Democrats hoping for reprise of how the West was won

SAN FRANCISCO -- Much has been made of the Northeastern pedigree, the liberal votes, the patrician bearing.

Senator John F. Kerry is quite a ways from good ol' boy. Which has some worrying that the likely Democratic nominee for president hasn't a hope of winning votes in the South, long considered crucial to success in a general election.

But in statements that might have been considered heresy a few short years ago, some Democrats are saying their nominee might be able to make do without Dixie. The senator in question even said it himself, before backpedaling so as not to offend primary voters in South Carolina and Tennessee.

"Everybody makes the mistake of looking south," Kerry said in New Hampshire earlier this primary season. "Al Gore proved he could have been president of the United States without winning one Southern state, including his own. I think the fight is all over this country."

While they might not have advised Kerry to say it out loud, some Democrats and political analysts applaud the sentiment. Much of the South is all but lost to Democrats, falling away since the 1960s, when civil rights legislation alienated white voters there, and President Nixon coaxed them over to the GOP. The Democrats should direct their efforts elsewhere, they say: While they should concentrate on holding the states Vice President Al Gore won in 2000, and on states in the industrial Midwest (like Ohio, which Gore lost narrowly), the edge for Democrats lies in the West.

"One hundred forty years after the Civil War, people are still preoccupied with the North-South relationship," said former US senator and onetime presidential hopeful Gary Hart of Colorado. "The Republicans skillfully turned the South into Republican territory and, in some cases, used the race card to do so. What I'm suggesting is that the Democratic Party has a strategy of converting the West to the Democratic Party, in much the same way as Republicans converted the South, but without using race or hate."

Even in the party's salad days, the South was not always good to Democrats, said Thomas F. Schaller, assistant professor of political science at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Nor did the region's previous lack of affection for the GOP hamper Republican candidates, he said.

"People forget that from 1860 to 1932, the Democrats dominated the South, and they only won the presidency four out of 18 elections," Schaller said.

Bill Clinton carried a handful of Southern states in 1992 and 1996, but he would have won the presidency both times without them, Schaller said. Gore lost every Southern state in 2000, yet won the popular vote nationwide and nearly took the White House. If he had carried any of the states Hart and others are saying should be higher on Democrats' priority lists this year -- like Arizona -- Gore would be president today.

"Gore basically had the White House within reach if he could have won any of the 30 states he lost," Schaller said. "Eighteen of those states are outside the South, and only 12 are inside the South."

It's not "Forget the South," exactly. Hart believes Democrats should compete in every state in the region, but not at the expense of "40 percent of the population and the largest state in the union, west of the Mississippi."

"You can't ignore the South, but it's where you put your resources," said Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico. "You get more bang for your buck in Western states that are doable."

Just which Western states are "doable" for Democrats is subject to some debate, however. Some are beyond their reach -- Montana, Utah, and Idaho, for example, where Bush won convincingly in 2000. California and Washington are firmly in the Democratic column. Gore won Oregon narrowly in 2000, and New Mexico even more narrowly. He lost Nevada to George W. Bush by four percentage points, and Arizona by six points. Some see the Southwestern states -- with their burgeoning Latino populations (two-thirds of whom vote Democrat), and their many transplants from the East and the West, as a new kind of Democratic heartland. Though, as the electoral map stands right now, the region would hardly qualify as the Democrats' new South: the old one still offers far more electoral votes.

Early primaries in New Mexico and Arizona have visions of new Democratic strongholds dancing in local strategists' heads. Before Arizona's primary on Feb. 3, Paul Eckerstrom, chair of the Democratic Party in Pima County, which includes Tucson, was a fixture at events featuring the Democratic hopefuls for president. On a balmy Friday afternoon at Tucson's El Pueblo Neighborhood Center, or a cool Saturday morning at the city's Reid Park, he saw voters more energized and engaged than in any national election he can remember. He believes that the early attention could make a difference in November, and that the state, which went GOP red in 2000, has been moving steadily toward Democratic blue. "This is really good for the Democratic Party for one, really good for people being excited," he said. "I don't understand the focus on South Carolina. That's a red state. It's not going blue. We have a chance of going blue here."

The optimism of Richardson and others springs partly from the lesson of California, which no Democratic presidential candidate had carried between 1964 and 1992, but which is now a sure thing for the party. The behemoth -- with more electoral votes than any other state -- had gone from "the victory lap for Ronald Reagan in 1984 to the Democrats cleaning house in 1992," said Democratic consultant Bill Carrick, who recalls bruising uphill fights for his candidates there in the 1980s.

Carrick said the state flipped because of the emergence of Latino voters as a Democratic force, and the growth of Christian conservatism, which turned off socially liberal Californians to the GOP. Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger won last year's recall election because his views on social issues were liberal, Carrick said.

Now, when Bush comes to California, he "acts like he has just arrived on Mars," Carrick said. "There's a tentativeness about it. If a swing voter bumped into George Bush in California, it would be entirely an accident."

"I see those same trends in Nevada, New Mexico, and Arizona today," Carrick added.

In Arizona, the ranks of independents have been growing in recent years, and Democrats have made gains in state offices and in Congress. Nevada's population is exploding, particularly in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, a city that trends Democrat. Clinton won Nevada twice, and though Bush took it in 2000, his approval of nuclear waste storage at Yucca Mountain will probably be used to turn voters against him.

But the Bush campaign is targeting the West this year, too, including those states on which Democrats have their eyes. The campaign will pour resources into Washington and Oregon, and into New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada, and into California, said Bush campaign chair and former Montana governor Marc Racicot.

The campaign will try to win over Latino voters in the region by focusing on Bush's proposal to give undocumented workers temporary permits, and to persuade all voters in the region that Bush is committed to education and affordable health care.