Southern Voters Beyond Bubbas And Yellow Dogs

The Thomases are prize catches for presidential candidates: white Southern swing voters. For more than 20 years this of conservative Democrats and moderate independents has helped the Republicans roll through the South and into the White House by blow-out margins. They’re also part of a political anthropology that gets lost in the tumult of airport press conferences and negative ad fire fights that constitute Super Tuesday campaigning. Southern politics is more than blacks, Bubbas, Bubbarettes and yellow dogs-die-hard Democrats who’d vote for a yellow dog before a Republican. Urban and suburban expansion, and the steady stream of transplants like Mickey Thomas, have given the region an electoral complexity that belies venerable stereotypes. “When people think of a Southern voter they are thinking of a middle-class white male, not upper-middle class, but the Bubba vote,” says Atlanta polltaker Claibourne Darden. “It’s anything but that.”

Candidates who hope to thrive on Super Tuesday-and this fall-need to assemble a winning coalition from an increasingly diverse group of voters. Florida, one of next week’s major trophies (148 pledged Democratic delegates, 97 Republican), is more akin to California than the old Confederacy. “Condo commandos”-retired Jews from the Northeast who line the Atlantic coast from Boca Raton to Miami Beach-helped Michael Dukakis win the state’s 1988 primary. Miami’s anti-Castro Cuban-Americans are stalwart Bush Republicans. Texas, the other Super Tuesday giant (196 pledged Democratic delegates, 121 Republican), has Democratic Mexican-Americans who are beginning to flex their muscles. A half-million Asian-Americans in Houston are growing more politically active. A brief survey of Southern typology:

The good ole boy core of the South’s white Re publican vote constituting more than 40 percent of the region’s electorate. He is often a small businessman who believes racism is a thing of the past. He may have voted Democrat once, but believes the party has long since been hijacked by minorities and other special interests. He thinks affirmative action and other Great Society-era remedies are unfair, but insists that he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body. Icons of tax-and-spend liberalism like Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson get him riled, but charismatic Christians make him nervous as well. He’s a classical Bubba or a Northern transplant whose heroes are Ronald Reagan or rising Southern stars like Texas Sen. Phil Gramm and South Carolina Gov. Carroll Campbell. Together with conservative independents, he anchors the GOP’s dominance in the South, according to political scientists Earl and Merle Black, authors of “The Vital South,” a new and richly detailed study of Southern voting patterns.

Life has been good to the Joe Bourbons. Seven in 10 have attended college and three quarters have a family income of $25,000 or more. They’re also restless with George Bush, who won more than 90 percent of them in 1988. Henry Shaffer, a 36-year-old M.B.A. who lives in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody, has always voted Republican because of the party’s strong promilitary stance. But now, with the cold war over, he sees Bush and the GOP in a new light. “I think he’s lost touch with economic reality,” he says, His new horse: Tsongas.

This is the white swing-vote prize, about 18 percent of the Southern electorate. Consistently captured on the presidential level by the GOP, it includes independents like the Thomases who are also susceptible to appeals by moderate Democrats. They’re proud of social advances in the South and see government as an agent of change. But they still don’t like big-ticket programs or preferential hiring. Bubbas can be found in this group, and Bubbarettes as well: high-school graduates who fill manufacturing, service and low-level white-collar jobs. Democratic governors like Clinton, Texas’s Ann Richards and Georgia’s Zell Miller have been able to win this bloc on the state level. Clinton now needs to do it regionally. The problem: swing voters usually sit out primaries. Their absence forces Democrats to cater to an artificially progressive primary electorate of blacks and white liberals. That sends the middle swinging to the GOP come November.

Still the most consistently loyal segment of the Democratic Southern constituency, it’s 14 percent of the region’s vote and more than 30 percent of the primary electorate in Louisiana and Mississippi. Jesse Jackson’s absence has scattered black support among all candidates. “That’s the way it should be. That’s playing winning ball,” says Michael Thurmound, chairman of the Georgia Legislature’s black caucus. But Southern blacks are no longer a Democratic lock. Upward mobility has led some into the GOP. Thirteen percent of the region’s blacks voted for Bush in 1988, including Carlton Stewart, a 40-year-old Atlanta attorney. He says he’ll do it again this year. “If you’re Republican and black you’re labeled a conservative and that’s not always the case,” says Stewart. “I describe myself as a moderate.”

The white Democratic core, 24 percent of the region’s vote. Earl and Merle Black found that bedrock Democrats tend to be softer in their support than loyal Republicans, making them more likely defectors. This group also includes the yellow-dog Democrats. Found in college towns like Austin, Chapel Hill and Tuscaloosa, their heroes include former Texas agriculture commissioner Jim Hightower and other liberal populists. But dwindling numbers give them little clout unless they link with other party groups, like blacks.

The unreconstructed racists. They’re on the margins but making their presence felt. The low-to-moderate-income suburban and rural whites respond to coded resentments that are a now famous part of GOP presidential candidate David Duke’s repertoire. North Carolina Republican Sen. Jesse Helms and Mississippi Gov. Kirk Fordice know the formula as well. Bush challenger Patrick Buchanan will be chasing these voters on Super Tuesday. They are a reminder that tolerance and diversity still have enemies in the South-sometimes powerful ones.

title: “Southern Voters Beyond Bubbas And Yellow Dogs” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-24” author: “Helen Lawrence”

The Thomases are prize catches for presidential candidates: white Southern swing voters. For more than 20 years this of conservative Democrats and moderate independents has helped the Republicans roll through the South and into the White House by blow-out margins. They’re also part of a political anthropology that gets lost in the tumult of airport press conferences and negative ad fire fights that constitute Super Tuesday campaigning. Southern politics is more than blacks, Bubbas, Bubbarettes and yellow dogs-die-hard Democrats who’d vote for a yellow dog before a Republican. Urban and suburban expansion, and the steady stream of transplants like Mickey Thomas, have given the region an electoral complexity that belies venerable stereotypes. “When people think of a Southern voter they are thinking of a middle-class white male, not upper-middle class, but the Bubba vote,” says Atlanta polltaker Claibourne Darden. “It’s anything but that.”

Candidates who hope to thrive on Super Tuesday-and this fall-need to assemble a winning coalition from an increasingly diverse group of voters. Florida, one of next week’s major trophies (148 pledged Democratic delegates, 97 Republican), is more akin to California than the old Confederacy. “Condo commandos”-retired Jews from the Northeast who line the Atlantic coast from Boca Raton to Miami Beach-helped Michael Dukakis win the state’s 1988 primary. Miami’s anti-Castro Cuban-Americans are stalwart Bush Republicans. Texas, the other Super Tuesday giant (196 pledged Democratic delegates, 121 Republican), has Democratic Mexican-Americans who are beginning to flex their muscles. A half-million Asian-Americans in Houston are growing more politically active. A brief survey of Southern typology:

The good ole boy core of the South’s white Re publican vote constituting more than 40 percent of the region’s electorate. He is often a small businessman who believes racism is a thing of the past. He may have voted Democrat once, but believes the party has long since been hijacked by minorities and other special interests. He thinks affirmative action and other Great Society-era remedies are unfair, but insists that he doesn’t have a racist bone in his body. Icons of tax-and-spend liberalism like Ted Kennedy and Jesse Jackson get him riled, but charismatic Christians make him nervous as well. He’s a classical Bubba or a Northern transplant whose heroes are Ronald Reagan or rising Southern stars like Texas Sen. Phil Gramm and South Carolina Gov. Carroll Campbell. Together with conservative independents, he anchors the GOP’s dominance in the South, according to political scientists Earl and Merle Black, authors of “The Vital South,” a new and richly detailed study of Southern voting patterns.

Life has been good to the Joe Bourbons. Seven in 10 have attended college and three quarters have a family income of $25,000 or more. They’re also restless with George Bush, who won more than 90 percent of them in 1988. Henry Shaffer, a 36-year-old M.B.A. who lives in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody, has always voted Republican because of the party’s strong promilitary stance. But now, with the cold war over, he sees Bush and the GOP in a new light. “I think he’s lost touch with economic reality,” he says, His new horse: Tsongas.

This is the white swing-vote prize, about 18 percent of the Southern electorate. Consistently captured on the presidential level by the GOP, it includes independents like the Thomases who are also susceptible to appeals by moderate Democrats. They’re proud of social advances in the South and see government as an agent of change. But they still don’t like big-ticket programs or preferential hiring. Bubbas can be found in this group, and Bubbarettes as well: high-school graduates who fill manufacturing, service and low-level white-collar jobs. Democratic governors like Clinton, Texas’s Ann Richards and Georgia’s Zell Miller have been able to win this bloc on the state level. Clinton now needs to do it regionally. The problem: swing voters usually sit out primaries. Their absence forces Democrats to cater to an artificially progressive primary electorate of blacks and white liberals. That sends the middle swinging to the GOP come November.

Still the most consistently loyal segment of the Democratic Southern constituency, it’s 14 percent of the region’s vote and more than 30 percent of the primary electorate in Louisiana and Mississippi. Jesse Jackson’s absence has scattered black support among all candidates. “That’s the way it should be. That’s playing winning ball,” says Michael Thurmound, chairman of the Georgia Legislature’s black caucus. But Southern blacks are no longer a Democratic lock. Upward mobility has led some into the GOP. Thirteen percent of the region’s blacks voted for Bush in 1988, including Carlton Stewart, a 40-year-old Atlanta attorney. He says he’ll do it again this year. “If you’re Republican and black you’re labeled a conservative and that’s not always the case,” says Stewart. “I describe myself as a moderate.”

The white Democratic core, 24 percent of the region’s vote. Earl and Merle Black found that bedrock Democrats tend to be softer in their support than loyal Republicans, making them more likely defectors. This group also includes the yellow-dog Democrats. Found in college towns like Austin, Chapel Hill and Tuscaloosa, their heroes include former Texas agriculture commissioner Jim Hightower and other liberal populists. But dwindling numbers give them little clout unless they link with other party groups, like blacks.

The unreconstructed racists. They’re on the margins but making their presence felt. The low-to-moderate-income suburban and rural whites respond to coded resentments that are a now famous part of GOP presidential candidate David Duke’s repertoire. North Carolina Republican Sen. Jesse Helms and Mississippi Gov. Kirk Fordice know the formula as well. Bush challenger Patrick Buchanan will be chasing these voters on Super Tuesday. They are a reminder that tolerance and diversity still have enemies in the South-sometimes powerful ones.