South Carolina's GOP lines up behind Bush

By Curtis Wilkie, Globe staff, March 14, 1999

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Some of the same forces that crushed Pat Buchanan's insurgency in the 1996 South Carolina primary and helped Lee Atwater throw up a "firewall" in the state to protect George Bush in 1988 are at work to give an advantage to the former president's son in next year's primary.

In a preemptive move last month, House Speaker David Wilkins enlisted more than 50 of his Republican colleagues to join in a public call for Texas Governor George W. Bush to seek the presidential nomination. Former Governor David Beasley and associates of Carroll Campbell, another former governor, are also supporting Bush.

But the Republican establishment that has controlled the political climate in South Carolina for years no longer speaks with the same authority since the party suffered a string of statewide defeats last fall, and challengers to Bush are beginning to stake out positions in South Carolina a year in advance of the critically situated primary.

Though he is not yet a formal candidate, Senator John McCain of Arizona received an enthusiastic reception Friday night as the keynote speaker at a banquet attended by 1,600 party loyalists where presidential politics bubbled in conversations.

"I'm encouraging McCain to run," said Representative Lindsey Graham, the hero of the evening for his efforts as a House manager in the impeachment trial of President Clinton. "Our party is in the process of reorganizing itself," Graham said, asserting that the old Atwater-Campbell axis cannot dictate events anymore.

The Republicans not only lost the governor's office, but failed to unseat a vulnerable Democrat, Senator Ernest F. Hollings, and saw other candidates fall in the 1998 election.

Attention is now focusing on the state's presidential primary, which closely follows New Hampshire's and is the first major primary in the South. In recent presidential elections, the South Carolina contest has played a pivotal role heading into the Super Tuesday primaries throughout the South.

Attorney General Charles Condon, the most prominent Republican official left in state government, said he is "trying to help" Elizabeth Dole get a foothold in the state. There is an opening for her, he says, because "she's excited many women."

The primary cannot be wired the way it was in the past, Condon said. "Before, we had an incumbent governor with hundreds of patronage jobs. That's gone. The party's Balkanized, and there is no clear political leader in the state."

Campbell is not yet aligned. Bush and Dole would be formidable in the 2000 primary, he said, "but don't underestimate Dan Quayle. He's the most undersold candidate in the country." With a nod toward McCain, Campbell said, "He could get a buildup, too."

McCain, a free spirit who often dissents against party doctrine, spent two days in the state during the weekend promoting his candidacy in this conservative stronghold.

Also, Cyndi Mosteller, an antiabortion activist, hosted a breakfast for the Arizona senator in the Patriot's Room of a hotel in a Charleston suburb. Although McCain describes himself as prolife, he has never put abortion at the top of his agenda. Mosteller pronounced herself satisfied with McCain's position and hailed him as a man who had shown his "willingness to sacrifice for this country . . . In John McCain's vocabulary, dodge is not a verb."

Despite Bush's strong connections here, McCain insisted in an interview, "I'm not starting from scratch in this state."

With his background as a decorated Navy pilot who endured more than five years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, McCain said, "I'm keenly aware there are more veterans per capita in South Carolina than any other state." Throughout his South Carolina trip, he said "rebuilding our nation's defense" was his first priority, and he talked wistfully of finding a way to register potential voters at the many military bases around the state.

But in the last Congress, McCain became identified with a couple of initiatives that are unpopular with the Republican leadership. He joined with Democratic Senator Russell Feingold of Wisconsin in an attempt to choke off special interests in campaign financing, and he led an unsuccessful move to impose a costly settlement on the tobacco industry.

Henry McMaster, chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party, said McCain's image as "a true American hero" would be a major asset in South Carolina, but he predicted McCain's interest in campaign-finance reform would have no resonance in the state.

McCain ran into the tobacco issue Friday in South Carolina, where tobacco is grown and R.J. Reynolds served as a benefactor at the GOP dinner. In an afternoon meeting with a few prominent party contributors, Jake Razor, a businessman from Laurens, questioned McCain about his role in "a huge ploy by the government to put an industry out of business."

Before he got to Columbia, McCain had anticipated the reaction. "I know tobacco can be a problem," he told reporters on a flight from Charleston. "I know it will be used against me. They'll try to make me sound like a tax guy."