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Democrats Get
Push For
Reform From
Within
By: Dan Hoover
Another
election has come and gone, and South
Carolina's Democrats are at another crossroads.
Perhaps
we should make that the same crossroads. They've been there before.
While the
state party is set for a leadership change in April amid intense interest
in South Carolina's
presidential primary, the centrist Democratic Leadership Council is
pushing a reform agenda aimed at making Democrats relevant.
Democratic
moderates who were concerned about the party's leftward drift and an
indifferent national apparatus created the DLC. Its biggest success was
the election to the presidency of one of its own, then-Arkansas Gov. Bill
Clinton.
Charleston's Phil Noble, the
state DLC's executive director, talks of a
South Carolina Democratic Party too staid, too set in its ways, too
stymied by inertia. Climbing back"There is
no question about that, and it's not just my opinion, but that of the
majority of voters in South
Carolina," Noble says.
The
Democratic Party today is not a viable alternative for the majority of
people in South Carolina, he says,
adding that it's not about left-right elections,
it's about changing South
Carolina, change that is impossible until there
is ballot box success.
With his
party a shell of its former self, Noble says the road back can be built
on the party's success at holding its own in municipal and county
offices, by encouraging incumbents with demonstrated leadership success
to seek legislative and state offices, running as reformers. Success agendaTo that end, DLC released last week its "Reform Agenda for Success in the 21st
Century." The centerpiece is a proposed change in the state
constitution that would do away with the "minimally adequate"
requirement for education, replacing it with a mandate for
"top-quality, world-class" schools.
"You'd
have to talk to the party," Noble said when asked about state party
efforts.
"The
state of the party speaks for itself. We're appreciative of everything
that anyone has ever done to build the party, (but) we are manifestly
falling short of success. We've got to bring new people, ideas into the
process."
Retiring
Democratic Party Chairman Joe Erwin, a Greenville advertising executive, says
there's no conflict, no tension between the party and the DLC.
Perhaps.
Both
agree that the party's return to influence will be slow and can only come
from the grass roots.
"When
you've been in minority status for a number of years, you don't turn it
around in a single cycle," said Erwin, a guy no one ever accused of
lack of energy. Primary drive"That's
exactly why I worked so hard to get this early (2008) presidential
primary, because we learned in 2004 it compelled us, challenged us, made
us, if you will, reinvigorate Democrats in every county, down to the precinct
level."
But he
adds that creating a Democratic primary that now equals the GOP primary
in excitement and interest is "one of the special things the state
party is uniquely poised to do, to create that ability to go to the grass
roots. That's not something, frankly, that Phil Noble can do."
Are the
party and the DLC on the same page?
Erwin
answers, "We don't really work that closely together; they're not a
functioning part of the state party. I don't know what all they do, but I
respect that they're engaged in different places. They occupy an
important space as a voice for debate and concern."
Former
Democratic Gov. Jim Hodges recalled that "the SCDP and DLC
peacefully coexisted during my time in office. I am not aware of any
hostility between the two groups. If it is, it's very limited."
Democrats
also are counting on disillusionment with the Iraq war among independents
and interest in their 2008 presidential primary, marked by repeated
visits from the party's hottest names, to offer a shot in the arm going
into 2008. Party 'in shambles'Against that
backdrop, Noble recently referred to the state-level party as being
"in shambles."
Noble
demurs when asked if DLC is being treated like the pushy new kid on the
block who interrupts the elders and gets in the way, but notes that
"people who can read election returns, be they young, old, bright or
not too bright, understand we have got to do things fundamentally
different. People who want to win, who want new ways, are all for
us."
The
coming election cycle, with a U.S. Senate contest and all 170 legislative
seats on the ballot, offer the battered party a chance to begin its
comeback and burnish the images of some of its emerging young guns eyeing
statewide offices in 2010.
But make
no mistake, Democrats were hammered again in
2006's statewide elections, crowing over Jim Rex's 455-vote defeat of
Karen Floyd notwithstanding.
With the
end of Republican Mark Sanford's term as governor in 2011, the Democrats
will have held the state's top office for only four of the past 24 years.
Last year, they lost seven of the eight races they contested.
Democrats
shouldn't look to Rex, their lone statewide incumbent, as the block on
which to build their future.
Rex, who
would prefer making his job nonpartisan, said he's trying to stay out of
the fray as much as is possible.
Besides,
he said, the party is "a pretty disorganized group from what I
see."
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