Dems look to rebuild by riding local issues

Group says party needs to push ideas people identify with

Democrats got hammered yet again in South Carolina's statewide races last fall, so some are hoping to build the party's strength back by thinking locally first.

The effort is being coordinated by Phil Noble of Charleston, who has founded an Internet technology company, done political consulting and once ran for lieutenant governor in the 1990s.

He is the new director of the South Carolina Democratic Leadership Council, which bills itself as a "think tank and a do tank ... (that) gives a voice to people who want to move politics beyond the old left-right debates of the past."

Noble noted that the Democratic Party lost eight of nine statewide races last November, has held the governor's post only four of the past 24 years and is at its lowest point since 1876.

"If you look around the state on the state level, the Democratic Party is just in shambles, but if you look down the row at the city and county level, it's different," Noble said. "What's been lacking is a way to network those people and to encourage them to move up to the statewide level and take leadership positions."

Perhaps not surprisingly, two local officials are serving as co-chairmen of the council, Mayor Bob Coble of Columbia and Mayor Floyd Nicholson of Greenwood.

Coble said the party statewide needs to use some of the same ideas being voiced by local Democrats, such as those taking a role in the global warming debate,

trying to fight gangs and youth violence, and promoting better planned development over urban sprawl.

"We just need to articulate issues that people identify with and agree with and are successful on the local level," he said.

For the past nine months Noble and others have been floating ideas that could become rallying points for rebuilding the party, such as establishing a universal statewide kindergarten for 4-year-olds, giving each student a laptop computer and ensuring a minimum level of health care. They plan to unveil their manifesto — what issues Democrats should talk about and why — on March 14.

If the message is grounded in local politics, the council sees national politics, and the upcoming Democratic presidential debate in Orangeburg this spring, as a perfect opportunity to get its message out.

"I think the presidential election is a boon to that. It's going to lift the political debate in South Carolina," Noble said. "It's going to change politics as usual, and I think that's hugely important."

The council's relationship with the state Democratic Party has been complementary in the sense that Democratic candidates sometimes embrace the group's ideas, but not necessarily closely.

Carol Fowler, who is the only announced candidate for the party's chairmanship, said she has not joined the council because she has devoted her time to the party.

"In a lot of respects, it's the same people doing two things. I have not been a member of the DLC simply because I spend my time getting Democrats elected," she said.

Coble and Noble said their efforts aren't meant as a threat to more established party members.

"This is not a politics of subtraction. It has to be a politics of addition," Coble said. "I'm as much a part of the old people as anybody. It's not that the old people need to move aside. We just need to add until we get to 50 (percent) plus one. Maybe even to 55."

Noble agreed. "I don't care if it's a business or a church or a party. If you don't innovate, you die. Ideas are all that matters. If you've got that part right, all the rest comes."

Reach Robert Behre at 937-5771 or rbehre@postandcourier.com.