OxfordPress.com

Southern Democrats take shine to Warner

Charleston, S.C. — Gov. Mark Warner of Virginia, who has dominated recent speculation about the next Democratic presidential campaign, is headed into a lunch-to-brunch showdown this weekend with another favorite son of the South, John Edwards, the party's vice presidential nominee last year.

Edwards, the former senator from North Carolina, is the scheduled luncheon speaker Saturday at the Florida State Democratic Party conference in Orlando. Warner, who is wrapping up his term, is scheduled to address the conference at a brunch Sunday.

In more normal political times, most of the attention at the Florida gathering would be on Edwards, who was the running mate of 2004 Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry.

But the high-profile month Warner has had since he helped engineer his Democratic successor's victory in Virginia — a state that has not voted Democratic in a presidential election since 1964 — over a candidate endorsed by President Bush has analysts and party professionals reassessing what the Southern political landscape might be like in 2008.

"It's now an open question as to who is the favorite in the South now," said Tom Schaller, a political science professor at the University of Maryland campus in Baltimore.

That was evident as Warner on Wednesday night addressed the South Carolina Democratic Party's salute to former Democratic governors. Warner came away with all but formal endorsements from some of the most influential Democrats in South Carolina, a state that gave Edwards, a South Carolina native, his only outright primary victory over Kerry before the nomination was settled.

Warner "just won the South Carolina primary," said Schaller, who was on hand for the event. "He practically got the endorsements of almost every speaker on stage."

Among those praising Warner were former Sen. Fritz Hollings and former Govs. Jim Hodges and Robert McNair.

"I believe like the rest of you that we have a real winner here tonight," Hollings said in comments echoed by Hodges and McNair.

It is Warner's political message that could propel him in the 2008 Democratic presidential contest, said Jack Bass, a professor at the College of Charleston and biographer of Southern political legends Sen. Strom Thurmond and Judge Frank Johnson Jr.

"You don't see many candidates with messages that well developed even before a campaign has begun," Bass said after hearing Warner's speech.

"Results matter" is the core message from Warner, a wealthy businessman who, in one term as governor, restructured Virginia's tax system, increased funding for education and health care and turned a $6 billion budget deficit into a $100 million surplus. And achieving such results, Warner emphasized, is "not a matter of liberal versus conservative or even Democrat versus Republican but rather it is the future versus the past."

That, said former state and national party chairman Don Fowler, is a message for Democrats in every region of the country. "What the party needs is a nominee who speaks with clear convictions and clarity of mind and purpose," Fowler said. "And that kind of nominee can be successful anywhere, not just in the South."