Could 'Tumpy' thump Henry Brown down into South Carolina’s shifting sands?
By: John Vaught LaBeaume
Special to The Examiner
10/02/09 5:16 PM EDT
Electoral sands are shifting along the Carolina Coast and Rep. Henry Brown (R-SC) is scrambling for a stable beachhead.
In last November’s Supermarket Showdown, former Piggly Wiggly Veep Brown barely fended off Food Lion heiress Linda Ketner, who self-funded her unexpectedly aggressive bid. Ketner may have hit a ceiling – for now – for a Democrat in this New South district that is only barely trending Democratic. But the factors spurring that modest trend are posing problems for Brown among Republicans, too.
Last summer, Southern Republican virtuoso Whit Ayers cranked to Roll Call that the chances for an openly lesbian, market-friendly Democratic challenger like Linda Ketner were “slim.” Why? Because: “that districts voters…switched political allegiances well before it became trendy in the South two decades ago.”
In fact, Coastal South Carolina was an “early adaptor,” playing along with former Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond as he imposed Nixonian Republicanism on the Palmetto State, sparing it the embarrassment of going for George Wallace in ’68. Charleston County showed the first cracks in a once-Solid South Carolina when it started voting heavily Republican back in 1952, years before the GOP launched its fabled Southern Strategy.
The Examiner’s own senior Political Analyst Michael Barone, in his authoritative Almanac of American Politics, captured this district and its affluent resort towns – not to mention Brown’s predicament - cogently: “The conservatism of the Low Country district is more economic and less cultural than the conservatism of Up Country South Carolina.”
Republicans in South Carolina’s First defied the firewall that South Carolina’s early primary was set up to be, and favored then-maverick Senator John McCain back in 2000 over Republican Establishment darling, George W. Bush. Mitt Romney’s business cred scored his best showing here in 2008. Mike Huckabee’s mix of social conservatism and economic populism played far better in Up Country.
- Enter Carroll “Tumpy” Campbell III. The Palmetto Scoop blog reports that “Tumpy” is fixin’ to challenge Brown for re-nomination, and stands to knock him off. Roll Call, National Journal’s House Race Hotline, CQPolitics, and Politico all concur: this could be the hottest GOP House primary of the cycle. Campbell’s dad, the late Gov. Carroll Campbell, was the paradigm of the urbane Southern Republican, a respectable conservative antidote to the state’s rabidly segregationist and populist Democratic history. Coastal counties embraced Carroll Campbell as their anti-“Pitchfork Ben” Tillman. Carroll fils, upholding his father’s tradition, could a better fit than Brown with constituents.
But Brown thinks his combination of pedestrian social conservatism – the cousin of former Christian Coalition chief Roberta Combs, he vociferously opposes kiddie porn and is unwavering in his support for the Ten Commandments’ public display – and unapologetic earmarking will save him, even though his predecessor, Gov. Mark Sanford, abjured federal dollars during three barely-challenged terms.
The embattled governor rarely mentions social issues, but before his so-called sojourn along the Appalachian Trail (later revealed, of course, to be his amorous ambling in Argentina) Sanford’s cacophonous contretemps with Washington Democrats over stimulus funds was a popular stance in this district. Even if his influence among Republicans hadn’t dimmed, it doesn’t look like the governor would have lifted lift a finger for Brown, deriding him as “anything but a guardian of the taxpayer.” Comments like that could sound Brown’s death knell in a Republican primary, Sanford’s political predicament notwithstanding.
In his announcement – nearly bereft of social rhetoric, while hammering home that “we deserve better than” a big spender like Henry Brown - “Tumpy” resurrected Walter Mondale’s debated declamation of the “New Ideas” of his “New Democrat” presidential rival, Gary Hart, by declaring, “I have been in the Wendy's restaurant business. And, when I take a look at Mr. Brown's record, I have to ask, ‘Where's the beef?’”
Tumpy’s frosty self-retort? “Unfortunately, Mr. Brown's beef is nothing but pork.”
Keep an eye on this internecine squabble. It could offer a glimpse of how serious the forces of fiscal conservatism are about wresting the rhetorical reins as they seek a Republican revival.
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