Coy, with Clout

The coyest and most courted region in the 1968 election season is the South.

The Old Confederacy and the Border States nominated the Republican ticket, and will shape its campaign. The winds from Dixie make Hubert Humphrey the Democratic pacesetter and will similarly trim his sails into November. Thus, to the naked eye, the South appears to have risen again. A closer look does not quite bear out the more sweeping assumptions about Southern power, but Dixie has indisputably earned the attention it gets.

More than any other area, the South has been undergoing rapid political and social change for nearly 20 years. While the Negro population has increased 20% in the eleven secessionist states since 1948, black voter registration has risen more than 500%, to an estimated 3,250,000 for this year's election. Industrialization and legislative reapportionment have given new strength to the cities and suburbs. The Republican Party is again a potent force; but it wears dramatically contrasting faces in different states, and has lost most of the Negro support that once formed its core. The Democrats meanwhile are being pulled apart by the opposing forces of reaction and moderation.

Ancestral Party. The South in one sense has lost influence. Democratic Congressmen, who under the seniority rule built one-party security and physical longevity into enduring power on Capitol Hill, have become vulnerable to challenge and defeat. Nor can the survivors rely on each other to vote "right."

Three years ago, 43 Southern Congressmen helped pass the Voting Rights Act. In presidential politics, the once Solid South no longer has the weight to offset the Democratic Party's liberal elements. When Texan Lyndon Johnson became President, the conservative South found overnight that it still had no ally in the White House on racial and economic issues. Georgia Governor Lester Maddox, the latest presidential entry, complained last week that the "socialists and Communists" now control his ancestral party.

Yet, by re-establishing the two-party system -- actually a three-party system this year, with George Wallace's candidacy -- the South has regained political leverage in other respects. Both major parties must compete there as in other regions; they can no longer regard the South as a bloc but must view it as a collection of diverse states with diverse interests. In this sense, the South has come of age politically. There are real rewards for the party that deals delicately with this constituency. The eleven states of the Old Confederacy contain 128 electoral votes and five Border States add 42, for a total of 170.

Needed to elect: 270.

Non-Enemy. If the South's influence this year has been strong, it has also been negative and retrogressive. The Wallace candidacy is a magnet for the disgruntled, and while the Alabamian poses serious problems for the major parties, his odd allure is a force to be circumvented rather than absorbed into the mainstream.

To be sure, the South contributed the necessary margin for Richard Nixon's first-ballot nomination, but in a spirit of acceptance rather than enthusiasm. Southern Republicans could not have Ronald Reagan and would not have Nelson Rockefeller. Nixon became their only realistic choice. South Carolina Senator Strom Thurmond's role in Miami Beach was described by many observers as that of kingmaker. It would be more accurate to say that he acted as the king's bodyguard, jealously fending off the Reagan forces because they could not carry the nation, and assiduously blocking the selection of an outright liberal as Nixon's No. 2 man. Thurmond & Co. finally settled for Spiro Agnew, not as a friend but certainly as a non-enemy.

New Favor. Certainly, important elements of Nixon's emerging campaign strategy will appeal to conservative elements in the South, particularly his emphasis on the law-and-order issue. But, as he sees it, this approach is eminently usable outside the South as well, in view of the nation's current concern over crime and violence. Actually, there has been something of a depolarization over the racial issue, at least among many Northern and Southern whites. The Southerners have tended to become less conservative, the Northerners less liberal. Further, middle-road Republicans like Nixon discovered big, centralized government as a target long before Wallace arose as a threat and Southern Republicanism as a lure. It is still an attractive mark to those in all regions who view the Federal Government as an inefficient leviathan. That this position also appeals to the old states'rights sentiment, the resistance to change imposed by alien authority, is something of a bonus for Nixon. The Southern attitude is an inducement for him to press the point vigorously.

On the Democratic side, Humphrey has also benefited from strong Deep South and Border support in his pre-convention campaign. Of the 16 states' 745 convention votes, Humphrey will probably get more than 600 of 1,312 needed for nomination. His new-found favor with Southern Democrats, after years of being disliked and distrusted by them, has two major reasons. After Johnson withdrew from the race, Humphrey seemed the most trustworthy and stable of the possible candidates, particularly in comparison with Robert Kennedy, who was feared and hated in the South. Also, the Democratic leadership in most Southern states has grown more moderate, partly because of the increasing Negro vote and partly because the Republicans and George Wallace have drawn off the most conservative elements. The remaining loyalists had nowhere to go but to Humphrey, who as Vice President had taken the trouble to visit and treat with Southern leaders, even Maddox.

Nixiecrat. The Southerners are now attempting to keep Humphrey from breaking toward the liberal side in his effort to mollify the followers of Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. Last week a group of party leaders proposed a Southern running mate for Humphrey, mentioning seven prospects by name.* Humphrey preferred to remain politely vague. Nonetheless, in Mississippi he is backing the biracial insurgent delegate slate, a direct slap at the old-time leaders. And last week he coined the term Nixiecrat to disparage Nixon's association with conservative Southerners like Thurmond, who led the Dixiecrat revolt in 1948.

While Humphrey has a fighting chance to carry a few Southern states in November, he is obviously not constructing his strategy around that hope. Dixie will indeed be fought over. If the election turns out to be as close as now appears likely, a few smallish states could be decisive--north or south of the Mason-Dixon line. But it seems unlikely that the South will go as a bloc for any one candidate. Wallace will almost certainly take a few states, with Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana his surest bets. Humphrey might collect Tennessee, Arkansas and possibly Georgia, states in which Wallace and Nixon are likely to cut into each other's vote. Nixon has good prospects in Texas, Florida, Virginia and the Carolinas. But the dominant characteristic of the South this year is that of a region in flux--uncertain, hard to please, and even harder to predict. Therein lies its power.

-Governors John Connally of Texas, Buford Ellington of Tennessee, Robert McNair of South Carolina and John McKeithen of Louisiana; former Governors Carl Sanders of Georgia and Terry Sanford of North Carolina; Senator George Smathers of Florida.

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