Money, Money, Money

Jimmy Carter, a product of the progressive politics that infiltrated the South in the '60s, harbors a strong desire to rid his region of old-guard conservatives and Nixonian Republicans. High on his hit list in this election were three of the most conservative Republicans: John Tower of Texas, Strom Thurmond South Carolina and Jesse Helms of Carolina. All faced strong challengers who received personal help from Carter. And all three Republicans won.

But Democratic senatorial candidates in the South were able to lose even without Carter's help. Former Virginia Attorney General Andrew Miller never invited Carter in, though the President was willing. He lost by a slim margin to former Navy Secretary John Warner, thus casting Elizabeth Taylor in yet another role, Senate wife. In Mississippi, Cochran became the first Republican Senator in almost a century, partly because the black vote was split Democrat Maurice Dantin and independent Black Civil Rights Leader Charles Evers.

Democrats also lost two hotly contested gubernatorial races. Carter stumped for wheeler-dealer Banker Jake in Tennessee, but he was upset by Republican Lamar Alexander, who walked 1,000 miles across the state to conquer his reputation for aloofness. Texas activist Attorney General John Hill, who had toppled Governor Dolph Briscoe in Democratic primary, eschewed Carters help. But he too was upset, by Oilman William Clements.

Do these Democratic defeats mean a Southern repudiation of the first President from the Deep South since the Civil War? Not really. But they do emphasize the birth of the two-party system in the once Solid South.

The G.O.P. breakthroughs were mostly individual. As in the rest of the country, elections in the South did not generally turn on party lines or the President's popularity. Perhaps because local taxes tend to be lower in the South, there were also fewer manifestations of the tax-cut issue. In fact there were few issues at all: attention seemed to focus on such trivial things as, in Texas, a spurned handshake (Senator Tower's public rebuff to Democrat Robert Krueger) and, in Virginia, a famous wife.

While candidates across the South repeatedly denounced high government spending, they were less critical of campaign spending. The old Confederacy was awash with money, much of it from the candidates' own deep pockets. Thirty years ago, Clements founded an oil-drilling firm that made him one of Texas' richest men. He guaranteed loans of $4.2 million in his massive, $6.4 million campaign for Governor. Said he: "The spending was totally necessary because unlike a career politician, I had an identification problem." His elaborate phone banks reached 17,000 voters a day and seemed to bring out every Republican for the election. Consequently, tour guides at the Austin statehouse will no longer point to the portrait of Edmund Jackson Davis, who was elected in 1869, as the state's last Republican chief executive.

Similarly, Alabama Democrat Forrest ("Fob") James, who parlayed a sporting goods empire into a personal fortune, used $2 million in his successful primary bid and then coasted to victory in the race to succeed George Wallace.

The Florida Governor's race pitted two lavish campaigners against each other. Democrat Robert Graham, a millionaire Miami Lakes land developer and dairyman, spent $2.6 million. His Republican opponent, Jack Eckerd, who built a burgeoning chain of drugstores that bear his name, vowed to spend "whatever it takes" and ended up with a $2.9 million campaign, $2 million of which was his own. But Graham dispelled his wealthy Harvard image with a well-publicized series of 100 one-day stints at blue-collar jobs across the state. He won with a surprisingly large 56% of the vote.

The biggest spending of all was done by ultraconservative Helms in North Carolina, whose $6.7 million was a record for a Senate race. His opponent, John Ingram, a friend and populist protege of Carter's, raised less than $300,000 and sought to make an issue of the fortune that Helms received from fellow conservatives around the country. Said he: "Helms is the six-million-dollar man and he's not even bionic." It did not work.

But money was not a sure road to victory. Like Clements and James, Tennessee's Butcher had never held elective office, and he used a lot of his own money in his $4.5 million bid for his state's governorship. But his finances became a campaign issue: he was criticized for his dealings with Georgia Banker Bert Lance and for his hotshot banking practices. His campaign spending also became an issue. Charged Republican Alexander: "Citizens of this state won't let Jake Butcher buy the Governor's office." He was right.

One of the most interesting aspects of this year's Southern elections, and the most encouraging for the Democrats, is the emergence of fresh faces. Perhaps the brightest new light is Arkansas' William Clinton, a Yale Law School graduate and Rhodes scholar, who at 32 will be the nation's youngest Governor in 40 years. He worked on the McGovern and Carter campaigns and used his tenure as attorney general to fight for consumers. He is an anomaly for both Arkansas and 1978. He said he might ask for a state tax increase if food and drugs were exempted from the sales tax; his wife is an ardent feminist who uses her maiden name, and he is a competent jazz saxophonist. He looks like a Kennedy and even breaks his campaigning for impromptu touch football games. Along with Alabama's James, 44, Florida's Graham, 42, and South Carolina's Richard Riley, 45, he is part of a drove of Democrats who have infused fresh blood into Southern Governors' mansions and who may some day--it has happened before--be important on the national scene.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.