ROXBORO, N.C. — In an unguarded moment during their presidential primary battle, Sen. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts dismissed the notion that Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina represented Democrats' best hope for a strong showing in the South this November.
"He can't win his own state," Kerry told an aide.
Now, those words in February are ancient history for Kerry. Fresh from selecting Edwards as his running mate on the presumed Democratic presidential ticket, Kerry comes with him to North Carolina today to challenge President Bush's grip on a state that has voted Republican in the last six presidential elections.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday July 13, 2004 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 2 National Desk 1 inches; 44 words Type of Material: Correction
North Carolina voters -- A graphic in Saturday's Section A incorrectly reported North Carolina's voter registration totals. Of the 5.1 million registered voters, 2.4 million (47%) are Democrats, 1.8 million (35%) are Republicans, 928,450 (18%) are unaffiliated and 10,649 (0.2%) belong to other parties.
The Bush campaign acknowledged the potential political threat Friday by launching commercials on North Carolina television stations for the first time in this year's campaign. Recent polling showed Bush with a modest lead in the state, but suggested the race could tighten with Edwards as the Democratic vice presidential candidate.
North Carolina is not without a Democratic presence. Its governor is a Democrat, six of its 13 House members are Democrats, and the party controls the state Senate and shares power in the state House. Still, the obstacles to national Democrats remain so numerous that most analysts doubt Kerry can capture the state's 15 electoral votes, even with Edwards at his side.
Here and throughout the South, much of the trouble for Kerry starts with white males like Tracy Maurer, a 36-year-old electrician in Roxboro (population 8,900).
Maurer moved here from Pennsylvania after his previous employer closed and set up shop in China. He's an independent -- he supported H. Ross Perot in 1996 and sat out the 2000 election -- who fears something went wrong with the invasion of Iraq. In short, he is the kind of Southern voter Democrats are looking for.
"It's time to stop meddling in foreign affairs and start trying to take care of our own country," Maurer said in an interview outside a Roxboro shopping center. "All the good-paying, good-benefit jobs are leaving."
Yet Maurer also complains that politicians "are all tangled up now in this gay and lesbian marriage thing" -- alluding to the debate over same-sex marriage that could hurt Kerry and Edwards in rural America. Bottom line: He grudgingly leans toward reelecting Bush.
Sonny Ford, 27, a maintenance worker, was more definitive. "I don't know about this Kerry guy," he said. "He looks kind of shady to me. I reckon it's the liberal part."
He described himself as a voter who was raised Republican, and is suspicious of what he sees as Democratic support for people on welfare. Like Maurer, he was unmoved by Kerry's pick of Edwards for his ticket.
With Jeff Moore, though, Kerry made a partial inroad this week. Moore, 34, a supervisor at a movie complex, voted for Bush in 2000 and had been leaning toward doing so again because he viewed Kerry as someone who talks in circles. But Moore said he is now giving the Democrats a second look.
"After he named Edwards, I'd have to actually think about it a bit more," Moore said. He said he was attracted to Edwards because of the senator's reputation for running "a cleaner campaign."
Moore said his chief concerns were foreign affairs and the federal budget deficit. "The everyday person has to balance a checkbook on a monthly basis," Moore said. "That's something the government hasn't had to do now for awhile."
To be sure, it is hazardous to draw generalizations about the white male vote in the South. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean was excoriated last year during his Democratic presidential campaign for saying he would seek to appeal to "guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks."
But many Democratic strategists say that while Dean stumbled with his reference to a racially divisive emblem, he put his finger on a key challenge the party faces in the South: persuading enough white voters to join solidly Democratic black voters to forge a winning coalition.
In the 2000 presidential race, Democrat Al Gore, a Tennessee native, won nine out of every 10 black votes in the South, according to polling on election day, but then Texas Gov. Bush prevailed among the region's white voters by a crushing 2-to-1 ratio. Bush carried every Southern state, including North Carolina, which he won by 13 percentage points.
"The truth of the matter is the Democrats lost white males in the South," said Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, a Democratic strategist in Virginia who advised the campaign of Virginia Gov. Mark R. Warner in 2001 and is a former consultant for Edwards and Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.).
To win in North Carolina and at least a few other Southern states, Saunders said, Democrats have to overcome the perception among many white voters that they are "wrong" on values. Among other things, that means talking frankly about religious faith, but tiptoeing around abortion and gay rights.
