May 21, 1996
Congress Reflecting Southern Shift to GOP
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By KEVIN SACK
TLANTA -- With the Senate prepared to elect a Mississippian as the next majority leader, both houses of Congress may soon be led by Southern Republicans, an unprecedented occurrence that would give symbolic emphasis to the political realignment sweeping the region.
Now that Bob Dole has announced that he will resign from the Senate to run for president full time, the ascension of either Trent Lott or Thad Cochran to succeed him as majority leader would complete the transformation of Capitol Hill from a place where long-tenured Southern Democrats once used seniority and solidarity to protect their power.
The election of a Southern majority leader would also cap a remarkable shift in Southern politics. It has been 36 years since two Southerners -- Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson and Speaker Sam Rayburn, both Texas Democrats -- led Congress. At that time, 93 percent of the Southerners in the House were Democrats, as were 92 percent of the Southern senators.
Today, 57 percent of the Southerners in the House and 62 percent of those in the Senate are Republicans. A third of all House Republicans and 30 percent of Senate Republicans are from the 11 states of the former Confederacy, plus Kentucky and Oklahoma. In 1960, 6 percent of the Republicans in each house came from those states.
"The notion that the Republican leadership is going to come down to two Senators from Mississippi is astonishing," said Merle Black, an Emory University political scientist and an authority on Southern politics. "It's an indication of the tremendous realignment of Republicans in the Congress."
The pairing of Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia with either Lott or Cochran would be "an important symbol because the leadership positions suggest the direction in which power is moving," said Larry J. Sabato, a professor of government at the University of Virginia. "And over the past 30 to 40 years now, power has been flowing from the Frost Belt to the Sun Belt."
That shift has followed both the flow of population and the flow of politics. Because of the reapportionment that follows each decennial census, the 13 Southern states now elect 137 members of the House, 17 more than in 1960. And as white Southern voters have been alienated by Democratic positions on everything from race and the Vietnam War to taxes and crime, the region has gradually abandoned its historic ties to the Democrats.
Much of that change has occurred in the last six years, when the Southern membership of Congress has shifted from nearly two-thirds Democratic to about 60 percent Republican. Contributing to the transformation have been party-switching decisions by five Southern House members and one senator, all since President Clinton was elected in 1992.
"I've often said I'll be the last Democrat in the Senate who can still say, 'Y'all,' " Sen. John B. Breaux of Louisiana said.
An additional factor contributing to the elevation of Southerners to leadership positions is the high value placed on seniority by Southern voters. Breaux noted that when he was first elected to the House in the early 1970s, no incumbent in his district had ever lost a race for re-election. Rep. Sonny Callahan, a 63-year-old Republican from Alabama, said that only four men had represented his district during his lifetime.
Although lengthy tenure has long defined the careers of Southern Democrats in Congress, it is beginning to do the same for Republicans. Gingrich was first elected in 1978.
Lott and Cochran both came to Washington 24 years ago, with both serving in the House before winning election to the Senate.
The election of Lott or Cochran would not simply give Southern Republicans control of both houses of Congress for the first time. It also would be the first time this century that Southerners have simultaneously led Congress and held the presidency, not to mention the vice presidency.
Several political scientists said it was no accident that each of the three Democratic presidents elected in the last 32 years were Southerners -- Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, Jimmy Carter of Georgia and Bill Clinton of Arkansas.
"The Democratic Party has the best chance of winning the presidency when it's showing its more moderate face, and it tends to be Southerners that have taken the lead in that," said David E. Price, a Duke University political scientist and a former Democratic congressman who is trying to win back the North Carolina seat he lost in 1994. "And in the Republican Party, increasingly the South is at the heart of the effort to pull off a realignment and become the dominant party in national politics."
Q. Whitfield Ayres of Atlanta, a pollster for Republican candidates, said the regional shift in Congressional leadership was "a logical extension" of the Republican rise in the South. "The South is now the new base of the Republican Party nationally, and it makes sense that the Republican Party's leaders are now Southern," he said. "The base of the Democratic Party has shifted from the South to the Pacific West and New England."
Indeed, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, Haley Barbour, comes from Mississippi -- as does Rep. Roger Wicker, the leader of the Republican freshman class in Congress -- while the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, represents Connecticut.
Several political scientists and members of Congress said the Southern dominance would inevitably make Capitol Hill a more conservative place, particularly given that Dole has often exerted a moderating influence on his Republican colleagues in the Senate.
"The Southern Republicans tend to be the most conservative Republicans in the country, so the change will shift the Republican Party increasingly to the right," Black said. "But what the Republicans have to do is combine this conservatism with some pragmatic politics. Where the Republicans have been successful in the past is with pragmatic conservatism, not ideological conservatism."
Copyright 1996 The New York Times Company
