South Carolina Highlights Democrats' Split Loyalty: Families Remain Divided As Primary Begins Today

Jan 26, 05:07 PM

Jan. 26--COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Leecia Eve of Buffalo spent the past two days driving in a van with Mary Wilson of the Supremes through the stretch of South Carolina that locals call Pee Dee Country, all in hopes of helping Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton become president.

And that's no surprise, given that Eve, the daughter of retired Assemblyman Arthur O. Eve, said: "Six of the seven members of the Eve family would walk through fire to make Hillary Clinton the next president."

Meanwhile, the seventh Eve, Leecia's brother Martin, spent the last two days dodging sharp-toothed dogs as he went door to door in the rural back country near the state's capital -- campaigning for Sen. Barack Obama.

"This is the first time I've ever done this," said Martin Eve, meaning it's the first time he's ever left the state to campaign for a presidential candidate. "The person that Barack Obama is is what brought me into the process -- his integrity and passion."

That brother-sister split is nothing uncommon here in South Carolina, which will hold its Democratic primary today.

In the first Democratic contest in a state with a large African-American population, families are often divided and voters are often torn between three candidates: a woman with a long record of working for social justice, a man who stands a better chance than anyone ever has of being the nation's first black president, and former Sen. John Edwards, a native son.

The polls show Obama with a strong but shrinking lead built on his overwhelming support in the black community. And conversations with voters and political pros here show an Obama- leaning electorate that's deeply split at the end of a bitter -- and, at times, racially charged -- campaign.

Take, for example, Veronica Williams and Martha Patterson of Columbia.

"Initially I supported Hillary, but then I went to see Obama and I was really impressed," said Williams, 42, part of the largely black crowd that heard Clinton speak at Benedict College on Friday. "We don't need to put the same people that's been there back in there."

Patterson -- Williams' mother -- disagreed.

"I'm supporting Hillary," she said. "She's got the experience, and I've always liked her."

Even more typically, voters see this race just as Marquette Banks sees it.

"You have two great candidates," said Banks, a student at Benedict. "It's hard to choose."

Indeed, a Clemson University poll this week showed that 40 percent of Democrats still hadn't decided who would get their vote.

"There's some evidence that the past week and a half has only confused things for the voters," said Charles J. Finocchiaro, a political scientist at the University of South Carolina who used to teach at the University at Buffalo.

That time period has witnessed a flare-up of the kind of bare-knuckles politics for which South Carolina is famous. For example:

--A longtime anti-Clinton activist funded phone calls to South Carolina Democrats filled with scandalous unproven rumors about the candidate and her husband.

--Anonymous e-mails falsely accusing Obama of being a Muslim -- which have been circulated earlier in the campaign -- are so widespread here that Obama tried to shoot them down at a rally in North Charleston on Thursday. Noting that he's a Christian "who believes in an awesome God," he added: "Don't be hoodwinked."

--Touring the state, former President Bill Clinton accused the Obama campaign of "feeding" the media with questions that keep the race issue alive.

--The Clinton and Obama campaigns traded angry radio ads that offered very different interpretations of Obama's comments about former President Ronald Reagan.

Asked about the negativity, State Rep. Bakari T. Sellers, an Obama supporter, said: "We're shrugging if off. If anything, it's helping John Edwards."

Indeed, several late polls showed that while Obama's support had fallen and his lead had narrowed slightly, Edwards had gained to the point where he could threaten Clinton for third place. The RealClearPolitics. com average of polls taken this seek showed Obama at 38 percent, Clinton at 27 and Edwards at 20.

But some voters, such as Brusi Alexander of Columbia, have abandoned Obama for Clinton.

"I just started listening to the campaign with respect to the issues," Alexander said. "She spoke from experience and familiarity with the issues rather than from rhetoric."

Shadowing all of this is an issue that voters rarely cite but that remains a defining factor in the contest: race.

About half the Democratic electorate here is black, and that has left the Clinton campaign doing a delicate balancing act: courting black voters while tearing down a black candidate.

Introducing Clinton on Friday, Stacey Jones, a dean at Benedict College, indirectly acknowledged that blacks might have an affinity for Obama.

"For some of us it may take a very, very bold step to walk into that voting booth and focus on our community's future rather than acting on pure emotion," she said. "Let's do the right thing and elect Sen. Hillary Clinton president of the United States."

And the candidate herself took what appeared to be a gentle jab at her young opponent from Illinois while praising one of her key black supporters, Rep. Charles Rangel of New York.

"He serves as chair of the most important committee in the United States Congress," Clinton said of Rangel. "He didn't get there by leapfrogging. He got there by lots of hard work."

It appears that the jabs at Obama have had their greatest impact on white voters. MSNBC polls indicate that Obama's support among whites has shrunk from 20 percent to 10 percent in just one week.

All the discussion of the race issue "has reaffirmed Sen. Obama's blackness," even though he has tried to run a campaign that transcends race, said Adolphus Belk Jr., a political scientist at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C.

Through it all, Obama has continued doing what he's done for months: delivering passionately eloquent sermons of hope before adoring crowds of all races.

"I've never seen this kind of excitement in North Charleston," said Randolph Scipio, looking out at an overflow crowd in a gym at a high school where, he said, he would not have been welcomed 50 years ago. "If you think all these people are here because Barack is African-American, you've missed him. . . . They're here because they want to change politics into something new, and they think he can do it."

That's just the notion that brought Martin Eve to the back roads surrounding Columbia, where houses can be a quartermile apart and where, as he discovered, some people tend to keep pit bulls.

No, nothing bad happened on his rounds.

"One woman invited me in for apple pie," he said, noting that plenty of people told him they were supporting Obama.

Visiting a senior center, a food bank and an after-school program with a Motown legend and a prominent local lawyer, Marguerite Willis, in tow, Leecia Eve faced a challenge.

"Hillary has done so much, it's hard to compress it all in 30-second sound bites," said Eve, who added: "I love this woman. I feel so strongly that she must be the next president."

jzremski@buffnews.com

-----

To see more of The Buffalo News, N.Y., or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.buffalonews.com.

Copyright (c) 2008, The Buffalo News, N.Y.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA. South Carolina Highlights Democrats' Split Loyalty: Families Remain Divided As Primary Begins Today
Back to Current Headlines