From The Associated Press:
From Mississippi retiring its state flag to local governments removing Confederate statues from public spaces, a bipartisan push across the South is chipping away at reminders of the Civil War and Jim Crow segregation.
Now, during a national reckoning on racism, Democratic Party leaders want those symbolic changes to become part of a fundamental shift at the ballot box.
Many Southern electorates are getting younger, less white and more urban, and thus less likely to embrace President Donald Trump's white identity politics. Southern Democrats are pairing a demographically diverse slate of candidates for state and congressional offices with presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden, a 77-year-old white man they believe can appeal to what remains perhaps the nation's most culturally conservative region.
"There's so much opportunity for everyone in this region," said Jaime Harrison, Democratic challenger to South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and a 44-year-old Black man.
Decades of economic development have coaxed new residents to the area. That includes white people from other parts of the country, Black families returning generations after the Great Migration north during the lynching and segregation era, and a growing Latino population. Harrison noted that even younger native Southerners, Black and white, are less wed to hard-partisan identities than their parents and grandparents were.
"Sometimes we get held back by leadership that's still anchored in old ways," Harrison said. But "all of these changes are starting to move the dynamics in so many communities. That's not to say we're forgetting our past. But it won't be the thing that's dragging us back."
Harrison has been making the case that he can be that Democrat who can take down Lindsey Graham and also usher in a new era in the South:
Harrison has been able to attract buzz around his insurgent campaign from national Democrats who are eager to unseat one of the White House’s staunchest allies on Capitol Hill, garnering a slate of endorsements from high-profile lawmakers such as presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Rep. James Clyburn (D), a titan in South Carolina politics.
He also outraised Graham in the first quarter and again in the pre-primary period — though Graham's $13.9 million bank account is still more than twice as big — and has benefited from a number of investments from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
But convincing the political world he can actually win is a different matter. The Senate race is rated as "Likely Republican" by The Cook Political Report and is not even listed in RealClearPolitics's top Senate races.
Harrison is hinging his strategy on channeling fury among some voters over Graham's transition from Trump detractor during the 2016 race to Trump whisperer and leveraging his own longstanding ties to South Carolina to attract a broad coalition of Democrats, independents and disaffected Republicans to his campaign.
But South Carolina remains unfriendly territory for Democrats, having not elected a Democratic senator in more than two decades. And while Graham has irked some moderates by shedding his criticism of Trump and becoming a confidant of the president, he’s endeared himself to the GOP’s conservative base.
In an interview with The Hill, Harrison expressed confidence that the South Carolina senator has turned off a sizable number of moderate Republicans with his evolution from “Graham 1.0,” who criticized Trump, to “Graham 2.0,” who is one of his closest allies.
“This is a guy who has lost all support with Democrats, and he’s not going to get that support back. He has lost a lot of support ... with independents, because he used to win overwhelmingly with independents. And he has garnered some support from the right, but I believe that that support is extremely weak at this point in time,” Harrison said.
“So we are looking at building the coalition that Lindsey Graham 1.0 used to have, one where we will have almost unanimous support from the Democratic Party, one where we will beat him with independents in the state, and one where we will find moderate Republicans who are tired of the heightened partisanship and the sycophantism that Lindsey Graham has conducted.”
And Harrison is focusing on just his base but also those voters who are willing to split their vote:
Two Libertarian Party candidates, Keenan Wallace Dunham and David Weikle, and Constitution Party candidate Bill Bledsoe also filed to run for the Senate seat. If they dilute Graham’s haul at all, that could lessen the hurdle Harrison needs to overcome.
Jessica Taylor, the Senate analyst at the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, shifted her rating of South Carolina’s race from Solid Republican to Likely Republican in April, an acknowledgement that Harrison’s fundraising prowess had created the potential for a more competitive race.
But Taylor said it’s typically more difficult for candidates from a state’s minority party to counter partisan dynamics in Senate races than in governor’s races, which can become more about management competency than policy views.
“I’m not sure entirely sure what the profile of a Trump-Harrison voter would be, although he needs them,” Taylor said.
A study last year found South Carolina voters are more likely to split their tickets for lower-ballot races like sheriff or county council than they are for more high-profile contests like U.S. Senate.
Harrison has followed a similar playbook to the one that helped Democrats win U.S. House districts in 2018 that Trump carried two years earlier, including U.S. Rep. Joe Cunningham in the Lowcountry, focusing on kitchen-table issues like health care, prescription drug costs and, more topically, the coronavirus pandemic.
Tyler Jones, a Democratic strategist behind Cunningham’s upset win who is now advising an anti-Graham super PAC, said he has seen voters in South Carolina focus groups who say they plan to vote for Trump but would be open to backing Democrats for Congress to balance it out and put a check on him.
“Those voters really do exist,” Jones said. “There could be some crossover, a good amount of crossover.”
And Harrison has been spending big to oust Graham:
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison has so far spent more than three times as much on advertising this year compared with the Republican incumbent in an effort to boost his name recognition in what has been a safe GOP seat.
This year so far, Harrison’s campaign has spent $7.6 million on TV, digital, radio and satellite ad buys that include two 30-second ads worth six figures, according to data from ad firm Advertising Analytics. Meanwhile, Graham’s campaign has spent $2.2 million. Of that, he spent $700,000 on three 30-second spots, two of which ran during ahead of the June primary when he faced three challengers.
South Carolina is considered among the cheaper states for ad spending because it has no major television market, meaning South Carolinians are going to get flooded with ads, observers say.
“We could see more ads, that’s certainly possible. I think we’re going to be inundated,” said Gibbs Knotts, a political science professor at the College of Charleston. “We’re going to see tons of mailers, tons of ads, tons of stuff on social media.”
And it won’t just come from campaigns.
The Security is Strength PAC, a group backing Graham, has already spent more than $800,000 on TV time and reserved an additional $1.6 million worth of TV and satellite buys for October and November. Political Action Committees supporting Harrison’s candidacy have spent almost $240,000 to defeat the three-term incumbent, ranging from the gun-control group Brady PAC, the Congressional Black Caucus, Progressive Turnout Project and the Lindsey Must Go PAC.
Graham didn’t need to start early in the ad game because he’s a familiar public figure, Knotts said.
On the other hand, Harrison, “has to get his name recognition up,” Knotts said. “Everybody knows who Lindsey Graham is. Love him or hate him, people know how Lindsey Graham is.”
We need to go big and bold if we are to win our Senate majority. Let’s keep up the momentum and pull off a huge upset victory in South Carolina. Click below to donate and get involved with Harrison and Biden’s campaigns:
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