South Carolina's GOP Rivalry

By The Politico's Jonathan Martin.

Mirroring the dominance once enjoyed by their conservative forefathers in the Democratic Party, Republican dominance in South Carolina has grown to the point where primaries are all but tantamount to election.

The GOP cruised in contested Senate races in 2002 and 2004 and reelected their governor last fall by double digits while falling 455 votes short in one lower-ballot race — superintendent of education — that would have handed them all nine constitutional offices in the state.

So the real action now largely takes place inside the Republican tent. And in opposite corners of that tent, eyeing each other warily, are Richard Quinn and Warren Tompkins.

It is impossible to understand South Carolina Republican politics without knowing about these rival campaign consultants, who seem to loom over the GOP here as much as any elected officials. Both are veterans of the South Carolina political wars, having worked in the Republican vineyards for decades. Their clients include many of the top politicians in the state, most notably both U.S. senators, other statewide officeholders and a raft of legislators.

In conversations with Republican politicians and operatives here in South Carolina, it is almost imperative to preface a conversation by asking whether they are a "Quinn person" or a "Tompkins person." In a state that knows something about civil war, this modern political battle pits Republican brother versus brother.

All this would be little more than inside baseball, of scant interest to anybody outside a five-mile radius of the gracious, copper-domed capitol here, were it not for one important fact that South Carolina Republicans delight in reminding visitors: Forget about snowy Iowa and frosty New Hampshire — no GOP presidential contender has won his party's nomination without winning the South Carolina primary.

So it was in 2000 when then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush bounced back from a thumping in New Hampshire at the hands of John McCain with a hard-fought victory in South Carolina over the Arizonan. The lead consultants in that bare-knuckle contest: Richard Quinn with McCain and Warren Tompkins for Bush.

Now, seven years later, there seems to be a reprisal of that now-infamous primary in the offing. McCain is back in the running and retains the services of Quinn and his team. Tompkins and his people are with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

One difference, however, is that this time around, some of the people who lined up with Tompkins and Bush in 2000 are backing the man they worked against that year rather than Romney. McCain has garnered endorsements from numerous elected officials, donors and activists who were in Bush's corner last time.

"We are not focused on the endorsement game," says Terry Sullivan, Romney's South Carolina director and Tompkins' business partner, dismissing McCain's strategy of rolling out a steady stream of Bush converts.

Chatting inside the bare-bones, one-story building that they moved into last week and that will serve as their state headquarters, Sullivan says that Sen. Lindsey Graham and state Attorney General Henry McMaster, McCain's top two backers in the state and Quinn clients, "are working very hard and most aggressively to persuade folks" to get on a train they claim is leaving the station.

"They've done a good job of getting people on board, but the question is: Can the campaign keep them on board?" Sullivan says. "If they run out of track, those people are going to start hopping off board."

The support for McCain, in other words, is soft and could get softer if his standing in the polls doesn't improve.

"He's got 100 percent name identification, and anywhere from 29 percent to 38 percent of Republican primary voters are supporting him," Sullivan notes, citing recent polling data.

While McCain is below the 42 percent he received against Bush in 2000, his numbers are still well ahead of where Romney is in the state. The former governor is in the single digits in every public poll.

"We've got a long way to go," admits Sullivan, who ran Sen. Jim DeMint's 2004 campaign. But, he argues, they have got a charismatic candidate, they'll be on the air with TV ads in the state soon and they are putting together a grass-roots organization quietly, but effectively — the Bush way. To this end, they released last week a list of coordinators and supporters in almost all of the state's 46 counties.

"It's not sexy, it's not going to be front-page, above-the-fold news and you're not going to know it's out there until Election Day," Sullivan says. "The Bush campaign has done it two times."

To the McCain campaign here, the race boils down to two elements, and its candidate has the advantage on both. South Carolina Republicans, Quinn explains from his office, which is doubling as McCain's base of operations, want somebody who "is the most consistently conservative candidate who can win in November" and also is best suited "to lead the nation in the global war on terror."

McCain, despite his maverick status, best fits the bill on conservative credentials, Quinn argues, and his unwavering support for Bush on the war in Iraq helps paper over his instances of apostasy.

Iraq, Quinn says, "is the defining issue of the campaign." And, Quinn notes, McCain gained a lot of points from the GOP base by "campaigning so vigorously for Bush in 2004." That, along with McCain's support for the commander in chief's war policy, a better familiarity with the candidate and, yes, a practical desire to pick the winning horse is what is drawing some of Bush's supporters from 2000 to McCain, Quinn says.

The idea that Graham or McMaster is pressuring Republicans to get on board the McCain team is "absolutely not true," Quinn argues. "Lindsey Graham and Henry McMaster are two of the easiest-going politicians you'll ever meet," he says.

But is McCain's campaign so focused on making a statement by picking up as many Bush backers as possible that it loses sight of the ground game? No way, argues an animated Trey Walker, McCain's state director. "We're going to have over 500 Republican activists from across all 46 counties in the state" announced in the weeks ahead, Walker boasts.

And what about McCain's slippage in the polls from his 42 percent in 2000?

"I'm not sure he is below 42 percent," says Quinn. First, he points out, most of the surveys include former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who retains considerable name recognition among Republicans but who is uncertain he'll even run. Second, Quinn says, unlike the head-to-head, Bush-McCain matchup in 2000, the polls now include as many as eight or more candidates, spreading out the numbers.

Campaign allegiances aside, there is an unknown factor that complicates the 2000 redux storyline: Rudy Giuliani. The former New York mayor still basks in the glory of his 9/11 heroics and the attendant warm feelings from GOP primary voters that go with them. In this context, South Carolina is no different than any other state. Giuliani shows up in a solid second place in most polling here and is getting a look from Republican activists.

But his organization is far behind those of Romney and McCain. Not only does he not have a county-by-county structure in place, he doesn't even have a state organization yet.

Rumors abounded here that he may be close to signing up Rod Shealy, the biggest non-Tompkins, non-Quinn consultant in the South Carolina GOP, but so far he has nobody handling his day-to-day campaign in the state. He does, however, have two well-known upstate Republicans on his team in former state party chairman Barry Wynn and former Spartanburg County Council member Karen Floyd.

Still, polls and anecdotal evidence in South Carolina reflect that many Republican voters are still shopping. While Giuliani's liberal social views are anathema to the GOP base, his leadership skills and toughness could make him an appealing alternative to a Republican electorate not sold on Romney and reluctant to embrace McCain. Both the Romney and McCain camps predict that after South Carolinians are reminded about Giuliani's cultural stances he'll fall.

"Rudy is kind of the shining star right now, kind of the Obama of the Republican Party," says Romney backer Luke Byars, DeMint's state director, a Tompkins loyalist and former executive director of the state GOP.

A McCain supporter says Giuliani's rise "is the best thing that could have happened to us."

"It's plurality politics," says the source. "The candidate that has the most votes wins. If Giuliani hadn't shoved it into higher gear, Romney may be out of single digits right now."
By Jonathan Martin
TM & © 2007 The Politico & Politico.com, a division of Allbritton Communications Company