The New Republic

Wilson, North Carolina

It's a sunny Saturday morning in this sleepy eastern North Carolina
tobacco town, and Richard Burr, the Republican candidate for U.S.
Senate, is being serenaded. The singers are a four-man gospel choir
called Jubilation, and their tune is a lamentation for the
country's moral state--and an exhortation to improve it. "Wake up
America, open your eyes," goes the chorus.Burr is in Wilson hoping to open some eyes of his own. Locked in a
tight race with his Democratic opponent, Erskine Bowles, Burr, a
five-term representative from Winston-Salem, wants people in this
rural, socially conservative region to know that he understands
their concerns--and that he is looking out for their interests.
Speaking to a crowd of about 100 people outside the local GOP
headquarters, Burr touts his recent role in passing legislation
that ends the federal government's tobacco quota system and pays
$10 billion to tobacco farmers. He reiterates his support for
President Bush and the war on terrorism. And he promises to work to
put conservative judges on the federal bench.

Burr's points resonate with the crowd, which gives him a rousing
ovation. "The most important thing is to get more conservative
judges, because liberal judges are ruining this country," says Mary
Wadkins, a housewife and mother of four. Curtis Hyler, the gospel
group's lead singer, says he's voting for Burr because "he has good
Christian values. That's important around here."

That Burr has been coming "around here" to look for votes--his
appearance in Wilson is part of a daylong RV trip through eastern
North Carolina--is, in one sense, hardly a surprise. Although a
majority of voters in eastern North Carolina are registered
Democrats, they are socially conservative Democrats who, ever since
the civil rights movement, have been just as likely to back
Republicans. Indeed, over the course of his 30 years in the Senate,
Republican icon Jesse Helms relied on their support to such a
degree that these eastern North Carolina voters came to be known as
Jessecrats. And, ever since Helms's election to the Senate in 1972,
North Carolina Republicans have looked to the Jessecrats to provide
their margins of victory.

But, in another sense, Burr's intense focus on eastern North
Carolina is a surprise, because Burr was supposed to represent a
new breed of North Carolina Republican. With the state in the midst
of profound demographic changes--as its once dominant tobacco and
textile industries give way to growing high-tech and banking
sectors and its population shifts from rural to metropolitan
areas-- there had been a sense among North Carolina Republicans
that the old methods of winning elections would no longer work. In
Burr, Republicans thought, they had the perfect candidate to move
the party out of the past, as exemplified by Helms, and into the
future. But Burr, it turns out, isn't much of a break from
tradition. Indeed, his campaign is following the old North Carolina
GOP playbook almost to the letter. "Burr was seen as the bridge
from the old Republican model to the new Republican model," says
Ferrel Guillory, the director of the University of North Carolina's
Program on Southern Politics, Media, and Public Life. "And it's
looking like they haven't quite built that bridge yet." The
question facing North Carolina Republicans is, if Richard Burr
can't build that bridge, can anyone?

Like practically every Republican in North Carolina, Burr doesn't
have kind words for John Edwards (who is vacating the seat Burr is
running for). But, were it not for Edwards, Burr's Senate candidacy
might never have happened. Edwards's 1998 Senate victory over
Republican incumbent Lauch Faircloth--an ornery old pig farmer so
conservative that he referred to Helms as the state's liberal
senator--served as a wake-up call for North Carolina Republicans.
Edwards won because, in addition to limiting Faircloth's margin of
victory in the east, he racked up huge margins in the rapidly
growing metropolitan areas of Charlotte and the Research Triangle
of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill-- which now accounts for close
to 40 percent of the state's population. Since these areas will
only keep growing-- demographers estimate that, between now and
2030, some counties in the Charlotte and Research Triangle areas
will more than double in population--some Republicans concluded
that their party could never again run a candidate whose base was
in the state's population- hemorrhaging rural areas. Indeed,
Republicans were so spooked by Edwards's victory that they worried
even Helms would be unable to win a sixth term in 2002 in what they
called "the new North Carolina."

These fears were never realized, since Helms retired after his fifth
term. And, in 2002, the Republicans nominated Elizabeth Dole to
replace him. She easily beat her Democratic opponent, Erskine
Bowles. But Dole's public profile in North Carolina is akin to that
of Oprah Winfrey's, and her candidacy hardly serves as a model for
other Republicans. Going into this campaign, then, the North
Carolina GOP was still searching for a new face for a new era in
state politics. In Burr, they thought they'd found it. With the
White House's help, they made sure Burr had no significant primary
challengers. "Richard Burr's our answer to John Edwards," one
prominent North Carolina Republican said before the race.

Like Edwards, the 48-year-old Burr is a handsome, personable baby
boomer. He was a football star at Wake Forest University and had a
successful business career in Winston-Salem before being elected to
Congress in 1994. Although he came to Washington as part of the
Gingrich revolution, Burr wasn't a bomb- thrower. In the House, he
generally focused on economic and regulatory matters, and he
largely ignored divisive social issues. While Burr has a solidly
conservative voting record, he's usually described in the press as a
moderate. Even liberals like Wall Street Journal columnist Al Hunt
call him "able, a decent man, not, in North Carolina GOP circles, a
hater like the Jesse Helms crowd." In other words, he was the
perfect candidate for Republicans to send into the vote-rich
suburbs that Edwards dominated six years ago.

Burr began his Senate campaign with this moderate approach. His
early commercials were soft and gauzy, featuring breast cancer
survivors and sick but now healthy children. In the ads'
disclaimers, he appeared with his wife and two teenage boys to say,
"I'm Richard Burr, and we all approved this message." Burr also
steered clear of wedge issues. Asked in March about same-sex
marriages, he said he would support a constitutional amendment to
ban them only as "the last resort." But this strategy didn't seem
to be working. In early September, Burr, according to most polls,
trailed his Democratic opponent, Bowles--who, just two years
earlier, had been trounced by Dole--by ten points statewide, and he
was behind by even more in Charlotte and the Triangle, the two
places where this sort of approach was supposed to pay off.

So, in mid-September, Burr changed strategy: He was going to play
for the old Republican base. He launched a series of harsh TV ads
against Bowles, linking him to Bill Clinton--still reviled among
North Carolina conservatives-- for whom Bowles had served as White
House chief of staff. "Erskine Bowles," the ads intoned, "he wants
it both ways--just like Bill Clinton." Burr also went after Bowles
on gay marriage, attacking him for not supporting the
constitutional amendment Burr once called "the last resort." In one
radio advertisement the Burr campaign has been airing in the
eastern part of the state, a woman says, "It's a shame Erskine
Bowles doesn't have the courage to stand up for traditional
marriage." Burr adds, "I authorized this message because our values
and beliefs are under assault by the liberal elite in Washington."
Meanwhile, the National Republican Senatorial Committee cut an
ugly, nativist TV ad accusing Bowles of favoring increased
government benefits to immigrants.

There were those who thought this old GOP strategy would never work
again. And, given the state's demographic trends, it doesn't have
much promise in the long term. But the strategy apparently may have
enough juice left to propel one last candidate to Washington.
Although Bowles continues to lead Burr in Charlotte and the
Triangle, Burr is now trouncing Bowles in eastern North Carolina,
and, thanks to his increased popularity with Jessecrats, Burr has a
slight lead statewide. In the campaign's final weeks, he is largely
ignoring the metro regions. Burr's strategy now, the University of
North Carolina's Guillory explains, is to try to make his "margin
in the east so big that he'll be able to win the whole thing."

Of course, the best way to appeal to Jessecrats and secure big
margins in eastern North Carolina is to enlist the aid of Helms
himself. The retired senator recently cut a radio ad for Burr. And
he is even hitting the campaign trail--as he did last weekend,
appearing with Burr at an event near the eastern North Carolina
town of Goldsboro.

Helms is 83 years old and in declining health. He wears two hearing
aids and uses a walker. At the event outside of Goldsboro, he has
to be helped up to the stage, where he delivers his remarks while
seated. Even as a young man, when he defended segregation as a
commentator on the Raleigh TV station wral, Helms was never an
eloquent speaker; age and health haven't helped matters. Addressing
a crowd of about 200 gathered in a tobacco barn, Helms's speech is
slow and slurred, and he all but says it is his dying wish that
people vote for Burr. "He's a conservative, fine, Christian man,
and you can count on him," Helms says. "North Carolina needs him in
the Senate."

And then Burr, like so many North Carolina Republicans before him,
pays homage to Helms. Gazing at the retired senator, he exclaims:
"I'm proud to say that Jesse Helms never changed one bit in the
five terms he served in the United States Senate, from the Jesse
Helms we used to watch on wral, ... to the Jesse Helms that sits in
front of you today--he is exactly the same guy. ... He believes
what North Carolinians believe, and we cherish the consistency that
he represents North Carolina with." Turning away from Helms, Burr
pauses and faces the crowd. "I'm here today to look you in your
eyes and ask you for your vote," he says, "not just for Richard
Burr, but for candidates who reflect the type of values and beliefs
that you have." If Richard Burr is the future of the North Carolina
GOP, then the future doesn't look so different from the past.

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