Independent Support for McCain

Independent New England expected to help McCain <br>Voting rules, liberal attitudes and George W. Bush's turn to the right in South Carolina help make this a promising area for the GOP insurgent. <br><br>By

Monday, February 28th 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

Independent New England expected to help McCain
Voting rules, liberal attitudes and George W. Bush's turn to the right in South Carolina help make this a promising area for the GOP insurgent.

By SCOTT MacKAY and CHRISTOPHER ROWLAND
Journal Staff Writers

When Rhode Islanders cast their ballots in the Republican primary March 7, Arizona Sen. John McCain boldy predicts, his insurgent wave will smother Texas Gov. George W. Bush. McCain also predicts victory in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

There is good reason for his confidence.

Even if his bid for the Republican presidential nomination collapses in delegate-heavy states such as California, Ohio, and New York, history suggests New England will mirror New Hampshire's primary vote of a month ago and remain a stronghold for McCain.

Bounded by the Hudson River Valley, Canada, and the Atlantic Ocean, this is the most moderate corner of the country. Its old mill towns, rolling countryside, and big cities are loaded with the same voting groups who, in a matter of weeks, have transformed McCain's marathon New Hampshire bus trip into a status-quo-threatening movement within the national GOP.

With the exception of Connecticut, New England states have loose primary rules that favor McCain. He will find crucial independent voters in abundance. And there is strong evidence that conservative Democrats will be joining moderate Republicans to support him.

What's more, Bush's supporters acknowledge that the Texas governor may have hurt his chances in this region by veering sharply toward the ideological right in the South Carolina primary.

``I can only assume that the Bush camp is having regrets about the lurch to the right down in South Carolina,'' said Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee, a Bush backer whose late father, Sen. John Chafee, embodied New England's tradition of moderate Republicanism.

``It had short-term dividends,'' Chafee said of the Bush shift, ``but I'm sure it's going to have adverse implications in states such as Rhode Island.''

Chafee said he remembered, at age 11, going to the Cow Palace in San Francisco in 1964 with his father, then governor of Rhode Island, and seeing Nelson Rockefeller ``booed and booed and booed'' by conservative Goldwater Republicans. Barry Goldwater won California and the nomination, but he lost the general election to Lyndon Johnson.

``That's something that can happen when you get too far out on extremes,'' Chafee said.

IN NEW ENGLAND, the word ``extreme'' is more frequently applied to weather conditions atop Mount Washington than it is to politics.

``New England is a region with many independents; the religious right is not very strong; and it is the most moderate region in the country,'' says Darrell West, Brown University political science professor.

The breakdown in party affiliation and the rise of independent voters has been dramatic. In the years between World War II and the 1960s, Rhode Island had one of the nation's most reliable Democratic machines. But voters not affiliated with either party are now the state's largest single bloc of voters -- about 58 percent, according to a 1998 Journal computer study.

In Massachusetts today, more than half of the 3.2 million voters do not belong to any party, an increase of 10 percent in 10 years. In Maine, there are 350,000 independents, compared with 281,000 registered Democrats and 256,000 Republicans.

McCain's appeal has been carefully calibrated for independents. At a time when the economy is strong but the post-Clinton electorate says it is weary of Washington politics as usual, the former Vietnam prisoner of war has emphasized his personal biography, his call for campaign finance reform, and his maverick position within his own party.

``Being an independent was once something you did if you could not figure out whether you were Republican or Democratic,'' says Garrison Nelson, a University of Vermont political science professor who studies New England politics.

``Now it is a conscious choice made by educated, technocratic voters who want to show they are above party politics . . . These are people who vote for the candidate, not the party.''

PARADOXICALLY, the insurgent's strength in the Republican primary race is helping the establishment candidate in the Democratic race, Vice President Al Gore. Gore's challenger, former New Jersey Sen. Bill Bradley, is struggling to attract the same independent support and media coverage that McCain is monopolizing.

Liberal Vermont, for example, should be one New England state where Bradley attracts broad support. But former Senate President Peter Welch, a lawyer in White River Junction who is leading the Bradley effort, said the campaign is struggling for a lack of attention.

``The Bradley message is extremely appealing in Vermont,'' said Welch, ``with his strong position of racial tolerance and social tolerance.''

``The more people see of Bradley in Vermont, the more they like him. But he's suffering from a news blackout. When you're a challenger, you've got to be in the news. McCain has had the front pages.''

THE BIG DIVIDE in New England was always seen as the line between the three hilly, rural northern states -- Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine -- and the three urban southern states -- Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut. A New Hampshire newspaper some years ago jokingly called for dividing the two regions into ``Mooselandia'' and ``Flatlandia.''

Yet, from Lake Champlain on Vermont's Canadian border to Provincetown on the sandy eastern tip of Cape Cod, through the prosperous suburbs and struggling inner cities of southern New England, the voters of the region have come to share some political traits.

The most striking thing about the region in 2000 is how similiar it has become. The Democratic Party machines of Boston, Providence, and Hartford have withered, and the Republican habits of Maine and Vermont have been diluted by a generation of liberal back-to-landers from cities who have settled into a relaxed lifestyle.

In both 1992 and 1996, all six New England states -- even New Hampshire, long the most reliably Republican state in the region -- supported Bill Clinton over his Republican opponents. In 1964, all six states supported Democrat Lyndon Johnson. Over the last generation, the center of the Republican Party has moved to the right, to the southern and Sunbelt white voters who now control the party. But New England's Republicans have retained their moderate views, supportive of abortion rights, environmental programs, and gun control. Four of the region's six GOP U.S. senators -- the late John Chafee, of Rhode Island, James M. Jeffords, of Vermont, and Maine's Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins -- voted to acquit President Clinton in the Senate impeachment trial.

Connecticut and Maine have had independent governors and Vermont voters have elected an independent to Congress for five consecutive terms, left-leaning Bernard Sanders.

New Englanders do not have the strong anti-government sentiments that have swept the rest of the country. Perhaps it is because government is still relatively close to people: New England is the only region of the country with a town-meeting form of government, says Jere Daniel, a Dartmouth College professor who teaches New England history.

New England's Protestants tend to be of the liberal, mainstream variety -- Congregational, Episcopal, Methodist -- rather than the Southern Baptist and Pentecostal denominations that fuel the religious right in the South.

All this should help McCain, who proved his attraction to independents by drawing thousands in to the Republican primary in New Hampshire. Sixty-two percent of New Hampshire independents who cast ballots in the Feb. 1 primary chose GOP ballots, 38 percent chose Democratic ballots.

The bulk of New England's remaining primary delegates are to be had in the southern part of the region. Roughly 10 million of the region's 13 million inhabitants live in the three southern states. Massachusetts is the biggest delegate prize, followed by Connecticut. Rhode Island (with 14 Republican and 22 Democratic), Vermont, and Maine all have roughly the same number. Individually they may not amount to much, but taken together are a significant number of delegates that cannot be ignored.

Viewed together, New England's remaining 102 Republican delegates could help McCain, if he swept the region, weather a strong performance by Bush in, say, New York, which has 101, or Missouri and Ohio, which have 104 between them.

Both McCain and Bush are expected to visit New England in the next week, and McCain is expected to come to Rhode Island. With just days to go, recent polls give a clear advantage to McCain.

A Boston Globe poll released Friday showed the Arizona senator would have swamped Bush by almost 2 to 1, 59 percent to 32 percent, if the election had been held last week, attracting support from registered Republicans -- a constituency that has tended to favor Bush in recent primaries -- and the overwhelming backing of independent voters who expect to vote in the GOP primary.

McCain took every demographic category in the Globe poll -- rich and poor, conservative and liberal, young and old, men and women.

A Brown University poll of Rhode Island voters last week said the Arizona senator would beat Gore or Bradley. Bush would lose to either of the Democrats. Bush does have the endorsements of the state's most prominent Republican figures, Governor Almond and Sen. Lincoln Chafee, but that only translates to a few thousand votes in a state teeming with Democratic and independent voters.

Almond, the chairman of the Bush campaign, could not be reached for comment. His staff said he was in Maryland on vacation and would be unavailable to discuss the issue.

An even bigger sign of trouble for Bush is a recent Quinnipiac College poll that gave McCain a 52-to-39-percent lead over Bush among registered Republicans in Connecticut, despite the backing of popular GOP Gov. John Rowland. The state's primary is closed to all but Republicans.

Quinnipiac pollster Douglas Schwartz said Bush's rightward tilt does not sit well in the Nutmeg State.

``The type of campaign he ran in South Carolina may have hurt Bush up here in Connecticut,'' said Schwartz. ``He was really trying to appeal to very conservative Republican voters, and in Connecticut they tend to be more moderate. He may have made it even harder to beat McCain in Connecticut.''

Connecticut voters can expect to see Bush's more moderate side in coming days, said Jay Malcynsky, who is heading the Bush campaign in Connecticut.

Governor Rowland said last week that Bush made a ``stupid'' mistake by visiting South Carolina's ultra-conservative Bob Jones University, which has a ban on interracial dating and where a former president expressed strong anti-Catholic bias. Malcynsky called it an ``unnecessary mistake,'' but he added that voters should not infer that Bush shares those religious views just because he paid a visit there.

``It's absurd to believe that by appearing at a university you adopt every philosophical belief of that university,'' he said. ``I'm a Catholic and there are thousands of other Catholics [who will support Bush on March 7].''

Massachusetts has fewer Republicans than Connecticut, and its GOP primary gives McCain the extra advantage of being open to independent voters. Republican Gov. Paul Cellucci acknowledged last week that Bush faces an ``uphill fight.''

McCain's candidacy is further eroding party identification -- no small feat in a labor-oriented state like Massachusetts with a tradition of political machines. In recent weeks, nearly 30,000 voters have shed their Democratic affiliation so they can vote in the Republican primary, and a University of Massachusetts poll released last week gave McCain a 58-to-34-percent lead.

``Voters look at all the candidates from both parties, and they want to vote for the one they think should be the next president,'' said Jean Inman, McCain's Massachusetts campaign coordinator. ``For Democrats registered their whole life, switching into unenrolled is a very big step, and they didn't take it lightly.''

There has been talk of a New England bus tour with Bush this week, featuring Almond, Rowland, and Cellucci. But even if such a high-publicity foray by the region's GOP governors does take place, it might not sway many voters, said Schwartz, of Quinnipiac College. That's because it's hard for governors to translate their popularity into votes for their candidate.

Said Schwartz: ``Look what just happened in Michigan,'' where Gov. John Engler wrongly predicted that his state would stand as an ``asbestos firewall'' for the Texas governor.