In the south, fair-trade Democrats claimed seats that were thought
to be beyond their party’s reach. In North Carolina, Democrat Kay Hagan
beat Republican incumbent Sen. Elizabeth Dole, after running a national
record eight paid trade ads.
Hagan’s victory is particularly interesting, given her position on
“social” issues. While Hagan was pro-choice, her relentless
campaigning on fair-trade and other pocketbook issues allowed her to
win over the socially conservative voters that dominate her state. In
July 2008, Hagan released materials that slammed Dole for voting for
CAFTA, and an October television ad showed an abandoned factory while
a narrator said, “This is the legacy of Washington special interests:
unfair trade deals, and Senator Elizabeth Dole giving tax breaks to
corporations that send jobs overseas.” On her campaign website, Hagan
said,
“For too many years, however, trade deals
have been written to pull down wages and working conditions in the U.S.
and other developed countries, instead of pulling them up in the
developing world. As corporate profits and CEO pay have soared, the
incomes of ordinary North Carolinians have stagnated. Even in the best
case, the pitfalls of trade are too apparent for Americans and for
North Carolinians in particular. We need only look at once thriving
communities built on the textile and apparel and furniture industries
that are being devastated by low-cost competition from China and Mexico
and other countries around the world… Our trade agreements need to
include enforceable labor and environmental standards to prevent
businesses from engaging in a race to the bottom by off-shoring their
factories to newly opened markets with little or no environmental and
labor protections.”
In Georgia, Kentucky and
Mississippi – heavily GOP states that supported McCain – fair-trade
Democrats Jim Martin, Bruce Lunsford and Ronnie Musgrove gave anti-fair
trade GOP incumbents Saxby Chambliss, Mitch McConnell and Roger Wicker
a run for their money, after running multiple television ads attacking
the incumbents’ support of unfair trade deals.
These included an early September 2008 ad paid for by the Democratic
Senatorial Campaign Committee, where a narrator said: “Wicker and his
special interest buddies back tax breaks for American companies that
ship jobs overseas, and Wicker supports bad trade deals like NAFTA,
Central America, and China – deals that send tens of thousands of jobs
overseas. Ronnie Musgrove opposes these job killers, and he’ll fight to
keep Mississippi jobs in Mississippi.” An October ad for Martin
focused on Chambliss’ support for CAFTA and Fast Track. In Georgia,
Chambliss’ margin was only 3 percent in the first round of voting (and the race is headed for a
runoff), and in Kentucky, only 6 percent. In all three states including
Mississippi, the fair-trade Democrat beat Obama’s margin – in Kentucky,
by 11 points.
And as we detailed in our Fair Trade Gets an Upgrade report (PDF), fair
traders won tough pick-ups in House seats in both the so-called “Deep
South” (Alabama) and “Outer South” (Florida, North Carolina, and
Virginia). And fair traders also defended seats in tough races in both
“Deep” and “Outer” South (Georgia, Mississippi; and Kentucky, Texas).
These victories defied some pundits’ suggestions that Democrats
should “whistle past Dixie.” In 2006, for instance, political scientist
Thomas Schaller said that Democrats could not win statewide seats in
the South – even if they were socially conservative yet economically
progressive. “Political candidates in all but a few isolated pockets of
the South essentially must pass a values ‘litmus test’,” wrote Schaller
in Whistling Past Dixie, who calls on Democrats to instead focus on
western states. According to Schaller:
“[Some] think
Democrats can bridge the cultural gap by emphasizing the destructive
impacts of Republican economic policies. But it’s extraordinarily
difficult for Democratic candidates to differentiate themselves
sufficiently on economic policies to compensate for the built-in
advantages Republicans enjoy on social issues, and post-NAFTA Democrats
are having a hard time convincing many working-class voters that there
is any meaningful differentiation at all. Besides, no matter how
attractive their economic messaging may be, Democrats must first pass
through the ‘cultural credentialing’ filter to get a full hearing from
Southerners on economic policy. The best Democrats can do is hope for
fate to drop in their laps a huge electoral windfall, like an economic
collapse of such magnitude that it eliminates the culture filter… This
is neither a workable long-term strategy nor a noble way to run a
political party.”
Such claims about southern politics are highly debatable.