By MARSHA MERCER
Fifty years ago, President Lyndon Johnson signed the
Civil Rights Act of 1964 at a joyous White House ceremony. That night, though,
when presidential aide Bill Moyers stopped by the living quarters, he found the
president melancholy.
“He looked at me morosely and said, in effect, `I
think we just handed the South to the Republicans for the rest of my life and
yours.’” Moyers recounted on PBS, adding, “And so we had.”
The 2014 midterm elections marked the demise of the white
Southern Democrat. On Tuesday, voters fired the last one in the U.S. House from
a state in the Deep South.
Democrats also lost Senate races in Arkansas,
Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina and nearly lost Virginia. A
Dec. 6 run-off in Louisiana is a challenge for Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu. All
seven gubernatorial races in the South went to the GOP.
Republicans ran the table across the country, not
just in the South, but considering that Southern Democrats once ruled Congress
– 103 of 105 House members from the South were Democrats in 1950 -- their disappearance
is remarkable.
Dubbed “the loneliest man in Congress,” Rep. John
Barrow, D-Ga., had the distinction of being the last white Democrat in the
House from the Deep South. Barrow, a conservative who had the endorsement of
the National Rifle Association, had held his seat since 2004. He lost to
Republican Rick Allen. And so ends an era.
In the next Congress, every one of the Democrats in
the House from the Deep South states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana,
Mississippi and South Carolina will be black.
Virginia will have two
white Democratic members in the U.S. House, both from Northern Virginia, and
one black House member representing a majority-black district that stretches
from Richmond to Hampton Roads.
An anti-President Obama fever felled Barrow and
other Democrats. Southern voters weren’t just turning the page; they were
tearing it up.
Even having a distinguished political pedigree couldn’t
save the Southern Democrat. Also in Georgia, Jason Carter, grandson of former
President Jimmy Carter, and Michelle Nunn, daughter of former Sen. Sam Nunn,
lost their bids for governor and senator, respectively.
Nunn campaigned with her dad, promising to adopt his
practice of working across the political aisle to get things done.
In Arkansas, Sen. Mark Pryor, son of former Sen.
David Pryor, lost his re-election bid to freshman Rep. Tom Cotton, an Iraq War
veteran. Pryor has been a name in Arkansas politics since 1960 when David Pryor
was first elected a state representative. He went on to be a congressman and governor
before serving in the Senate from 1979 to 1997.
The South has evolved a two-party system deeply divided
by race. White voters form the base of the Republican party and African
Americans the base of the Democratic party.
“The racial
split remains one of the starkest divides in Georgia politics,” the Associated
Press reported from early exit polls.
Republican Senate candidate David Perdue won about
70 percent of the white vote and Nunn took the overwhelming majority of the
black vote, AP said. Nunn had hoped to win enough of the white vote to force Perdue
into a run-off, but he won with 53 percent to her 45 percent.
Mark Pryor also won the black vote, exit polls reported,
but he suffered a stinging loss to Cotton, 57 percent to 40 percent.
The Southern disaffection with Democrats is hardly
new. Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina switched parties and became a
Republican three months after Johnson signed the Civil Rights law. Sen. Harry
F. Byrd Jr. of Virginia quit the party and became an independent in 1970, and
Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama became a Republican in 1994.
Ronald Reagan courted Southern voters in 1980 and
enlisted support for his legislative agenda from the Conservative Democratic
Forum, known as the boll weevils, many of whom were Southerners concerned about
deficit spending.
The Blue Dog Coalition of fiscally conservative
House Democrats, founded by Southerners in 1995 in a last gasp to remain
relevant, has been shrinking. In 2010, it had about 50 members and before the midterm
was down to 19. Now it has lost its last white member from the Deep South.
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