Politics of the Southern United States
Encyclopedia
Politics of the Southern United States (or Southern politics) refers to the political landscape of the Southern United States
. Due to the region's unique cultural and historic heritage, the American South has been prominently involved in numerous political issues faced by the United States
as a whole, including States' rights
, slavery
, the American Civil War
, and the American Civil Rights Movement
. Due to the South's conservative political leanings and political power, the South has seen the start of several political movements (such as George C. Wallace's American Independent Party
) and the region has played a crucial role in Presidential politics as the South provided the winners in the presidential elections of 1976, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 (and the loser in 1980 and 1992).
's presidency the North supported the Federalists, believing in a centralized government, while the South stood behind Thomas Jefferson
and his interpretation of the 10th Amendment
. When the XYZ Affair
took place, resentment of the French quickly developed in the South while the North wanted to resolve the situation diplomatically. This would be the start of a split between the South and the North.
Early in the 19th century, the South's economy became focused nearly exclusively on agricultural cash crop
s, made possible by the extensive use of slave labor. Due to the region's agricultural success, the South became integral to the political history of the United States
, with many of the United States' early military and political leaders (including nine of its first twelve presidents) coming from the Southern United States.
However, by the middle of the 19th century sectional differences surrounding the issues of slavery, taxation, tariffs, and states' rights
led to a strong secession
movement. The political drive to secede from the United States hit its peak after the election of Abraham Lincoln
in 1860. The Southern states that seceded formed the Confederate States of America
with Richmond
as its capital.
During the four-year Civil War
that followed, the South found itself as the primary battleground, with almost all of the main battles taking place on Southern soil. The Confederates were eventually defeated by the Union
.
After the Civil War, the South found itself devastated in terms of its population, infrastructure
, and economy. During Reconstruction, Union military troops occupied areas of the South and Republican appointees and election officials had direct political control. Many white Southerners who had actively supported the Confederacy were temporarily without some of the basic rights of citizenship (such as the ability to vote). With the passage of the 13th Amendment
to the Constitution of the United States (which outlawed slavery), the 14th Amendment
(which granted full U.S. citizenship to African American
s) and the 15th amendment
(which extended the right to vote to black males), African Americans in the South began to enjoy a full range of citizens' rights which were broader than those extended to free blacks, even in the North, in decades before the war.
A reaction to the defeat and changes in society began immediately, with vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan
arising in 1866 as the first line of insurgents. They attacked and killed both freedmen and their white allies. Most men in the South were veterans of the war, so it was not surprising that resistance became violent. By the 1870s, more organized paramilitary groups, such as the White League
and Red Shirts, took part in turning Republicans out of office and barring or intimidating blacks from voting. White Democrats regained power by the late 1870s, and began to pass laws to restrict black voting in a period they came to refer to as Redemption. From 1890–1908 states of the former Confederacy passed statutes and amendments to their state constitutions that effectively disfranchised most blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites in the South through devices such as residency requirements, poll taxes, and literacy tests. At the same time states passed Jim Crow laws
to create legal racial segregation
in public facilities and services; the phrase separate but equal
, upheld in the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson
, came to represent the notion that whites and blacks should have access to physically separate but ostensibly equal facilities. It would not be until 1954 that Plessy was overturned in Brown v. Board of Education
, and only in the late 1960s was segregation fully repealed by legislation passed following the American Civil Rights Movement.
for Democratic Party
candidates for nearly a century after the Reconstruction era (1877–1964). In most of the South, whites were the only ones who could vote, but the states kept their Congressional representation for their entire populations.
Except for 1928, when candidate Al Smith
, a Catholic
, ran on the Democratic ticket, Democratic candidates won by large margins in the South in every presidential election from 1876 until 1948 (even in 1928, the divided South provided Smith with nearly three-fourths of his electoral votes). From World War I to 1970, nearly 6.5 million blacks left the South in two waves of the Great Migration
to the North, Midwest and West, to escape segregation and limited opportunities. The exodus was large enough in several states to end black majorities and alter the racial balance. Changes in the economy have also contributed to continuing white majorities in all southern states.
Especially in the 1960s, the national Democratic Party's support of the Civil Rights Movement, capped by President Lyndon Johnson's support for the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, led to white southerners turning away from the Democratic Party. The Republican Party made gains in the South by way of its "Southern strategy." Today, the Republican Party
has substantial strength among white southerners. African Americans in the South have mostly voted with the Democratic Party in state and national elections since the civil rights years.
movement, the Civil Rights Movement
, and the "Republican Revolution
" of 1994.
of South Carolina, split from the Democrats in reaction to an anti-segregation speech given by Minneapolis mayor Hubert Humphrey
, founding the States Rights Democratic or Dixiecrat
Party. During that year's Presidential election, the party unsuccessfully ran Thurmond as its candidate.
gained ground in the American South. While many individuals and organizations participated in the movement's early years, dating back to the turn of the century, in the 1950s-1960s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist
minister, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
were highly influential in carrying out a strategy of non-violent protests and demonstrations. Black churches were prominent in organizing their congregations for moral leadership and protest. Protesters rallied against racial http://support.2wire.com/segregation laws, through such events as the Montgomery Bus Boycott
, the Selma to Montgomery marches
, the Birmingham campaign
, the Greensboro sit-in of 1960, and the March on Washington in 1963.
Legal changes came in the mid-1960s when President Lyndon B. Johnson
of Texas
signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964
, effectively ending segregation by state governments, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which restored the ability of minorities to exercise their franchise. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. continued his political activism, opposing the Vietnam War
and focusing his attention on nonviolence
and poverty-related issues. He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee
in 1968. A national holiday honoring King, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, was first observed in 1986; it was not officially observed by all 50 states until the year 2000.
Other prominent figures in the American Civil Rights movement included Rosa Parks
, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Abernathy
, Fred Shuttlesworth
, Julian Bond
, Jesse Jackson
, Dr.Wyatt Tee Walker
, and Malcolm X
.
ticket. Wallace ran a "law and order" campaign similar to that of Republican candidate, Richard Nixon
. While Nixon won, Wallace won a number of Southern states. This inspired Nixon and other Republican leaders to create the Southern Strategy
of winning Presidential elections. This strategy focused on securing the electoral votes of the U.S. Southern states by having candidates promote states' rights and culturally conservative values, such as family issues, religion, and patriotism
, which appealed strongly to Southern voters. Analysts evaluated issues of states' rights and busing as code words for the changes of integration.
, former Georgia
governor Jimmy Carter
won the Democratic nomination for President of the United States
. Carter, a peanut farmer and pro-life
Southern Baptist Sunday school
teacher became the first Democratic president to date to defeat the Republicans' Southern Strategy
. He defeated George Wallace
in the Democratic primary and carried every Southern state in the general election, with the exceptions of Virginia
and Oklahoma
. In addition to being a native son, Carter ran a culturally Southern, populist campaign. People of his hometown of Plains, Georgia
held fundraisers with "covered-dish" dinners and its residents traveled north to campaign by train on the "Peanut Express"."Plains to the White House," 1976. Republican incumbent Gerald Ford
had only narrowly defeated Ronald Reagan
in the conservative intra-party coup
to secure his party's nomination. As a moderate Republican who generally kept his religious views to himself, Ford was unable to endear himself to Bible Belt
voters. Carter's victory was significant in that he was among the few U.S. Presidents to have claimed to be a born-again Christian.
By 1980 Carter's approval ratings plummeted due a poor economy and the Iran hostage crisis
. In addition, although Carter had energized Southern evangelicals in his 1976 campaign, as perhaps the first "born-again" president, a backlash among some white conservative evangelicals led to the formation of the Religious right
. It split the Southern evangelical vote and denied Carter a victory in many states. Ronald Reagan
won the 1980 presidential election
in a landslide; Carter retained majorities in Georgia
, West Virginia
, Maryland
, and the District of Columbia, becoming the last Democratic candidate to perform better in the South than nationally.
Since leaving office in 1981, however, Carter has continued to have a significant influence among Southern evangelicals. He has continued the practice of evangelism
and has taught Sunday school to the tourists who visit his hometown. (His sister Ruth Carter Stapleton
was an evangelist until her death in 1983.) He is also credited with using his national recognition to boost the success of the Christian
non-profit ministry Habitat for Humanity beyond its original sphere of influence in Sumter County, Georgia
. Habitat for Humanity has housed 1,000,000 people to date. It continues to host the "Jimmy Carter work project" each year. Finally, Carter has written numerous books on the subject of religious faith.
For many years, Carter attempted to reconcile moderate and conservative factions of the Southern Baptist Convention
, but in 2000 he left to join the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
. Reasons cited for his decision included a 1998 ban on the ordination
of women as ministers, and "the elimination of language in June that identifies Jesus Christ as "the criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted" in the Baptist Faith and Message
."Jimmy Carter Renounces Southern Baptist Convention," reprinted at Beliefnet.com
-born Georgia Congressman Newt Gingrich
ushered in a "Republican revolution" with his "Contract with America
". Gingrich, then the Minority Whip of the House, created the document to detail what the Republican Party
would do if they won the that year's United States Congressional election. The contract detailed several proposed aspects of governmental reform. Nearly all of the Republican candidates in the election signed the contract. For the first time in 40 years, the Republicans won control of the Congress. Gingrich became Speaker of the House
, serving in that position from 1995 to 1999.
Republicans maintained control of Congress from January 1995 until January 2007, with two exceptions. After the 2000 elections, a 50-50 split in the Senate temporarily resulted in a Senate presidency by Tennessee's Al Gore
in January 2001. (In the event of a tie, party control is decided by the Vice-President's tie-breaking vote.) In May 2001, Republican senator James Jeffords left his party to become an Independent, giving the Democrats a 50–49 majority in the Senate until early 2003.
During this period, a number of current Congressional leaders were also from the South, including former President Pro Tem of the Senate Strom Thurmond
of South Carolina
, former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist
of Tennessee, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
of Kentucky, and Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay
of Texas.
was able to forge a powerful coalition of Southern states that had been out of reach of the Republican party in the last two Presidential contests. In particular, Bush's increased popularity following the September 11 attacks in 2001 enabled him to aid in the defeat of most Southern Democratic Senators in 2002 and 2004. On November 7, 2006, however, the Democratic Party once again regained control of the House and Senate, as well as control of the Southern Governors Association
. The election was the first since the Gulf Coast was struck by Hurricane Katrina
. The Republican Administration was seen to have failed in rescue and recovery efforts there. Voters named "government corruption" and the state of the then-current war in Iraq
as influences on their decisions. The election was the first since 1948 in which Republicans did not win a single Democratic seat. (See United States House of Representatives elections, 2006.)
Prior to the election, two government scandals involving Congressional Republicans fueled a public backlash. The first was the Abramoff scandal, in which lobbyist Jack Abramoff and others presented bribes to legislators on behalf of Indian casino gambling interests. In the South, the scandal had the effect of ending Ralph Reed
's political career, when he lost the primary election for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia. The scandal also ended the career of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay
of Texas
.
In 2005, a Texas grand jury indicted DeLay on criminal charges that he had conspired to violate campaign finance laws. DeLay denied the charges, saying that they were politically motivated, but Republican Conference rules forced him to resign temporarily from his position as Majority Leader. In January 2006, under pressure from fellow Republicans, DeLay announced that he would not seek to return to the position. In the months before and after this decision, two of his former aides were convicted in the Jack Abramoff scandal. DeLay ran for re-election in 2006, and won the Republican primary election in March 2006, but, citing the possibility of losing the general election, he announced in April 2006 that he would withdraw from the race and resign his seat in Congress. He resigned on June 9, 2006, and sought to remove his name from the ballot. The court battle that followed forced him to remain on the ballot, despite having withdrawn from the race. Democrat Nick Lampson
ultimately won DeLay's House seat in TX-22.
A second scandal, commonly known as the Mark Foley scandal
, involved Florida
Congressman Mark Foley
's sending sexually explicit messages to underage Congressional pages
. Foley resigned, but his name remained on the ballot, and Democrat Tim Mahoney
won the general election. The scandal led to Foley's resignation from Congress on September 29, 2006. It is believed to have contributed to the Republican Party's loss of control over Congress in the November 7, 2006 election, as well as the end of House Speaker Dennis Hastert
's leadership of the House Republicans. Kirk Fordham
, chief of staff to Rep. Tom Reynolds
and former chief of staff for Foley, also resigned as a result of the scandal. (See Mark Foley scandal
.
's unlikely victory against incumbent Virginia
Senator (and former Governor) George Allen
. Allen's poll numbers had plummeted after a video was released of Allen taunting an Indian-American student at a rally with what were interpreted as racially charged remarks. (See Macaca (slur)
.) In Missouri
, Democrat Claire McCaskill
defeated incumbent Senator Jim Talent
.
.
, Mike Beebe of Arkansas
regained the governorship previously held by Republican Mike Huckabee
. In Maryland
, Martin O'Malley
defeated incumbent Republican governor Robert Erlich. In 2007, Kentucky Democrat Steve Beshear
defeated incumbent Republican governor Ernie Fletcher
. These victories gave the Democratic Party a decisive 10-8 majority in the Southern Governors Association
. Joe Manchin
of West Virginia subsequently became chairman of the association, while Tim Kaine
of Virginia became Vice-Chairman.
won a comfortable victory in the 2008 presidential election
, the first signs of a GOP resurgence in two gubernatorial elections
were seen, one of them in the South. In Virginia, a state that Obama carried by 6%
, Republican Bob McDonnell
won the seat vacated by the term-limited Kaine by a 17% margin
. This proved to be a prelude to more significant pickups in 2010
.
passed shortly before the elections, and a reenergized conservative movement, with its most visible manifestation being the Tea Party movement
.
Eight Southern states held gubernatorial elections
. The GOP picked up two seats held by term-limited Democrats; Mary Fallin
won the seat
vacated by Brad Henry
in Oklahoma
and Bill Haslam
won the seat
vacated by Phil Bredesen
in Tennessee
. The GOP also held all of its other Southern governorships. Rick Perry
won a third term in Texas
, while Robert Bentley, Nathan Deal
, and Nikki Haley
won seats held by term-limited Republicans in Alabama
, Georgia
, and South Carolina
. In Florida
, Rick Scott won the seat vacated by Charlie Crist
, who was elected as a Republican but switched to an independent during his unsuccessful U.S. Senate run
. These results gave the GOP a 11–7 majority in the Southern Governors Association when all the new governors were sworn in.
The GOP made substantial gains in the U.S. Senate. While the Democrats maintained control over the chamber, their majority was reduced from 59–41 to 53–47 (both totals include two independents who caucus with the Democrats). One of the GOP pickups came in Arkansas
, where John Boozman
easily defeated
incumbent Blanche Lincoln
. The Republicans also successfully defended all of their own seats, including eight in the South.
The greatest Republican gains came in the U.S. House
, where the GOP more than erased its losses from 2006 and 2008 by gaining 63 seats, retaking control of the chamber in the process. These gains were the largest by either party in any House election since 1948 and in a midterm election since 1938.
When the 112th Congress
convened in January 2011, many leadership positions in the new GOP majority are held by Southerners:
, the South has supplied many of the 43 presidents. Virginia
specifically was the birthplace of seven of the nation's first twelve presidents (including four of the first five).
Presidents born in the South and identified with the region include:
One President was born in the South, and is identified both with the South and elsewhere:
One President was born outside the South, but is generally identified with the region:
Presidents born in Southern states, but not primarily identified with that region, include:
Another President was born outside the region, and was not a resident of a Southern state when elected, but is often identified with the South:
This list encompasses members of the Whig Party
, Republican Party
and the Democratic Party
; in addition, Washington, while officially non-partisan, was generally associated with the Federalist Party.
They have also supplied Presidential losers:
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
. Due to the region's unique cultural and historic heritage, the American South has been prominently involved in numerous political issues faced by the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
as a whole, including States' rights
States' rights
States' rights in U.S. politics refers to political powers reserved for the U.S. state governments rather than the federal government. It is often considered a loaded term because of its use in opposition to federally mandated racial desegregation...
, slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
, the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
, and the American Civil Rights Movement
African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)
The African-American Civil Rights Movement refers to the movements in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against African Americans and restoring voting rights to them. This article covers the phase of the movement between 1955 and 1968, particularly in the South...
. Due to the South's conservative political leanings and political power, the South has seen the start of several political movements (such as George C. Wallace's American Independent Party
American Independent Party
The American Independent Party is a right-wing political party of the United States that was established in 1967 by Bill and Eileen Shearer. In 1968, the American Independent Party nominated George C. Wallace as its presidential candidate and retired Air Force General Curtis E. LeMay as the vice...
) and the region has played a crucial role in Presidential politics as the South provided the winners in the presidential elections of 1976, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 (and the loser in 1980 and 1992).
Early political history
When America's first political parties developed during the first term of George WashingtonGeorge Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
's presidency the North supported the Federalists, believing in a centralized government, while the South stood behind Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
and his interpretation of the 10th Amendment
Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which is part of the Bill of Rights, was ratified on December 15, 1791...
. When the XYZ Affair
XYZ Affair
The XYZ Affair was a 1798 diplomatic episode during the administration of John Adams that Americans interpreted as an insult from France. It led to an undeclared naval war called the Quasi-War, which raged at sea from 1798 to 1800...
took place, resentment of the French quickly developed in the South while the North wanted to resolve the situation diplomatically. This would be the start of a split between the South and the North.
Early in the 19th century, the South's economy became focused nearly exclusively on agricultural cash crop
Cash crop
In agriculture, a cash crop is a crop which is grown for profit.The term is used to differentiate from subsistence crops, which are those fed to the producer's own livestock or grown as food for the producer's family...
s, made possible by the extensive use of slave labor. Due to the region's agricultural success, the South became integral to the political history of the United States
History of the United States
The history of the United States traditionally starts with the Declaration of Independence in the year 1776, although its territory was inhabited by Native Americans since prehistoric times and then by European colonists who followed the voyages of Christopher Columbus starting in 1492. The...
, with many of the United States' early military and political leaders (including nine of its first twelve presidents) coming from the Southern United States.
However, by the middle of the 19th century sectional differences surrounding the issues of slavery, taxation, tariffs, and states' rights
States' rights
States' rights in U.S. politics refers to political powers reserved for the U.S. state governments rather than the federal government. It is often considered a loaded term because of its use in opposition to federally mandated racial desegregation...
led to a strong secession
Secession
Secession is the act of withdrawing from an organization, union, or especially a political entity. Threats of secession also can be a strategy for achieving more limited goals.-Secession theory:...
movement. The political drive to secede from the United States hit its peak after the election of Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
in 1860. The Southern states that seceded formed the Confederate States of America
Confederate States of America
The Confederate States of America was a government set up from 1861 to 1865 by 11 Southern slave states of the United States of America that had declared their secession from the U.S...
with Richmond
Richmond, Virginia
Richmond is the capital of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States. It is an independent city and not part of any county. Richmond is the center of the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area and the Greater Richmond area...
as its capital.
During the four-year Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
that followed, the South found itself as the primary battleground, with almost all of the main battles taking place on Southern soil. The Confederates were eventually defeated by the Union
Union (American Civil War)
During the American Civil War, the Union was a name used to refer to the federal government of the United States, which was supported by the twenty free states and five border slave states. It was opposed by 11 southern slave states that had declared a secession to join together to form the...
.
After the Civil War, the South found itself devastated in terms of its population, infrastructure
Infrastructure
Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...
, and economy. During Reconstruction, Union military troops occupied areas of the South and Republican appointees and election officials had direct political control. Many white Southerners who had actively supported the Confederacy were temporarily without some of the basic rights of citizenship (such as the ability to vote). With the passage of the 13th Amendment
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution officially abolished and continues to prohibit slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for a crime. It was passed by the Senate on April 8, 1864, passed by the House on January 31, 1865, and adopted on December 6, 1865. On...
to the Constitution of the United States (which outlawed slavery), the 14th Amendment
Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was adopted on July 9, 1868, as one of the Reconstruction Amendments.Its Citizenship Clause provides a broad definition of citizenship that overruled the Dred Scott v...
(which granted full U.S. citizenship to African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
s) and the 15th amendment
Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
The Fifteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits each government in the United States from denying a citizen the right to vote based on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude"...
(which extended the right to vote to black males), African Americans in the South began to enjoy a full range of citizens' rights which were broader than those extended to free blacks, even in the North, in decades before the war.
A reaction to the defeat and changes in society began immediately, with vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
arising in 1866 as the first line of insurgents. They attacked and killed both freedmen and their white allies. Most men in the South were veterans of the war, so it was not surprising that resistance became violent. By the 1870s, more organized paramilitary groups, such as the White League
White League
The White League was a white paramilitary group started in 1874 that operated to turn Republicans out of office and intimidate freedmen from voting and political organizing. Its first chapter in Grant Parish, Louisiana was made up of many of the Confederate veterans who had participated in the...
and Red Shirts, took part in turning Republicans out of office and barring or intimidating blacks from voting. White Democrats regained power by the late 1870s, and began to pass laws to restrict black voting in a period they came to refer to as Redemption. From 1890–1908 states of the former Confederacy passed statutes and amendments to their state constitutions that effectively disfranchised most blacks and tens of thousands of poor whites in the South through devices such as residency requirements, poll taxes, and literacy tests. At the same time states passed Jim Crow laws
Jim Crow laws
The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans...
to create legal racial segregation
Racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of humans into racial groups in daily life. It may apply to activities such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a public toilet, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home...
in public facilities and services; the phrase separate but equal
Separate but equal
Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law that justified systems of segregation. Under this doctrine, services, facilities and public accommodations were allowed to be separated by race, on the condition that the quality of each group's public facilities was to...
, upheld in the 1896 Supreme Court case Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson
Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 , is a landmark United States Supreme Court decision in the jurisprudence of the United States, upholding the constitutionality of state laws requiring racial segregation in private businesses , under the doctrine of "separate but equal".The decision was handed...
, came to represent the notion that whites and blacks should have access to physically separate but ostensibly equal facilities. It would not be until 1954 that Plessy was overturned in Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 , was a landmark decision of the United States Supreme Court that declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional. The decision overturned the Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896 which...
, and only in the late 1960s was segregation fully repealed by legislation passed following the American Civil Rights Movement.
The Solid South
Solid South refers to the electoral support of white voters in the Southern United StatesSouthern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
for Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
candidates for nearly a century after the Reconstruction era (1877–1964). In most of the South, whites were the only ones who could vote, but the states kept their Congressional representation for their entire populations.
Except for 1928, when candidate Al Smith
Al Smith
Alfred Emanuel Smith. , known in private and public life as Al Smith, was an American statesman who was elected the 42nd Governor of New York three times, and was the Democratic U.S. presidential candidate in 1928...
, a Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...
, ran on the Democratic ticket, Democratic candidates won by large margins in the South in every presidential election from 1876 until 1948 (even in 1928, the divided South provided Smith with nearly three-fourths of his electoral votes). From World War I to 1970, nearly 6.5 million blacks left the South in two waves of the Great Migration
Great Migration (African American)
The Great Migration was the movement of 6 million blacks out of the Southern United States to the Northeast, Midwest, and West from 1910 to 1970. Some historians differentiate between a Great Migration , numbering about 1.6 million migrants, and a Second Great Migration , in which 5 million or more...
to the North, Midwest and West, to escape segregation and limited opportunities. The exodus was large enough in several states to end black majorities and alter the racial balance. Changes in the economy have also contributed to continuing white majorities in all southern states.
Especially in the 1960s, the national Democratic Party's support of the Civil Rights Movement, capped by President Lyndon Johnson's support for the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act, led to white southerners turning away from the Democratic Party. The Republican Party made gains in the South by way of its "Southern strategy." Today, the Republican Party
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
has substantial strength among white southerners. African Americans in the South have mostly voted with the Democratic Party in state and national elections since the civil rights years.
Twentieth-century political movements
During the 20th century, the South was home to numerous political movements, including the DixiecratDixiecrat
The States' Rights Democratic Party was a short-lived segregationist political party in the United States in 1948...
movement, the Civil Rights Movement
African-American Civil Rights Movement (1955-1968)
The African-American Civil Rights Movement refers to the movements in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against African Americans and restoring voting rights to them. This article covers the phase of the movement between 1955 and 1968, particularly in the South...
, and the "Republican Revolution
Republican Revolution
The Republican Revolution or Revolution of '94 is what the media dubbed Republican Party success in the 1994 U.S. midterm elections, which resulted in a net gain of 54 seats in the House of Representatives, and a pickup of eight seats in the Senate...
" of 1994.
Dixiecrat movement
In 1948, a group of Democratic congressmen, led by Governor Strom ThurmondStrom Thurmond
James Strom Thurmond was an American politician who served as a United States Senator. He also ran for the Presidency of the United States in 1948 as the segregationist States Rights Democratic Party candidate, receiving 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes...
of South Carolina, split from the Democrats in reaction to an anti-segregation speech given by Minneapolis mayor Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Humphrey
Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. , served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 38th Vice President of the United States. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and...
, founding the States Rights Democratic or Dixiecrat
Dixiecrat
The States' Rights Democratic Party was a short-lived segregationist political party in the United States in 1948...
Party. During that year's Presidential election, the party unsuccessfully ran Thurmond as its candidate.
The Civil Rights Movement
Between 1955 and 1968, a movement toward desegregationDesegregation
Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups usually referring to races. This is most commonly used in reference to the United States. Desegregation was long a focus of the American Civil Rights Movement, both before and after the United States Supreme Court's decision in...
gained ground in the American South. While many individuals and organizations participated in the movement's early years, dating back to the turn of the century, in the 1950s-1960s Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a Baptist
Baptist
Baptists comprise a group of Christian denominations and churches that subscribe to a doctrine that baptism should be performed only for professing believers , and that it must be done by immersion...
minister, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr...
were highly influential in carrying out a strategy of non-violent protests and demonstrations. Black churches were prominent in organizing their congregations for moral leadership and protest. Protesters rallied against racial http://support.2wire.com/segregation laws, through such events as the Montgomery Bus Boycott
Montgomery Bus Boycott
The Montgomery Bus Boycott was a political and social protest campaign that started in 1955 in Montgomery, Alabama, USA, intended to oppose the city's policy of racial segregation on its public transit system. Many important figures in the civil rights movement were involved in the boycott,...
, the Selma to Montgomery marches
Selma to Montgomery marches
The Selma to Montgomery marches were three marches in 1965 that marked the political and emotional peak of the American civil rights movement. They grew out of the voting rights movement in Selma, Alabama, launched by local African-Americans who formed the Dallas County Voters League...
, the Birmingham campaign
Birmingham campaign
The Birmingham campaign was a strategic movement organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference to bring attention to the unequal treatment that black Americans endured in Birmingham, Alabama...
, the Greensboro sit-in of 1960, and the March on Washington in 1963.
Legal changes came in the mid-1960s when President Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon Baines Johnson , often referred to as LBJ, was the 36th President of the United States after his service as the 37th Vice President of the United States...
of Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Civil Rights Act of 1964
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a landmark piece of legislation in the United States that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation...
, effectively ending segregation by state governments, and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which restored the ability of minorities to exercise their franchise. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. continued his political activism, opposing the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
and focusing his attention on nonviolence
Nonviolence
Nonviolence has two meanings. It can refer, first, to a general philosophy of abstention from violence because of moral or religious principle It can refer to the behaviour of people using nonviolent action Nonviolence has two (closely related) meanings. (1) It can refer, first, to a general...
and poverty-related issues. He was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....
in 1968. A national holiday honoring King, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, was first observed in 1986; it was not officially observed by all 50 states until the year 2000.
Other prominent figures in the American Civil Rights movement included Rosa Parks
Rosa Parks
Rosa Louise McCauley Parks was an African-American civil rights activist, whom the U.S. Congress called "the first lady of civil rights", and "the mother of the freedom movement"....
, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ralph Abernathy
Ralph Abernathy
Ralph David Abernathy, Sr. was a leader of the American Civil Rights Movement, a minister, and a close associate of Martin Luther King, Jr. in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Following King's assassination, Dr. Abernathy took up the leadership of the SCLC Poor People's Campaign and...
, Fred Shuttlesworth
Fred Shuttlesworth
Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, born Freddie Lee Robinson, was a U.S. civil rights activist who led the fight against segregation and other forms of racism as a minister in Birmingham, Alabama...
, Julian Bond
Julian Bond
Horace Julian Bond , known as Julian Bond, is an American social activist and leader in the American civil rights movement, politician, professor, and writer. While a student at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, during the early 1960s, he helped found the Student Nonviolent Coordinating...
, Jesse Jackson
Jesse Jackson
Jesse Louis Jackson, Sr. is an African-American civil rights activist and Baptist minister. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as shadow senator for the District of Columbia from 1991 to 1997. He was the founder of both entities that merged to...
, Dr.Wyatt Tee Walker
Wyatt Tee Walker
Wyatt Tee Walker is a United States black pastor, national civil rights leader, theologian, and cultural historian. He was a Chief of Staff for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and in 1958 became an early board member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference . He helped found the Congress for...
, and Malcolm X
Malcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
.
George Wallace and the Southern strategy
In 1968, Democratic Alabama Governor George C. Wallace ran for President on the American Independent PartyAmerican Independent Party
The American Independent Party is a right-wing political party of the United States that was established in 1967 by Bill and Eileen Shearer. In 1968, the American Independent Party nominated George C. Wallace as its presidential candidate and retired Air Force General Curtis E. LeMay as the vice...
ticket. Wallace ran a "law and order" campaign similar to that of Republican candidate, Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
. While Nixon won, Wallace won a number of Southern states. This inspired Nixon and other Republican leaders to create the Southern Strategy
Southern strategy
In American politics, the Southern strategy refers to the Republican Party strategy of winning elections in Southern states by exploiting anti-African American racism and fears of lawlessness among Southern white voters and appealing to fears of growing federal power in social and economic matters...
of winning Presidential elections. This strategy focused on securing the electoral votes of the U.S. Southern states by having candidates promote states' rights and culturally conservative values, such as family issues, religion, and patriotism
Patriotism
Patriotism is a devotion to one's country, excluding differences caused by the dependencies of the term's meaning upon context, geography and philosophy...
, which appealed strongly to Southern voters. Analysts evaluated issues of states' rights and busing as code words for the changes of integration.
Jimmy Carter, the 1976 Presidential election, and the rise of the Religious Right
In the 1976 electionUnited States presidential election, 1976
The United States presidential election of 1976 followed the resignation of President Richard Nixon in the wake of the Watergate scandal. It pitted incumbent President Gerald Ford, the Republican candidate, against the relatively unknown former governor of Georgia, Jimmy Carter, the Democratic...
, former Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
governor Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter
James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
won the Democratic nomination for President of the United States
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
. Carter, a peanut farmer and pro-life
Pro-life
Opposition to the legalization of abortion is centered around the pro-life, or anti-abortion, movement, a social and political movement opposing elective abortion on moral grounds and supporting its legal prohibition or restriction...
Southern Baptist Sunday school
Sunday school
Sunday school is the generic name for many different types of religious education pursued on Sundays by various denominations.-England:The first Sunday school may have been opened in 1751 in St. Mary's Church, Nottingham. Another early start was made by Hannah Ball, a native of High Wycombe in...
teacher became the first Democratic president to date to defeat the Republicans' Southern Strategy
Southern strategy
In American politics, the Southern strategy refers to the Republican Party strategy of winning elections in Southern states by exploiting anti-African American racism and fears of lawlessness among Southern white voters and appealing to fears of growing federal power in social and economic matters...
. He defeated George Wallace
George Wallace
George Corley Wallace, Jr. was the 45th Governor of Alabama, serving four terms: 1963–1967, 1971–1979 and 1983–1987. "The most influential loser" in 20th-century U.S. politics, according to biographers Dan T. Carter and Stephan Lesher, he ran for U.S...
in the Democratic primary and carried every Southern state in the general election, with the exceptions of Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
and Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
. In addition to being a native son, Carter ran a culturally Southern, populist campaign. People of his hometown of Plains, Georgia
Plains, Georgia
Plains is a city in Sumter County, Georgia, United States. The population was 776 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Americus Micropolitan Statistical Area.-Notable people:...
held fundraisers with "covered-dish" dinners and its residents traveled north to campaign by train on the "Peanut Express"."Plains to the White House," 1976. Republican incumbent Gerald Ford
Gerald Ford
Gerald Rudolph "Jerry" Ford, Jr. was the 38th President of the United States, serving from 1974 to 1977, and the 40th Vice President of the United States serving from 1973 to 1974...
had only narrowly defeated Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
in the conservative intra-party coup
Republican Party (United States) presidential primaries, 1976
The 1976 Republican presidential primaries were the selection process by which voters of the Republican Party chose its nominee for President of the United States in the 1976 U.S. presidential election...
to secure his party's nomination. As a moderate Republican who generally kept his religious views to himself, Ford was unable to endear himself to Bible Belt
Bible Belt
Bible Belt is an informal term for a region in the southeastern and south-central United States in which socially conservative evangelical Protestantism is a significant part of the culture and Christian church attendance across the denominations is generally higher than the nation's average.The...
voters. Carter's victory was significant in that he was among the few U.S. Presidents to have claimed to be a born-again Christian.
By 1980 Carter's approval ratings plummeted due a poor economy and the Iran hostage crisis
Iran hostage crisis
The Iran hostage crisis was a diplomatic crisis between Iran and the United States where 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days from November 4, 1979 to January 20, 1981, after a group of Islamist students and militants took over the American Embassy in Tehran in support of the Iranian...
. In addition, although Carter had energized Southern evangelicals in his 1976 campaign, as perhaps the first "born-again" president, a backlash among some white conservative evangelicals led to the formation of the Religious right
Christian right
Christian right is a term used predominantly in the United States to describe "right-wing" Christian political groups that are characterized by their strong support of socially conservative policies...
. It split the Southern evangelical vote and denied Carter a victory in many states. Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Wilson Reagan was the 40th President of the United States , the 33rd Governor of California and, prior to that, a radio, film and television actor....
won the 1980 presidential election
United States presidential election, 1980
The United States presidential election of 1980 featured a contest between incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter and his Republican opponent, Ronald Reagan, as well as Republican Congressman John B. Anderson, who ran as an independent...
in a landslide; Carter retained majorities in Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
, West Virginia
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...
, Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
, and the District of Columbia, becoming the last Democratic candidate to perform better in the South than nationally.
Since leaving office in 1981, however, Carter has continued to have a significant influence among Southern evangelicals. He has continued the practice of evangelism
Evangelism
Evangelism refers to the practice of relaying information about a particular set of beliefs to others who do not hold those beliefs. The term is often used in reference to Christianity....
and has taught Sunday school to the tourists who visit his hometown. (His sister Ruth Carter Stapleton
Ruth Carter Stapleton
Ruth Carter Stapleton was a sister of Jimmy Carter and was known in her own right as a Christian evangelist. She died of pancreatic cancer in 1983.- Early life :...
was an evangelist until her death in 1983.) He is also credited with using his national recognition to boost the success of the Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
non-profit ministry Habitat for Humanity beyond its original sphere of influence in Sumter County, Georgia
Sumter County, Georgia
Sumter County is a county located in the southwest portion of the U.S. state of Georgia. It was created on December 26, 1831. As of 2000, the population was 33,200. The 2007 Census Estimate shows a population of 32,532...
. Habitat for Humanity has housed 1,000,000 people to date. It continues to host the "Jimmy Carter work project" each year. Finally, Carter has written numerous books on the subject of religious faith.
For many years, Carter attempted to reconcile moderate and conservative factions of the Southern Baptist Convention
Southern Baptist Convention
The Southern Baptist Convention is a United States-based Christian denomination. It is the world's largest Baptist denomination and the largest Protestant body in the United States, with over 16 million members...
, but in 2000 he left to join the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
Cooperative Baptist Fellowship
The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship is a Christian fellowship of Baptist churches formed in 1991. Theologically moderate, the CBF withdrew from the Southern Baptist Convention over philosophical and theological differences, such as the SBC prohibition of women serving as pastors. The Cooperative...
. Reasons cited for his decision included a 1998 ban on the ordination
Ordination
In general religious use, ordination is the process by which individuals are consecrated, that is, set apart as clergy to perform various religious rites and ceremonies. The process and ceremonies of ordination itself varies by religion and denomination. One who is in preparation for, or who is...
of women as ministers, and "the elimination of language in June that identifies Jesus Christ as "the criterion by which the Bible is to be interpreted" in the Baptist Faith and Message
Baptist Faith and Message
The Baptist Faith and Message is the confession of faith of the Southern Baptist Convention . It summarizes key Southern Baptist thought in the areas of the Bible and its authority, the nature of God as expressed by the Trinity, the spiritual condition of man, God's plan of grace and salvation,...
."Jimmy Carter Renounces Southern Baptist Convention," reprinted at Beliefnet.com
The Contract with America
In 1994, PennsylvaniaPennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
-born Georgia Congressman Newt Gingrich
Newt Gingrich
Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich is a U.S. Republican Party politician who served as the House Minority Whip from 1989 to 1995 and as the 58th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999....
ushered in a "Republican revolution" with his "Contract with America
Contract with America
The Contract with America was a document released by the United States Republican Party during the 1994 Congressional election campaign. Written by Larry Hunter, who was aided by Newt Gingrich, Robert Walker, Richard Armey, Bill Paxon, Tom DeLay, John Boehner and Jim Nussle, and in part using text...
". Gingrich, then the Minority Whip of the House, created the document to detail what the Republican Party
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
would do if they won the that year's United States Congressional election. The contract detailed several proposed aspects of governmental reform. Nearly all of the Republican candidates in the election signed the contract. For the first time in 40 years, the Republicans won control of the Congress. Gingrich became Speaker of the House
Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, or Speaker of the House, is the presiding officer of the United States House of Representatives...
, serving in that position from 1995 to 1999.
Republicans maintained control of Congress from January 1995 until January 2007, with two exceptions. After the 2000 elections, a 50-50 split in the Senate temporarily resulted in a Senate presidency by Tennessee's Al Gore
Al Gore
Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
in January 2001. (In the event of a tie, party control is decided by the Vice-President's tie-breaking vote.) In May 2001, Republican senator James Jeffords left his party to become an Independent, giving the Democrats a 50–49 majority in the Senate until early 2003.
During this period, a number of current Congressional leaders were also from the South, including former President Pro Tem of the Senate Strom Thurmond
Strom Thurmond
James Strom Thurmond was an American politician who served as a United States Senator. He also ran for the Presidency of the United States in 1948 as the segregationist States Rights Democratic Party candidate, receiving 2.4% of the popular vote and 39 electoral votes...
of South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
, former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist
Bill Frist
William Harrison "Bill" Frist, Sr. is an American physician, businessman, and politician. He began his career as an heir and major stockholder to the for-profit hospital chain of Hospital Corporation of America. Frist later served two terms as a Republican United States Senator representing...
of Tennessee, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell
Mitch McConnell
Addison Mitchell "Mitch" McConnell, Jr. is the senior United States Senator from Kentucky and the Republican Minority Leader.- Early life, education, and military service :...
of Kentucky, and Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay
Tom DeLay
Thomas Dale "Tom" DeLay is a former member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Texas's 22nd congressional district from 1984 until 2006. He was Republican Party House Majority Leader from 2003 to 2005, when he resigned because of criminal money laundering charges in...
of Texas.
2006 elections and return to Democratic control
In the early 21st century, Republicans were able to maintain their hold on the federal government, as President George W. BushGeorge W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
was able to forge a powerful coalition of Southern states that had been out of reach of the Republican party in the last two Presidential contests. In particular, Bush's increased popularity following the September 11 attacks in 2001 enabled him to aid in the defeat of most Southern Democratic Senators in 2002 and 2004. On November 7, 2006, however, the Democratic Party once again regained control of the House and Senate, as well as control of the Southern Governors Association
Southern Governors Association
' was founded in 1934, and is the oldest and historically the largest of the United States' regional governors' associations. Since its first meeting 75 years ago to discuss the repeal of discriminatory rates for transporting goods by rail, SGA has represented the common interests of Southern...
. The election was the first since the Gulf Coast was struck by Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...
. The Republican Administration was seen to have failed in rescue and recovery efforts there. Voters named "government corruption" and the state of the then-current war in Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
as influences on their decisions. The election was the first since 1948 in which Republicans did not win a single Democratic seat. (See United States House of Representatives elections, 2006.)
Prior to the election, two government scandals involving Congressional Republicans fueled a public backlash. The first was the Abramoff scandal, in which lobbyist Jack Abramoff and others presented bribes to legislators on behalf of Indian casino gambling interests. In the South, the scandal had the effect of ending Ralph Reed
Ralph E. Reed, Jr.
Ralph Eugene Reed, Jr., is a conservative American political activist, best known as the first executive director of the Christian Coalition during the early 1990s. He sought the Republican nomination for the office of Lieutenant Governor of Georgia but lost the primary election on July 18, 2006,...
's political career, when he lost the primary election for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia. The scandal also ended the career of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay
Tom DeLay
Thomas Dale "Tom" DeLay is a former member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Texas's 22nd congressional district from 1984 until 2006. He was Republican Party House Majority Leader from 2003 to 2005, when he resigned because of criminal money laundering charges in...
of Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
.
In 2005, a Texas grand jury indicted DeLay on criminal charges that he had conspired to violate campaign finance laws. DeLay denied the charges, saying that they were politically motivated, but Republican Conference rules forced him to resign temporarily from his position as Majority Leader. In January 2006, under pressure from fellow Republicans, DeLay announced that he would not seek to return to the position. In the months before and after this decision, two of his former aides were convicted in the Jack Abramoff scandal. DeLay ran for re-election in 2006, and won the Republican primary election in March 2006, but, citing the possibility of losing the general election, he announced in April 2006 that he would withdraw from the race and resign his seat in Congress. He resigned on June 9, 2006, and sought to remove his name from the ballot. The court battle that followed forced him to remain on the ballot, despite having withdrawn from the race. Democrat Nick Lampson
Nick Lampson
Nicholas Valentino 'Nick' Lampson is an American politician from the state of Texas and was a Congressman representing the 22nd Congressional District of Texas. He was defeated by Pete Olson on November 4, 2008 in his re-election bid....
ultimately won DeLay's House seat in TX-22.
A second scandal, commonly known as the Mark Foley scandal
Mark Foley scandal
The Mark Foley scandal, which broke in late September 2006, centers on soliciting e-mails and sexually suggestive instant messages sent by Mark Foley, a Republican Congressman from Florida, to teenaged boys who had formerly served as congressional pages...
, involved Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
Congressman Mark Foley
Mark Foley
Mark Adam Foley is a former member of the United States House of Representatives. He served from 1995 until 2006, representing the 16th District of Florida as a member of the Republican Party....
's sending sexually explicit messages to underage Congressional pages
United States House of Representatives Page
United States House of Representatives Page Program was a program run by the United States House of Representatives, under the office of the Clerk of the House, in which appointed high school juniors acted as non-partisan federal employees in the House of Representatives, providing supplemental...
. Foley resigned, but his name remained on the ballot, and Democrat Tim Mahoney
Tim Mahoney
Timothy Edward "Tim" Mahoney was a U.S. Representative for and a member of the Democratic Party. He was elected in November 2006 after his opponent, six-term Republican incumbent Mark Foley, resigned on September 29, 2006, after questions were raised about an email exchange with a congressional...
won the general election. The scandal led to Foley's resignation from Congress on September 29, 2006. It is believed to have contributed to the Republican Party's loss of control over Congress in the November 7, 2006 election, as well as the end of House Speaker Dennis Hastert
Dennis Hastert
John Dennis "Denny" Hastert was the 59th Speaker of the House serving from 1999 to 2007. He represented as a Republican for twenty years, 1987 to 2007.He is the longest-serving Republican Speaker in history...
's leadership of the House Republicans. Kirk Fordham
Kirk Fordham
Kirk Fordham serves as the CEO of the Miami-based Everglades Foundation. A wide range of prominent businessmen and women serve on the Board of Directors of the Foundation, including hedge fund manager Paul Tudor Jones, recording artist Jimmy Buffett, golfer Jack Nicklaus and retailer-newspaper...
, chief of staff to Rep. Tom Reynolds
Thomas M. Reynolds
Thomas M. Reynolds , commonly known as Tom Reynolds, is a politician from the U.S. state of New York, formerly representing the state's 26th Congressional district in the United States House of Representatives...
and former chief of staff for Foley, also resigned as a result of the scandal. (See Mark Foley scandal
Mark Foley scandal
The Mark Foley scandal, which broke in late September 2006, centers on soliciting e-mails and sexually suggestive instant messages sent by Mark Foley, a Republican Congressman from Florida, to teenaged boys who had formerly served as congressional pages...
.
Senate
In the Senate, Democrats defeated six Republican incumbents to gain control of the Senate. The close contest that determined the final outcome of Senate control was Democrat and former Marine Jim WebbJim Webb
James Henry "Jim" Webb, Jr. is the senior United States Senator from Virginia. He is also an author and a former Secretary of the Navy. He is a member of the Democratic Party....
's unlikely victory against incumbent Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
Senator (and former Governor) George Allen
George Allen (U.S. politician)
George Felix Allen is a former United States Senator from the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the son of former NFL head coach George Allen. Allen served Virginia in the state legislature, as the 67th Governor, and in both bodies of the U.S. Congress, winning election to the Senate in 2000...
. Allen's poll numbers had plummeted after a video was released of Allen taunting an Indian-American student at a rally with what were interpreted as racially charged remarks. (See Macaca (slur)
Macaca (slur)
Macaca is a word used by George Allen in 2006 that began a controversy because it sounds similar to the French word "macaque". It was reported by journalists to be a racial slur against African immigrants in some European cultures; and by Zairian painter Tshibumba Kanda Matulu to be a pejorative...
.) In Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
, Democrat Claire McCaskill
Claire McCaskill
Claire Conner McCaskill is the senior United States Senator from Missouri and a member of the Democratic Party. She defeated Republican incumbent Jim Talent in the 2006 U.S. Senate election, by a margin of 49.6% to 47.3%. She is the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Missouri in her own...
defeated incumbent Senator Jim Talent
Jim Talent
James Matthes "Jim" Talent is an American politician and former senator from Missouri. He is a Republican and resided in the St. Louis area while serving in elected office. He identifies with the conservative wing of the Republican party, being particularly outspoken on judicial appointments,...
.
House of Representatives
- In GeorgiaGeorgia (U.S. state)Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
, Republicans concentrated on two districts as their best hopes of gaining Democratic seats, those of Jim Marshall and John BarrowJohn Barrow (U.S. politician)John Jenkins Barrow is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2005. He is a member of the Democratic Party.The district stretches along the eastern portion of the state, from Augusta to Savannah.-Early life, education and career:...
. They were not successful although the seats were closely contested.
- In TexasTexasTexas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, both the twenty-second and twenty-third districts switched to Democratic control.
- In FloridaFloridaFlorida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, both the sixteenth and twenty-second districts were lost to Democrats.
- In North Carolina's eleventhNorth Carolina's 11th congressional districtThe 11th Congressional District encompasses most of Western North Carolina, anchored by Asheville. Starting in the 110th Congress, it is represented by Heath Shuler, a Democrat. Shuler defeated 8-term Republican representative Charles H. Taylor in the 2006 midterm elections.The 11th District is...
House district, Heath ShulerHeath ShulerJoseph Heath Shuler is a businessman, a former NFL quarterback, and the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2007. He is a member of the Democratic Party....
defeated incumbent Charles H. TaylorCharles H. TaylorCharles Hart Taylor is an American politician; a Republican, he represented North Carolina's 11th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. He began serving in 1991 and continued through January 3, 2007....
.
Changing Congressional leadership
While Republicans lost key Congressional leadership positions following the 2006 elections, new Democratic leaders emerged from below the Mason-Dixon LineMason-Dixon line
The Mason–Dixon Line was surveyed between 1763 and 1767 by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in the resolution of a border dispute between British colonies in Colonial America. It forms a demarcation line among four U.S. states, forming part of the borders of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and...
.
United States House of Representatives
- Jim ClyburnJim ClyburnJames Enos "Jim" Clyburn is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1993, and the Assistant Democratic Leader since 2011. He was previously House Majority Whip, serving in that post from 2007 to 2011. He is a member of the Democratic Party...
of South CarolinaSouth CarolinaSouth Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
became the third-ranking House Majority Whip, the first South CarolinaSouth CarolinaSouth Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
native to hold the position, while South Carolinian John Spratt became chairman of the House Budget Committee.
- Bennie ThompsonBennie ThompsonBennie G. Thompson, is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1993, and the ranking member of the Committee on Homeland Security since 2011. He is a member of the Democratic Party....
of MississippiMississippiMississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
became chairman of the United States House Committee on Homeland SecurityUnited States House Committee on Homeland SecurityThe U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security is a standing committee of the United States House of Representatives, the lower house of Congress. Its responsibilities include U.S...
.
- Nick RahallNick RahallNick Joe Rahall II is the U.S. Representative for West Virginia's 3rd congressional district, serving since 1977. Rahall is currently Ranking Member of the House Resources Committee. He is a member of the Democratic Party. The district includes much of the southern portion of the state, including...
of West VirginiaWest VirginiaWest Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...
chaired the United States House Committee on Natural Resources.
- Bart GordonBart GordonBarton Jennings "Bart" Gordon, is a lawyer and former U.S. Representative for , serving from 1985 until 2011. The district includes several rural areas and fast-growing suburbs east of Nashville. He was Chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology from 2007 until 2011. He is a member...
of TennesseeTennesseeTennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
led the United States House Committee on Science and Technology.
- The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence was chaired by Silvestre ReyesSilvestre ReyesSilvestre "Silver" Reyes is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1997, and the Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the primary Committee in the U.S...
of TexasTexasTexas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
.
United States Senate
- Following his re-election in 2006, Robert ByrdRobert ByrdRobert Carlyle Byrd was a United States Senator from West Virginia. A member of the Democratic Party, Byrd served as a U.S. Representative from 1953 until 1959 and as a U.S. Senator from 1959 to 2010...
of West Virginia became chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee and President pro tempore of the United States SenatePresident pro tempore of the United States SenateThe President pro tempore is the second-highest-ranking official of the United States Senate. The United States Constitution states that the Vice President of the United States is the President of the Senate and the highest-ranking official of the Senate despite not being a member of the body...
, placing him third in line in Presidential succession.
- Jay RockefellerJay RockefellerJohn Davison "Jay" Rockefeller IV is the senior United States Senator from West Virginia. He was first elected to the Senate in 1984, while in office as Governor of West Virginia, a position he held from 1977 to 1985...
, also of West Virginia, chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Democratic control of Governorships
In the 2006 gubernatorial electionsUnited States gubernatorial elections, 2006
The U.S. 2006 gubernatorial elections were held on November 7, 2006 in 36 states, with 22 of the seats held by Republicans and 14 by Democrats....
, Mike Beebe of Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
regained the governorship previously held by Republican Mike Huckabee
Mike Huckabee
Michael "Mike" Dale Huckabee is an American politician who served as the 44th Governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007. He was a candidate in the 2008 United States Republican presidential primaries, finishing second in delegate count and third in both popular vote and number of states won . He won...
. In Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
, Martin O'Malley
Martin O'Malley
Martin Joseph O'Malley is an American Democratic politician who is currently serving as the 61st Governor of Maryland. Previously, he served as the mayor of Baltimore from 1999 to 2007. He is currently the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association.-Early life, education and career:O'Malley...
defeated incumbent Republican governor Robert Erlich. In 2007, Kentucky Democrat Steve Beshear
Steve Beshear
Steven Lynn "Steve" Beshear is an American politician who is the 61st Governor of the Commonwealth of Kentucky. A Democrat, Beshear previously served in the Kentucky House of Representatives from 1974 to 1979, was the state's Attorney General from 1980 to 1983, and was Lieutenant Governor from...
defeated incumbent Republican governor Ernie Fletcher
Ernie Fletcher
Ernest Lee "Ernie" Fletcher is a Republican politician from the U.S. state of Kentucky. In 1999, he was elected to the first of three consecutive terms in the United States House of Representatives; he resigned in 2003 after being elected the 60th governor of Kentucky and served in that office...
. These victories gave the Democratic Party a decisive 10-8 majority in the Southern Governors Association
Southern Governors Association
' was founded in 1934, and is the oldest and historically the largest of the United States' regional governors' associations. Since its first meeting 75 years ago to discuss the repeal of discriminatory rates for transporting goods by rail, SGA has represented the common interests of Southern...
. Joe Manchin
Joe Manchin
Joseph "Joe" Manchin III is the junior United States Senator representing West Virginia. Manchin, a Democrat, was Governor of West Virginia from 2005 to 2010...
of West Virginia subsequently became chairman of the association, while Tim Kaine
Tim Kaine
Timothy Michael "Tim" Kaine is a Virginia politician. Kaine served as the 70th Governor of Virginia from 2006 to 2010, and was the chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2009 to 2011...
of Virginia became Vice-Chairman.
Virginia, 2009
Only a year after Barack ObamaBarack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...
won a comfortable victory in the 2008 presidential election
United States presidential election, 2008
The United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 2008. Democrat Barack Obama, then the junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona. Obama received 365...
, the first signs of a GOP resurgence in two gubernatorial elections
United States gubernatorial elections, 2009
The United States gubernatorial elections of 2009 were held on November 3, 2009 in the states of New Jersey and Virginia as well as in the U.S. commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands on November 7, 2009...
were seen, one of them in the South. In Virginia, a state that Obama carried by 6%
United States presidential election in Virginia, 2008
The 2008 United States presidential election in Virginia took place on November 4, 2008 throughout all 50 states and D.C., which was part of the 2008 United States presidential election. Voters chose 13 representatives, or electors to the Electoral College, who voted for President and Vice...
, Republican Bob McDonnell
Bob McDonnell
Robert Francis "Bob" McDonnell is an American politician who has been the 71st Governor of Virginia since January 2010. A former lieutenant colonel in the United States Army, McDonnell served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 1993 to 2006 and served as Attorney General of Virginia from 2006...
won the seat vacated by the term-limited Kaine by a 17% margin
Virginia gubernatorial election, 2009
The Virginia gubernatorial election of 2009 took place on November 3, 2009. The election chose Bob McDonnell as the next Governor, Bill Bolling re-elected as Lieutenant Governor, and Ken Cuccinelli as the next Attorney General of the Commonwealth of Virginia. The winners were inaugurated on January...
. This proved to be a prelude to more significant pickups in 2010
United States elections, 2010
The 2010 United States elections were held on Tuesday, November 2, 2010. During this midterm election year, all 435 seats in the United States House of Representatives and 37 of the 100 seats in the United States Senate were contested in this election along with 38 state and territorial...
.
2010
The 2010 elections were held in the backdrop of economic uncertainty, a controversial health-care reform lawPatient Protection and Affordable Care Act
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a United States federal statute signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. The law is the principal health care reform legislation of the 111th United States Congress...
passed shortly before the elections, and a reenergized conservative movement, with its most visible manifestation being the Tea Party movement
Tea Party movement
The Tea Party movement is an American populist political movement that is generally recognized as conservative and libertarian, and has sponsored protests and supported political candidates since 2009...
.
Gubernatorial elections
Eight Southern states held gubernatorial elections
United States gubernatorial elections, 2010
The United States gubernatorial elections were held on Tuesday, November 2, 2010 in 37 states . As in most midterm elections, the party controlling the White House lost ground...
. The GOP picked up two seats held by term-limited Democrats; Mary Fallin
Mary Fallin
Mary Fallin is the 27th and current Governor of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. She was a U.S. Representative for from 2007 until 2011....
won the seat
Oklahoma gubernatorial election, 2010
The Oklahoma gubernatorial election of 2010 was held on November 2, 2010 to elect the Governor of Oklahoma. Due to term limits placed on him by the Oklahoma Constitution, incumbent Democratic Governor Brad Henry could not seek re-election...
vacated by Brad Henry
Brad Henry
Charles Bradford "Brad" Henry was the 26th Governor of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. A member of the Democratic Party, he was elected governor in 2002...
in Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
and Bill Haslam
Bill Haslam
William Edward "Bill" Haslam is the 49th and current Governor of Tennessee. A member of the Republican Party, Haslam was elected to office in 2010...
won the seat
Tennessee gubernatorial election, 2010
The 2010 Tennessee gubernatorial election took place on November 2, 2010. Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen was term-limited and unable to seek re-election...
vacated by Phil Bredesen
Phil Bredesen
Philip Norman "Phil" Bredesen Jr. was the 48th Governor of Tennessee, serving from 2003 to 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, he was first elected Governor in 2002, and was re-elected in 2006. He previously served as the fourth mayor of Nashville and Davidson County from 1991 to...
in Tennessee
Tennessee
Tennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
. The GOP also held all of its other Southern governorships. Rick Perry
Rick Perry
James Richard "Rick" Perry is the 47th and current Governor of Texas. A Republican, Perry was elected Lieutenant Governor of Texas in 1998 and assumed the governorship in December 2000 when then-governor George W. Bush resigned to become President of the United States. Perry was elected to full...
won a third term in Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, while Robert Bentley, Nathan Deal
Nathan Deal
John Nathan Deal is a United States politician, the 82nd and current Governor of Georgia. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives as a Democrat in 1992 but switched to the Republican Party in 1995...
, and Nikki Haley
Nikki Haley
Nimrata Nikki Randhawa Haley is the 116th and current Governor of South Carolina. A member of the Republican Party, Haley represented Lexington County in the South Carolina House of Representatives from 2005 to 2010....
won seats held by term-limited Republicans in Alabama
Alabama
Alabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
, Georgia
Georgia (U.S. state)
Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
, and South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
. In Florida
Florida
Florida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
, Rick Scott won the seat vacated by Charlie Crist
Charlie Crist
Charles Joseph "Charlie" Crist, Jr. is an American politician who was the 44th Governor of Florida. Prior to his election as governor, Crist previously served as Florida State Senator, Education Commissioner, and Attorney General...
, who was elected as a Republican but switched to an independent during his unsuccessful U.S. Senate run
United States Senate election in Florida, 2010
-Polling:-Results:-Background:Upon Senator Martinez's announcement that he would not run for reelection, early speculation surrounded former Governor Jeb Bush. It was thought that if Bush decided to run, other potential Republican candidates would allow Bush to run uncontested...
. These results gave the GOP a 11–7 majority in the Southern Governors Association when all the new governors were sworn in.
U.S. Senate
The GOP made substantial gains in the U.S. Senate. While the Democrats maintained control over the chamber, their majority was reduced from 59–41 to 53–47 (both totals include two independents who caucus with the Democrats). One of the GOP pickups came in Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
, where John Boozman
John Boozman
John Nichols Boozman is the junior U.S. Senator for Arkansas . A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as the U.S. Representative for .Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, he was the brother of state Senator Fay Boozman...
easily defeated
United States Senate election in Arkansas, 2010
The 2010 United States Senate election in Arkansas took place on November 2, 2010 alongside other elections to the United States Senate in other states, as well as elections to the United States House of Representatives and various state and local elections. Incumbent Democratic U.S...
incumbent Blanche Lincoln
Blanche Lincoln
Blanche Meyers Lambert Lincoln is a former U.S. Senator from Arkansas and a member of the Democratic Party. First elected to the Senate in 1998, she was the first woman elected to the Senate from Arkansas since Hattie Caraway in 1932 and, at age 38, was the youngest woman ever elected to the...
. The Republicans also successfully defended all of their own seats, including eight in the South.
U.S. House
The greatest Republican gains came in the U.S. House
United States House of Representatives elections, 2010
The 2010 United States House of Representatives elections, also known as the 2010 midterm elections, were held on November 2, 2010, at the midpoint of President Barack Obama's first term in office. Voters of the 50 U.S. states chose 435 U.S. Representatives. Voters of the U.S...
, where the GOP more than erased its losses from 2006 and 2008 by gaining 63 seats, retaking control of the chamber in the process. These gains were the largest by either party in any House election since 1948 and in a midterm election since 1938.
When the 112th Congress
112th United States Congress
The One Hundred Twelfth United States Congress is the current meeting of the legislative branch of the United States federal government, composed of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. It convened in Washington, D.C. on January 3, 2011, and will end on January...
convened in January 2011, many leadership positions in the new GOP majority are held by Southerners:
- Eric CantorEric CantorEric Ivan Cantor is the U.S. Representative for Virginia's 7th congressional district, serving since 2001. A member of the Republican Party, he became House Majority Leader when the 112th Congress convened on January 3, 2011...
of VirginiaVirginiaThe Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
is House Majority Leader.
- Jeb HensarlingJeb HensarlingJeb Hensarling has been the Republican congressman representing Texas' 5th congressional district in the United States House of Representatives since 2003.-Early life:...
of TexasTexasTexas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
is Conference ChairmanRepublican Conference Chairman of the United States House of RepresentativesThis is a list of Republican Conference Chairmen of the United States House of Representatives.-References:...
.
- Frank Lucas of OklahomaOklahomaOklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
is the chair of the Agriculture CommitteeUnited States House Committee on AgricultureThe U.S. House Committee on Agriculture, or Agriculture Committee is a standing committee of the United States House of Representatives. The House Committee on Agriculture has general jurisdiction over federal agriculture policy and oversight of some federal agencies, and it can recommend funding...
.
- Joe BartonJoe BartonJoseph Linus "Joe" Barton is a Republican politician, representing in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1985, and a member of the Tea Party Caucus...
of Texas is the chair of the Energy and Commerce CommitteeUnited States House Committee on Energy and CommerceThe Committee on Energy and Commerce is one of the oldest standing committees of the United States House of Representatives. Established in 1795, it has operated continuously—with various name changes and jurisdictional changes—for more than 200 years...
.
- Jo BonnerJo BonnerJosiah Robins Bonner, Jr. is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2003. He is a member of the Republican Party.-Early life, education, and early political career:...
of AlabamaAlabamaAlabama is a state located in the southeastern region of the United States. It is bordered by Tennessee to the north, Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the south, and Mississippi to the west. Alabama ranks 30th in total land area and ranks second in the size of its inland...
is the chair of the Ethics CommitteeUnited States House Committee on Standards of Official ConductThe Committee on Ethics, often known simply as the Ethics Committee, is one of the committees of the United States House of Representatives. Prior to the 112th Congress it was known as the Committee on Standards of Official Conduct....
.
- Spencer BachusSpencer BachusSpencer Thomas Bachus III is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1993. He is a member of the Republican Party and the senior member of the Alabama U. S. House delegation...
of Alabama is the chair of the Financial Services CommitteeUnited States House Committee on Financial ServicesThe United States House Committee on Financial Services is the committee of the United States House of Representatives that oversees the entire financial services industry, including the securities, insurance, banking, and housing industries...
.
- Ileana Ros-LehtinenIleana Ros-LehtinenIleana Ros-Lehtinen is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1989. She is a member of the Republican Party....
of FloridaFloridaFlorida is a state in the southeastern United States, located on the nation's Atlantic and Gulf coasts. It is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the north by Alabama and Georgia and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. With a population of 18,801,310 as measured by the 2010 census, it...
is the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee.
- Lamar SmithLamar S. SmithLamar Seeligson Smith is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1987. The district includes most of the wealthier sections of San Antonio and Austin, as well as nearly all of the Texas Hill Country...
of Texas is the chair of the Judiciary CommitteeUnited States House Committee on the JudiciaryThe U.S. House Committee on the Judiciary, also called the House Judiciary Committee, is a standing committee of the United States House of Representatives. It is charged with overseeing the administration of justice within the federal courts, administrative agencies and Federal law enforcement...
.
- Ralph HallRalph HallRalph Moody Hall is a United States Representative from . First elected in 1980, Hall is the chairman of the Science Committee and a senior member of the Energy and Commerce Committee...
of Texas is the chair of the Science and Technology Committee.
- John MicaJohn MicaJohn L. Mica is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 1993. He is a member of the Republican Party. He is the chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, starting January 3, 2011....
of Florida is the chair of the Transportation CommitteeUnited States House Committee on Transportation and InfrastructureThe U.S. House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure is a standing committee of the United States House of Representatives. John Mica currently chairs the committee.-History:...
.
Southern Presidents
The South has long been a center of political power in the United States, especially in regard to Presidential elections. During the history of the United StatesHistory of the United States
The history of the United States traditionally starts with the Declaration of Independence in the year 1776, although its territory was inhabited by Native Americans since prehistoric times and then by European colonists who followed the voyages of Christopher Columbus starting in 1492. The...
, the South has supplied many of the 43 presidents. Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
specifically was the birthplace of seven of the nation's first twelve presidents (including four of the first five).
Presidents born in the South and identified with the region include:
- George WashingtonGeorge WashingtonGeorge Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...
of Virginia (term 1789 - 1797). - Thomas JeffersonThomas JeffersonThomas Jefferson was the principal author of the United States Declaration of Independence and the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom , the third President of the United States and founder of the University of Virginia...
of Virginia (term 1801 - 1809). - James MadisonJames MadisonJames Madison, Jr. was an American statesman and political theorist. He was the fourth President of the United States and is hailed as the “Father of the Constitution” for being the primary author of the United States Constitution and at first an opponent of, and then a key author of the United...
of Virginia (term 1809 - 1817). - James MonroeJames MonroeJames Monroe was the fifth President of the United States . Monroe was the last president who was a Founding Father of the United States, and the last president from the Virginia dynasty and the Republican Generation...
of Virginia (term 1817 - 1825). - Andrew JacksonAndrew JacksonAndrew Jackson was the seventh President of the United States . Based in frontier Tennessee, Jackson was a politician and army general who defeated the Creek Indians at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend , and the British at the Battle of New Orleans...
, born in either North CarolinaNorth CarolinaNorth Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
or South CarolinaSouth CarolinaSouth Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
, identified with TennesseeTennesseeTennessee is a U.S. state located in the Southeastern United States. It has a population of 6,346,105, making it the nation's 17th-largest state by population, and covers , making it the 36th-largest by total land area...
(term (1829–1837).- Jackson's birthplace is generally accepted to be in the WaxhawsWaxhawsThe Waxhaws is a geographical area on the border of North and South Carolina.-Geography:The Waxhaws region is in the Piedmont region of North and South Carolina, southwest of the Uwharrie Mountains. The region encompasses an area just south of Charlotte, North Carolina, to Lancaster, South...
region on the border between the Carolinas, but is not known with any certainty. He spent his adult and political life in Tennessee.
- Jackson's birthplace is generally accepted to be in the Waxhaws
- William Henry HarrisonWilliam Henry HarrisonWilliam Henry Harrison was the ninth President of the United States , an American military officer and politician, and the first president to die in office. He was 68 years, 23 days old when elected, the oldest president elected until Ronald Reagan in 1980, and last President to be born before the...
of Virginia (term 1841). - John TylerJohn TylerJohn Tyler was the tenth President of the United States . A native of Virginia, Tyler served as a state legislator, governor, U.S. representative, and U.S. senator before being elected Vice President . He was the first to succeed to the office of President following the death of a predecessor...
of Virginia (term 1841 - 1845). - James Knox Polk, born in North Carolina, identified with Tennessee (term (1845–1849).
- Polk was born in North Carolina, but spent his adult and political life in Tennessee.
- Zachary TaylorZachary TaylorZachary Taylor was the 12th President of the United States and an American military leader. Initially uninterested in politics, Taylor nonetheless ran as a Whig in the 1848 presidential election, defeating Lewis Cass...
of Virginia (term 1849 - 1850). - Andrew JohnsonAndrew JohnsonAndrew Johnson was the 17th President of the United States . As Vice-President of the United States in 1865, he succeeded Abraham Lincoln following the latter's assassination. Johnson then presided over the initial and contentious Reconstruction era of the United States following the American...
, born in North Carolina, identified with Tennessee (term 1865 - 1869).- Johnson was born in North Carolina, but spent his adult and political life in Tennessee.
- Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas (term 1963 - 1969).
- Jimmy CarterJimmy CarterJames Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. is an American politician who served as the 39th President of the United States and was the recipient of the 2002 Nobel Peace Prize, the only U.S. President to have received the Prize after leaving office...
of GeorgiaGeorgia (U.S. state)Georgia is a state located in the southeastern United States. It was established in 1732, the last of the original Thirteen Colonies. The state is named after King George II of Great Britain. Georgia was the fourth state to ratify the United States Constitution, on January 2, 1788...
(term 1977 - 1981). - Bill ClintonBill ClintonWilliam Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
of ArkansasArkansasArkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
(term 1993 - 2001).
One President was born in the South, and is identified both with the South and elsewhere:
- Woodrow WilsonWoodrow WilsonThomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
, born in Virginia, also identified with New JerseyNew JerseyNew Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
(term 1913 - 1921).- Wilson was from Virginia. After studying and living in a number of states, mostly outside the South, he moved to New Jersey to become president of his undergraduate alma mater, Princeton UniversityPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private research university located in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. The school is one of the eight universities of the Ivy League, and is one of the nine Colonial Colleges founded before the American Revolution....
, in 1902. He then established his political career in that state, but retained strong ties with the South.
- Wilson was from Virginia. After studying and living in a number of states, mostly outside the South, he moved to New Jersey to become president of his undergraduate alma mater, Princeton University
One President was born outside the South, but is generally identified with the region:
- George W. BushGeorge W. BushGeorge Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
, born in ConnecticutConnecticutConnecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
, identified with Texas (term 2001 - 2009).- The younger Bush was raised from early childhood in Texas, first in MidlandMidland, TexasMidland is a city in and the county seat of Midland County, Texas, United States, on the Southern Plains of the state's western area. A small portion of the city extends into Martin County. As of 2010, the population of Midland was 111,147. It is the principal city of the Midland, Texas...
and then in Houston. He went on to spend his adult and political life in that state.
- The younger Bush was raised from early childhood in Texas, first in Midland
Presidents born in Southern states, but not primarily identified with that region, include:
- Abraham LincolnAbraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
, born in KentuckyKentuckyThe Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...
, identified with IllinoisIllinoisIllinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
(term 1861 - 1865).- Lincoln moved with his parents to IndianaIndianaIndiana is a US state, admitted to the United States as the 19th on December 11, 1816. It is located in the Midwestern United States and Great Lakes Region. With 6,483,802 residents, the state is ranked 15th in population and 16th in population density. Indiana is ranked 38th in land area and is...
when he was seven years old, and spent the remainder of his childhood there. Shortly before he went out to live on his own, the family moved to Illinois. He chose to remain in Illinois, living and working there until his election to the Presidency.
- Lincoln moved with his parents to Indiana
- Dwight D. EisenhowerDwight D. EisenhowerDwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
, born in TexasTexasTexas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, identified with KansasKansasKansas is a US state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south...
(term 1953 - 1961).- Eisenhower moved with his parents to Kansas when he was two years old, and lived there until he enrolled at West PointUnited States Military AcademyThe United States Military Academy at West Point is a four-year coeducational federal service academy located at West Point, New York. The academy sits on scenic high ground overlooking the Hudson River, north of New York City...
. After his graduation, he was an active-duty U.S. ArmyUnited States ArmyThe United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...
officer until the end of World War II. Eisenhower then moved to New YorkNew YorkNew York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
to become president of Columbia University, and was elected from that state.
- Eisenhower moved with his parents to Kansas when he was two years old, and lived there until he enrolled at West Point
Another President was born outside the region, and was not a resident of a Southern state when elected, but is often identified with the South:
- George H. W. BushGeorge H. W. BushGeorge Herbert Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 41st President of the United States . He had previously served as the 43rd Vice President of the United States , a congressman, an ambassador, and Director of Central Intelligence.Bush was born in Milton, Massachusetts, to...
(term 1989 - 1993).- The elder Bush was born in MassachusettsMassachusettsThe Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
, but spent most of his adult and political life as either a physical or legal resident of Texas. He has also maintained a summer home at his family's compoundBush compoundThe Bush compound , is the summer home of 41st President of the United States George H. W. Bush. Located adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean in southern Maine, in the town of Kennebunkport, the property has been a family retreat for more than a century.The estate was purchased in the late 19th century...
in MaineMaineMaine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
.
- The elder Bush was born in Massachusetts
This list encompasses members of the Whig Party
Whig Party (United States)
The Whig Party was a political party of the United States during the era of Jacksonian democracy. Considered integral to the Second Party System and operating from the early 1830s to the mid-1850s, the party was formed in opposition to the policies of President Andrew Jackson and his Democratic...
, Republican Party
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
and the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
; in addition, Washington, while officially non-partisan, was generally associated with the Federalist Party.
They have also supplied Presidential losers:
- Charles PinckneyCharles Cotesworth PinckneyCharles Cotesworth “C. C.” Pinckney , was an early American statesman of South Carolina, Revolutionary War veteran, and delegate to the Constitutional Convention. He was twice nominated by the Federalist Party as their presidential candidate, but he did not win either election.-Early life and...
of South CarolinaSouth CarolinaSouth Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
– 1804 election, 1808 election - Henry ClayHenry ClayHenry Clay, Sr. , was a lawyer, politician and skilled orator who represented Kentucky separately in both the Senate and in the House of Representatives...
of KentuckyKentuckyThe Commonwealth of Kentucky is a state located in the East Central United States of America. As classified by the United States Census Bureau, Kentucky is a Southern state, more specifically in the East South Central region. Kentucky is one of four U.S. states constituted as a commonwealth...
(born in Virginia) – 1824 election, 1832 election, 1844 election - William CrawfordWilliam H. CrawfordWilliam Harris Crawford was an American politician and judge during the early 19th century. He served as United States Secretary of War from 1815 to 1816 and United States Secretary of the Treasury from 1816 to 1825, and was a candidate for President of the United States in 1824.-Political...
of Georgia (born in Virginia) – 1824 election - Hugh WhiteHugh Lawson WhiteHugh Lawson White was a prominent American politician during the first third of the 19th century. He succeeded Andrew Jackson and served in the United States Senate, representing Tennessee, from 1825 until his resignation in 1840, and was a Whig candidate for President in 1836...
of Tennessee (born in North Carolina) – 1836 election - John BreckinridgeJohn C. BreckinridgeJohn Cabell Breckinridge was an American lawyer and politician. He served as a U.S. Representative and U.S. Senator from Kentucky and was the 14th Vice President of the United States , to date the youngest vice president in U.S...
of Kentucky – 1860 election - John BellJohn Bell (Tennessee politician)John Bell was a U.S. politician, attorney, and plantation owner. A wealthy slaveholder from Tennessee, Bell served in the United States Congress in both the House of Representatives and Senate. He began his career as a Democrat, he eventually fell out with Andrew Jackson and became a Whig...
of Tennessee – 1860 election) - John W. DavisJohn W. DavisJohn William Davis was an American politician, diplomat and lawyer. He served as a United States Representative from West Virginia , then as Solicitor General of the United States and US Ambassador to the UK under President Woodrow Wilson...
of West VirginiaWest VirginiaWest Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...
– 1924 election - J. Strom Thurmond of South CarolinaSouth CarolinaSouth Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
- 1948 election - Al GoreAl GoreAlbert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr. served as the 45th Vice President of the United States , under President Bill Clinton. He was the Democratic Party's nominee for President in the 2000 U.S. presidential election....
of Tennessee (born in Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C.Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
) – 2000 election
See also
- Politics of the United StatesPolitics of the United StatesThe United States is a federal constitutional republic, in which the President of the United States , Congress, and judiciary share powers reserved to the national government, and the federal government shares sovereignty with the state governments.The executive branch is headed by the President...
- Blue Dog Democrats
- Boll weevil (politics)Boll weevil (politics)Boll weevils was an American political term used in the mid- and late-20th century to describe conservative Southern Democrats.During and after the administration of Franklin D...
- Conservative DemocratConservative DemocratIn American politics, a conservative Democrat is a Democratic Party member with conservative political views, or with views relatively conservative with respect to those of the national party...
- Southern Democrat
- Deep SouthDeep SouthThe Deep South is a descriptive category of the cultural and geographic subregions in the American South. Historically, it is differentiated from the "Upper South" as being the states which were most dependent on plantation type agriculture during the pre-Civil War period...
- Upland SouthUpland SouthThe terms Upper South and Upland South refer to the northern part of the Southern United States, in contrast to the Lower South or Deep South.-Geography:There is a slight difference in usage between the two terms...
- History of the Southern United StatesHistory of the Southern United StatesThe history of the Southern United States reaches back hundreds of years and includes the Mississippian people, well known for their mound building. European history in the region began in the very earliest days of the exploration and colonization of North America...
- History of the United States Republican PartyHistory of the United States Republican PartyThe United States Republican Party is the second oldest currently existing political party in the United States after its great rival, the Democratic Party. It emerged in 1854 to combat the Kansas Nebraska Act which threatened to extend slavery into the territories, and to promote more vigorous...
- History of the United States Democratic PartyHistory of the United States Democratic PartyThe history of the Democratic Party of the United States is an account of the oldest political party in the United States and arguably the oldest democratic party in the world....
- Southern AgrariansSouthern AgrariansThe Southern Agrarians were a group of twelve American writers, poets, essayists, and novelists, all with roots in the Southern United States, who joined together to write a pro-Southern agrarian manifesto, a...
- Southernization
- Southern strategySouthern strategyIn American politics, the Southern strategy refers to the Republican Party strategy of winning elections in Southern states by exploiting anti-African American racism and fears of lawlessness among Southern white voters and appealing to fears of growing federal power in social and economic matters...