Rising Stars From the Sunbelt

By Richard Stengel

| WANTED: Moderate Democrats (blow-dried hair not essential) to help move the party of F.D.R. toward the center in time for the '88 elections. Applicants do not necessarily have to come from the Sunbelt, but should appeal to Sunbelt voters. Blacks, Hispanics and women welcome, although ties to unions and other special-interest groups may be held against you. Old-line old-boy liberals need not apply.

A year after its founding, the new-look Democratic Leadership Council has found plenty of support for its call for a more conservative Democratic Party --without resorting to want ads. Organized by young, centrist Governors and Congressmen, many from the South and West, after Walter Mondale's rout in the 1984 presidential election, the D.L.C. set out to do three things: shift the party away from standard-brand liberalism, stem defections to the G.O.P., and create a climate for a moderate or conservative Democrat to succeed Ronald Reagan as President. What a difference a year makes. Notes Virginia ex- Governor Charles Robb, who will shortly become the next D.L.C. chairman: "What we've done is evoke new interest in the party. We're providing a showcase for a message and for messengers."

Once sneeringly described as "the white-male caucus," the D.L.C. has recruited a number of high-profile black and women members, such as House Budget Committee Chairman William Gray of Philadelphia and San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein. Moreover, it has expanded its ranks from about 20 to 110, of whom 79 are members of Congress. While the D.L.C. is not nudging any closer to the party's Old Guard, the Old Guard seems to be edging closer to the D.L.C. The recent move by as many as a dozen Southern states to coordinate an influential regional presidential primary in March 1988 may push the two factions into a bona fide embrace.

To promote its views and showcase its members, the D.L.C. has conducted campaign-style road shows in five states, including California and Florida. On a recent trip to Dallas, Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia and Congressman Les Aspin of Wisconsin, leaders of the military-reform movement on Capitol Hill, told some 200 local Democratic spear carriers that while the Reagan Administration's trillion-dollar military buildup had created a "museum of weapons systems," the U.S. still lacks a sound and coherent defense strategy. Doves they are not, however. Said Nunn: "We need to make sure that the public understands that the Democratic Party stands for a strong position on national security."

Initially, relations were not particularly fraternal between the D.L.C. and Paul Kirk, chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Kirk and other traditional Democrats viewed the D.L.C. as a kind of separatist movement of crypto-Republicans. Yet now Kirk seems almost brotherly toward the D.L.C., talking about the "positive, constructive relationship" he has with its members. Kirk has acted on the D.L.C.'s diagnosis of some of the party's problems: he has reduced the number of its special-interest caucuses and increased the proportion of elected Democrats who will be delegates at the 1988 convention. Kirk is also on the record as saying that the Democrats cannot lasso the White House in 1988 without a Sunbelt candidate on the ticket.

The D.L.C. has become a kind of triple-A farm team supplying the Democratic Party's first string. Four of the five Democrats chosen by the Senate Democratic leadership to reply to the President's State of the Union address were D.L.C. members (Robb, Gray, Missouri's Lieutenant Governor Harriett Woods and Congressman Tom Daschle of South Dakota). Senator Jim Sasser of Tennessee, who last week answered the President's pitch for contra aid, is a D.L.C. member as well. In each case, the D.L.C. respondents avoided a stock liberal line, though they sometimes sounded more like mushy nondenominational moderates than like Democratic standard-bearers.

It does not hurt the D.L.C.'s profile that several of its headliners are also routinely mentioned as presidential prospects. Arizona Governor Bruce Babbitt, Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt and Delaware Senator Joseph Biden all seem to be warming up for a presidential race, while Nunn and Robb have been urged to jump in. "We won't be a vehicle for one candidate's campaign," says Robb, but he notes that the D.L.C. will stay in business "at least until we have a candidate nominated in 1988."

The D.L.C. agenda, fuzzy at first, is still not exactly "high concept," as they say in Hollywood. Thus far the group is defined by its contrast with traditional liberalism, and its formula, relying on common sense and fiscal responsibility, seems little different from New York Governor Mario Cuomo's "progressive pragmatism" tag line. Says Robb: "We need to get the party back to the basic principles on which it stood when we were winning (national) elections. We always stood for economic growth and for positive change."

Critics of D.L.C. members accuse them of "me-tooism," suggesting that they sidle up so close to the Republicans that their identity becomes blurred. Ann Lewis, national director of the liberal Americans for Democratic Action, sums up the D.L.C.'s bad notices. Instead of stimulating debate, she says, "they engage in a subtle form of party bashing. They go around to businessoriented audiences and say, 'We're not Walter Mondale.' It won't play in a Democratic convention, and I have no reason to believe it will play before the electorate."

Of course, Mondale did not play before the electorate either. As losers in four out of the past five presidential elections, most Democrats know they must recast their appeal to voters. Current D.L.C. Chairman Gephardt echoes the opinion of many when he says, "If a party is seen as primarily a collection of special interests, it's in deep trouble." The D.L.C. members are not worried about alienating some of those interests. They know that if they want to capture the nation's vital political center, they must risk some estrangement at the edges.

With reporting by Laurence I. Barrett/Washington