Democrats' Neglect Perplexes Southerners

C O L U M B I A, S.C., Feb. 4 -- South Carolina was good to native son John Edwards.

Edwards, who was born in Seneca, S.C., won the state's primary by a double-digit margin.

"You said that the politics of lifting people up beats the politics of bringing people down," the North Carolina senator told cheering supporters at a victory party at a Columbia restaurant Tuesday night. "And, today, we said clearly to the American people that in ourcountry, our American, everything is possible."

But with the exception of the Rev. Al Sharpton, the other candidates who won votes here Tuesday night celebrated elsewhere. In fact, for most of this week, they abandoned the Palmetto State, once thought of as an important primary battleground.

Their absence is especially odd if one buys what Edwards says, that the South Carolina primary "is a head-to-head contest on who can compete in the South, who can win rural voters, and who can do well with African-American voters."

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John Kerry came in second here, which he said before results were final was "extraordinary, given how little I was able to be there."

But Southern Democratic leaders wonder why Kerry was only "able" to visit South Carolina twice since his campaign kickoff in Charleston last September. With momentum from his early victories and endorsements from the state's one Democratic senator, Fritz Hollings, and its only black congressman, Jim Clyburn, many thought the Massachusetts senator could have won here if he'd spent more time in the state.

Richard Harpootlian, the former chairman. of the South Carolina Democratic Party, fears Kerry's absence may signify that national Democrats plan on writing off the region. That, he says, would be a mistake.

"If this is a precursor of what's going to happen in November, then all this has just been a huge charade," Harpootlian said of the absence of five of the seven Democratic presidential candidates.