Reelection: William Jefferson Clinton as a Native-Son Presidential Candidate

by Hanes Walton Jr., Frederick Harris, Robert Brown, Vincent Hutchings

Overview

Since the passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, only three Democrats have captured the White House—all of them natives of southern states. The ascendancy and reelection of Bill Clinton to the presidency is a prime example of this phenomenon, and although books have been published on the "native son" psychological variable in electoral contests, no work to date has investigated this aspect of Clinton's political career.

Covering all of Clinton's twenty-one elections to state and national offices, Hanes Walton Jr. explores one of the political success stories of our century, showing how Clinton's popularity in his southern home has had a profound influence on his national electoral dominance. Walton combines the native-son theory with the issue of race to describe how the Democrats have built a vital power base in the South, in large measure because of their popularity among African-American voters.

With an epilogue on the Monica Lewinsky scandal and its effect on the Democratic Party, Reelection is a major contribution to the literature on the psychology of national elections at a time when its insight into the possibility of Democratic leadership into the next century is most critical.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231115537
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	02/03/2000
Series:	Power, Conflict, and Democracy: American Politics Into the 21st Century
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.72(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Hanes Walton Jr. is professor of political science at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He has been a Guggenheim, Ford, and Rockefeller Fellow, and is the author of eleven previous books on elections, race, and African-American politics, including African-American Power and Politics (Columbia, 1997) and The Native-Son Presidential Candidate: The Carter Vote in Georgia.

Table of Contents

Foreward
Preface
Introduction
Prologue
1. Elections
1. Epistemology and the Native-Son Candidate
2. Theory
3. Methodology
2. The Political Context of a Native-Son Candidate
4. The Arkansas Electorate
5. The African American Electorate
3. The Making of a Native-Son Candidate
6. The Congressional Vote for Clinton
7. The Attorney General Vote for Clinton
8. The Gubernatorial Vote for Clinton
4. The Native-Son Presidential Candidate
9. The Presidential Vote for Clinton
10. The Regional Vote: Clinton and Carter
5. The Native-Son Candidate and Democratic Elections
11. The Democratic Party in Presidential Elections: The Native-Son Theory Revisited
Endnotes
Appendix: The Election Data—A Research Note

Editorial Reviews

Sophisticated and impressive.

Journal of American Studies

Walton's research has numerous implications for the future of national electoral coalition building in general and possible winning combinations for the Democratic party in particular.

Choice

Building on his 1992 study of Jimmy Carter, Hanes Walton, Jr. argues here that a "native-son" candidate is the Democrat's counter to the Republican South. Southerners- Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton- achieved the four Democratic successes in presidential politics since the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Walton argues that the native-son variable attracts voters in the region, as well as the home state, across party lines.

This book develops a native-son theory and examines its utility, applied to Bill Clinton's electoral performance in Arkansas. Using county-level voting data for all of Clinton's campaigns, 1974 to 1996, Walton analyzes support for Clinton across five types of Arkansas counties.

Walton argues that Clinton's consistent appeal to black voters in his home state was in turn a key to building crucial support among African Americans outside the South in the 1992 Democratic presidential primary.

The reader may want more from Walton, but he achieves his main goal of conceptualizing the native-son variable and illustrating how it affects voters in the Clinton case. Along the way, this book makes a case for the utility to Democrats of the native-child electoral strategy.
—Political Science Quarterly

Peri E. Arnold