The Thompson Phenomenon

By Hastings Wyman
Southern Political Report

(6/11/07) He hasn’t even announced his candidacy, yet Fred Thompson, the former senator from Tennessee who is now an actor on a television crime series, has shot nearly to the top of opinion polls of Republican voters for their 2008 presidential nomination. InsiderAdvantage’s nationwide poll, taken earlier this month, the first national survey after Thompson formed a committee to explore a presidential run, showed him with 19%, just behind Rudy Giuliani with 28%, but ahead of John McCain and Mitt Romney, with 17% each, all candidates who have been criss-crossing the country for months speaking to Republican voters.

Thompson has shown significant strength in recent polls in the South. He came in fourth or higher in more than one recent poll of South Carolina Republicans. In Florida, a recent Quinnipiac University poll showed Giuliani still leading with 31%, but Thompson in second place with 14% and McCain third with 10%. And in North Carolina, a Public Policy Polling Survey (D) showed that Thompson has surged to first place, with 37%, to Giuliani’s 25% and McCain and Romney with 14% each.

Thompson is already beginning to make a big play for South Carolina, which still plans to be the first-in-the-South primary next year. He is expected to be a factor as soon as he enters the race. “I think he’ll be near the top, or at least edge some of the others down real fast,” says Greenville consultant Chip Felkel (R). Thompson will be in the state to headline a GOP fundraiser on June 27. He already has considerable support in the Palmetto State. Congressman Gresham Barrett (R) has endorsed him and party activists across the state are reportedly excited about the prospect of a Thompson candidacy. “If he gets in,” says Felkel, “you will see some interesting defections from some of the other campaigns.”

The inability of any of the current ten Republican candidates to catch fire with the Republican electorate is apparent in South Carolina as elsewhere. “The rest of the candidates all have caveats,” says Felkel. “Thompson is the only guy that doesn’t have caveats.” Giuliani is wrong on the social issues -- abortion, gay rights -- for most of this state’s conservative GOPers. Although McCain has much of the state’s Republican establishment in his corner, he runs second or third in surveys. In addition, his recent work in the Senate on behalf of a compromise immigration bill “really hurt McCain tremendously, especially with Republican primary voters,” says Felkel. (“The immigration bill was the final nail in [McCain’s] coffin,” says another South Carolina Republican insider.) Romney, despite strong conservative backing here, “can’t get over a certain threshold,” he adds.

“Thompson is going to be a major, major factor,” says Gay Suber, political consultant and former executive director of the state GOP. As for the current crop, especially the top tier (Giuliani, McCain and Romney), “Each one is carrying some baggage… Not one of the three has caught on.” Suber notes that at the recent state Republican convention, “People said they liked this one some, and didn’t like that about that one.” He concludes, “All I’ve heard is good things about Fred Thompson, but are there some ‘gotcha’s’ there that I don’t know about? I just don’t know enough about him. If he doesn’t have any skeletons, right now I predict he will carry South Carolina in the primary.”

But there is at least one caveat, or ‘gotcha,’ with Thompson, and that is the major one facing all presidential wannabe’s: Can he handle the job? He served eight years in the Senate, where he was known for little more than being a friend of John McCain. Assured of re-election, he nevertheless opted out, letting it be known that he found the self-styled world’s greatest deliberative body a waste of his time. Having already made a small fortune in the law business, he returned to a hobby that did interest him and began a third career as a regular on NBC’s “Law and Order” series, playing -- not being -- a district attorney.

It is not clear what has brought him back to politics. He has been part of no movement of late -- to get us out of, or further into, Iraq; to reduce spending; to solve the illegal immigration problem. Sure, he has views on these things, but there is no evidence these or other issues have tapped a reservoir of duty in his make-up. It may just be that Thompson senses a vacuum, at least in his own Republican Party, and like many others who have drunk from the well of public affirmation, he wouldn’t mind enjoying it again.

But if it is the party faithful’s lack of enthusiasm for the other ten candidates that is the major impetus for his candidacy, the Thompson boomlet may be short-lived. He’ll soon be exposed to the same media scrutiny that the other candidates are experiencing. His somewhat moderate voting record will get a thorough going over. The National Journal rated him 74% conservative during his first six years in the Senate; the Christian Coalition gave him 77%. Neither score makes his “a liberal,” but it doesn’t put him in the right-wing hero range, either.

Moreover, Thompson’s speeches, like one that bombed recently on the West Coast, may prove to be no more earth-moving than those by Giuliani, McCain or Romney. That is likely to prove as true in the South as in the rest of the nation. And despite Thompson’s strength in polls of Republican voters, Giuliani still runs stronger than any of the GOPers -- including Thompson -- against the leading Democrats. The Quinnipiac Florida poll, for example, showed Giuliani would defeat any of the leading Democrats. McCain would beat Obama, but not Clinton. And Thompson would lose to both of them.

In sum, dissatisfaction with the rest of the GOP field gives Thompson an opportunity. But that is all. Once he gets in the race, he’ll have to prove that he has something to offer beyond being a new face.