Look Away, Dixieland

At a cattle-ranch rally in North Carolina, the crowd polished off the remnants of a barbecued pig and the bluegrass band wound up a rollicking rendition of Rocky Top as Al Gore mounted the platform. "I've been on the side of the average workingman and -woman," he drawled earnestly. "I've been on the side of the small farmers." Standing in front of a monument to Confederate heroes in South Carolina, Pat Robertson reminded his audiences that "I went to school where Robert E. Lee was president." In heavily Hispanic Corpus Christi and San Antonio, Michael Dukakis appeared in TV commercials, speaking fluent Spanish.

Turning their backs on the snows of Iowa and New Hampshire, Minnesota and South Dakota, candidates were whistling Dixie last week, jostling for advantage on the presidential campaign's biggest battleground. Dukakis, who easily won the Minnesota Democratic caucuses with 34% of the vote, concentrated on the South's urban areas and ethnic voters. Native Son Gore, who ignored Iowa and ran poorly in other Northern contests, finds himself playing catch-up with the better-known contenders. Richard Gephardt won big in the South Dakota primary (with 44% of the Democratic vote), but he trails the others in recent Southern polls.

Robertson has declared that he must rack up some wins in the South to prove he is a viable candidate. But George Bush maintains a commanding lead in the region, and a frustrated Robertson last week resorted to a series of outlandish remarks, including a suggestion that the Bush team had timed the Jimmy Swaggart scandal to embarrass the Robertson campaign. Bob Dole was buoyed by impressive triumphs in South Dakota (55% of the G.O.P. vote) and Minnesota (43%), but his disorganized campaign has still not caught fire in much of the South. His strongest champion in the South remains his wife Elizabeth, who was born in North Carolina and is working the region hard.

So many candidates are competing for attention that Southerners, like voters elsewhere, find it hard to sort them out. Only this week, as the television campaigns and phone banks go into overdrive, will Southerners begin to narrow their choices. Last week TIME correspondents visited several communities whose voters will decide the Super Tuesday battle.

GREENSBORO, N.C.

Within the central "Triad," bound by Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point, Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1. Yet voters would just as soon send a member of the G.O.P. to the statehouse or the White House. "I have voted for J.F.K. and for Barry Goldwater," says Paul Hinkle, a purchasing agent at the Drexel Heritage furniture-manufactu ring plant. "I am a registered Democrat, and I intend to vote, but this is the weakest field I have seen in 35 years."

In downtown Greensboro, a marker notes the 1960 Woolworth's sit-ins by black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University students. "Sure, you can't come in here as a black man and not feel a sense of history," says Terry Woods, a technician, as he sits at a once segregated lunch counter. "We get along with whites here," says Woods, 33. "I am not going to vote for a man because of the color of his skin." But, he adds, "I do like Jesse, because I like to think that one day a black man will be there."

R.N. ("Buster") Linville, 77, is an Oak Ridge tobacco farmer who owns 300 acres of land and lives in an antiques-filled ranch house overlooking his own fishing pond. "Tobacco farmers are just doing fair," says he. "All the antismoking stuff does not add to our income, and farmers are afraid tobacco will leave them." Linville believes Gore will look out for his interests. "He's more Southern than the rest of them," he says. But "I'm not enthused," he concludes, adding cryptically, "I met him."

Robertson has a loyal following, including novice Delegate David Latham, a member of the Cathedral of HIS Glory on New Garden Road in Greensboro. "I believe in what Robertson stands for," says Latham. "I have his tape right here. I listen to it in the car." At Frank Roberts' barbershop on Main Street in High Point, however, the former preacher is hardly taken seriously. "Pat Robertson?" says Roberts. "We never hear the name." According to Roberts, the G.O.P. race is between Dole and Bush. "Dole's biggest asset is Liddy," say the barber. "She is absolutely better than he is. She ought to run." Some of the customers like Gore for his electability. But Barber Harvey Speaks is skeptical. Says he: "Jimmy Carter killed the chances for another Southern President."

MACON, GA.

On Macon's blue-collar Southside, the Sandwich King is a friendly, family- owned eatery where folks slurp coffee and talk about bass fishing, layoffs at the local textile mills and, once in a while, politics. Most of the whites at the cafe describe themselves as evangelical Christians who support a strong military and a balanced budget. A real Reaganite bunch? Think again. "I don't always like the Democrats who run for President," says Bill Morland, 36, a burly telephone lineman, "but it was pretty clear to me from the get-go that Ronald Reagan was out to make the rich folks richer."

Even when Reagan swept the rest of Georgia in 1984, Macon went solidly for Walter Mondale. This Democratic solidarity is due partly to the high proportion of black voters: 40% within Macon's city limits. More important, Macon's Democratic leaders have helped forge a coalition of blacks and blue- collar whites who vote together against the local aristocrats who own the cotton and soybean farms and run the banks and brokerages.

That working-class unity crumbles when it comes to Jesse Jackson. "I really don't think it's a racist thing between Jesse and the whites, at least not here," observes the Sandwich King's white proprietor, Dewey Lawing, 60. "He's just too radical, and we don't trust him." A black machine operator in his late 30s takes a pragmatic approach to Jackson. "Don't think that we're such fools that we don't see the same faults in Jesse that white people see," he says. "But we're going to vote for him anyway. And then the white man who wants to win has to make a deal with us."

Macon's whites are a tad cynical about Gore. "I've heard some people wonder whether he's too wishy-washy," says Lawing, "trying to look more conservative in the South than he really is." Competition from foreign textiles and other imports worries people, and Gephardt's protectionist message might find a sympathetic audience. "If he's for limiting imports," says Prew Wilson, 54, who lost his job at a textile mill last Christmas, "you can bet I'll listen to him."

Wilson's wife Sharon, 49, is trying to decide between Gephardt and Dole in the state's open primary. She likes Dole for his attacks on Bush, whom she regards as "just another puppet of Big Business, like Reagan." Though Sharon considers herself a "very religious Baptist," she opposes Robertson. "First, because I don't believe in mixing religion and politics," she says. "Second, because he smiles and giggles too much. I can't trust that."

FORT WORTH, TEXAS

The locals like to call their town a cultural crossroads, the place "where the West begins." With shimmering skyscrapers set against ancient stockyards and honky-tonk bars, Fort Worth is a polyglot of old and new. Cowboys in ten- gallon hats and snakeskin boots rub elbows with yuppies dressed for success. Fort Worth prides itself on being a political bellwether. In presidential elections, the city's voters usually go with the winner.

This year Fort Worth's man is Bush -- by default. "It's a lesser-of-evils election," says Radio Shack's Advertising Director Michael Wood, as he shuffles through a stack of design layouts. "There are no white knights to turn people on." Wood, 45, who considers himself a "loose Republican," sees Bush as a "quiet, reserved thinker. He's got savvy." He wrote off Dole after seeing him accuse Bush of lying. "Talk about sour grapes," says Wood. "This was Nixonesque." As for Robertson, "He scares me more."

James Toal, a real estate developer whose company was hard hit by the economic downturn, thinks Bush might be good for the economy. He also likes Bush because he "represents a stable image and will bring good people in with him. He's a known quantity." Toal could go for a Democrat, but it won't be Dick Gephardt. "Something intangible moves me away," says he. "Maybe it's the flip-flopping." And Dukakis? "He's the guy to watch. He seems to make sense."

Utility-company Manager Alex Jimenez is also leaning toward Bush, but like many in Fort Worth, he remains skeptical. "Nobody out there is electrifying," says Jimenez. "Something seems to be missing from each." John Justin, the 71-year-old chairman of Justin Boot Co. and a Democrat for Bush, sounds almost plaintive when he talks about the candidates. "All I want is someone who will go out and run the country well," says Justin. "That's all."