Thompson's Late-Comer Candidacy Depends on Southern Roots, Backing

WASHINGTON — Never mind that the other candidates have been stumping across the country, debating on TV and spending upwards of $25 million over the past six months.

This week, after one of the longest drum rolls in political memory, former Sen. Fred Dalton Thompson will make his entrance into the crowded race for the White House, aided by his national celebrity as a Hollywood actor, his folksy charm and his conservative appeal.

The Tennessee Republican's hopes for winning his party's presidential nomination will almost certainly lie in his native region, where no candidate has yet captured the hearts of conservatives.

"Thompson probably would come closer to representing their views than anyone in the race thus far," said Emory University politics professor Merle Black, who predicted that he would become an "instant front-runner" in the South.

Even before his official entry, Thompson led in an early poll of Georgia voters, and he has ranked at or near the top in opinion surveys in the crucial early state of South Carolina.

"He's a neighbor and a southerner," said Thomas D. Bell Jr., an Atlanta real estate executive who led the fundraising for Thompson's "testing-the-waters" effort.

"Frankly, I don't know if it's too late" to start the campaign, Bell conceded. But he and others are counting on Thompson's poll standing as a candidate-in-waiting as a sign that his small-town, blunt speaking style — not to mention his 6-foot 5-inch frame — will elevate him above his rivals.

"The one thing that I've found to be true of Fred throughout the 35-plus years I've known him is he says what he thinks," Bell said. "I hope that's the Fred the American people will see. And they'll either embrace it or they won't."

From his upbringing in Lawrenceburg, Tenn., just across the border from Alabama, Thompson honed a deep baritone drawl and a self-deprecating humor that makes an audience want to listen.

At the Iowa State Fair last month, he gave a crowd sitting on hay bales a brief summary of his background as a car-dealer's son who idolized conservative icon Barry Goldwater from his youth. His accidental movie career began, he told the gathering, when he played himself as the lawyer in the true story of a Tennessee parole board official who sued Gov. Ray Blanton and exposed his pardon-selling corruption.

Thompson said he took the part "never having had an acting lesson" and added, "You know, oftentimes my friends say, 'You don't need to mention that acting lesson part. It's obvious watching you.' "

Thompson's commanding presence led other movie directors to cast him in the roles of authority figures — an admiral, CIA director, presidents and the occasional villain.

The Hollywood parts became cameos in an unusual career that put Thompson in the spotlight from the time he was a young lawyer. With strong ties to Tennessee Republicans, especially Sen. Howard Baker, he served as a staff counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee in its probe of President Richard Nixon. It was Thompson who asked a top Nixon aide the history-making question that revealed the existence of White House recordings that were to be the president's undoing.

Later, Thompson returned to private law practice and worked as a lobbyist — including helping the savings and loan industry in its push for deregulation, which was later blamed for a disastrous collapse of that industry.

After Al Gore became vice president in 1992, Thompson won Gore's vacated Senate seat by campaigning across his home state in a red truck. He easily won re-election in 1996.

On Capitol Hill, Thompson played mostly supporting roles. He established a reliably conservative voting record favoring low taxes, opposing abortion, and supporting the military. His major deviation was backing limits on campaign fundraising, a reform opposed by conservative groups.

As a senator, Thompson focused much of his attention on unglamorous hearings and investigations into waste and mismanagement within the federal bureaucracy.

By 2002, Thompson decided not to seek another term, making the now famous declaration, "After eight years in Washington, I longed for the realism and sincerity of Hollywood." He eventually accepted a role as the tough prosecutor Arthur Branch in NBC-TV's "Law & Order" drama series.

A major factor in his departure from politics was grief over the death, by drug overdose, of his daughter from his early marriage to his high school sweetheart. The couple divorced in the mid-1980s.

He married his current wife, Jeri, a former Republican Party spokeswoman who is 25 years his junior, in 2002. They have a 4-year-old daughter and a toddler son. Thompson's wife has emerged as his key strategist, and Thompson calls his two young children part of his motivation for running for president - as a way to focus on spending levels he sees as endangering "future generations." He points to the rising costs of Medicare but so far stops short of outlining ways to fix the problem.

Thompson's acting career, informal speaking style and conservative leanings invite comparisons, fanned by his supporters, to President Ronald Reagan.

"He's got that same kind of manner about him — the same ease with himself, the same sort of easy understanding of fairly complex issues," said Rich Galen, a longtime ally of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., who has signed on as a senior adviser to the Thompson campaign.

But Thompson's career path has been quite different from that of Reagan, who went from Hollywood to two terms as governor of California and who developed his communication skills by writing and delivering speeches and radio commentaries across the country.

"In terms of speaking to crowds, Thompson is a far cry from Ronald Reagan," said Black. "Reagan was a polished, consummate public speaker."

"Thompson works very well with a prepared text," Black said, adding that "he tends to ramble" when speaking extemporaneously.

Also, Thompson, who just turned 65, is younger than Reagan was during his successful 1980 race for the White House. But the Tennessean looks older than his years, the Emory professor said.

Even so, he will probably have the inside track in the South, said Black. "I think a lot of southern conservatives don't see anyone in the race who matches their beliefs and preferences."

Thompson's opening campaign schedule, which begins Thursday in the early caucus state of Iowa, moves to New Hampshire on Saturday and ends Monday in what could be his make-or-break state of South Carolina.

Galen brushed off suggestions that the campaign waited too long to join the money chase to finance campaigns in the early states and in the 20 primaries that will follow on Feb. 5 next year.

"We haven't spent $25 million" as some other candidates have, Galen notes. "We're second in almost every poll. We're first in some state polls, and we're tied in (electing) delegates—at zero."

Thompson, taking full advantage of his outsider position, dismisses "all the Washington pundits and the beltway politicians" that he blames for changing the rules of the game to make the campaign start early.

"I wasn't there when they made those rules, so I'm not abiding by them," he drawled to the cheers at the Iowa State Fair.