The New Dixieland Democrats
When Democrat Heath Shuler took the stage to claim victory on election night, he began his speech by saying, "I want to thank my lord and savior, Jesus Christ."
The crowd — even Asheville's granola-crunching environmentalists and liberal activists — went wild.
On the day when Democrats posted their biggest gains in the House since 1974's post-Watergate election, Shuler was one of only two congressional Democratic candidates in 10 Southern states able to tap the nation's discontent with President George W. Bush and his party to beat a Republican incumbent.
Many view that success — built in part on Shuler's socially conservative views, which would make him a Republican in most other parts of the country — as a way forward for the party in a region largely locked up by the Republican for decades.
"I think Shuler is the kind of exemplar of a conservative Democrat who can win in more traditionally Republican areas," said Vanderbilt University political scientist Christian Grose. "On issues, he's taken at least some conservative positions. Voters will say: 'He's not lockstep. He's not a traditional national Democrat.'"
Neither is Jim Webb, the former Republican and Reagan appointee who beat Republican Senator George Allen in Virginia. Webb is one of only four Democrats among the 20 senators from Virginia, the Carolinas, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Louisiana.
For the first time since the 1950s, the majority party in the House will be the minority party in the South.
Shuler's campaign mixed economic populism and strong environmental stances with moderate positions on social issues that often hurt Democrats in the South. He opposes abortion but supports stem-cell research. He supports gun rights. He talks openly of his Christian faith and bringing "mountain values" to Washington.
He won even though the South was far more receptive to Republicans. Exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and the networks found a majority favored Republican candidates in the South, breaking 52-45 percent for the Republican.
Just over half in the South, 51 percent, approved of Bush's job performance, and about the same number were either enthusiastic about or satisfied with the Republican leaders in Congress.
White men and white women in the South strongly supported Republican candidates. More than a third of Southern voters — 35 percent — said they were white evangelicals, and they backed the Republican Party by a margin of almost 3-to-1.
As Shuler heads to Washington for freshman orientation, returning to the city where he once played quarterback for NFL football team the Redskins, he will encounter other Democrats trying to occupy the political middle.
"Boy, he'll be watched like a hawk," said Merle Black, a political scientist at Atlanta's Emory University. "If he doesn't vote the way they like, they (the Republicans) will come after him. Every issue that (likely House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi sends up, he has to watch out."
Shuler will have role models. Neighboring Tennessee is home to Congressman Lincoln Davis, a rural Democrat who once vowed that no Republican would ever "out-pray me or out-family me." Like most successful Democrats in Tennessee and across the region, Davis supports gun rights and opposes gay marriage.
Eric Wortman, a spokesman for the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Democrats, said money issues may separate the Blue Dogs from the new Democratic majority.
"I don't know what the leadership's going to push, but certainly if you look at the budget, many in the Democratic Party have advocated for increased spending in many areas," Wortman said.
One faction within the Blue Dog coalition is mainly concerned with budget deficits and keeping spending down; the other is socially conservative and economically populist.
Shuler, Davis and North Carolina Congressman Mike McIntyre are among the latter, generally opposed to free-trade agreements but open to spending aimed at helping the less fortunate. That philosophy works well for Southern Democrats comfortable "holding the Bible and saying, 'The Bible tells you, you have to help people who don't have money,"' Grose said.
Running as a moderate Democrat in the South, however, isn't a perfect blueprint. The party's only other Southern win in the House came in Kentucky, where liberal former newspaper columnist John Yarmuth beat 10-year Congresswoman Anne Northup in a race defined mostly by the Iraq war.
Grose and Black both believe deep South states such as Alabama and Mississippi remain more or less off-limits to Democrats.
But in states on the edges — Virginia, Arkansas and even North Carolina, which has seen a large influx of newcomers from other regions — Grose said, "there's just enough people who are comfortable with the national Democratic Party ... and then enough people who can make a coalition to vote for old-time Southern Democrats."