Mediaboss Marketing

Democrats are wagering that women candidates will help them make a comeback in the South.

It worked six years ago when the party recruited Kay Hagan to defeat Republican Senator Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina and Senator Mary Landrieu won a third term in Louisiana, both with outsized support from women voters.

Now Democrats are applying that model in Kentucky, where Alison Lundergan Grimes is trying to oust Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Georgia, where Michelle Nunn is seeking to replace retiring Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss. Both have made an appeal to women voters a centerpiece of their campaigns.

Across the South, Democrats have struggled with an inability to attract white, male voters, said Merle Black, a political science professor at Emory University in Atlanta. It may be that a female Democratic candidate can do better with female voters than a male candidate can, he said.

Mark Pryor, who is seeking a third term in Arkansas, is the only white, male Democratic senator representing a state in the Deep South. Three others -- Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine of Virginia and Bill Nelson of Florida -- represent presidential battleground states with Democratic-leaning urban centers.

Michelle Nunn, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, listens during her tour of the Whitewater Express rafting business by the Chattahoochee River in Columbus, Georgia, on April 16, 2014. Close

Michelle Nunn, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, listens during her tour of the... Read More

Close

Michelle Nunn, Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, listens during her tour of the Whitewater Express rafting business by the Chattahoochee River in Columbus, Georgia, on April 16, 2014.

That stands in stark contrast to 20 years ago, when 13 white, male Democratic senators represented Southern states.

Visit link:
Democrats See South as No Country for White Men in Senate