Delta Earl
| 🌾 | |
| Era | The Seventies |
|---|---|
| Age | 50-56 |
| Home | Greenwood, MS |
| Demographic | rural South, white, small businessman |
| Lean | Strong Republican |
| Race | white |
A farm supply dealer and Baptist deacon in his fifties in the Mississippi Delta, a lifelong Democrat who no longer votes Democratic for president. He is the cast's Southern realigner, and his shift in voting defines the decade's political realignment.
Who they stand for
Earl stands for the white conservative South during its realignment from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party. Governor George Wallace carried Mississippi and four other Deep South states in 1968. Richard Nixon took Mississippi with nearly four fifths of the vote in 1972, his largest share in any state that year. The trigger was a series of court rulings. The 1969 Supreme Court decision in Alexander v. Holmes County ended further delay on school desegregation in Mississippi. The 1971 decision known as Swann authorised busing to achieve school integration. Private segregation academies opened across Mississippi in response, funded by men like Earl. Carter's return of the South to the Democratic column in 1976 was narrow and did not last. Reagan's 1980 speech at the Neshoba County Fair completed the region's shift to the Republican Party.
The realignment happened at only one level of government. Earl still votes Democratic for sheriff, for the state legislature, and for Senators Eastland and Stennis, because the state Democratic Party remained his party. Birmingham Bernice is his neighbour, and she holds the opposite view from him on nearly every political question of the decade.
Playing to them
Earl responds well to local control of schools, restraint on federal judges and the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, respect for the church, a favourable price for cotton, and a sheriff left to do his job without interference. He understands the phrase 'states' rights' as a policy position rather than as a coded reference to race, and he resents any president who suggests otherwise. He does not forgive court-ordered busing, judicial appointments that extend such orders, or an active Justice Department presence in his county.
Winning his support costs the support of Birmingham Bernice and Motor City Moses outright. It also costs the support of Main Line Margaret, who regards the Southern strategy as a disgrace to her party. Upper West Side Ruth and Berkeley Bruce follow Margaret's view. Macomb Bev and Southie Sean respond to the same message when it is delivered in a Northern accent, so a president who wants to build a coalition around this backlash can build it starting here, but doing so costs the support of nearly every Black and liberal persona in the cast.
Where they live
The five states where Delta Earl makes up the largest share of the electorate in the seventies:
- Mississippi
- Alabama
- Arkansas
- Louisiana
- South Carolina