OKLAHOMA CITY — It’s the heartland of the modern Republican Party, the most reliably red region in presidential elections. But as the 2016 GOP campaign for the White House gets underway, the South finds itself yet again without a native son in a leading role.

As party leaders gathered here for the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, a traditional candidate cattle call that draws many of the party’s presidential hopefuls and attracted around 2,000 activists this year, there was no shortage of reminders about the South’s importance, both financially and electorally, to the party’s political fortunes.


Yet the three Republicans who lead the field are a governor from Wisconsin, Scott Walker, and Sen. Marco Rubio and former Gov. Jeb Bush, two candidates rooted in the part of Florida that is most culturally distinct from the South — Miami.

The GOP primary is not without authentic sons of the South — South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, both born in small towns at the dawn of the civil rights era, proudly identify as such. There is also Bobby Jindal, the Baton Rouge-born Louisiana governor.

But all of them — including former Gov. Rick Perry, a Texan not quite a Southerner but stylistically close enough to pass for one — find themselves trailing far behind in the polls, struggling to demonstrate their viability as 2016 prospects. Two other candidates with tenuous claims to the Southern candidate mantle — Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul and Canada-born Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — are faring better but still have a ways to go in expanding their voter bases. Should they all fall short, it would mark the third consecutive presidential election that the Republican Party has picked a nominee who doesn’t hail from the South, even in its most expansive definition.

Few here at the SRLC said that it matters, as long as the candidate who captures the GOP nomination shares the same conservative values.

“I just think our people don’t care where they’re from as much as what they believe and how they lead,” said Chad Connelly, a former South Carolina Republican Party chairman.

Steve Fair, Oklahoma’s Republican national committeeman, said Southern voters no longer simply supported a candidate because they were from the South. With the rise of the Internet and technology, party activists had a wide array of factors influencing who they got behind.

“I don’t think geography is nearly as important as it was 45 to 60 years ago,” he said. “Obviously a person from the South is more appealing, because of culture. But I don’t think it’s a critical factor.”

It’s not hard to understand why. Southern Republicans see the region’s red tint — you could take I-40 out of Oklahoma City and drive on it for more than 1,000 miles and not encounter a single state with a Democratic governor or state legislature — as validation of the conservative style of governance and values they espouse, and they’ve already remade the national party in that image.

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, who played host to the conference, started off the confab with a 15-minute speech in which she highlighted her own state’s steadfast conservatism. In the 2012 election, she noted, all 77 of its counties broke for Republican nominee Mitt Romney. It was, she said, “the reddest state in America.”

At the conference, powerful Oklahoma energy company executives who’ve filled the Republican Party’s coffers, like Harold Hamm and Larry Nichols, stalked through the halls of the downtown Cox Convention Center and appeared at panel discussions. T. Boone Pickens, the iconic local oil man who famously helped to finance the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” TV ads that sunk John Kerry’s presidential campaign, was feted with a lunch celebration to commemorate his 87th birthday.

The Republican presidential hopefuls who spoke here this week sought to highlight the GOP’s need to build an electoral coalition that would allow them to win the White House. Picking a candidate who could appeal only to the party’s Southern base, the message seemed to be, wouldn’t be enough.

Walker took the stage on Thursday to highlight his own experience in a purple state. He’d been elected and reelected and survived a recall attempt, he pointed out, in a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican for president since 1984. “I think going forward, we need someone who can fight and win,” the Wisconsin governor said.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who as a Northeastern Republican is a member of a suspect class in the view of some conservatives, outlined his state’s long history of Democratic domination and said he’d beaten the odds. “Our first priority must be winning,” he said.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush made a similar point. “I think we have to go beyond preaching to the choir, to be honest with you, although I love the choir, don’t get me wrong,” said Bush, who’s tangled with conservatives on some issues. “To get outside our comfort zone … go campaign in the Latino barrios across this country, go to the college campuses that haven’t heard from a conservative in a long while, go to the black churches to talk about school choice.”

That message seemed to resonate among many attendees. After six years of exile from the White House, many are ready to seek out a candidate with broad appeal — regardless of what part of the country they come from.

“I might have a slight preference for a Southern nominee, but I really wouldn’t make it a litmus test,” said Mick Cornett, Oklahoma City’s longtime mayor.

One factor that might lift a Southern candidate is the primary calendar. A group of states, including Alabama, Texas and Virginia, are banding together to establish what’s being referred to as the SEC primary, an allusion to the NCAA powerhouse conference in the Southeast. The plan, which would designate March 1 as a single day when Southern states would hold their primaries, is intended to give the region greater influence over the nominating contest. In recent nominating contests, the region’s primaries were spread out among a number of different dates.

“I don’t think the South will be left out,” said Roger Villere, the Louisiana Republican Party chairman. “I think you’re going to see some candidates take off.” Villere is supporting Jindal, his home state governor, who formed a presidential exploratory committee earlier in the week and delivered a well-received speech at the conference.

Fallin,the host, has remained neutral throughout the early stages of the primary. But she provided glowing introductory speeches for many of the candidates who made their way to the conference. At a news conference on Thursday, when asked if she would prefer the party nominate a candidate from the South, she couldn’t help but break into a smile.

“Well, of course,” she said. “That would be nice.”