WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W. Va. — Centrist Democrats were wiped out in the 2014 elections and in their absence emerged a resurgent liberal movement, embodied most recently by the surprisingly competitive presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.

But the suddenly ascendant left — its populist overtones becoming part of the mainstream Democratic pitch — is worrying Democrats who want to compete on Republican-leaning turf. The party lost every competitive gubernatorial and Senate race in the South last year. And Democrats didn’t fare much better in the heartland.


Now, as Bernie Sanders’ surge foreshadows a new burst of progressivism, moderate Democrats are looking to their counterparts in Washington with a plea: Don’t freeze us out.

“The national Democratic Party’s brand makes it challenging for Democrats in red states oftentimes and I hope that going forward, the leaders at the national level will be mindful of that and they will understand that they can’t govern the country without Democrats being able to win races in red states,” said Paul Davis, who narrowly failed to unseat Republican Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback last year.

Davis and his ilk were partly victims of a historically dismal year for Democrats, who saw their gubernatorial ranks fall to 18. Their candidates were weighed down by perceptions that President Barack Obama was too liberal. Now, Democrats in red states are worried that the party’s shift toward an even more polarizing, populist tone could turn off the swing voters they need to mount a comeback in 2015 and 2016, when a handful of GOP-tilted states with Democratic governors are on the ballot.

“It’s important that the Democratic party be ‘big-tent,’” said Vincent Sheheen, who lost last year to South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley. “So if the result of that kind of rhetoric is an antagonism toward or a hostility toward the moderate elements of the Democratic Party then yeah, it’s big trouble and big problems.”

“We’ll never take back Congress unless we can win in the South. We’ll never take back governorships unless we can win in the South,” he added.

Though his state is fairly reliable for Democrats, Delaware Gov. Jack Markell told POLITICO he worries that overemphasizing liberal themes to turn out the Democratic base will backfire.

“There are still more self-described conservatives than there are self-described liberals,” he said. “I think relying on a strategy where all you’re trying to do is turn out your base of liberal Democrats is not a very compelling electoral strategy. I think what we need to do is we need to have a message that is compelling to Democrats, to independents, and even to some Republicans.”

Georgia Democrat Jason Carter, the grandson of former president Jimmy Carter and the narrow loser of his state’s 2014 governor’s race, said the party would do well to preserve its inclusive image.

“Democrats in the South are the only truly ‘big tent’ party left,” he said, adding that he expects that mentality to pay off in the near future. “The only real litmus test we have is that you have to want to be in the fight with all different kinds of people — and not exclude folks because of one or two issues.”

Though Sanders has largely come to represent the restive left, supplanting liberal beacon Elizabeth Warren, the fear among moderate Democrats is not that he’ll win their party’s nomination — they’re still confident Hillary Clinton will be the party’s nominee — only that his supporters will tug the party so far away from the middle that there’s no place for Southern moderates or Midwestern centrists.

The shift comes amid furious turnover for moderate Democrats at the gubernatorial level. Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear is term-limited and the race to succeed him takes place in three months. Missouri’s Jay Nixon and West Virginia’s Earl Ray Tomblin are also term-limited and will see successors elected in 2016. Montana Gov. Steve Bullock is up for reelection next year.

These Democrats, who congregated here for the summer meeting of the National Governors Association, treaded cautiously around the issue, emphasizing repeatedly that energy within any faction of the party is a positive force that will aid Democrats across the ideological spectrum.

Tomblin predicted West Virginia Democrats would continue to run as “moderate to conservative” candidates and won’t suffer from the pull of national politics. Beshear, whose preferred successor Jack Conway has bragged on the campaign trail about suing Obama over EPA regulations, underscored the importance of retaining the Democrats’ big-tent mentality.

“We include viewpoints all across the political spectrum and that includes everything from the most liberal viewpoints to the most conservative viewpoints,” he said. Beshear argued that Democrats’ focus on common goals — job creation, improved education and access to health care — would keep the party united. “Those issues bring us all together and I think will serve as sort of the anchor of the party throughout future years.”

Bullock, who heads the campaign organization tasked with electing Democratic governors this year, cited “roles for all of us” in the party, and Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a former national Democratic leader whose term expires after 2017, said “Anytime anyone brings any energy to a political process, it’s a good thing.”

Democrats were also quick to deflect from their internal debate with a quick reference to Donald Trump. For all their ideological squabbling, they noted, the Republican Party is far more fractious and still struggling to find its identity.

“If you look at the difference among Democratic candidates on their core message, their core issues, I mean there is much less difference than what we see from extreme parts of the spectrum of Republican candidates,” said Mark Schauer, who lost last year’s Michigan governor’s race against Rick Snyder and is now leading Democratic efforts to retake state legislatures.

Yet Democrats are mindful of how easily Republicans managed to tag local and statewide candidates as pawns of national leaders deeply unpopular in Republican-leaning states.

“Nancy Pelosi in South Carolina does not play well,” said Sheheen. “We need to have moderate figureheads in the party who can speak to people and relate to people in the south. If the message is a less mainstream message, if it is a more extreme message, then that would be a problem.”

One Democratic operative who works with gubernatorial candidates argued that the Democratic Party must avoid a slide into factionalism that mirrors the rise of the tea party on the right.

“The Democratic Party cannot become what the Republican Party is today – a fractured party with the tea party crazies on one side and the libertarian loonies on the other,” the operative said. “We have to be able to embrace all.”

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