James M. Glaser
Publications
 Race, Campaign Politics, and the Realignment in the South
Synopsis:
Since the Voting Rights Act of 1965, growing numbers of southerners
have called themselves Republicans, and Republican candidates have
carried the South in presidential elections. Yet the Democratic
party has persisted in winning the southern congressional elections.
In this engagingly written book, James M. Glaser explains this
political phenomenon, investigating six special U.S. House elections
won by Democrats from 1981 to 1993 in Mississippi, Texas, Alabama,
and Virginia. Glaser draws upon his own direct observations, news
reports, and extensive interviews with election participants-
candidates, advisors, journalists, labor leaders, party officials,
black ministers, volunteers, and others- to demonstrate that the
issues of group conflict and race continue to have an enormous
impact on congressional politics in the South. According to Glaser,
southern Democrats have prolonged realignment and kept control of
local elections through a variety of tactics. Most important,
southern Democrats have been able to construct biracial coalitions
in an ever-changing political environment. Glaser's analysis offers
insight into what led Democrats to ve so unexpectedly successful in
the Reagan-Bush years and into what they must do if they are to
survive the increasingly powerful force of southern Republicanism.
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