InAmerican politics, aconservative Democrat is a member of theDemocratic Party with moreconservative views than most Democrats. Traditionally, conservative Democrats have been elected to office from theSouthern states,rural areas, and theGreat Plains.[1] In 2019, the Pew Research Center found that 14% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters identify as conservative or very conservative, 38% identify as moderate, and 47% identify as liberal or very liberal.[2]
Before 1964, the Democratic Party and Republican Party each had influential liberal, moderate, and conservative wings. During this period, conservative Democrats formed the Democratic half of theconservative coalition. After 1964, the Democratic Party retained its conservative wing through the 1970s with the help of urbanmachine politics. In the 21st century, the number of conservative Democrats decreased as the party moved leftward.[3][4]
TheBlue Dog Coalition represents centrist and conservative Democrats in theU.S. House of Representatives.[5][6]
The Solid South describes the reliable electoral support of theU.S. Southern states for Democratic Party candidates for almost a century after theReconstruction era. Except for1928, whenCatholic candidateAl Smith ran on the Democratic ticket, Democrats won heavily in the South in every presidential election from1876 until1964 (and even in 1928, the divided South provided most of Smith's electoral votes). The Democratic dominance originated in many Southerners' animosity towards the Republican Party's role in the Civil War and Reconstruction.[7]
In1896,William Jennings Bryan won the Democratic Party nomination by promoting silver over gold, and denouncing the banking system. He had a strong base in the South and Plains states, as well as silver mining centers in the Rocky Mountain states. He was weak in urban areas and immigrant communities which opposed prohibition.[8] He also won the Populist nomination. Conservative Democrats opposed him, especially in the Northeast where "Gold Democrats" were most active. "Gold Democrats" were supporters ofGrover Cleveland, the hero of conservative Democrats. They formed theNational Democratic Party and nominatedJohn Palmer, former governor of Illinois, for president andSimon Bolivar Buckner, former governor of Kentucky, for vice-president. They also nominated a few other candidates, includingWilliam Campbell Preston Breckinridge for Congress in Kentucky, but they won no elections.[9] Bryan and people he supported (especially Woodrow Wilson) usually dominated the party. However the conservatives did nominate their candidate in 1904,Alton B. Parker.[10]
The1932 election brought about a major realignment in political party affiliation.Franklin D. Roosevelt forged a coalition oflabor unions, liberals,Catholics,African Americans, and southernwhites.[11][12] Roosevelt's program for alleviating theGreat Depression, collectively known as theNew Deal, emphasized only economic issues, and thus was compatible with the views of those who supported the New Deal programs but were otherwise conservative. This included theSouthern Democrats, who were an important part of FDR's New Deal coalition. A number of chairmanships were also held by conservative Democrats during the New Deal years.[13]
Conservative Democrats came to oppose the New Deal, especially after 1936. They included SenatorHarry F. Byrd and his powerful state organization in Virginia, SenatorRush Holt Sr., SenatorJosiah Bailey, and RepresentativeSamuel B. Pettengill. TheAmerican Liberty League was formed in 1934, to oppose the New Deal. It was made up of wealthy businessmen and conservative Democrats including former CongressmanJouett Shouse of Kansas, former Congressman from West Virginia and 1924 Democratic presidential candidate,John W. Davis, and former governor of New York and 1928 Democratic presidential candidateAl Smith. In 1936, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of War,Henry Skillman Breckinridge ran against Roosevelt for the Democratic nomination for president.John Nance Garner, of Texas, 32nd Vice President of the United States under Roosevelt, a conservative Southerner, broke with Roosevelt in 1937 and ran against him for the Democratic nomination for president in 1940, but lost. By 1938 conservative Democrats in Congress—chiefly from the South—formed a coalition with Republicans that largely blocked liberal domestic policy until the 1960s.[14][15]
However, most of the conservative Southern Democrats supported the foreign policy of Roosevelt and Truman.[16]
Roosevelt tried to purge the more conservative Democrats in numerous states in 1938. He especially tried to unseat those up for reelection who defeated his plan to pack the Supreme Court in 1937. He failed in nearly all cases, except for a major success in defeatingJohn J. O'Connor in Manhattan, a spokesman for big business.[17]
A different source of conservative Democratic dissent against the New Deal came from a group of journalists who considered themselvesclassical liberals and Democrats of the old school, and were opposed to big government programs on principle; these includedAlbert Jay Nock andJohn T. Flynn, whose views later became influential in thelibertarian movement.[18]
The proclamation by PresidentHarry S. Truman andMinneapolis MayorHubert Humphrey of support for acivil rights plank in the Democratic Party platform of1948 led to a walkout of 35 delegates fromMississippi andAlabama. These southern delegations nominated their own States Rights Democratic Party, better known as theDixiecrats, nominees with South Carolina GovernorStrom Thurmond leading the ticket (Thurmond would later represent South Carolina in the U.S. Senate, and join the Republicans in 1964). The Dixiecrats held their convention inBirmingham, Alabama, where they nominated Thurmond for president andFielding L. Wright, governor of Mississippi, for vice president. Dixiecrat leaders worked to have Thurmond-Wright declared the "official" Democratic Party ticket in Southern states.[19] They succeeded in Alabama,Louisiana, Mississippi, andSouth Carolina; in other states, they were forced to run as athird-party ticket.Preston Parks, elected as a presidential elector for Truman inTennessee, instead voted for the Thurmond-Wright ticket.Leander Perez attempted to keep the States Rights Party alive inLouisiana after 1948.
Similar breakaway Southern Democratic candidates running onstates' rights andsegregationist platforms would continue in1956 (T. Coleman Andrews), and1960 (Harry F. Byrd). None would be as successful as theAmerican Independent Party campaign of George Wallace, the Democratic governor of Alabama, in1968. Wallace had briefly run in the Democratic primaries of1964 againstLyndon Johnson, but dropped out of the race early. In 1968, he formed the new American Independent Party and received 13.5% of the popular vote, and 46 electoral votes, carrying several Southern states.[20] The AIP would run presidential candidates in several other elections, including Southern Democrats (Lester Maddox in1976 andJohn Rarick in1980), but none of them did nearly as well as Wallace.
After 1968, withdesegregation a settled issue, conservative Democrats, mostly Southerners, managed to remain in the United States Congress throughout the 1970s and 1980s. These included Democratic House members as conservative asLarry McDonald, who was also a leader in theJohn Birch Society. During the administration ofRonald Reagan, the term "boll weevils" was applied to this bloc of conservative Democrats, who consistently voted in favor of tax cuts, increases in military spending, and deregulation favored by the Reagan administration but were opposed to cuts in social welfare spending.[21]
Boll weevils was sometimes used as a political epithet by Democratic Party leaders, implying that the boll weevils were unreliable on key votes or not team players. Most of the boll weevils either retired from office or (like SenatorsPhil Gramm andRichard Shelby) switched parties and joined the Republicans. Since 1988, the termboll weevils has fallen out of favor.
Split-ticket voting was common among conservative Southern Democrats in the 1970s and 1980s. These voters supported conservative Democrats for local and statewide office while simultaneously voting for Republican presidential candidates. For example,Kent Hance defeated future presidentGeorge W. Bush in the1978 midterms.[22] They were sometimes humorously called "Yellow dog Democrats", or "boll weevils" and "Dixiecrats". According to journalist Ed Kilgore, Yellow Dog Democrats were Southerners who saw the Democratic Party as "the default vehicle for day-to-day political life, and the dominant presence, regardless of ideology, for state and local politics."[23]
In theHouse after the1994 Republican Revolution, theBlue Dog Coalition was formed, a caucus of conservatives and centrists willing to broker compromises with the Republican leadership who acted as a unified voting bloc in the past, giving its members some ability to change legislation, depending on their numbers in Congress.
During the2006 midterm elections, the Democratic Party ran moderates and even a few conservative Democrats for at-risk Republican seats.[24] TheBlue Dog Democrats gained nine seats during the elections.[25] TheNew Democrats had support from 27 of the 40 Democratic candidates running for at-risk Republican seats.[24]
In his2010 campaign for reelection,Walter Minnick, U.S. Representative forIdaho's 1st congressional district, was endorsed byTea Party Express, an extremely rare occurrence for a Democrat.[26][27] Minnick was the only Democrat to receive a 100% rating from theClub for Growth, an organization that typically supports conservative Republicans.[28] Minnick lost toRaúl Labrador, a conservative Republican, in the general election.
The Washington Post noted the waning influence of the conservative DemocraticBlue Dog Coalition voting bloc, losing over half of their previously more than 50U.S. House members in the2010 midterms.[29] In the2018 House of Representatives elections, the Democratic Party nominated moderate to conservative candidates in many contested districts and won a majority in the chamber. In the aftermath of the elections, the Blue Dog Coalition expanded to 27 members.[30]
During the117th Congress with theSenate evenly split 50-50, U.S. SenatorJoe Manchin of West Virginia wielded enormous influence as the most conservative member of theSenate Democratic Caucus. Manchin refused to abolish theSenate filibuster for non-budget reconciliation-related legislation, but did vote to confirmKetanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court and pass theInflation Reduction Act.[31][32] During the2022 midterms, Democrats narrowly lost their House majority, though they gained a seat in the Senate. The Blue Dog Coalition was reduced to eight members, the lowest number in its history.[33]
In 2023,Joe Manchin, described as the most conservative Democratic U.S. Senator,[34] announced he would not seek re-election in2024.[35] Manchin left the Democratic Party and registered as anIndependent on May 31, 2024.[36]
The Blue Dog Coalition was formed in 1995[37][38][39] during the104th Congress to give members from the Democratic Party representing conservative-leaning districts a unified voice after Democrats' loss of Congress in the 1994Republican Revolution.[40] The coalition consists of centrist and conservative Democrats.[41]
The term "Blue Dog Democrat" is credited toTexas Democratic U.S. RepresentativePete Geren (who later joined theBush administration). Geren opined that the members had been "choked blue" by Democrats on the left.[42] It is related to the political term "Yellow Dog Democrat", a reference toSouthern Democrats said to be so loyal they would even vote for a yellow dog before they would vote for any Republican. The term is also a reference to the "Blue Dog" paintings ofCajun artistGeorge Rodrigue ofLafayette, Louisiana.[43][44]
The Blue Dog Coalition "advocates for fiscal responsibility, a strong national defense and bipartisan consensus rather than conflict with Republicans". It acts as a check on legislation that its members perceive to be too far to the right or the left on the political spectrum.[41] The Blue Dog Coalition is often involved in searching for a compromise betweenliberal andconservative positions. As of 2014, there was no mention of social issues in the official Blue Dog materials.[45]
Historically,Southern Democrats were generally much more conservative than conservative Democrats are now, and formed the Democratic half of theconservative coalition.[46] After the 1994Republican Revolution, the Republican Party won a majority of U.S. House seats in the South for the first time since Reconstruction, with the remaining conservative Democrats forming theBlue Dog Coalition.[47]
Conservative Democrats are generallyfiscally conservative, and are often alsosocially conservative.[46] According to journalist Ed Kilgore,Yellow Dog Democrats were Southerners who saw the Democratic Party as "the default vehicle for day-to-day political life, and the dominant presence, regardless of ideology, for state and local politics."[48]
In 2019, the Pew Research Center found that 14% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters identify as conservative or very conservative, 38% identify as moderate, and 47% identify as liberal or very liberal.[2]
Four years ago, they were the most influential voting bloc on Capitol Hill, more than 50 House Democrats pulling their liberal colleagues to a more centrist, fiscally conservative vision on issues such as health care and Wall Street reforms.
To be sure, they also tended to vote with the right on national security issues but they were explicitly organized around market based economics and fiscal conservatism from the very beginning and they never wavered in their dedication to those ideals. ... Not that the members weren't traditional values types. Most were. And they surely ran for office on those issues as well. But there is not one word in the official Blue Dog materials about social issues.
