OLUMBIA, S.C. - He is trying, as a top aide put it, to build the base of the South Carolina Republican Party ''beyond the country club.'' And that effort has taken Senator John McCain to places and settings where GOP candidates are seldom seen.
To the grounds of a Columbia synagogue, for instance - a rare bit of outreach for a Republican candidate here. And to a huge Clemson University rally featuring thousands of students, strobe lights, and booming rock music.
''This is the new Republican Party,'' McCain political director John Weaver, ecstatic, shouted to a companion over the din.
With interest in the race high, both sides are suggesting that the turnout tomorrow could be as high as 400,000. In the 1996 GOP primary here, a lively contest between Bob Dole and Patrick Buchanan, 276,000 voters came to the polls.
Because South Carolina has no party registration, any eligible voter in the state can cast a ballot. McCain's victory in New Hampshire earlier this month was fueled by an enormous turnout by independents, and his aides say that if the total vote in South Carolina exceeds 400,000, McCain will be a winner again.
Bush's state communications director, Tucker Eskew, said yesterday the Bush campaign was not troubled by the prospect of a big turnout. ''In 1994, the Republicans here turned out 400,000 in a gubernatorial primary, so our votes are there to get.''
Most analysts say that Bush can expect to beat McCain 2 to 1 among Republicans - a projection that the McCain campaign does not dispute.
But with interest in the Democratic presidential race receding to the back pages, it is conceivable that many Democrats who like McCain's style may be willing to forgo their own historically inconsequential primary next month in order to vote in the Republican primary. No one questions that thousands of independents will also come out tomorrow.
In his campaign appearances, McCain has been talking of building a new Republican Party while criticizing the existing GOP. ''This party I love and cherish has lost its way,'' he told a large audience gathered under a tent outside Beth Shalom Synagogue Tuesday.
At a rally in Newberry the next day, McCain described Abraham Lincoln, a symbol of ''inclusiveness, tolerance, and forgiveness,'' as one of his heroes. That night, he took the stage at an open-air amphitheater on the Clemson campus to the cheers of several thousand students and the sounds of the old rock anthem ''Louie, Louie.'' At the end, cannons fired rounds of confetti into the sky, obscuring a full moon, while strobe lights swept the crowd.
McCain's appearance at the synagogue was the first visit in memory by a Republican presidential candidate to a Jewish group in Dixie. Although McCain said later that none of the hundreds he met there mentioned Bob Jones University to him, Bush's visit to the white Protestant fundamentalist institution earlier this month is believed to have aroused the indignation of many Jews.
The political animosity between the Jewish community in South Carolina and the religious right is more than 20 years old. One McCain supporter said it dated to 1978, when Carroll Campbell, a Republican leader, defeated the Jewish mayor of Greenville, Max Heller, in a race for a congressional seat. In that contest, Heller was undermined by a whispering campaign about his faith.
Carroll went on to be a two-term governor and his organization is providing the backbone of the Bush campaign. This year, the Texas governor is following a pattern his father, George Bush, used in the 1988 primary, speaking at Bob Jones University and appealing to hard-core conservatives.
McCain's advisers say Bush is fighting an old war, failing to reckon with the state's new demographics. In the years since that famous primary, which served as a ''firewall'' against the advance of his opponents, a half-million new residents have moved to the state, changing the complexion of South Carolina from a rural, conservative stronghold to a prosperous landscape with booming businesses and sprawling suburbs. A moderate Democrat, Jim Hodges, was elected governor 15 months ago.
