Sen. Strom Thurmond's race for an eighth term has the air of a victory lap. Even those who say it's time for the 93-year-old Republican war horse to call it a day are paying grudging homage.
Thurmond, leading his 43-year-old Democratic opponent, Elliott Close, in the polls, is content to keep it that way.The nation's oldest senator ever - he set the record earlier this year - campaigns mostly on weekends at parades, festivals and football games.
He poses for pictures, shakes hands and occasionally gives a generic stump speech about how "it would take my opponent 60 years to catch up to what I can do in the next six years."
Close, heir to a textile fortune, is in a quandary. While he wants voters to retire Thurmond, he finds it necessary to acknowledge Thurmond's legendary ability to help constituents.
"I think he used to get results. I'm not sure how much is done for this state . . . specifically by Strom Thurmond and how much is done by his staff," Close said.
Thurmond, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has been criticized in recent years as dependent on his staff and out of touch with the intricacies of public policy. Recent disclosures about Thurmond's use of state police as chauffeurs also caused a few grumbles.
But Thurmond has loomed large in South Carolina politics since he won an extraordinary write-in campaign for the Senate in 1954.
Two years later, fulfilling a promise to seek election in the traditional manner, he resigned and won the seat back. He left the Democratic Party for the GOP in 1964 and hasn't had a tough campaign since 1978, when Democrat Charles "Pug" Ravenel held him to 55 percent of the vote.
"Thurmond's done a good bit for South Carolina, but I still say he should get down," said 72-year-old Robert Lewis Griffin of Greenville.
But then there are those like Ray McAdams, a 67-year-old retired Duke Power Co. employee from Cherokee County.
"A lot of people, when a man gets to be a little up in age, they like to turn him out to pasture," McAdams said. "I think (Thurmond) is a person who really goes to bat for the little people. What I mean by that is the working class of people."
Close admits his family's reaction to the prospect of his challenging Thurmond was hardly positive. "Mainly, they thought I was nuts for thinking about it," he said.
He most often addresses the age issue obliquely by promising to serve no more than two terms and frequently mentioning that Thurmond began his public life in the late 1920s. But in a recent Close commercial, elderly actors talk about how Thurmond is too old and needs to "come home."
If he wins and completes his six-year term, Thurmond, whose birthday is Dec. 5, would be 100. But he has never been one to let age stand his way. At the age of 66, for instance, Thurmond married 22-year-old beauty queen Nancy Moore. The couple separated in 1991, though Thurmond continues to wear his wedding band. One of their four children, Nancy, was hit and killed by a car in 1993 while walking.
In tune with his conservative state, Close supports a balanced budget amendment and campaign finance reform and sometimes speaks about "fighting Ted Kennedy and the liberals" in the Senate if elected. He refuses political action committee donations.
In one-on-one exchanges, he's forceful and animated. On the campaign trail, however, it's clear Close is unlikely to ever become a Thurmond-style glad-hander. "I'm shy," Close says.
The senator focuses mostly on the constituent service that even Close praises: getting passports and wayward Social Security checks for people or grants for local communities.