Clinton’s Appeal Stalls at Southern 500 Stock-Car Race : Campaign: The nominee is booed. But he finds some supporters and vows not to give up the South.

DARLINGTON, S.C. —  The first hint that Bill Clinton picked a strange place to plant his campaign flag on Sunday came as his rumbling motorcade entered Darlington speedway, where 70,000 rabid stock-car fans awaited the start of the Southern 500.

“Are you bringing that draft dodger in?” one man yelled.

“Go home, cheater!” another hollered.

And those were only the preliminary greetings. When the Democratic presidential nominee came into view of the grandstands, a cheer rang loudly from the crowd:

“Bush, Bush!” thousands chanted, while others roundly booed Clinton.

Here at the Southern 500, where the air was heavy with beer and engine fumes and the crowd was powered with a swaggering sense of macho, it was not always easy to be a Democrat.

Here the king is not Elvis Presley but Richard Petty. Voters are determinedly Republican and not shy about saying so, even if it means snubbing the grand marshal, which the Arkansas governor was on Sunday.

But while Clinton’s adventure among the stock-car denizens had its rough spots, there were also indications that he is making some inroads among those who would not be suspected of harboring good feelings about him.

Why, even Miss Southern 500, a sweet young woman with an upswept blonde hairdo, a rhinestone crown and a plunging neckline, declared that she liked Clinton.

“Some of his policies are good,” said Eliza Caughman, talking over the ear-splitting roar of the engines gunning on Pit Row. “He has a good chance this year.”

Not that she was sold on voting for him. “I didn’t say that. I’m real non-biased at this point,” she said, shirking from controversy at all costs.

It is a measure of both Clinton’s confidence and his campaign’s desire to play some tactical games with President Bush that he found himself on Sunday courting voters who have come to define the Republican Party in the South.

And he was doing so at an archetype of the Old South, where the mostly male, overwhelmingly white crowd gathered for the oldest major race in a sport that draws true-blue fanatics. A “Redneck-orama,” one Clinton aide called it.

On Sunday, the Confederate flag flew unbesmirched over the speedway, the decor ran to T-shirts bearing the logos of beer companies and few people wanted to disrupt their viewing of the race to talk about the presidential campaign. But more of them than George Bush would like were open to voting for Clinton.

“I like Clinton,” said Andrew Brabbs, a 23-year-old construction worker from Lumberton, N.C., who was hanging out under the awning of a motor home in the speedway’s crowded infield. “He acts like he’s speaking the truth when he comes up to talk.”

Theresa Dent, sitting nearby, could not put her finger on why she was receptive to Clinton. But she said she was.

“For some reason, I do like Clinton,” said the Oram, N.C., woman. “He seems like a nice guy.”

The sense of Southern affinity was what Clinton was after as he ventured to the race track, much like another Southern governor named Jimmy Carter did in 1976. From accounts at the time, Carter appeared to have had better luck selling himself to the crowd.

Clinton arrived about an hour before race time and walked to the racing garage where he chatted with stock car driver Mark Martin, an Arkansas native whose father is a friend of the governor.

Clinton, clad in jeans, a Darlington T-shirt and a matching hat, eventually meandered over to the track itself, where he gave the traditional order--”Gentlemen, start your engines”--and took two pace laps at Los Angeles freeway speeds before he got off the track and let the real show begin.

Trained, as all politicians are, to see the bright side, Clinton brushed off the embarrassment of having nearly all of an immense grandstand demonstrate its opposition.

“I got booed at an Arkansas football game one time in a year when I won (the governor’s race) 2-1,” he said. “People think politicians shouldn’t be at stock car races or ball games or anything like that.”

The Arkansas governor said he was “surprised” at the number of mechanics and race officials who indicated their desire to vote for him, after reports earlier in the week suggested that most drivers were firmly in the Bush camp.

But Clinton remains intent on fighting it out in South Carolina, a move meant to force the Republicans to continue to battle for turf that should be theirs to begin with, limiting the time they can fight in other states more hospitable to Democrats.

Clinton said Sunday that he intends to campaign this year in South Carolina, which he described as one of the handful of states he supposedly has no chance to win.

Today on the Trail . . .

Bill Clinton in Independence, Mo., and Cincinnati.

Al Gore in Chicago, Detroit and Cincinnati.

President Bush in Mackinac, Mich., Milwaukee and Hamtramck, Mich.

Vice President Quayle in Grand Junction, Colo., and Lodi, Calif.