2018 General ElectionLost 55 — 44
Back into the ring
The Democrats haven’t done well with old warhorses. Evan Bayh’s attempt to return to the Senate from Indiana is one example of failure. Former governor Ted Strickland’s losing campaign for the Senate from Ohio in 2016 is a better example. Why would Phil Bredesen http://www.bredesen.com/ succeed south of Kentucky when Strickland could not north of Kentucky? Can former Tennessee Governor Bredesen win election to the Senate?
Phil Bredesen is unusual. Unusual for Tennessee, unusual for anyplace.
- Grew up in New Jersey.
- Grew up an army brat
- Went to Harvard
- Majored in physics
- Did classified work for a firm in Massachusetts
- Married and divorced
- Awakened to politics and campaigned for Eugene McCarthy
- Ran, unsuccessfully, for the State Senate in Massachusetts
- Went to London — to manage a division of G. D. Searle and Company
- Remarried in England
- Followed his wife to her new job in Tennessee
- Created an insurance company — HealthAmerica Corp.
- Became wealthy when he sold his insurance company.
- Returned to politics
- Lost a campaign for mayor of Nashville.
- Won a campaign for mayor of Nashville.
- Built a downtown library, built schools, improved the school curriculum, attracted an N.FL football team, an NHL hockey team, but could not attract an NBA basketball team
- Lost a campaign for governor
- Won a campaign for governor and then won a second term
- Dealt with a fiscal crisis by cutting services including the state’s medicaid program. When he could spend money, focused on education and libraries. Focused on conservation and on ending a methadone epidemic through treatment and shutting down labs.
- Retired after two terms and focused on hobbies and the development of a solar energy plant.
- People see him as a fiscal conservative and a social liberal
- In Ohio, Ted Strickland faced a young insurgent in the Democratic primary. In Tennessee, Bredesendoes not. The young Tennessee insurgent, a former military pilot married to a female rabbi, withdrew from the race.
Phil Bredesen can win this election. Here is how he puts it in his website:
I’m running for the Senate because I have the right kind of experience — and the actual track record — that it will take to start working across party lines to fix the mess in Washington and bring common sense back to our government.
Before I ran for office, I was a businessman. I was the CEO of a successful public company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, one that I started on my kitchen table and grew to 6,000 employees. Later, I was a successful Mayor. Lots of new jobs, a revitalized downtown, the Nashville Predators, the Tennessee Titans.
When I was sworn in as Governor, TennCare was out of control and our bond rating was headed South. And then we had the meltdown of the Great Recession. With a lot of hard choices, we managed our way through all of that — without an income tax and without raising the sales tax. And we didn’t just get through it, we prospered. We put new money in education — especially in teacher’s salaries. We brought in new jobs and investment. Our rainy-day fund hit new highs and we achieved a triple A bond rating — the best there is.
We need and deserve something better than we’re getting from Washington. And we need and deserve a Senator who can make that happen.
I’m applying for the job.
Here is what the Memphis Daily News said about Phil Bredesen after Doug Jones won in Alabama:
Democrats eager to take control of the Senate next year are turning to the state of Tennessee, where a popular Democratic former governor is running for the seat being vacated by the retirement of Republican Sen. Bob Corker.
Neither of Tennessee’s two top GOP candidates, Rep. Marsha Blackburn and former Rep. Stephen Fincher, has the kind of personal baggage Republican Roy Moore had in the Alabama race won by a Democrat. But both have wholeheartedly embraced President Donald Trump at what Democrats hope is exactly the wrong time.
“Tennessee is clearly in play,” said Paul Maslin, a pollster who worked for the campaign of Doug Jones, the first Democrat elected in a quarter-century in Alabama. Jones’ rival, Moore, was besieged by decades-old accusations of sexual misconduct involving teenage girls when he was in his 30s. Moore denied the allegations.
Former Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen, a known quantity in Tennessee, has kicked off his Senate run from a position of strength.
“He starts with credibility among Tennesseans that Doug Jones didn’t have or almost no Democratic challenger in any of the other Republican states would have next year,”
Maslin, the Democratic pollster, said Bredesen should be able to pick off former Trump supporters around Tennessee, including women and college-educated voters. Said Maslin, “There are frankly lots of suburban white voters in and around Nashville, Memphis and Knoxville that fit the profile of voters who are moving away from Trump and or the Republicans in Washington.
Maybe Phil Bredesen can.
Here’s the challenge.
PhilBredesen has to win more than the white suburban vote. In Alabama, blacks are 25% of the population and were 30% of the vote in the special election that elected Doug Jones. Tennessee is just under 80% white. Bredesen has to generate a non-white vote that is at least 20% of the total vote, maybe more that 20% of the total vote. How do non-whites in Tennessee remember Phil Bredesen as governor?
When Phil Bredesentalks about his approach to politics, he describes first approaching people in small towns, people who an analyst would say, make up the white working class — Trump voters. Phil Bredesenwill not carry the votes of the white working class in Tennessee, but he’s got a history with them. He could make a dent.
If Phil Bredesenhas bona fides, it is in two areas — careful spending (even cutting spending) and deficit reduction and health care; the former because he was tough on spending as governor and an opponent of the federal deficit, the latter because he created, ran, and then sold a health insurance company. On those issues alone, he has a campaign against Republicans, a campaign that would appeal to the suburban voters he needs to win and to others.
Phil Bredesen does not have the same bona fides with the African-American community that Doug Jones had in Alabama. He has some, though. He fought to have African-American judges appointed — regularly quarreling with the nominating committee whose nominations he had to select from. His administrative appointments were more than 20% African-American. He will need enthusiastic support from the African-American community.
Like Jones,Phil Bredesencould be helped by the quality of his opponent. Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, a likely opponent, describes herself as a “hardcore conservative.” She is outspoken enough and offensive enough to have been suspended from Twitter. The other likely opponent, former Congressman Stephen Fincher is described as a social and fiscal conservative — a pro-life, pro-gun opponent of same-sex marriage. He was named one of the most corrupt members of congress in 2011. Apart from corruption charges, he was able to combine opposition to the Food Stamp program with getting $3.5 million in federal agricultural subsidies for his farm. Neither of these likely opponents is Roy Moore, but either one gives Bredesensomething to work with.
You can give Phil Bredesenhttp://www.bredesen.com/something to work with, too. Think about some financial support. Wealthy as he may be, he is not going to self-fund a Senate race in a state the size of Tennessee. Think about a monthly donation. Demonstrating grassroots support can mean a lot to larger donors.
