NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — 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 said.
Voters both in Tennessee and Alabama went for Trump in a big way in 2016: Trump’s margin of victory was 28 percentage points in Alabama and 26 points in Tennessee, though his poll numbers have slipped somewhat since. And while Fincher and Blackburn slug it out to the primary for who can be the more pro-Trump candidate, Bredesen can concentrate on a message of being a problem-solver who can “fix the mess” in Washington.
“The risk is that when you have so embraced a public official that is fairly unpredictable, that if his numbers start to erode suddenly you’re in trouble,” said Kent Syler, a political science professor at Middle Tennessee State University and a former Democratic congressional staffer.
With Republicans up 51-49 in the Senate next year, the stakes will be high in November.
Much was made of Democrats’ 25-year losing streak in Senate races in Alabama until a Dec. 12 special election. In Tennessee it’s been two years longer since Al Gore was the Democrats’ last victorious Senate candidate in 1990. Tennessee Democrats have fallen short ever since Gore left the Senate to become Bill Clinton’s vice president.
In his campaign launch video, Bredesen didn’t even mention Trump. Bredesen told the Associated Press afterward that he’s intent on winning back voters who supported him in 2002 and 2006.
“If you just do the basic arithmetic, there’s got to be hundreds of thousands of people in this state who voted for me and then turned around and voted for Trump,” Bredesen said. “I don’t think they’ve totally changed — political views don’t change in that way.”
But simply portraying himself as the adult in the room may not be enough if Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander’s most recent experience is any guide. A former two-term governor, Alexander suffered a serious primary scare en route to his 2014 re-election. While depicting himself as the senior statesman staying above the attacks of a little-known tea-party styled opponent, Alexander ended up winning by a too-close-for-comfort 9 percentage points.
Chris Hayden, spokesman for the Democratic Senate Majority PAC, said he expects Bredesen will draw wide support.
“He is a great candidate who will be running against an opponent tied to a deeply unpopular and ineffective Republican Congress,” said Hayden.
The National Republican Senate Committee is quick to scoff at such claims.
“If Phil Bredesen thinks Tennesseans want him opposing President Trump and his agenda, he really doesn’t have a clue,” committee spokesman Michael McAdams said. “Tennesseans made their voices heard loud and clear last election, and they’re not about to let a 74-year-old politician block the change they voted for.”
Corker declined in a recent interview to weigh in on what the Alabama race portends for those vying to succeed him. But he noted the recent Virginia governor’s race — won by a Democrat — showed Republicans could be losing their grasp on once-reliable GOP voters. And hyper-partisanship in Washington isn’t helping.
“The tone of much of the conversation coming out of Washington is a turnoff,” said Corker, who has openly feuded with Trump. Corker once charged Trump had turned the White House into an “adult day care center” while Trump has tweeted Corker was a “lightweight” and “couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Tennessee.”
As for term-limited Republican Gov. Bill Haslam, the lesson from Alabama should be that GOP candidates need to think about winning both the primary and the general vote.
“Republicans need to elect people who can win two elections,” Haslam said, adding the results in Virginia and Alabama have shown that voting patterns might be changing. “For people in my party, it’s a heads-up: We need to be thinking about why we’re losing some voters we’ve traditionally gotten.”
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.”
Anyone but Marsha…
This has been an extremely interesting development I’ve been keeping an eye on. Not just because, flipping a seat in TN, after flipping one in AL…but because early polling showing us with a close race there, adds even more encouragement to Dems to run everywhere.
Even if we don’t win everywhere, make them squirm and spin money. If we take the Senate, or even get closer…the fear of voters will be strong in their black hearts heading into 2020, the year when their advantage flips…they have more seats to defend than we do. That’s important, because it makes it much more likely GOP Senators will vote to impeach Trump after a Democratic House passes articles of impeachment.
Have enjoyed you well informed commentary over the years DJ64. Here’s to a triumphant 2018
Think back to the ill-conceived “White Lives Matter” twin marches this fall - planned in rural areas (because the lesson - so said the planners - from Charlottesville was to plan events in their natural areas - not in liberal areas) - planned for two events about 100 miles apart one in the morning one in the mid afternoon.
Many more (mostly local) counter protesters showed up than marchers/white supremacists. The second event - in an even smaller community (if I recall correctly) also had a large showing (mostly local) in opposition - but the event marchers (except a handful who didn’t get the message) didn’t show up.
They called the second event off. Allegedly because they left so late from the first event (blamed on having to go through security - and leave line to put all weapons back in their cars and get back into the security line - that pushed the time back too late to make it to the second event.) However, reportedly the ‘leaders’ gathered at a park outside of the first town, and decided it to just call off the second one - because it wasn’t looking like more people were going to join them, and they didn’t make their cause look big and strong - which I think was the whole point.
I read and watched video interviews with some of the counter-protesters - who indicated they felt very strongly that they wanted to send the message that these white supremacists did not represent who they (the town(s)) were.
Tap into that energy in the rural areas - along with the same urban and suburban areas in Tennessee as turned out strongly in Alabama and Virginia - and it seems like their is reason to be hopeful for this race.
If Marsha wins the primary, Democrats should make net neutrality a big issue. Marsha has been extremely antagonistic to municipal broadband in Chattanooga which is an overwhelming success. She led the charge to block the FCC from preempting the law that kept EPB from expanding its footprint. That left a lot of people with little better than dial up when EPB could easily have covered them. There are a whole lot of voters in E.TN that dont have access and it can be pinned squarely on her shoulders. Even now she has written a bill that tries to strip the FCC of any regulatory power over broadband (not that they are using it).
Marsha Blackburn (R-Comcast) has taken over 600,000.00 from Comcast