Can Phil flip Tennessee?
It is certainly possible, but by no means a sure thing. Since Phil Bredesen’s first gubernatorial win in 2002, the map has gotten that much redder, the terrain that much steeper. As evidenced by the below graph, showing a weighted number of public office holders by party, Tennessee emerged from the Second World War with a super strong Democratic ascendancy, to relative bipartisanship between the 1960s and early 2000s, to a strong Republican ascendancy beginning to manifest itself towards the end of Bredesen’s governorship. But as the state’s politics continue to realign, it is possible that new combinations of voter support could push the former Governor over the finish line first.
The suburbs around Nashville were instrumental in making what was previously a strong Democratic Middle division of the state more of a bipartisan swing state (helping George W. Bush win over native son Al Gore Jr. in 2000) and helped initiate the change of the State Senate from Democratic to Republican. In 2010, a watershed year to the state Republican party, the rural areas eventually followed suit en masse, with the effective collapse of the traditional yellow-dog centrist, rural Democratic vote in the remaining Middle and Western divisions of the state. Thus, while the Donald Trump Presidential ticket in 2016 carried several previously yellow dog (Mondale and McGovern voting) counties to record levels of support for the Republican Party, the phenomenon of Democratic Party decline in the rural counties predated the populist campaign of Trump and therefore should be seen as more of a long-term dynamic that will determine how each party positions itself to influence future elections.
This is not to say that there aren’t ‘yellow-dog’ recapture votes to be had for the Bredesen campaign. As previously noted in the 2017 Alabama Senate race where Doug Jones eked out a narrow win, his campaign was much more dependent on urban votes that has previously been the case for Democrats in Alabama. But several strong Trump (previously staunch Democratic) counties in the northwest portion of the state noticeably shifted towards the Democrats, even if they remained a lighter shade of red. This could well be the case for the Bredesen campaign in Tennessee, where some of the same yellow-dog counties which supported Trump in 2016 return to the Democratic fold. This could be seen as a nod to a more ‘traditional’ style of state politics which is less partisan and based on the personality of the candidate – the centrist Bredesen remains highly regarded for his two terms as Governor.
His opponent, U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn from suburban Williamson County, is by her own admission more partisan, at least in the sense that she has fully embraced the Donald Trump campaign and as seen as a staunch supporter of the President’s agenda. Even before Trump, Blackburn’s style of politics was seen as a shift towards a more ideologically defined approach than the traditional pragmatism of some of the state’s GOP elder statesmen such as Howard Baker Jr. In adding Trump’s confrontational style to the mix, however, Blackburn’s partisan and ideological edges are likely amplified, which account for a more polarized opinion about her persona than Bredesen.
Clearly every vote will count for Bredesen in what is now a much more red-leaning state than when he won his first mandate as Governor. Some traditional rural vote recapture will be necessary for him to win, and his campaign deliberately disavowing partisanship (to the point of openly opposing the Democratic party line on Brent Cavanaugh’s U.S. Supreme Court nomination and Chuck Schumer’s Democratic Senate leadership) could help entice more traditionalist Tennessee voters in the rural counties back in the fold.
In terms of number of votes, however, Bredesen is far more dependent on suburban and urban votes if he is to have a realistic shot at victory. In the same time that the rural areas have swung more sharply towards Republicans, there is some evidence that the larger urban counties – Knox and Hamilton/Chattanooga (which traditionally supported Republicans even as the state as a whole did not) are less instrumental in Republican wins, and have even trended away from the same increases in overall Republican support. Rutherford/Murfreesboro, more suburban and anchored by a large public university, basically had static levels of Republican presidential support between 2012 and 2016, and Williamson County was one of four counties statewide which saw a decrease in levels of Republican support during those same presidential election years. The largest cities – Nashville and Memphis, which at one time could contribute to Republican margins (more so in Memphis/Shelby than Nashville) have become increasingly Democratic in their support, with Hillary Clinton winning close to or over 60% support in each county in 2016. This could be likened to an I-24 strategy for a state Democratic renaissance, loosely based on the key cities on that section of interstate (Chattanooga, Murfreesboro, Nashville and Clarksville) that may increasingly trend Democratic and help make the state more competitive.
This race will be indicative of overall state political trends in the future, since the Republicans have adopted with Trump a more aggressive, confrontational approach, which may or may not work for Republicans further down the ballot. In the larger urban areas, can the centrist Bredesen count on a large turnout of Democrats who might otherwise prefer a more activist, progressive approach? In the suburban areas and smaller metropolitan areas (i.e. Chattanooga) will the electorate, perhaps more preferential to moderation than firebrand populism, continue to trend more towards the Democrats? Will the rural areas, more amenable to conservative populism but also cognizant of actual candidates and their record, regardless of party, return at least in part to the Democratic fold?
For Bredesen, and Tennessee Democrats in the longer term, they need a decisive “yes” to all the above questions – an urban progressive base who can still be relied upon to support moderates, suburbs and smaller metro areas becoming increasingly more competitive, and rural areas, at least for the time being, who can still support centrist, pragmatic Democrats of an earlier era when the state was considerably more blue.
