Bredesen Launches Senate Bid With Video

NASHVILLE, TN -- Former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen formally launched his campaign for the United States Senate with a two-minute video released Thursday.

The Democrat, who served two terms as governor and two as mayor of Metro Nashville, said in the message "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 of Washington and bring common sense back to our government."

Bredesen, wearing a vest similar to the green one that became his trademark look during the 2010 Nashville flood, addressed a range of topics from the economy to the Affordable Care Act - Bredesen, a former health care executive, said the ACA needs "fixing" - to the opioid crisis.

He touted his record as governor and mayor, particularly that the state turned around its bond rating and reversed a massive budget shortfall into a surplus during his tenure.

Bredesen was the last Democrat elected to statewide office in Tennessee. He eked out a victory for the governorship by 3 points in 2002, but was overwhelmingly re-elected in 2006 with nearly 69 percent of the vote, sweeping all 95 counties and winning more than 1.2 million votes, the most for any gubernatorial candidate in the state's history. He left office overwhelmingly popular from Union City to the Unakas, a rarity these days for Tennessee Democrats.

The Tennessee Republican Party fired back at Bredesen in a statement saying that the state and country need fresh ideas and tied Bredesen to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

“Former Governor Phil Bredesen’s record represents the Tennessee of yesterday when Democrats labeled extreme unemployment rates, higher taxes, and a total lack of government transparency as ‘prospering.' A lot has changed in the last 16 years, since the first time he ran for statewide office.
“Since Governor Bredesen left office and our state with a 10.4% unemployment rate, Tennesseans have seen their state and their lives improve. Whether it has been by cutting taxes, supporting fiscal responsibility, or driving unemployment to historic lows, Republican elected officials in Tennessee have established a record of making our state, and our country, a better place to live, work, and achieve the American dream. Next year’s U.S. Senate election will be about comparing the Tennessee of today, to the Tennessee of yesterday, and the records and results are clear.
“As the primary process gets underway for both parties, we look forward to contrasting our fresh, bold Republican vision for the future with the Democrats’ retread message of the job killing policies of Pelosi and Schumer."

Bredesen joins political upstart James Mackler, a 44-year-old Nashville attorney, in seeking the Democratic nomination. The winner of that primary will face the winner of the Republican primary, likely either U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, a conservative stalwart and prominent supporter of President Donald Trump, or former U.S. Rep. Stephen Fincher of Frog Jump. Fincher, though a supporter of Trump as well, is seen as more closely aligned with the state's Republican establishment.

This will be the centrist Bredesen's first foray into national politics, though he was considered an outside possibility to be Barack Obama's running mate in 2008 and was reportedly on the shortlist to be Obama's Health and Human Services Secretary.

Politically, the New York-born Bredesen's first mayoral victory in 1991 is regarded as the end of the dominance of the East Nashville political juggernaut which controlled Davidson County politics for decades. Bredesen began a streak of Nashville mayors — Philadelphia-born Bill Purcell, South Dakota-born Karl Dean and Kansas City-born Megan Berry — who were not originally from Davidson County.

Photo via State of Tennessee