He's Running: Former Gov. Phil Bredesen Making Senate Bid

NASHVILLE, TN -- Former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen is calling major Democratic Party donors to say he is running for the United States Senate, NashvillePost.com reports.

Bredesen, also an ex-mayor of Metro Nashville, has been mulling a run for the seat being left vacant by Sen. Bob Corker's retirement for at least six weeks. After initially demurring, Bredesen said in mid-October he would consider a bid and, according to the Post, the 74-year-old is jumping in the race.

Bredesen, the last Democrat elected to statewide office in Tennessee, is a former two-term governor and mayor of Metro Nashville. Bredesen 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 overwhelming popular from Bristol to Bartlett, a rarity these days for Tennessee Democrats.

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.

The general election campaign is expected to be extraordinarily expensive and Bredesen was considered by many observers as the only Democrat with the ability to keep pace with the Republicans in the fundraising department. Bredesen, a former health care magnate, has considerable personal wealth.

The centrist Bredesen has never made a formal 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. During his tenure as governor, he oversaw significant budget cuts — 9 percent across the board in his first year — and then turned his focus to improving Tennessee's education and economic development.

He was in office when the state enacted a lottery with money earmarked for college scholarships and pre-K programs and when corporations like Nissan relocated headquarters to the Volunteer State. That followed a stint as Nashville mayor, which included the relocation of the Houston Oilers to become the Tennessee Titans and the construction of what is now Bridgestone Arena, which led to the NHL awarding the Nashville Predators to the Music City.

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