How Lee used negative attacks to his advantage
That Williamson County businessman Bill Lee would receive the Republican nomination for governor seemed unlikely not that long ago.
The most boisterous of his opponents, former Economic and Development Commissioner Randy Boyd and U.S. Rep Diane Black, sucked up all the air in the race with increasingly stark and negative ads.
Lee’s advantage in the end was his unknown profile. Lee, a heating and air man from Middle Tennessee had basically no reputation outside of his local area and had no record that most voters would immediately recognize.
But as his profile grew, so too did the attacks on him, mostly from the Black camp, which offered the perverse effect of increasing his exposure.
Black turned the race, though not in the way she might wish. Politics, and particularly Republican politics, seems in the past several years to have taken negative campaigning all the way to its logical conclusion. Black drove it there with attack ads that only the willing suspension of disbelief made palatstunts, able. She used moderate as if it were a dirty word. She essentially called Lee a Democrat in Republican clothing.
Ronald Reagan deployed his 11th commandment in his 1966 race for California governor: “Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.”
Black stomped Reagan’s admonition flat, dug a hole and buried it.
Black tarred Boyd as well, but Boyd fought back, labeling Black “DC Diane.” The two tangled over conservative bona fides and sought to define themselves based on political catch phrases and issues, like immigration, that governors have little control over.
These things are important all in context, but voters seemed to turn away from the display in disgust.
Here stood Bill Lee, who rarely said anything outside of defining himself and occasionally answering some outlandish charge. He also tended home base the most, charging up more than 50 percent of the vote in his home county on primary day, and taking Davidson County from House Speaker Beth Harwell, while Black and Boyd struggled more than they should have in their home areas.
Lee emphasized rural issues, speaking of his life spent on a working farm and riding a tractor across the state, a stunt like all political but authentic enough. He rolled out rural policy proposals and. It paid off.
Meat and potatoes politics here. Meet the people. Don’t make too many mad. Keep home folks happy.
Former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean walked easily over House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh in the Democratic primary.
The moderate Dean will want to carve the same path that Democratic Senate nominee Phil Bredesen cut in 2002 in his own gubernatorial race.
History would seem to be on his side. Tennessee elected a Democratic governor in 2002 and a Republican Senator. In 2006, voters overwhelmingly reelected Bredesen while dispatching freshman Republican Bob Corker to the Senate.
But partisan attitudes are much more entrenched now than they were then, and Dean will find Lee a more competitive candidate, having already survived a hurricane.
The Tennessee Republican Party has some healing to do. It shouldn’t be hard. Overall, the party is poised to maintain its hold on the state, including the governorship.
But for now, let this be a lesson to future candidates. Apparently, negative campaigning has a limit after all.