After Alabama win, Dems eye Tennessee
NASHVILLE — 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 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.
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, Bredesen can concentrate on a message of being a problemsolver who can “fix the mess” in Washington.
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 the Dec. 12 special election. In Tennessee it’s been two years longer since Al Gore was the Democrats’ last victorious Senate candidate, in 1990.
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.
“The tone of much of the conversation coming out of Washington is a turnoff,” said Corker, who has feuded with Trump.