Dems look to rural areas for 2022.
Voters disappointed in pandemic response
Could Tennessee Democrats score an upset victory in the 2022 gubernatorial election?
While Democratic officials and strategists agree chances of winning are slim, many argue there has never been a more fitting time to try than now.
Democrats in Tennessee are banking their hope on voters disappointed at Gov. Bill Lee’s pandemic response — policies met with sharp criticism from liberals and conservatives alike.
“I really believe that Gov. Lee’s incompetence has made this a possibility,” said Rep. Gloria Johnson, D-knoxville. “What we need is a Democratic candidate to get out there, work hard and catch fire.”
A field of Democratic challengers to Lee are trying to seize an opportunity, announcing their bids at a time when the Lee administration has resisted further statewide measures to curb the COVID-19 pandemic amid surging cases and deaths. They said the inaction proves Lee’s failure to lead and prompted them to run.
But replacing Lee will be a daunting task for Democrats — if not completely unlikely. No Democrat has won a statewide election in Tennessee since 2006.
Lee has remained as popular as ever among Tennesseans, according to a Vanderbilt University poll released in June. His approval rating stood at 65%, the highest level since he took office in January 2019.
Winning, or even closing the margin, will require aggressive, hyperlocal messaging on “bread and butter issues” and engagement with all types of voters, said Tennessee Democratic Party Chair Hendrell Remus.
The glimmer of hope to flip the governor’s seat has attracted a slate of Democratic contenders.
Sumner County ICU doctor Jason Martin is kicking off a 95-county tour — an effort to gain name recognition before the August Democratic primary. According to his campaign, Martin has raised more than $175,000 since he launched his bid last month. Memphis City Council member JB Smiley Jr., the latest to join in the race, made an official announcement of his much-anticipated bid Wednesday.
Casey Nicholson, a veteran Democrat in Greene County, announced his gubernatorial bid on social media last month. Carnita Atwater, a Memphis-area community activist, is also running.
Democrats look for ‘common sense’ to Lee’s pandemic response
Early in the pandemic, Lee restricted private gathering sizes and ramped up testing efforts. He deployed the National Guard and worked to set up temporary overflow hospitals. But he relegated the authority to issue mask mandates to local mayors. As the pandemic stretched on, Lee has been reluctant to push additional state-issued measures, stressing the philosophy of personal choice and parental decision making for children.
For Democrats who perceive Lee’s pandemic as failing to lead, cashing in on that aspect is key.
“In this climate, with this sitting governor, we could be surprised. People could get sick and tired of being sick and tired,” said Carol Andrews, a Tennessee-based veteran Democratic consultant who has worked on both state and national campaigns. “That would be a good inroad for a Democrat to emerge, if it were the right one.”
All Democrats running so far have blamed the Lee administration for its COVID-19 decisions.
Martin is pushing his background as a critical care doctor who has witnessed preventable COVID-19 deaths front and center. In his official announcement, Smiley criticized the effectiveness of Lee’s policies and pledged to boost vaccination uptake. In a Facebook statement, Nicholson argued Lee’s stance on masks “has endangered our children and put all Tennesseans at greater risk of the virus.”
The state Democratic Party has seen more volunteers and donors who are Republicans “disgusted” by Lee’s pandemic response, Remus said. To capitalize on that support, Democrats need to develop practical strategies beyond paying lip service, he said.
“We’ve got to make sure that we are using a common sense approach, being honest and truthful to people, offering a clear alternative and not getting involved in this political back-and-forth about it,” Remus said.
Attracting rural voters: practical approach, customized messaging
But given Lee’s popularity and Tennessee’s political landscape, the number of frustrated voters alone will not be enough for Democrats to turn the tide.
Only three of Tennessee’s 95 counties — Davidson, Haywood and Shelby counties — voted for Democrat Joe Biden over Republican Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
In the 2018 race for governor, Democratic nominee Karl Dean won those same three counties in losing to Lee. The 38% of the vote Dean received statewide was the most for a Democratic gubernatorial nominee since former Gov. Phil Bredesen’s reelection in 2006.
Statewide, Democratic support has largely come from the state’s urban areas and among minority voters. Democrats have consistently lost ground in rural areas in recent decades.
Democrats must win back the hearts of rural voters to stand a chance, Andrews said, and that’s the lesson the party should learn from 2010, when Bill Haslam, a Republican, won the gubernatorial race by a landslide. Republicans seized control of the state legislature that year, solidifying their victory through redistricting and capping off Democratic seats for the next decade.
“(Rural areas) is where we lost everything,” Andrews said. “We had no bench. We still have no bench.”
Liberals in Tennessee have focused too much on urban areas, Andrews said, and delivering messages to rural voters has been a big challenge for the Democratic Party. To succeed, Democrats must shy away from nationalized messages and acronyms, and talk about issues everyday Tennesseans resonate with, she said.
“Try to speak to people in real terms and see what hits,” Andrews said. “It doesn’t take all of that fancy stuff or a bunch of focus groups to figure out that when you are speaking Washington speak, or a national speak, it doesn’t rub the right way with voters.”
But some party officials perceive deep-red voters as too far gone. Rather, they said the opportunity exists in new voters and disenfranchised Republicans. The state Democratic Party is determined to register 200,000 more voters before November 2022, Remus said, and spending time on staunch Republican voters would be “wasting resources.”
“I believe that those people are gone,” he said.
But Tennessee Democrats should also target all types of voters, including those in solid-red areas, Andrews said.
“We don’t have the margins and the luxury of a Stacey Abrams operation going on to register enough people,” she said.
Longshot bid could help ‘move the needle’
While Democrats may not stand a chance against Lee, they said any gain from the statewide race could help the party grow popularity and shift the landscape locally.
Remus pointed to the 2020 election results in Georgia, a key swing state where Biden narrowly won by 0.2%. He credited it to the momentum Abrams built in 2018, even though she lost the governor’s race that year.
“She left people feeling so hopeful that she had come so close,” Remus said. “They were so right there on the cusp of really changing the dynamic. People were fired up like never before in 2020 and they were actually able to get over the threshold.”
Reach Yue Stella Yu at yyu@tennessean.com.