Senate 2018: Will Phil Bredesen’s Down-The-Middle Approach Keep Liberal Voters Away?

Former Governor Phil Bredesen has long billed himself as a centrist who’s unafraid to buck his fellow Democrats. That persona made him popular statewide in the early and mid-2000s — even as Tennessee shifted Republican.

A decade later, he’s in a close race for the U.S. Senate. But an increasingly partisan climate may have made his down-the-middle approach harder to pull off.

Among those who’ve struggled to maintain their support for Bredesen is Carly Myracle. She was going to campaign for the Democratic nominee and even picked up a yard sign to show her support.

But things changed quickly two weeks ago, when Bredesen made a last-minute statement endorsing then-nominee Brett Kavanaugh for the U.S. Supreme Court.

“I needed to mow my yard before I put it in — and before I had the chance to put it in, the statement came out,” she says. “And while I do still intent to vote for Bredesen, I no longer feel comfortable having that sign in my yard, it just feels icky now.”

Myracle believes the endorsement was unnecessary. “He could have just not said anything, instead of what did happen, which felt like a slap in the face to women.”

Myracle was far from the only Democrat who was dismayed.
The Facebook post where Bredesen announced his endorsement received 2,500 comments, many of them negative. Some volunteers quit his campaign in protest. The chairwoman of the Tennessee Democratic Party even issued a statement saying she found his position “disappointing,” though she pointedly added that she still sees her party’s nominee as the superior candidate.

Bredesen’s support for Justice Kavanaugh brought to a head questions that have long been simmering beneath the surface among liberal Democrats: Is Bredesen, a multi-millionaire businessman, too conservative for today’s Democratic Party? And would he stand with Democrats if elected to the Senate?

“I’m doing just what I’ve always done, which is call them as I see them,” he says.

In an interview with WPLN, Bredesen said he has a history of taking positions unpopular with his party.

He’s generally refused to denounce President Trump, despite Democratic animosity toward the president.

During the Obama administration, Bredesen opposed the Affordable Care Act. As a former health care executive, he predicted it would cause many employers to drop coverage.

And back before that, as Tennessee governor, Bredesen slashed the rolls of TennCare, the state’s Medicaid program, by limiting coverage of working-age adults. Bredesen argued TennCare had become too expensive.

The lesson he drew was that making a difficult call would ultimately pay off, even if unpopular with his party.

“Remember, when I got re-elected in 2006, there were a lot of liberal voters who were angry about the handling of TennCare at the time, and I yet I still won every county in the state,” he says. “So I’ve never been someone who’s worried about alienating this bloc of voters or that bloc of voters.”

When it came to Kavanaugh, it might have been easier for Bredesen to stay neutral, but he says he felt compelled to take a clear position. He says he’d made a public promise to declare whether he supported the judge before the final Senate confirmation vote.

Bredesen does feel Christine Blasey Ford’s allegation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were in high school should’ve been investigated more vigorously. But Bredesen still believes the conservative judge was qualified enough to join the Supreme Court.

“On that one, I probably lost some people, and there’s probably something else that I said where I lost somebody else, but you also pick up supporters at the same time,” he says. “If I had been opposing him on political grounds, I think it was a problem, it could have been a problem.”

Bredesen says many of the the people who left his campaign after his announcement have gravitated back. They say the alternatives — either voting for a Republican or sitting out a crucial Senate race — are worse.

One Democrat who plans to hold her nose and vote for Bredesen is Myracle. But she says, as a survivor of assault, she’s “horrified” to vote for someone she doesn’t believe prioritizes women.

“I’m exhausted by having to choose the lesser evil over and over again,” she says.

For Bredesen to win, he’ll need voters like Myracle to put those differences aside and vote for him anyway.

Tomorrow, we’ll profile Bredesen’s Republican opponent, Marsha Blackburn. Find more of our coverage about the Senate race at
wpln.org/senate2018.