History May Not Repeat Itself
Alexander's the heavy, but Ed Bryant benefits from a changing GOP
by Phil Ashford & Bill Carey
Back in 1988, the state's Republicans thought they had a shot at winning the West Tennessee 8th District congressional seat being vacated by veteran Democrat Ed Jones. The Democratic candidate, a conservative state legislator named John Tanner, had put together a solid organization with good fund raising and had views in line with the conservative rural district, but Republicans felt they had a chance because they had a well-spoken moderate candidate who would be able to reach across party lines. The candidate, Rich Jacobs, was the national president of the Young Republicans, and many thought he could be a rising star.
He wasn't. Jacobs lost the Republican primary to an unknown who was generally disparaged as merely "a supporter of Pat Robertson." The Republican nominee never got past his bumptious Bible thumper image that year and Tanner soundly beat him—but that wasn't the end of Ed Bryant's political career. A subsequent Bush administration appointment as U.S. attorney for West Tennessee gave Bryant the credibility and foundation to capture the 7th District seat Don Sundquist vacated in 1994. Bryant's now served nearly eight years in Congress, and he's announced his intention to take on one of the state's biggest Republican icons in the primary to replace retiring Sen. Fred Thompson.
To anyone with only a casual interest in politics, Bryant's campaign against former Gov. Lamar Alexander would appear hopeless. Alexander has been a major figure in state politics since 1974, and he still has access to his old money network. But that would dismiss Bryant too quickly and ignore the changes that have marked the state's politics in the 20 years since Alexander ran his last statewide race.
Alexander is the kind of Republican who plays well with journalists and the general public. As politicians go, he's intellectually honest. He's grammatical. He doesn't rant about divisive social issues. He can affect a convincing version of the common touch. He didn't build his career out of veiled racial appeals at a time when many politicians did. Unfortunately, none of that has anything much to do with being successful in the contemporary Republican Party.
At this point, Alexander still has to rate as the GOP favorite, but it will be harder than it looks. Part of it is just the natural attrition of a politician trying to make a comeback, however distinguished he may have become since last holding elected office. The classic example was Richard Nixon's loss in the 1962 California governor's race.
But the bigger problem is that the Republican Party in the state is a lot stronger than it used to be. Alexander emerged on the scene at a time when the Republican Party was only just breaking out of East Tennessee to become a force in statewide politics. Traditionally, moderate hillbillies were the core of the state party. East Tennessee had resisted secession in 1861 and voted Republican ever after. Because the area had few blacks, racial politics and fights over civil rights had little relevance.
But cracks in the Democratic monolith in Middle and West Tennessee in the 1960s opened the way for Republican successes. Most significant was the development of the Shelby County Republican Party in the suburbs around Memphis. This other leg to the party made it possible for East Tennessee Republicans like Howard Baker, Bill Brock and Alexander to start winning races. But the Shelby party was of a different stripe—not a product of hillbilly moderation but of the civil rights backlash and the arrival of easy money in the Southern economy. It had a much harder edge to it, and it appeals more to the paranoid politics of the hard-charging far right.
The ensuing 35 years in the Republican Party in Tennessee has been the story of the growth of suburban Republicans in Middle and West Tennessee. It was the clout of these voters that drove the 1994 Republican sweep. Indeed, the tipping of the balance of power in the Republican Party came during that year's Senate primary. Locked in a tight race with the more conservative Bill Frist, Chattanooga developer Bob Corker put most of his television advertising money in the final weeks of the campaign into the East Tennessee media markets. He was simply acting on the conventional wisdom—that was where most of the Republican primary voters were. But 1994 was a different year—for the first time, more people voted in the Republican primary than in the Democratic one.
Frist, who distributed his advertising money more evenly around the state, lost East Tennessee but scored well in Middle and West. With a much bigger than expected Republican vote in those regions, Frist won the nomination and Corker got to rest up during the fall. That's why it's too soon to be writing off Ed Bryant.
He represents the rising tide in Republican politics, while Alexander represents the receding one.
—P.A.
Dwindling Commodores
With the departures of Reps. Matt Kisber of Jackson and Pete Phillips of Shelbyville, the 99-member state House loses its only two Vanderbilt undergraduate alumni.
Cecil Branstetter, a Nashville attorney and graduate of the Vanderbilt Law School who served in the state House from 1951 to 1953, says he can't explain why the state's top academic institution soon will be woefully underrepresented at the state House. "The tuition has gotten so high, maybe Vanderbilt graduates have so much debt that they can't afford to serve in the legislature," he says. "But maybe it has something to do with prestige. It used to be that serving in the legislature had some prestige, but because of the abuse that they've been given from the talk shows and the general public, there isn't very much prestige connected with the legislature any more. In fact, I don't know if there's any."
—B.C.
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