Looking from a distance, a reasonable person might ask himself just what it is Mary Parker hopes to accomplish running for state Senate in District 23, which mostly comprises Williamson County. In Williamson County, where Parker is attempting to replace Jim Bryson, who is sacrificing himself in an ill-advised attempt to run against Gov. Phil Bredesen this fall, Democrats don’t win. Of the 40 countywide partisan officers—judges, county commissioners and so forth—all but two are Republicans. Those two, incidentally, aren’t Democrats either. They ran and won as independents. It’s anybody’s guess exactly how many Republicans there are in Williamson County because Tennesseans don’t register by party affiliation. But in the last two presidential elections, George Bush carried Williamson with roughly 70 percent of the electorate. The left learned the formula for winning in the county south of here long ago: run as a Republican, which is what retiring public defender John Henderson did to win re-election in the late 1990s. Yet there was Mary Parker last week, speaking to a roomful of Democrats at the Sunset Grill, an audience that included state Sens. Roy Herron and Rosalind Kurita as well as Reps. Rob Briley and Kim McMillan. (It also would have included Gov. Phil Bredesen had he not been ill.) “A lot of people don’t think I can win running as a Democrat,” Parker said. “They ask me why I don’t run as a Republican. But I wasn’t going to have the first thing I did as a politician be fraudulent. I’m a Democrat.”  Nov. 7 will be a big surprise, she said. “We’re going to prove a lot of people wrong.” If she can accomplish that, Parker will undoubtedly pull off the upset of the fall election season. “It will be a long shot for her to win,” says one prominent Democrat. “It will take very unusual circumstances for her to pull it out. She’ll have to hope her opponent doesn’t finish well. The Republican Party won’t let that seat go without a fight. They’re not going to leave one stone unturned. I expect them to pound away at her.” That will mean painting Parker with the same liberal tag the GOP does every Democratic hopeful. Republicans will make sure voters know Parker is what many conservatives consider to be a societal low life, a trial attorney. In the minds of some business leaders, trial lawyers are responsible for the high cost of medicine, for example, because they deftly present their clients’ sob stories to juries, who award outrageous judgments based on half-truths. “Trial lawyers are people who are surfing the community to see where they can profit on others’ mistakes, or perceived mistakes,” says Doug Grindstaff, a venture capitalist, board member of five companies and chairman of the Williamson County Republicans. “They’re putting doctors out of business right now.” But if it weren’t for trial attorneys, Parker would be just another wannabe candidate smothered by Williamson County Republicans. Trial attorneys are the main reason she’s raised more than $120,000 so far in the campaign—the most ever by a non-incumbent candidate in Tennessee. Parker could indeed surpass $167,000, the amount Jo Ann Graves collected in her failed reelection bid for the state Senate two years ago, which is believed to be the most ever spent on a Tennessee legislative campaign. Money has poured in from attorneys in such faraway places as Des Moines, Iowa; Beaumont, Texas; Montgomery, Ala.; Washington, D.C.;  Flint, Mich.; Chicago and Indianapolis. Parker makes no attempt to distance herself from her occupation. She mentions several times how fond she is of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, who practiced law in Nashville in the late 1970s. As a founding member of Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, Parker was involved in several high-profile cases, including a $1.25 million judgment against Ohio-based Dana Corp., maker of engines, suspensions and other automotive products, for discharging lead-based wastewater into the Duck River. She has sued colleges for failing to comply with Title IX requirements. She helped keep Bells Bend, on the Cumberland, free of a dumpsite Metro officials were proposing. And she won $77,500 for a family whose dog was shot on the side of I-40 by a Cookeville police officer. “I think being a trial attorney is nothing but a badge of honor,” Parker says.   Parker isn’t relying only on money to win. She is emphasizing how conservative she is—pro-life, pro-Second Amendment, fiscally responsible. On the stump, she points out how much more life experience she has than her opponent, financial analyst Jack Johnson, and how she’s lived in the district much longer than Johnson has. “I’ve lived in Tennessee 31 years,” says Parker, who is 53. “My opponent was probably still in the second grade in Texas when I came to Tennessee.” Parker also will appeal as much as possible to Williamson County’s significant Catholic population. While Catholics in Tennessee at large represent only about 4 percent of the population, about 11 percent, or 4,000 of the 36,000 households in Williamson County, are Catholic, many of them residing in the Republican strongholds of Franklin and Brentwood. Parker stresses that she is anti-abortion, though not as extreme as Johnson is. He opposes abortions involving rape and incest. She favors these exceptions. A Democratic operative says Parker is right to push her difference on abortion. “Even for those who are staunchly pro-life,” the Dem says, “his position is pretty far to the right.” In the end, it might not matter what positions the two claim as much as it does the timing of Parker’s appearance on the political scene. She’s campaigning at a time when a Republican president is extremely unpopular and when voters might be game to vote outside their party. “Iraq and the local issues all tie together. George Bush is low on the totem pole, and so many people here voted for him,” says Roy Barker, a Democrat who was a Williamson County state rep in the early 1960s. And for all the Republican bluster about how much they rule Williamson County, the race may have less to do with party affiliation than some believe. Mike Williams was a pro-choice Democrat who retired in 2001 after eight years as a Williamson County state rep. He says Williamson County residents are less beholden to the GOP than party leaders claim. “There’s a lot of independents down here,” he says. “That’s where the race is always won, with the independents. There are more independents than Republicans. And they’re willing to vote either way. I don’t think anybody running for office should discount any vote. I think Mr. Johnson should go into the black community and other areas that are Democratic. And I think Mary Parker needs to ask for the Republican vote. I had plenty of Republicans vote for me because I asked them to vote for me.”