Eight years after being blindsided by a loss to an unremarkable Republican congressman with few credentials, Phil Bredesen on Tuesday overshadowed a similar Republican congressman remarkable only for his lack of credentials. It was, in other words, a day of redemption for the 58-year-old former Nashville mayor.
Bredesen’s victory could be attributed to his résumé as a capable financial manager with both business and government experience. There was also the matter of the abject administrative weakness of his opponent, Van Hilleary. At the same time, Hilleary probably did more with less—in campaign terms—than perhaps any politician in modern Tennessee history.
“We ran a great race,” Hilleary said during his concession speech in Franklin. Truer words he has not spoken during the last 18 months.
Some believe Bredesen failed to define the campaign and to respond quickly and with vigor to various attacks from Hilleary. Bredesen had been assaulted as a greedy “HMO millionaire,” and his mayoral tenure was portrayed as nothing short of disastrous. (Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell, it should be noted, was conspicuous by his silence on this issue, which Bredesen will no doubt remember.)
But much like Ned McWherter, the last Tennessee Democrat elected governor in 1986, Bredesen was able to build considerable statewide support for his campaign, even in traditional Republican strongholds in East Tennessee. As well, Bredesen was able to fend off several campaign stops in Tennessee by President George W. Bush on Hilleary’s behalf.
The contrast in style and demeanor between the two major-party candidates could not have been starker. Hilleary, who spoke in a nasel twang and often ridiculed his opponent’s Yankee roots, focused on turning out a rural vote. It wasn’t a stupid campaign plan at all—never in the history of Tennessee has a big-city mayor ever been elected governor, not to mention one born in New York and educated at Harvard. If there was any history made with Bredesen’s victory, therefore, it would have to be that Tennessee finally found it within itself to accept an urban candidate. Also, the fact may be that the state’s dominant rural character may not be as great as it once was.
As for what Bredesen’s victory entails for the state, the fact is that many of Bredesen’s public policy initiatives are largely similar to what Hilleary would have advocated. Or to put it in the words of one cynical Republican, “When you get right down to it, there’s about a 25-cent difference between the two men.”
On the issue of taxes, of course, one that voters were assaulted with at every turn, Bredesen has made it clear that he won’t support an income tax—in his first term, anyway. It’s unlikely the General Assembly would pass one anytime soon, whatever the case. Still, Hilleary’s defeat offers some glimmer of hope to progressive-minded, pro-income tax voters that a levy on income perhaps could be enacted in a second Bredesen term. If Hilleary’s demagoguery on the lightning-rod issue and Bredesen’s unwillingness to take it off the table in a second term didn’t beat the Democrat, the thinking goes, maybe there’s hope for the measure after all. Time—lots of it—will tell.
Looking ahead, Bredesen will also be much more likely than Hilleary would have been to reform the controversial Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT), which receives state gas tax revenues and is a bureaucracy unto itself. Whereas Bredesen may appoint an activist or environmentalist to run the hated department and clean up the culture of asphalt advocacy and orange cone worship, Hilleary would have been more likely to appoint someone friendly to the entrenched road builder lobby, which has perpetuated the indiscriminate practice of paving in Tennessee. This issue reflects perhaps the biggest difference that existed between the two men.
On the topic of improving public education, Bredesen is likely to take a different approach than Hilleary would have, but many experts cynically predict the same end result regardless of who is the state’s chief executive: a downward spiral in Tennessee’s public education system, assuming a stagnant revenue stream and the absence of radical reform. Bredesen has promised changes on the issue of teacher pay, saying he wants to reward good teachers and keep them from fleeing the state’s schools in favor of better and higher-paying jobs elsewhere. But, like Hilleary, Bredesen is not enthusiastic about charter schools or vouchers, measures that many education reformers say are crucial to turning around public education. The biggest education issue Bredesen will likely have to deal with concerns a lawsuit that may require funding levels between urban and rural school districts to be equalized.
On the issue of TennCare reform, Hilleary and Bredesen campaigned virtually identically, saying the state’s health care program for the poor and uninsurable should tighten eligibility requirements and cut back benefits at the same time that it should remain a safety net for those who fall through the cracks. Of course, Bredesen’s knowledge of the intricacies of the health insurance industry is clearly superior to Hilleary’s. He is, after all, an “HMO millionaire.”
It was just more than a decade ago that Phil Bredesen was a no-name computer nerd stumping inside Metro government offices for a chance to succeed the notoriously flawed Nashville Mayor Bill Boner. (He had a lot more hair back then.) The way he sees it, he’s doing the same again, only this time he’ll have a bigger office in a bigger building down the street. Not to mention more legislators to deal with.
