March 26, 2005

Caution: Hilleary's Running

Former Congressman Van Hilleary, last seen losing the governorship in 2002 to a Democrat, has launched his campaign website for the 2006 Senate race. By the way, back in 2001 in the early stages of that Tennessee gubernatorial campaign I wrote a column urging Hilleary to make his campaign message much more clear regarding the state income tax.

Democrat Phil Bredesen, I wrote then, "has figured out how to explain his opposition to a state income tax in plain language that doesn’t get bogged down in technicalities," while Hilleary "has yet to offer an equally simple statement, and his opposition to an income tax always comes packaged with a caveat: He says he’s against it unless voters approve one in a referendum. This creates the impression he has left the door open, ever so slightly, to the possibility of an income tax."

Hilleary was being too cautious, and too clever - wordsmithing an issue on which voters wanted crystal clarity.

I concluded by giving Hilleary some advice on how to sharpen his rhetoric and make his anti-income tax much clearer to the average Tennessean who cared little about the difference between a statutory tax or a constitutionally-created tax, or about tax system "elasticity."

"As long as Hilleary leaves the door open even a bit," I wrote, "folks I talk to think it sounds like the third term of Don Sundquist is just around the corner. And that makes the quiet people nervous. Bredesen gets this. He might get the governor’s mansion too."

Hilleary never really did slam the door, rhetorically speaking, on the income tax. He never did "sharpen his anti-income tax rhetoric," as I urged him again in another column in the Nashville City Paper on Jan. 17, 2002. And he sent the wrong message on Internet taxes.

He did offer a tepid endorsement of the Taxpayers Bill of Rights concept of requiring voter-approval for tax hikes and new taxes, and capping spending with surpluses being returned via tax rate cuts, but he never campaigned on that issue or ran ads pushing it. And it was too late. Bredesen - who had a record of big tax hikes taxes as mayor of Nashville - incredibly outflanked Hilleary on the tax issue, and - just as I predicted - won the governor's mansion.

I've been itching to say this for a long time about that August 2, 2001, column in the Nashville City Paper, a column that rankled the Hilleary campaign: I was right. Hilleary's campaign should have listened to me.

In the 2006 Senate race in Tennessee, the GOP nominee likely will face U.S. Rep. Harold Ford, who will pose as - and be portrayed in the mainstream press as - a moderate. He will attempt to get to the right of the GOP nominee on some issues.

He will not be defeated by a cautious candidate.

Related Items:
TeamGOP, a Tennessee grassroots Republican activist group, has started a blog and will be following the 2006 Senate race.