May 19, 2005

Run Hilleary Run!

Mark Rose is dispensing campaign advice, and giving Van Hilleary a game plan for a successful campaign against incumbent Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen.

But Hilleary isn't running for governor, you say - he's running for the U.S. Senate. I know. So does Mark. But Mark thinks Hilleary ought to switch races and run against Bredesen - and he lays out both a sensible rationale for the switch and game plan for defeating Bredesen.

I have my doubts about Hilleary, but I think he's got a better shot at beating Bredesen than at winning the GOP Senate nomination. And the longer he stays in the Senate race, the more likely a closet Democrat named Bob Corker will win the GOP's nomination.

If Hilleary doesn't run against Bredesen, whoever does run ought to follow Mark's game plan play for play. It's a winning formula and Bredesen is vulnerable, though I suspect he's less vulnerable to a challenge from Hilleary than he would be to a challenge from a less-traditional Republican candidate.

I have two in mind...

The first is banker and businessman Scooter Clippard, who is known to be contemplating the race. The second is state Rep. Beth Harwell, a former chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party. Harwell is currently running for the same Senate nomination as Hilleary, Corker and former Congressman Ed Bryant.

Either Clippard or Harwell would present a strong challenge to Bredesen. Here, in alphabetical order, is my thinking on that score for both of them:

Scooter Clippard
Clippard, who has the right connections to run a well-funded campaign, would give the Tennessee GOP exactly what the Tennessee Democratic Party had four years ago: a candidate whose business experience positions him as the right guy to solve Tennessee's budget mess.

And make no mistake it still needs fixing. Bredesen is credited with balancing the budget, but he has only done so by diverting gas tax revenue (meant for road and transportation projects) from the Tennessee Department of Transportation and by forcing local governments into raising property taxes to offset the loss of tax revenue that Bredesen withheld from them.

Meanwhile, Bredesen has let TennCare fester and become an even bigger budgetary mess than when he took office, and launched a new Pre-K program that will soon demand huge amounts of state dollars whose future source has not been identified.

Clippard, a successful banker and businessman, can do what Bredesen did four years ago: Run on his business experience as the guy who can make the numbers work.

Beth Harwell
Harwell presents a different but also very powerful appeal. As a long-time legislator, Harwell is well qualified to discuss the state's budget mess, TennCare, and how Bredesen has managed to make a mess of both.

Especially on TennCare, Harwell can make an even more powerful charge against Bredesen that goes something like this: TennCare was created by an executive order in 1994, and has been run by the Executive branch ever since. Neither Gov. Ned McWherter nor Gov. Don Sundquist nor Gov. Bredesen have allowed the legislature to have much of a role in TennCare's design, oversight, or reform. This has, obviously, been a failed approach - and under Gov. Harwell, the legislature will be made an equal player in TennCare reform. This sounds like inside baseball, but think of how that promise will resonate. First, legislators - even Democrats - will like it. Right now, they get a lot of the blame for the TennCare mess even though they don't have much power to change it.

Fence-sitting moderate Democrats might be tempted to endorse Harwell, or at least to absent themselves from Bredesen's campaign. And voters - who have watched TennCare inexorably become a bigger and bigger problem under a succession of governors, might be glad to hear that their legislators will soon be able to represent the people's wishes on TennCare.

In addition, every time Bredesen talks TennCare during his campaign, his argument that his healthcare expertise makes him uniquely qualified to reform it will ring increasingly false.

Harwell brings some other assets to the table: She's a woman. And while she's conservative, she's not easily caricatured as a scary right-winger.

Bredesen only won by 50,417 votes last time, out of 1.6 million votes cast. That's a razor thin margin. And because he has no real reform plan - and because his administration has repeatedly rejected sensible reforms for TennCare - Bredesen is now poised to slash a quarter of million or more poor, old, sick and disabled Tennesseans - every last one of them old enough to vote - off of TennCare.

Meanwhile, Bredesen is on record as being open to pushing for an income tax in a second term. Harwell, on the other hand, headed the state party during the 1999-2002 income tax war and kept it standing strongly opposed to the income tax. Either she or Clippard could remind voters that the only way to guarantee Bredesen doesn't go for an income tax in a second term is to deny him a second term.

Imagine if Clippard or Harwell campaigned on Bredesen's openess to an income tax on the one hand, and his lack of a real TennCare reform plan on the other.

Suggested campaign slogan on TennCare: "I'll keep the promise Phil broke."

UPDATE: It has been mentioned to me by a former TN GOP insider that Harwell was rather tepid in her opposition to the income tax back during the 1999-2002 income tax war, and that Clippard was in Gov. Sundquist's circle of pro-income tax supporters. I don't know about Clippard - a Google search is inconclusive - but I do recall Harwell making public statements to the effect that the state party platform was opposed to the income tax. I also recall, however, that the anti-income tax fight was lead fiercely and publicly primarily by a handful of women in the state legislature and that Harwell was not among them. Of those that lead the battle to defeat the income tax, state Sen. Marsha Blackburn was elected to Congress, and state Rep. Mae Beavers was elected to the state Senate.

Marsha Blackburn, I strongly believe, would be by far the strongest candidate the GOP could run against Bredesen. To put it simply, Blackburn is a gutsy leader, a proven-vote getter and a conservative star.

How much star power? Think Fred Thompson in heels. She would have zero problems raising the $12-$15 million a race against Bredesen would cost.

More important than money, Blackburn has already proven she can win - handily - in a large swatch of West Tennessee, where Bredesen must do well to win a second term (and where polls show his base is not happy with him). Blackburn won her first term in Congress despite being from Nashville's suburbs in a district dominated by suburban Memphis and rural West Tennessee. Some well-known Tennessee political observers speculated she won the GOP nomination in the Republican-leaning district in 2002 only because Memphis voters split between a handful of Memphians on the GOP primary ballot - and that Blackburn would be a one-termer as Memphis would reassert itself with a consensus candidate in the 2004 GOP primary. It didn't happen - she faced no opposition in 2004.

Blackburn is famous statewide foir her role in standing up to Sundquist and helping stop the income tax, and she is loved statewide by the Republican base. She also did something for Tennessee taxpayers that Bredesen hasn't done: She helped cut their taxes, by helping push through Congress legislation restoring federal tax deductibility for state sales tax payments. A few million Tennesseans have more money in their pocket this year because of Rep. Blackburn. Bredesen can claim no such success.