JACKSON, Tenn. – While retiring U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., announced he’s contributed to expected GOP nominee Marsha Blackburn, the Chattanoogan told a Washington magazine he won’t be out campaigning in November against her opponent, Democrat and former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen.
“I certainly do not plan to be working against somebody who is a friend and who has served our state ably,” Corker said of Bredesen, The National Journal reported Friday. “We’ve worked together to build a great state.”
Corker noted that as state finance commissioner in the mid-1990s for then-Republican Gov. Don Sundquist, he worked with then-Nashville Mayor Bredesen to bring the NFL’s Houston Oilers to Nashville, where the team is now known as the Tennessee Titans.
And in 2008, Corker, a former Chattanooga mayor first elected in 2006 to the Senate, and Bredesen, then governor, worked together again to help bring Volkswagen’s auto assembly plant to Chattanooga.
“He [Bredesen] is a very substantial person,” Corker told The National Journal. “And he no doubt will attract a lot of Republican votes.”