What exactly has Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker seen in the tea leaves of American and Tennessee politics – and the Trump administration – that soured his recent flirtation with re-entering the Senate race?
Corker, once thought to be on the short list for a nomination as Donald Trump’s vice president or secretary of state, announced in the fall that he would retire from the Senate after spending a good portion of 2017 in nasty spats with Trump. But in mid-February a spokesman said Corker began to reconsider retirement at the request of establishment Republicans who argued that without his candidacy, the GOP could lose the seat this November.
The fear is not unfounded. The current top GOP contender, Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Brentwood, seems unlikely to beat centrist Democrat Phil Bredesen, a former two-term Tennessee governor. A Public Opinion Strategies survey of the race conducted for a Tennessee business group gave Bredesen a 47-percent-of-the-vote advantage to Blackburn’s 45 percent, according to Politico and Fox News.
The Tennessee race is key: Republicans hold a slim 51-49 majority in the Senate.
But just a few months ago and in the wake of Corker’s fights with Trump, polls were showing a decline in the senator’s support. A November survey by the Mason-Dixon polling firm found that more than 50 percent of Tennessee voters then approved of how the president was handling his job, but only 40 percent of voters approved of Corker. The firm’s poll found that only 32 percent of respondents said they would vote for Corker in 2018.