NASHVILLE – In Tennessee’s fiercest U.S. Senate race in a dozen years, former Democratic governor Phil Bredesen and Republican U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn have placed their respective bets on how voters stand in the era of President Donald Trump.
Bredesen, a former two-term governor and Nashville mayor, is gambling that moderate Republican and independent voters who supported him in the past in a red state that went overwhelmingly for Trump in 2016 will still support him based on his past record.
And he promises to remain a get-it-done pragmatic moderate in the Senate and work across the partisan divide in the Senate, as well as with Trump.
Blackburn, meanwhile, is relying on her fellow Republicans, who have elected GOP candidates to the Senate since 1994 and put Republican Gov. Bill Haslam in office to succeed Bredesen in 2010.
She touts her hard-right credentials in Congress as well as her loyal support of Trump. And, Blackburn warns, Bredesen can’t be trusted if he gets into the Senate, where Republicans have a slender 51-49 margin.