Franklin, Tenn., businessman Bill Lee threaded the needle between two better financed opponents who constantly attacked each other, cast himself as "the only conservative outsider in the race" and used a barrage of small town-hall appearances to propel himself to the Republican nomination for Tennessee governor in Thursday's primary election.
The seventh-generation Tennessean, who was endorsed by this page, was thought to be running third out of four top-tier candidates when U.S. Rep. Diane Black of Gallatin and Knoxville businessman and former Haslam cabinet member Randy Boyd began running negative advertising against each other in late June.
Lee said he wouldn't go negative, that the voters didn't want that, and continued to rely on a string of town-hall appearances that weren't structured to draw huge crowds but simply for voters to meet him and hear him. The idea, likely, was that they, in turn, would go home and tell their family and friends about this down-to-earth candidate who wasn't slinging elbows like the rest of the competition.
Very few public polls were done on the race, so it was a surprise to many when a JMC Analytics poll released less than two weeks ago showed the business executive with a 6-point lead. The Boyd campaign ridiculed the poll, and some even speculated it had been secretly sponsored by Lee.
An Emerson College poll in mid-July had Black up by five points and Lee well back in third place. A Tennessee Star poll in late June had Boyd up by five points and Lee in third but said to be "surging."
In their unceasing effort to turn up anything negative about President Donald Trump, the national media already has said the race was lost by the president's favored candidate, Black. Black certainly used her ties to Trump in her advertising, but Trump never endorsed her (though Vice President Mike Pence did), and all four top-tier candidates were unsparing in their support for the president.
No, in the end, this race did not turn on the president's popularity or lack of it, though he did tweet his enthusiastic support for Lee on Friday. We believe Lee was able to grasp the nomination because voters saw him more as "one of us" than as a politician and because he refused to go negative in the race like the two better financed, better exposed candidates ahead of him.
Since Tennessee has become more of a Republican state, the first-time candidate should be favored in the November general election, but he will be facing Democrat Karl Dean, a former two-term mayor of Nashville.
We hope the race will not become another battle of attack ads but will be one of substance where both candidates lay out their vision for the Volunteer State. If they do, we believe a majority of voters will see Lee as the candidate who most shares their values.