Phil Bredesen is the clear choice for Tennessee's U.S. senate seat.
But his race is close. His opponent, U.S. Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn, is a Trump coattail chaser, and her relentless false campaigning shows her closing the lead that popular two-time Tennessee Gov. Bredesen had early in the race.
That could be a huge problem for this opioid-damaged state and nation, thanks to Blackburn's insatiable penchant for corporate pharmaceutical favor.
A poll released last week found Blackburn, of Williamson County, with support from 54 percent of respondents to Bredesen's 40 percent.
The Bredesen campaign counters that its recent internal polls show the race is still tight, with Blackburn leading 48 to 47 percent. A fundraising email sent Friday by the Senate Conservatives Fund, which supports Blackburn, also says she is up just 2 percentage points, making the race "too close to call."
Make no mistake Blackburn, boosted by $16.5 million spent by outside groups, has outspent Bredesen by nearly three to one - and with very negative and downright false attack ads.
But that is Blackburn's bent. That and creating gridlock, especially if it helps her. Look no further than our nation's opioid crisis, which began in the 1990s with the over-prescription of painkillers like Oxycontin and other generic hydrocodones. Drug manufacturers misled doctors that those drugs were less addictive than they really are, and when the prescriptions proved habit-forming, some patients progressed to a heroin addiction. Today, drug overdoses have become the leading cause of death among Americans under 50.
But Congress, with Blackburn's dark guidance, helped corporate drug makers and distributors continue the opioid epidemic - especially when she pushed legislation that had the effect of shutting down Drug Enforcement Administration investigations of opioid pharmaceutical makers and distributors.
In 2014, Blackburn and another congressman asked for an Inspector General's probe of then-DEA Office of Diversion Control Joe Rannazzisi, who was issuing fines and trying to make cases against pharmaceutical distributors making "suspicious" deliveries of opioids. One example of "suspicious" was 9 million hydrocodone pills delivered over two years to a pharmacy in Kermit, West Virginia, where the town's population was just 392 people.
The Center for Responsive Politics reported that Blackburn has taken $711,385 in campaign contributions from the pharmaceutical industry since 2002, and in 2015 she pushed a bill that substantially raised the legal bar on the DEA's ability to crack down on the drug distributors, including the DEA's ability to freeze suspicious shipments. She wrapped her bill in the American flag, saying the legislation was needed to help people with pain - like our veterans - have steady access to medication.
After a "60 Minutes" and Washington Post exposé about the lawmakers' DEA interference, she backtracked: "If there are any unintended consequences they should be addressed immediately," her spokesperson said. Then Blackburn announced her co-sponsorship of a bill to create an opioid task force. Of course, that task force's work was aimed primarily at fentanyl and heroin from China - not pharmaceutical and corporate distributorship of American-made opioids. Meanwhile, the DEA remains toothless against our nation's corporate opioid pushers.
Bredesen will bring to the Senate the common-sense tools he used as governor in keeping Tennessee in good shape through the Great Recession with no new taxes - despite Blackburn's false ads. As governor, Bredesen helped taxpayers weather the growing pains of TennCare and improved K-12 education. In Trump's Washington, he'll bring that same bipartisan, non-confrontational attitude to work. "I'm not there to support any political party, or to oppose the president, but to do what the people of Tennessee need done," Bredesen says.
The records of Bredesen and Blackburn make it clear that if we want a real problem-solver, we must vote for Bredesen.