NASHVILLE - Democrat Phil Bredesen is now battling not just Republican rival Marsha Blackburn but impressions left by three recent polls showing Congresswoman Blackburn leading the former two-term Tennessee governor in the state's open U.S. Senate race.
In a new memo to supporters, Bredesen campaign manager Bob Corney says their own internal polling shows the contest remains "deadlocked." And an accompanying memo from his pollster Fred Yang of the firm Garin-Hart-Yang says their own two latest internal polls conducted this month show Bredesen remains "positioned to win in the upcoming November 6th election."
"Still," Yang added, "we agree with an October 12th email from the Senate Conservatives Fund that Tennessee's U.S. Senate race is currently 'too close to call,'" a reference to the Republican super PAC's latest fundraising appeal in the Tennessee race, which has become a flash point in the national contest over who controls the Senate.
The latest independent survey of the contest, a 593-person poll of likely voters conducted last week by The New York Times Upshot and Siena College, found staunch conservative Blackburn with a 14-point advantage over Bredesen - 54 percent to 40 percent. The poll's margin of error is plus or minus 4.2 percentage points.
Campaigning in Chattanooga on Monday, Blackburn said she is feeling good about her campaign, but also appealed to supporters to work to get out the vote in the next 22 days to ensure her victory.
"We know that the media and the money is with Phil Bredesen," Blackburn said. "But we've got the policies, we've got the people and we've got the principles that we will be standing with to make certain that we win this election."
The New York Times poll comes on the heels of two other polls conducted in late September and early October. One was from CBS/YouGov and the other from Fox News. They show Blackburn ahead by 5 to 8 points in the contest to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Chattanooga.
In a red state that now-President Donald Trump easily won by 26 points in 2016 over Democrat Hillary Clinton and where no Tennessee Democrat has won in a statewide contest since Bredesen's own 2006 re-election as governor, the former governor has run as a pragmatic moderate.
He says he will represent Tennessee and not reflexively oppose Trump, with whom Blackburn has firmly aligned herself and pledged to back. Trump has held two Tennessee campaign rallies for Blackburn, as has Vice President Mike Pence.
As the race entered the fall, Bredesen was caught up in the national battle over the confirmation of Trump's U.S. Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh.
Blackburn announced her support for Kavanaugh immediately and joined national Republicans in hammering Bredesen on where he stood. Bredesen, who as governor appointed a Republican to the Tennessee Supreme Court, said he wanted to study the nomination, look at Kavanaugh's record as a judge and and his then-upcoming Senate confirmation before stating his view.
After explosive allegations later surfaced from a woman who said Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party while they were in high school, Bredesen said he wanted to see what transpired at a follow-up Senate hearing after a quick FBI examination of various charges.
The FBI report found no corroboration of the claims. Noting he was not not privy to information and that he believes presidents are entitled to their picks unless there is overwhelming evidence they are not suitable, Bredesen announced as the Senate floor vote was starting that he would have voted to confirm Kavanaugh.
That angered some fellow Democrats, including a number of women and even some campaign volunteers.
According to the latest Federal Election Commission figures, the Tennessee campaign has attracted some $27 million in outside spending by independent Republican and Democratic-aligned groups. They're running ads supporting the respective candidates they favor and other ads slamming the other candidate. So far, some two thirds of the spending is from GOP-aligned groups.
In his memo, Corney says the contest "will be decided by turnout. With the support of Tennesseans of all stripes - Democrats, independents, and Republicans - and the engagement of candidates up and down the ballot, we have built the largest Get-Out-The-Vote operation in the history of our state."
Staff writer Dave Flessner contributed to this story.
Contact Andy Sher at asher@timesfreepress.com or 615-255-0550. Follow on Twitter @AndySher1.