Gizzi on Politics

Post Frist

Memphis, Tenn.-Amid all the maneuvering of potential presidential candidates during the Southern Republican Leadership Conference March 9-12, talk among home-state pundits and pols at the Peabody Hotel in Memphis tended to focus on the GOP nomination for U.S. senator in Tennessee this year. With Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist honoring a 1994 campaign promise to step down after two terms, three heavyweight Republicans are vying in the May primary for the GOP nomination to succeed him: conservative former Representatives Van Hilleary and Ed Bryant, and moderate Bob Corker, a former mayor of Chattanooga and a top official in the administration of former Republican Gov. (1994-2002) Don Sundquist.

Smelling a prospective net gain in their Senate minority, national Democrats have rallied behind Rep. Harold Ford, Jr., as their standard bearer in the only state in which a Republican U.S. senator is retiring this year. A former Clinton Administration official and scion of the best-known political family in Memphis (his name-sake-father held the House seat for 22 years before young Ford succeeded him in 1996), the 35-year-old Ford was a keynote speaker at the 2000 Democratic National Convention.

Like Bill and Hillary Clinton, Ford (lifetime American Conservative Union rating: 19%) generally pleases liberals but takes a walk from the left on certain issues: He favors prayer in school, an anti-flag-burning amendment to the Constitution, the balanced budget amendment, cutting the capital gains taxes and repealing the death tax. The Tennessee lawmaker also supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Should Ford emerge triumphant in November, he would be only the second African-American to win statewide office in the South since Reconstruction. (The first was fellow Democrat Doug Wilder, who served as lieutenant governor of Virginia from 1985-89 and then governor from 1989-93. )

As formidable a candidate as Ford appears to be, Volunteer State Republicans I talked to at the Peabody generally agreed that if their eventual nominee is able to publicize the Democrat's overall record (which includes opposition to a ban on partial-birth abortion), the GOP will retain Frist's seat. Their premier worry is that Hilleary and Bryant will divide the conservative primary vote and allow Corker-who lost the '94 Senate nomination to Frist (lifetime ACU rating: 89%) and is again the candidate of the party's moderate establishment-to win with a plurality.

Tennessee is one of only two states in the South (the other is Florida) in which a candidate can win a plurality rather than a majority of primary votes and be nominated for office.

Similar, But Different

On paper, Hilleary and Bryant appear to be products of the same cookie-cutter: Both are lawyers who went to the House as part of the "Gingrich class" of 1994, both are stalwart conservatives with lifetime ACU ratings of 98%, and both left Congress in '02 to run unsuccessfully for statewide office. (Hilleary narrowly lost the governorship to Democrat Phil Bredesson and Bryant lost the Republican Senate primary 53% to 43% to now-Sen. Lamar Alexander.)

But Hilleary's performance at the polls four years ago has clearly yielded greater dividends, and he is now considered the front-runner in the primary. The Desert Storm veteran lost the closest Tennessee governor's race since 1894 to Bredesson-in part, pundits and pols agree, because Hilleary had the burden of running right after unpopular outgoing GOP Gov. Sundquist had unsuccessfully tried to impose a first-ever income tax on the state. Both Hilleary and Bredesson vigorously opposed any income tax.

A Mason-Dixon poll last year showed Hilleary with name recognition of 82% statewide, compared to 42% for Bryant and 26% for Corker. Hilleary's own OnMessage, Inc. survey that shows him leading Bryant 33% to 15% statewide among likely Republican primary voters.

Unlike Hilleary or Bryant, construction company owner Corker has his own personal resources that he can deploy in the primary. While both of the former U.S. House members are strongly pro-life, Corker is from the pro-abortion wing of the party. Although Corker served as commissioner of finance and administration in Sundquist's cabinet, he steadfastly maintains that he was not for the proposed state income tax.

"But when he was mayor of Chattanooga," Hilleary was sure to point out to me during the conference in Memphis last month, "he raised taxes twice in four years."

Hilleary was also careful not to say an unkind word about Bryant, a friend and now his rival for conservative votes. In his words, "There are enough conservative votes to go around." But he also voiced concern about whether "there is enough conservative money to go around" to overcome a possible self-funded media strike by Corker in the closing days of the primary campaign.

"Look, guys like him fill seats in the Senate all the time," said Hilleary, referring to Corker's packing a political wallop because of his personal exchequer. "But here is one of the last true chances anywhere in the country to elect a genuine grass-roots conservative to the Senate-if conservatives unite."