CAPITOL VIEW

By Pat Nolan, Senior Vice President, Dye, Van Mol & Lawrence Public Relations


October 5, 2006

New campaign chairman Tom Ingram calls it a “tweak”. But what’s happened to Bob Corker’s U.S. Senate campaign looks more like a “political tsunami” with the number of campaign officials being added, removed or swept away to new jobs.

Coming just weeks before the voting begins in a very tight race against Democrat Harold Ford, Jr., this is clearly great concern in the GOP about what can be done to put Corker right.

There is no one in Tennessee politics more qualified to pull Corker’s ox out of the ditch than Tom Ingram. He put Fred Thompson in his famous pickup truck to win a U.S. Senate seat and Lamar Alexander in his red plaid shirt to win a Governor’s race.

But there’s not enough time to do anything like that now. What Ingram must do is bring unhappy Republicans home. Polls show Corker has still not united his base. That’s why Stephanie Chivers has been brought to turn out the troops as she has done successfully several times before.

So who are these are GOP voters? They are Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary supporters unhappy with Corker and how he relentlessly trashed their candidates on TV during the final weeks of the primary. Some may also be unhappy with the GOP in general, including President Bush and the Republican Congress.

So what do Ingram and the “new’ Corker campaign say? Expect them to remind these conservatives just how horrible it will be to have Harold Ford and the National Democrats in charge of the Senate. Expect them to highlight Ford’s extravagant lifestyle and how Bob Corker is more “one of us”, a husband, a father, a successful businessman and government leader, and from Tennessee, not from Washington.

But we’ve already heard a lot of that and it hasn’t seemed to hurt Ford. Will saying it differently, talking about private junkets, Playboy bunnies and missed votes make any difference now?

And then there’s Governor Phil Bredesen, who is cruising to re-election. But is he also growing coattails that are bringing voters over to Ford?

Ticket-splitting is an old tradition in Tennessee. What GOP leaders may have to say (quietly) to wayward Republicans is that’s it’s OK to vote for Bredesen but please vote for Corker too. Of course, GOP gubernatorial nominee Jim Bryson sure won’t like that and neither may Bryant and Hilleary supporters if Tom Ingram has to be the one to deliver that message.

You see four years ago it was Ingram who openly supported Phil Bredesen for Governor, when Hilleary was the GOP nominee. And, of course, Ingram supported Lamar Alexander for the Senate that year too, which didn’t thrill supporters of Ed Bryant who was his challenger in the primary.

It’s true in politics like anywhere else, what goes around, can come around. And what that’s mean for the “new” Corker campaign is they have a lot of work to do and short time to do it.

AND THERE’S MORE…

While the Corker campaign reportedly gets ready to tape some new TV spots in the next few days, they seemed to have been searching around in the campaign closet to find some old material they could recycle.

Remember the ad Corker ran (very effectively) in the primary with a group of seemingly average folks who identified themselves as being from Chattanooga. They then proceeded to praise Corker for the great job he did as Mayor there, from taxes to crime to you name it.

A re-cut version of that ad re-appeared on Tennessee TVs a few days ago and I guess it led some reporters to start to check out just who these folks in the ad are. Well, according to an Associated Press story of October 4 written by Beth Rucker, some of them are NOT from Chattanooga, but rather the surrounding area. Oops!

Corker folks are quick to defend the ad, saying all the people shown are very involved in the life of Chattanooga even if they don’t live within the city limits. OK, but the ad says “We are from Chattanooga”. If they are not, it should have said: “We are from the Chattanooga AREA.” Maybe a minor point, but once the credibility of a candidate’s ad can be questioned it is likely to weaken the overall effectiveness of that spot. Maybe it was better off left back in the closet.

And is that where the TV spot featuring Corker and mother is headed? Not only has it been criticized by the Ford campaign for being wrong when it claims Corker cut crime 50% while he was Mayor (“Bob lied to his Mom” is the bumper sticker response), now, as the spot has continued to air, I hear complaints even from some Republicans, that the conversation between the candidate and his mother doesn’t seem to flow or make a lot of sense.





FORD

Of course the Ford campaign hasn’t been staying quiet.

They are back on the air with an ad once again featuring the candidate as the prime talent and focus. That “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” spot lampooning Bob Corker seems to have been ditched, (which given the alternative of featuring Ford, is a good move tactically).

The new spot has Ford in what appears to be a “meat and three” restaurant. But there are no personal waitresses here. This is the kind of eatery you can find in a lot of places in Tennessee, where you order your food at the counter and take it out on a tray to eat at a table with a simple (but certainly not white linen) tablecloth.

With the theme of there is “no such thing as a free lunch”, Ford criticizes the Republicans in Washington for running up a record deficit and putting us in big debt to foreign countries. He extols his own voting record of holding the line on the deficit and says he supports a Constitutional Amendment that would require a balanced budget. Clearly this is an ad aimed at recruiting conservatives who are disgusted with the huge spending that continues to go on in Washington.

But it is the close of the spot which is the grabber and classic Tennessee. You see the cashier ready to take some money with a large American flag draped all across the wall behind him and this big UT Vols football helmet next to the cash register. All of this is in the background behind Ford. Leaving aside what Ford is saying, he looks so comfortable in this environment, it is clear this ad is also aimed to undercut the efforts by the GOP to portray Ford as “not one of us.”

And State Democratic leaders are doing even more than that in their contest against the Corker/GOP team.

According to an October 5 story in the KNOXVILLE NEWS SENTINEL by Tom Humphrey, the Demos say a photo of Ford in a fund-raising appeal put out by the State GOP is “racist” because it has been “obviously altered” to make Ford, an African American, looked darker. They also say the GOP piece uses “codes words” like “smooth operator” to describe Ford. Finally, they charge that a TV ad by the National Senate Republicans seems to depict Ford as a dark, shadowy figure walking down an alley in the spot.

“A lot of baloney” and “silly” say the Republicans in denying these claims. And the Corker campaign itself, while pointing out it was not involved in anyway with the mailer or the TV spot under fire denies it has done anything to make race an issue in the campaign.

Gives you just a little taste of just how tough and rough these final few weeks are going to be, huh?

ANXIOUS TIMES

Besides Bob Corker, the politicians with the most to lose if the GOP doesn’t hold this Senate seat are our current Senators Bill Frist and Lamar Alexander.

If Frist has any chance to get a good start out of the gate as he runs for the GOP Presidential nomination in 2008, he must make sure Bob Corker wins. Losing would inflict a political black eye on Frist (like Al Gore losing his home state when he ran for President in 2000) from which the good doctor may never recover.

As for Alexander, he is up for re-election in two years. If the Democrats take over one of Tennessee’s seats in the Senate (or the Demos take over the full Senate itself) that could make his prospects more problematic and perhaps even raise some doubts about whether Alexander wants a second term to be a member of the minority party in the upper chamber. But I suspect he would still want to run and given his past ability to appeal to Democrats and Independents (which some conservatives in the GOP do not view as a virtue) I suspect he will still be favored to win even if Corker doesn’t make it.

DEBATES

As the campaign calendar turns to October, it’s debate time in Tennessee with the GOP and Democratic candidates in both the U.S. Senate and Goverrnor’s races squaring off three times each this month.

As I mentioned before, you can already see the political positioning go on for the Senate debates. I have gotten two news releases from the Corker campaign in recent days, saying what a great “orator” Ford is but how he will be challenged in the debate to explain things like his “liberal” voting record. Clearly this is an effort to put some heat on Ford and take it off Corker who most think is probably not as good (or as tall) on his feet as Ford.

As I wrote in the last column Ford seems to be trying to intimidate Corker a bit, calling him “a wimp” for not debating more and urging him to do more debates, especially one in the Knoxville area.

Meanwhile in the Governor’s race, everybody is wondering why incumbent Phil Bredesen agreed to any, much less three debates, with his little known (statewide) and underfunded challenger State Senator Jim Bryson. The Governor told me on my INSIDE POLITICS show to air this weekend (October 6-8) that he just believes doing debates is what is expected in a campaign so that’s why he agreed to do so (even if it doesn’t make a lot of political sense, especially doing three).

My interview with the Governor covers a lot of topics. Tune into NewsChannel 5 Plus, Comcast Channel 50 to see it. We’re on at 7:30 PM Friday, then 5:30 PM on Saturday as well as 5:00 AM, 12:30 PM and 8:30 PM Sunday.

Getting back to the debates, Governor Bredesen and Jim Bryson have already done one debate with another set for this weekend and the final one in Nashville October 14. The first round in Knoxville seemed to be a draw with no one making a mistake at first blush.

But now comes a story by the Associated Press on October 5 which indicates that Bryson may have misstated his background as a hunter and fisherman during the debate. In fact, according to the story, Bryson does not now and never has had a Tennessee hunting or fishing license and apparently may be in violation of the law for not having one when he went fishing on his father’s farm pond back in Arkansas. Ouch!

And to make matters even worse, now comes word that Governor Bredesen is the choice for the endorsement of the National Rifle Association.

Double ouch!

And it gets even more challenging…Bryson is looking at how to stay on TV. The ad buy for his only campaign TV commercial (I call it “Honey I Shrunk the Governor”) is over with no replacement ad in sight according to Andy Sher, of the CHATTANOOGA TIMES & NEWS FREE PRESS. It’s probably a matter of money and apparently the ad, while memorable, did not make enough donors rally to his cause to keep his “big, big” message on the air (at least for now). In fact, most polls show Bryson’s support has dropped some while the ad ran (from trailing Governor Bredesen by 30 or more points to closer to 40 points).


FOLLOWING HIS GRANDFATHER?

Metro Councilman at Large David Briley seems to be the latest local leader eyeing a potential run for Mayor next year. Briley, who has been raising money to run for Vice Mayor, has just gotten back the results of a poll he commissioned.

The survey I am sure asks a lot of vice-mayor related questions, but several sources confirm to me (and Briley does not deny) that it also contains at least one question pitting him in a race against the three current candidates for Mayor.

Briley won’t say how he did or what he is going to do, except to say that…for now..he is still a candidate for Vice Mayor. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile the other candidates don’t seem to be waiting around to see if anyone else jumps in the race. Bob Clement’s camp reports another very successful fund raiser hosted by Beth and Steve Franklin. It reportedly attracted over 240 people at $500 per head (including former Governor Ned McWherter). The e-mail I got doesn’t give a fund raising total for the event, but if everyone attending paid $500 that adds up to $120,000.

Wow! A good night indeed

Vice Mayor Howard Gentry has told me the fund raiser he had hosted by Martha Ingram raised him another $55,000 and as for Councilman At Large Buck Dozier, it’s hard to say. I never hear much of anything about or from his campaign (except when he made his first fundraising disclosure), so I have no idea what he is up to. Given Buck’s past record in local elections (he has twice led the ticket in getting the most votes for Metro Council At Large) and I am sure he and his team are working hard.

But it would be nice to hear what you are up to, Buck.

WASHINGTON

It seems that the burgeoning scandal in Washington has stolen a “page” out of Karl Rove’s perfect playbook.

For weeks, he, the Bush administration and Congressional Republicans have been successful in getting the media’s and voter’s attention to focus on terrorism and national security and not so much on the war in Iraq or Congressional ethics issues. It was a strategy to help Republicans and President Bush win the mid-term elections next month and it seemed to be working.

But the page scandal on Capitol Hill, which erupted such as members were headed home to run for re-election, seems to change everything, especially when it is combined with Bob Woodward’s new book on the Bush Administration conduct of the Iraq War and the recent national security report which also paints a very gloomy picture on how things are going and what we have NOT accomplished over there.

More and more it appears this election (and control of the next Congress) will pivot, one way or another, on what the news headlines are as we enter the voting booths

There is still time for things to change again from something unexpected happening but don’t expect it to have much impact here in Tennessee. None of our incumbent Congress members have been implicated in any way in the scandal and all are heavily favored to win re-election. In fact, no incumbent Tennessee congress members has lost re-election since 1974 (32 years and counting).

I suppose this scandal could have some impact in the U.S. Senate race. If it continues to go badly for the GOP and its Congressional leaders it could hurt Corker. If it is seen as more a Washington issue for both parties it could impact Ford somehow. But I think both those possibilities are a stretch and except for further turning off voters in general, it probably won’t be that big a factor here.