'Ridiculous' attack ads and bitter protests define a divisive Tennessee race that could determine control of the Senate
- The battle between eight-term Republican congressman Marsha Blackburn and Democratic former Gov. Phil Bredesen over Tennessee's Senate seat has become deeply divisive.
- Many Tennesseans point to the attack ads outside groups have released in a Senate race in which spending clocked in at a staggering $68 million.
- The race has also featured two candidates with very different approaches to politics.
FRANKLIN, Tennessee - The scene at a pumpkin festival in this city's downtown last Saturday was cheerful. Parents pushed their stroller-bound toddlers dressed in Halloween costumes. Dog owners paraded their costumed pets across a stage in the town square.
But the exurb of Nashville is ground zero for one of the country's most competitive, consequential, and nasty US Senate races.
At stake is retiring GOP Sen. Bob Corker's seat, over which eight-term Republican congressman Marsha Blackburn and Democratic former Gov. Phil Bredesen are locked in a tight battle.
Blackburn strolled around the festival on Saturday morning, shaking hands and chatting with supporters. Some 500 miles away, a gunman opened fire inside the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing 11 congregants in the most deadly attack on the US Jewish community in decades. Progressive Jewish groups called the anti-Semitic violence "a direct culmination" of President Donald Trump's - and the Republican Party's - rhetoric.
You wouldn't have known it from the mood at the pumpkin festival, but Tennessee is suffering from the same deep political divisions riling Washington and the nation.
"People, regardless of their ideology, know that something in American politics isn't right at the moment," said Jeff Yarbro, a Democratic state senator from Nashville.
Divisive rhetoric and 'ridiculous' attacks
Tennessee hasn't had a competitive state-wide political contest since 2006, when Corker narrowly beat Democrat Harold Ford, Jr. This year's race is being fought through the prism of deep national divisions.
Many Tennesseans point to the attack ads both camps have released in a Senate race in which spending clocked in at a staggering $68 million. The most vicious ads have been bankrolled by outside groups, including the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity on the right and Sen. Chuck Schumer's Senate Majority PAC on the left. The groups have poured $17.8 million into supporting Bredesen's campaign and $23.2 million into backing Blackburn's, respectively.
The first thing that Dawn Van Ryckeghem, a 54-year-old swim coach and Blackburn supporter, said when asked about the race is that she's been repelled by the "ridiculous" attack ads.
"When I was younger, when my mom was younger, politicians had respect for each other, they didn't call each other names, they didn't do smear campaigns and they kept to the facts," Van Ryckeghem said between bites of kettle corn at the Franklin festival on Saturday, adding that Trump is "spewing out hatred and divisiveness."
- In one ad, Americans for Prosperity accused Bredesen of supporting higher gas and sales taxes and spending lavishly on the governor's mansion while he led the state through a budget crisis. Some of those claims are untrue, according to independent fact-checkers.
- A National Republican Senatorial Committee ad accuses Bredesen of shredding documents related to sexual harassment claims made by state employees while he was governor.
- Fact-checkers also found that attack misleading, and Bredesen released a response ad in which former female colleagues call Blackburn a "liar."
- Meanwhile, Senate Majority PAC ads accuse Blackburn of being a Washington insider who's repeatedly voted to raise her own salary while stripping benefits from vulnerable Americans and being "bought and paid for by the opioid industry."
"The ads this cycle are orders of magnitude worse, in terms of nastiness," said Josh Clinton, a political science professor at Vanderbilt.
He added that negative ads can depress enthusiasm and turnout, particularly among independents and new or irregular voters, on whom Bredesen is counting.
"So if you think cynically, that's probably better news for the stronger party in the state, which has a larger base," he said.
'Marsha Blackburn is a white supremacist!'
Perhaps the most unexpected attack launched in the race from Taylor Swift, who broke her political silence by slamming Blackburn as an anti-woman candidate who would undermine civil and human rights. She encouraged fellow Tennesseans to vote for Bredesen and Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper.
"Her voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me," Swift wrote in an Instagram post of Blackburn. "These are not MY Tennessee values."
Exemplifying the deep tensions at play in the race, anti-Blackburn protesters interrupted a moment of silence for victims of the Pittsburgh massacre during a Sunday rally in Nashville. As the crowd quieted in respect for those who were killed by an anti-Semitic mass shooter, a woman called out, "Marsha Blackburn is a white supremacist!"
Blackburn joined the crowd's chants of "USA! USA!" as several protesters were forcibly dragged out of the event by police. She later called the demonstrators a "liberal angry mob."
Bredesen's campaign also condemned the protesters, with whom it said it had no association, and also accused Blackburn staffers of disrupting Bredesen's events.
"It is a shame that people disrupted Congresswoman Blackburn's event and it is a shame that Congresswoman Blackburn's campaign staffers have been proudly screaming at 37 of Governor Bredesen's events," Bredesen's press secretary, Alyssa Hansen, said in a statement to reporters.
Eliza Relman/Business InsiderPhil Bredesen talks with a supporter at a campaign event on October 27.
A clash of styles
Blackburn and Bredesen have different views on policy, but their differing styles are particularly apparent in this race.
Bredesen is understated, measured, cautious - what some call boring. He largely sticks to policy, a strategic move - he would lose cultural battles over guns, abortion, or protesting during the pledge of allegiance. Meanwhile, Blackburn is a conservative firebrand who's doing her best to energize the GOP base for a repeat of 2016.
Despite unbridled partisanship in Washington, Bredesen insists he has "a high school civics view of our country" and is "pained" by what he sees as "a government of people standing on opposite sides of the room and shouting at each other." He said that he's tried to engage as little as possible in political attacks.
"I think it's certainly appropriate to contrast yourself, but I have not tried to correct or fight back on every single crazy thing that comes of out these ads," Bredesen said in a Saturday interview. "I don't want to run a campaign where the issues are driven by the opponent. I like to talk about my own issues."
Blackburn made her name on cable TV, is one of the most conservative members of the House, and has become one of Trump's most loyal allies in that chamber, where she's served since 2003. She introduced her Senate bid last year by framing herself as more conservative than the rest.
"Tennessee has never had a Republican nominee as conservative or who is as much an ideological warrior as Rep. Blackburn is," said Yarbro, the Democratic state senator.
But despite Blackburn's full embrace of Trump, many Tennesseans draw a distinction between the candidate and the president. And the congressman herself occasionally draws a line herself, conceding that Tennesseans won't always stand for his rhetoric.
"There's been a couple of times … I've said we need to take a kinder approach," Blackburn said in an interview last Saturday. "This is the South and people have a lot of respect for manners."