Richard Powelson of the Knoxville News Sentinel reports on Harold Ford's surging campaign for the U.S. Senate:After the Democrats lost another presidential election last year, one of the state's most conservative Democrats, U.S. Rep. Lincoln Davis, was musing about what the party must do to become winners again.
They should be talking about God and guns, among other priorities, instead of gays and abortion, Davis said.
Now Davis is one of the close advisers to the 2006 U.S. Senate campaign of U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., a Memphis Democrat. Ford has been talking about his faith, interjected a prayer at the beginning of a luncheon meeting recently with reporters, and mentioned he liked duck hunting and that he had toured a gun-manufacturing plant in the state.
Hmmm. Are Ford and Davis cooking up a Democratic comeback?
When Ford first announced earlier this year that he would not run for re-election to his House seat and instead would run for the Senate, it looked to many like political suicide. Tennessee had been leaning strongly Republican for many years. It last elected a Democrat as a U.S. senator in 1990.
But that was before the war in Iraq had killed more than 2,000 U.S. soldiers, before U.S. gasoline prices rose briefly to more than $3 a gallon, before the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney was indicted on felony charges of obstruction of justice and perjury and resigned, before a federal U.S. attorney's office and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission began an investigation of stock sales by U.S. Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn.
And that was before the Middle Tennessee State University poll completed Nov. 4, which showed only 40 percent of Tennessee residents have a favorable opinion of President Bush's performance - compared to 55 percent last spring.
The same poll said 58 percent reported driving less because of high gasoline prices.
Suddenly, the state seems open to change - and perhaps with a focus on who has the best ideas for the state's future regardless of party affiliation. By spring next year, voters will be well aware of all the candidates' positions, their positives and negatives.
Ford has many views on his new direction for federal policy.
He talks a lot about problems in Iraq and his alternatives, and high gasoline prices and his alternatives.
About problems with Bush's education program, about excessive spending and borrowing and record budget deficits caused by the Bush administration and Republican-controlled Congress, how he has made more trips than Bush to talk to U.S. troops in Iraq, about excessive federal "tax cuts for millionaires" that are prompting Republicans to push for spending cuts elsewhere but choosing programs that Ford says are important to the poor and middle-income.
On Iraq, in part he suggests a new national security team for Bush with more credibility and urges public statements against plans for permanent military bases in Iraq and for bans on cruel and inhumane treatment of detainees from Iraq.
But how well Ford plays in rural areas remains to be seen. His friend Rep. Davis lives on a farm in a remote area of East Tennessee and drives a big pickup truck. Ford represents the most populous urban area of the state and drives a car. Davis has a bachelor's degree in agriculture; Ford has a law degree. But both are Baptists.
Of course, Ford's primary opponent, Rosalind Kurita, and the three major GOP candidates - Ed Bryant, Bob Corker and Van Hilleary - may talk often, too, about their belief in God and rights to use guns and hold similar views on key issues.
In the end, voters will pick the candidate who seems most sincere, the most fired up, the most trustworthy and who seems to connect with them.
