DEMS/POLITICS: “Former Gov. Phil Bredesen, the last Democrat to win statewide office in Tennessee, announced on Thursday [12-7-17] that he would run for the seat being vacated by Senator Bob Corker, handing his party a conceivable, if extremely narrow, path back to a Senate majority in 2018.
Mr. Bredesen, a wealthy business executive and two-term governor who swept every county in the state in his 2006 re-election bid, was aggressively courted by Senate Democrats, who have been eyeing any potential openings in a year that features a forbidding map for the party.
Democrats are defending 25 Senate seats next year, 10 of them in states that President Trump won. But if Mr. Bredesen can mount a strong campaign, Tennessee would join Nevada and Arizona as states where Republican-held Senate seats could be in jeopardy. Republicans currently have a two-seat majority.”
-Jonathan Martin, Ex-Governor’s Run Gives Democrats a Bit More Hope of Retaking the Senate,” The New York Times online, Dec. 7, 2017