Tough situation for Democrats in 2006. Ford was their best and most attractive candidate on paper, but I definitely think his race and family associations hurt him. Based on the PVI swings elsewhere in the country, I suspect Lincoln Davis, John Tanner, or Bart Gordon all could have won Tennessee in 2006 if they'd been nominated.
Tough situation for Democrats in 2006. Ford was their best and most attractive candidate on paper, but I definitely think his race and family associations hurt him. Based on the PVI swings elsewhere in the country, I suspect Lincoln Davis, John Tanner, or Bart Gordon all could have won Tennessee in 2006 if they'd been nominated.
But I also don't think it would have meant anything beyond the 2006 cycle. Democrats required a uniquely rural coalition to squeak out a victory in Tennessee even in the best of times given how red East Tennessee had been for generations. That coalition was no longer an option by the Obama years, ensuring no path to victory for any Democrat in Tennessee for at least a generation.
There was this controversial campaign ad that divided Democrats and Republicans.
In the article, it shows that it was aired at a bad time for Bob Corker's campaign even though Corker outright denounced it. Ford kept on pressing Corker.
With their majority in the Senate potentially hanging in the balance, Republicans were bickering among themselves over an advertisement in the particularly nasty campaign in Tennessee that even some Republicans have denounced as racist.
The dispute pitted former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker, the GOP candidate for the seat held by Senate Republican leader Bill Frist, against his own party leadership Tuesday after it rebuffed his call to pull the ad, which lampoons Democratic Rep. Harold Ford Jr.’s reputation as a man about town.
In the ad, a young white actress playing the stereotype of a “dumb blonde” talks about meeting Ford, a 36-year-old bachelor who is black, “at the Playboy party.” At the end of the ad, she winks and says to the camera, “Harold — call me.”
The ad brought immediate criticism from the Ford campaign and the NAACP, whose Washington office called it “a powerful innuendo that plays to pre-existing prejudices about African-American men and white women.”
Ford told MSNBC-TV: “I know that they are a little desperate and doing the things that you do when you get desperate in a campaign.”
Corker himself called the ad “distasteful” Tuesday, telling MSNBC-TV, “I think it ought to come down.” Meanwhile, Bill Cohen, a former Republican senator from Maine, criticized it in an interview on CNN as “a very serious appeal to a racist sentiment.”
Tough situation for Democrats in 2006. Ford was their best and most attractive candidate on paper, but I definitely think his race and family associations hurt him. Based on the PVI swings elsewhere in the country, I suspect Lincoln Davis, John Tanner, or Bart Gordon all could have won Tennessee in 2006 if they'd been nominated.
But I also don't think it would have meant anything beyond the 2006 cycle. Democrats required a uniquely rural coalition to squeak out a victory in Tennessee even in the best of times given how red East Tennessee had been for generations. That coalition was no longer an option by the Obama years, ensuring no path to victory for any Democrat in Tennessee for at least a generation.
There was this controversial campaign ad that divided Democrats and Republicans.
In the article, it shows that it was aired at a bad time for Bob Corker's campaign even though Corker outright denounced it. Ford kept on pressing Corker.
Corker still won in the end.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna15403071
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With their majority in the Senate potentially hanging in the balance, Republicans were bickering among themselves over an advertisement in the particularly nasty campaign in Tennessee that even some Republicans have denounced as racist.
The dispute pitted former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker, the GOP candidate for the seat held by Senate Republican leader Bill Frist, against his own party leadership Tuesday after it rebuffed his call to pull the ad, which lampoons Democratic Rep. Harold Ford Jr.’s reputation as a man about town.
In the ad, a young white actress playing the stereotype of a “dumb blonde” talks about meeting Ford, a 36-year-old bachelor who is black, “at the Playboy party.” At the end of the ad, she winks and says to the camera, “Harold — call me.”
The ad brought immediate criticism from the Ford campaign and the NAACP, whose Washington office called it “a powerful innuendo that plays to pre-existing prejudices about African-American men and white women.”
Ford told MSNBC-TV: “I know that they are a little desperate and doing the things that you do when you get desperate in a campaign.”
Corker himself called the ad “distasteful” Tuesday, telling MSNBC-TV, “I think it ought to come down.” Meanwhile, Bill Cohen, a former Republican senator from Maine, criticized it in an interview on CNN as “a very serious appeal to a racist sentiment.”