Looks like Tennessee Dems have caught a bad break: Their likely Senate candidate, businessman Mike McWherter, the son of former Gov. Ned McWherter, is expected to drop his Senate bid.
Two potential candidates for the seat, former state Democratic Party Chair Bob Tuke and Nashville insurance lawyer Kevin Doherty, both say that they received calls from McWherter to inform them of his decision to cut the cord on the race.
Tuke says that he’ll make a decision soon:
Tuke said earlier this year that he planned to seek the Democratic nomination to run against Alexander, but then stepped aside after McWherter indicated an interest.
“I’m going to go through a very methodical, intentional analysis of it – talking to people and looking at the polling Mike had done. Then we’ll see – hopefully in just a few days. Time’s a wasting,” said Tuke.
Tuke says he’ll also talk with Nashville attorney Kevin Doherty, who had also indicated an interest in making the race until McWherter stepped up.
This seat was always a long shot for Dems to pick up (absent a Lamar! retirement), but McWherter was expected to partially self-fund his race, with the potential to make Alexander sweat a little. The news isn’t good by any means, but at least we have a couple of potential candidates who are giving the race a look.
Tim McGraw and Tipper Gore. I haven’t heard Democrats courting either of them which is a shame because they would both create a tremendous amount of buzz and both would have, at the very least, a decent shot at winning.
McGraw has stated he would like to run for office some day and Tipper was rumored to be a candidate back in 2002 against Lamar.
Can anyone say “Draft Gore?” 😛