Gov. Phil Bredesen (D) Elected 2002, 1st term up Jan. 2007
Born:	Nov. 21, 1943, Oceanport, NJ
Home:	Nashville
Education:	Harvard U., B.S. 1967
Religion:	Catholic
Marital Status:	married (Andrea Conte)
Elected  Office:	Lexington, MA, City Cncl., 1972-73; Nashville Mayor, 1991-99.
Professional Career:	Founder, HealthAmerica Corp., 1975-86.
Office	State Capitol, Nashville 37243, 615-741-2001; Fax: 615-532-9711; Web: www.state.tn.us/governor.
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Phil Bredesen is a Democrat who was elected governor of Tennessee in 2002, on his second try. Bredesen grew up far from Nashville, in Shortsville, New York, 30 miles southeast of Rochester; his parents were divorced and his mother worked as a bank teller; his grandmother lived with him and took in sewing for a living. He got a scholarship at Harvard and graduated with a degree in physics, and in 1967 he moved to Lexington, Massachusetts, and went to work for Itek; it was classified work and he got a draft deferment for it. He caught the political bug early. In 1968 he volunteered for Eugene McCarthy in New Hampshire and then for Robert Kennedy and for John Lindsay for mayor in New York in 1969. In 1970 he ran for the Massachusetts state Senate and lost to a longtime incumbent. In 1972 he won a seat on the Lexington Town Meeting. He went to work for Searle, a pharmaceutical firm, and moved to London, where he met his wife. She was recruited by Hospital Corporation of America; he quit his job to follow her to Nashville in 1975. There he got a job with Hospital Affiliates International, negotiating management contracts with hospitals. He wanted to start his own business and in 1980, with $50,000 cash and $250,000 in backing from local venture capitalists, operating from a computer in his den, he started HealthAmerica, which began acquiring and operating HMOs across the country. When it went public in 1983, it ran 20 HMOs with 400,000 members. His backers decided to sell the firm in 1986, and got $400 million from MaxiCare; Bredesen pocketed $47 million, while MaxiCare, under other management, later went bankrupt.

The political bug bit again. This time his goal was not the Lexington Town Meeting, but the mayoralty of Nashville, a particularly powerful position since the city includes all of Davidson County and the mayor has broad powers. Bredesen spent $2 million on his 1987 mayoral campaign but lost in the runoff to Congressman Bill Boner. Bredesen ran again in the January 1988 special election to succeed Boner, but lost the primary 40%-36% to former gubernatorial candidate Bob Clement. In 1991 Bredesen ran for mayor again and won with 71%. As mayor, Bredesen had some spectacular successes. He lined up financing for a hockey arena and, later, a football stadium and brought the NHL Predators and NFL Tennessee Titans to Nashville. He got voters to approve $100 million to build schools. He enticed Dell to locate a facility in Nashville. Nashville boomed in the 1990s and he took credit for 106,000 new jobs. Once a regional center, Nashville now seemed to be a major national metro area.

Nashville is Tennessee's largest media market, covering almost all of Middle Tennessee, and a successful Nashville mayor is a natural candidate for statewide office. In 1994 Bredesen spent $6 million on running for governor and won the Democratic nomination with 53% of the vote in a 10-candidate field. He did not campaign heavily in East and West Tennessee and lost to Republican Don Sundquist by a 54%-45% margin. But in the years that followed, Bredesen had a more successful record than Sundquist. The state government's problem is that it had an increasingly expensive health care program, TennCare, and one of the nation's lowest revenue bases, with no state income tax. TennCare, established in 1994 with federal waivers, covered not only those eligible for Medicaid but others with relatively low incomes or who were uninsured; enrollment zoomed and costs increased higher than average. In his second term, Sundquist went back on a campaign promise and sought an income tax. Most Republicans opposed him, arguing that Tennessee's low taxes helped account for the fact that the state had had much more economic growth than most neighboring states. The legislature, barraged at critical points by honking motorists and slogan-chanting anti-tax crusaders mobilized by radio talk show hosts, refused to pass one.

Against this background Bredesen, who had not run for reelection as mayor in 1999, decided to run for governor again. He said that he opposed an income tax and argued that his experience managing health care systems would enable him to straighten out TennCare. He won the Democratic primary easily, but the favorite was Republican Congressman Van Hilleary, who based his campaign on opposition to an income tax. Hilleary charged that Bredesen was a rich northerner who didn't really understand Tennessee. Bredesen undercut that by sitting down with folks over coffee and telling how he had grown up poor in a small town. Unusual for a Democrat, he appeared on conservative talk radio shows and made a favorable impression.

Much of Hilleary's campaign was based on the premise that Bredesen didn't really oppose an income tax. In September Hilleary ran an ad saying that "Phil BredeSundquist" had raised property taxes three times in Nashville (as indeed Bredesen had). Bredesen responded the next day with an on-camera ad: "Well, Mr. Hilleary, I'll say it again as clearly as I know how. I do not support an income tax." Bredesen focused more on fixing TennCare. "Everybody in the state of Tennessee knows somebody on TennCare they don't think should be on TennCare. It needs to be the bronze package, not the platinum package," he said. Hilleary, who said TennCare was "not my passion," said he would cut $300 to $400 million from TennCare. On other issues, there was agreement: Both candidates opposed gun control, supported scheduled teacher pay raises, called for children to learn to read by the third grade, wanted more spending on higher education, more spending to promote tourism and expansion of the Tennessee Industrial Infrastructure Program.

Bredesen spent $3 million of his own money on his campaign, to counter, he said, money raised for Hilleary by George W. Bush. This turned out to be the closest Tennessee governor's race since 1896; Bredesen won 51%-48%. This time he had campaigned across the state, raising money in small fundraisers, holding chili suppers is rural counties. He broke into the Republican base in East Tennessee, carrying Knoxville's Knox County--and holding Hilleary to a narrow lead in his own region. Bredesen carried Nashville solidly and carried or held Hilleary to narrow margins in all but one of the Republican-trending counties around Nashville. Bredesen had a big lead in Memphis and carried rural West Tennessee, often a swing area in Tennessee elections.

Facing a predicted $800 million budget shortfall, Bredesen got the legislature to cut state spending 9% across the board in 2003 and to vote in a lottery to pay for college scholarships; it had a record $10.8 million in sales on its first day in January 2004. He supported changes in workmen's comp supported by businesses and opposed by trial lawyers. He got the legislature to limit driver's licenses to citizens and aliens with permanent resident status; others could get certificates of driving which would not be valid identification.

In 2004 he proposed selective increases in spending, restoring $16 million of $18 million in cuts for conservation land purchases, restoring the $36 million in cuts in subsidies to local governments over two years; he refused to restore $65 million in cuts to the state roadbuilding fund. He pushed through a $174 million education increase, raising teacher pay above the Southeastern average and starting voluntary pre-kindergarten. He got $8 million for industrial infrastructure, $11 million for job training connected to Nissan and Toyota and a $10 million Memphis biotech initiative; $95 million was added to the rainy day fund. When a tax study commission came in with a recommendation for an income tax in December 2004, he said, "I don't feel bound by its recommendations to do anything."

The big elephant remained in the room: TennCare. By early 2004 it consumed nearly one-third of the state budget and its 2005 cost was estimated to be $650 million over what was budgeted. In May 2004 the legislature approved Bredesen's changes: recipients were limited to 10 doctor visits a year and six prescription medicines (the average for TennCare was 30); medical necessity was to be determined by the medical contractor, not the patient's doctor; only the least expensive adequate care would be covered. One reason TennCare had so many benefits and cost so much was that self-styled public interest groups, notably the Tennessee Justice Center, kept going to court to enforce old consent decrees. In June 2004 the Tennessee Justice Center went to court again. In September Bredesen asked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for approval of all his changes. But the lawsuits went on, and on November 10 Bredesen announced that he was ready to abolish TennCare and move back to standard Medicaid, which would eliminate coverage for 430,000 people, one-third of beneficiaries.

Twice in the next weeks Bredesen met with the head of the Tennessee Justice Center to get concessions. But they would make none. On January 10, 2005, he announced that all non-Medicaid-eligible adults would be removed from TennCare and that strict limits would be imposed on prescription drugs and doctor visits, with no appeals; the cost increase was reduced from $650 million to $75 million.

Bredesen's ratings in the polls suggested that he was very well positioned to win reelection in 2006. On many of his programs he had been receiving support from most Republicans in the legislature, which left him needing only a few Democrats to prevail. Back in 2002 he had given $750,000 to the state Democratic party for local races; he gave less in 2004, though he did campaign extensively for Democrats. When Republicans won a majority in the state Senate and gained a seat in the state House, he said he didn't think he would have much difficulty dealing with them, though some were threatening to bring up for the required second passage a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Meanwhile, some national Democrats, given pause by their defeats in November 2004, began to give Bredesen a lookover. The New Republic ran a laudatory cover story on him in January 2005. University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds, proprietor of the influential Instapundit.com, wrote an admiring article for The Wall Street Journal. In January Bredesen was the keynote speaker at the Democratic National Committee Council meeting in Atlanta. Was this the kind of Democrat who could be elected president? Bredesen seemed not totally uninterested, but told The New Republic, "The people who have the opportunities are the ones who put their heads down and do the best job they can at the job at hand, and that produces the kind of opportunities that people who put their heads up don't have." He had been governor, after all, for only two years, and he would have to face Tennessee voters again in 2006. But his story seems to be of interest not only in Tennessee.

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent
2002 general	Phil Bredesen (D)	837,284	51%
	Van Hilleary (R)	786,803	48%
2002 primary	Phil Bredesen (D)	426,418	79%
	Randy Nichols (D)	38,322	7%
	Charles Smith (D)	34,547	6%
1998 general	Don Sundquist (R)	669,973	69%
	John Jay Hooker (D)	287,750	29%
	Other	18,513	2%