Republicans Finally Embrace Recycling
In honor of Earth Day, Tennessee Democratic Party Chairman Bob Tuke congratulated his statewide counterparts in the Republican Party for finally embracing recycling by reusing “three failed candidates from the Don Sundquist era” in the race for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Bill Frist. “Rather than letting Ed Bryant, Bob Corker, and Van Hilleary languish on the junk heap of Tennessee political history, the GOP rolled them back out so voters can reject them again,” Tuke said. “I guess it’s admirable that they have finally seen the value of reprocessing their castoffs.”
Calling them members of the “Sundquist Class of ’94,” Tuke noted that all three of the GOP Senate candidates appeared on the statewide political scene in the same year that the pro-income-tax former governor won Tennessee’s highest office: Bryant and Hilleary as candidates for the U.S. House and Corker as a candidate for the U.S. Senate seat eventually captured by Frist. Corker, after being handily thrashed by Frist in the Republican primary, went on to become a trusted fiscal advisor to Sundquist as commissioner of the Department of Finance and Administration in the run-up to the disastrous effort to enact a state income tax.
Bryant and Hilleary were thumped in statewide races in 2002, the final year of the Sundquist Administration: Bryant by Lamar Alexander in the U.S. Senate primary and Hilleary by Phil Bredesen in the gubernatorial race.
Tuke said it’s no coincidence that the career trajectories of the three have followed that of Sundquist. “They rose with Sundquist, and they fell with Sundquist,” he said. “In most cases, recycling is good, but I don’t think anyone in this state wants to bring back the days of Don Sundquist.
“It’s best to leave some things in the discard pile.”
