Excerpted from “The Education of a Senator: From JFK to Trump” by Lamar Alexander, former Roy M. and Barbara Goodman Family Visiting Professor of Practice in Public Service, 2001-2002, published by Post Hill Press.
The Democratic sweep in 2008 did not interfere with my re-election to a second term in the Senate.
I had no opposition in the August primary. In November, I won 65 percent of the vote. Despite Obama’s carrying majority African American Shelby County (Memphis) by 2 to 1, I carried it too. My winning Shelby County for the sixth time in over 40 years showed that friendships among Black, as well as white, constituents can pay dividends for Republicans too.
The Tennessee election results seemed uneventful, but they marked the end of four decades of two-party competition in our state. McCain won Tennessee handily. Obama lost traditionally Democrat white voters in rural Middle and West Tennessee counties that African American Democrat Senate candidate Harold Ford Jr. had won just two years earlier.
Counties named for Democrat heroes Sam Houston and Andrew Jackson began switching from solid Democrat to solid Republican. Democrats dropped the names of Jefferson and Jackson from their annual dinners. Republican Lincoln Day dinners became Reagan Day dinners. A new polarization was underway.
