Phil Bredesen

Infobox Governor
name= Phil Bredesen


caption=
order=48^th
office= Governor of Tennessee
term_start= January 18 2003
term_end=
lieutenant= John S. Wilder
(2003 - 2007)
Ron Ramsey
(2007 - Present)
predecessor=Don Sundquist
successor=Incumbent
office2= 4^th Mayor of the Metropolitan Nashville
term_start2= 1991
term_end2= 1999
predecessor2=Bill Boner
successor2=Bill Purcell
birth_date= birth date and age|1943|11|21
birth_place= Oceanport, New Jersey
spouse= Andrea Conte
profession= Healthcare entrepreneur
party= Democratic
religion=Presbyterian
residence= Nashville, Tennessee
alma_mater= Harvard University

Philip Norman "Phil" Bredesen (born November 21, 1943) is the 48th Governor of Tennessee, having served since 2003. He previously served as the fourth mayor of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County from 1991 to 1999.

Background

Bredesen was born Philip Norman Bredesen, Jr. on November 21, 1943 in Oceanport, New Jersey. He is one of the sons of Norma Bredesen (née Norma Lucille Walborn) and Philip Norman Bredesen. His father, a captain in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, was stationed at Fort Monmouth in New Jersey at the time of Bredesen's birth. The family lived in various locations during Bredesen's early childhood, including Canandaigua, New York and Arlington, Massachusetts.

When the family broke up in 1951, Norma moved with her two sons, Phil and his younger brother Dean (1947-2006), to her family home in Shortsville, New York, where they lived with Bredesen's maternal grandmother, a widow. Shortsville is the community Bredesen considers to be his hometown, and he lived there until he left for college. He attended the Red Jacket Central Elementary and Secondary School, located in the adjoining village of Manchester.

In 1961, Bredesen entered Harvard College, where he concentrated in physics and lived in Quincy House. He received his A.B. degree in 1967. [Harvard University, "2005 Alumni Directory", p. 188.]

Bredesen married Susan Cleaves in 1968, but they divorced in 1974 and had no children. In 1974, Bredesen married Andrea Conte in Wheatley, Oxfordshire, England, and the two have one son, Ben. In 1975, the family moved to Nashville, Tennessee. There Bredesen founded HealthAmerica Corp., a healthcare management company that eventually grew to more than 6,000 employees and was publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange. He sold his controlling interest in HealthAmerica in 1986, and because of the wealth he earned from his work with the company, he does not accept his gubernatorial salary. Phil Bredesen is a democrat.

Early political career

Bredesen ran his first political campaign in 1987, when he ran for mayor of Nashville. He finished second to 5th District Congressman Bill Boner, but since Boner only won 42% of the vote, he and Bredesen faced each other in a runoff. Boner won the runoff, largely by emphasizing that he was a Nashville native while Bredesen was a Northerner.

In 1988, he ran in the Democratic primary for the congressional seat left open by Boner's victoryndash the real contest in a district that had been in Democratic hands since 1875. However, he finished a distant second behind Bob Clement, son of former governor Frank G. Clement. Bredesen ran for mayor again in 1991 and won by a comfortable majority. He was reelected almost as easily in 1995.

As mayor of Nashville, he added more than 440 new teachers, built 32 new schools and renovated 43 others. He also implemented a back-to-basics curriculum to teach students the fundamentals of learning. Additionally, under the Bredesen Administration, the NFL's Houston Oilers (now Tennessee Titans) were brought to Nashville and were furnished with a new stadium; the NHL awarded Nashville its first of four new expansion franchises as the Nashville Predators; a new arena was built; and a new downtown library was built as a cornerstone of major improvements to the entire library system. However, Bredesen's effort to lure the Minnesota Timberwolves NBA franchise to Nashville was not successful.

In 1994, Bredesen won the Democratic nomination for governor and faced Republican 7th District Congressman Don Sundquist in the November general election. The race was initially thought to be one of the hottest races of the cycle, but Sundquist won by a large margin (almost 10 points).

Bredesen did not run for a third term in 1999. The Metro Charter had been amended to limit city council members to two consecutive four-year terms, and was worded in such a way that it appeared to apply to mayors as well. Although mayors had been permitted to serve a maximum of three consecutive terms since the formation of Metro Nashville in 1963, Bredesen did not make an issue of that.

Governor of Tennessee

First term

Sundquist was barred by term limits from running for reelection in 2002. Bredesen entered the race and easily won the Democratic nomination. He faced Republican 4th District Congressman Van Hilleary in November. Bredesen promised to manage state government better, improve Tennessee's schools and use his experience as a managed-care executive to fix TennCare. Bredesen's reputation as a moderate Democrat was well-established (he is a member of the "good government" faction of the Nashville Democratic Party), so Hilleary's attempts to brand him as a liberal did not work. This allowed Bredesen to garner far more support in East Tennessee than was usual for a Democrat, especially a Democrat from Nashville. In November, Bredesen narrowly defeated Hilleary with 51 percent of the vote. He did well in several East Tennessee counties where Democrats usually do not fare well except in landslides. He won Knox County, home to Knoxville, by a few hundred votes; by comparison, George W. Bush had won Knox County by over 40,000 votes.

During his first year in office, Bredesen worked to instill the citizens of Tennessee with a renewed confidence that government can work for the betterment of the citizens and the entire state. One of his first acts as governor was to open the door on administrative budget meetings, creating a new level of candor, openness and accountability and allowing taxpayers to see how the decisions are made on how their money is spent. Bredesen’s first three executive orders established the toughest ethics rules in history for the Tennessee executive branch. He also managed Tennessee through a fiscal crisis without raising taxes or cutting funding for education. By Bredesen’s fourth year in office, Tennessee had passed four balanced budgets, received top rankings from national bond rating agencies and raised its Rainy Day Fund to a record high.

In his second and third years on the job, Bredesen pushed to improve education. He did this by raising teacher pay above average salary in the Southeast and expanding Tennessee’s pre-kindergarten initiative into a program for four-year-olds across Tennessee. He created the Governor’s Books from Birth Foundation, a statewide expansion of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library that offers children free books monthly in all 95 counties. In his fourth year, Bredesen worked with the General Assembly to increase funding for education by $366.5 million.

He worked with the General Assembly to reform Tennessee’s worker compensation system and invest in programs to help laid-off employees develop new skills, in order to recruit new industry and jobs to Tennessee. Since he took office, 2,889 companies – including Nissan and International Paper- have expanded in or moved to Tennessee, bringing more than 104,000 jobs and $12.8 billion in new business investment to the state.

Bredesen launched Tennessee’s war on methamphetamine abuse, focusing on treatment, prevention and public awareness with the Governor’s Meth-Free Tennessee initiative. In addition, the criminal penalties and resources for law enforcement were enhanced as part of this program and led to a 50 percent decline in illegal and toxic meth labs.

Bredesen’s founding of the Heritage Conservation Trust fund increased the state’s land-buying power and has worked with public and private partners to preserve nearly 30,000 acres (120 km²) for future generations.

One of the biggest accomplishments of his first four years as governor was Bredesen taking control of TennCare. The program made necessary reductions in adult enrollment while preserving full enrollment for children and disease management initiatives. He continues to build on this foundation with Cover Tennessee, a new initiative to provide access to affordable health care for severely ill Tennesseans who have been denied health insurance, for uninsured children and for uninsured working adults.

In August 2008 Phil Bredesen in order to cut state budget for TennCare placed restrictions to services of 10,800 TennCare patients who receive some type of home nursing care. The new limits will affect about 1,000 of those patients forcing more people into crowded nursing homes. [http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/aug/26/tenncare-cutting-home-health-benefit/] [ http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/aug/18/tenncare-reduces-nursing-services/]

Bredesen is a founding member of Nashville's Table, a non-profit group that collects overstocked and discarded food from local restaurants for the city's homeless population. He served on the board of the Frist Center, a major art gallery that was established to utilize the former downntown main Nashville post office.

Bredesen founded the Land Trust for Tennessee, a non-profit organization which works to preserve open areas and family farms. As Governor, he is member of the National Governors Association, the Southern Governors' Association and the Democratic Governors Association.

In late August 2006, Bredesen experienced a health scare. According to "The Tennessean", while hospitalized at Nashville's Centennial Medical Center, he was in intensive care with a fever of 104 degrees. Bredesen was hospitalized for a total of four nights with what was thought to be a tick bite, but testing was inconclusive. The following week he was tested for two more days as an outpatient at Minnesota's Mayo Clinic, but no definitive diagnosis emerged there either. The incident has brought to light that the Tennessee Constitution makes no provision for a disabled governor, although Bredesen was not incapacitated at any point during his illness to an extent that precluded him from fulfilling the duties of his office.

Bredesen is a supporter of capital punishment, [ [http://www.issues2000.org/Phil_Bredesen.htm Phil Bredesen on the Issues ] ] presiding over three executions. But he commuted the death sentence for one inmate to life without parole, citing "ineffective legal counsel at his sentencing and procedural limitations on his appeals" [ [http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=126&scid=13 Clemency ] ] .

Reelection

For much of 2005, Bredesen was considered a heavy favorite for reelection in 2006. While his poll numbers slipped for a time in mid-2005, they rebounded by early 2006. The state Republican Party concentrated its efforts on keeping the Senate seat of retiring Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist in the Republican fold. Most potential top-tier challengers to Bredesen shied away from the race.

On November 7, 2006, Bredesen won re-election with 68.6% of the vote over State Senator Jim Bryson--the most lopsided victory in a gubernatorial race in Tennessee history. He also garnered more votes than any statewide candidate in Tennessee history while sweeping all 95 counties.

Future Plans

Viewed by many as a centrist Democrat based in the South, Bredesen was touted as a potential presidential candidate in 2008. Bredesen, however, stated no interest in joining the wide field of Democrats that sought the Democratic nomination. He did not comment on joining a Democratic ticket as Vice-President. On June 4, 2008, Governor Bredesen endorsed Barack Obama for president. [ [http://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2008/jun/05/washington-bredesen-endorses-obama/ Washington: Bredesen endorses Obama; Davis, Gordon, Gore stay silent] By: Herman Wang. Thursday, June 5, 2008]

Electoral History

Election box candidate with party link
|party = Democratic Party (US)
candidate = Phil Bredesen
votes = 835,635
percentage = 50.7
change =Election box candidate with party link
|party = Republican Party (US)
candidate = Van Hilleary
votes = 782,978
percentage = 47.6
change =

Election box candidate with party link
|party = Democratic Party (US)
candidate = Phil Bredesen (Incumbent)
votes = 1,241,606
percentage = 68.6
change = +17.9Election box candidate with party link
|party = Republican Party (US)
candidate = Jim Bryson
votes = 538,508
percentage = 29.7
change =

Other activities

Bredesen is a licensed pilot as well as a hunter and outdoorsman. [Tennessee Blue Book, 2007-2008, p. 12.] He also paints as a hobby, and the annual family Christmas card features his artwork. [http://www.tennesseeanytime.org/governor/viewArticleContent.do?id=939] [http://pewresearch.org/pubs/672/holiday-cards]

See also

* Tennessee gubernatorial election, 2006

References

External links

* [http://www.state.tn.us/governor/ Phil Bredesen Governor, State of Tennessee] official state site
* [http://www.nga.org/portal/site/nga/menuitem.29fab9fb4add37305ddcbeeb501010a0/?vgnextoid=3d08224971c81010VgnVCM1000001a01010aRCRD National Governors Association - Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen] biography
* [http://www.followthemoney.org/database/StateGlance/candidate.phtml?si=200642&c=426644 Follow the Money - Philip Bredesen] 2006 campaign contributions
* [http://www.ontheissues.org/Phil_Bredesen.htm On the Issues - Phil Bredesen] issue positions and quotes
* [http://www.vote-smart.org/bio.php?can_id=CNIP9078 Project Vote Smart - Governor Phil Bredesen (TN)] profile
* [http://www.bredesen.com/ Governor Philip N. Bredesen] official campaign site

tags: