The Bredesen Record of Achievement

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ETHICS


Governor Bredesen knows effective management of state government begins with earning – and keeping – the citizens’ trust. Top priorities include:

Prohibiting conflicts of interest. Governor Bredesen’s first three executive orders in 2003 established new standards, including personal financial disclosures for executive branch employees and requirements to avoid any action that would adversely affect ‘the confidence of the public in the integrity of government.’

Ensuring accountability in all state agencies. Under the same standards, commissioners are required to annually certify the ethical conduct of employees in their departments. The Governor believes holding department heads accountable for the conduct of their employees is critical, in business and in government.

Maintaining an ethics committee to serve as a watchdog. The committee has the power to review allegations of questionable conduct and make recommendations to the Governor regarding appropriate action.

EDUCATION


Governor Bredesen believes education is Tennessee’s fundamental priority. It’s the key to growing a strong economy, ensuring future success for our children and improving the quality of life for all Tennesseans. His top priorities include:

Fully funding the Basic Education Program (BEP). At a time when many states cut funds for education, Governor Bredesen invested new dollars in the BEP. He believes the State has a moral imperative to provide additional resources for education.

Raising teacher pay. Governor Bredesen believes Tennessee must pay competitive salaries in order to recruit and retain the best and brightest professionals to teach our children. As a result, Tennessee in 2005 hit a milestone: Average teacher pay climbed above the Southeastern average.

Expanding pre-kindergarten programs. Governor Bredesen believes Tennessee must help its youngest children arrive on the first day of kindergarten prepared to take advantage of what lies ahead. In 2005, the Governor proposed a voluntary expansion of pre-K programs statewide. Local communities would be encouraged, but not required, to participate.

Encouraging reading initiatives. Governor Bredesen believes books in the home are key indicators of children who will do well in school. With that in mind, he formed the Governor’s Books From Birth Foundation in 2004 in an effort to expand Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library program statewide. The program places one book a month in children’s homes, from birth until age 5.

JOBS
Governor Bredesen knows the wealth of our state is in the hard-working Tennesseans who have good jobs with good futures, and the companies that employ them. He believes job creation is critical to improving Tennessee’s quality of life. His top priorities include:

Leveraging the full muscle of state government. Governor Bredesen believes agencies across state government have a role to play in economic development. That’s why, in 2003, he created the State’s first Jobs Cabinet to encourage the departments of Agriculture, Education, Labor, Economic Development and others to work together and improve coordination.

Investing in traditional and high-tech infrastructure. Governor Bredesen is committed to maintaining traditional investments through the Tennessee Industrial Infrastructure Program (TIIP) as well as launching new high-tech initiatives. Just as new roads and highways opened Tennessee’s communities to economic development in the 20th Century, the Governor believes fiber and broadband technology will yield job growth in the 21st Century.

Focusing on education improvement. Governor Bredesen knows education is not only the key to securing a happy and healthy future for Tennessee’s children, but also is the key to developing a skilled workforce that will attract new jobs and promote expansion of existing industry. With that in mind, he’s working to improve K-12 schools and expand pre-kindergarten programs throughout the state.

Making meaningful policy changes. Governor Bredesen believes the State must work hard to create new jobs, particularly in manufacturing sectors that are poised on the brink of reinvestment and recovery. In 2004, the Governor called for reform of the State’s workers’ compensation system. The net result: Tennessee’s workers’ comp costs now are more in line with neighboring states, giving us a more competitive edge.

Providing rapid response to expanding business. Governor Bredesen knows a quick turnaround is what it takes to be competitive with other states in recruiting jobs. Under the Governor’s FastTrack Initiative, the Department of Economic and Community Development must respond within 72 hours to communities and businesses seeking technical assistance and approved incentives. The Department also must put together tailor-made job training packages within five days of receiving a written commitment of a qualified jobs investment

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1. More about Bredesen

Phil Bredesen, the 48th governor of Tennessee, took office January 18, 2003, with a promise to “focus energy on real results by leaving behind predictable and stale political debates.”

During his first year in office, Bredesen brought a new level of candor, openness and accountability to state government. In one of his first acts as Governor, he opened the door to administrative budget hearings, allowing taxpayers to see for the first time the decisions that are made on how their money is spent. His first three executive orders established the toughest ethics rules in the history of Tennessee’s executive branch. He managed the State through a fiscal crisis without raising taxes or cutting funding for education. Most of all, he instilled a renewed confidence that government can work on behalf of its citizens for the betterment of the entire state.

Years two and three brought more progress. Bredesen pushed measures to improve education, including raising teacher pay above the Southeastern average and expanding Tennessee’s pre-kindergarten program as part of a statewide initiative. To recruit new industry and jobs, he worked with the General Assembly to reform Tennessee’s workers’ compensation system and invest in retraining programs to help laid-off employees develop new skills in the rapidly changing economy. He launched Tennessee’s war on methamphetamine abuse by focusing on treatment, prevention and public awareness as well as enhanced criminal penalties and resources for law enforcement.

Most importantly, Bredesen took control of TennCare – the state’s financially troubled Medicaid-expansion program – by preserving full enrollment for children and pursuing innovating care and disease-management initiatives. Even after necessary reductions in adult enrollment to maintain TennCare’s fiscal balance, the program remains one of the most generous and comprehensive state healthcare plans in the nation.

Before serving as Tennessee’s governor, Bredesen built a reputation for effective leadership as the mayor of Nashville from 1991 to 1999, charting a course that made Music City U.S.A. one of the best places in America to live, work and raise a family. Among other accomplishments, he invested nearly $500 million to build new schools and hire new teachers. He developed a state-of-the-art library system, oversaw downtown redevelopment, expanded the city’s park system and drove down the crime rate. Under his leadership, Nashville saw record economic growth by recruiting high-quality jobs and companies such as Dell Computer Corp. and HCA Inc. Bredesen also brought two professional sports teams to Nashville: the NFL’s Tennessee Titans and the NHL’s Nashville Predators.

Before entering public service, Bredesen was a successful healthcare entrepreneur. Between research trips to the public library, he drafted a business plan at the kitchen table that led to the creation in 1980 of HealthAmerica Corp., a Nashville-based healthcare management company that eventually grew to more than 6,000 employees and traded on the New York Stock Exchange. He sold the company in 1986.

Bredesen and his wife, First Lady Andrea Conte, are active members of the community, locally and statewide. He is a founding member of Nashville’s Table, a nonprofit group that collects discarded food from local restaurants and distributes it to the city’s homeless population. He also founded the Land Trust for Tennessee, a nonprofit organization that works statewide to preserve open space and traditional family farms. Conte is founder and president of You Have the Power … Know How to Use It, a nonprofit organization dedicated to raising awareness about crime and justice issues.

Bredesen was born on November 21, 1943. He grew up in rural Shortsville, N.Y., and moved to Nashville in 1975. He earned a bachelor’s degree in physics from Harvard University. He is an avid hunter and outdoorsman, a licensed pilot and enjoys painting as a hobby. He and Conte have one son, Ben.

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2. He was also against the Iraq War

Bredesen was born in Oceanport, New Jersey, but grew up in Shortsville, New York, a small agricultural community just south of Rochester. He earned a bachelor's degree in physics from Harvard University. He and his wife, Andrea Conte, have one son, Ben. Bredesen moved to Nashville in 1975. While doing research at the public library, he drafted a business plan in the couple's small apartment that led to the creation of 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. In part due to the wealth he earned from HealthAmerica, Bredesen does not accept his gubernatorial salary.


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 victory – 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 also built a well-established reputation as a moderate Democrat (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.

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<1>, 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"<2>.


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 seeking the nomination.