Tennessee is politically and geographically divisible by threes. The eastern part of the state -- home to Bill Brock, who unseated Sen. Albert Gore Sr. in 1970, and former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker -- has been Republican since the Civil War. Tennessee's 2nd congressional district "has only had a Republican congressman, ever," brags Tennessee Republican Party chairman John "Chip" Saltsman Jr.

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Tennessee Democrats have, in the past, found their support in the middle hilly part of Tennessee and western mountainous area. But that has changed. "Since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and especially since Reagan, many white Democrats in middle and western Tennessee have switched parties," Holland says. "The politics have become highly racially polarized."

In the suburbs of Nashville and Memphis, middle-class white voters are now the Republican base, while black voters throughout the state turn out for the Democratic candidates. Swing voters are working-class whites -- "populist, religious fundamentalists who depend on government programs," in Holland's estimation. Folks who have turned out and voted for Gore in each of his statewide campaigns as a senator as well as a vice president in 1996.

"Since 1994, the Democrats have yet to field a credible statewide candidate," says Saltsman. The Republican revolution of '94 swept through this state like a Tennessee twister, unseating three-term powerhouse Jim Sasser with a little-known gazillionaire doctor named Bill Frist. Before the typhoon hit, Tennessee had a Democratic governor, two Democratic senators and a House delegation that was Dem by a ratio of 6-to-3. After the monsoon, Republicans had the governor's mansion, both Senate seats and saw their House delegation shift to one that was 5-to-4 GOP.

Since then, Gore has tried to recruit stronger candidates, but to no avail. Movie star Sen. Fred Thompson had token opposition in '96, Gov. Don Sundquist had the same in '98 and Frist will have token opposition this year.

Gore did win Tennessee in 1996, his staffers are quick to remind you. But the votes only came after a tremendous effort by Gore.

In total disproportion to Tennessee's measly 11 electoral votes, Clinton-Gore dedicated time, money and energy to winning the state in 1996 for a simple reason: pride. Of course, politically speaking, Gore wouldn't have wanted to launch a 2000 presidential race having lost his own state in 1996. But the primary motivation for the campaign's huge effort in Tennessee was to save Gore from the embarrassment of losing his home state.

In 1992, Clinton-Gore had killed the Bush-Quayle ticket in Tennessee, 47 percent to 42 percent, and led polls throughout the summer of '96.

But this time, Tennessee turned out to be one of the few places in the country where the presidential race was actually something of an interesting competition, despite the fact that neither Sen. Bob Dole nor ex-Rep. Jack Kemp were Southerners. Then again, the Dole-Kemp strategy depended upon their sweeping the South, while Clinton-Gore didn't need Tennessee's 11 electoral votes. But Gore sure wanted them.

"This is my home, and I make no secret of the fact that it is a point of personal pride for me to do the most effective job I possibly can in making our case here in Tennessee," Gore said in a 1996 interview with the Nashville Tennessean, a newspaper where he once worked as a reporter.

But in the fall of 1996, Dole-Kemp started chipping away at Clinton-Gore's lead. An early September Mason-Dixon Political/Media Research poll had Clinton with 48 percent, Dole with 40 percent, Ross Perot with 3 percent and 10 percent undecided. Back in Washington, the alarm sounded.

Gore had a Tennessee operation led by Bill Purcell, now the mayor of Nashville. But, Gore judged, that team wasn't going to be enough. So a team from the White House and the Democratic National Committee was drafted into duty and shuttled down to Nashville. In charge was Michael Whouley, now playing a key political strategy role in Gore's presidential campaign. Others included Tom Jurkovich, a Gore staffer since '88 who now works for Microsoft's government affairs department; Karen Skelton, then Gore's White House political director and now an attorney for the Federal Highway Association; Jake Siewert, now deputy White House press secretary; and top Gore fundraisers, including Winston McGregor of the Democratic Leadership Council.

They agreed to the new field operation, but only after some of them set a few conditions: They could stay at cushy hotels during the week and fly back to Washington each weekend.

The campaign, awash in cash -- some of which was later found to be raised under questionable circumstances -- agreed. "They poured as many resources in there as they could, supplementing the entire Tennessee campaign operation with an entire other campaign operation," says one former official of the Clinton-Gore 1996 campaign team. "He hadn't had a tough race for awhile in Tennessee, so he didn't have the infrastructure." Soon he did.

The team immediately set to work, running a campaign unlike a typical presidential statewide race for a small, relatively unimportant state, and one -- in the words of this official -- "more like a close-fought Senate campaign." Direct mail sent to voters was flourished with different themes and messages to match the three different geographical regions of the state. They were dressed up accordingly: mail sent to eastern Tennessee featured forests and trees, while mail sent west had photos of cotton fields.

Bob Squier, the late Democratic media maven, purchased hours of radio time for Gore advertisements, again with far different ads run on rural radio stations than those transmitting to Nashville suburbs, or those to African-American stations.

"Squier was buying in huge volume," says the official. In fact, Squier bought so much time on some of the rinky-dink stations that "some of them thought they were being purchased by the campaign."

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