Ford Running Unique Campaign in TN

ONE OF THE most watched races this year is in Tennessee, where Congressman Harold Ford is trying to take the Senate seat being vacated by current Majority Leader Bill Frist (R). The race is significant not only because it could help determine who controls the house, but --as the current issue of Newsweek explains -- Ford isn't running a typical Democrat-style campaign.

Ford is running a 'Southern-style' campaign, complete with lots of references to religion (his business cards have the 10 Commandments on the back), strong talk on immigration, and conservative-sounding positions on abortion and gay marriage.

Democrats have been working on strategies to win in red states for several years now. Recent successes in Virginia (Tim Kaine's gubernatorial win last year) have the Dems thinking about other victories in the South. However, most pundits see Virginia as a kind of hybrid state -- with the DC suburbs (where a large portion of the population lives) balancing out the more conservative southern part of the state (locals call this the NoVA vs RoVA phenomenon --where NoVa is 'northern Virginia' and RoVa is the 'rest of Virginia).

So a victory by Ford in a truly southern state could provide Democrats with a blueprint for how to turn red states blue in the coming years.

Everyone is watching.