Bush Dog – TN-04 Lincoln Davis Updated…

Note: This post is in response to, and support of the “Bush Dog” project at Open Left. This, like all the other profiles, is a work in progress. If you have any insight or information to add to this profile, please do so in the comments.

Update (10/9/07): As I and others wrote earlier today, there is a possibility of a Davis run for Governor of Tennessee in 2010.
Here are three posts about it.

Lincoln Davis TN-04, is a conservative Democrat from a rural district in Tennessee. First elected in 2002, Davis has gone on to win in 2004 and 2006 by healthy margins. Davis is fairly progressive on issues that affect rural Tennesseans. Some of these issues include cleaning up coal mine operations, and protecting Social Security and Public Education. On the other hand, Davis consistently receives high marks from conservative groups on issues like gun control, abortion, gay marriage, and the GWOT. He voted to make the Patriot act permanent, and has consistently voted to continue funding with few or no benchmarks, the war in Iraq.

Davis is a member of the Blue Dogs. He votes with the Democratic Party 89% of the time. On Key votes Davis’ record is not so shiny, voting against the party on 4 key votes in the 110th and 12 key votes in the 109th. He has a Progressive Punch index of 68.01. He is a member of the Agriculture, Science, and Transportation and Infrastructure committees. 68% of his fundraising came from PAC’s. Of that money, 64% came from business. This means that 43% of his total fundraising effort in 2006 came from business.

In 2006 Norma Cartwright and Harvey Howard challenged Davis in the primary. Cartwright received some press on the internet but received few votes in the primary (10%). Howard did even less (3.8%).

As of this writing, Davis has no primary or general opponent. David Dunaway has been filing FEC forms since 1997, but has not run a campaign since his loss to Van Hilleary – R in the general election in 2000. The FEC site reports that Davis has some $83k on hand as of July.

Tennessee’s 4th district is a large J shaped district stretching from south central Tennessee to the north and east. There are 24 counties in TN-04. In 2006 only 6 of these counties had total vote counts of over 10,000 votes, and only 1 saw total vote counts reach 20,000. The Cook Political Report lists TN-04 a R+3.2 rating. In 2004, Kerry only won two counties in this district. In 2000, Gore, a native of Tennessee won 10, though those wins were in mostly smaller counties in the center of the state. The largest cities in the district are Franklin (42,000) and Columbia (33,000).

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