This week an interesting thing happened in Virginia. Creigh Deeds, a state senator, defeated former Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe to win the party’s nomination for governor. Not only is this a setback for the Bill Clinton legacy (his lone bright spot appears to be … Bill Richardson?), but also for conventional campaign wisdom. Deeds was outspent 2 to 1 by McAuliffe, and despite a former president campaigning around the commonwealth with McAuliffe, Deeds won in a landslide, getting nearly half the vote.

What this says is that message and vision are important, and unlike money, never reaches a saturation point.  In the Tennessee GOP primary, we have a similar situation. There will be one candidate who will attempt to spend more money than God has printed and three others who won’t be able to come close. Like your average Virginian, the average Tennessean is a savvier voter. This is especially the case for GOP primary voters. It simply will not work. In a four-way, regionally divided race, Bill Haslam’s monetary advantage is not going to be enough.

The silver lining for the mayor from Knoxville is that we now have a case study in how carrying former elected officials around the state to build support doesn’t always work. It seems that the mayor’s plan to campaign with Al Gore to tout his gun rights record have therefore been scrapped.