Excerpted from The Memphis Flyer

Then came campaign manager David Kustoff with a brass-tacks presentation of polling data and regional strategy. Among the figures he cited from a recent poll by longtime political consultant John Bakke for Ethridge and Associates: In Shelby county, Memphian Gibbons can boast support from 60 percent of the Republicans polled, versus 3 percent for Chattanooga-area congressman Zach Wamp, and a virtual zero for Haslam. The poll also recorded a 91 percent favorable rating for Gibbons by the 72 percent of those polled who expressed an opinion.

According to the poll, 13 percent of the overall GOP vote in the three-way Republican Senate primary in 2006 was cast in Shelby County, with the next largest contributing county being Knox, with 7 percent of the total votes. Adding on the neighboring suburban counties of Tipton and Fayette, where Gibbons is also well known, the larger Memphis area contributed 15 percent of the overall state Republican primary votes.

Those figures, combined with a split between Wamp and Haslam in East Tennessee and a name-recognition factor for Gibbons of nearly 100 percent in West Tennessee, dictate the strategy to come. Kustoff said, “We know we have our base, but we don’t take that for granted.”

Make that a split of three in East Tennessee.

Bill Gibbons was at a Knox County Young Republicans’ meeting last week, and the reviews were solid

It was great. Gibbons answered every question srtaight open honestly and candidly! In the parking lot after the meeting fellow Young Republicans stuck around and after chatting it over decided they were backing him. Let me make it straight. The decisions were INDIVIDUALS MAKING INDIVIDUAL DECISIONS ON THEIR OWN! The club is always neutral in a primary! Let me state why I am publically backing Gibbons…Simply stated, he wants it more. Here is a guy who travels from Memphis to Knoxville to meet YR’s in Haslam’s backyard. In all the time I have been a Republican in the YR’s…in the West End Club…in the Farragut Club… I have personally never seen Haslam. This is the second time in like a month the Gibbons campaign has come to meet with us.

In my extraordinarily biased opinion, I believe the three from East Tennessee have their hands full.