Source: Politics<\/p>\n
Phil Bredesen wasn\u2019t expecting it in his wildest dreams. <\/p>\n
It was a Sunday night in October, about a month out from the 2018 Senate election in Tennessee that had him locked in an uphill battle against then-Rep. Marsha Blackburn, and he and some of his campaign staff had just left a debate-prep session when the text came in.<\/p>\n
A friend had messaged Bredesen\u2019s communications director, Laura Zapata.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was like, \u2018Congratulations for getting the Taylor Swift endorsement.\u2019 And we were absolutely surprised \u2014 all of us on the campaign were surprised \u2014 when she posted,\u201d Zapata told POLITICO. She called Bredesen and the rest of the team to share the good news.<\/p>\n
Bredesen was familiar with the wildly popular country-singer-turned-pop-sensation who spent a chunk of her childhood in Nashville, where Bredesen once served as mayor. \u201cI had met her a couple of times at events way back when I was governor,\u201d he told POLITICO.<\/p>\n
But they hadn\u2019t talked in years and the endorsement \u2014 Swift\u2019s first public foray into politics \u2014 came completely out of the blue. The campaign had never talked to her directly, let alone lobbied for the endorsement, and she didn\u2019t reach out before or after announcing her support for Bredesen in an Instagram post<\/a>. <\/p>\n With no direct line to Swift, they relied on their social media channels to pump the message, posting a story thanking her and digging through the archives to find photos of Bredesen with the rising songwriter<\/a> at community events from his time in office.<\/p>\n Swift\u2019s groundbreaking endorsement boosted the two-term governor\u2019s national profile \u2014 and bumped up his street cred with his family.<\/p>\n \u201cI have a lot of cousins and their families that live in New York, and some of them thought [the endorsement] was cooler than being governor,\u201d Bredesen, now 80, admitted.<\/p>\n The decision to publicly dive into the race wasn\u2019t an easy one for Swift, as chronicled in \u201cMiss Americana,\u201d a documentary that follows the singer behind the scenes. But since, Swift has continued to dabble in politics.<\/p>\n In 2020, she endorsed Joe Biden as he looked oust Donald Trump from the White House. But even four years ago, Swift had yet to rocket to the stratosphere of stardom she\u2019s since reached. With over 275 million followers on Instagram and an army of die-hard supporters, Swift\u2019s occasionally earth-shaking<\/a> rise has captured national attention whether you like it or not.<\/p>\n Perhaps that\u2019s why this time around, Biden\u2019s campaign is more actively seeking her endorsement, according to a recent New York Times report<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe chatter around Ms. Swift and the potential of reaching her 279 million Instagram followers reached such intensity that the Biden team urged applicants in a job posting for a social media position not to describe their Taylor Swift strategy \u2014 the campaign had enough suggestions already. One idea that has been tossed around, a bit in jest: sending the president to a stop on Ms. Swift\u2019s Eras Tour,\u201d the Times wrote.<\/p>\n Far-right conspiracy peddlers have latched on to the idea, pushing a handful of far-out theories \u2014 among them, the idea that the upcoming Super Bowl is fixed in favor of Swift\u2019s beau<\/a>, Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce, to give Swift a prime platform to deliver her endorsement. The Pentagon has denied accusations<\/a> that she\u2019s part of a psy-op.<\/p>\n Bredesen said he isn\u2019t surprised by the attention Swift is getting from the right.<\/p>\n \u201cI’ve heard that the NFL games are all fixed so that Kansas City will win \u2014 all this kind of stuff, but that’s just kind of expected part of the political atmosphere we have today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Back in 2018, Swift\u2019s support breathed new life into Bredesen\u2019s campaign in the final push to November.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was really this exciting, uplifting kind of moment for the campaign, who had been working so hard and who were younger folks who were backing a more established candidate, an older candidate,\u201d Zapata said. \u201cThere is this person who has now put her very important spotlight on our state. It showed our state was competitive and that it mattered and that all that work that we had put into it, to challenge \u2026 the way that things had gone in Tennessee for so long \u2014 that there was hope and there was reason for us to believe.\u201d<\/p>\n The campaign up until that point had been hyper-locally focused. One of their big platforms, Zapata remembers, was a push to get the invasive Asian carp fish out of Tennessee rivers (yes, there was merch<\/a>).<\/p>\n With Swift\u2019s endorsement, they now had a national spotlight. Calls from journalists began pouring in \u2014 from outlets like Variety, that normally might not have taken an interest in the Southern Senate race. A sorority at Vanderbilt University sported pins with Swift\u2019s mug and the words, \u201cTaylor & I are voting for Phil Bredesen.\u201d<\/p>\n The campaign\u2019s challenge was to tie the endorsement back to local issues in the state.<\/p>\n \u201cWe went back and posted some throwback pictures of their work together from when he was mayor and governor, to remind people, \u2018See, it’s this track record that makes him unique and uniquely Tennessean\u2019 \u2014 keeping the race that way, instead of getting lost in the celebrity of it all,\u201d Zapata said.<\/p>\n In the end, Swift\u2019s endorsement wasn\u2019t enough to push Bredesen to a victory: He pulled 37 percent to Blackburn\u2019s 62 percent<\/a>. But after the campaign ended, as trailers for \u201cMiss Americana,\u201d were hitting the airwaves, Zapata messaged Swift on Instagram.<\/p>\n \u201cI just said that I appreciated it; that it made a difference and that maybe the vote didn\u2019t go the way that she expected, and we all expected it to, but it did get people engaged in a way that they wouldn’t have otherwise,\u201d Zapata said.<\/p>\n \u201cEven though we may not always win campaigns, it’s always worth the swing,\u201d she added. \u201cAnd good things can come out of those things.\u201d<\/p>\n