Nashville News Blog

Democratic insiders are questioning whether new party treasurer Bill Freeman can withstand outrage over his history of campaign giving to Republicans. "All those contributions just look awful," one party executive committee member tells Pith. "This is just very contentious. This whole thing, it's like it's on steroids. I don't see how Freeman can hang on."

Party chair Chip Forrester, whose own support is tenuous, isn't strong enough to fend off Freeman's critics on the executive committee should they demand the treasurer's ouster, according to these sources. "Chip is a lightning rod in a shitstorm," one insider says. If any of Forrester's dreamy supporters desert him over Freeman, Forrester would have little choice but to dump the real-estate developer, these sources say. "He just can't afford to lose any of his own people over this."

Blogs are fueling the controversy and making matters much worse for Freeman. Actually, you could say blogs and their commenters have created Freeman's troubles. "In a normal world without the Internet, I wouldn't know any of this was even happening," one insider says. "There might have been some muttering or something. But damn, now I'm getting emails from somebody in Knoxville who's gotten an email from somebody in Memphis who's been reading it on the Scene's website, and all of a sudden there's all this trash out there. There's just reams of. I don't think Freeman or Forrester ever expected that this would blow up."

Freeman insists he won't quit. "I have no intention of doing that," he tells us. In fact, he says he's already been dialing for dollars for the party, and "we've had a tremendous first few days. I'm optimistic I'm going to continue doing this."

Maybe the color of Freeman's money will calm his critics. After the jump, Forrester tells us what he thinks about it all.

Forrester says dumping Freeman's "the last thing I'm contemplating." He did a little calculating and figures 86 percent of Freeman's political contributions since 2002 were to Democrats, an amount Forrester calls "modest percentage-wise."

"In looking at these contributions, he contributed to every Democratic member of Congress, except John Tanner and that's maybe because he wasn't asked. His first couple of days on the job he's already raised substantial contributions from Democrats," Forrester says.

Nearly the entire senior elected Democratic leadership opposed Forrester's election as chairman in January. Only one of the congressmen, Jim Cooper, has agreed to meet with Forrester since then. He hasn't met with the governor, either. But Forrester denies his appointment of Freeman signals that he's given up trying to patch up relations with Bredesen.

"I'm trying to build the strongest team here to raise money," Forrester says. "Bill will be a part of that team and part of that success. It was not at all an effort to turn away from the governor. I consistently hope that we can all come together with the single task of taking back the House. This was not by any means an action to push the governor away."