This is the third and final report on our interview with Ward Cammack, Democratic candidate for governor of Tennessee. (See also: part 1, part 2)

Question: Tennessee has had some successes recruiting jobs to the state but we have to spend a lot of money on incentives in the form of job training programs. What if we spent more money up front on education and infrastructure and had a better prepared workforce?

Mr. Cammack: "There's a point where we drop off far enough on the education base that we won't be able to recruit jobs. We have lost our ability on a community by community and county by county basis to create jobs from the ground up, to create and generate and regenerate jobs.

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"If we lose our health insurance because we have lost our job, it's not one person who goes into bankruptcy if there's a problem, it's the whole family. And usually it's because of taking care of somebody like your parents or grandparent or cousin who fell through the cracks. Our state will go bankrupt if we continue on that path.

"Our schools have got to provide a success-proven path that takes people where they want to go. If that is night college, then there has to be a proposition that there's a business on the other end of that. The best proposition is that we have are our state community colleges and our technical schools and we use those as our recruiting tools. There are so many businesses that rely on those state and community colleges where we can begin to afford the proposition to business when we're recruiting and afford the proposition to communities that we can deepen our communities all across the state.

"When we look at the demographic change, there are going to be fewer people turning eighteen, going to college, going into the workforce and it heightens the competitive aspect of the market place. That's for schools, that's for jobs, that’s for everything. So Tennessee's schools have got to be competitive and world class. They can't just be competitive in Tennessee, they have to be globally competitive. They have to have a real proposition.

"When you go across the country and look at schools, the ones that are really successful, they know what they are about and they know what their value proposition is and it's usually unique and valuable and that's what we have to work toward."

Question: How do we get TVA going in the direction of renewable energy and replacing coal and getting people across the state to start thinking in that direction?

Mr. Cammack: "It will partly be driven by business and business insistence on it, it will partly be driven by consumer demand increasingly, but TVA needs to take this on as an initiative. It's in their interest to do it, too. They don't need another ash spill. My wife and I and our youngest daughter came up the day after Christmas to look at the ash spill. Naturally we were horrified, and disappointed. But you can only put that stuff so many places for so long, and it's the whole point of there's no more away in throwing away and that's a perfect example of it.

"Some of the changes that are taking place out there that will help drive this is we're moving toward interactive energy grids. Boulder Colorado is going to be probably the first city in the country to come out with it. Austin Texas is well on the way toward it, too. And what this does is it reduces the demand for peak power generation, so you lower the peak power and you reduce the need for coal-fired power plants. They'll still be there, there will still be a demand for coal, that's not going to go away, but what you'll see is this whole consideration of peak power and the need to fire up these coal power plants and run them at peak capacity twenty four hours a day, it goes away.

"This will be a competitive process. What's changing is the ability to store electricity, and that changes everything. We're just at the cusp of this new technology and the states who get there first will be the ones that are the most prosperous. And we have to make it our business in Tennessee to head in this direction as well.

"We tend not to be overall a fully integrated utility kind of a state. We outsource a lot of our power. But increasingly this is going to drive the competitive change. You'll see more households getting off the grid and doing things differently. It's going to be very interesting."

Question: Where does nuclear power fit in to our energy future?

Mr. Cammack: "It shouldn't. They keep building these, and it doesn't take many nuclear power plants to soak up all the water in the Tennessee River. Thank goodness [uranium is a limited resource]."

In another part of our conversation, Mr. Cammack remarked about his own energy efficient housing experience:

"My wife and I we have five daughters together, two of whom I adopted, and they range in age from seven to twenty. They’re growing up and getting out of the house so we downsized and we're about to move into a house that we've just outfitted with geothermal and energy star windows, soybean insulation, clean components, and when you've done that you really feel empowered.

"You look at the housing proposition out there and you say I could own a house that has geothermal or solar and I can own a house that doesn't, well, which house has the better opportunity to sell first? That's really what it's going to be like.

"What we found when we did this is that there's a whole economy of people out there who are doing this, but they don't call themselves green. They don't wan't the label. And these are old HVAC people, and painters and cabinet makers and insulation installers. I've talked to them a lot about this, asked them why did you get in this business, and they say two things. One is, we figured this is where things are going and we want to go ahead and get there. The second thing is, we wanted to work in a healthier environment."

Question: You talked about Wisconsin doing some things on alternative energy, and I think North Dakota is doing some things as well, and their governments are pretty involved in making that happen. It's not private enterprise that is leading the way to make that happen because they aren't big enough. Doesn't the government have to be involved?

Mr. Cammack: "I think in this instance you're getting the realization on both sides of the equation and business articulates it differently. But I think we need to have bolder articulation of it.

"And when you look at business, and you look at Wal-Mart, and they have a sixty thousand company supply chain. The biggest in the world. When somebody goes and they shop at Wal-Mart they throw away thirty percent of what they buy right off the bat. It's the packaging. And Wal-Mart says that's a waste. That's a vulnerability. So we need to look at the packaging. How can we optimize packaging for example.

"So they are going through company by company, product by product, and looking at how the packaging works. They went to General Mills and said we'd like you to take a look at straightening out Hamburger Helper that you sell through Wal-Mart. General Mills went in and looked at this and found that they could save 900,000 pounds of cardboard per year and reallocate five hundred trucks. Not bad.

"So business is going to look at it that way. Coca Cola is going to look at it as water is so key to what we do. Where is our vulnerability there, how can we use less of it and how can we take better care of it. Municipalities are going to look at it in terms of how can we reduce our power costs, how can we look at our fleets, what can we do to help make our citizens more prosperous and save more by bringing down the utility costs and encouraging people to go toward renewable energy and take all these different steps.

"I think that Gov. Bredesen's energy action plan is a fabulous step, but we're going to go a lot further and that's just one step of many that we'll see down the road. So the two complement each other."

Question: But Wal-Mart is an exception. They are so big they can drive big changes. What is your governing philosophy with regard to government involvement, more government, less government, appropriate where it's needed?

Mr. Cammack: "I think appropriate where needed, and government doesn't need to be intrusive and we don't need to tell people what to do. But if you don't live by the example and you don't really lay out a bold plan then people aren't really going to listen to you and nobody's going to follow.

"I think Gov. Bredesen has done a fine job and I commend him. He was elected at a different point in time. We're in a new world now. And I think we need to embrace it and go for it. To deny it is to our detriment. And when I say this election isn't just about the next four or eight years it's about the next one hundred years, it truly is. This is truly an inflection point."

Question: You've mentioned Wal-Mart a couple of times, but aren't they a perpetuation of the disposable society, and what about their effect on small businesses disappearing? How does that fit in with the idea of pulling back and making our communities more self-sustaining?

Mr. Cammack: "The business models are changing. When you look at the investment capital it's taking this all into consideration so there will be new competition and new ways to approach things.

"One aspect is that the new community proposition of how communities are put together and multi-use communities and being a little closer together and urbanized in terms of shopping, retail, living, recreation that's all right there together. And that goes back to the whole idea of the twenty-two million surplus houses in 2025.

"A lot of what you are talking about is going to change anyway, just through the course of the constraints that we're beginning to see through finite resources. Some of the biggest challenges that people have today is that they have a house that has high energy costs, they're commuting huge distances and people are getting sick of it. They can't afford it. These are big changes that will take place and I think it will be a challenge for Wal-Mart. And I'm not hung up on Wal-Mart. My only point about Wal-Mart is that they do have an impact on the economy and they're the biggest employer.

"One of the best business concepts that I've heard that I really like is Zip Cars. Great idea. You don't have to have that fleet, it doesn't work the same way. There are things we can do in terms of providing incentives such as parking places."

Question: What are your thoughts on public transportation? Here in East Tennessee we have no public transportation connecting different towns, such as between Knoxville and Maryville. And some smaller towns like Maryville don't have any public transportation at all.

Mr. Cammack: "I have thought there is a real opportunity in the state to put in a commuter rail system, and high-speed rail systems to connect with Atlanta, connect up Washington D.C. through East Tennessee, and become parts of these different systems and have connectors that go out.

"It could be a sustainable source of revenue and it's low impact to the environment because the corridors are already there. If we can create the renewable energy to power it, this is something that can produce revenues for the state for years to come if we can make it economically viable. It would seem like there's a huge opportunity in Tennessee to do that and really build up the economy in the state by doing so. Now I want to be careful about how I talk about it, but I'm intrigued by it and I think it could offer us a real proposition if done the right way."

Question: What is the future of TennCare, and is CoverTN filling the gaps?

Mr. Cammack: "I'll have to learn a lot more about TennCare, but I have met more people who were knocked off the TennCare rolls and it's heartbreaking some of the situations I've seen and how it's impacting families who are having to do things like lose the family farm to take care of the grandmother, that kind of thing, and losing all their savings and everything they have. As a state we could go bankrupt because of it. We have to have a solution.

"The biggest problem and the hardest thing about it is preventable disease. That's something you can do something about. The state is putting in incentives, for example surcharges [on state employee insurance] if you smoke. The belief that what I do doesn't impact anybody else is baloney. It does. It cost's everybody. And when people are falling off of TennCare because we can't afford for more people to be on it then we have to do something. So there should be a differential and there should be incentives. If you live healthy then you should have huge incentives."

Question: Is there a problem with that theory, though, that young people never think they are going to get sick so they don't contribute to any kind of health insurance unless their employer does it. What if everybody had insurance and paid in similar to car insurance?

Mr. Cammack: "That's true. But I think this is addressable in a way that I think people can buy in to it and that's in everybody's interest. To not have insurance is not good because the cost is still there. Essentially we have national health insurance. You still have the costs. Everyone gets treated, and somebody has to pick up the cost. And we have one of the most expensive health care systems in the world and one of the least efficient."

At this point we had to start wrapping it up so Mr. Cammack could make his next appointment with WBIR for a taping of Inside Tennessee (airing at 9:30 AM today, Sunday). We did get in a couple of quick final questions.

We were curious about which newspapers he reads. He said he reads the Tennessean, the New York Times, and on occasion the Wall Street Journal. He also said that it's not a newspaper but he occasionally buys a Rolling Stone. The last novel he read was The Shack, and the last non-fiction was Outliers. He does not have a Kindle, but we may have convinced him to get one.

We mentioned that while he is out campaigning that we hope to see him in East Tennessee and that Blount County could especially use some attention. He said "We will be visiting all ninety-five counties and every state community college and every technical school."

Conclusion:

My overall impression from this interview is that Ward Cammack is a pretty sharp guy. It's not like talking to a politician at all, but then he isn't really a politician in the traditional sense. He has a calm, confident demeanor and also a commanding presence when he speaks one on one. Having not seen him give a public address, it's hard to say how that will translate to large crowds on the campaign trail. He says he is a "people person," though, and comes across as warm and friendly and "likeable."

He also seems to have an innate curiosity, in the sense that he's constantly questioning and learning more about things he's involved in or that interest him. He has an almost unusual way of looking around and observing with a quizzical sort of look, as if he is always about to ask what is that building? what kind of tree is that? where do those railroad tracks go?

We were speculating that his natural curiosity might be in part from years of looking at investments and business plans, and really digging down into the details of all aspects of it to fully understand it and make good decisions. It occurred to us that this would afford the opportunity to learn a little or even a lot about a lot of different things.

There's no doubt that he would be a "business friendly" governor, but as I have said in the past what's particularly wrong with that? The business of America is business. It's what sustains our way of life and has created incredible opportunity. But it's refreshing to talk with a successful businessman who also recognizes that along with all that opportunity comes some social responsibility, if for no other reason than it's simply good business. It's also nice to know there is at least one businessman looking beyond the next quarterly report to the next decade and the decade after that.

It appears he has synthesized all of this into a long-term vision guided by some core principles, and he doesn't seem like the kind of person who will shift positions with the political winds. You or I may not agree with all of his policy ideas, and he is no doubt a serious policy wonk, but he appears well prepared to argue his case with facts and logic and reason and to do so convincingly. And if anyone can sell progressive policy ideas to the business community, it's Mr. Cammack.

It remains to be seen if he can establish statewide name recognition and overcome his Republican past. It seems to me, though, that Democrats in general ought to welcome reformed Republicans into the fold, and hope that they bring others along with them.

Democrats are fortunate to have some good candidates for governor who are willing to step up at a time when Tennessee is in desperate need of competent, capable leadership. We look forward to learning more about the others, and I suspect we will be hearing a lot more from Ward Cammack, a guy nobody had ever heard of three months ago.

Follow up questions

Because we covered so much before running out of time there were some questions that we didn't get to. I sent a follow up via e-mail and Mark Brown responded on behalf of Mr. Cammack, who was tending to some family business and not available. Here are Mark's responses on behalf of the Cammack campaign.

Party politics:

Question: How do you answer criticism that you are a "recent convert" to the Democratic Party and that you have supported Republican candidates in the past?

Mark Brown: The Republican Party simply moved away from Ward's beliefs. To be blunt, the Republican Party is too wrapped up in the politics of "us v. them." Ward believes that there is no "them." We are all Tennesseans. There is only "us."

Question: As party leader, what would be your approach to building the party and electing more Democrats?

Mr. Brown: First and foremost as party leader, Ward is committed to running the state responsibly. He is also committed to raising funds for TNDP and Democratic candidates for office, to recruiting candidates, and to all of the other responsibilities that come with being party leader.

He also believes it is vitally important for Tennessee Democrats to build on the new media and grassroots outreach, to build a 95-county party organization, and to contest every vote statewide.

Question: What is your past involvement in Democratic party politics, either officially or through your relationships with party and elected officials including Gov. Bredesen?

Mr. Brown: Ward was an early supporter of both Governor Bredesen and Mayor Dean. He helped raise money for both.

Question: As governor, will you actively campaign for President Obama in Tennessee in 2012?

Mr. Brown: Enthusiastically.

Health Care:

Question: Should we require insurers operating in the state to write individual policies, and should we prohibit exclusions for pre-existing conditions? Do you support the idea of moving towards some form of universal single-payer health insurance?

Mr. Brown: As he discussed, Ward believes that jobs, education, and health care are interlated. We must solve the problems in all three areas to really move forward. He believes we must have universal access to health care, but the system cannot bankrupt state government. That may or may not be single-payer. Ward is open to exploring all ideas.

Two other things, the current system of allowing insurance companies to cherry pick health policy holders obviously isn't working. Also, I believe that 70% of health care costs go for preventable diseases. Ward believes we have to promote healthy lifestyle and do all we can cut these costs.

[Mark noted that they are still formulating their policy on health care, insurance, and related issues.]

Question: Where do you stand on "tort reform" as it relates to medical malpractice and the cost of health care?

Mr. Brown: There is absolutely no evidence that Tennessee has a problem with out-of-control juries doling out huge awards to plaintiffs. Tort reform, as advocated by Ron Ramsey and Republicans in the General Assembly, is nothing more than a bad solution in search of a problem.

State finances:

Question: What do you consider to be the best use of stimulus funds?

Mr. Brown: It wouldn't be appropriate for Ward to weigh in on this. He has the utmost faith that Governor Bredesen will do what is best for Tennessee and its citizens.

Question: Where do you stand on the idea of a state income tax?

Mr. Brown: Ward is unequivocally opposed to a state income tax. Tennessee has a competitive advantage because it doesn't have an income tax, and Ward believes that an income tax is 20th Century thinking. In today's "flat technology" world, businesses can close shop and move jobs to a new location with little more than the push of a button. An income tax would run jobs out of Tennessee.

State government must come up with creative ways to tap into new revenue streams. For example, when Ward talks about forming partnerships between our community colleges and business, he means real partnerships. Our colleges will provide training for business, and business can pay for it - that means direct financial contributions to our schools.