Tom Humphrey talks with Mike McWherter [1] about his run for U.S. Senate against Lamar Alexander.

McWherter says he is "all but certain" he is running and will announce officially in three or four months. He says support in East Tennessee will be "determinative."

There was speculation that McWherter was waiting to see what Fred Thompson would do before announcing, the conventional wisdom being that Thompson would bring out a huge GOP vote if he's on the ticket. We speculated here last week that if McWherter is running he must not think much of Fred's chances.

This interesting quote from the article confirms it: "I’ve seen the polling and don’t think Fred will be the Republican nominee."