Governor Bredesen is unable to run for governor in Tennessee again due to term limits, leaving a vacuum of political opportunity for both Republicans and Democrats.

If Tennessee’s next governor is a Democrat, the most likely Democrat to win the office would be State Senator Roy Herron.

Herron has won all three straw polls among Democratic Party activists in Rutherford County, Sullivan County, and Hamilton County.

I attended the recent dinner and straw poll in Chattanooga (Hamilton County) where local Democratic Party activists paid $45 per person to have dinner and to hear four of the five Democratic gubernatorial candidates speak (McWherter could not attend due to a family illness).

A straw poll is an exercise in analyzing the public opinion of party activists and those who are willing to pay for admission to the straw poll dinner. The results are not a depiction of general party opinion but of those who attend the event.

Nonetheless, straw polls are a valuable measure of a candidate’s viability among party loyalists. And, Roy Herron seems to be the favorite among this demographic.

Those who cast ballots at the Chattanooga dinner gave Senator Herron 152 of the 310 votes cast — 49% — in the five-candidate contest. On Saturday, he won the straw poll in Sullivan County with 57%. He also won the first straw poll in Rutherford County also by a large margin.

Herron is an ordained Methodist minsiter, a lawyer, a state Senator and a former member of the State House of Representatives.

From a participant observation perspective, Herron’s most qualifying credentials among those Democrats with whom I spoke were his religious background and his 20 years of experience as a public servant.

Tennessee is considered the buckle of the Bible belt, and if a Democrat is going to differentiate himself or herself from whomever may be the Republican nominee for governor, then being an ordained minister is probably an appealing trait to the religious bloc of voters in Tennessee.

Some gay and lesbian voters may be reluctant to consider voting for Herron because of his religiosity. In his book, God and Politics, he writes, “I do, however, write–and serve–out of my own faith, and I pray my experiences will be useful to other Christians confronting questions about politics and public service.”

Senator Herron (pictured to the right) is the founding co-chair of FaithfulDemocrats, an online community of Christian Democrats who are committed to the Gospel and to the common good.

Gay and lesbian voters tend to support a fundamental separation of church and state, but Senator Herron unapologetically serves in public office as a Christian.

However, I do not believe that Senator Herron’s religiosity will be a negative trait to GLBT voters because he is affiliated with the United Methodist Church, which has an open and accepting policy toward GLBT congregants.

In fact, on Thursday, January 31, 2008 Nashville’s East End United Methodist Church was a public space for a Tennessee Equality Project’s Lobbying 101 session to prepare the Tennessee GLBT community for its annual “Advancing Equality Day on the Hill” event.

Senator Herron’s viability among evangelical Christians, including Southern Baptists, is also promising, and if he can swing a majority of evangelical Christian voters in Tennessee, then he may be the first democratic candidate to affect a significant inflection in the history of evangelical voting behavior and favorability toward the Democratic Party in the South.

In 2006, Richard Land, with the Southern Baptist Convention where he is the President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, discussed the future of evangelical voter loyalty with Senator Herron on CNN. Both Land and Herron agreed that there is no one party that Christians should endorse.

Evangelical favorability for the Republican Party had fallen from 63% to 54% during the end of the Bush White House years. And, David Kuo, author of “Tempting Faith” wrote that the Republican Party had begun to take the evangelical vote for granted.

I doubt Senator Herron will be seen in such a light, due to his campaign’s emphasis on promoting his book, God and Politics, at almost the same level as his campaign is promoting his candidacy.

For gay and lesbian voters, the governor does not have the power to affect a change in the state’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, and in the coming years if such a change occurs it wil happen because the US Supreme Court will find the ban as being inconsistent with the equal protection clause of the US Constitution’s 14th amendment.

The most pressing issue for gays and lesbians who will be approaching Senator Herron as the probable next Governor of Tennessee should not be gay marriage because of this, and because if he were publically to support gay marriage it would put his campaign at odds with over 70% of Tennessee’s electorate. What should be primary in conversations with Senator Herron is his position on banning same-sex parents from adopting children (he does not support the ban) and his faith-based position on how the Gospels support non-discrimination, acceptance, and inclusion of gays and lesbians in Tennessee’s workplaces and communities.

In Senator Herron’s conversation with a moderator and with Land of the Southern Baptist Convention, Land said, “The only person who can deliver evangelical votes to a candidate, Democrat or Republican, is the candidate himself or herself. And, it will depend on whether or not the candidate can convince evangelicals (whether they’re Democrats or Republicans) that they support their values, their beliefs and their convictions.”

Senator Herron has an approach to religion and politics that has the potential to reconcile, represent, and appease both Southern Baptists and GLBT Tennesseans like no other politician, and I think his appeal to both important demographic groups will likely make him Tennessee’s next governor.

He was also the least boring speaker at the Hamilton County Democratic Party’s straw poll and dinner event on Tuesday night.