MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
NPR's Debbie Elliott has their story.
(SOUNDBITE OF DRIVING)
DEBBIE ELLIOTT: Congressman John Tanner's family has farmed in Union City since before the Civil War. We're driving down a winding country lane in this small West Tennessee town, not far from the Kentucky State line. It's called Walker Tanner Road.
JOHN TANNER: That's my grandfather.
ELLIOTT: We drive by the stable of Tennessee walking horses, between fields where the soybeans and corn have been harvested and stop at a barn flanked by dog pens.
(SOUNDBITE OF BARKING DOGS)
TANNER: This is where we keep the quail.
ELLIOTT: It's called a fly pen.
TANNER: Can you hear them?
(SOUNDBITE OF QUAIL)
ELLIOTT: The quail stay in the barn until it's time for the hunt. Then, they're loaded into crates and taken to a wooded field nearby.
TANNER: Then you open the thing and they fly out all over the place. And then you put the dogs down and the dogs go and find them and point them and you shoot them.
(SOUNDBITE OF LAUGHTER)
ELLIOTT: Sitting by the fireplace in Quail Haven, his family's rustic wood- paneled hunting lodge, Tanner acknowledges the South is a tough place for incumbent Democrats now - even those of the Blue Dog breed.
TANNER: We're too liberal in our home areas and too conservative in Washington. I mean, we get it on both sides, and which means I think we're doing something right.
ELLIOTT: Tanner is retiring after 22 years in the seat once held by Davy Crockett. He would've faced his toughest challenge in years, but was still favored to win reelection. Tanner says he wants to spend more time with his grandchildren, but also sounds frustrated with the climate in Congress.
TANNER: Out of office, I may actually be able to do more than I actually can trying to pass a bill that - in this mud fight between Democrats and Republicans, that is unrelenting and, in my view, very destructive.
ELLIOTT: The latest blow in that mud fight came just before Christmas, when freshman Blue Dog Parker Griffith of Alabama defected to the GOP.
PARKER GRIFFITH: Our nation is at a crossroads, and I can no longer align myself with a party that continues to pursue legislation that is bad for our country, hurts our economy and drives us further and further into debt.
ELLIOTT: One of the GOP's best opportunities is in middle Tennessee, where veteran Democrat Bart Gordon is retiring after 26 years. He's a Blue Dog known to buck the party, but recently fell in line on health care and climate change legislation. Like John Tanner, Gordon says he's leaving for personal reasons - not to avoid a serious election challenge.
BART GORDON: There are 15 counties in this district, and I've never lost any one of them. This is a more difficult environment, but, you know, winning and losing didn't play a role in this decision.
ELLIOTT: Unidentified Woman: All right, y'all quickly get your breakfast.
ELLIOTT: At a Murfreesboro Chamber of Commerce meeting this week, handyman Brian Hughlett said he's disappointed by the Democratic agenda and Gordon's recent positions.
BRIAN HUGHLETT: Yeah, this last year I really think some mistakes have been made, and I'm not real happy with the way things are going. And with him retiring, maybe we can get someone, you know, maybe a little more middle of road in there.
ELLIOTT: Others suggested Blue Dogs could be an endangered species around here. Martin Porter owns a golf shop in Murfreesboro.
MARTIN PORTER: You know, the words conservative Democrat in this area might be an oxymoron, I guess.
ELLIOTT: Given voter sentiment, Vanderbilt University political scientist Bruce Oppenheimer says this election could further polarize Congress.
BRUCE OPPENHEIMER: In an earlier generation, we saw the gradual disappearance of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. And now we're seeing, increasingly, the disappearance of more moderate Republicans and moderate Democrats.
ELLIOTT: That's something that troubles Tennessee Democrat John Tanner. He blames the divide on the partisan way congressional districts are drawn. By his estimate, only about 88 of the 435 seats in the House are competitive. The rest, he says, are gerrymandered to be determined by party loyalists, making it hard to govern.
TANNER: In a society like ours, the middle has to hold for there to be compromise to work out the problems facing us not as Democrats or Republicans, but as Americans.
ELLIOTT: Debbie Elliott, NPR News.