The following is an original production of WTCI.

But like I said, until you've been that person on the ballot and been that person standing on the stage during a debate and that person walking through neighborhoods, knocking on doors, it's hard to describe because when you run for office, you're basically saying, okay, tell me what you think about me.

You know, I'm standing up here saying, I want the job.

Have a shot.

Find out more about the struggles, triumphs and lessons learned on the road to victory.

This week on the A-list, I get to know Tennessee 49th Governor Bill Haslam.

I'm only six months into his term as governor of Tennessee.

Bill Haslam has already made an enormous impact in the lives of countless citizens across the state.

But since he is still new to the job, there is still much to learn about our state's leader.

So I made the trip to Nashville, Tennessee, to visit the governor at his executive residence.

But before we sat down, I got a brief tour of the home from this avid history buff.

This is actually one of my favorite rooms in the home.

I'm a history lover.

I was a history major.

But there's some there's some cool things in here.

The portrait over over the wall there is John Severe, who was the first governor of Tennessee.

And below it is a punch bowl that came off of the USS Tennessee.

And I've heard from reliable source.

So I think it's true.

The punch bowl was actually on the USS Tennessee when it was sunk at Pearl Harbor.

And the cups and that when they when they raise the ship, they saved the punch bowl in the cups, which is cool.

And then it's amazing when the U.S. Navy had a new they're going to commission a new ship, a new USS Tennessee.

And this is, you know, 40 years after that, will they call the state and said, we want our punch bowl back?

But fortunately for us, Howard Baker, who'd been a state senator, was then Ronald Reagan's chief of staff.

And Baker stepped in and said, said no deal to the Navy and said, we'll buy you all a new punch bowl.

Let us keep the old one, which Gore.

And then over my over our shoulder here is Tennessee's had three presidents and this is James K Polk in the cool story about Polk that I love as he was only like five foot three, which is a problem because when you're the president, you walk in room, people are supposed to know, oh, the president's here right?

So they said, we need a song.

So let people know that you're here.

And that's where Hail to the Chief became the Cannon, became the anthem that announced that the president was there.

It was a song before that.

But that's where it became the kind of the official presidential song is because James Kapok was was vertically challenged.

Well, while I was living here, it's a neat experience.

I, I didn't know if I would like it or not.

And there's moments when you miss your own home, but it's a special thing to get to live here.

And you see the history that that's happened here.

Bill Clinton tells a story that former Governor McWhirter first talked him into asking Al Gore to be as vice president in in the governor study.

And they're so they're all throughout the grounds.

They're fun history in stories that help the place come alive.

And it's fun to think it should be a little bit little piece of that someday.

In November of 2010, Bill Haslam began making his mark on Tennessee history when he was elected governor with 65% of the vote, the biggest victory of a non-incumbent candidate the state has ever seen.

Having began his journey into the world of politics only seven years earlier, Bill Haslam's rise to state leadership has been a learning experience, both personally and professionally.

So you grew up in Knoxville, which is still really home for you.

It is.

And so we try to every second or third week can be home to see friends and family and go to our own church and all and all those sort of things which keeps home from being too far away.

Will you tell me a little bit about your childhood growing up in Knoxville?

Yeah, you know, I think I had a great child, great family, have older brother and older sister, grew up in Knoxville, lots of sports, lots of family.

Got involved in family business early.

My mom died when I was in high school and my dad ended up remarrying and gained three step sisters in the process.

And all of our six of us and our spouses are all close now.

And you know, next generation as well.

So I you know, a lot of people, I feel blessed.

A lot of people don't look back at childhood and say it was a really good time for me.

It was.

And I look back with almost all good memories.

What kind of impact did your mother's death have on you?

I know you were only 16 at the time and the baby of the family.

Do you remember back that being a turning point in your life?

Sure.

I mean, you know, I've told people it's a little bit like I've heard people that had their house burned down and they realize you don't know how much you lose at that point.

It's only later when you realize, oh, you know, my wedding scrapbook was in there in my, you know, high school annual and all those things.

And that's sort of like it.

What it is when you lose a parent, when you're that young, you know, when you're 16 year old boy, you think you're a little bit bulletproof.

You're not, but you think you are.

It's only as time goes on that you realize how much you have lost by losing a parent early.

But I think for me, it was definitely a turning point.

And since our family was already close, that brought us even closer.

I think it also maybe tends to grow you up a little faster.

The things that might might have seemed fun and funny before that.

You realize, that's okay.

I'll think of something else to do now.

Did that change your relationship with your father?

You know, did we've always been close family.

My dad is, you know, I would only hope I was half as good of a father to my kids as he was to me.

So we were always close.

But, you know, you go through in any hard event, you go through with other people, brings you closer and, you know, we went from my dad had always been real busy, but always had plenty of time for us.

It's kind of amazing.

He built this business while we were growing up, but yet my pictures, he was always there.

But after that, I think was there more and I mean lots of memories.

But then my brother and sister in college, of the two of us somehow trying to cook a dinner together and we did a lot of grilling of hamburger and steak.

Kept that family bond over the way.

We did.

I don't remember a lot of vegetables during that period, but we were good on baked potatoes and hamburgers.

Now, where did you go to college?

I went to college at Emory University in Atlanta.

Everybody in my family had gone to UT, but I don't know if it was maybe my mother died.

Maybe I was just ready to to to be somewhere else.

And so decided to go away.

And that was a great experience for me.

Number one, to live away from home, I think is a good growing experience for all of us.

Number two, I met Christy.

Did you really meet her the first day of class?

Honestly, actually, before the first day, you know, like when they have the freshman orientation, when they have a student fair and all the different activities.

And we met that day before class even started now.

And I literally can remember liking her from the very beginning.

I remember thinking that's she's the cutest girl I've met so far in college.

Do you remember your pick up line?

Like what?

You know.

Well, actually, I remember.

I remember, like, trying to meet her.

And later, when she looks back, she says, This boy, he has such a redneck accent.

You know, she was from ultra sophisticated Memphis and I was from Knoxville.

So she thought, I can't believe you really talks like that.

So that was the boyish charm from Knoxville.

Junior year before we started dating.

So and then from Emory, you move back to Knoxville.

I did.

I came back at the time, I really wasn't sure certain what I was going to do.

I thought about teaching.

I was thinking about at some point, maybe even going to seminary.

Dad said, Once you come back and work for the company a while and see if you like it and I came back for what I thought would be a couple of years that turned into, you know, 20 plus work in there for pilot, which was a great experience.

We were growing at the time and new concept.

We went from being kind of a small southeastern based company to being spread all over the country.

So it was really a great experience for me and in learning how to manage a growing enterprise.

In assuming a leadership role in the company.

Fresh out of college, Bill helped expand the company into a travel center network spanning 39 states and creating more than 14,000 jobs.

And it was his experience managing the rapidly growing family business that unknowingly began preparing him for the next step in his career.

What was it like being in a family business at the same time?

Because I know those dynamics sometimes play a role in either the challenges or the opportunities that you have.

It's both.

There's some really great parts about I mean, it's I mean, I treasure getting over to my dad and my brother and that's great.

Sometimes the downside is you want your father and your brother to be your father and your brother and not the people that you work with.

And you want to be able to separate that.

So there are definitely some good and some some upside and downside for me overall, it was a you know, it was a great experience and I still miss working with them.

I'll be around them when they're talking business.

And part of me misses the, you know, the the database decision making that happens in business versus what happens in government sometimes.

And part of me just misses being around my family.

What kind of experience did you have in the family business that you think made you especially tailored for politics?

Well, I think a couple that it actually is a really it's a it's a good question, because being a family business is a little different than being in a big corporate environment, maybe with a public company.

And I think it teaches you a little bit because your name's on the door.

I mean, not literally.

It wasn't Haslam company, it was pilot.

But but you feel responsible in a different way.

And I think that's a that's a good thing.

And it teaches you and in government, it matters.

It matters what you do.

It matters who you hire, it matters what kind of work product you put out.

And there's a sense of kind of accountability that I think comes from being.

A lot of people think, oh, family business, you have it made.

You got to they gave you a job easy street.

But I think it's really for most people, the exact opposite.

You actually feel maybe more pressure and more accountability.

I think that's a good thing when you serve in public office.

So you're in a family business, helped to grow the company exponentially.

For all intents and purposes, you have job security, right?

Oh, what made you decide, you know what, I'm going to leave this and I'm going to run for mayor of Knoxville.

Well, it was a big jump.

And when people first brought it up to me about running for mayor, I literally laughed and said, You've got the wrong guy.

I have no interest.

But Bob Corker, who at the time was mayor of Chattanooga, had been my brother's college roommate, and we were on spring break with our kids together down in Florida.

Actually win plan that we just end up do up together.

We're both big bike riders and we'd gone on a 25 mile bike ride one day and I said, I don't get it.

Why would you leave a real successful business to go be a mayor?

I mean, that's why would anybody do that?

And so he started explaining it on the way out.

And as we rode back, we talked more.

And I mean, I left that bike ride thinking no way and came back thinking I maybe should be serious about it.

And Bob's point was, you know, he said, Hey, have you been the chair of the United Way in the art museum?

And boy Scouts and this and that community organization?

And he said, if you really want to change your community, the best the best way to impact it is being in public office.

I thought, well, okay, maybe I should take it seriously.

So did Ran.

If you've never run anybody who's never run for public office, it's hard to appreciate just what it's like to be the candidate.

It's incredibly vulnerable.

But it's it's a it's also challenging and interesting and a growing experience, both personally and professionally.

But like I said, until you've been that person on the ballot and been that person standing on the stage during a debate and that person walking through neighborhoods, knocking on doors, it's hard to describe because when you run for office, you're basically saying, okay, tell me what you think about me.

You know, I'm standing up here saying, I want the job, have a shot.

And that's a that's a new experience.

Do you have a tough skin.

Tougher than it used to be?

Probably not as tough as it should be for an honest answer.

I mean, a lot tougher.

I mean, again, there's things now that I hear and I think, okay, four or five years ago that would have really bothered me and I was watching somebody be interviewed who was running for four local office.

The other in town where I was.

And I thought, Oh, you're so worried about that.

Don't worry about that.

You know, that's not a big deal.

But it takes a it takes a it takes some ground to get used to that.

I still I mean, nobody likes to have negative things to say about it said about them, Right.

I mean, I don't I don't know anybody goes, oh that's, that's right.

Now what up?

From what I've read or seen or heard about your father, I know he is a well-respected and pretty formidable character.

Right.

Especially in.

Knoxville.

Right.

How did that play either to your advantage or even challenging as you take on the role of mayor in a state where, I mean, Big Jim Haslam has been the boss almost, and then here comes his son Bill, and he's going to start to run the town.

How does that work out?

And I mean, that was actually a real issue the first time I ran or but I said, Oh, this is just his dad found another way to run Knoxville.

You know, he's been the chair of the UT board and he's been the chair of the Chamber of Commerce.

So this just another way.

Well, that really what I think is further from the truth.

I mean, he he wasn't he wasn't really the one pushing me to run at all.

He didn't necessarily think it was a bad idea, but he wasn't pushing also as really kind of a hurdle for me to get over, for people to say this is Bill run and I love my dad.

I think it's been one of the best things that ever happened to Knoxville, but it's not why I'm running for mayor.

So that was definitely a huge challenge, particularly early.

Now the joke became because it was true.

He only asked me for one thing the whole time that I was mayor because I said, Oh, he'll be telling you what to do.

We're asking you to do this and that.

He asked me for one thing.

There was a puddle outside his church right where he led off his wife before he went and parked the car.

And he kept thinking the city should fix that little dip in the pavement.

And I just never did.

On principle.

That puddle is still there.

It's still there.

Now I need to tell the new mayor to go fix it.

All right.

As the new mayor, they'll fix it.

Though he might not have fixed every dip in the road.

Bill Haslam, seven years as mayor of Knoxville, brought significant growth to the city.

He championed the revitalization and preservation of historic sites, founded educational initiatives throughout the city, tripled the rainy day fund and brought thousands of new jobs into Knoxville.

Having achieved so much success in his hometown, he made the decision to try and expand his leadership role statewide.

With his record breaking gubernatorial victory, Bill Haslam has only just begun making his imprint on Tennessee history, but his journey to the top could not have been possible without the lessons learned early on in his political career.

What was the best part of that race experience, that first race?

You know, I think a lot of people think about people who run for public office and they just assume they have some selfish motive or they they there's there's so much cynicism today.

And and so learning how to deal with people who are really cynical about motives and you're in the middle of thinking this is really hard.

I mean, there's nothing fun about this at all.

But dealing with people like that who are cynical or distrustful of your motives and thinking, well, if I think it's the right thing to do, it's the right thing to do regardless, and kind of learning how to work through some of those things and realizing this that, you know, when you run for office, you know, if you win 55 to 45, that's a big ten points is huge In politics.

That still means 45% of people don't want you.

Right.

Okay.

Okay.

And getting used to the fact that there's going to be a lot of people who who aren't for you and don't like you and don't trust you and are going to say negative things.

While that's not fun, that's a really good learning experience and a good thing to get past.

But how do you filter that?

How do you filter the public persona versus the private individual?

You know, I think in the end it's about deciding what really matters to you and is this really what I'm what I should be doing?

And then being, in my case, incredibly supported by Christie, who I mean, the only thing maybe worse than being a candidate is being a candidate spouse and then the elected.

Same thing with the elected.

I be incredibly supportive of her and their group of friends who you kind of know are with you regardless, and you learn really quick.

That's not true of everybody.

There are some people who are with you when things are going well and will jump ship really, really quick if things aren't going so well.

But I mean, I feel like said, privileged to have a group of friends that have been longtime friends that, you know, I'm sure I could do something that would lose their friendship, but but it'd have to be a lot.

So you make the jump from the family business to running for mayor.

What on earth possessed you to run for governor?

Not that it was a bad decision, but I mean, after going through all of that and and, you know, the challenges and and the openness and vulnerability of the campaign just running for mayor, that's got to be exponentially multiplied when you run for governor.

It really is true.

And I was prepared a little bit because it is it's the same game.

Okay.

But it's just so much bigger and more of it and faster.

And your campaign across the state and there's a lot more media attention.

And, you know, when you're running for mayor in Knoxville, you know, you got really one daily newspaper and you know, three, you know, three or four TV networks, etc..

But it's a pretty limited pool.

And then you jump into this world where, you know, news outlets from all across the state, people who are Capitol Hill reporters, that that's their full time job is to cover state government.

And they know things about state government that as a first time candidate, you don't know.

So there's the the speed and the tone of it, while it's the same game, is a lot faster and a lot harder.

So what possessed me, I think, though, comes back to this.

I actually I loved being the mayor of Knoxville.

I really did every I mean, I was the mayor of Knoxville for, you know, seven plus years.

And every day I loved doing it because you could make a difference.

I mean, you could said, okay, we want to work at rebuilding downtown.

And, you know, a year later you could see some difference.

And two years later, you could see some more difference.

And, you know, and I love that that ability to have an impact.

And I think that's probably no, I know that's what led me to start thinking about running for governor.

Now, a lot of people say it's not necessarily the destination, but the journey that's important as the growth process.

How important is the campaigning to ultimately reaching this goal?

How important is that in formulating, you know, strategies and making relationships and forging bonds with people across the state?

I mean, the truth is, I don't I mean, I really don't love campaigning.

I don't think many people do.

Every now and then you hear I mean, supposedly Bill Clinton loved to campaign all that stuff, but it's just it's hard.

It's it's hard and long.

And I mean, I'm not exaggerating for for the better part of two years, we worked 80 or 90 hours a week.

And that's not an exaggeration.

We really did work 80 or 90 hours a week.

And you're very public and it's very vulnerable and you're tired a lot of the times and you're going from one thing to the next.

You're giving the same speech 2000 times.

I mean, it's really hard.

So I don't look back at those days at all and go, Oh, boy, I wish I was still doing that.

But I look back at those days and say, I'm really glad I did it.

You're way better governing because of the process of campaigning.

You learn you learn how diverse people's views are, You learn how hard the issues are, and you learn really what a great state we we live in.

But I would I know I'm not saying I'm the world's best governor now or that I was the world's best mayor, but in both of those jobs, I was a whole lot better because I went through the campaign.

Even if I didn't think the campaign was always the most fun thing in the world.

What was it like when you won?

You know, it's it's a little hard to believe, even though, like in the polls showed even the primary in the general, you're going to win.

You just you never think that.

You never really feel like that.

And so when the numbers start coming in all set, it dawns on you like we really are going to win.

And particularly when I ran for governor because so many people were involved, who were they had worked so hard and they were so excited, I was like, I was excited, but it made even more exciting, like to see all the people who had who had really, really worked hard, stuck out their neck for me, talked to their neighbors about vote for me, raised money for me, all those things.

You know, it's a it sounds trite when somebody in my and you know, when you win says it feels very humbling, but it does because you don't do it by yourself.

And so you almost I remember thinking at one point like, gosh, I'd feel horrible if I lost for so-and-so who, you know, went out on a limb for me when they didn't have to go out on a limb early in the process.

I will tell you that I think you have a great website, but what I love most about your website is that you have an entire tab dedicated to your wife, Chrissy, or I should say Chrissy has warranted a whole tab on your website, complete with YouTube videos and stories about her accomplishments and her involvement.

Yeah, You know, was that an organic process?

Was that something that as you were making this run for governor, you and Chrissy sat down and talked about the roles.

You would both have an office or.

A couple of things.

First of all, a lot of it just came out of campaign because she was really good at this.

And, you know, and when we got married at the time, she thought, well, I might be a pastor or maybe I was gonna be a school teacher.

And then, oh, I'm I'm going to be in business.

But she didn't she never signed up for this right.

But she's great at it.

And so part of all that, the website and all that stuff is she she deserves it.

She's good.

She's an incredible ass.

I mean, after you win an election, everybody says they voted for you.

Okay, everybody does.

You never meet to.

I didn't vote for you ever, but I voted for you.

And a ton of those people say, because I really like your wife.

The path that Bill Haslam has taken to get to the governor's mansion has been remarkable.

From family businessman to city leader, his passion for effecting change and improving quality of life is clear.

And only six months into his term as governor, the true impact of his vision for the state of Tennessee has yet to be written.

Still, this hardworking civic servant has great hopes for his tenure in Nashville.

So I know during your tenure as governor, you're going to get questions about policy and unemployment and education, all of those things that are important.

But at the end of the day, at the end of your your role here, what's the one thing that you hope people take away about you as a person and as a leader?

I hope it's that we help Tennesseans to expect more.

We have it set the bar high enough for ourselves when it comes to education or when it comes to health habits.

There's just there's that part of our culture, the part of our culture that says, well, let's let's aspire to be more.

Let's try to let's raise the bar in terms of education standards, in terms of the businesses we want to recruit in here.

We can be more in Tennessee.

It's incredible place to live.

Everybody ends up, here goes.

I didn't really think I want to live in Tennessee, but now that I'm here, I'm not leaving.

Okay, So we have this great asset to work with.

We should raise the expectations on ourselves.

And how are you going to know when you do a good job?

You know, I don't I mean that it's really hard.

And I mean, you can measure by, you know, education statistics or unemployment going down or companies we recruit in or health health statistics, you know, heading in a better direction, you know, but then there's always so many other things that you can say, well, that was the economy or that was this or that.

Do they?

I think it's, you know, did you did you or did you work really hard?

Did you communicate the best that you could?

And did you all were you always like we always doing it for the right reasons?

And if you did, then you just at the end of the day is going to be some people that don't think you did well, some people that still don't like you, but that's part of the deal.

I think that's a pretty good checklist, though.

I thanks, Governor.