'It came out of the blue': Tennessee Democratic Senate candidate describes the shock of learning of Taylor Swift's endorsement

• Phil Bredesen, the former Nashville mayor, two-term Tennessee governor, and now US Senate candidate said he was taken by surprise when pop star Taylor Swift endorsed his campaign earlier this month. 
• Bredesen and Swift had briefly worked together on an anti-drug initiative years ago, but Swift had never spoken out about politics - until now. 
• Bredesen said Swift's endorsement was helpful in the highly competitive race - and a boon to the 74-year-old's appeal among millennials. 

Phil Bredesen, the former Nashville mayor, two-term Tennessee governor, and now candidate for US Senate, said he was taken by surprise when pop music phenom Taylor Swift broke her political silence to endorse his campaign earlier this month. 

"It came out of the blue," Bredesen, a centrist Democrat running on a promise to bring bipartisanship to Washington, told Business Insider in an interview last weekend in Nashville. "I had no reason to believe she would even know I was running, let alone that she would do this." 

Bredesen said he got to know Swift "very slightly" while he was governor in the mid-2000s as the two worked together on an anti-drug initiative targeted at school kids. He also said he'd "seen her backstage at things over the years."

But he said the 28-year-old megastar had not communicated with Bredesen's campaign or indicated she might make an endorsement before she posted her unexpected Instagram message a month before November's midterm elections. 

"I wish I could claim that it was something I had organized or orchestrated, but it was not," Bredesen said. 

After years of speculation about her political views, Swift announced to her 112 million followers that she would be voting for Bredesen and Democratic Rep. Jim Cooper in her adopted home state. She also slammed Bredesen's Republican opponent, eight-term congressman Marsha Blackburn, one of the most conservative members of the House who's running on a full-throated support of President Donald Trump's platform. 

"Her voting record in Congress appalls and terrifies me," Swift wrote of Blackburn. "These are not MY Tennessee values."

The move, which Swift made two days before Tennessee's voter registration deadline, was followed by a surge in voter registration, particularly among millennials both in the Southern red state and across the country, according to Vote.org, a nonpartisan group that works to boost voter turnout.

Bredesen, 74, thinks Swift's endorsement has been a boon to his campaign. 

"For somebody who's on the other side of 70, relating to millennials is not as easy as if you're Beto O'Rourke or somebody, so I think that really helped me," he said. 

Swift also urged her massive following to educate themselves on candidates for office wherever they live and "vote based on who most closely represents your values."

Swift has since followed up with several other social media posts encouraging her fans to vote early - and urging her fellow Tennesseans to cast their ballots for Bredesen. 

"These two Tennessee women voted for the candidate who has proven himself to be reasonable and trustworthy," she wrote in a Tuesday Instagram post featuring herself and her mother, Andrea Swift, posing by a Bredesen campaign banner. "We want leadership, not fear-based extremism."