Before Fred Thompson was District Attorney Arthur Branch on the television series Law & Order, he was driving across Tennessee in a red pickup truck. It was 1994, and Thompson was vying for Al Gore's old Senate seat.

Polls had Thompson far behind his opponent, a six-term congressman and son of a former governor. But Thompson had a plan. He swapped the suit and tie he wore as a Washington lobbyist for work shirts and boots, and he drove around the state in a leased truck, meeting people in coffee shops and restaurants throughout Tennessee. The humble clothes and red pickup lent Thompson a common-man image that appealed to voters.

He soared ahead of the Democratic candidate, Rep. Jim Cooper, and won the election with 60 percent of the vote.

It was his first stint as a politician, but it wasn't his first time in Washington. Thompson, 64, had spent years in the capital as a lawyer and lobbyist, and had also worked his way into Hollywood circles as an actor in movies and TV shows. But despite his opponents' attempts to paint him, in Cooper's words, as a "Gucci-wearing, Lincoln-driving, Perrier-drinking, Grey Poupon-spreading millionaire," Thompson always managed to convince people that he was just a regular guy from Tennessee.

It was this image that helped him win the Senate seat in 1994, said Aaron Crawford, who processed Thompson's Senate papers for the University of Tennessee archives. His debates with Cooper show how skilled he is at perfecting the "image of a down-home populist," Crawford said.

"You can't underestimate his power to do that in a campaign," he said.

Thompson will have his first shot at wooing New Hampshire voters tonight at a GOP fundraiser in Bedford.

Small-town roots

Although Thompson has honed his skills as an actor over the past two decades, his portrayal as a regular guy with humble beginnings isn't scripted.

Thompson was born in Sheffield, Ala., in 1942 to Ruth and Fletcher Thompson - a used car salesman - and soon moved to Lawrenceburg, Tenn. He attended Lawrenceburg public schools and was a star football and basketball player. He married his pregnant high school girlfriend when he was 17, and he worked at the local post office and as an assembly line worker at a bicycle plant to make ends meet.

The couple worked their way through college at Memphis State University, where Thompson earned a double major in political science and philosophy in 1964. After attending law school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Thompson returned to Lawrenceburg to practice law. Two years later, he was appointed assistant U.S. attorney and prosecuted federal criminal cases, including bank robberies, moonshine and stolen car cases.

At the same time, Thompson got his first taste of politics. He started a young Republicans group and worked on two congressional campaigns. In 1972, he resigned his position with the U.S. Attorney's office to work on Sen. Howard Baker's re-election campaign. The day after his resignation, five men were arrested at the Watergate Hotel for breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters.

As details of the break-in unfolded, a congressional committee was formed to investigate presidential involvement in the scandal. Baker chose Thompson as Republican counsel for the committee. He questioned witnesses during televised hearings, the highlight of which was his line of questioning that revealed the White House policy of recording Oval Office conversations.

After the hearings were over, Thompson returned to private law practice in Tennessee. In 1977, he represented Marie Ragghianti, the chairman of Tennessee's Pardons and Parole Board, who was fired by the governor for refusing to release prisoners who had bribed the administration in exchange for release. The case rocked the capital, exposing an ongoing "cash-for-clemency" scandal that forced the governor to resign.

A new career in acting - and politics

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