Author: Steve Steffens

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Roll of the Dice for Tennessee Democrats

CREDIT: JB

With the announcement of former Governor Phil Bredesen that he would seek the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat being vacated by Bob Corker, it looked like the Tennessee Democratic Party would have not one, but two primaries at the top of their ticket in August. However, the withdrawal on December 13th of newomer James Mackler leaves the Senate primary all to Bredesen, at least for now.

This would have worked well in Shelby County, where county-wide Democratic candidates face a general election in August at the same time as state and federal primaries. In recent years, with few statewide candidates, this has hurt local Democrats, who were wiped out, except for Assessor Cheyenne Johnson.

The gubernatorial primary features House Democratic Leader Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley, who is beloved by his caucus and has a good reputation for working with local leaders, and former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, who is given some of the credit for the rapid growth in Davidson County. They are similar in age and temperament, and each has a good working knowledge of government operations.

However, the true divide among Tennessee Democrats was more visible in the Senate primary. The initial entrant in the race was Nashville attorney Mackler, whose bio notes that he quit his job in the early 1990s in order to enter the Iraq War. He entered the race before Corker announced that he would not seek re-election; however, Corker’s withdrawal from the race did not prevent Mackler from demonstrating why he wanted the office or from assailing the presumed GOP front-runner, U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn.

Mackler is only 44 years old and had not sought public office prior to this race, which had some longtime Democrats worried about how he would do in a statewide election. That said, he appeared to have the ability to draw younger voters, as well as those who have stayed out of the process, back to the voting booth. As reviews of the 2016 election have indicated, non-voters have hurt Democrats the most —  with a lack of enthusiasm being a major problem.

The election of Donald Trump to the presidency dramatically increased leftward activism here and throughout the country; the Democrats need to be able to turn this interest into votes.

This begs the question of why a 74-year-old former governor, who has not been on a Tennessee ballot since 2006, would enter a Senate race when he has never been a legislator, only a mayor and a governor. Bredesen’s entry video indicated not that he would serve as a rebuttal to the GOP, but that he would work across the aisle with legislators to get things done. He did not even indicate that he would work to save the Affordable Care Act, upon which many Tennessee lives depend.

JB

Bredesen in his campaign-announcement video

For some of the activist groups that have risen in the aftermath of last year’s election, the question that will be asked is this: Who is this guy, where did he come from, and has he been paying attention? For younger Democrats, who may not be old enough to remember his administration, Bredesen is reminiscent of a past they never knew.

Only longtime Democrats, with nostalgia for the days when they held power, seem to be excited over a Bredesen candidacy. He is certainly to the right of those new activists, who are raising new generations of Democrats. While Mackler is not exactly Bernie Sanders, his appeal would have skewed younger and more in line with the people knocking on doors and making phone calls.

Without Mackler in the race, Bredesen can focus on the general election. A Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee poll taken in October, before Bredesen’s entry, showed him with a 46-41 lead over Blackburn, which may have been the deciding factor for him to get in the race.

As the headliner of the Democratic ticket, he won’t just be responsible for his own victory, he will be expected to help raise turnout levels in down-ballot races, especially those in the state legislative races. It’s a lot to ask from someone who won’t have been on a ballot for 12 years; for Tennessee Democrats, it appears to be the best chance at this time.

Steve Steffens, is a longtime Democratic activist and the proprietor of Leftwingcracker.com weblog.

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Tear Down the Shelby County Democratic Party and Start Over

What separates the current version of the Shelby County Democratic Party (SCDP) into camps is that we have no clue what we stand for. You have the old-guard white liberals who fought against the county-primary idea in the ’80s, and there are the people who came into power with Mayor Willie Herenton in the ’90s who want to hire their folks over the old folks.

Willie Herenton

Say you are in the middle of a countywide campaign, and you are attempting to ask a friend or neighbor to vote for a Democratic candidate for one of the county offices. You get into the spiel before you are stopped and told this: “Look, I vote Democratic in the legislative and executive races, but I have a spouse/child/sibling/parent/friend who works in that office, and if the Democrat is elected, they lose their job, and they really need it. I just can’t go there with you.”

What on earth can you say to that?

Let’s look at another major problem we have: Because of the way legislative districts are drawn, there are rarely competitive races in the general elections any more. Look at this year. Outside of District 96, where Democrat Dwayne Thompson will be challenging Republican incumbent Steve McManus, what seat has the possibility of changing hands in November? None.

The races are all in the primaries, which hurts because Democrats do not turn out in the primaries, thinking that the only races that matter are in November. Because our countywide races are in August, we start out at a disadvantage. Not only that, but our incumbent legislators, who are trying to turn out their voters but not those of their primary opponent, aren’t really much help. Frankly, they don’t turn out their folks in November any more, because they have already been reelected at that point.

So what does all this have to do with the SCDP? With no real strong figure in charge, the party’s executive committee is filled with the people who are looking to make money off the party on one side, and, on the other, the Old Guard who want to elect Democrats but are outvoted and overrun by those who obsess over procedural matters.

Because we have no power in Nashville and no power in the Shelby County administrative building (where there are a couple of Democratic commissioners willing to sell out the party at a moment’s notice) and because — as all who can read a newspaper know — we apparently cannot keep financial accounts, who in their right mind would give the SCDP one red cent?

This issue has been exacerbated in recent weeks by further negative publicity about unexplained financial shortages under a previous party administration and with the resignation of SCDP chair Randa Spears, who left due to an increased workload at her day job.

Yes, in seven of those years (1997-2003 and 2014), I sat on the executive committee, and I have to take partial responsibility for what has occurred. The fact remains that, with no money coming in or any real reason for there to be any money coming in, the local party, in a county with the largest Democratic voting bloc in the state, finds itself completely irrelevant.

This is why I respectfully request that the Tennessee Democratic Party and its very able current chair, Mary Mancini, put this body out of its (and our) misery and pull its charter. We really have to destroy the Party in order to save it. Get a group of good Democratic lawyers, along with solid Democrats, young and old, who have campaign experience, to rewrite the bylaws in order to drive out the leeches of the party and, for stability’s sake, to have the same number of Executive Committee members season after season.

And let’s give them time to do it. For heaven’s sakes, the Party nominee for president will carry Shelby and four other counties regardless if there is a SCDP structure in place. Same with the legislators, same with the Congresspeople.

Every second we wait is a second that we fail to have a real Democratic Party structure in the largest Democratic Party in the South outside Atlanta (Florida never counts), and we cannot truly hope to reestablish Democratic strength in Tennessee until this happens.

Steve Steffens is a longtime Democratic activist and proprietor of the well-read blog leftwingcracker.blogspot.com, where a lengthier version of this essay first appeared.

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No Female Mayors?

Nashville voted heavily on September 10th, doing what Knoxville did four years ago, and what Memphis and Shelby County have, so far, refused to do: They elected a female mayor for the first time. And, no, I don’t see this as leading to a groundswell for Memphis mayoral candidate Sharon Webb.

Nashville Mayor Megan Berry

Congratulations to Mayor-elect Megan Barry, who was also the first sitting metro councilor to be elected mayor. She beat David Fox, who seemed to be doing well, until he started campaigning like a Tea Partier, which turned off the city’s voters in short order.

Of Tennessee’s five largest cities, three of them will have female mayors: Knoxville (Madeline Rogero), Clarksville (former State Representative Kim McMillan), and Nashville with Barry. 

Memphis and Shelby County have certainly produced women who are qualified to lead the city and/or county, yet it has not happened. One of the several undeniably qualified female candidates was Republican Commissioner Carolyn Gates, who ran for the county mayorship in 1994, losing to Jim Rout in a crowded field.  

City Councilwoman Mary Rose McCormick ran unsuccessfully in the packed 1999 mayoral race in which then Mayor Willie Herenton won a third term. Wanda Halbert, a veteran of the Memphis School Board and the City Council, ran unsuccessfully in the 2009 race to fill the vacated fifth term of Herenton, which was won by the current incumbent, A C Wharton.

Several shots. No basket. Why not? The largest voting bloc in the city of Memphis, and Shelby County, for that matter, is African-American women. These women have gladly supported their sisters of all colors for legislative positions, giving us great fighters like the late Lois DeBerry and Kathryn Bowers, as well as current leaders such as Karen Camper, Raumesh Akbari, Barbara Cooper, and Senator Sara Kyle.

However, when it comes to electing women to executive positions such as Memphis mayor or Shelby County mayor, nada.  

While it is easy to see how Carol Chumney’s 2002 loss to A C Wharton in the Democratic primary for county mayor could be attributed to the excitement that Wharton would be the first African American elected to that office, she didn’t get much help from African-American women to break the glass ceiling in 2007 when she challenged Herenton (whose ceiling was long since shattered) in his final run for city mayor.

And if you wish to suggest that race was a factor in those elections, then what of the well-credentialed Deidre Malone, who lost a Democratic primary to Joe Ford, a fellow African American, for county mayor in 2010, and then lost the general election for that office to Republican incumbent Mark Luttrell in 2014? Why can’t a woman be elected mayor in this town or county?

Like Barry, who had served on Nashville’s Metro Council for eight years prior to her election, Malone had served on the Shelby County Commission for eight years. Malone had served as chair of the budget committee and was the first African-American female to serve as chair of the entire commission. There should have been no questions as to her qualifications to serve as the county’s mayor, especially when one factors in her work with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and her successful business, The Carter Malone Group.

Is it possible that one reason is that local African-American women are not comfortable voting for women for executive positions because of religious reasons?  

There are black churches in this town, lots of them, that are to the right of Bellevue Baptist on social issues, and these conservative (in the religious sense) women may be simply unwilling to elect a woman to an office that they believe should remain in the hands of a man. 

It’s 2015, and one has to wonder why this could even be an issue, but we know from experience that social achievements often take longer to take hold in the Mid-South. It does suggest to me, however, why it is so difficult for a woman to achieve that office in Memphis or countywide. Our suburban neighbors, Germantown (Sharon Goldsworthy) and Collierville (Linda Kerley) have elected female mayors, but those are mostly white, more affluent towns.

I wish that, when running a poll of the city or county, the media outlet doing so would include these questions to all surveyed voters: Would your beliefs prevent you from voting for a female for mayor of your city or county? If so, why?

It’s not scientific, but even reader comments to this article might provide an answer to this mystery. And, really, I am mystified. 

Steve Steffens is proprietor of the local political blog, Left Wing Cracker.

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Whither the Shelby County Democratic Party?

The Shelby County Democratic Party (SCDP), on whose executive committee (EC) I serve, has experienced a bad run over the past couple of years, culminating in the resignation of Chair Bryan Carson on Saturday, February 21st. This was due to problems with the party’s financial reports and undocumented deposits, and more importantly, undocumented withdrawals.

Beginning on March 14th with ward and precinct caucuses, to be followed on March 28th with the SCDP convention, the party will be reorganized, as this happens every two years. There will be new leadership, and a newer, smaller executive committee of 29 people from 14 State House Districts.

While I, a veteran of two different stints on the EC, will be leaving, we need new people from every area of Shelby County to get involved. If you lean Democrat, please show up. We need you.

People look at the demographics of Shelby County and mistakenly assume that it should be overwhelmingly Democratic. They would be wrong. Due to the hollowing out of Democratic strongholds like South Memphis, North Memphis, Frayser, and Hickory Hill by departed middle-class African Americans (who are far more likely to vote than their working and poverty-class brethren), the idea that Whitehaven can ensure Democratic victory after victory has been proven wrong.

The Democratic Party must, without leaving its ideals of equality behind, attract people of all races, creeds, and colors from every area of this county. That really hasn’t happened in a long time, except for Congressman Steve Cohen, and Mayor A C Wharton, during his time as Shelby County mayor. We have not developed a bench of strong candidates, as seen in our clobbering by the GOP in every county election in recent memory. We have to be as competitive in Cordova as North Memphis; in Collierville as South Memphis. We need to be strong enough to compete anywhere in Shelby County.

As for the incoming chair (and we won’t know who that is until they are elected by the new executive committee after the March 28th convention), this person needs to be a lot of things. In order to regain the trust of Shelby County Democrats and independent voters, the new chair will need to be able to raise money, a more daunting task since the older generation of well-to-do Democratic businessmen have died off. 

The chair will need to be able to put together a great team, and then delegate and empower them to do those things that need to be done, like organizing, registering voters, and preparing a plan to ensure all voters have legal IDs. We are stuck with the voter photo-ID law for the immediate future, and we need to have a plan in place to accommodate it.

The chair will need to be a good speaker, one who is not afraid of speaking in one-on-one situations or with medium-to-large groups. The new chair needs to have a plan to train campaign workers and candidates and to weed out those who are only running because they need a job — the type of candidate that gets Democrats beat every four years.

The new chair needs to see that people who want to associate with the party for the sole purpose of making money off of it and its candidates are kept far away; they are cancers on our party, and that includes sample-ballot makers.

The chair also needs to get good people on the standing committees of the party, especially including non-executive-committee members of those committees. The chair needs to find people who will volunteer their time to learn about the party and work to make it more effective. If you’re looking to get paid, go join the Republicans; the Koch brothers have plenty of money.

The biggest task for the new chair and executive committee, after cleaning up, will be to recruit candidates who understand and know the positions that they seek. We need people who have experience in the offices for which they run and can evoke confidence in their competence. “Vote for Me Because I am the Democrat” is more done than a two-hour steak. It has not worked.

The new chair and committee will have their work cut out for them. If you lean Democrat, please come out on March 14th at 9 a.m. to First Baptist Church-Broad and get involved. We need you, and want you to help this party to be what it can be.

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Southern Democrats: Down, Not Dead

Well, to the surprise of no one, national political columnists began last week to suggest that national Democrats should write the South off for any major election from this point forward. This came in the wake of the defeat of Mary Landrieu recently, as Louisiana failed to reelect her to the United States Senate for a fourth term.

No, it’s not good right now for Southern Democrats, confined, for the time being, to urban areas and rural areas dominated by people of color. Why, indeed, shouldn’t we say to hell with it and all move north, or east, or to California?

Because we love it here, that’s why, and the South is worth fighting for. We have to do it slowly; what happened here didn’t just happen overnight with the election of Barack Obama, though that may have brought things to a head. So, how did we get to this place?

Part of the problem for Democrats in the South is that many people were Democrats not based on a liberal or progressive ideology, but because those #$%@ Republicans started the War of Northern Aggression, as it is inaccurately referred to in these parts. Their mommas, daddies, grandparents, everyone was a Democrat back then.

However, after the Civil Rights Act of 1965 was passed, and southern Democrats began to realize that government assistance was for all people, not just people who looked like them, a slow and steady migration took place. Republicans now control every house of every legislature in the South, even Arkansas.

So, we know how Democrats got here, but how do they swing the pendulum back? The first thing Democrats must do as a party is to stop running away from national Democratic issues and causes. People respect you when you stand up for what you are, clearly and concisely define yourself, and don’t allow your opponents to do that for you. That has been a particular problem here in Tennessee.

What Chris Devaney and the Tennessee GOP are doing with their “Red to the Roots” program to elect Republicans at every level is exactly what Tennessee Democrats should have done 30 years ago, when they had the legislative advantage. Pity that they never conceived that they would be out of power.

The road back for Democrats has to begin at the local and county levels. Whoever is elected on January 10th to succeed Roy Herron as chair of the Tennessee Democratic Party needs to have a plan in place to get the county Democratic parties functional at every level — raising money, recruiting candidates, and honing a message that reflects Democratic values.

To paraphrase the great Howard Dean, we need a 95-county strategy. This is partially to get local Democrats excited and get them working for our values and candidates, and partially to get money out of Nashville and into the outlying counties, like Dean did with his 50-state strategy, by getting money away from Washington and its too-conservative Democratic consultants.

More than anything else, we need to stand for specific values that support families, workers, and small businesses, and not big business, big banking, and Wall Street. Draw that line in the sand and stand by it; respect can only follow. 

This isn’t going to be easy, especially when most national media refuse to challenge or call out Wall Street or big business, since that’s who owns national media. It’s hard to get a message that isn’t Fox News or Rush Limbaugh to areas like Weakley or Obion counties, who get their televised local news from Paducah, Kentucky, Cape Girardeau, Missouri, or Harrisburg, Illinois. The same can be said for southern Middle Tennessee, which gets its television news from Huntsville, Alabama.

This is why our new chair and the executive committee will have to build their own communication networks via person-to-person contact and social media to get the message out. That’s where having clear, concise Democratic values and messages are crucial to regaining the trust of people who have been scared off from the Democratic Party.

It’s time to be proud Democrats in Tennessee and throughout the South. The way back starts now.

Memphian Steve Steffens is a Democratic activist and the proprietor of the well-read blog LeftWingCracker.blogspot.com.

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Kyle and Cooper?

As Sara Kyle decides whether to challenge Governor Bill Haslam and his billions in the 2014 governor’s race (and here’s hoping that she does), there is more to think about for 2014.

With the announcement that the rabidly rightist state representative Joe Carr of Lascassas has decided to challenge Senator Lamar Alexander in the Senate GOP primary, it raises some questions that Democrats need to think about.  

As we have seen in other states, when a moderate senator such as Alexander is challenged in a GOP primary and then defeated, it has enabled Democrats to elect a senator, as in the case of Joe Donnelly in Indiana, and it has opened up possibilities for Michelle Nunn (yes, that’s Sam’s daughter) in Georgia.

Congressman Jim Cooper

Does Joe Carr have a real chance to knock off Alexander in the primary? Well, once we start seeing his disclosures and can determine if the Club for Growth and ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council) will put serious funding into Carr’s campaign, then that could cause Democrats to rethink whether to field a candidate who can raise money into the race.

If no one else gets in, I will probably vote for Jacob Maurer, the Nashville liberal activist; he seems to have the right stands on the issues for me, but I harbor no illusions about his ability to beat Alexander in a general election. However, what if Carr really gets the wackos out to beat Lamar in the primary?  

The old-guard GOP truly hates the Tea Partiers with a purple passion, and if the last member of the Holy Trinity that built the establishmentarian TNGOP (Howard Baker, Fred Thompson, and Alexander) is upended, does anyone else think that some of their money might go to a Democrat worth voting for?

I think we may know the answer to this question before Christmas. And, if it looks like Carr can make enough headway to beat Alexander, then Democrats need to get someone ready to run.

When it comes to the type of person that old-guard GOPers might be willing to support in the event of a Carr upset over Alexander, there’s really only one Democrat who could get the support and funding from those folks.

Jim Cooper.

I know, I know. No, I am not high or drunk or otherwise altered. Under normal circumstances, I would be calling for Cooper, Nashville’s Democratic congressman and a Blue Dog’s Blue Dog, to be primaried from the left.            However, as you may have noticed, these are not normal circumstances, and if Joe Carr were to somehow snatch the GOP nomination from Alexander, there are a lot of GOP donors who would be pissed off enough to help Cooper. This may be his best shot.

All of this, of course, comes down to whether the wackos in the TNGOP can knock off the old guard; no one thinks Cooper could take Lamar Alexander mano-a-mano. However, if Carr proves to be a more formidable force than anyone believed, Cooper would be ready to send him back to Rutherford County.  It would also mean that a Democrat would win a Senate race for the first time in this state since Al Gore was reelected in 1990.

All of which means that Jim Cooper needs to think about this seriously. As much as I have been at odds with him on my blog, he clearly would be our best choice in the event of a GOP Senate primary upset. I would absolutely hold my tongue and keyboard and try not to criticize him, knowing what the alternative could be.

And if we had Kyle and Cooper at the top of our ticket, it sure as hell might encourage other Democrats to run for state House and state Senate positions, and that is a consummation devoutly to be wished.

So, Jim Cooper, take this under consideration, if you have not done so already. If Carr can beat Lamar, you could move up and take another Senate seat from the GOP, which would be indeed a good thing. For you, for the party, and for the state.

Memphian Steve Steffens is the proprietor of leftwingcracker.blogspot.com, a Democratically oriented blog.

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Quit W(h)ining

by STEVE STEFFENS

You will undoubtedly see and hear commercials from Tennessee’s liquor wholesalers trying to stop House Bill 1157/Senate Bill 0121. These companion measures have been introduced in the Tennessee General Assembly to permit the sale of wine in retail food stores in the state’s “wet” counties. What you will hear are cries that this will put “mom-and-pop” liquor stores out of business, that teenagers will be able to buy wine, even though they may be underage, and that the world will soon come to an end.

What this bill does is allow retail food stores in wet counties to sell wine, for which the merchants would have to obtain a license. Store cashiers will have to identify all purchasers of wine, just as they do beer. If they fail to do so, grocers would face the same penalties as they do for selling beer to minors. Have you bought beer in Kroger or Schnucks lately? I’m 50 years old and I get carded, and they would do the same under the proposed law if you or I were to buy wine.

Remember, if a retail food store decides they do not want to sell wine, they can choose not to. If they do sell wine, they will be operating under the Responsible Vendor Law. And as the bill itself states, it would not apply in “dry” counties in Tennessee.

As the good folks at the invaluable “Red, White, and Food” website correctly note: “The license would be issued by the alcoholic beverage commission and only in a county or municipality that has authorized the sale of alcoholic beverages.”

What is a retail food store? Here is what the proposed bill states:

“Retail food store” means an establishment where food and food products are offered to the consumer and intended primarily for off-premises consumption, not including the following: roadside markets that offer only fresh foods and vegetables; food and beverage vending machines; or establishments selling only tobacco, beer, or gasoline.

You see, the liquor wholesalers seek to hide the fact that the major grocery chains such as Kroger, Schnucks, and Wal-Mart operate their own distributorships in the states where they can sell wine in their stores. Were this bill to pass and be signed by the governor, wholesalers throughout Tennessee would be forced to do something new: compete.

Tennessee’s liquor lobby has had a stranglehold on the laws and regulations for decades, leading to some of the strangest and most consumer-unfriendly liquor laws in America. Tennessee is one of 17 states that prohibits the sale of wine in grocery stores.

The liquor lobby doesn’t care about liquor store customers, who would benefit from lower prices; they care about maintaining their control on wine sales and artificially inflating prices to the very mom-and-pop stores they claim to represent. When smaller stores can buy for lower prices, they can charge lower prices, and that benefits all of us who enjoy wine.

Prices on wine would likely come down on popular sellers, but if you want a nice Chilean merlot or if you have a question about a wine that’s difficult to find, chances are you’ll still go to a well-stocked local establishment. As for the mom-and-pop liquor stores, their sales are more likely to come from liquor rather than wine. However, with lower prices, their sales might actually increase instead of decrease. This frightens the wholesalers, who have not had to compete on the basis of price for many years. 

In short, the bill does the following, according to redwhiteandfood.com:

• It creates a license that allows retail food stores to sell wine.

• It restricts licenses only to localities where the citizens have voted to allow retail package stores (approximately 85 localities around the state).

• It provides liquor stores (retail package stores) the opportunity to sell ice, soft drinks, mixers, glasses, corkscrews, and other items normally associated with alcoholic beverages.

The w(h)iners don’t want their monopoly to end, and they are not afraid to mislead the public in order to scare them. Ask your legislators to ignore all that and to support this bill, so that we can buy wine in our favorite grocery stores.


Steve Steffens blogs on issues of the day at leftwingcracker.blogpost.com.

See also “Don’t Big-Box Wine!” by Hank Cowles.