(UPDATE: The state Supreme Court, meeting in emergency session, has overturned the injunction setting May 5 as the new date for state Senate filings. Citing the “harm” that could be caused by the injunction, the court established a new filing deadline for the state Senate positions as 4 p.m. Thursday, April 14.)
To crib a phrase from Shakespeare: “If this be error and upon me proved …” Well, it’s proved, all right, and I’ll just have to own up. There is an error in the “Politics” column on this week’s Flyer print edition (April 14), and I’ll try to unravel it both here and, more briefly, via a note in the next print edition.
The error was to suggest that “the filing deadline for the District 33 state Senate primary has been shifted to Thursday, May 5, as a consequence of the seat — formerly held by Katrina Robinson — having been vacated last month by legislative action. The current holder of the District 33 state Senate seat is former state Representative London Lamar, who was appointed as interim state Senator last month by the Shelby County Commission.”
The unstated implication was that the filing deadline for the other state Senate seats on the ballot, for Districts 29 and 31, had continued to be April 7, as originally scheduled, and that the opportunity to file for those seats was thereby foreclosed.
In reality, all the state Senate seats, everywhere in the state, are, at present, subject to a revised filing deadline of May 5, and former Senator Robinson’s misfortune, due to a felony conviction, had nothing to do with it.
The actual explanation for the shifted deadline date for state Senate filings has to do with this line from the state constitution: “In a county having more than one senatorial district, the districts shall be numbered consecutively.” In their zeal to achieve desired outcomes in various areas of the state, the Republican overseers of the reapportionment process, inadvertently redrew the lines for state Senate districts in Davidson County (Nashville) so as to violate this provision, which prevents odd-numbered and even-numbered seats from being voted on in the same election cycle. The idea is to restrain the potential for turnover of seats in a county with multiple seats.
Under the original redistricting, the state Senate seats held by the Democrats in Davidson County became the 17th, 19th, 20th, and 21st. That fact put three out of the county’s four seats at risk Plaintiffs backed by the state Democratic Party sued, and a three-judge state panel held in their favor, ordering that the redistricting maps for state Senate seats be redrawn in conformity with the state constitution.
The three-judge panel also ordered a new filing deadline date for state Senate seats of May 5. That’s for all state Senate seats.
The state Attorney General’s office has appealed the ruling, and the state Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeal — the practical meaning of which is that the filing date for state Senate seats could be changed yet again, possibly even returning to the original April 7 date, which has passed.
Got all that?
