Tag: Bill Hagerty

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Politics Politics Feature

The Mackler Moment: A Parable

Marquita Bradshaw (Photo: Darnell Landers)

Can Knoxville state Senator Gloria Johnson, she of last spring’s “Tennessee Three” and a heroine of sorts among Democrats, actually unseat the GOP’s Marsha Blackburn in the 2024 U.S. Senate race?

There is an illustrative case — that of James Mackler, a Nashville lawyer and former Iraq war helicopter pilot, who made bold to put himself forth as a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2018 for the seat then held by the retiring moderate Republican Bob Corker.

Meanwhile, out of the Republican MAGA ranks, seeking the same seat, came the aforementioned arch-conservative Marsha Blackburn, then a congresswoman. The then still existent state Democratic establishment, two years into the Trump age, didn’t trust a novice Democrat like Mackler, no matter how promising, to take on Blackburn, so talked Tennessee’s recent Governor Phil Bredesen, an old-fashioned conservative Democrat, out of retirement to become their candidate.

Mackler dutifully withdrew, biding his time.

History records that both Bredesen and Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, the last two name Democrats to carry the party banner into battle, were both routed in 2018, Bredesen by Blackburn (who would end up a cover girl on The New York Times Magazine) and Dean by Bill Lee.

Mackler was still on the scene and considered it his time to take on the next Senate race in 2020, where he would be opposed by the GOP’s Bill Hagerty, a former ambassador and state economic development commissioner. What was left of the Democratic establishment, in something of its last go-round, thought Mackler was right and timely, also, and got behind him.

Alas! Mackler and the party establishment withheld their considerable fundraising receipts from a five-way Democratic primary, hoarding them for the forthcoming race against Hagerty, and never even got to the general election. Mackler was upset in the primary by one Marquita Bradshaw, an environmentalist from Memphis who had no ballyhoo whatsoever and had raised virtually no money.

What she did have was an emergent standing among Memphis Blacks as a progressive candidate (though a nonmember of the now-expiring party establishment).

What she had was enough to win 35.5 percent of the primary vote, outpolling poor Mackler, who had 23.8 percent. Between the primary and the general, Bradshaw upped her campaign kitty from $22,300 to $1.3 million (a major-party nomination is still worth something), but lost to Hagerty, once again polling 35 percent.

Jump to last week, when the Beacon Center, a conservative think tank, released the results of two Emerson College polls — one measuring incumbent Blackburn running for reelection against Gloria Johnson, another matching her against Bradshaw, regarding the Memphian, once again as a prospective Senate candidate.

Beacon had Blackburn running ahead of Johnson by 49 percent to 29 percent, with the balance undecided. Against Bradshaw, Blackburn’s margin was smaller, 48 percent to 36 percent.

What Beacon did not do was match the two Democrats against each other, testing what might happen in a primary encounter.

But, given the example of Mackler, the already actively campaigning Johnson might wonder, as do we. Might she suffer an unexpected defeat to Bradshaw, a la Mackler?

Word from the Democratic establishment (yes, it still exists, though barely) is that Johnson has digested the lesson of Mackler and will pour a generous amount of the substantial funds she has already raised for a primary contest.

That will take pace in August, and we shall see what we shall see.

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News News Blog News Feature

TN GOP Blast Federal Move to Locate Immigrants Here

(Credit: Alejandro Cartagena on Unsplash)

The federal government is apparently looking to relocate some immigrants out of its custody, and the thought of releasing them in Tennessee brought a storm of criticism and complaint from Tennessee conservatives. 

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, and U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn) and Bill Hagerty (R-Tenn) made noise about the plan Tuesday. In a news statement, they claimed the White House and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were planning “to release an unspecified number of single adult migrants into Tennessee” and blamed the move on “continued inaction to secure the Southern border.” 

Tennessee Lookout questioned ICE about it, only to be told they have “not transported non-citizens for release to Tennessee.” ICE has not announced the move on its website nor on social media. 

However, a Tuesday news alert from the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRCC) seemed to confirm that some detained immigrants may be released here.   

“The federal government recently reached out to city and state government officials, as well as non-profits and faith communities, to coordinate an orderly process to assist asylum seekers and others who have been processed and cleared to leave immigration custody in traveling to reunite with family members,” TIRCC said in a statement. 

Gov. Lee said his office was notified of the move Monday afternoon by the Biden Administration. The plan would “transport multiple busloads of single adult detainees from ICE facilities in New Orleans into Tennessee, beginning as soon as this week. Federal officials have not shared any further details. The governor’s office continues to push back on the plan.”

Lee called the move “irresponsible” and a “threat to the safety of Tennesseans.” He also battled an ICE move in 2021 that brought migrant children to the state on airplanes in “the dead of night.” 

But in a statement on ICE’s recent plan, Lee’s focus once again shifted from Tennessee to the “Southern border.” Earlier this year, Lee sent about 50 Tennessee National Guard members to Texas to “curb a surging drug crisis.”

“[Seven thousand] people unlawfully enter our country every day,” Lee said. “This crisis is too big to ignore, and the only way to stop it is to secure the border. 

“Placing the burden on states is not a solution, and we should not bear the brunt of the federal government’s failures. We are demanding the Biden administration reverse their plan for detainee relocation. In the meantime, we’re also discussing options with the Tennessee Attorney General and our federal delegation.”

Two of the top leaders of that delegation made it clear they won’t want the immigrants in Tennessee either. Blackburn said she, Lee, and Hagerty “will be utilizing all possible options to stop President Biden from trafficking illegal migrants into our state.”

“Biden created this crisis by terminating successful Trump-era immigration policies, including Remain in Mexico and safe third-country agreements,” Blackburn said in a statement. “Tennesseans will not stand for this flagrant abuse of law and order.” 

Hagerty said the flow of immigrants into the U.S. has “brought heartbreaking consequences to communities throughout America in the form of increased drug overdoses.” These have strained resources for hospitals, schools, and local communities, he said. It has also put national security at risk as a number of those crossing “are on terrorist watch lists.”

“This is unacceptable,” Hagerty said. “A nation without a border is not a sovereign nation. President Biden cannot ignore this crisis any longer.”

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Tiger in the Bathroom

As we enter what portends to be the week in which we will see the final death spasms of Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the American presidential election, an early candidate has emerged for Time magazine’s 2021 Person of the Year. That would be an unassuming political functionary named Bradford Jay Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state.

Raffensperger, a lifelong Republican, was the recipient of a phone call on Saturday from our clearly demented president, who spent the better part of an hour spewing rumors, conspiracy theories, and blatant lies, all the while haranguing, threatening, and begging the secretary of state to just, you know, change the state’s election results. What’s the harm?

“C’mon, fellas,” the president finally whined, “I just need 11,780 votes.” It was a line straight out of Goodfellas, the closing argument of a mob boss. Just cheat a little for me, or it might not go well for you.

It turned out that Raffensperger, a Trump voter and supporter, had a spine. He was the little Dutch boy with his finger in the dike, the last line of defense against a would-be autocrat determined to overturn a free and fair election based on no evidence whatsoever, only a desperate, overweening desire to stay in power.

At long last, and not a moment too soon, Donald J. Trump encountered a Republican with enough integrity, with enough sand in his craw, to simply say no to the president’s ludicrous kabuki horror show. “Your data is wrong,” Raffensperger said. By which he meant, your “data” comes from fools on Parler and OANN. You are the emperor but you have no clothes.

After the phone call, Trump was unhappy, so he went on Twitter and blasted Raffensperger, accusing him of not answering questions, of being untruthful. And once again, Trump was rebuffed by a single man with the stones to call his bluff. Turns out that the secretary of state had receipts: A tape of the entire phone call was released to the media so Americans could judge for themselves who was telling the truth, and who was not.

Trump supporters immediately got the vapors, gasping at the audacity of Raffensperger releasing a tape to prove he wasn’t a liar. A gentlemen, the Trumpers huffed, simply doesn’t do such things. It was a bit like complaining that Captain Sullenberger forgot to put on his turn signal before landing a crippled passenger jet in the middle of the Hudson River.

So what’s left of the Republican party after Duh Furor leaves in two weeks? You’ve got your never-Trumpers (Republicans who never drank the Orange-Aid). Then there are “concerned and troubled” Republicans, including Senators Susan Collins, Ben Sasse, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney, who aren’t all in for Trump, but who don’t speak against him without checking the wind. Next are the Trump panderers, those making the cynical political calculation to go along with whatever insanity Trump pulls out of his butt just to keep the magical “base” on their side. These are the folks who will stand up in the Senate and in Congress this week and proclaim that the election is “tainted,” while showing no evidence to support any of it. This group includes Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn and fellow Trump-spawn from hell, Senator-elect Bill Hagerty.

So what’s left after that? Nothing but “the base,” the potpourri of anti-abortionists, evangelicals, billionaires, gun-rights nuts, assorted racists and white supremacists, QAnon conspiracists, and millions of pissed-off caucasians who love Donald Trump because he tells them their lives are screwed-up only because other people (Black and brown and Chinese) are screwing them.

When Trump leaves office, how does this disparate bowl of fruits and nuts and cynical creeps ever reassemble itself into a national political party? I don’t think it does. The GOP has let itself become a personality cult. When Trump goes, it will splinter into a pile of pick-up sticks. They have nothing in common but Trump, who in 2024 — if he’s alive and/or not in prison — has no chance of winning the presidency again. It wasn’t even close this time. He lost by seven million votes, and his old white base is dying off.

It’s more likely that the former president will keep doing what he’s done all his life: get media attention by spewing whatever outrageous thoughts float to the top of his withering cortex; find suckers to grift and prop him up; and play golf as much as possible.

After Trump leaves, the Republicans will wake up like the wasted partiers in the morning-after scene of The Hangover, wondering what happened, why there’s a chicken walking around, where that inflatable sex doll came from — and what to do about that tiger in the bathroom.

Bruce VanWyngarden brucev@memphisflyer.com

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

The Joke That Did Not Kill and Would Not Die

GOP Chair Chris Tutor

Make of it what you will, but President Trump’s apparently jesting suggestion of some weeks ago that Republicans should attempt to vote twice has seemingly left a lasting residue among GOP cadres.

At the Shelby County party’s annual Lincoln Day banquet, held Friday night at the Grove facility in Germantown, Cary Vaughn, the local party’s second vice chair, roused attendees early on by asking from the dais, “How many of you in the audience have already voted?” Upon a show of hands, he asked, “Can you go vote again, one more time?”

Party executive director Kristina Garner, who was standing alongside
Vaughn, stage-whispered to him, “We’re not Democrats!” To which Vaughn responded, “My apology, my apology.”

Evidently Shelby GOP chair Chris Tutor felt that the routine deserved a reprise. Later on, after a speech by 8th District Congressman David Kustoff and just prior to his introduction of Senatorial candidate Bill Hagerty, the event’s final speaker, Tutor looked back at Kustoff and said, “Thank you, Congressman. You got me fired up. You got me real fired up. I wish I could go back to the ballot box and vote again. [Pause for faint audience chuckle] I hear I’d get in trouble.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Proposed Tennessee Senatorial Debate Gets Quashed

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

For a time, it seemed that there would be one major statewide political debate this year — for U.S. Senate candidates — to be held under the auspices of the NEXSTAR network, which includes WREG-TV News Channel 3, locally.

The debate was scheduled for Wednesday, October 14th, in the studios of WKRN in Nashville.

The NEXSTAR invitation to participants cited a lengthy list of prerequisites, including one that candidates “must have reported, on the most recent official forms filed with the appropriate election authority, accepting at least $50,000 in monetary, as opposed to in-kind, campaign contributions, at least 25 percent of which must be raised from in-state constituents.”

Clearly, Republican Senate nominee Bill Hagerty, who reported upwards of $12 million in receipts on his last filing, in July, easily qualified. Surprise Democratic nominee Marquita Bradshaw of Memphis had reported contributions in the neighborhood of $22,000 as of that reporting date, though presumably she has raised considerably more than $50,000 since, and would have filed reports indicating as much, and would also have qualified to take part in the debate.

Jackson Baker

Reflecting a confidence that the U.S. Postal Service is equal to the task, District 83 state House candidate Jerri Green oversees a postcard-writing party.

Nobody else was even close to the $50,000 threshold. That would include another Memphis candidate, Aaron James, one of nine independents running. Responding to WKRN general manager Tracey Rogers, James cited a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulation requiring that “if a station allows a legally qualified candidate for any public office to use its facilities … it must give equal opportunities to all other candidates for that office to also use the station,” contending also that “the minimum bar for being recognized as an official candidate by the Federal Election Commission is only $5,000.”

Therefore, said James, given the strictures of the two cited federal commissions, he had a right to insist on inclusion; he maintains that he has a campaign fund of at least $5,000, consisting of his own money, and he filed an informal complaint this week regarding his exclusion from the debate.

Then the whole matter has become moot. Rogers announced that the debate event had been called off, and viewers in Memphis and elsewhere in the state will not, after all, have an opportunity to witness an exchange between major-party candidates Hagerty and Bradshaw, much less one involving James or any of the other eight independent candidates.

Bradshaw engaged in an interesting exchange of another kind last week with state Democratic chair Mary Mancini. In an online interview, the Democratic nominee, largely an unknown statewide but a familiar presence in environmentalist ranks, gave this account of her coming of political age:

“Right across the street from my elementary school was a Superfund site. And we didn’t learn about the dangers of this Superfund site until it closed down in 1995. … [T]hat was the year that I gave birth to my son, at the age of 21. I watched my great grandmother die of cancer. And after she died, many people in the community began experiencing sickness and death, also at alarming rates higher than the national average. And so that was when I got involved in a political process beyond voting.”

• In these pandemic times, the number of public assemblies of any kind has been drastically reduced. But on Monday night, there were doubtless many people who wanted to take part in two simultaneous events and had to choose. One was a memorial service at the D’Army Bailey Shelby County Courthouse in honor of the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Organized by Assistant County Attorney Jessica Indingaro, it drew numerous legal and political eminences.

Simultaneously, members of the Coalition Get Out the Vote 901 group, including some key Democrats, were participating in a Zoom meeting, co-hosted by state Senator Raumesh Akbari and TaJuan Stout-Mitchell, to discuss pre-election strategies.

In it, local Democratic Party chair  Michael Harris cited District Attorney General Amy Weirich as a target for defeat. That’s called looking ahead. Weirich isn’t up for re-election until 2022.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

GOP Senate Candidate George Flinn Bashes Trump

George Flinn

Critics of Donald Trump express reactions ranging from mystification to outrage that the controversial president seems to escape adverse judgment from fellow Republicans. And indeed, there aren’t many who, like Utah Senator Mitt Romney, have been willing to take Trump to task.

For what it’s worth, Tennessee has a GOP candidate, one running for the U.S. Senate, who has looked at Trump’s record and is willing to call it blameworthy.

This would be George Flinn, the wealthy physician and broadcast magnate who has gained a reputation as something of a perennial candidate, pouring millions of dollars every two years into unsuccessful campaigns for this or that political office. Flinn served one term and part of another as a Shelby County commissioner, and he came close to winning the Republican primary for the 8th District congressional seat in 2016.

With only days to go before the state’s August 6th Republican primary, voters are asked to levy judgment on him as a candidate one more time. Flinn is attempting to distinguish himself from presumed GOP senatorial frontrunners Bill Hagerty and Manny Sethi by going where other Republicans — here and elsewhere — have feared to tread.

Flinn is blasting away at Trump, on two main grounds: 1) what he sees as the president’s slavish attitude toward Russian leader Vladimir Putin; and 2) Trump’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic.

“He won’t hold Putin to account for all the aggressive actions he’s taking against us in America,” saId Flinn, who expressed particular outrage at Trump’s inability or unwillingness to confront Putin over alleged bounties offered by the Russians to the Taliban in return for assassinations of American personnel in Afghanistan.

“They [Hagerty and Sethi] won’t say anything critical of Trump for this, but I’m denouncing it,” Flinn said.

The other issue Flinn raises is what he, as a doctor, sees as the president’s confused and belated responses to the Covid-19 crisis. “He’s finally been willing to set an example by putting on a mask. That’s 108 days and 138,000 deaths too late. And he’s wasted so much time taking nonsense about relying on hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug, as a cure for the coronavirus.

“And, instead of relying on Dr. [Anthony] Fauci and others, he’s recently been trying to give credibility to that woman who believes that people get the virus by having sex with demons in their sleep” This last was a reference to eccentric theories recently pushed by Stella Emmanuel, a Houston doctor.

Flinn pointedly recalled that the 2018 GOP Senate primary had been regarded most of the way as a duel between Republican rivals Randy Boyd and Diane Black, who fought each other to a standstill while a third candidate, current Governor Bill Lee, slipped by them both to win the primary.

Clearly, he is suggesting a similar outcome for his candidacy this year as Hagerty, a former ambassador to Japan who has been endorsed by Trump, and Sethi, a Nashville-area doctor, compete with each other, both keeping to laudatory or uncritical remarks about the president.

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Politics Politics Feature

Looking Ahead to 2020 Elections

The elections of 2020 are just around the corner. Chief interest right now, and likely to remain so for a while, is the race for president, of course. Just under 20 active candidates remain in the Democratic field, and some 12 of them — including newcomer Tom Steyer, he of the billlion-dollar war chest and two years’ worth of pro-impeachment commercials — were holding forth on a nationally televised debate stage in Ohio this week.

President Donald Trump, looking to his re-election, still reigns supreme among Republicans, though he has drawn a surprising number of challengers in his party, including, to date, former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld, former Congressman and Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina, and former Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh. It is a bit chancey to call these gents “primary challengers,” though, in that slavishly loyal GOP state organizations are canceling their scheduled 2020 presidential primaries about as fast as these challengers have announced themselves.

Torrey Harris

Statewide, Tennesseans will be eyeing the race to succeed Lamar Alexander, who is retiring from the U.S. Senate. Most attention so far has been focused on the Republican contest between former state economic development commissioner and ambassador to Japan Bill Hagerty, who has what would appear to be an outright endorsement from Trump (who announced Hagerty’s Senate bid) and Manny Sethi, a Nashville physician and author of books on medicine. 

Lest one be skeptical of Sethi’s chances, it should be recalled that former Senator Bill Frist, also of Nashville, managed a similar leap from medicine into politics back in 1994. Ultimately, transplant surgeon Frist would decide he’d had enough of Washington, but he had managed to become Senate Majority Leader before that final change of heart.

A Memphian, Marquita Bradshaw, is the latest declared Democratic candidate for the Senate seat. Bradshaw is a board member of the state Sierra Club and has worked for the American Federation of Government employees and the Mid-South Peace & Justice Center. She joins in the Democratic race James Mackler, the Nashville attorney and Iraq War vet who has been running ever since the close of the 2018 election season.

Mackler, it will be remembered, had declared for the Senate seat vacated last year by Republican Bob Corker but stepped aside to make room for former Governor Phil Bredesen, who lost decisively to the GOP’s Marsha Blackburn. (Incidentally, one signal that the president’s hold over his party could be weakening came last week from Blackburn, a Trump loyalist, who nevertheless made public her serious disagreement with the president’s decision to withdraw troops from northern Syria, leaving the Kurds, American allies, at the mercy of a Turkish invasion. Nashville, as it happens, is the location of the largest number of Kurdish émigrés anywhere in the nation.)

One legislative race in 2020 will be a reprise from 2018. Torrey Harris, a human resources administrator for the Trustee’s office,, will try again to knock off longtime state Representative John DeBerry in District 90. In his previous shot at DeBerry, Harris pulled 40 percent of the primary vote and hopes to improve on that showing this time around.

As before, Harris is pitching his appeal to mainstream Democrats irked at DeBerry’s well-established habit of voting with Republican House members on social legislation. The incumbent’s latest provocation to the regulars was his vote in the House for last session’s education voucher bill, which passed the House by the margin of a single vote.

The bill, a key part of Governor Bill Lee‘s legislative package, was rewritten several times in order to attract enough votes for passage — the last time so as to apply only to Shelby County and Davidson County (Nashville). Ultimately, the bill gained several votes from representatives who were promised that their localities would not be affected by it but was opposed by most legislators from the two counties where it applied.

Harris’ announcement statement said in part: “We need someone fighting for the hard-working people here — that means supporting the push for money for our already underfunded public schools instead of giving it away. … DeBerry could have been the vote that tied up this legislation.” Harris also promised to be “bold about human rights … LGBTQ equality, racial justice, and reproductive health justice.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Multiple Choices for Justin Ford and Mauricio Calvo

This is the deadline week for candidates in the 2020 Memphis city election, and by Thursday, July 18th, some of the mysteries that have lingered for weeks will have been resolved.

We will know which (if any) of the four races that Justin J. Ford has pulled petitions for — mayor; City Court clerk; city council District 6; or city council, Super District 8, Position 1 — that he intends to run in.

Justin J. Ford

Ford’s case is interesting. His political career so far has included two successes, each netting him a term in the Shelby County Commission. His first win was in 2010, for one of the three positions available in what was then a multi-seat District 3. Then, in 2014, after single-district reapportionment, he was able to win again in the newly created District 9, which covered a smaller slice of the previous District 3.

In both cases, the South Memphis district served by Ford was one in which the extended Ford family has always possessed political power. His father, Joe Ford, represented the District 3 seat before him.

Justin Ford also has three losses on his record — for City Court clerk in 2015, for the 9th District Congressional seat in 2016, and for the District 29 state Senate seat in 2018. He also was charged with domestic assault of a girlfriend in 2017 and offered an Alford plea, which combines an admission of guilt with a technical dismissal. Ford also has been assessed with some $20,000 in civil penalties for violating rules relating to his business, the Justin Ford Funeral Home.

So, suffice to say much is at stake for Ford in this year’s city election — arguably, his last chance at a viable long-term political career — and his choice of which race to run in is crucial.

A District 6 race would pit him against a field including Edmund Ford Sr., who is not only his uncle but the odds-on favorite to regain a seat he once held. Running for the District 8, Position 1 seat would pit him, along with a large field of others, some with name recognition, against a short-term incumbent, Gerry Curry. As for the mayor’s race: The reality is that he would have a hard time being taken seriously in that massive field, in which other challengers loom larger and the incumbent, Jim Strickland, has a million dollars in cash reserves and huge odds in his favor. The race for City Court clerk also has a large field, with former Councilmen Myron Lowery and Joe Brown being the biggest names.

There’s not a slam dunk among those options. Whichever race Justin Ford may have chosen by the time you read this will require maximum effort on Ford’s part, plus significant resources and luck, big-time, if he wishes to avoid the permanent obscurity possessed by, say, one Roderick Ford, who is unrelated to the political Fords but runs in every election in the forlorn hope that voters will mistake him for somebody else.

Mauricio Calvo

• Another would-be candidate who began the week with decisions to make is Mauricio Calvo, who has been a candidate for serious public distinction for years as executive director of Latino Memphis and as a member of the board of directors of the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce.

Calvo, Mexican-born but a naturalized U.S. citizen, has been pondering a race for the City Council in Super District 9 and drew petitions for Positions 1, 2, and 3. Each of those choices presented difficulties.

In Position 1, he could conceivably be up against six opponents, two of whom — Erika Sugarmon and Chase Carlisle — are regarded as the main competitors and had already filed for the position. In Position 2, the field would appear to be a mite smaller, but one of the two candidates already filed is the incumbent, Ford Canale. And in Position 3, Calvo would face a field containing highly touted Jeff Warren, the leading fund-raiser among council candidates, and Cody Fletcher, another candidate with a serious head start.

In addition to the problem of choosing the optimal ballot position of the three — all of which relate to the same sprawling geographical area comprising the eastern half of the city — Calvo faces another self-created challenge, the fact that he has, for better or for worse, outed himself as gay.

Calvo did so in a June 19th post on his Facebook page. As he explained, “I wanted people to know who I am. … I wanted supporters and voters to know who I am. My mom is 84, and I wanted her to know who I am. In my everyday life, I have the privilege of working and interacting with many inspiring people within and outside of the Memphis community. I wanted them to know who I am. Speaking my truth took a weight that I have carried for decades off of my shoulders.”

Family reasons were important  in Calvo’s decision to come out. His wife, Yancy Villa-Calvo, an artist who collaborates with him on “High Ground News,” a social-activist newsletter, had known for years and remains supportive. “And, of course, there are my loving children: Santiago, Anna, and Carolina,” Calvo added. “After speaking with them earlier this year, I believed it would be inconsistent, unhealthy, and dangerous to encourage them to embrace themselves and others while keeping their father’s truth a secret.”

The responses to Calvo in comments from others on his Facebook page have been resoundingly supportive, and they reflect a generous swath of the Super-District population. It remains to be seen what the impact of his decision has on his candidacy or on his widely acclaimed place in the city’s life, but in the meantime, he would seem to have evinced an indisputable personal bravery that can only be regarded as a triumph in its own right.

• The probable pairing for next year’s U.S. Senate race became apparent this week with the endorsement of Republican Bill Hagerty, current Ambassador to Japan and former Tennessee Economic Development Commissioner, by President Donald Trump for the seat being vacated by Lamar Alexander.

Meanwhile, Nashville lawyer and Iraq war vet James Mackler, a Democrat, has been endorsed by former Governor Phil Bredesen, for whom Mackler dropped out of last year’s Senate race, won ultimately by then-Congressman Marsha Blackburn of the GOP.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Trump Endorsement of Hagerty Senate Bid May Have Force of Edict

CREDIT: JB

JB

Bill Hagerty in Memphis in 2012

The trial balloon sent up last week by 8th District Congressman David Kustoff, along with several others expected to have been launched by would-be Republican U.S. Senate candidates would appear to be grounded by word from President Donald Trump favoring Bill Hagerty, current U.S. Ambassador to Japan.

Trump’s support for Hagerty as a 2020 candidate for the Tennessee Senate seat being vacated by Lamar Alexander was announced in a presidential tweet on Friday that said: “Tennessee loving Bill Hagerty, who was my Tennessee (Victory) Chair and is now the very outstanding Ambassador to Japan, will be running for the U.S. Senate. He is strong on crime, borders & our 2nd A. Loves our Military & our Vets. Has my Complete & Total Endorsement!.”

Trump’s tweet came the day after an announcement of non-candidacy from former Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, who had been understood to have first dibs on a race for Alexander’s seat. After Haslam said that such a race was “not my calling,” Kustoff teased a candidacy of his own, saying,” I’ve been approached by folks from all across Tennessee encouraging me to run and I look forward to continuing to talk to the people about how to best continue serving our great state.”

Meanwhile, such other GOP Senatorial prospects as 7th District Congressman Mark Green and Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett made statements taking themselves out of contention for the race.

Inasmuch as Trump’s tweeted endorsement preceded any statement by Hagerty himself, it amounted to an unusual presidential edict, and it would seem to have, temporarily at least, foreclosed any other candidate activity from state Republicans, though Manny Sethi, a Nashville physician, had already announced his Senate candidacy in early June.

As Green made a point of noting, Hagerty has good ties with both the traditional Republican establishment and its Trump wing. A private equity investor, he served as an economic advisor and White House Fellow under President George H. W. Bush and was national finance chairman for Mitt Romney’s 2008 presidential campaign. From 2011 to 2014, Hagerty served as commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development under Governor Haslam.

Lawyer and Iraq war veteran James Mackler of Nashville remains the only serious and declared Democratic candidate for the Alexander seat.