Tag: Bill Haslam

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Hope and Change in Nashville?

Over the course of time — and quite a lot recently — we have had much to say about the Tennessee General Assembly’s annual legislative value judgments (if that’s not too oxymoronic a term). More than once, we have

characterized them in cartoons as hillbillies (and that was if we were feeling kindly.)

That kind of rude jesting on our part had actually begun well before the state’s voting population began its pell-mell rush to the flag of Tea Party Republicanism. Since that happened, beginning with the election of 2008, more or less, and proceeding geometrically in that direction ever since, we have often been stupefied — uncertain as to how much further we could go with such ad hominem characterizations without being considered either too rabid or, worse, guilty of gross understatement.

We’re still a little buffaloed, frankly, as to how and why the Tennessee GOP was able to expand so far beyond its East Tennessee hinterland, where a relatively genteel and moderate version of Republicanism had flourished since the Civil War, as a result of the region’s hill-country pro-Unionism, and how and why the party’s philosophy had shifted so far rightward.

Our puzzlement was amplified by the fact that those original advances into Middle and West Tennessee (in the direction of what was then called a “two-party system”) were facilitated by Memphis’ own Lewis Donelson, a genteel presence whose protégés — office-holders like Howard Baker and Winfield Dunn and the early version of Lamar Alexander — were thoughtful additions to a thriving political debate that for some gave Tennessee the reputation of a bellwether state, one that could go back and forth between the two major parties in tune with shifts in the regional and national mood.

All that began careening to an end in 2008, more or less simultaneously with the election and then the administration of an African-American president. Or maybe that was just a coincidence. In any case, Tennessee is now, like the rest of the South, and in some ways more so, resolutely red, with only trace amounts of Democrats, mainly in Nashville and Memphis.

But we have come to praise the General Assembly, not to bury it. Granted, in the last session, there was yet another gratuitous firearms bill, which our well-intentioned but, er, gun-shy governor signed into law after pointing out concisely its more dangerous attributes. And there was the expected bill adding new anti-abortion restrictions to state law. Worst of all, there was the refusal to accept a badly needed Medicaid-expansion bill, largely because the word “Obamacare” was attached to it by opponents.

On the plus side, this Republican super-majority legislature refused for the third year in a row to devalue public education with a school-voucher bill, approved a halfway decent educational-standards measure, rejected a Bible-as-state-book bill that would have trashed the barrier between church and state, gave the concept of medical marijuana a fair hearing, and, arguably best of all, came within a single vote — that of an absent Democrat — of approving in-state tuition allowances for children of undocumented aliens, with a bill that is said to be sure of passage next year (see Viewpoint).

All things considered, this is progress. Maybe something like a normal political spectrum has reasserted itself within the confines of our one-party state. We are entitled to hope.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said (April 23, 2015) …

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s editor’s note, “NRA Foreplay in Nashville” …

Tennessee has far more vehicle deaths than firearm-related deaths. None of you want to outlaw texting/talking on the phone or enforce stricter DUI laws. Some people will have accidents with their firearms. Just like so many people have accidents in cars or playing sports. None of you pretend socialists actually care about saving lives – you are just anti-gun.

Jason

I’m hearing talk of a newly introduced bill designed for petting zoos, “Pistols for Peacocks.” I can hear the goats screaming in disgust already.

Dave Clancy

About the Flyer’s editorial on guns in parks legislation, “Veto It, Bill” …

Written like a true ingrained/naive civil rights bigot, and I never give the time of day to civil rights bigots. The real question that needs to be answered is just who at the Flyer anonymously wrote this slanted tripe? Someone needs to man/woman up.

Nightcrawler

Nightcrawler, someone using a pen-name and avatar is challenging someone else to man up?

CL Mullins

About Wendi C. Thomas’ story, “Cuba, Si!” …

I went to Cuba on a People to People trip in February. It was absolutely amazing! I want to go back to stay in some hotel particulares as opposed to the nationally owned hotels; although, the Hotel National in Havana was pretty amazing!

What really hit me is how the embargo has hurt not just Cubans, but Americans, too. Cuba has a pretty successful medical system. The country has its own biotech industry and has created a drug that is very successful in preventing amputations due to complications from diabetes. We have no such drug in the U.S. and won’t until the embargo ends.

CSH

About Jackson Baker’s post, “Haslam Remains Dubious About Bible Bill and Provisions of Gun Bill” …

I firmly believe that we should pass a constitutional amendment that anyone responsible for passing three laws that are later declared unconstitutional by the courts be removed from office. Call it the “Three Strikes for Dumbass Politicians” amendment.

Charley Eppes

Veto them both. I don’t think he will though, especially the gun bill. That would kill his chances of being chosen as a VP running mate this year since the Republicans are dependent upon the big gun manufacturers and their affiliate groups, mainly the NRA.

Olmanriver

About Bianca Phillips’ post, “Ultra-sound Bill Introduced” …

I grew up around many ultra-conservative Christians who were very anti-abortion … until they had a daughter get pregnant in high school. Then they were all about getting a convenience abortion so that little Sally didn’t have to put her life on hold. I knew a handful of girls at my high school whose parents made sure to get their daughter’s “issue” fixed, even though they were staunchly anti-abortion.

Personally, I don’t like abortion, but I do think it’s necessary, and I think it’s a better alternative to have it be legal than to have a bunch of coat hanger attempts and quack doctors performing these things.

GroveRebel84

About National Volunteer Week …

In celebration of National Volunteer Week, I am writing to recognize the residents of our community whose lives have been enriched through the feeling that comes from helping others. I encourage you to find a worthy cause with which to volunteer.

I give my time to the American Cancer Society because cancer has touched everyone in some way, including my family. To help others in their fight against cancer is truly humbling.

Volunteers have been the backbone of the American Cancer Society since its founding more than 100 years ago. They continue to provide the crusading spirit the society has needed to champion the fight against this terrible disease.

Latrice McLin

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

On the Health-Care Front

Against all odds, backers of a renewed effort to secure legislative approval for Governor Bill Haslam‘s Insure Tennessee proposal hoped to steer the Medicaid-expansion measure through committees in both the state Senate and state House this week.

And, even if the proposal is stopped short of the goal, as it was in an aborted February special session, 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen and other members of the state’s congressional delegation have managed to obtain some measure of fiscal relief for the state’s beleaguered hospitals.

Cohen announced this week the passage of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, which, the congressman said in a press release, will “guarantee disproportionate share hospital (DSH) allotments totaling more than $530 million over the next 10 years to help the state’s hospitals and community health centers recoup expenses incurred caring for those who cannot afford to pay.”

As Cohen, who took the lead in securing the new funding, noted, Tennessee is the only state in the nation that, until passage of the act, was not in a position to receive annual DSH allotments automatically.

The reason for that has been that, when the administration of Governor Ned McWherter negotiated a waiver with the federal government to convert Tennessee’s Medicaid operation into what became TennCare, the DSH allotments were not included within the waiver. The oversight, based on an apparent overestimation of TennCare’s ability to cover all exigencies, may have kept the state from receiving as much as $450 million in DSH funding annually.

Attempts in recent years to remedy that situation have been blocked by a general atmosphere of fiscal austerity in Washington, and even the new arrangement, which secures a guaranteed amount of new federal DSH funding amounting to $53 million annually, provides but a drop in the bucket compared to the $1.4 billion that would be made available to the state’s hospitals for indigent health care through Insure Tennessee via the Affordable Care Act.

Haslam’s proposal was voted down 7-4 by a specially constituted state Senate Health and Welfare committee in the special session, but, Lazarus-like, it got up and moving again last week as Senate Joint Resolution 93, passing hurdles in the Senate Health and Welfare subcommittee and the regular Senate Health Committee.

SJR 93, co-sponsored by Senators Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville), Doug Overbey (R-Maryville), and Richard Briggs (R-Knoxville), was on the schedule to be considered this week by the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee. Meanwhile, over in the House, Rep. Larry Miller (D-Memphis) had put the House version of the measure, HJR 90 on notice in the Insurance and Banking Subcommittee. Opinion of lawmakers consulted by the Flyer is divided on the extent to which consideration of Insure Tennessee on the floor of either the Senate or the House will be determined by what happens in committee.

Some proponents of the proposal are wondering out loud if a bill passed last year requiring legislative approval of Medicaid expansion actually applies prohibitively to an executive action by the governor.

· In separate conventions held over the weekend, the Shelby County Democratic Party (SCDP) and the Shelby County Republican Party each elected a new chairperson. In both cases – a woman.

The Democrats went first, convening on Saturday at First Baptist Church on Broad, selecting first a 29-member executive committee, which in turn elected longtime party activist Randa Spears on the second ballot from a field of four aspirants.

Spears thereby became the first white female to head the local Democratic Party in its history.

Her ascension to party leadership, after 32 years in the gruntosphere, made perfect sense. It was a reward for faithful service — including a recent stint as campaign manager for Deidre Malone, the Democratic nominee in last year’s county mayor race. It was a nod to the longstanding prominence of women in party affairs (as in local social and civic life, generally). And it was a clear signal to Shelby County’s white population that the SCDP was not, as it has sometimes seemed in recent years, a monolithically black organization.

Asked about that last fact in the aftermath of her second-ballot win over runner-up Del Gill, Spears was discreet, diffident, and diplomatic: “I don’t know that that is important. I think it’s important that someone with my focus and experience and enthusiasm is chairman. And I think I’ve worked with almost everybody in this room, except for the new folks, on one campaign or another. So I look at this as all one group.”

Malone, who, in an exchange of roles this year, had been Spears’ campaign manager, addressed the point more freely: “I do think it’s important to have elected a white chair — and especially a white female. It makes a statement.”

Just as it might to elect a female mayor at some point, she was prodded? “Yes,” she nodded, in gratitude for the implied tribute to her pathfinding 2010 and 2014 mayoral campaigns.

For the fact is, American politics is all about constituent groups (or blocs, if you choose). The more different ones your party can address satisfactorily, the more broadly based — and successful — your party is likely to be.

All four candidates on Saturday’s ballot had something to say for themselves. Runner-up Del Gill could boast his four decades of party work, newcomer Jackie Jackson was a fresh breath, just a little too new to most committee members to win; and pre-convention favorite Reginald Milton, a well-respected county commissioner, was conspicuous in his efforts to unite disparate party factions.

Politics is also all about trade-offs, and Spears’ victory owed much (as did Milton’s defeat) to longtime party broker Sidney Chism, who, for whatever reason, tipped his support, and that of his still significant network, to her.

Gill, all things considered, was not that far behind Spears, at 11 to her 16 on the second ballot. And, Gill being Gill, it was unlikely that he was prepared to fall in line behind Spears. Encouraged by his original first-ballot-leading total of 11, he put up something of a fuss at meeting’s end about a procedural issue regarding the validity of the new committee’s voice vote to continue the party’s bylaws in lieu of a full review of them.

The newly elected Spears politely but firmly disallowed the complaint and moved on to complete the day’s business. She did say later that she was willing to avail herself of the “wealth of experience” of Gill and whomever else. But it remained to be seen whether she can impose an effective measure of unity on a committee composed in large part of members potentially sympathetic to Gill’s dissident outlook.

A day later, on Sunday at the Bartlett Municipal Community Center, a throng of several hundred Republicans (including 400-odd delegates as such) witnessed what amounted to a re-assertion of the local GOP establishment’s control of the Shelby County Republican organization.

Though there was no dearth of competition — either for the party chairmanship, won by Mary Wagner over Arnold Weiner, or for the numerous other offices up for grabs — the Tea Party rebellion that flared up at the 2013 Republican conclave and in attempted power grabs at several local Republican clubs has been contained. There was no Tea Party slate as such, with adherents of that somewhat diversified, quasi-libertarian point of view to be found on both contending slates, Wagner’s and Weiner’s.

There was a message to be had, though, in the fact that the slate headed by Wagner, a relative newcomer to party politics whose last position was that of Young Republicans president, all but swept the slate led by Weiner, a longtime party veteran who had been, most recently, a party vice chair and immediate past president of the East Shelby Republican Club. And that “all but” is required mainly because Curt Cowan, the Wagner slate’s candidate for Primary Board position Number 5, was prevailed upon to drop out in favor of George Flinn, the wealthy radiologist/broadcast executive and sometime political candidate who still maintains a high profile in the local Republican Party.

The other 35 contested positions — for chairman, at-large steering committee members, district representatives, and primary board members — were won by the Wagner slate. The message, quite simply, is that there is a Republican mainstream, and it is back in full command.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Tennessee’s Senatorial “Moderates”

We have had our differences with Tennessee’s junior U.S. Senator, Bob Corker — particularly over his repeated interventions against the United Auto Workers during the UAW’s campaign last year to represent workers at the Chattanooga Volkswagen plant. We understood that Corker had been instrumental in attracting the plant to his hometown and that, like numerous other Tennessee figures in both parties, past and present, he had a commitment to the state’s Right to Work law, which allows workers to remain independent of union membership.

In conducting his own high-volume campaign against the UAW, Corker interfered too directly and too insistently with the union-representation election, we thought, and we said so in no uncertain terms. We were also concerned that Corker’s over-zealous effort — supported by other Republican officeholders including Governor Bill Haslam — would contravene Volkswagen’s stated international policy of making management decisions in tandem with “workers’ councils.”

In any case, the plant’s workers were induced to reject the UAW bid. By now, the matter has receded into our rear-view mirror, especially in view of the fact that the UAW has since been permitted to maintain a presence at the VW plant and to lobby there for eventual recognition.

So we can revert to what had been, by and large, our admiration for Corker’s studied attempts to maintain independent views on most matters and to swim against the tide of partisan polarization in Congress, maintaining good communications with the White House and with congressional Democrats.

We are never going to agree 100 percent with either Corker or his GOP Senate colleague, Lamar Alexander, but — even though neither would admit to being covered by the term — both can be considered “moderates” on today’s badly skewed political spectrum, as can Haslam, for that matter. Political realities being what they are in red-state Tennessee, they may be the best we can hope for.

We congratulate Corker on taking over the reins of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as we have previously congratulated Alexander on his chairmanship of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Both can provide useful service — and balance to some of the more extreme views in their now-predominant party. In particular, we trust that Corker’s counsel on the ever-mounting specter of ISIS and other Middle East issues will be seasoned with the same careful judgment that caused him, correctly, to advise disengagement from full-scale war in Afghanistan and, in particular, from the corrupt regime of Hamid Karzai.

John Jay Hooker

We learned this week that another distinguished Tennessean — John Jay Hooker, former gubernatorial candidate, friend of the Kennedys, orator, and tireless campaigner for unpopular issues — has terminal cancer and will be focusing his formidable mind and will on lobbying for legislation in Nashville to allow individuals the right to voluntary termination of life. We don’t necessarily agree with that position, but we admire the courage and invincible determination of Hooker, who once gratified our editorial staff with an extended visit that showed off his good will and his formidable persuasive qualities. We wish him well.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Government on Ice

So the bad weather came. Not as bad as was advertised, frankly, and not as bad as hit many other points in the nation, including parts of Tennessee to the east of us. Still, it was enough to halt, here as elsewhere, the momentum of politics and government for a couple of days.

“Parts of Tennessee to the east of us,” I said. Okay, Nashville, for instance. Tuesday was wiped off the calendar in state government, and at press time there seemed a real possibility that the General Assembly could have a de facto shutdown all week, even should the schedule of events (committee meetings and floor sessions) be formally reinstated.

East Tennessee proper, which supplies a generous share of human fodder for the legislature, was hardest hit by the storm and seemed destined to remain weather-bound. Conditions there were the primary cause of a state of emergency declared Monday evening by the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA). But power outages and road closures were abounding in Middle Tennessee counties like Davidson, Hickman, Humphreys, and Williamson, as well.

Some urgent things, of course, had already been put on ice by the General Assembly — the most notable of which was Governor Bill Haslam‘s Insure Tennessee proposal for Medicaid expansion. That happened week before last, with the proposal’s rejection by a 7-4 vote in an ad hoc Senate committee meeting in special session.

Not to mince words, the proposal, which would have poured into state coffers some $1.5 billion annually — much of it destined for Tennessee hospitals struggling with the costs of uncompensated medical care for the uninsured (estimated to number at least 280,000 in the state) — was defeated because it could be linked to the Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare.”

Other arguments — that the federal government would eventually welsh on its commitment to fund the lion’s share of long-term funding or that Tennessee would be stuck in a “Hotel California” commitment it could never check out of — were demolished over and over by the governor or the attorney general or legislative supporters (including Democrats and Republicans), but they kept resurfacing — as a smoke-screen, backers of Insure Tennessee maintained.

Parenthesis: Late in that first week, state Representative Steve McManus (R-Cordova) expressed disappointment that many press reports up Nashville way had wrongly credited a fellow Shelby Countian, state Senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) with authoring the “Hotel California” trope. McManus is correct. As the Flyer reported on its website on January 9th, McManus, a sometime thespian, was indeed the originator of that metaphor.

Kelsey had merely borrowed the phrase — along with predictions of a special-session “bloodletting” by state Representative Curry Todd (R-Collierville) — for his own numerous attacks on the governor’s Medicaid proposal. The senator from Germantown can lay claim to one original argument of his own, however — that, as he said during the fateful hearing by the ad hoc Senate Health and Welfare Committee, Insure Tennessee amounted to nothing more than a “bailout” for the state’s foolishly miscalculating hospitals.

Democrats in the House and Senate, more a remnant than a real force, have introduced legislation to renew consideration of Insure Tennessee in the regular session, now begun, but there seems little hope of that coming to pass. In his post-mortem with the press after the failure of the special session, Haslam said that he’d like to try again, but hinted it might not be possible until the election of a new president.

That same theme was noted directly last week by House Speaker Beth Harwell (R-Nashville), who declined to support Insure Tennessee in the special session and was quoted by The Commercial Appeal‘s Rick Locker as saying, “It might be that two years from now, we wake up with a Republican president, look at going after it again and coming back with a block grant. … Do I think we want to spend a lot of time during the regular session? Nah, I don’t think that.”

People wonder what presidents’ legacies will be. Barack Obama‘s might be that he was the first president who saw every proposal even remotely connected with him — good, bad, or indifferent — relentlessly stonewalled by his political opposition, not only at the congressional level but at the level of state government, as well.

So we wait two years. Right. That’s roughly $3 billion worth of waiting, and God only knows how many of the 280,000 uninsured Tennesseans could have health emergencies in the meantime.

Obama-bashing may work for GOP members in the legislature, but not for those Republicans with responsibility for actual governing in the affected localities of Tennessee. In two overwhelming votes, one in advance of the special legislative session, another afterward, the Shelby County Commission has endorsed Republican member Terry Roland‘s resolution calling for passage of Insure Tennessee.

Concern for imminent strain on the medical and financial resources of Region One Health (aka The Med) was cited by members of both parties. Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell has been outspoken in his disappointment, forecasting in a series of appearances lately that the defeat of Insure Tennessee could lead to a 10 percent county property tax increase. On last week’s Behind the Headlines broadcast on WKNO-TV, Luttrell bit down hard on that bullet:

“The opposition framed it as being an extension of the president. Those Republicans that dared to kind of step out and support it in the General Assembly were vilified.”

It should be noted that not every measure introduced in the current legislative session has met with a cold shoulder. Nah. As one example, a bill (HB677/SB0783) introduced by state Representative James Van Huss (R-Jonesborough) and state Senator Mae Beavers (R-Mt. Juliet), seems on its way to being fast-tracked. This bill would establish the Barrett Model 82A1 50-caliber semi-automatic rifle, manufactured in Murfreesboro, as Tennessee’s “official state firearm.” First things first.

• Another political situation which may have experienced a brief freeze since last week was the rush of candidate declarations for various city offices.

The announcement last Monday by commission chairman Justin Ford that he would seek the office of Memphis mayor further filled out a candidate roster that is ultimately expected to include a generous number of candidates besides those already declared, who include Councilman Jim Strickland, former county commission chairman James Harvey, former University of Memphis basketballer Detric Golden, and, of course, incumbent Mayor A C Wharton.

Councilman Harold Collins is considered a good bet to enter the mayoral field, and another likely possibility is Memphis Police Association director Mike Williams. Expect others before the Election Commission allows petitions to be formally pulled on April 17th. The election itself won’t happen until October 29th.

Other relevant dates: Filing deadline, July 17th. Withdrawal deadline, July 24th. Start of early voting, October 14th. Voter registration deadline, October 5th.

One of those still mulling over a city race and inclined, she says, to give the matter a good bit of time before deciding, is Kemba Ford, the daughter of former state Senator John Ford and an increasing presence in local civil and political affairs. Ford, who has run previous races for the city council and the state legislature, may be a candidate for the council’s District 7 position, but she’s involved at the moment with cousin Joe Ford Jr., a resident of Los Angeles, in an archival multimedia research project on Memphis politics during the civil rights era, focusing on the Ford family’s involvement.

Kemba Ford herself was a longtime resident of L.A., where she pursued an acting career until her father’s arrest, conviction, and imprisonment as a result of the FBI’s Tennessee Waltz sting brought her back to Memphis to provide him with moral support. (Former Senator Ford, long since released, accompanied his daughter to the Tennessee Equality Project’s fund-raising Gumbo Contest at Bridges downtown weekend before last.)

The District 7 position was formerly occupied by Lee Harris, who vacated it after his election year to the state Senate, where he is now that body’s Democratic leader. The seat is currently held on an interim basis by Berlin Boyd, sure to be a candidate in October.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Republican Rift

Anyone who’s been paying attention knows that Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey’s hand-picked Senate committee voted not to allow Governor Bill Haslam’s innovative Insure Tennessee proposal out of committee. Seven Republican legislators — including local lightweight champion Senator Brian Kelsey — each of whom gets per diems, paid travel expenses, and government health care for their part-time jobs — voted to keep sending Tennessee tax dollars to other states and to keep 280,000 Tennesseans from being able to purchase affordable health care.

Those seven people voted to turn down funds that would have helped keep county hospitals open all across the state. They voted to make people have to travel farther for care. They voted to make the rest of us pay for uninsured Tennesseans’ medical care. They voted to force more people to face medical-related bankruptcy. They voted to let thousands suffer and die from lack of medical care.

Why? Because most GOP legislators in Tennessee are owned by Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the Koch brothers’ group that is fighting the Affordable Care Act all over the country. If a Republican dares to not sign the AFP pledge to fight “Obamacare,” AFP runs ads in their communities linking them to President Obama. Oooh.

The legislators’ decision is another indication of the growing rift in the GOP between the socially conservative, “shrink government,” pro-gun ideologues and the business-friendly, common-sense-governing faction. The former group boasts our two local AFP toadies, Senators Mark Norris and Kelsey. The latter group includes Haslam, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, GOP members of the Shelby County Commission, and many others around the state.

Someone’s going to have to lead the fight for common sense in the GOP. Haslam is the obvious choice, but there’s not a lot of fire there. I never thought I’d write these words, but we need more Republicans like Commissioner Terry Roland, who isn’t intimidated by out-of-state interests and who gets that foolishly turning down federal money that’s already ours is going to mean a tax increase in Shelby County.

We need somebody like Montana Republican state Representative Frank Garner, a conservative who was open to hearing how “Obamacare” might or might not work in his state. AFP ran ads with his picture super-imposed over President Obama’s. They called a “town meeting” in Garner’s district to tell his constituents about his nefarious activities. They didn’t invite Garner, but he showed up anyway. From a rawstory.com account of the meeting:

“I promised the people here when I ran that I would listen to you and not out-of-town special interests,” Garner said to wild applause. “If every time they want me to sign a pledge card and I don’t do it, they are going to rent a room and have a meeting, then this is going to get real expensive — because I’m not signing the pledge card.”

Having the courage to do what’s right for your constituents. What a concept.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

It’s a New Year in Politics, Too

As the second week of the New Year began, the aura of the holidays finally began to fade, and politics per se moved into high gear, locally, statewide, and nationally.

In Memphis, the city council stumbled over an early deadline that left a majority of applicants ineligible for a council vacancy, including a putative favorite, then recovered its balance with a fresh interpretation of the city charter by attorney Allan Wade that gave all seven hopefuls more time to complete their petitions.

In Nashville, the 2015 General Assembly convened to take on such key issues as health care, educational standards, changes in taxation, and legislation designed to exploit the constitutional changes effected by the state’s voters in the November 2014 election. In the cases of educational standards and “Insure Tennessee,” Governor Bill Haslam‘s proposal for Medicaid expansion, the trick will be to back into the essential structures of Common Core and the Affordable Care Act (ACA), respectively, with improvised Tennessee-specific substitutes.

Nationally, Tennessee’s two Republican U.S. Senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, attained new levels of influence as a consequence of the GOP’s capturing a majority in the Senate. Alexander became chairman of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and Corker ascended to the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee.

Alexander, who is behind legislation to revise the Bush-era “No Child Left Behind” act, is widely regarded as a possible liaison between Republicans and Democrats in the highly fractionated Senate. Corker indicated, in a conference call with Tennessee reporters last week, that he intends to bring a new activist focus to what he regards as a drift in the Obama administration’s foreign policy. For that, he has been touted by columnist George Will as potentially “the senator who matters most in 2015,” though Corker has drawn more attention of late for his proposals to raise the federal gasoline tax.             

• The city council imbroglio and subsequent fix stemmed from the revelation late last week that only former Councilmember Barbara Swearengen Holt Ware and local Democratic Party Chairman Bryan Carson had met what appeared to be the council’s deadline for filing a petition bearing 25 valid signatures of voters in District 7.

That would have meant that five others — including former interim Councilman Berlin Boyd, regarded in some circles as the favorite — could not vie for the right to succeed Lee Harris, now a state senator, in the vacated District 7 seat. Most of the five, including Boyd, were credited with 23 or 24 valid signatures — one or two short of the total needed — though all five had met the filing deadline of noon, last Thursday.

The situation was repaired with a hastily issued opinion from council attorney Allan Wade, who interpreted the city charter as giving additional flexibility on the deadline for submitting valid voter signatures. The new deadline was established by Wade as being Thursday, January 15th — a date that would seem to give the other candidates enough leeway to qualify.

Of the five, Boyd and Curtis Byrd Jr. had already submitted 23 signatures deemed valid by the Shelby County Election Commission (whose chairman, Robert Meyers, had noted that it was the council, not the commission, which had applied the signature requirement for regular elections to the instance of filling vacancies). Audrey Jones and David Pool had 24, and Charles Leslie had 15.

The council will choose a successor to Harris from among the ultimately eligible candidates next Tuesday, January 20th.

• At a farewell dinner last week for Harris, who was recently elected by his party colleagues in the Senate to be Democratic leader there, the new state senator got off a memorable quip: “Within this month, I’ll be drawing three government checks — from the city council, from the state Senate, and from the University of Memphis Law School. That proves I’m a Democrat!”

• The council does not lack for quipsters. Councilman Kemp Conrad, who was the host for a massively well-attended holiday party over the break, responded to someone’s suggestion that he might consult city planning czar Robert Lipscomb for help in building a parking garage to accommodate excess traffic. “A TDZ!” Conrad proposed.

• It would appear that the forthcoming session of the General Assembly in Nashville will not lack for controversy. The formal convening of the legislature, at noon on Tuesday, was preceded by a 10 a.m. “Women’s March on Nashville,” whose participants included another new state senator from Memphis, former Tennessee Regulatory Authority member Sara Kyle, who was elected in November to succeed her husband, Jim Kyle, now a Shelby County chancellor.

The rally was called to address several matters, including health, wage, and poverty issues, but a central concern of it was to counter a proliferation of bills in the legislature to impose new restrictions on abortion in the wake of the narrow passage of Amendment 1 by state voters in November.

Tennessee Right to Life, an organization that supports the proposed restrictions, indicated in advance that it had plans for a counter-demonstration.

Besides the abortion measures, other expected controversies include a renewed fight over proposed Common Core standards and efforts by several Republicans, including state Senator Brian Kelsey of Germantown, to abolish the Hall Income Tax in the face of resistance from Governor Haslam, who considers the potential loss to state revenues to be prohibitive.

But the major battle will take place in a session within the session. Haslam has called a special session, to begin on February 2nd, dealing with his “Insure Tennessee” proposal for accepting Medicaid expansion funds under the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare).

The governor’s plan, which apparently is assured of a waiver from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, provides for a two-track structure in which persons eligible under poverty-level guidelines could either accept vouchers to purchase private health insurance plans or come under TennCare, the state’s version of Medicaid, through acceptance of modest co-pays and premiums.

Funding could amount to as much as $2 billion annually, with the federal government absorbing the full costs for two years and 90 percent of them after that period. The state Hospital Association, which has been lobbying tirelessly for the Medicaid expansion funds, has indicated it would assist with the remaining financial obligation after the two-year period.

Haslam has made a special appeal to the General Assembly’s Democratic minority to help him pass enabling legislation for Insure Tennessee. A bill spearheaded by Kelsey and other opponents of Medicaid expansion to require legislative approval of any administration plan under the ACA was passed in the last General Assembly. And, though Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey has expressed a degree of open-mindedness, Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris of Collierville and several other GOP members seem reluctant to endorse Insure Tennessee.

The sentiment of six GOP legislators from Shelby County who addressed the Republican Women of Purpose group at Southwind TPC last week varied from lukewarm to defiantly opposed to the governor’s plan.

State Representative Curry Todd prophesied “a lot of blood-letting” in the special session regarding the plan; Kelsey insisted Republicans needed to “shrink the size of government, not … expand the size of government,” and cast doubt as to whether the federal government would or the state Hospital Association could pay its pledged share in two years’ time. State Representative Jim Coley lamented the plan’s “dependence on the federal government” and said he “hope[d] to persuade the governor this is not the most appropriate plan.”

State Representative Steve McManus said it might not be so easy to opt out of the plan after two years as Haslam suggests. He contends that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services might withhold Medicaid funds entirely as retribution. “It’s like Hotel California,” he said, meaning that once you check into the plan, you can never leave.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Call Us Pollyanna …

Attentive readers will have noticed that the current issue of the Flyer is devoted to variations on that annual chestnut, the New Year’s resolution. Our staffers have searched their souls (and reserves of will power) to provide examples

of this eternal urge to be made new and better than ever (and to expunge undesirable habits) purely through determined actions of one’s own.

If we take a few liberties with the notion, we can also find instances of such a resolve in affairs of state, where it is sorely needed. Lamar Alexander, the recently reelected senior U.S. senator from Tennessee, has become the new chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. Alexander, as an old governmental hand (now in his third six-year Senate term, (with a lengthy spell as Governor of Tennessee and a shorter one as U.S. Secretary of Education behind him) seems bent, not on creating new habits, but on recreating old ones of across-the-political-aisle collaboration with members of the other major party. 

As governor, especially, Alexander was able to pioneer significant reforms in public education, but only with the advice and consent (and votes) of supportive Democrats, who then constituted a majority in the Tennessee legislature. Not only is Alexander capable of doing good in his own right, he is potentially a resource for President Obama to learn from. The Democratic president has had precious little luck so far in getting congressional Republicans to even consider working with him. Alexander can perhaps give both the president and his stiffer-necked GOP colleagues pointers for getting along with each other. (Yes, we know this has a Pollyanna sound to it, but so do all New Year’s resolutions.)

Tennessee’s other Republican senator, Bob Corker, who has ascended to the chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is also well placed to effect some useful collaboration, and he has been known to proclaim (and practice) the utility of constructive bipartisanship in the past. So far, though, he hasn’t tipped his hand on meeting Democrats halfway on any of the several foreign policy issues now pending.

Closer to home, we have the case of Governor Bill Haslam, another Republican who in crucial ways of late has attempted to cross the political divide. The governor’s decision to participate in Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act (even if disguised within a plan called Insure Tennessee) is long overdue but welcome all the same. We suspect he’ll have more trouble convincing his fellow Republicans to go along than he will with the legislature’s dwindling number of Democrats, who will have their own opportunity to demonstrate government rather than partisanship.

In any case, both in Nashville and in Washington, the two power capitals that influence our destinies the most, we see evidence, however modest and tentative, of a genuine desire to change. Wishful thinking or not, that would certainly make for a Happ(ier) New Year! So let us hope.

Categories
Cover Feature News

A “Change” Election

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Jackson Baker

Lawyer Lang Wiseman and Supreme Court Justice-designate Holly Kirby make the case for Amendment 2 on judicial appointment

It is one of the laments of local political junkies that the number of seriously contested candidate races on the November 4th ballot is somewhat restricted, to say the least. Oh, they exist here and there — in a hot race for mayor of Germantown between Mike Palazzolo and George Brogdon, for one example, and one in Bartlett  between incumbent Bubba Pleasant and challenger Mick Wright, for another.

And, of course, Charlotte Bergmann and George Flinn, two Republican never-say-die types would insist on the competitive nature of their races — for the 9th District congressional seat and the District 30 state Senate seat, respectively. And so, for that matter, would Dwayne Thompson, the valiant Democrat who is running against incumbent state Representative Steve McManus in House District 96, one of the reddest Republican areas of Shelby County.

There is, moreover, a race of sorts in the mainly rural 8th Congressional District, which these days includes a generous slice of eastern Shelby County within its far-flung western-Tennessee sprawl. One Wes Bradley, a sheriff’s deputy from Paris, up near the Kentucky border, traveled into Germantown (yes, Germantown) not long ago to make a rousing speech to a group of Democrats (yes, Democrats) in support of his race against well-heeled Republican Stephen Fincher of Frog Jump, who seeks a third term in a district that, like so much of Tennessee, switched abruptly to GOP control in 2010 and hasn’t yet looked back.

Most political observers find it hard to share the optimism of Bergmann, Flinn, Thompson, and Bradley, since each is bucking a well-established tide favoring the opposition, but there is a caveat that needs to be taken seriously — which is that the very paucity of competitive races on the Shelby County ballot would almost seem to put the coming vote in the category of a special election, with all the attendant lack of public interest that could be exploited by a determined stealth candidate.

Case in point: Current Republican Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland is as red a Republican as they make ’em, and he very nearly upset Ophelia Ford in a 2005 special election contest for the state Senate seat vacated by the Democrat’s brother John Ford, a Tennessee Waltz indictee.

Factors such as money and organization could help offset the expected outcome to some degree. In his race against Democrat Sara Kyle for the seat just vacated by her husband, newly elected Shelby County Chancellor Jim Kyle, Flinn, a famously wealthy businessman/physician, can self-finance ad infinitum as he has in several prior races. And Bergmann may have a modest amount of financial support, too, though nothing to compare with the resources of incumbent Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen, a formidable candidate and veteran fourth-termer who has an unspent $1 million or more carried over from previous campaigns.  

But what really makes the hopes of such long-odds challengers look unrealistic is the fact that there are indeed some choices on the November 4th ballot that should jack up the vote totals enough to reduce the prospect for any freak outcomes.

John Jay Hooker, sworn foe of Amendment 2

No one expects Republican Governor Bill Haslam to be seriously troubled by Democratic gubernatorial nominee Charlie Brown, a retired East Tennessee construction worker who has the late cartoonist Charles Schulz to thank for the name recognition that got him through a crowded but little-noticed Democratic primary. Brown will do well to stay even with such other also-runnings as Isa Infante of the Green Party and legendary — if lapsed from his glory days — independent John Jay Hooker.

But Democrat Gordon Ball, the successful Knoxville lawyer who is challenging veteran GOP veteran Lamar Alexander for the latter’s U.S. Senate seat, is wealthy enough to do some self-financing of his own, and he displayed some chops in a hotly contested primary battle with fellow Knoxville attorney Terry Adams. 

Alexander is, as they say, highly favored (and is in possession of several million dollars in campaign cash, to boot), but Ball cites for the record both that the incumbent finished below 50 percent in his August primary against Flinn and the Tea Party backed Joe Carr and that a current poll shows Alexander to be still below 50 percent — though leading — in his race against Ball, Libertarian candidate Tom Emerson, and a passel of others.

(For more on the U.S. Senate race and assorted other contests, see “Alexander and Ball in Heated Tennessee Senate Race” in this weeki’s “Politics” column.)

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS

Jackson Baker

Proponents of Amendment 1 with passer-by at Bartlett Festival

Again, though, the galvanizing factor in this election — and that which makes a meager special-election turnout unlikely — lies in the voting for four proposed amendments to the Tennessee Constitution, three of which are potential bringers of serious, even transformational, change to the state.

By far the most controversial of the proposed ballot issues is Amendent 1, which proponents — who include Governor Haslam and other influential members of the predominant Republican state establishment — say is necessary to amend a 2000 state Supreme Court ruling that affords more protection of abortion rights in Tennessee than the federal courts allow for the nation at large.

Opponents of the amendment — who include the chief figures of the Tennessee Democratic Party, including Ball, Cohen, and state party Chairman Roy Herron — see Amendment 1 as nothing less than the proverbial “slippery slope,” designed to turn back the clock on abortion rights or ultimately to discard them altogether.

Even some neutral observers find troubling the Amendment’s last clause — which expressly opens the way to legislative revision of the accustomed preconditions for abortion in cases of “rape, incest, or threats to the life of the mother.”

In any case, the amount of money invested on the issue seems destined to rise well above a million dollars for either side, with a major player being Planned Parenthood — which in recent years has been fighting for its life, literally, against a hostile state GOP establishment bent on defunding or disempowering it. 

Jackson Baker

Former state Senator Beverly Marrero makes the case against Amendment 1

(For a fuller discussion of Amendment 1,

and some of the issues attending it, see Bianca Phillips’ story, p. 21.)

Amendment 2, which concerns the mode of appointing state appellate judges, is seen as equally crucial by its adherents, who include numerous legal lights and an impressively bipartisan cast of characters (both Haslam and his Democratic predecessor, Phil Bredesen, are making the rounds for the amendment).

Much like Amendment 3, which would explicitly ban a state income tax, Amendment 2 is designed to eliminate an ambiguity in the state Constitution, which stipulates that appellate judges must be “elected by qualified voters of the state.” To those who take the Constitution literally — like the aforementioned Democratic maverick Hooker, once a leading political figure but now an almost hermetically obsessive one — that means to vote for appellate judges in the same way that Tennesseans vote for state trial judges.

Others believed in the legality of the state’s current “Tennessee Plan” — among them, the members of a special Supreme Court panel (including two Memphians, lawyer Monica Wharton and Criminal Court Judge Bobby Carter) that, earlier this year, validated it. The plan allowed for a special nominating commission to present names to the governor, who in turn could select from the names or call for a new list. Whoever got appointed would be subject to a statewide yes/no retention vote at eight-year intervals.

Amendment 2 keeps to the same general format, though it eliminates the provision for a nominating commission and adds a new one requiring legislative approval of a gubernatorial appointment. Without an adverse vote by both chambers of the General Assembly within 60 days, the appointment becomes final.

The veto power given the legislature was the factor that garnered approval of the amendment from such current supporters as Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey and state Senate Judiciary Chairman Brian Kelsey of Germantown, the latter of whom is Amendment 2’s chief sponsor. Supporters of Amendment 2 warn that, if it is rejected, direct election, which has had its backers and which opponents warn would bring both big money and high-stakes politics to the appellate selection process, will once again be in the legislative hopper, with good prospects of success.

In something of a hat trick, Kelsey is also the main legislative sponsor of Amendment 3, which would ban a state income tax and a state payroll tax and potentially lead to the abolition of the currently legal Hall Income Tax on interest and While essentially acquiescent in the case of Amendment 2, Kelsey has been nothing short of zealous in shepherding Amendment 3 through the complicated process of approval by both legislative chambers in consecutive sessions in order to qualify for the ballot.

Though a state income tax was seriously pushed more than a decade ago by former Governor Don Sundquist, a Republican, and by the Democratic legislative leadership of the time, it aroused grass-roots resistance bordering on the fanatical and was finally blocked in July 2001 by a bona fide mob riot on the grounds and in the halls of the state Capitol.

Though the idea of an income tax still has its defenders — to some degree, in both parties — they are so clearly in the minority that virtually no one doubts overwhelming success for Amendment 3.

After all the sturm-und-drang involved in the first three amendments, the last one, Amendment 4, comes off as inconsequential and even a bit quaint. Basically, it loosens constitutional restrictions on state lotteries to permit charity raffles on behalf of veterans’ groups, and the chief threat to its success is an existing constitutional wrinkle that ties success or failure of an amendment to the number of votes cast in the gubernatorial race. 

Basically, for a constitutional amendment to pass, it must garner a majority of the votes that is at least equal to the number of votes that would constitute a majority in the race for governor.

Given the essential no-contest aspect of the 2014 governor’s race, pro- and con- activists in the case of a particular amendment have advocated strategies making use of this constitutional quirk. Those wishing to defeat an amendment are being counseled to vote for somebody, anybody for governor at all costs, thereby raising the threshold for the amendment’s approval.

Conversely, proponents of an amendment might well take a pass on the governor’s race, thereby lowering the threshold of success. OTHER BALLOT INITIATIVES

Wine-in-Grocery-Stores: After dint of much struggle in many legislative sessions, the wine-bibbers of Tennessee finally got the General Assembly to uncork the opportunity for them to purchase their fermented grape delights in grocery stores as well as in liquor stores per se.

There are several catches, though. One is that localities that already have legalized retail liquor sales or bars and that want to permit such diversity are obliged to pass through two hoops — first, the establishment of a referendum on this fall’s ballot sounding out voter opinion on the merits of such an expansion of wine sales; secondly, the passage of the referendum. 

Six of Shelby County’s legal municipalities — Memphis, Bartlett, Collierville, Germantown, Arlington, and Millington — are holding such referenda, couched in simple “for” or “against” choices on the question of “legal sale of wine at retail stores” within city limits. (Voters residing in the county’s other municipality, Lakeland, will find an alternate referendum on their ballot, on whether to approve “the legal sale of alcoholic beverages for consumption on the premises in city of Lakeland.” Should this referendum pass, Lakeland will qualify for a wine-in-grocery-stores referendum of its own on some future ballot.)

In the event a municipality should pass the referendum enabling wine sales in grocery establishments, several other catches come into play. One is that the grocery-store sales may not begin until July 1,

2016. Another mandates that retail food establishments within 500 feet of an established liquor store must wait another year, until July 1, 2017.

Yet another catch — a concession to big-box retailers — is that only grocery stores sized 1,200 square feet or greater may sell wine when the time comes.

Meanwhile, the liquor lobby, which has held sway in Tennessee virtually forever, won the right as of July 1st of this year to sell commercial beers, which are already available at most of them.                

Civil-service-reform: An initiative on the ballot for Memphis voters asks them to decide whether to “1) increase the number of Civil Service Commission members; 2) make administrative updates to civil service hearing processes and procedures; and 3) Allow the Director of Personnel to consider performance as a measure for personnel evaluations.” Enough said.

Making Sense of Amendment 1

A guide to the history and rhetoric behind the ballot initiative that affects abortion rights.

By Bianca Phillips

 

“Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion. The people retain the right through their elected state representatives and state senators to enact, amend, or repeal statutes regarding abortion, including, but not limited to, circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or when necessary to save the life of the mother.”

           

That’s the language Tennessee voters will see on the ballot for Amendment 1 on Election Day. But what does that mean?

In a nutshell, a “Yes” vote would amend the Tennessee Constitution to allow the General Assembly to enact new laws or amend existing laws to further restrict a woman’s right to an abortion.

They could pass bans on abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy, as some other states have done. Or they could require that all second trimester abortions be performed in hospitals. They could even go so far as to restrict abortions for women who have been raped or women who may die giving birth because of some health condition or complication.

Owen Phillips, a local OB/GYN appears in a television ad for the “Vote No on 1” campaign. In that commercial, she shares a story about a patient who had cancer and was told she might die if she kept her baby. That patient chose not to have an abortion, and she lost her life.

Screeenshot from ‘vote no on 1’ commercial

“I chose that story because whether or not she continued the pregnancy or had an abortion didn’t matter. What mattered is that she had a chance to sit down with her family and make the decision that was right for her,” Phillips said. “I think most people listening to that story would say, ‘Oh my gosh, I would not have chosen that.’ They see that their decision may have been different, and this law would take that decision-making out of their hands.”

Since the General Assembly has tried before (and failed, thanks to a U.S. Supreme Court decision), they could pass mandatory 72-hour waiting periods between a woman’s initial consultation with an abortion provider and her procedure. That would make obtaining abortions more difficult for women who are forced to travel across the state or from other states since they would have to take multiple days off work (and spend more money on travel expenses) for the entire process.

While Roe v. Wade provides some federal protection for abortion rights, it has been challenged before, and it could be challenged again in the future.

“I think [state legislators] will pass something that says abortion becomes illegal in Tennessee if Roe v. Wade is overturned,” said Ashley Coffield, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region.

A “No” vote on Amendment 1 would leave things just as they are. But how are they? The “Vote Yes on 1” camp often touts that abortions in Tennessee are largely unregulated. But that’s not exactly true.

Tennessee has had parental consent laws in place for minors seeking abortions since the 1990s. And in 2012, the state legislature passed a law requiring doctors in reproductive health clinics to have hospital-admitting privileges in order for those clinics to provide abortions. When that restriction passed in 2012, two of the state’s abortion clinics were forced to shut down. Abortion in Tennessee, said Coffield, is “highly regulated.”

“We have to have a surgery treatment center license at Planned Parenthood, and we are subject to licensure and inspection by the Tennessee Department of Health,” Coffield added. 

The licensing issue is a major talking point for proponents of Amendment 1. One who makes the case for the amendment is Lorene Steffes, a board member of Yeson1.org and the organization’s director of community education.

Steffes said in September, when announcing her campaign’s county chairs: “We even lack the legal basis for licensing and inspecting facilities where abortions are performed. The severity of this matter has inspired these 95 leaders to step forward to win Amendment 1 in November, and we are grateful for their dedication and support.”

Coffield says that the theory of abortions being unregulated in Tennessee is based on a state Court of Appeals ruling regarding licensure of ambulatory surgical treatment centers.

“The regulations in Tennessee for ambulatory surgical treatment centers say any health center that does a substantial number of abortions has to have a certificate of need from the state and a license and must be an ambulatory surgery center,” Coffield said. “But what is a substantial number of abortions?

“Nobody knows what that means, so a private physician [Gary Boyle] challenged that, and he won. And now he can do abortions in his private practices [in Nashville and Bristol] and not be a surgery center. This is where our opposition gets the idea that abortion is unregulated because private physicians can do it in their practices, and they don’t have to have a surgery treatment center license,” Coffield said.

That’s a loophole that Coffield said could easily be closed by the state without having a large effect on women’s access to abortion.

Tennessee currently has strong abortion rights protections in place. In the 1990s, the Tennessee General Assembly passed four restrictions on abortion — parental consent, a 72-hour waiting period, a requirement that second trimester abortions had to be performed in hospitals, and a requirement that physicians counsel patients with a script crafted by the state government.

In 2000, Planned Parenthood in Memphis and Nashville challenged those restrictions, and only the parental consent requirement was upheld. The other three were struck down on the basis that the Tennessee Constitution guarantees the right to privacy, even when it relates to a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

The Nuances of Voting in Tennessee

Early voting has begun for the various contests and ballot issues that culminate on November 4th, and there would seem to be ample interest in the outcomes of at least three of the proposed amendments to the state Constitution that

are on the ballot, as well as for several of the elective positions being contested.

The race for U.S. Senator has generated more interest than usual these days in a state that has progressively become more one-party in its sentiments. And, while it would be misleading to suggest that there is much suspense in the statewide race for governor, even that race — one in which Republican governor Bill Haslam is a shoo-in for reelection — has become a conjuring point in strategies for boosting or defeating this or that amendment. If one is dead set against a given amendment, one take on how to defeat it is to make sure to vote in the governor’s race — literally for anyone at all — while going ahead to cast one’s vote on the no side for the displeasing amendment.

The idea is to raise the threshold for the amendment’s success. That’s based on a constitutional formula that is applied specifically to the amendment process. To succeed, an amendment must garner a majority that is equal to or larger than what would constitute a majority of those voting in the race for governor.

Conversely, one might avoid voting for governor altogether if the aim is to lower the threshold for a favored amendment. The logic of these strategies is more than a little abstruse, a bit like Martian algebra, but the mechanics of it all, either way, seem simple enough. The real question is whether it is desirable to admit that much cynicism into the voting process. Understandably, Haslam, when asked last week about this manner of consciously linking a pro or con vote on an amendment to one’s choice in the governor’s race, said, “I obviously don’t like that.”

We’re not sure we’re crazy about such a strategy, either, realistic as it may be.

But we’re more concerned, frankly, about another, more prevalent way of influencing the voting process — one that applies now in Tennessee to any kind of election, state or local. And that is the requirement, built into state law as of 2012, that anyone desiring to vote must provide a government-issued ID bearing a photograph. The purpose was to prevent fraud, said the GOP sponsors of the law, though ID fraud has been virtually nonexistent in Tennessee or anywhere else.

But, while the law has had little or no effect on voter fraud, what it and a similar law in Kansas have done, according to a new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, is to suppress the vote among black and younger voters, for a variety of reasons having to do with a proportionally lower possession of photo IDs among those demographic groups. We would add that elderly voters are equally disadvantaged by the requirement.

The report makes it obvious. This law is worse than cynical. It is repressive and should be changed.