(left) Marsha Blackburn;
(right) Bill Hagerty (Photos: United States Senate, Public domain | Wikimedia Commons)
To remind the faithful readers of this space: In our year-end issue, we offered forecasts about the shape of things to come in the political arena.
One circumstance noted for the record was the fact that both of Tennessee’s incumbent U.S. senators — Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty — would strongly consider running for governor in 2026.
That is what our pipeline said, and that is what we reported, even though it seemed passing strange, even to us. Why? Because the customary rites of passage flow in the opposite direction — with the gubernatorial office more often serving as a springboard for Senate, than vice versa.
That is definitely the pattern in our neighboring state of Arkansas, where such eminent recent members of the Senate as Dale Bumpers and David Pryor (both now deceased) served what amounted to apprenticeships as governor before going on to become senators.
To be sure, ambitions may figure differently in the Land of Opportunity than in the Volunteer State, but Lamar Alexander ran first for governor and then for senator. And one recalls the unhappy, arguably tragic fate of Democrat Frank Clement, who served several terms as the state’s governor before meeting his Waterloo in two successive failed runs for the Senate.
(Interestingly, Clement’s second and final failed try, in 1966, resulted in the election to the Senate of Republican Howard Baker — the forerunner of what, in the course of time, would become the wall-to-wall ubiquity of GOP state officials.)
In any case, both of Tennessee’s current Republican senators have floated unmistakable trial balloons regarding gubernatorial races in 2026, and both seem dead serious. It may be far-fetched to imagine a competitive race between the two, but, my, wouldn’t that be an attention-grabber!
More likely, forces in the Republican Establishment — most notably Donald Trump — would probably dictate the choice of one over the other. (Either could make a plausible claim of loyalty to the president and to the MAGA agenda.)
And, given the high probability of success for the ultimate GOP nominee, one can imagine a domino-like chain reaction of opportunities opening up for other upwardly mobile Tennessee Republicans.
If Hagerty makes a governor’s race, he could either run for both governor and re-election as senator simultaneously, or go ahead and shed his Senate seat (his term would expire in 2026, anyhow) while campaigning for governor. In that latter eventuality, a race for his departed seat would occur in 2026, with a high probability that 8th District Congressman David Kustoff would be a candidate.
Kustoff’s seat, in turn, might then well be targeted by, say, the preternaturally ambitious state Senator Brent Taylor, in which case his seat would open as well, with possible aspirants for it including former city councilmen Kemp Conrad and Frank Colvett, and maybe even state Rep. Mark White. (A White race would create yet another vacancy and another domino.)
If Blackburn runs and wins, she would keep her Senate seat until being sworn in, in which case either she or a lame-duck Bill Lee would appoint a temporary Senate successor, with a special election for a permanent senator to be held in 2028.
The same sort of sequence as mentioned above for a Hagerty win might then occur, involving the same or a similar cast of characters, though everything would happen at a later remove in time.
Got all that straight, gentle reader? Probably not, though it could be worse. There are other permutations and possible complications we’re sparing you from.
The bottom line is that some shock and awe seems certain for the state’s political calendar in 2026, along with a potentially dizzy round of dominoes.
And who knows? Maybe some as yet unknown Democrat comes out of nowhere to spoil the party at some point along the succession line.
The year that just passed promised at various points to be one of dramatic change in this or that public sphere, but such changes as did occur fell way short of transformative.
A new order was unveiled in the city government of Memphis with the inauguration of Mayor Paul Young, for example, but the dominant issue of Young’s first days in office — that of police authority vis-à-vis the citizenry in a climate of anxiety about crime — remains mired in uncertainty a year later.
Young’s reappointment of MPD Police Chief C.J. Davis was rejected by the city council, for example, and she still lacks that validation, serving in an interim capacity. Her second-in-command, Shawn Jones, turned out to be ineligible as a Georgia resident, and the mayor’s announcement of a new public safety director continues unfulfilled, although a “consultant” on the subject got added to the patroll..
The shadow of the Tyre Nichols tragedy lingers on at year’s end, reinforced by harsh judgements levied against the MPD by the U.S. Department of Justice, and state government continues to impose its iron will on local law enforcement, countering the brave stands taken by the city’s voters in referenda intending to assert the city’s own efforts at self-protection.
Those referenda, all essentially meant as rebukes to state policies favoring gun proliferation, were a highlight of the election season, which otherwise saw the status quo reassert itself. Though Democrats held on to their legislative seats in the inner city and fielded plausible candidates in races for the United States Senate and a key legislative district on the city’s suburban edge, the ongoing metamorphosis of Tennessee into red-state Republicanism continued more or less unabated.
In the presidential election, Shelby County reasserted its identity as a Democratic enclave, one of two statewide, the other being Nashville. Unlike the capital city, whose electoral districts had been systematically gerrymandered by the General Assembly’s Republican supermajority, Memphis could still boast a Democratic congressman, Steve Cohen, a fixture in the 9th Congressional District since 2006. The adjoining, largely rural, 8th District, which takes in much of the Memphis metropolitan area, continued to be represented by Republican David Kustoff.
As always, the Memphis area serves as an incubator of individuals with clear potential for further advancement. Among them are Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, a prolific deviser of developmental projects; state Senator Raumesh Akbari, a shining light both in Nashville and in national Democratic councils; and Justin J. Pearson, a member of the “Tennessee Three” who famously galvanized the case for gun safety legislation in the Tennessee House in 2023 and who added to his laurels with rousing appearances at the 2024 Democratic Convention in Chicago.
Meanwhile, amid rampant speculation as to the identity of contenders for the Tennessee governorship in 2026, two surprising new names were added to the list — those of the state’s two Republican senators, Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn.
An unexpected situation began to simmer late in the year with a virtual mutiny of members of the Memphis-Shelby County Schools system against first-year superintendent Marie Feagins, who was threatened with a rescission of her contract with the board. Action on the matter was postponed until January, but, coming on the heels of the ouster of her predecessor Joris Ray due to a personal scandal, it was clear evidence that major things were amiss on the schools front, which had been a highly politicized landscape a decade earlier and could well become once again.
All in all, 2024 seemed destined to go into the history books as a time of preamble, with weighty circumstances likely to follow in its wake.
The Flyer recently highlighted several referenda for Memphis voters on the November 5th election ballot. This week, which will see the onset of early voting (October 16th through October 31st), we look at partisan contests in several key races.
Legislative Races
Noah Nordstrom, tall, stately, with long blonde hair he ties into a bun, says people tell him he looks like Trevor Lawrence, the ex-Clemson quarterback who now pilots the Jacksonville Jaguars of the NFL. “Either that or Thor,” Nordstrom says. “I’ll take either one.”
Images aside, Nordstrom is paradoxically mild-mannered and not macho at all, indeed somewhat diffident, as befits his day job as a public school teacher.
Noah Nordstrom (Photo: Jackson Baker)
What else he hopes to take is the title of state representative for Tennessee’s District 83, an enclave that straddles the southeastern rim of Shelby County and the western edge of Germantown. Challenger Nordstrom, a Democrat, has his work cut out for him. The seat has been held since 2010 by Republican Mark White, a fixture in the state GOP’s legislative supermajority in Nashville and the chair of the House Education Committee.
Education, as it happens, is also the central concern of Nordstrom, who teaches Spanish at Overton High School and is sounding the alarm about what he calls the “radical” ideas of the current legislative Republican supermajority. The specific moment that galvanized him into running came, he says, “when I realized that my state representative, Mark White, is pushing the voucher bill.”
That bill, a main priority of GOP Governor Bill Lee, is described by Nordstrom as “a proposal that would defund our public schools across the entire state of Tennessee.” A bit of an exaggeration, perhaps, but the premise of the proposed legislation is that substantial amounts of taxpayer money would be siphoned out of the general fund to provide tuition at private schools, which, arguably, are in direct competition with the long-established public school system.
“I live just over on the Memphis side [where] Memphis has set up against it completely,” said Nordstrom. Also, as he notes, “The leaders here in Germantown, the entire school board, and the mayor stood up and said, you know, we don’t want this. … Even the Republican-leaning communities don’t want it. And so I decided to throw my name in.”
Indeed, opposition to school vouchers is universal in Shelby County school circles, not only in the urbanized Memphis-Shelby County Schools, but in each of the six county municipalities — Germantown, Collierville, Bartlett, Lakeland, Arlington, and Millington — that won the right to establish their own public school districts during the school merger controversy of the county’s previous decade.
Opposition to vouchers is one of the key wedge issues, along with demands for gun safety, also linked to public schools, that Democrats — presumed to be a minority in District 83, as they certainly are in the state at large — hope can support a political comeback for the party.
“We can do better for our kids, and so that’s been one of the main issues,” Nordstrom said at the Future901-sponsored meeting, held in a Germantown household, where he recently spoke his views. “Obviously one of the other major ones is gun violence. It’s overwhelming to realize that you might not be able to save some of these kids. We see it every day, wondering whether they’re going to make it home safe.”
Gloria Johnson (Photo: Jackson Baker)
Unforgotten is the “good trouble” of spring 2023, when mass protests were held at the state Capitol following a lethal episode of gun violence at a Nashville school. In the aftermath, three Democratic House members, including Justin J. Pearson of Memphis and Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, a candidate this year for the U.S. Senate, were held to accounts by the Republican majority for their passionate support of protesters’ demands for gun safety legislation.
Pearson was expelled by the vengeful majority, along with Justin Jones of Nashville, the third member of the “Tennessee Three.” Johnson survived expulsion by a single vote. All three were celebrated nationally for their stands, and Pearson and Jones were hastily returned to office in special elections.
Realistically, Democrats don’t envision any immediate regaining of the hegemony the party held for much of Tennessee’s history, but they do hope to achieve at some point a competitive status with the Republicans, who established their dominance in the statewide election years of 2010 and 2014 and have never looked back.
At the Future901 meeting in Germantown, there was a fair amount of partisan bear-baiting of Republicans, to be sure, but there were also expressions of concern regarding the increasing takeover of the GOP by MAGA ideology and a corresponding erosion, as attendees saw it, of commonsense shared values among Republican office-holders.
John Gillespie (Photo: Jackson Baker)
White, Nordstrom’s opponent, and state Representative John Gillespie, the incumbent Republican in House District 97, were specifically cited as case studies of GOP moderates shedding their scruples, or at least trimming them at the edges, while going along to get along with the MAGA-minded majority.
As Nordstrom noted, “Now the gun lobby is so strong they say, ‘Don’t vote our way and we’ll find a candidate for the primary, and we’ll pick you out.’ And that’s part of the reason why Mark White has gotten so much more radical. You know, at one point he opposed getting rid of the permitting system for concealed carry. And last year, he voted to arm teachers, and that’s because he knows they” — members supported by the gun lobby — “are comfortable.”
Democratic activist Diane Cambron, an attendee, concurred: “That’s one of the reasons why [District 96 Democratic state Representative] Dwayne Thompson is not running for reelection. He didn’t run for reelection this time because, according to him, when he first got elected in 2016 there were some moderate Republicans with whom he could work, but every year, those moderate Republicans drop out, they don’t run, and they’re replaced by younger, more radical Republicans, and that is what our Republican legislature is becoming. Even though they have a majority, they’re getting more and more radical all the time. There are very few moderate Republicans left.”
It should be said that White, the criticism notwithstanding, is widely regarded as being able to work across party lines. And, as the old joke has it, White can cry all the way to the bank. As is the case with most incumbents, especially well-heeled establishment figures, his cash receipts dwarf those of opponent Nordstrom, a first-time candidate.
His Education Committee chairmanship is consistent with his background in that, before attaining some success with a party-favor business, he was an elementary school teacher and a principal. He co-founded something called the Global Children’s Educational Foundation, which provided financial assistance and educational opportunities to impoverished children in Panama. And he won the Tennessee Community Organizations’ Legislator of the Year award in 2016 and the Tennessee CASA Association’s Legislator of the Year award in 2012.
He is no slouch, no easy target.
All of which is to say that Noah Nordstrom and the Democrats will have their hands full in District 83. They remain hopeful, though, that they can build on the incremental success they began in 2016 — ironically the year of Donald J. Trump’s win over Hillary Clinton nationally. The victory in 2016 of the aforementioned Dwayne Thompson over incumbent Republican Steve McManus in District 96 was just as much of an upset locally. As then constituted, District 96 also straddled city and county lines and the accustomed bailiwicks of either party.
Jesse Huseth (Photo: Jackson Baker)
So does House District 97, where the case can be made that Democratic challenger Jesse Huseth might even be regarded as a favorite over incumbent Republican John Gillespie. The two opponents have raised approximately the same amount of money, each with cash on hand of just under $100,000, and, as currently configured, the district lines encompass a territory where Democrat Jason Martin, a distant second to incumbent GOP Governor Bill Lee virtually everywhere statewide, actually out-polled Lee. And the same can be said of Joe Biden in his presidential race against Trump.
The district’s current configuration remains one of the mysteries of Election Year 2024, since Gillespie, as a member of the GOP supermajority, had the opportunity to call the shots during the redistricting that followed census year 2020. And he decided to discard two Republican-dominated county precincts in return for two politically ambivalent ones further west in Memphis proper, presumably lowering his chances for reelection.
There has yet emerged no satisfactory explanation for Gillespie’s decision. One theory is that, as someone not regarded as slavishly partisan, he fretted over the prospect of being challenged in this year’s primary by a MAGA type in the formerly configured district. Another is that he was determined to prove that he could still win the more problematic district as a presumed Republican moderate — one who conspicuously deviated from GOP orthodoxy on the issue of guns, among other issues. Yet a third theory is that Gillespie simply wishes to represent the concerns of Memphis’ Poplar Corridor business community.
In any case, the District 97 race is regarded statewide as something of a coin-flip race — a test case of sorts regarding future partisan tendencies and the Democrats’ best chance of altering the current statistical ratio in the House, which stands at 75 Republicans and 24 Democrats.
The race could hinge on the two candidates’ contrasting positions on crime, which reflect an ongoing showdown between state and city. Huseth is a strong supporter of three referenda on the Memphis ballot that seek citizen support for “trigger” laws that would allow possible local reinstitution of gun permit requirements, the banning of assault rifle sales, and the imposition of “red flag” laws allowing judges to confiscate firearms from likely offenders. The Democratic candidate is an adherent as well of District Attorney General Steve Mulroy’s call for a new Memphis crime lab that would facilitate detection and prosecution of violent crime.
Gillespie has allied himself with state Senator Brent Taylor, a declared foe of Mulroy, in aggressive sponsorship of legislation strengthening anti-crime penalties and counteracting local options on matters of sentencing. Gillespie authored a bill striking down the Memphis City Council’s ban of “preemptive” traffic stops based on minor infractions.
Partisan races exist in several other legislative districts, where the incumbents are heavily favored. The contests are: Democratic incumbent Larry Miller vs. Republican Larry Hunter in House District 88; Democratic incumbent G.A. Hardaway vs. Republican Renarda Renee Clariett in District 93; Democratic incumbent Antonio Parkinson vs. the GOP’s Cecil Hale in District 98; and Republican incumbent Tom Leatherwood vs. Democrat William P. Mouzon in District 99.
U.S. Senate
Democrats have not come out ahead in a statewide race in Tennessee since then-Governor Phil Bredesen fairly handily won reelection in 2006. By the time Bredesen was next on the ballot, in a race for the U.S. Senate in 2018, he was defeated with equal ease by arch-conservative Republican state Senator Marsha Blackburn.
Nothing more clearly indicates the sea change in Tennessee partisan politics which occurred in the meantime, with the rapid shift of Tennessee from the status of a bellwether state to one in which Republican domination of state affairs had become a given.
Blackburn is up for reelection this year, and Democratic hopes are vested in the aforementioned Gloria Johnson, who won prominence as a member of the “Tennessee Three,” the Democratic House members who drew the ire of the Republican leadership for their assertive support of gun safety protesters in 2023.
Both Blackburn and Johnson have well-deserved reputations for intense partisanship, with Blackburn being a mainline supporter of former President Donald J. Trump, of strong action against illegal immigration, and of MAGA causes in general, and Johnson being equally vigorous in espousal of Democratic positions on such matters as reproductive freedom and climate change. She has clashed repeatedly with Republicans in the legislature and, after being gerrymandered out of one state House seat by the GOP supermajority, returned to the General Assembly as the representative of another.
Efforts by Democrats and others to arrange debates between the two candidates have so far foundered on a confident and financially well-endowed Blackburn’s reluctance to entertain them, but various polls have suggested that underdog Johnson, beneficiary of a recent fundraiser at the Annesdale Mansion in Memphis, may be within striking distance.
Congressional Races
Incumbent Democrat Steve Cohen is heavily favored against Charlotte Bergmann, a perennial Republican opponent of his in the Memphis-based 9th District, while Republican incumbent David Kustoff in the 8th District has a scrappy challenger in Sarah Freeman of Germantown, who hopes to revive a dormant Democratic base in the rural enclaves of that West Tennessee district.
Sarah Freeman (Photo: Jackson Baker)
The effect of the 2024 presidential race on any and all of these local races is somewhat harder than usual to estimate. Normally a heavy Democratic turnout in Memphis precincts for the presidential race inflates the totals of Democrats running in local districts. And that effect could be augmented by a larger turnout than usual among women voters who favor the Democratic position on behalf of abortion rights and who might be influenced by the fact of a woman, Kamala Harris, heading the Democratic ticket. But local Republican candidates, too, can expect a boost, from whatever turnout the Trump/MAGA base can command.
“Shock waves” is too strong a term for the reaction, but a fair number of eyebrows have been raised by the surprise action of state Democratic Party chair Hendrell Remus in removing from power local Shelby County party chair Lexie Carter.
The action took place Thursday following a Zoom call between Carter, Remus, and others. Invoking what the state chair said was the absolute authority of the state party over local parties, Remus said Carter had not measured up to the needs of a coordinated Democratic campaign for the fall election.
He mentioned specifically the campaigns for District 97 state representative of Jesse Huseth, who opposes Republican incumbent John Gillespie, and that of Gloria Johnson of Knoxville against GOP U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn.
Remus said he had sent a questionnaire to Carter asking for details of the local party’s readiness for election activity and received insufficient information in response.
Carter professed to be taken by surprise by her removal, having just, as she maintained, presided over the local party’s annual Kennedy Day banquet on September 5th and grossed upwards of $40,000 for party coffers.
She alleged that a number of disagreements and confrontations had occurred between herself and Remus at the recently concluded Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Remus had apparently been considering the removal action well in advance, having discussed the possibility with potential ad hoc successors to Carter the previous week.
He said he would appoint four temporary co-chairs to guide the Shelby County Democratic Party (SCDP) until December, when a local party election would be held. The Flyer has learned that two of those invited to serve in that capacity are outgoing state Rep. Dwayne Thompson and City Council Chair JB Smiley.
Former local party chair and ex-County Commissioner Van Turner, who had assisted Carter in answering Remus’ questionnaire, raised concerns about due process in Carter’s removal and likened his action to the state Republican Party supermajority’s attempt to dominate over the actions of local government.
The new developments recalled the situation of 2016 when then-state Democratic chair Mary Mancini disbanded the Shelby County party following years of local controversy, including charges of embezzlement.
The local party was reconstituted in 2017 with Corey Strong as chair. So far, no names have surfaced as potential local candidates for the permanent chairmanship of SCDP.
As it happens, Remus will be giving up his own chairmanship in January, when his elected term ends. So far the only known candidate to succeed him is Rachel Campbell, chair of the Hamilton County (Chattanooga) Democratic Party and vice chair of the state party.
• Sarah Wilkerson Freeman, the Democratic nominee for the 8th District congressional seat, confirms that Susan Boujnah, a videographer who accompanied her to last month’s Democratic National Convention, is hard at work on an official campaign video, which will be released (presumably via social media) within the month.
Though Freeman has issued no formal debate challenge to Republican incumbent David Kustoff, Freeman observed that the NAACP will be holding an open forum for area candidates in Collierville on October 8th and that Kustoff is among those invited to participate.
Freeman, a resident of Germantown, likes to say she lives “within spitting distance” of her opponent.
• Former U.S. Senator Jim Sasser died at his North Carolina home last week. Sasser represented Tennessee in the Senate from 1977 to 1995 and later served as ambassador to Japan.
If you happen to have seen a blurred image of 8th District U.S. Representative David Kustoff in the background of a picture frequently featured in the coverage of the GOP’s mystery Long Island Congressman-elect George Santos, so has Kustoff, who notes that his first sight of the picture was via an issue of TheNew York Times.
Reached over the holidays, Kustoff identified the picture as one taken at a post-election event held in Las Vegas last month by the Republican Jewish Coalition. At the meeting, which was attended by presumed Speaker-to-be Kevin McCarthy, Kustoff and Santos, along with Rep.-elect Max Miller of Ohio, were extolled by McCarthy and others as a corps of Jewish members-to-be in the coming Congress.
That trio may turn out to be a duo, of course, as Santos’ Jewishness, as well as virtually every other fact of his public identification, has been since revealed to have been a fabrication on the Republican’s part.
Santos’ purported religion, as well as his claimed employment in the financial industry, his education, and his family background, along with much else, have been exposed as spurious in voluminous news coverage, and the lingering question has been what will become of Santos’ hopes of serving in Congress: Will he be seated, will he be expelled, or just what?
Conspicuously silent on the issue has been the aforementioned McCarthy, who is still trying to arrange for a guaranteed vote of 218 Representatives for himself as Speaker of the House on January 3rd, when Congress reconvenes.
Kustoff was clearly hesitant to comment on the disposition of Santos’ case, venturing only, “Nothing will happen until after the Speakership vote.”
That presupposes, of course, that the New Yorker will be seated. Kustoff declined to say anything else about the case and about Santos’ chance of continuing in Congress, though he indicated he might comment further later on.
The Memphis area’s other Jewish congressman, Democrat Steve Cohen of the 9th District, has been less restrained. He authored a well-noticed tweet on the subject: “This guy makes Herschel Walker look like George (I can’t tell a lie) Washington./ Jew-ish? That’s some chutzpah!”” Cohen suggested in another tweet that the $700,000 that Santos claimed to have lent his recent campaign was unlikely to have been his own money and could lead to serious legal trouble for the would-be legislator.
Elaborating further this week, Cohen suggested Santos was obviously “mentally ill,” and foresaw his likely indictment in fairly short order.
From left: Mark Meadows, Bill Watkins, and former Governor Don Sundquist. (Photo by Jackson Baker).
There was really only one question I wanted to ask Mark Meadows, was obliged to ask him. I put it to him as soon as I met him, during a VIP reception in a back room of the vast space reserved Friday at the Agricenter for the Shelby County GOP’s annual Lincoln Day Banquet.
“Can you say categorically that you never were involved in discussions to obstruct or delay the counting of presidential ballots on January 6, 2021?”
The former Trump White House chief of staff, keynoter at this year’s banquet, gave me the sweetest, most accommodating smile, whereupon — as we both knew would happen — he evaded the question.
He almost made his refusal to answer sound regretful. “I’d love to answer that,” he said, “but, as the legal processes are still going on, I’m not able to … [brief pause] … but I thank you for asking.”
The gist of the aforementioned legal processes is that Meadows had begun cooperating with the House January 6th special committee looking into the unprecedented assault on the U.S. Capitol that took place on that date. And then he stopped cooperating, claiming executive privilege as he was asked about strategy sessions he is alleged to have conducted with Trump on January 6.
The House of Representatives, a body Meadows used to belong to, voted to find the former chief of staff guilty of criminal contempt and has urged the U.S. Justice Department to file criminal charges against him.
Meanwhile, Meadows, as big a name in the news as there is this side of the Ukrainian border, was chosen as the keynoter for the Shelby County Republican Party’s biggest annual event, its major fundraiser. He was selected for his usefulness as a draw, and,sure enough, several thousand Republicans dropped up to several thousand dollars apiece and gathered at the Agricenter on Friday to get a whiff of him.
The VIP reception, which followed another pre-event reception at the home of current state senate hopeful Brent Taylor, proved sufficiently popular to delay the rest of the banquet proceedings for the better part of an hour.
The dinner for attendees was a passable buffet, with options of steak or chicken breasts as the main entree, and conversation at the tables in the Agricenter’s cavernous space proceeded pleasurably enough, with every stripe of known politician — hundreds of them — up and working the room.
And then the event began, and that was when, for the overwhelming majority of attendees packed into that vast floor space, the event ceased to have much meaning. After an introduction and hello from local party chair Cary Vaughn, a prayer from former state representative and current gubernatorial adviser John DeBerry, a pledge of allegiance to the flag, and a singing of The Star Spangled Banner — all of which could barely be discerned as what they were, due to an embarrassingly bad audio system, the party trotted out its heavies — 8th District congressman David Kustoff, Senator Marsha Blackburn, and ultimately, Meadows.
The sound system was so dysfunctional that muffled noise was all that traveled into the near and far spaces alike of the giant arena. There was no doubt that the speakers were all doling out what the crowd probably came to hear — rhetoric extolling Republican values and condemning the presumed misprisions of the Democrats and President Joe Biden, especially.
But, except for the attendees seated at a few tables directly in front of the speaker, sentences went unheard, meanings had to be guessed at, and private conversations resumed at most of the tables throughout the sprawling floor space as the next best thing that could happen.
And, after all, most of what was being said from the dais was boilerplate of the most familiar kind. To the extent that the speakers received applause, they got it for being themselves and being there, not from anything they might have said.
Here and there, snatches of language could be divined, especially from Meadows, who has something of a clear, clarion voice. One sentence that emerged was, “You are making a difference right here in Shelby County!” Some sentences later he was telling an anecdote that contained the phrase “the Secret Service.”
And, several minutes into his speech, he intoned that orator’s classic: “Let me close with this …” After which came another 15 minutes or so of audio buzz. Eventually Meadows stopped speaking, got a round of applause as a reward for his presence, then resumed again with a coda of sorts. More audio buzz. And then he was done.
All the speakers tried hard, but at any given point it might as well have been eccentric perennial candidate Leo Awgowhat up there, trying out a string of his favorite obscenities on this unhearing strait-laced crowd. (I didn’t see him, but Awgowhat may have been at the event; he’s running for office as a Republican this year).
Circumstances being what they were, one looked for sideshows. One was Brandon Toney, the never-say-die candidate for state Senate who has twice been denied bona fides to run by the state Republican Committee. Toney, along with his campaign manager Katrina Garner, were bird-dogging anybody they could talk to and intimating that they were making arrangements to get on the widely watched Fox-TV show of Tucker Carlson to keep pitching Toney’s case.
Brandon Toney working the crowd. (Photo by Jackson Baker).
Various dignitaries from the Republican past were on hand. I was pleased to see Don and Martha Sundquist, the state’s former Governor and First Lady at the event, squired by veteran CPA Bill Watkins, long the local GOP’s mega-finance manager for important campaigns.
Sundquist, now somewhat infirm and perceptibly an elder, has in the last few years made an effort to accommodate himself to the currently shaped GOP, a more vitriolic one than he attempted to represent in Nashville back in the ’90s and early 2000’s, when as governor, in tandem with Democrats, Sundquist made serious efforts to accomplish state tax reform.
Ward Baker, the Nashville fireplug of so many GOP campaign efforts, local, state, and national, was there. We exchanged hellos, and I learned that someone had foolishly asked him at some point if he were my son. (!!!)
State GOP chair Scott Golden of Jackson was there, benignly explaining that the state Republican executive committee had forced his hand on a series of recent candidate removals from approved ballot status. The aforesaid Toney failed to appeal himself back on the ballot; congressional candidate Brown Dudley, and County Commission candidate Jordan Carpenter had better luck.
State Republican Party chair Scott Golden. (Photo by Jackson Baker).
I must say that the vast majority of Republicans on hand for Lincoln Day were personally benevolent in the extreme. I cribbed some table time from the very affable Steve Cross, the GOP’s candidate for assessor. (He opposes the equally affable Democratic incumbent, Melvin Burgess, on the August county ballot). And I reminded myself that, for all the craziness that occurs in politics, people are people, all trying to do right by the best of their lights.
Judge Chris Craft and wife Susie. (Photo by Jackson Baker).
As I passed through the arena, post-Meadows, another speaker, Republican congressman Mark Green, was at the dais, and, as I walked in front of the stage, on the way out, I actually could hear him, blasting away at Joe Biden.
I saw Bill Dries, the Daily Memphian reporter, standing nearby taking notes and asked him if he’d been able to hear anything intelligible during the evening. He said he had, and I felt a surge of wholly non-competitive elation thinking that I might have the opportunity to learn from his ultimate copy just exactly how some of the event’s spoken boilerplate had gone.
Current boundaries of the 9th Congressional District (Photo: Wikipedia)
Among the several factors that may change the political map, in Tennessee as elsewhere, are the numbers from the 2020 census. As a result of them, the dimensions of numerous governmental districts are due to change — with effects highly noticeable in Shelby County and West Tennessee.
Both the 9th Congressional District, which includes most of Memphis and is currently represented by Democrat Steve Cohen, and the 8th Congressional District, which contains a key sliver of East Memphis and is represented by Republican David Kustoff, will have to expand their boundaries to approximate the average district population in Tennessee, which the Census Bureau found to be 767,871.
Inasmuch as the 2020 population of the 9th District was certified as 690,749, and that of the 8th District as 716,347, both West Tennessee districts will need to stretch their limits. The 9th District actually lost 14,376 people from its 2010 population of 705,125, a diminishment of 2 percent. The 8th, by contrast, grew by 11,227 people from 705,120, a gain of 1.6 percent. But, since both districts fell below the stage growth average of 8.49 percent, their boundaries will expand.
New configurations will occur elsewhere in the state, as well — particularly in Middle Tennessee, where several districts that experienced population booms in the last decade will have to shrink. The state’s population as a whole is now reckoned at 6.91 million, representing an increase of something like 564,000 people in a decade. But Tennessee’s growth pattern still lagged behind the national average, so Tennessee will continue with its current lineup of nine congressional seats with no additional seats added.
Again, both the 8th and 9th Districts in Tennessee will have to grow geographically to catch up with the state average of population per district. That will undoubtedly cause some tension and horse-trading as state lawmakers, who must make the determination of new district lines for congressional and state offices, set to the task, which has a deadline of April 7, 2022. (In the case of local government districts, for commission, council, and school districts, the deadline is January 1, 2022.)
The situation recalls a previous significant change in the boundaries of Districts 8 and 9 that occurred in 2011 after the 2010 census. That reapportionment process was the first overseen by a Republican legislative majority, and it resulted in the surrender of a prize hunk of donor-rich East Memphis turf from Cohen’s 9th District to the 8th. Cohen was compensated by territory to the north of Shelby County in Millington.
Given the fact of continued GOP dominance of the General Assembly, the valuable East Memphis salient is liable to stay in Kustoff’s 8th District. The 9th will have to expand somewhere else in the 8th District, which surrounds it — a fact that creates a whack-a-mole situation for Kustoff, who’ll have to compensate, possibly from the adjoining 7th District.
Meanwhile, several legislative districts in Shelby County are seriously under-strength in relation to average statewide population figures. These include state Senate districts 29, 30, and 33 — now held by Democrats Raumesh Akbari, Sara Kyle, and Katrina Robinson, respectively — and state House Districts 86, 90, 91, and 93 — represented currently by Democrats Barbara Cooper, Torrey Harris, London Lamar, and G.A. Hardaway, respectively.
Significant changes are likely to occur also in legislative reapportionment, possibly in the loss of a seat or two in Shelby County.
In case you were ever worried about the GOP-dominated state government of Tennessee not having the best interests of its citizens at heart, you can relax. Our boys are on the case, battling against the vast, nefarious invasion of transgender young people into high school sports, standing firm against college basketballers who kneel for the National Anthem, and, of course, battling for the right of every Tennessean to pack a gun pretty much anywhere.
Jackson Baker
Governor Bill Lee
The truth is that this sort of legislation is just performative. Its only purpose being to stir up outrage among the mouth-breathing masses. “Dang it! We cain’t have boys competin’ against girls in softball!” Right. Because that happens so often. So the legislators propose a bill that ignores all protocols and legal ramifications of the issue and just mandates that transgender folks conform to their birth genitalia, no matter what. The Olympics and other sports organizations have rules involving testosterone levels for athletes, and other regulations that ensure fair competition, but those were ignored in favor of further inciting brocephus prejudices with a law that is very unlikely to stand up in court.
Legislators are also planning to tackle the vital issue of East Tennessee State’s men’s basketball team kneeling for the National Anthem on state property. Look for some overtly unconstitutional legislative foofawfery soon. Never mind that the First Amendment right to protest and free speech is every bit as sacred and protected as, well, the Second Amendment “right” to openly carry a gun into Costco.
Speaking of … If any of these guys ever has the nerve to say “Blue Lives Matter” again, they should be, well, arrested. Open carry laws are opposed by almost every major law-enforcement organization, by district attorneys groups, and by around 80 percent of American voters in recent polls. But Governor Bill Lee and his yahoo posse are more interested in pleasing the NRA and the 20 percent of the population that thinks gun regulations are a violation of the Second Amendment, even though most of them couldn’t spell “amendment” if you spotted them the vowels.
Then there was the egregious piling on by several Republicans of the Shelby County Health Department in the wake of the discovery of 2,400 expired or wasted COVID vaccine doses.
Eighth District Congressman David Kustoff, for example, was shocked and outraged and demanded an investigation into this chicanery. This is the same buffoon who backed Donald Trump’s ignorant and deadly approach to the pandemic for 11 months and who appeared, sans mask, slavishly praising Fearless Leader at rallies. He also voted to overturn the results of a free election after a mob violently demanding the same thing trashed the capitol building where he works, but yes, do demand an investigation into those who are trying, however imperfectly, to save people’s lives.
Lee also weighed in with his concerns, as did several other Republicans. Where was this concern when much smaller (and whiter) Knox County “lost” more than 1,000 doses earlier in February?
Look, there is no denying that Shelby County screwed up some aspects of the vaccine roll-out, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that this scenario is being replicated all over the country.
Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told NBC News earlier this month: “This kind of thing [having to throw away] vaccines is pretty rampant. I have personally heard stories like this from dozens of physician friends in a variety of different states. Hundreds, if not thousands, of doses are getting tossed across the country every day. It’s unbelievable.”
COVID-19 vaccines have a short shelf life once they are thawed out for use, Jha said. And because of federal and state mandates, many hospitals and other healthcare providers would rather risk a dose going bad than give it to somebody who isn’t scheduled to get a shot.
So yeah, we’ve had some issues with vaccine distribution, but so have a lot of places. More than 120,000 people have been vaccinated in Shelby County, so it’s not all bad. It’s fair to point out mistakes, but let’s keep the performative politics out of it.
“If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.” — Ulysses S. Grant.
As I write this, it’s the day after the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, 24 hours after politicians like 8th District Congressman David Kustoff and Senator Marsha Blackburn release their annual pious MLK quotes on Twitter. Because if anyone exemplifies the ideals of Dr. King, it’s Republicans who supported the overturning of a presidential election in order to appease the deluded, hateful supporters of a narcissistic would-be autocrat.
Kustoff had the utter audacity to cite this King quote: “Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.” Are you kidding me? Tell it to your friends who were at the Capitol last week, David. Tell it to the president whose boots you licked. I expect this kind of stuff from Blackburn, who’s been a lightweight and sellout for years. But Kustoff is smarter than Blackburn. He knows better. His cynical embrace of Trump’s corruption and lies is appalling.
Today is also the day before President-elect Joe Biden gets inaugurated in front of — what? — 300 people? Thanks to Kustoff’s and Blackburn’s pals, the ignorant yahoos who destroyed the Capitol a couple weeks ago, this year’s inauguration will feature a “crowd” made up of 25,000 troops. Trump won’t be there, having pardoned a bunch of sleazos before hopping a jet to Mar-a-Lago for some well-deserved R&R before his Senate impeachment trial. But there will be some good news for him: His only inaugural crowd will no doubt have been larger than Biden’s. Sean Spicer, wherefore art thou?
This new administration and this new Congress and Senate take over a country in chaos. Millions of Americans are unemployed, facing eviction, a lack of food and money, and an epidemic that will have killed half-a-million of us by the end of February, roughly a year after we were told by President Trump that it would “just go away.”
It’s a country in which more than 70 million people bought into the Trump fever-dream, a twisted vision that tapped into fear and latent anger more effectively than most of us imagined was possible. Take a minute to think about what Trump (and his political and media enablers) convinced his base to fear and/or distrust: any Democrat, any liberal, immigrants of color, journalists and most major media outlets, Black people, Mexicans, Antifa, “cancel culture,” mail-in voting, the American electoral system, scientists and medical experts, the Justice department, military leaders … I could go on.
Joe Biden says he wants to unite the country. I wish him luck. Maybe start with bringing back some iteration of the Fairness Doctrine, some sort of legislation that will ensure that knowingly broadcasting lies and disinformation on public airways or providing a place for it on the internet won’t be tolerated. It’s not just Fox News or OANN. It’s Facebook, Twitter, Google, Instagram, you name it. There has to be some sort of recalibration, some way to monitor this stuff. Too many people are being radicalized by lies and false conspiracies. The fact that millions of people actually bought into the insanity of QAnon is itself astounding and terrifying.
Similarly, the Big Lie about Trump “winning in a landslide” was allowed to be spread unchecked in too many places by too many people without pushback or fact-checking. We’ll be dealing with the fallout from it for quite some time. Thanks, David and Marsha. Good work.
Now that we have some vaccines that work, we have to figure out how to get the medicine into as many Americans as quickly as possible. The Trump administration’s “plan” of leaving it up to the states has resulted in an ineffective, spread-shot system without consistency or logic. Over the weekend, I saw several posts on social media from folks who’d gotten the vaccine. Only one was over 75 years old. They were all from out of state. Lots of folks were asking, understandably, “How did you do that?”
I went to the Shelby County Health Department website on Monday and learned nothing about how to schedule a shot. I followed a link to the state of Tennessee COVID site, where I could fill out a multi-page survey (outdated) to see if I was eligible for a shot, but there was no mechanism for signing up, and no indication of when I’d be able to do so. We’re still stumbling around. Hopefully, when the feds take over, they’ll flip on a light switch. We’ve been in this little dark age for too long.
U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-9th), Aye: “After President Trump was impeached but not convicted last year, Senator Susan Collins said ‘He’s learned a pretty big lesson. He was impeached.’ Then, last week, he brought his ‘It will be wild’ riotous television show that he produced for one person, Individual One. Intelligence reports indicate that the people he said he ‘loves’ and ‘are special’ are going to attack this city and attack this Capitol next week. He has not asked them not to do it. He has not told them to stand down. I most fear January 20th because I think he will try to go out with a bang and take attention away from Joe Biden.”
U.S. Rep. David Kustoff (R-8th), Nay: “There is no doubt every American was shocked by the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol Building last Wednesday. As our
country is experiencing this time of turmoil and uncertainty, we must work together to reconcile our differences and heal our nation. Impeaching President Trump during his last seven days in office would only further divide us as Americans. That is why I do not support the removal of President Trump through impeachment. Our country is in the middle of a global pandemic and the American people are struggling. We must focus our efforts on unifying our country and supporting a peaceful transition of power on January 20th.”
Jackson Baker 
