Tag: James Mackler

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Politics Politics Feature

The Mackler Moment: A Parable

Marquita Bradshaw (Photo: Darnell Landers)

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

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

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

Mackler dutifully withdrew, biding his time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Politics Politics Feature

Looking Ahead to 2020 Elections

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

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

Torrey Harris

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Trump Endorsement of Hagerty Senate Bid May Have Force of Edict

CREDIT: JB

JB

Bill Hagerty in Memphis in 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Politics Politics Feature

Mackler, Coleman Show Their Stuff to Local Democrats

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Following their good results in the election year 2018, which saw variations on blue wave voting in every governmental sphere except, arguably, the elections for statewide office, Democrats in Shelby County are wondering how best to follow (and improve on) that act, going forward.

Two of the party’s would-be standard-bearers were on display last Wednesday night at Coletta’s Restaurant on Highway 64, where the Germantown Democrats hold their monthly meetings.

One was James Mackler, the Nashville lawyer and Iraq War vet who declared for the U.S. seat of then Republican Senator Bob Corker in 2017 and backed out a year later in deference to former Governor Phil Bredesen‘s decision to run for the same seat. The other was Eric Coleman, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan, who is the party’s nominee for the vacant District 32 seat in the Tennessee state Senate. Mackler has declared for another run in 2020, for the Senate seat that Lamar Alexander has indicated he will vacate.

Jackson Baker

Germantown Democratic president Dave Cambron introduces James Mackler.

That both of these aspiring exemplars are combat veterans is, arguably, a sign of an ongoing process within the Democratic Party of reactivating roots and former constituencies. (The current Shelby County party chair — Corey Strong, who is due to be succeeded by a new chair in a local party convention process in March and April — happens also to be a veteran.)

In a thinly veiled reference to what many Democrats judge to have been a lackluster race by Bredesen, who lost to Republican Marsha Blackburn, one questioner asked Mackler how it was possible to run for statewide office in Tennessee without being suspected either of not being Democratic enough nor being middle-of-the-road enough.

Mackler’s answer was swift and to the point. “The pundits will say you can’t criticize Donald Trump in Tennessee,” Mackler said. “Donald Trump only cares about himself. He’s making the country worse, not better. I intend to tell the truth, and the people of Tennessee will respect that.”

Eric Coleman

As for the rest of the question, “It’s fair to say Tennessee has a lot of under-served communities. I’m going to go to these communities, not as a politician but again as a veteran, a husband, and father, and listen to people.”

Mackler promised to be a positive example, “the kind of person your kids can look to and be guided by, someone who will share credit when things are accomplished and take blame when they are not.” He added, “That’s what I think leadership is.”

Among the subjects discussed by Mackler were the prospect for investment in jobs and infrastructure, a need for background checks in gun sales, his “disgust” at efforts to stigmatize transgender members of the armed services (“Not for a moment did I question the sexuality or the orientation of the person in the helicopter with me.”), and term limits (“My little girl asked me, “Daddy, don’t other people get a turn?”).

Among other things, Coleman, a paraplegic as a result of his service, discussed his background as a procurement specialist in the Navy, talked about the incoherence and recklessness of the nation’s fiscal policy under Trump, and attributed much of the problem to the president’s experience and background in the seamy world of New Jersey wheeling and dealing.

Coleman said it was difficult for a Democrat to win in District 32 (which takes in much of eastern and northern Shelby County, as well as Tipton County), “only if we make it so.”

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Opinion Viewpoint

Roll of the Dice for Tennessee Democrats

CREDIT: JB

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JB

Bredesen in his campaign-announcement video

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

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

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

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

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

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Mackler Out of Senate Race, Yields to Bredesen

Mackler (l), Bredesen

James Mackler, the Nashville attorney and Iraq War vet who, months ago, declared as a Democratic candidate for the Tennessee U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican Bob Corker, has faced the reality that last week’s declaration of candidacy by former Governor Phil Bredesen had closed off his available routes to financial support.

Accordingly, Macler issued a press release on Thursday announcing his withdrawal from the Senate race. “The political environment has changed … and we cannot risk any distractions in our fight to defeat Marsha Blackburn’s extreme agenda,” Mackler’s statement read in part. “It is in this spirit of unity, not further division, that I am making the choice to step back as a candidate at this time to put us all on the path to victory.”

Mackler said he would continue to maintain his “Believe in Service” political action committee, which Bredesen made a point of commending, along with Mackler himself.

Although he had not yet achieved full statewide name recognition, Mackler, who had mounted his candidacy well before Corker’s withdrawal from the race, had raised some $1 million and had begun developing a viable profile, especially among millenials.

But Bredesen, who served two terms as Tennessee Governor from 2003 to 2011 had been assiduously courted to run by establishment Democrats, both in-state and out, who felt that, as the last Democrat to be elected statewide, he had the best chance of contesting for the now open Senate seat against either of the two name Republicans now seeking it — 7th District U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn o former 8th District congressman Stephen Fincher.

Despite a cost-conscious tenure as Governor which was widely regarded as centrist enough to have enacted significant portions of the then Republican platform, Bredesen has become a virtual daily target of official Republican broadsides attempting to portray him as a “big spender” Democrat and a liberal — neither of which things he ever came close to being.

In fact, the former Governor’s penchant, both in office and in his gubernatorial campaigns, for proposing relatively conservative compromise solutions was one of the major factors that won him significant crossover support.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Bredesen Enters U.S. Senate Race

CREDIT: JB

The other shoe has dropped in the case of Phil Bredesen, now a full-fledged candidate for the U.S. Senate. The former governor of Tennessee from 2003 to 2011  JB

Bredesen in his campaign-announcement video

and the last Democrat to hold major statewide office in this increasingly red state, Bredesen had been publicly flirting for at least two months with the idea of returning to active politics as a Senate candidate.

Founder of a highly successful health care enterprise in Nashville, Bredesen served several effective terms as mayor of that city and, after one unsuccessful race as Democratic nominee for governor in 1994, losing to Republican candidate Don Sundquist of Memphis, he was elected Tennessee’s chief executive on his second try in 2002, defeating the GOP’s Van Hilleary.

In his political races, Bredesen, a native of upstate New York, would joke about his origins elsewhere by saying, “I got here as soon as I could.”

While there are no sure things in politics, the entry of Bredesen is no doubt troubling news to fellow Nashville Democrat James Mackler, a lawyer and former Iraq war veteran who had previously declared for governor, as well as to state Republicans, now observing a potentially divisive race for the GOP Senate nomination between 7th District Congressman Marsha Blackburn and former 8th District Congressman Stephen Fincher.

The GOP establishment wasted no time in officially dissing Bredesen’s candidacy.

Scott Golden, chairman of the state Republican Party, issued a statement beginning with the statement that “[former Governor Phil Bredesen’s record represents the Tennessee of yesterday when Democrats labeled extreme unemployment rates, higher taxes, and a total lack of government transparency as ‘prospering,’” and going on to cite alleged improvements in the state’s circumstances since then.

And Michael McAdams, regional press secretary for the National Republican Senate Campaign Committee, greeted the former governor’s announcement by saying, “Phil Bredesen officially announced he’s running for U.S. Senate today, and national Democrats couldn’t be happier. Bredesen is exactly the type of big government liberal national Democrats love.”

Both statements are somewhat at variance with the actual political state of things during Bredesen’s incumbency. Far from being a “big government liberal,” Bredesen angered many in the liberal wing of his party by presiding over a period of enforced austerity, drastically pruning the state’s TennCare rolls and imposing across-the-board budget cuts that were one percent more severe than the ones recommended the year before by the ultra-conservative Blackburn, then a state senator.

Republicans were seriously hampered in their efforts to oppose Bredesen’s reelection in 2006 because, in the view of many observers, the Democratic Governor had in effect enacted the chief elements in the Republican platform of that time. Bredesen was opposed in 2006 by a GOP sacrificial lamb, state Senator Jim Bryson of Nashville, who lost badly.

It remains to be seen, of course, whether Bredesen, politically inactive since leaving the governor’s office (though he had publicly floated his availability for a cabinet position in the Obama administration) , will strike voters in 2018 as yesterday’s newspaper.

There is no doubting, however, that he posseses residual name recognition and will have financial and political support in his race that no other Democrat running statewide since his tenure in office as enjoyed. Moreover, the video in which he announced his candidacy seemed clearly in line with the conservative hues of Tennessee in 2017.

Referring to his background as a businessman, Bredesen declares in the video that “We all know Washington is broken..[while] back here in Tennessee, we have some real problems.” He boasts his resistance as governor to a state income tax and says, “The Affordable Care Act needs fixing.”

He laments that Congress is “immoral the way they keep borrowing money with no end in sight.,” and contends, “I’m running for the Senate because I have the right kind of experience and the actual track record that it will take to start working across party lines to fix the mess in Washington and bring common sense back to our government.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Busting Some Moves

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Jackson Baker

Craig Fitzhugh addresses a Collierville crowd.

Shelby County Democrats are continuing with their efforts to spread their party’s influence. The most recent instance was a fund-raising dinner Sunday night at the 148 North Restaurant in Collierville featuring several speakers — including state Representative Craig Fitzhugh, the state House minority leader and currently a candidate for governor; James Mackler, candidate for U.S. Senator; Floyd Bonner, candidate for sheriff; state Senator Lee Harris, now running for Shelby County mayor; John Boatner Jr., candidate for the District 8 congressional seat; and Sanjeev Memula, candidate for state House District 95.

• Another local gathering attracting a sizeable number of political figures was the Christmas party of the Tennessee Nurses Association, held Monday night at Coletta’s in Cordova. A good mix of Republicans and Democrats was on hand, including District 33 state Senator Reginald Tate, an inner-city Democrat who confided that he had felt compelled to resign his longstanding affiliation with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a national organization, largely funded by conservative donors, which grinds out sample bills and disseminates them to state legislatures.

Tate, who had been listed as a member of ALEC’s Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force, told the Flyer he had been pressured by fellow Democrats to sunder his ties with the organization, for which he expressed no particular ideological affinity.

• The confrontation between a Shelby County Commission majority and County Mayor Mark Luttrell over the circumstances of proposed litigation against distributors of opioids went up another notch on Monday. 

An eight-member commission majority — Republicans Heidi Shafer (the current commission chair) and Terry Roland, and Democrats Van Turner, Willie Brooks, Justin Ford, Reginald Milton, Melvin Burgess, and Eddie Jones — are supporting a Shafer initiative to force Luttrell’s hand on proposed litigation by the county against an extensive network of physicians, pharmacists, and others involved, both legally and illegally, in distribution of opioids, which, in the estimation of Shafer and the commission, have resulted in damaging levels of addiction in Shelby County.

Chancellor Jim Kyle recently ruled that Luttrell, who sued to block Shafer’s unilateral engaging of a law firm, had rightful authority over litigation by the county but declined to intervene in the lawsuit itself, now in limbo in Circuit Court. The chancellor suggested that the suit was in the public interest but recommended mediation between the commission and the mayor.

Meanwhile, Luttrell, who has floated the alternative idea of deferring to a statewide legal action against the opioid network, is still in formal (if suspended) litigation in Chancery Court against the commission. The eight-member coalition at odds with the mayor on the matter voted Monday to hire Allan Wade, who represents the Memphis City Council, as its “special legal counsel” in the matter.

That action carried, but it aroused opposition among a five-member commission minority consisting of Democrat Walter Bailey and Republicans Mark Billingsley, George Chism, Steve Basar, and David Reaves.

Typical of this group’s sentiments were Billingsley’s complaints that outside attorneys were enriching themselves at county expense and that the proposed ongoing action against the alleged opioid-distribution network was too extensive, involving well-established name-brand companies like Johnson & Johnson.

Roland, among others, responded that the proposed legal actions against opioid distributors were pro bono and would cost the county nothing, while Luttrell’s action did in fact “cost the county.”

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Politics Politics Feature

The Bredesen Bubble; County Government Showdown

CREDIT: jackson baker

Since Phil Bredesen‘s name was first dropped as a possible Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Bob Corker, the former governor has done a neat back-and-forth on the prospect, first expressing no interest, next rising to the bait, and then leaving the idea open as both fellow Democrats and Republicans have engaged in a running guessing game as to his intentions.

That quandary persists right up to the minute, with a decision by Bredesen likely to come between the composition of these lines and their appearance in print. Or not.

The effect has been to paralyze or at least inhibit the momentum that declared Democratic Senate candidate James Mackler might otherwise have achieved. First-time candidate Mackler, a lawyer and Iraq war veteran from Nashville, has had difficulty emerging from the shade of anonymity despite a well-turned-out mailer or two and some impressive appearances before limited audiences — like the meet-and-greet/fund-raiser he held a month ago in the East Memphis home of Bryce Timmons, in which the personable candidate demonstrated in his remarks what could be a fetching mix of progressive political positions and, on the basis of his military service, some old-fashioned patriotism.

That the Bredesen mystery was ripe for solution was the thrust of a lengthy report in the latest edition of the nonpartisan “Smart Politics” newsletter published this week by the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs and Center for the Study of Politics and Governance.

Eric Ostenmeier, the resident “Smart Politics” sage, begins his account with a sense that a decision by Bredesen is imminent and casts the issue in a somewhat skeptical light. Says Ostenmeier: “The ‘will he or won’t he’ question may finally be answered this week with regards to a Phil Bredesen 2018 U.S. Senate bid, but, in the meantime, a new ‘Smart Politics’ report examines how unusual it would be for the former Tennessee governor to win the seat.”
Ostenmeier proceeds to review the history of Tennessee ex-governors who sought Senate seats during the last 100 years and finds that only one, Republican Lamar Alexander in 2002, who succeeded, while the handful of Democrats who’ve tried it — the most recent being Frank Clement in 1966 — have come up short.

Another caveat noted by Ostenmeier is the fact that, if Bredesen runs and is elected, he would enter the Senate at the age of 75, making him “the fifth-oldest to win a first term via an election, the second-oldest to enter via election since the passage of the 17th Amendment, and the oldest to enter via direct election for a full term.”

Meanwhile, the aforesaid Alexander, meeting with reporters in Nashville Friday after an appearance before the Greater Tennessee chapter of the Associated Builders and Contractors, had this to say about a potential Bredesen candidacy:

“He would be a formidable candidate. He was a popular governor. I think what he would have to explain to the people is how electing one more to the Democratic number in the Senate would help the people of Tennessee, and my argument would be if you want conservative judges and lower taxes and deregulation, then it’s better to have a Republican majority.” 

Alexander’s lines themselves bespeak a certain respect, born of fruitful relations between the two of them for the eight years of their simultaneous service from 2003 to 2009, when a term-limited Bredesen left the governorship. Beyond that, and the Republican senator’s obligatory bromide in favor of the mother ship GOP, Alexander’s meta-message is one of elementary and neutral caution to the two party-mates — former 8th District Congressman Stephen Fincher and 7th District Congressman (her preferred title) Marsha Blackburn — who will slug it out for the Republican Senate nomination.

What Democrats might divine from Alexander’s evaluation is less obvious. The fact is that the political views of Bredesen, a moderate Democrat who governed the state with a tight rein on expenditures, are probably closer in spirit to Alexander’s own than they are to the ultra-conservatism of Fincher and Blackburn.

And, with old Democratic loyalties having long since washed away in most of rural and small-town Tennessee, it remains to be seen whether the current rank and file of youthful, urban-based Democrats will respond more enthusiastically to a Bredesen than to a Mackler. It is certainly true that the former governor would have a commanding lead among old-line party types and traditional donors.

If Ostenmeier proves correct in his projection of a timely decision by Bredesen this week or soon thereafter, we will soon know whether this kind of speculation is academic or on point.

•
Another issue that, at press time, was due for some kind of likely resolution this week is that of the showdown over opioid litigation between Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell and the County Commission, a clear majority of whose members have lined up behind the defiant leadership of commission chair Heidi Shafer.

The matter ended up this week in the courtroom of Chancellor Jim Kyle, who was asked to rule on Tuesday on Luttrell’s request for an injunction and restraining order against Shafer and her fellow commissioners.

The latest chapter in what has been an ongoing power struggle between the two branches of county government stems from Shafer’s bombshell announcement last week that she had, in the name of the county, engaged the national law firm of Napoli Shkolnik to seek damages from a wide variety of principals — drug manufacturers, pharmacists, physicians, and distributors (licensed and otherwise) — allegedly responsible and potentially liable for the adverse effects of widespread opioid addiction in Shelby County.

Luttrell, who contended that his administration had already been weighing the options for such legal action, promptly objected that Shafer was attempting a usurpation in the face of language in the county charter giving the office of mayor complete authority over legal contracts and establishing the county attorney, appointed by him, as the sole administrator of legal actions on behalf of Shelby County government.   
Another burr under Luttrell’s saddle was the fact that, to serve as co-counsel with Napoli Shkolnik, Shafer had named former Commissioner Julian Bolton, whom the commission had formerly sought to employ as an independent counsel of its own but, thwarted by County Attorney Kathryn Pascover‘s adverse ruling, had been forced to hire on instead as a “policy advisor.” Bolton’s involvement in the proposed opioid action thereby constituted an end run of sorts around Pascover’s ruling and Luttrell’s authority.

Whatever the outcome of the hearing in Chancellor Kyle’s court on Tuesday, the issues implicit in the mayoral-commission confrontation were certain to linger and continue to fester.   

At its Monday regular meeting, the commission overwhelmingly adopted a stern resolution presented by Commissioner Terry Roland, the language of which “directs” Luttrell and Pascover to desist from their lawsuit against the chair and commissioners. The resolution further seeks financial compensation for the commissioners’ legal expenses and, as an ultimate challenge, “prohibits the County Attorney or the Administration from entering into any litigation without the prior consent of the Commission by majority of their vote.”

Breathtaking as that resolution was (however questionable in its provenance), it fell short, in terms of its immediate effect, of another, more practical resolution that was held back from being introduced on Monday. This one, also prepared by Roland, called for a vote of no confidence in Pascover (and, by implication at least, of Luttrell) and is likely to be introduced at the commission’s December meeting, if not at a special called meeting beforehand.

Whatever the result of Kyle’s hearing, or of any formal mediation the two warring county branches might engage in by choice or by dictate, this power struggle is not even close to being over. The issue of opioid litigation is more a symbol of pre-existing intractable differences and a pretext for dealing with them than it is an animating reason for those differences.

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Politics Politics Feature

New Names on the Marquee

A longtime intimate of Harold Ford Jr. was asked the other day if the former Memphis congressman — who, as the Democratic nominee in 2006, lost a U.S. Senate race to Republican Bob Corker by a hair’s breadth — would trade the wealth and standing he has since acquired on Wall Street for the alternate biography that would have followed from a win over Corker.

The answer was quick and unequivocal: “In a minute.” He might have said, but didn’t, “In a New York minute,” since the Empire State has, for some years now, been Ford’s abode. The man, who had worked in close harness with Ford for the duration of his political career in Tennessee, went on to say, “He wanted to be president.”

Should “wanted” be “wants”? Whether it is a matter of his own uncooked seeds or just that various political talk shows want access to his expertise and/or residual star quality, Ford is a staple these days on cable TV — a frequent guest, for example, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe show, where he offers informed centrist commentary when queried on topical issues and affairs of state by the show’s host. Joe Scarborough is often peremptory with his guests but usually deferential with Ford, whom he refers to familiarly as Harold.

Upon the close of a recent colloquy with Ford, Scarborough, a former GOP congressman from Florida during the Tennessee Democrat’s own time there but an independent now and a member-in-good-standing of the resistance to Trump, smiled fondly and declared that Ford just might be the man to close the gap between right and left factions in the opposition.

The same note was also struck recently on an installment of Real Time With Bill Maher, when the eponymous host ended a group discussion that included Ford with a statement to the effect that he and the audience could be looking at the Democrat who could mount a successful challenge to Trump.

It must be said that in neither case did Ford respond with either a mock protest to the idea or a concurrence with it. With a certain modesty, he just allowed the sentiment to be expressed, while there were detectable murmurs of assent from others onstage or in the studio audience.

But how? Ford, no longer an office-holder, lacks the usual political perch from which a bid for national office could be mounted. Just after his loss in 2006, in a race that saw him featured on the cover of Time as a possible avatar of something new in national politics, Ford taught politics at Vanderbilt University in Nashville and became titular head of the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC), a center-to-right party organization that had been the launching pad for Bill Clinton‘s own ascent to the presidency.

As Democratic politics shifted leftward during those years of a George W. Bush Republican administration, the DLC ceased to be much of a force and eventually ceased to be, period. Meanwhile, too, a new and ambitious young senator from Illinois named Barack Obama had seized the limelight and, along with it, first dibs on a quest to become the first black president (an honor Ford’s supporters had long assumed to be his).

Ford’s views on fiscal matters had always tilted surprisingly rightward for a Democrat, and an African-American in particular. Indeed, that fact had been a sticking point with self-styled progressive Democrats in Tennessee and something of a brake on their ardor in Ford’s contest with Corker. But those views were consistent with Ford’s next move, which was to New York and Wall Street, where, a married man now with a family, he works as a rainmaker and managing director for the Morgan Stanley brokerage firm.

Early on in his New York residence, Ford took a flyer at a possible run for the Senate seat held there by fellow Democrat Kirsten Gillebrand, but the conservative social views he had expressed as a candidate in Tennessee worked against him in New York despite his efforts to update them in conformity with his new milieu, and he was forced to abandon his trial run.

So whither now? Lack of an office in government did not hinder Trump’s political ambitions, but Ford, for all his ubiquity on cable, is not on the same plane as a national celebrity. 

Ironically, were native son and periodic Memphis visitor Harold Ford still an official Tennessean, he might be the subject of renewed blandishments from Democrats anxious to field a candidate for the Senate seat which Ford’s former opponent Corker is abandoning. That may be happening, anyhow.

 

• Meanwhile, there is continued action in Tennessee on the Senate front and another possible blast from the past for Democrats, with no residential barrier to running.

Phil Bredesen, the state’s last Democratic governor (and last Democratic winner of any statewide office) made no bones of his wish to remain in government following his term-limited exit from office in 2010, but the hoped-for invitation from the Obama administration never came. (Bredesen had been rumored for secretary of Health and Human Services.)

Now, prodded by some of the aforesaid desperate Democrats — and notably by party moneyman Bill Freeman of Nashville — Bredesen announced Monday that, despite an earlier rejection of the idea, he is thinking seriously about a Senate run. Watch that space!

Last week,  prior to Bredesen’s statement, James Mackler, the Nashville lawyer and Iraq war vet who is already a declared Democratic candidate, was the beneficiary of a fund-raiser at the East Memphis home of Brice Timmons, where he demonstrated significant gifts as a speechmaker, articulating a lively point-by-point case against both putative GOP nominee Marsha Blackburn and President Trump. 

Mackler’s affair drew a fair number of longtime Democratic activists and donors.

On the Republican side, the former 8th District Republican congressman Stephen Fincher is serious enough about a possible Senate run — despite the presence in the race already of a like-minded conservative, 7th District U.S. Rep. Blackburn —  to have embarked on a statewide “listening tour” which took him to Memphis this week. More about that anon.