Tag: John DeBerry

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DeBerry’s Good Fortune, The Lookout, Commission COVID Controversy

No few local political observers were puzzled in the aftermath of November’s statewide elections by published reports that former state Representative John DeBerry had left his campaign financial account of roughly $200,000 untouched, spending none of it in his losing bid as an independent to newly elected Democratic successor Torrey Harris.

John DeBerry

Certainly that conclusion seemed somewhat sensible in the wake of DeBerry’s four-to-one loss to Harris, but the fact was that DeBerry had not gone unspoken for. Especially in the latter stages of his race, a plethora of signs boosting his re-election had appeared at strategic locations of the sprawling District 90.

It was suggested that DeBerry, whose GOP-like positions had caused him to be banished by the state Democratic Party from its ballot, had been the beneficiary of contributors from a conservative Political Action Committee on his behalf. To some degree he had, but it now develops, according to the Tennessee Lookout, that DeBerry did in fact spend from his own resources, to the tune of some $90,000, and that he would shortly be amending his previous financial disclosure report to the state Election Registry.

Going forward, the former legislator is likely to have few financial worries. As previously reported, he has been hired by Republican Governor Bill Lee as an advisor, at an annual salary of $165,000. How he’ll earn that is a little uncertain. DeBerry had a certain fame in the General Assembly for his oratorical prowess, which he used in recent years on anti-abortion and pro-voucher subjects, among others. How that penchant translates into his new advisory role remains to be seen.

• The aforementioned Lookout, which has a discernible progressive tilt, is renting space these days in the press room of the Cordell Hull building, which also houses legislators’ offices and meeting rooms, and will be covering the forthcoming legislative session from there.

Because of its arguable identity as an advocacy journal, there had been a modicum of controversy among the existing denizens of the press room, all serving established and ostensibly politically neutral periodicals, as to whether the Lookout should have a space there.

One of those considering the point rhetorically was Sam Stockard, a longtime journalist for various periodicals, most recently the Daily Memphian, for whom he rendered formidable service.

Somewhat to the astonishment of Stockard’s peers, the DM recently discontinued his role as their Capitol Hill correspondent. With the consent of his colleagues, Stockard will soldier on in Cordell Hull as the official lookout for the aforementioned Lookout.

• Even amid expectations of the imminent arrival of a COVID vaccine, the current spike of cases has raised anxiety in Shelby County. The auditorium of the Vasco Smith County Administration Building has suggested a ghost town for most of the pandemic in 2020. But it was filled to the maximum and beyond during a recent meeting at which county health department director Alisa Haushalter laid down new directives for dealing with the spike, which is currently setting new records for cases and deaths.

The new guidelines, which tightened mandates on mask-wearing, limited serving capacities, and established 10 p.m. closing times for restaurants, seemed moderate enough, at least by harsher standards applied elsewhere in the nation. But nearly 30 citizens came to the well to protest them, in sentiments ranging from sensible to troubled to outlandish.

One complainant advised the assembled commissioners and other county officials, “Listen to the mandate of the people in the referendum  provided to you daily on social media.” Another inveighed against the restrictions as specimens of “communism.” And there were numerous spurious statistics spouted, such as a claim that there had been only some 13,000 COVID deaths nationally, and only 37 in Shelby County, with the rest actually being misreported cases of diabetes, cancer, and gunshot wounds.

Most of the commentary from the audience, however, concerned the legitimate anguish, economic and otherwise, of gym proprietors and restaurant owners who felt their livelihoods to be in serious jeopardy. Commission chairman Eddie Jones patiently and sympathetically moderated the public-discussion period.

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Party Talk: Partisanship Draws Post-Election Attention

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The run-up to the statewide election of 2010 may have been, in retrospect, the first time the seismic shift in Tennessee from Democratic to Republican dominance became obvious.

Then-Governor Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, had served for the maximum two terms and was about to vacate the office. The Democratic field that year was full of worthies, as you would expect with an open seat. So was the Republican field.

There had been ample harbingers of the shift to come. In 2007, the venerable John Wilder, a nominal Democrat, had lost his speakership in the state Senate to the GOP’s Ron Ramsey, and a year later, the Republicans had captured a one-vote majority in the House.

Jackson Baker

Zach Wamp

The changeover accelerated during the 2010 governor’s race, as the Democratic candidates, noticing a diminishing lack of enthusiasm for their cause, began dropping out one by one. Memphian Jim Kyle, then-leader of the state Senate Democrats and now a Shelby County Chancellor, commented at the time, “I kept looking for Yellow Dog [committed] Democrats, and kept finding Yellow Dog Republicans.”

The race came down to three Republicans in the end — Ramsey, Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam, and Chattanooga Congressman Zach Wamp.

Haslam, regarded as the more moderate of the three, won, and Wamp, who waged a credible race as an Everyman-styled conservative, finished second. The Chattanoogan’s subsequent political history is, by the standards of Tennessee politics, somewhat unusual. Still regarding himself as a conservative and a Republican, he has been at pains to present himself as a “post-partisan truth-teller.”

Which means that Wamp and his son Weston, who has made efforts to establish a political career of his own, have regarded themselves as free to publicly criticize Donald J. Trump.

Wamp has of late been actively tweeting in favor of acceptance of the presidential election results — an act surely unique enough among Republicans to merit special mention.

A recent Wamp tweet, rebutting the no-surrender Trumpians: “What? Common [c’mon?] guys. Truth matters. Get real. Quit making stuff up and misleading people. Conservatives must stand for truth. #CountryOverParty.”

Another one, directed at current national GOP chair Ronna McDaniel, a vocal defender of the Trump holdout: “I was working my butt off to elect conservatives before you were a grown-up. Today I am ashamed of your service as Chair of the RNC. Time for you and your ilk to go. Truth matters. Your lies hurt our cause.”

And yet another: “The National Council on Election Integrity is spending $2 million on an ad urging a transition. On the board of this org: @GOP like Michael Chertoff, Dan Coats, Bill Frist, @BillHaslam and @zachwamp. Get to Work.”

Meanwhile, as was noted here last week, Tennessee’s outgoing U.S. Senator, Lamar Alexander, is — however circumspectly — advocating for acceptance of the election results and the need for an effective transition. In a recent interview with the Tennessee Journal, Alexander cautioned: “What we have to watch for is that what happened to the one-party Democratic Party doesn’t happen to the one-party Republican Party. … Middle Tennessee was grabbing all the power and leaving East Tennessee and Memphis out. … And now we’ve gone full circle, where we have a one-party system, which again is starting to concentrate power in Middle Tennessee. … We Republicans have to watch out for being self-satisfied, not broad enough in our thinking. We don’t want to develop the flaws the Democratic Party started to develop in the 1960s.”

Meanwhile, the aforesaid Democratic Party will be looking for new leadership as of January, as Mary Mancini, who has headed the state party for the last six years, is stepping down. Potential successors are beginning to emerge, and more of that anon.

Under Mancini’s guidance, Democrats were able to increase the number of competitive races, including several in Shelby County. One of their winners, new District 96 state Representative Torrey Harris, replaced former Rep. John DeBerry, who was disallowed as a Democratic candidate by the state party and forced to run as an independent. DeBerry has been compensated for his pain by receiving a new job — annual pay, $165,000 — as an assistant to GOP Governor Bill Lee. That’s outreach and then some!

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Dumping on DeBerry

The yard sign.

Are we to believe that state Representative John DeBerry, who is having to run for re-election as an independent in House District 90 because he was removed from the Democratic party ballot, is now campaigning with large yard signs boasting his picture alongside that of Donald Trump?

Or that DeBerry legitimately belongs to something called “The Republican Club,” the heading of a handout flyer that includes his picture, along with those of bona fide GOP candidates, under this description: “Eliminate Public School Funding; Remove Woman’s Choices; No Masks Needed; Pro-Life; remove Voice of Protestors; Limit Healthcare; No Unions; Easy Access fo Guns; Voter Restrictions”?

Clearly, neither DeBerry nor the actual Republican candidates pictured along with him would publicly identify with the premises of such a handout. As for the yard sign, it is highly unlikely that voters in the ultra-Democratic District 90 would respond favorably to a candidate’s so blatantly coupling himself with Republican Trump.

The handout flyer.

Both these exhibits, in other words, are clearly attempts to mislead voters, or to suggest a common purpose linking DeBerry to official Republican Party purposes. (By contrast, the other side of the handout flyer, whose authorship is not claimed by any organization, pictures Democratic officials under the heading, “Vote Democrat Up and Down the Ballot.”)

To be sure, DeBerry was expunged from the Democratic ballot earlier this year by the state Democratic Committee because of his alleged affinity with Republican views on abortion and school vouchers. It is also true that DeBerry has incurred favorable mention at Republican rallies and has at least once addressed a Republican club during this campaign year. (In doing so, however, he did not identify with the GOP but merely made a pitch for his own candidacy. As he says, “I don’t have a party label. I have to make speeches where I’m invited to.”)

The reality is that negative advertising of one sort or another is unusually prevalent in this campaign year, and it is not the province of a single political party. DeBerry is opposed on the November 3rd ballot by Democratic nominee Torrey Harris.

flip side of the handout

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Defrocked Democrat John Deberry Stars at GOP Event

CREDIT: Connie McCarter

Connie McCarter

DeBerry with Republican well-wishers

It isn’t often in an election year that a prominent declared Democrat becomes the star at an official Republican event, but that’s what happened this week when John DeBerry headed the card at a Republican rally at local GOP headquarters.

It should be remembered, of course, that DeBerry, who has represented state House District 90 in the legislature for 26 years, was formally booted off the party ballot earlier this year by the state Democratic executive committee. His offense? Years of alleged over-coziness with Republicans, especially in support of their positions on social issues such as abortion.

There is no great surprise, therefore, that DeBerry’s cause would have been taken up by Republicans. He is running for reelection as an independent, but is regarded as something of a lion by the GOP.

Hence his getting top billing at a candidate event of the East Shelby Republican Club Tuesday night. Others appearing included Patricia Possel, the party’s nominee in House District 96 and Rob White, running in District 86.

In his remarks, DeBerry clung to the identity of independent, explaining the background of his status this way: “I’m running as an independent not because the folks in my district didn’t qualify me to run. They did. Not because they hadn’t voted for me 13 times. They had. Not because they didn’t know what I was saying before. They’ve known that since 1995. But because … a group of people, many of whom have never set foot in District 90 in their lives, sat in a zoom meeting in the middle of a pandemic, [and] with 48 hours notice … removed a 26-year-incumbent from the ballot.”

He enlarged upon that point while engaging in some media-bashing: “It’s not whether or not you are Democrat or Republican, or whether you like the president or you like the challenger, but what the media has been able to do is take our eyes off the prize, what is important, the principles that are important, that made this nation in the first place — the principles that made us great, that gave us a great economy, that gave us freedom.”

Elaborating further, he underscored his anti-abortion position: “The media has been able to make us stupid, to the extent that we’re not looking at what’s really important. What’s important. What’s important is whether or not we protect life, whether an unborn child has the constitutional right to be born to take his or her first breath as a human being. I’ve always wondered how a human male and a human female can get together and have something that is not human.”

And, without specifying anybody in particular, DeBerry warned of candidates who held social and political ideas antithetical to his own. “What do these people stand for?” he asked. “What do they stand for? Are they murdering babies? Are they destroying the institution of marriage? Are they allowing those who refuse to obey the law to have more protection of the law than everybody else? Are they removing our First and Second Amendment rights?”

Clearly, DeBerry, a businessman (marketing, advertising, and public relations) and minister, is hopeful of compensating for his lack of a party label on November 3rd by putting together votes from independents and Republicans, in addition to those Democrats who remain loyal to him. He is opposed by Democratic nominee Torrey Harris, who is counting on the support of the party faithful.

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Candidates for Senate and State House are Running Hard

On the surface of things, Nashville physician Manny Sethi, GOP primary candidate for the U.S. Senate seat that incumbent Republican Lamar Alexander is vacating this year, would seem to have a long row to hoe.

Sethi, an orthopedic trauma surgeon and the son of Indian immigrants, is matched in his party’s primary against a candidate, former ambassador and state cabinet officer Bill Hagerty, who not only carries the endorsement of President Donald Trump, he was hand-picked by Trump to run for the office before he’d even announced.

Nevertheless, Sethi (a self-professed conservative, like all Republican hopefuls these days) is running hard and, in what had become a pandemic-quietened political environment, has resumed making himself visible to voters. He has begun running television ads, and last week he was on a tear — making house calls, as it were — from the state’s far eastern corner to Shelby County.

He arrived at 7:30 Saturday night at his newly opened headquarters in Cordova, to be greeted by a sizable crowd, many of whose members were wearing face masks. For those who weren’t, Sethi had a generous number of his own masks to pass out — red ones bearing his name and the office he sought.

He did not wear one himself, however — though, when speaking to the crowd, he kept an approximate version of the recommended six-foot distance. All thoughts of distancing vanished, however, as he worked his way through the crowd, pressing the flesh.

Among those traveling with Sethi was Chris Devaney, who was Governor Bill Lee’s campaign manager during his successful 2018 campaign and had served Lee subsequently as a cabinet officer. Devaney resigned that post to become campaign chairman for Sethi.

Sethi has the support of other well-known Republicans, including former congressman and gubernatorial candidate Zach Wamp of Chattanooga and Kentucky U.S. Senator Rand Paul, a former presidential candidate.

Paul’s endorsement statement struck a note that, implicitly perhaps, sums up Sethi’s campaign approach: “Tennessee deserves a true conservative who supports President Trump, is pro-liberty, and will fight out-of-control federal spending. I believe Dr. Manny is the right choice. Like me, he’s a physician, not another politician. We need more outsiders in Washington, and I’m proud to endorse him. …”

Meanwhile, the race for District 90 of the state House of Representatives is heating up. This is the position held for 26 years as Democrat by incumbent John DeBerry. DeBerry, whose close ties to Republican legislators and support for GOP policies had alienated numerous of his fellow Democrats over the years, was formally dumped from party ranks by a majority vote of the state Democratic committee back in April.

DeBerry’s exclusion occurred late enough to prevent his filing for re-election as a Republican (though he progressed no desire to change his party affiliation in any case), and the favorite in the race seemed to be Torrey Harris, a human resources officer with Shelby County government and the recipient of a good deal of support from the county’s Democratic establishment. 

Harris is not alone in the Democratic primary race, however. His two opponents there — Anya Parker and Catrina Smith — are both running hard, aided by mailers, billboards, yard signs, and other campaign paraphernalia. Parker is a salon owner, author, and executive director of Women of Brown. Smith teaches at Southwest Community College and boasts in her advertising an endorsement from TV judge Greg Mathis.

All the candidates bear watching — and none more so than the renascent DeBerry, whose ability to run for re-election was revived by a piece of legislation in the past session of the General Assembly. The measure allows an incumbent denied his party’s imprimatur (read: DeBerry) the opportunity to file as a candidate for the other party if 90 days or more away from a primary or as an independent if 90 days or more away from a general election.

DeBerry qualifies under the latter stipulation and has announced his candidacy for re-election as an independent. Given the name-recognition factor, his bid has to be reckoned as a serious one.

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DeBerry, Four Others Dumped from Democratic Ballot

John DeBerry

State Rep. John DeBerry, who has represented District 90 in the state House of Representatives for 26 years, has been voted off the August party primary ballot by the executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party. The committee, meeting online in virtual mode Wednesday, voted 41 to 18, with two abstentions, to oust DeBerry.

The board also acted to remove four other candidates from the party’s primary ballot. They were: William Frazier, in State House District 84 seat; Michael Minnis, state House district 93; M. LaTroy Alexandria-Williams, 9th Congressional District; and Tharon Chandler, U.S. Senate.

DeBerry’s comeuppance was long in coming. Democrats, including local ones, had been vocal for years about the businessman/minister’s tendency to vote as a de facto ally of Republicans on a variety of issues, notably on bills to outlaw abortion and to legalize taxpayer-supported private-school vouchers.

Michael Minnis, who filed to run for the Tennessee State House District 93 seat, was removed without a vote of the board.

The now ex-Democratic candidate expressed himself stoically about the ouster vote: “The Tennessee Democratic Party has decided that a 26-year representative that spent 12 years as a committee chairman, conducted himself with integrity, served the party well, sponsored meaningful legislation, and built bridges across the aisle to get bills passed is no longer a Democrat. And so, I’m not,” he said.

Since the two major parties have control over their own primary ballots and the deadline for filing, even as an independent, has passed, DeBerry’s only option for re-election is via a write-in campaign, a very long shot. The remaining Democrats on the ballot are Torrey C. Harris, Anya Parker, and Catrina L. Smith.

State Democratic chair Mary Mancini of Nashville said, apropos the ouster of the five candidates from the party’s ballot: “After a long meeting in which we heard challenges and evidence, we did what we thought was best to protect the Tennessee Democratic Party and the values we stand for.”

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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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Shelby Legislators in the Thick of It in Nashville

NASHVILLE — As the 2019 session of the Tennessee General Assembly concluded its first full week of activity last Friday, it became obvious that several Shelby County legislators are in the eye of the tiger. District 83 state Representative Mark White, a Republican, is chairman of the House Education Committee and, as such, is already riding that tiger.

During an introductory session of his committee last Wednesday, White scheduled two groups of presenters to testify before the committee. One group was a duo from SCORE (State Collaborative on Reforming Education), the organization founded by former U.S. Senator Bill Frist. The SCORE representatives talked about the group’s efforts to collaborate with the state’s professed educational goals and were able to cite several successes in the state’s educational achievement.

The second group, composed of two representatives from the state Department of Education, got a stormier response from committee members. The subject that dominated discussion was the “debacle” (that has been the operational term) of the state’s failure so far to implement a completely workable testing apparatus for teacher and student assessment under the TNReady formula. TNReady is the state-devised system that replaced the testing system existing beforehand under Common Core, the nationwide eductional initiative whose uniform standards became controversial for a variety of reasons, some of them frankly political.

Questar, the vendor that has the contract under TNReady — one worth $150 million over a projected five-year period — suffered a number of system breakdowns last year that made reliable testing impossible under the online methods adopted and caused the legislature to pass measures late in the 2018 session that, in effect, nullified the validity of the results.

In the course of an intense questioning by Education Committee members, the Department of Education representatives acknowledged that Questar was still due to be paid $26 million of the $30 million pro-rated annual payment called for under the state’s contract with the company and, further, was eligible to make a submission under a re-bidding process undertaken by the department. Moreover, until that process is completed, Questar remains the vendor of record.

That was too much for District 90 state Representative John DeBerry of Memphis, a Democrat. “I want to know why that company wasn’t fired on the spot,” he demanded. “The fact of the matter is that that system failed our children, failed our mission, failed the state of Tennessee. … I watched our teachers, our administrators, our students, including my own grandchild, in tears.”

The fact, explained the Department of Education representatives, was that federal regulations required that a contract be in place and that the testing debacle occurred too late to arrange a replacement company. Hence the new RFP (request for proposal) process.

In any case, chairman White will have his hands full dealing with the issue, as will the Senate Education Committee, chaired by Republican Dolores Gresham of Somerville, with two Shelby Countians, Republican Brian Kelsey and Democrat Raumesh Akbari, serving as co-chairs.

And so will Penny Schwinn, the Texan appointed by Governor Bill Lee to replace the departed Candace McQueen as commissioner of education. Schwinn was deputy education commissioner of education in Texas and — ironically (or appropriately) — experienced first-hand there the job of amending a failed assessment program that paralleled Tennessee’s experience.

• State Representative Antonio Parkinson has figured importantly both in the debates about marijuana legislation of the 2018 session and (so far, indirectly) in the general outcry over House Speaker Glen Casada‘s advice to committee chairs that they have the power to prevent broadcasting committee sessions online over social media. Parkinson was prominent in live-streaming such activities last year and his actions are regarded as one of the catalysts for Casada’s advisory.

The future effect of Casada’s edict is uncertain for several reasons, including the fact that questions have been raised as to whether the policy could be applied to citizen attendees or media members.

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Shelby Countians in New Early Education Caucus

CREDIT: JB

JB

From left: Reps. DeBerry, Ragan, and White, and Senator Gresham

NASHVILLE —Three Memphis-area legislators are key members of an education-minded group that on Wednesday announced the formation of a new bipartisan, bicameral caucus focusing exclusively on early education policy — concentrating on pre-K through third grade — as a means of enhancing the state’s ongoing efforts to improve public education in Tennessee.

The three Shelby Countians are state Representatives Mark White and John DeBerry and state Senator Raumesh Akbari. A fourth co-founder, state Senator Dolores Gresham, hails from Somerville in Fayette County. Akbari and DeBerry are Democrats; the others are Republicans. White and Gresham are the chairs of the House and Senate education committees, respectively.

White and the others, joined by state Representative John Ragan (R, of Oak Ridge), Ron Gant (R-Rossville), and Dennis Powers (D-Jacksonville), unveiled their intentions at a press conference in the Cordell Hull Building.

The new caucus as yet has no specific agenda, White said, other than to gather as much information as possible on the strategies, new developments, and best practices of early education, from the best speakers and researchers available. He said the inspiration for forming the caucus came from DeBerry, a member of the House education caucus, who, in the face of studies showing that only 37 percent of Tennessee third-graders were reading at their grade level, opined, “We’ve got to go nuclear.”

The Early Education Caucus is open to all members of the House and Senate and will hold its first post-organizational meeting on Thursday of this week, following the week’s final floor sessions.

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Politicians Call the Roll in Memphis and Nashville

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Tennesseans whose names were still circulating in the grapevine, as of mid-week, for possible appointive positions in the administration of President-elect Donald Trump were U.S. Senator Bob Corker, 7th District congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, former state Economic Development Commissioner Bill Hagerty, and former Congressman Harold Ford Jr. of Memphis. Corker is receiving steady mention as a possible Secretary of State; the others are not pinpointed for any particular office.

• A fascinating sidelight to last week’s election of officers by Democratic members of the General Assembly in Nashville was the elevation by his party peers of Memphis state Representative John DeBerry (District 90, North Memphis/Midtown) to the position of “Leader Pro Tem,” a largely honorific (or, as the Tennessee Journal termed it, “undefined”) position. DeBerry, a businessman/preacher with a distinct talent for oratory, is a former chairman of the legislative Black Caucus who often votes with House Republicans and has for years been on the hit list of Democratic progressives. He was most recently opposed by activist Tami Sawyer, who gave him a serious run for the money in this year’s party primary.

Though he did not attend the reorganizational meeting last Friday in Nashville, DeBerry was nominated for the Leader Pro Tem position by fellow Memphian Karen Camper, who was quoted as saying DeBerry, a House member for a quarter century, had been “on the sidelines” of party activity for some years and needed to be “pull[ed] back in.”

DeBerry’s opponent in the intra-party balloting was Rep. Sherry Jones of Nashville, whom he defeated in secret-ballot voting.

Representative Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley was reelected House minority leader by unanimous vote of the caucus. Also reelected unanimously was Representative Mike Stewart of Nashville as caucus chair.

Besides DeBerry, other Memphis Democrats and their caucus positions are: Joe Towns, assistant minority leader; Raumesh Akbari, House floor leader; Antonio Parkinson, caucus vice chair; Karen Camper, caucus treasurer; and Larry Miller, one of three Democratic members of the legislative joint fiscal committee. 

Other party members elected were  JoAnne Favors of Chattanooga, minority whip; Harold Love Jr. of Nashville, caucus secretary; and Johnny Shaw of Bolivar; and Brenda Gilmore of Nashville, the other two Democratic members of the legislative joint fiscal committee.

DeBerry was one of three General Assembly members in a “legislative roundtable” scheduled for Wednesday of this week in Memphis by the National Federation of Independent Business. The other legislators on the bill for the luncheon event, held at Regions Bank on Poplar, were state Senator Lee Harris of Memphis and state Representative Ron Lollar of Bartlett. Moderator of the event was to be NFIB state director Jim Brown.

 

• Two Republicans familiar to Memphians were among the three vying last Saturday for the position of state party chairman in Nashville. The winner, by a 33 to 26 margin over current state GOP executive director Brent Leatherwood of Nashville, was Scott Golden, a Jackson resident who has served as a district staffer for both outgoing 8th District Congressman Stephen Fincher and current 7th District Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn.

Running third in that contest was former Memphian Bill Giannini, now of Nashville, who served a term as chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party.

• The Shelby County Commission spent a good deal of time on Monday not making up its mind on pending business, but it did resolve one hanging matter — that of an ordinance to liberalize penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana.

The ordinance, proposed by Van Turner and Reginald Milton, would have paralleled measures passed by the Memphis and Nashville city councils, giving law enforcement officers an option to misdemeanor charges — that of writing $50 tickets for possession of a half ounce or less.

On its third and final reading, the proposed county ordinance failed by a vote of four to six, with votes in support coming from Memphis Democrats Turner, Milton, Walter Bailey, and chairman Melvin Burgess. 

One opponent, Republican Terry Roland of Millington, contended that a vote in favor would prejudice the chances of  passing legislation favorable to medical marijuana in the General Assembly. Another, GOP member David Reaves of Bartlett, said that sentiment in favor of liberalizing marijuana penalties was growing, even in his suburban district, but his constituents opposed the measure.

In any case, state Attorney General Herbert Slatery has opined that state law would prohibit any local jurisdiction from proceeding with such legislation on its own.

Having to deal finally with a done deal, co-sponsor Milton got one matter off his chest. He proclaimed that the debate on the ordinance, from beginning to end, had largely been an “Alice in Wonderland” saga. He cited a ranking member of the Sheriff’s Department, who had told members that a half-ounce bag of marijuana (apropos of God knows what) would set a buyer back by $32,000.

Milton held up a cellophane baggie filled with chopped-up greenish leaves (presumably oregano) and wagged it as an example of the “fantasy” that “everybody here” knew better than. (In fact, one way or another, the going street rate for such an amount of marijuana would be closer to $200 than $32,000.)

“I’m right, and you’re wrong,” Milton declaimed to opponents of his measure. Then he let the baggie, and the matter, drop.