Tag: John Kasich

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Politics Politics Feature

GOP Tilt Holds in Tennessee

According to the Tennessee secretary of state’s office in Nashville, a total of 385,653 Tennesseans, 43,000 of whom were Shelby Countians, cast ballots in the early-voting period that ran from February 10th to February 23rd.  

That’s an early-voting record for the state and a 17.1 percent increase over the 2008 primaries in Tennessee, the last time that both parties had contested primaries on Super Tuesday.  

Some 257,209 early votes were cast statewide in the Republican primary, as against 128,374 in the Democratic primary. That’s roughly a two-thirds tilt toward Republicans, a piece of math that would seem to coincide with the statewide shift of voter sentiment to the GOP in recent years — a trend that accelerated with the 2008 general election, when Republicans won a majority in the state House of Representatives to go with one already achieved in the Senate. 

Two years later, with then-Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam as their nominee, the Republicans won the governorship over Mike McWherter of Jackson.

The GOP edge in early-voting stats would also seem to reflect the disproportionate amount of time that Republican presidential candidates spent in Tennessee or adjacent areas. All five remaining Republican hopefuls — businessman Donald Trump, U.S. Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, Ohio Governor John Kasich, and retired surgeon/author Dr. Ben Carson — made appearances in the state in the run-up to this week’s primary.

Kasich, Trump, and Carson were all in Memphis on get-out-the-vote business this past weekend — Kasich for a well-attended town hall at the Central Avenue Holiday Inn on Friday, Trump for one of his patented monster rallies at the Millington Jetport hangar on Saturday, and Carson for a round of visits to churches and a local veterans’ service center on Sunday.

Active headquarters operations are up and running — within a block of each other on Poplar in Midtown — for the two remaining Democratic presidential candidates, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. 

But only Clinton visited Memphis in the course of her campaign, appearing at LeMoyne-Owen College for a rally last November and speaking at two local churches — Greater Imani Church and Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church — this past Sunday. Husband Bill Clinton, the former president, addressed a large crowd at Whitehaven High School last month on his wife’s behalf.

Sanders has been rumored as coming to Memphis once or twice but has not yet shown. The senator had also been scheduled for a visit to Tennessee State University in Nashville in January but evidently changed his plans and was represented there by campaign aide Matt Kuhn of Memphis, among others.

• As expected, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell has thrown his hat into the ring as a candidate for the soon-to-be-vacant 8th District congressional seat. The mayor’s bid, which was not unexpected, was announced at a Reagan Day dinner of Madison County Republicans in Jackson on Monday night.

Luttrell instantly becomes one of the favorites in the GOP primary field, which also includes state Senator Brian Kelsey of Germantown, Shelby County Register of Deeds Tom Leatherwood, Shelby County Commissioner Steve Basar, former county commissioner and radiologist/broadcast executive George Flinn, and former U.S. Attorney David Kustoff.

While the field of Republican contenders proliferates for the seat now held by Stephen Fincher of Crockett County, who has chosen not to run for reelection, the field of  Democrats has not developed in kind.

Shelby County assistant District Attorney Michael McCusker had indicated an interest in running as a Democrat but late last week bowed out, saying, “Simply put, I do not believe I can properly balance both the demands of my career and my family life with a campaign of this magnitude.”

Luttrell’s race is good news for Shelby County Commission chairman Terry Roland, who, in something of a ripple effect, would become interim County Mayor should Roland still be chairman if Luttrell wins the congressional race and has to resign his mayoralty in January 2017. That circumstance would require that Roland’s colleagues elect him to a second straight term as chairman this September, a real possibility for someone with his deal-making and arm-twisting skills.

Whoever gets to be interim mayor (for a charter-mandated 45 days) would have a leg up when the County Commission then chooses someone to serve out the balance of Luttrell’s term.

There is an irony in that fact, in that the mayor and the chairman have been seriously at odds for months over issues relating to which branch of county government should have priority over the other. Conflicts have raged over matters ranging from the reliability of the administration’s accounting statistics to the issue of whether the commission is entitled to have its own attorney.

But there has clearly been a thaw in their relations of late. Luttrell told the Flyer last week that Roland was one of the people he consulted in advance of his decision to make the congressional race. 

And at the Shelby County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day banquet the weekend before last, the mayor, speaking from the dais, threw a verbal bouquet Roland’s way, calling him a “great chairman.” The mayor coupled that with a similar grace note for GOP Commissioner Heidi Shafer, Roland’s ally in the procedural wars with Luttrell.

Just as Roland, who has planned a race for County Mayor in 2018, might profit from a Luttrell victory in the congressional race, so would Shafer’s ambitions gain from a win by another congressional candidate, state Senator Kelsey.

Shafer, who served two consecutive terms as Commission budget chair, raised eyebrows last fall when she opted to shift to the chairmanship of the legislative affairs committee. But the change, she confided, was in line with her intent to run for the legislature at the soonest feasible opportunity. A Kelsey win for Congress, and his subsequent departure from his Senate seat, would occasion a special election and give her that opportunity.

Roland, incidentally, is in line for a possible serendipity in yet another political lottery. He has become West Tennessee chairman of the Trump campaign and was principal organizer of Trump’s giant rally in Millington last weekend. Whatever the local dividends might be from a Trump victory, either in the nomination process or for the presidency itself, Roland would likely be first in line to receive them.

• Bills relating to criminal justice are getting good play during the current legislative session in Nashville. Students from Soulsville in Memphis were on Tuesday’s schedule to testify in a hearing before the house Criminal Justice subcommittee on a bill — HB 2483, sponsored by Representative Raumesh Akbari (D-Memphis) — that would reduce fees  to have criminal records expunged after successful completion of a pretrial diversion program.

Also to be heard by the subcommittee were HB2370, which would increase penalties for assaults against correctional officers, and HB2043, which would eliminate penalties for persons substituting prayer for a child’s medical or surgical treatment.

“There have to be ramifications for what people do and say, or else they’re going to continue to do whatever they want. It’s very hard for us, like I’m sure [for] Memphis and Nashville, because we make decisions worried about whether the state is going to come in and overrule them. It’s hard to run a city that way. … Look at Nashville; for better or worse, the voters adopted an amendment about local hire, and, like it or hate it, two weeks later the state overrules it. …We’ve got to change the people.” — Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke, at a reception at the Henry Turley Company in Memphis, on the need to overhaul the membership of the current legislature.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

New Hampshire: Some Impressions

CREDIT: JB

SALEM, N.H. —

JB

A New Hampshire snowplow tries to make the world safe for democracy.

The Republicans

Yes, before it’s all over on Tuesday night, Donald J. Trump will no doubt play a significant character role in my soon-to-be-published chronicle of the New Hampshire primary (scheduled for the Flyer issue of February 18), just as he has in so much national media coverage of the presidential-election season to date.

I plan to check out his last major rally in Manchester on Monday night, primary eve, and that should allow me to hazard some sort of serious eyewitness take on The Donald.
JB

New Jersy Governor Christie (aka Brom Bones) loomed menadingly over media onlookers (and Marco Rubio) at Saturday’s debate.

But for all the polls that still have Trump way ahead of his GOP rivals — by something like 20 points, at last reckoning — I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up suffering another major embarrassment like that which befell him in his second-place finish to Ted Cruz in Iowa last week.

So far I’ve only seen him in action in Saturday night’s debate of the remaining Republican contenders in Bedford, and, in all honesty, it was difficult to see Trump as a major figure in that event, or , for that matter, retrospectively over the course of the debates and cattle-call forums to date. More about that in the aforesaid February 18 issue.

Front-runner Trump may still be (at least in New Hampshire and possibly, tenuously elsewhere), but, up until Saturday night’s debate, I thought there was a fair chance of his being overtaken in New Hampshire by Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who entered this last week of the primary on a roll, after finishing third in the Iowa caucuses and coming close there to catching Trump for the silver.
JB

Jeb Bush (like all the governors) is trying to make a point of his administrative know-how while he still can.

But that was before Rubio and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie did their impromptu version, at the weekend debate, of a well-known Washington Irving short story, the one in which schoolmaster Ichabod Crane has been dazzling everybody as a fine young dandy until village bully Brom Bones, played in this case by Chris Christie, runs him right off the reservation.

Maybe that’s overstated as a comparison to the verbal pummeling Christie, obviously desperate to keep his own diminishing hopes as a suitor alive, gave to Rubio on the score of the latter’s talking points, rote-sounding to the point of self-parody, but it was pretty brutal. A thought: anybody who went to high school in New Jersey with Christie and fancied the same girl that he did was ipso facto risking a serious ass-kicking.

But there was a serious point to the mayhem, which Christie duly made. And that was that the GOP field’s three governors — Christie, John Kasich of Ohio, and Jeb Bush of Florida — were all seasoned in actual administration rather than in the kind of parliamentary fencing that both Rubio and Cruz were skillful at.
JB

Marco Rubio threw a Super Bowl Party for his voters.

It remains to be seen, in fact, whether New Hampshire becomes a turning point in how actual voters see the matter. Up to now the gubernatorial types have been puffing hard trying to stay within hailing distance, not only of the two 
clever young Senators, but also of such untutored originals as Trump and Dr.Ben Carson.

Kasich inevitably talks a good civics-class game in public, and, after attending a Bush town hall on Sunday morning, I found myself more impressed with his comprehensiveness than I had expected to be (hey, he even acknowledged the reality of man-made climate change, albeit somewhat left-handedly in response to an attendee’s question).

The guvs are running out of time, however, and should probably all step it up, a la Christie. It should be said that Bush’s SuperPac, Right to Rise, has been running expensive and vigorous ad campaigns against Rubio and anyone else perceived as standing between Bush and the voters he wants —but who so far haven’t wanted him.

The Democrats

Now, this one’s a real doozy — a bona fide one-on-one contest between a crafty and experienced pragmatist, Hillary Clinton, and an inspiring ideologue…nay, a revolutionary, Bernie Sanders. There is little  JB

In give-and-take sessions, Hillary Clinton can be persuasive, even charming.

doubt that New Hampshire is Bernie’s, but real (if somewhat diminishing) doubt that the energies he has tapped are enough to be a concern to Hillary elsewhere as the primary season wears on.

The Democrats should really take heart that they have two candidates with significant followings, and that Thursday night’s debate between the two of them, beginning with such blazing dissonance, should have ended on a note of genuine mutual respect.

When I saw Bernie at a rally at Great Bay Community College at Portsmouth on Sunday, it was precisely what I expected — an overflow crowd not only composed of today’s youth (lots of them) but one significantly leavened by graying ex-hippies from another time.

Pundits keep comparing Vermont Senator Sanders to the charismatic Obama of 2008 or even, in his populist appeal, to Trump. But he is neither an inspiring New Thing like the former nor an exciting celebrity scofflaw like the latter. He is a bona fide revolutionary with 
JB

Bernie and friends at Portsmouth: This about says it.

a program that is authentically Socialist — free college, state-supported medical care for everybody, guaranteed living wage for all workers, sticking it to the too-big-to-fail corporations.

A program of reform that attacks economic inequality directly and isn’t, like so much liberalism of the present, siphoned off into purely social issues, a la what Marcuse called repressive desublimation. (Although Bernie endorses the social issues, too.)

Still, Hillary’s IOUs and a skill-set that shines through in extended give-and-take sessions like one I witnessed at New England College in Henniker are built for the long haul. We’ll see.

The Weather Factor

JB

Ted Cruz drew big in a blizzard. Here he’s either being stroked or being hectored. (Both things happen to him.)

Like Iowans, the residents of New Hampshire understand their importance in the quadrennial screening process for would-be American presidents — a task which culminates in mid-winter — and they are downright intrepid in dealing with the elements.

Take the massive turn-out for right-wing poster boy Cruz in Salem on Friday night — a moonless sub-freezing night with iced-over streets and several feet of freshly fallen snow for the town’s fleet of snowplows to contend against. Parking at this and all other events was hard to come by.

Monday is everybody’s last shot at making good here, and some of the Republicans may not go any further. More about that later. And, btw, this visit to the New Hampshire primary is my seventh rodeo (1992 was my first.) It never gets old.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Elephants, Newhart, and Powder Cake!

“Nobody remembers who won second place.” — Walter Hagen

That tweet came from Donald Trump a few weeks back. It returned to haunt him Monday night, when The Donald came in second to Ted Cruz in the Iowa caucuses. And once again, America was left asking the question: Why do we start this whole process in Iowa? A white, rural, fundamentalist state that was won by Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum in the previous two election cycles? It makes no sense.

But it was a weird week for everybody: An internet argument raged for days between Atlanta rapper B.o.B. and scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson over whether the earth is flat. Seriously. Apparently, the flat-earth movement is not dead, and B.o.B. isn’t buying this “the earth is round” nonsense. Actually, I suspect that if the GOP presidential candidates learned that a significant number of potential voters were flat-earthers, they’d whip out their “I’m not a scientist” line when confronted with the question.

Speaking of questionable science … Trump did the near-impossible and turned Fox News’ Megyn Kelly into a paragon of tough-minded journalism by skipping the most recent GOP debate, in which we learned that no matter the question, the answer is always: Get rid of Obamacare, kill ISIS, stop immigration, and Hillary Clinton will be a horrible president.

For example, when asked a question about Kim Davis, Chris Christie went full-9/11 and then promised he would destroy ISIS. To prevent gay marriage, I suppose? I don’t know.

We learned that soon-to-be-former-candidate Ben Carson can memorize the opening lines of the Constitution and that he stacks words like Jenga sticks. My favorite quote: “Putin is a one-horse country.”

Ted Cruz tried to make a joke about Trump, but it fell flat, and Bette Midler tweeted that he couldn’t improvise a fart at a baked bean dinner. Which was much funnier than Ted’s line. Also, Ted likes mandates. A lot.

John Kasich tried hard to bring some sense to the occasion, but he will likely soon return to his role as the other brother Daryll on Newhart.

Oh yeah, Facebook deaths this week included Joe Cocker (again), Pete Seeger (again), and Yanni, who is still alive, to the disappointment of many.

In local news, it was the week that the Grizzlies found themselves and the Tigers stayed lost. Overton Park advocates and the Memphis Zoo remained entangled in a battle over the Greensward parking issue, with the zoo showing all the grace of a tranquilized elephant running the high hurdles. Or Jeb Bush in a debate. Your call.

And Flyer reporter Toby Sells broke the story that District Attorney Amy Weirich and her assistant Stephen Jones were being hit with a censure by the Tennessee Supreme Court’s Board of Professional Responsibility for their actions in the trial of Noura Jackson. This led to an epic comment battle on the Flyer website, with one fellow suggesting that the DA’s office was a “powder cake” ready to implode.

Which reminds me of the time a Flyer intern once wrote, “It’s a doggy dog world out there.”

And indeed it is.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Zooey and Bowie

Time moves in one direction, memory in another. — William Gibson

This week, an old friend sent me a photo of myself, circa 1978. In the picture, I was thin, long-haired, and standing barefoot on the porch of an old farmhouse where we lived, just outside of Columbia, Missouri. It was a shock to see it. I don’t remember my friends and I taking many photographs, and I didn’t remember this moment, but there I was, captured on film, wearing a blue T-shirt and bell-bottom jeans. That long-ago moment happened, even though I had no memory of it.

Memory is a tricky thing, especially when the years pile up. I recently watched the documentary, Salinger, about the reclusive author of Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey, and precious few other works. J.D. Salinger was one of my favorite authors when I got out of college. I probably read his books in that farmhouse.

I learned a lot from the documentary: how Salinger was terribly impacted by his World War II combat experience and by witnessing the Nazi death camps as the war was ending, how he thereafter fixated on young women, eventually marrying three 19-year-olds at various times in his life. According to one ex-wife, he was a selfish, obsessive jerk.

My memories of Salinger’s work were mostly about his characters’ quest for authenticity, their fascination with Buddhism and Eastern philosophy, and their abhorrence of the phony, shallow people that surrounded them. I remembered the books as being brilliant. I decided I should revisit them in light of what I’d learned about the author. Probably a bad idea.

As I reread Catcher in the Rye, Franny and Zooey, and Nine Stories, I was struck by how much of Salinger’s writing was dialogue interrupted by incessant descriptions of lighting and putting out cigarettes. It seemed dated, talky, not at all how I remembered it. What once seemed authentic and edgy no longer did.

Then memory doubled down, as the news of David Bowie’s death flooded the internet on Monday. Videos of his songs were unavoidable. On social media, everyone had a story about how his music changed them in some real way. Bowie died as he lived — on the edge, pushing boundaries. His final video, Lazarus, was haunting and thought-provoking and beautiful, everything that seems to be lacking in so much of our music and culture now.

“Phony” was Holden Caulfield’s favorite word, and phony is what we’re seeing everywhere. The line between what’s authentic and what’s noisy and meaningless has seldom been more blurred. For far too many Americans, musical talent is defined by the ability to wow the judges of The Voice or American Idol. If there are Bob Dylans or Neil Youngs or Joni Mitchells out there now — and there surely are — their road to getting heard is long and hard.

Our politics, like our music, has also been corrupted by money and television ratings. Sound bites, bigotry, and controversy get you on Meet the Press to bloviate for millions of people (see Trump, Donald). Talking serious policy positions and discussing issues in an adult manner makes you John Kasich talking to 17 people in an Iowa pizza joint.

Phony is the new reality. And it’s not a pretty picture.