Tag: Lamar Alexander

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Politics Politics Feature

It’s a New Year in Politics, Too

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Editorial Opinion

Call Us Pollyanna …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

A Surprise Consensus in Tennessee Government

Events in Tennessee state government were on center stage this week, with the convening of the Tennessee General Assembly just around the next turn of the calendar.

The big political/governmental news of the week was, beyond doubt, Governor Bill Haslam‘s announcement of a provisional agreement with the federal government on an alternative Tennessee plan for Medicaid expansion in Tennessee.

The plan, which Haslam called “Insure Tennessee,” would, he said, “leverage” Medicaid-expansion money under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in a two-year “pilot program” that would provide coverage for the currently uninsured and prepare them for eventual “transition to commercial health coverage.”

Haslam said the agreement with the federal government was “verbal” at this point, but that a formal request for waiver from standard ACA requirements would follow, with expectations of approval.

Under the terms of legislation passed in the last session of the Tennessee General Assembly, any agreement reached between the governor and the federal government on Medicaid expansion must be approved by both houses of the legislature. Haslam said he would work diligently to achieve that approval in a special session to be held in January, in advance of the regular 2015 session of the General Assembly.

If approved, the plan apparently would, like standard Medicaid expansion, make the state eligible for millions of dollars in new funding under the ACA, a result that the state’s hospital executives, many of them facing critical shortages, have been aggressively lobbying for.

Initial response to the plan on the part of Tennessee’s public officials was overwhelmingly positive on both sides of the party line, with Tennessee’s two Republican U.S. Senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, quickly conferring their approval, as did the state’s ranking Democrats, 5th District Congressman Jim Cooper of Nashville and 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen of Memphis (though Cohen was one of several Tennessee Democrats to deplore the GOP-dominated state government’s long delay in responding to the proffer of substantial federal funding.

At stake has been millions of dollars in potential aid to fund medical coverage for indigent patients through TennCare, the state’s version of Medicaid (itself, ironically, established a generation ago through a waiver agreement with the federal government during the administration of the late former Governor Ned Ray McWherter).

Several of Tennessee’s hospitals have been experiencing severe financial difficulties, and they, along with prominent members of the state’s business establishment, have been lobbying hard for a change of mind by Haslam, who, confronted by widespread hostility by his fellow Republicans in the legislature to what they called Obamacare, had declined to accept funding for Medicaid expansion in 2013.

Haslam said at the time that he would attempt to reach an agreement with the Obama administration for an alternative Tennessee expansion plan that deviated from strict ACA requirements. He had subsequently been in protracted negotiations with officials of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to obtain such a waiver.

At his announcement/press conference on Monday, Haslam told reporters that federal officials had basically pre-approved a waiver for the plan — which must first, however, be approved by both houses of the Tennessee legislature under terms of a restrictive statute passed last year.

The chances for that happening were decidedly enhanced by what seemed an open-minded response to the Governor’s plan from Lieutenant Governor/State Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey.

Said Ramsey on Monday: “When a state has an opportunity to take power away from the federal government and institute real conservative reform, that is an opportunity that must be taken seriously. Governor Haslam has negotiated a deal, which returns tax dollars back to Tennessee while using conservative principles to bring health insurance to more Tennesseans. I look forward to sitting down with my fellow legislators to take a hard look at what has been negotiated to make sure that the final deal, which must be approved by the legislature, is in the long-term financial interest of Tennessee.”

Insure Tennessee does indeed cater to Republican free-market shibboleths. It proposes to use the additional federal Medicaid funds to broaden coverage for the state’s uninsured through their employers’ existing health insurance plans or by requiring modest co-pays and premiums for those accessing the aid through TennCare. The plan allows for a reduction in the latter costs if recipients pursue preventive measures and other “healthy choices.”

Democratic legislators indicated a willingness to fall in line with the governor. Typical was the response of the Democratic state House leader, state Representative Craig Fitzhugh (Ripley), who promised to “stand with” Haslam and expressed “my personal thanks to Governor Bill Haslam and the Obama administration for working together on this plan.” 

And, as noted previously in this space, Democrats are in a position to provide Haslam with backup in the governor’s professed intention to resist efforts to repeal the Hall Income Tax on the part of GOP ultra-conservatives  — several of whom, no doubt, will endeavor to thwart or amend the Insure Tennessee plan during the forthcoming special session.                

• Given the disproportionate extent of GOP control in the General Assembly — 28 of 33 members of the state Senate, 73 of 99 in the state House — it would be misleading to use the word “bipartisan” in anticipation of the coming legislative session, but optimists would surely be within their rights to hope for a greater degree of political moderation than has been the case in the past several sessions.

One possible indication of that was the easy reelection (57-15) in the House Republican Caucus last week of state Representative Beth Harwell (R-Nashville) as House Speaker over state Representative Rick Womick (R-Rockvale), a Tea Party Republican. Yet another was a vote in the state Senate Republican Caucus to replace Germantown conservative Brian Kelsey on the Fiscal Review Committee with the relatively moderate Maryville Republican Doug Overbey. 

And even Kelsey, a possible thorn in Haslam’s side on the Medicaid and Hall Income Tax issues, struck a moderate note in his announced co-sponsorship with Democratic state Representative John DeBerry (D-Memphis) of a measure that would require law enforcement agencies in Tennessee to adopt policies outlawing racial profiling.

Moreover, there had been a decisive (47-17) vote by the state Republican Executive Committee the week before to reelect as state GOP chairman the establishment-oriented Chris Devaney over Tea Party-leaning Joe Carr, the outgoing state representative from Lascassas who unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Lamar Alexander for the U.S. Senate.

 

•  Tennessee Democrats, meanwhile, were engaged in an effort to decide on a new state chair for their party, to succeed Roy Herron, who is stepping down. All five contenders for the chairmanship — which will be awarded by the state Democratic Executive Committee in Nashville in January — were in Memphis on Saturday making their pitch before an audience of state committee members and other interested Democrats at LeMoyne-Owen College.

Appearing, in sequence, were Mary Mancini of Nashville, former executive director of Tennessee Citizen Action and a recent candidate for a state Senate seat;  Terry Adams, the Knoxville attorney who ran a close second to fellow Knoxvillian Gordon Ball in this year’s Democratic primary for U.S. Senate; Gloria Johnson, also of Knoxville, a long-term party activist and current chair of the Knox County Democrats, who was narrowly unseated from the state House this year by a Republican opponent; Lenda Sherrell of Monteagle, who unsuccessfully challenged 4th District GOP Congressman Scott Desjarlais; and Larry Crim of Nashville, chairman of the nonprofit Democrats United for Tennessee and a recent candidate for the U.S. Senate nomination.

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Politics Politics Feature

How to Fail in Politics 101

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Toward the end of his just-concluded campaign for U.S. Senate, Democratic candidate Gordon Ball, son of a moonshiner (that was one of his never-fail best self-descriptions), a self-made multi-millionaire Knoxville lawyer who made his money and his name suing polluters and greedy corporations, altered his presentation in a perplexing way.

To back up: Ball had always been determined, as he put it, to take a broom against the feckless Washington, D.C., power community that he saw, in the original and negative sense of the term, as so much rascal flats. He would fulminate against the major inhabitants of this gone-wrong Potemkin Village, particularly Republican opponent Senator Lamar Alexander, whom he castigated for what was made to sound like an ill-gotten $22 million net worth, including $620,000 reaped from a $1 investment in the now-defunct Knoxville Journal. “A finder’s fee,” Ball scornfully quoted Alexander.

“If you want to change things in Washington, you’ve got to change the people,” Ball said. And he would name names of those who had to go — Mitch McConnell, the would-be Senate majority leader from Kentucky who was drenched with oil and gas and Koch money and would do nothing but obstruct any modest agenda put forth by Democrats, and Alexander, who opposed minimum wage and women’s rights and veterans’ rights and so much else, and needed to go home and tend to his garden of greenbacks.

So far, so good, I thought, as I heard all this at a morning stop last week at the IBEW headquarters on Madison. He’s coming on as a populist and demonizing the opposition and pitching to his base. But afterward, when we reporters had a chance for some private words with Ball, something he’d said on the road that I’d read in somebody else’s coverage kind of chafed at me, not in an ideological sense but in purely practical terms. So I had to ask.

Had Ball actually included on this list of desirable purgees the name of Harry Reid, the bespectacled ex-pugilist from Searchlight, Nevada, who’d risen to become Senate Democratic Majority Leader and who was constantly at battle with Senate Republicans determined to filibuster every proposal brought by the Obama administration?

Instead of reading my question as a rhetorical one, maybe even an implied rebuke (What’s to gain from attacking your own party leadership?), Ball took what I’d said as a prod. He’d overlooked Reid, whom, in various articles along the trail, he’d said he wouldn’t be able to vote for as leader. He apologized for having omitted Reid’s name at the IBEW rally and added it back in. “Yes, let’s include Harry Reid in there, too. We need to get rid of Mitch McConnell and Lamar Alexander and Harry Reid!”

It scanned wrong with my sensors, mainly because it diluted Ball’s respectably populist message, already nudged a little bit toward that shadowy, ill-defined reform constituency — the Tea Party — that had repudiated Common Core, as had any number of classroom teachers, who disliked the standardized tests and career-binding teacher scores that came with it as heartily as the Tea Party folks hated what they saw as governmental over-reach.

These were the folks who contained so much of the undecided vote that Ball needed in order to make up the gap shown in the final Middle Tennessee State University poll — reputedly showing Alexander (the same Alexander who netted only 49 percent of the Republican primary vote in August) with 42 percent, Ball with 26, and the rest, 32 percent, undecided. “I’ve got to get almost all that undecided,” Ball would tell me on election eve.

We can all do the math and see how much of it would have had to break Ball’s way — and, since this is being read after the election, we can now see for ourselves how much of it did break toward the challenger.

Something tells me that the Knoxville Democrat’s rhetorical throwing of his current party leader, Reid, on the same trash heap as Alexander and McConnell was worth very little to his hopes and, indeed, was likely counter-productive.

I am sure there are extant studies on the efficacy of this kind of acrobatic tactic, in which a candidate separates from his party, or from what he perceives as the unpopular national version of it, in hopes of ultimately gaining both re-entry into his party’s good graces and –more importantly — immunity from its adversaries.

Maybe even their toleration. Heck, maybe even their votes!

If there aren’t such studies, there should be, and, meanwhile, with a conviction based entirely on my intuitive sense, coupled with case after case of actual results. I say this sheep-in-wolf’s-clothing maneuver is a loser, always.

First, there is no reason to believe, literally no reason, that a disparagement of some symbolic party colleague whom one’s political adversary has made an arch villain will gain a single vote for oneself. Those who would agree with the disparagement are already on the other side, for that and any number of other assorted reasons.

It’s just a guess, but I believe a candidate would do equally well with the opposition voter by heaping rhapsodic praise on the party colleague whom the other guys have demonized. A wash, is my guess.

On the other hand, he would certainly get better results with his own party base and ideological constituency with the latter course, which might have the salvific effect of rousing them to solidarity and sincere effort on one’s behalf.

Another case in point — speaking of McConnell — is that of Alison Lundergan Grimes, the Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in Kentucky who, for much of the past year, had been running neck-and-neck with the venerable GOP Senate leader.

Here of late, however, McConnell seemed to be pulling away a bit, and either as partial cause or maybe just as an objective correlative to that fact, Grimes has apparently tried to join McConnell on the anti-Obama bandwagon, refusing four times in a brief televised performance to say she had voted for Obama for president.

As Memphis Leftwing Cracker blogger Steve Steffens noted with some dismay, along with fellow Democratic blogger Rick Maynard, Grimes had demonstrably been a convention delegate of Obama’s — something requiring a positive embrace and avowal of a candidate on a relatively public scale. And now she was denying him? Thinking … what?

“This is why we can’t have nice things,” Steffens and Maynard both concluded.

I am one who thinks current Tennessee Democratic Party Chairman Roy Herron is doing good work, and I always thought he was a conscientious, effective state Senator, but, while I recognized the head of steam Republican Stephen Fincher of Frog Jump had going in the 8th District congressional race of 2010, I thought Herron, a longtime fixture in the area,  was competitive until he began pandering to what he perceived as his home folks’ animus against national Democrats, and ended up repudiating the then-Democratic House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, whom he vowed to vote against.

Same arithmetic as with all other such cases: No gain from the opposition camp, while there is a palpable unease in one’s own party ranks, resulting in resentment, resignation, and fatalism that probably cost votes.

And need we mention the 2006 U.S. Senate race, in which the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate, Harold Ford Jr., made a concerted effort to dissociate himself not only from national party luminaries but from established party talking points on issues such as gay rights, a Draconian bankruptcy bill, opposition to the war in Iraq, and even from the party label itself.

At his headquarters opening in Memphis in 2006, he declaimed at one point, “I’m not a Democrat running up to Washington yelling ‘Democrat, Democrat, Democrat!”

And sure enough, Ford, who in other ways was running what may have been the last truly competitive statewide Democratic race against a Republican, lost to Republican Bob Corker and never got a chance to go up thataway yelling “Democrat, Democrat, Democrat” or “Blue Dog, Blue Dog, Blue Dog” or whatever other mutated and minimized form of party identity he was willing to own up to. 

Maybe “Wall Street, Wall Street, Wall Street”? That’s where he works today, having thus far failed to rekindle popular excitement for another political candidacy, here, there, or anywhere.

Radical thought: Maybe it actually pays to embrace one’s political party, its principles, and its personnel. Maybe that’s how you get elected.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said (October 39, 2014) …

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Toby Sells’ story, “Confederate Heritage Groups Vow to Fight Park Name Changes” …

Health Sciences Park, Mississippi River Park, and Memphis Park. Good Lord, how about just Tree Park, Grass Park, and Wino Park (let’s be real). Or since the Confederates surrendered Memphis after 15 minutes of battle, how about Slam Bam Thank You Ma’am Park.

CL_Mullins

About Les Smith’s At Large column, “Hot Water” …

Les Smith incorrectly stated that Roland McElrath, MLGW controller, was the man behind the prepared rate hike. Then he continued by criticizing Mr. McElrath’s previous record as a public servant. Smith complained of being blindsided with a rate hike. Smith’s article deserves a response to set the record straight.

Up until mid-September, we at MLGW were confident that we would not need to ask for a rate increase for next year in the electric, gas, and water divisions. Then on September 16th, Cargill announced it would close its plant on President’s Island on January 1, 2015.

Water utility costs reflect 84 percent fixed costs and only 16 percent variable or consumption costs. Since Cargill is by far our largest potable water customer, I knew as soon as Cargill made the closure announcement that MLGW could not sustain the $2 million per year loss of revenues to pay for fixed expenses. Absorbing the loss of Cargill revenues was not an option. I knew a small rate increase would be needed. How small? Thirty-five cents (35 cents) per month for the average residential customer. This represents a 2.3 percent increase.

Despite this increase, MLGW’s water rates will still be the second-lowest of any major city in this country. In fact, MLGW’s combined electric, gas, and water rates will remain the lowest of any major city.

The announcement for the need for this small rate increase was appropriately made during our budget presentation to the MLGW Board on October 9th. Despite our breathtakingly low combined utility rates, MLGW is in excellent financial shape. MLGW has relatively little debt, excellent bond ratings, and a properly funded pension plan.

Our governing principle at MLGW is to always do that which is in the best interest of our customers as a whole. Although this includes keeping our rates low, it sometimes also includes a rate increase. It’s called fiscal responsibility.

Jerry Collins Jr., President & CEO

Memphis Light, Gas & Water

Les Smith incorrectly stated that I was the man behind the proposed rate hike. Then he continued by criticizing my previous record as a public servant by using inaccurate and faulty information to make his point. As the former finance director for the city of Memphis, I am compelled to address the inaccuracies in his article.

According to the city’s June 30, 2012 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (CAFR), the city ended its fiscal year 2012 with a $5 million general fund operating surplus, not a $17 million deficit. This surplus was generated even after paying the employee bonuses referred to in Smith’s commentary.  

 There’s also another factual error. 

MLGW’s estimated revenue loss from the closure of the Cargill facility is $2.2 million, not $4 million.

As evidenced by our breathtakingly low combined utility rates, MLGW is committed to providing high quality, reliable service to our customers in the most cost efficient manner possible while also maintaining the financial integrity of the organization.

Roland McElrath, CPA, CMFO

About Jackson Baker’s Politics column, “Alexander, Bell in Heated Senate Race” …

Senator Lamar Alexander is at is again. He would have us forget he was the first secretary of education to suggest common core type standards. He backs the right to work law. He wants to kill Obamacare, but doesn’t say what would happen to the thousands of citizens who would lose their insurance, the ones with pre-existing conditions or the workers whose employers who do not offer health insurance.

Alexander has never voted against a pay raise for himself, but abhors the right of working people to organize. His “unselfish service” to the people of Tennessee has allowed him to become a multi-millionaire. Since entering government, he and his family have never been without a paycheck, vacation time, or health care, yet he is opposed to all those benefits for the poor and middle-class.

Jack Bishop

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Tennessee Senate Candidates Hit Snags

As has become increasingly evident — and was predictable from the start — the November 4th election ballot in Shelby County lacks the punch and volatility that was so evident in the August 7th “big ballot” election, with its myriad of party primaries, judges’ races, and eccentric personalities. 

The one possible marquee race for local and statewide voters, that for the U.S. Senate, saw both candidates — the highly favored Republican incumbent, Lamar Alexander, and his Democratic challenger, Knoxville attorney Gordon Ball — stumbling this week in their efforts to gain momentum and positive public attention.

Alexander, it will be remembered, polled only 49.5 percent — a minority — of the total Republican primary vote on August 7th, a circumstance that prompted him to go hat-in-hand last month in search of support from his closest challenger, Tea Party-backed state Representative Joe Carr of Lascassas.

Carr polled 40.6 percent of the primary vote, despite having spent only $1.1 million on his campaign against Alexander’s $7.1 million, and despite restricting his efforts essentially to his Middle Tennessee bailiwick. Carr campaigned very little in East Tennessee and was basically a no-show in populous Shelby County, home of another challenger, wealthy radiologist/businessman George Flinn, who polled 5 percent of the vote as a late entry.)

At their post-election meeting in September, at a Cracker Barrel restaurant on Carr’s home ground in Rutherford County, Alexander asked for his runner-up’s support but failed to get anything more than an assertion from Carr that he would “think about it.” The TNReport.com news site reported this week that Carr, having duly thought about it, still isn’t ready to endorse the GOP incumbent.

“It’s not up to me. It’s up to Senator Alexander. The ball’s in his court,” Carr was quoted as saying. Reportedly, he is insisting that the senator, who has issued a series of ambiguous statements about the hot-button issues of Common Core and immigration, be more explicit in opposing the former and standing against any variant of amnesty on the latter. (For what it’s worth, Democrat Ball has done just that.)

Apparently, there are other obstacles to a rapprochement between Alexander and his former primary challenger. Carr is said to be have been resentful that Alexander failed to return “five or six” would-be concession calls from him, beginning on election night, and made a point of extracting an apology from Alexander on that score when the two of them met in September.

Carr was evidently rankled also by a poll released shortly before the August election that misleadingly showed Senator Alexander leading his challenger by 30 percent.

If Alexander was having his problems in squaring personal and political accounts with Carr (and, by implication, with hardcore Tea Partiers), Ball remained luckless in his attempts to get Alexander to even talk directly about their differences on a debate platform (though the two will appear, along with other statewide candidates, in a Farm Bureau forum two weeks from now).

The Democrat had troubles of another kind, too, stemming from a Buzzfeed.com report that Ball’s campaign website consisted almost entirely of boilerplate cribbed verbatim from the published platforms of other Democratic Senate candidates  — including Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

One example of many may suffice. 

Warren: “We need to put people to work rebuilding our roads and bridges, upgrading our water systems, teaching our kids, and protecting our communities — earning paychecks and keeping Massachusetts growing.”

Ball: “That’s why it is so important that we get people back to work right now, rebuilding our roads and bridges, upgrading our water systems, teaching our kids, and protecting our communities, earning paychecks and keeping Tennessee and America growing.”

Buzzfeed’s disclosure of this and the numerous other examples of cloned prose on Ball’s website forced an embarrassed response from the candidate (“I had no idea that this material was cut and pasted on my website from other sources.”) and a righteously phrased demand from state Republican Chairman Chris Devaney that Ball exit the race: “Gordon Ball, with nearly everything on his website plagiarized, should do the same and halt his fraudulent campaign today.”

Trace Sharp, a spokeswoman for the Ball campaign, would later set forth the obvious, that a campaign staffer, since departed, had assembled a series of statements on issues from various sources that Ball could concur with and placed them on the candidate’s website.

To reprise Horatio in Act One of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “Needs no ghost come from the grave to tell us this.” Virtually all candidates, all of the time, lean heavily on boilerplate prepared by staffers for their public statements. Unlike major addresses, which usually are designed specifically for candidates by their speechwriters (or improved by the candidates themselves), talking points and website pronouncements hardly every reflect much originality.

To be blunt, it is highly doubtful that most of the aforesaid sources for the Ball website — Senators Manchin, Brown, Hagan, and Warren — were the actual authors of the remarks cribbed by the unidentified Ball staffer. And it surely wouldn’t be that difficult to uncover remarks made by Republicans — Alexander and Carr, say, on the evils of the “Obama agenda” — that displayed a remarkable sameness.

Still and all, this week’s disclosure was a setback for Ball, as Carr’s latest blowing-off of Alexander was for the Senator.

 

• But, if the U.S. Senate race may so far have failed to inspire many Tennesseans, other issues on the November 4th ballot — notably four constitutional amendments — were beginning to gain traction.

A case in point is Amendment One, which would essentially nullify a 2000 state Supreme Court decision that struck down the state’s power to impose significant restrictions on the right to abortion — going further in many ways than the U.S. Supreme Court itself had.

The amendment reads: “Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion. The people retain the right through their elected state representatives and state senators to enact, amend, or repeal statutes regarding abortion, including circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or when necessary to save the life of the mother.”

Proponents of the amendment say that it merely makes the Tennessee Constitution neutral on abortion. Opponents say it is designed to roll back the hard-won rights of women and cite the last prepositional phrase, from “including” on, as being especially ominous.

Resisters to Amendment One had back-to-back meetings this week. The Tennessee Democratic Party held a Tuesday night fund-raiser at the Racquet Club to oppose the amendment, and Planned Parenthood was host for a scheduled “Clergy Perspective” event opposing the amendment at Evergreen Presbyterian Church.

Adherents were also active. Two examples: Proponents of Amendment One were conspicuous in passing out literature at the two-day Bartlett Festival at Freeman Park this past weekend, and an organization called Concerned Women for America held a press conference in Nashville on Tuesday to announce results of a poll purporting to show Tennesseans favor the amendment.

All of this is tip-of-the-iceberg. Clearly, much more public activity is coming on this issue, as, for that matter, on Amendment Two, which establishes a method of selecting state appellate judges via gubernatorial appointment, coupled with legislative ratification; and on Amendment Three, which would enact an explicit constitutional ban on a state income tax.

 

• Some 70 attendees at a “legislative forum” held by the Tennessee Nurses Association (TNA) last week got more gratification than they may have expected from a cross-section of public officials and candidates.

The number one item on the TNA’s wish list seemed to be a call for legislation in the next session of the General Assembly that would confer “full practice authority” on several categories of advanced nurse practitioners. 

Such authority, sanctioned in only 16 states, would grant the qualifying nurses latitude, independently of supervising physicians, to write prescriptions, make medical assessments, order tests, and make referrals. 

Among those endorsing the request were U.S. Representative Steve Cohen, a Democrat; state Senate candidate Flinn, a Republican; Democratic state Representatives Karen Camper of Memphis and Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley; and Tea Party U.S. Senate candidate Tom Emerson.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Looking for Lamar Alexander

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Gordon Ball, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senator, was in Memphis last week, and he sat down for a lengthy interview on his campaign and his hopes for an upset victory over incumbent Republican Senator Lamar Alexander.

As Ball noted, Alexander had eked out his renomination on August 7th, polling slightly less than 50 percent of the total vote in a Republican primary in which he was opposed by state Representative Joe Carr, a Tea Party supported Middle Tennessean, and George Flinn, the multi-millionaire Memphis physician/businessman.

Carr, who finished strong with 40 percent of the total vote, had gone unmentioned for most of the primary campaign, Ball noted, but toward the end of the race, Alexander had begun making formal attacks on his main challenger by name. “When he started mentioning Joe Carr, it was a sign that things were getting tight for Lamar,” Ball said.

Ball has challenged Alexander to a debate but doesn’t expect that to happen. “Lamar’s going by the incumbent’s playbook. He’s not going to debate me. He will never mention me, unless it gets close.”

From that standpoint, the Democratic nominee can take heart from a response to his candidacy this week by the state Republican Party, which has not only mentioned him but has incorporated his name in a brand-new website entitled ObamaBallAgenda.com.

According to the site, Tennessee faces a veritable liberal onslaught this fall in the form of various nationally sanctioned candidates and causes. And, “at the top of the ticket, will be a man who would be one more vote for Barack Obama’s harmful agenda — Gordon Ball. Mr. Ball, a liberal personal injury lawyer from Knoxville, will only serve to empower Obama and strengthen Washington’s stranglehold on our economy.”

Ball sees the relationship between himself and the national Democratic Party quite differently. Noting the disinclination of the Obama presidential campaign to pump much in the way of resources into Tennessee during the 2008 and 2012 races, the Knoxvillian said, “I think the national Democratic Party has written Tennessee off. That’s not good for the state.” But he shrugged and said, “That’s all right with me. We’ll run without them.”

A corollary to what Ball sees as a lack of interest in Tennessee from national party sources is the fact that the Tennessee Democratic Party itself is not exactly in the pink of political health. Rather famously, the party has, within the past decade, lost control of the governorship and the General Assembly, becoming little more than a token minority in both the state House and the state Senate. 

And, for the second time in the past two statewide elections, Tennessee Democrats have failed to mount a serious challenge in a major statewide race. In 2012, the party suffered the embarrassment of seeing Mark Clayton, an off-brand candidate with alleged membership in an anti-gay hate group, become its nominee against GOP Senator Bob Corker in an almost unnoticed Democratic primary.

And in 2014, via yet another back-burner primary, the Democratic candidate who emerged as the party’s nominee for governor, to oppose well-heeled incumbent Republican Bill Haslam, is one Charlie Brown, a retired construction worker from Oakdale, Tennessee, whose victory in a large but largely anonymous primary field owed much to his name, redolent of a well-known comic-strip character and alphabetically first on the Democratic primary ballot. 

With the wry grin that seems an innate part of his persona, Ball commented, “I wish I had his name recognition.”

But the fact is, Ball represents what both Democrats and Republicans recognize as a serious political possibility. He and fellow Knoxville attorney Terry Adams conducted a primary race that, in the quality of its rhetoric and intensity, was something of a throwback to the now vanished time when Democrats ruled the state. Their race went down to the wire, with Ball, considered the centrist in the race, prevailing on August 7th with 36.5 percent of the Democratic primary vote, against 35.6 percent for Adams, an unabashed liberal.

The two Democrats had actually agreed on most issues — including a need for an increase in the minimum wage, support for parity pay for women and the pro-choice position on abortion, provision of equal opportunity for the gay community, and full-throated backing of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and of Medicaid expansion in Tennessee, where, Ball says, some 160,000 people can’t get medical care and 28 hospitals are in danger of closing for lack of the ACA-provided Medicaid-expansion funds.

He and Adams had differed most notably on Ball’s espousal of a flat tax, which Adams considered regressive and counter to the needs of working people and a possible barrier to his post-primary support of Ball. Again, the Ball shrug — indicating, in this case, flexibility on the issue. “We need tax reform. I don’t think anybody disagrees. I just want to be in middle of that debate. And I’m for whatever helps the middle class remain strong and viable and that can raise money to pay off our $17 trillion debt.”

In any case, Adams wasted little time climbing aboard the Ball bandwagon and now serves as his former opponent’s East Tennessee co-chair.

One edge that helped Ball in his primary campaign was the wealth amassed during a long and successful legal career. To a certain degree, he can self-finance, as he did during the primary, shelling out some $400,000 for TV ads. He knows, however, that Alexander himself is flush and suspects that Governor Bill Haslam, scion of his family’s Pilot truck-stop fortune and beneficiary of a hugely successful GOP fund-raising campaign, will help the GOP out-spend him.

The point gnaws at Ball. “I’m going to make a strong statement,” he said: “This state is controlled by the Haslam family. Think about it. They own Bob Corker. They own Lamar Alexander. And they have the governor’s seat. Now what else do they want? … It’s just not right that one group of people controls this state. If you don’t think that’s happening, you’re living on another planet.”

Citing polls by Rasmussen and The New York Times that show something like a 47 percent to 32 percent edge for Alexander, Ball predicts the kind of shrinking in the incumbent’s margin that occurred late in the Republican primary, and partly for the same reason — distrust for the incumbent among Tea Party Tennesseans.

“We don’t agree on every issue, obviously, but they see Lamar as being for Common Core [in education] and amnesty [on the immigration issue]. They’re against Common Core and amnesty, and so am I.”

Ball is buoyed by hopes of making inroads among such disaffected Republicans and by what he sees as a largely united Democratic Party (though certain well-known Democrats like former Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell and former Congressman John Tanner — “lobbyists now,” Ball says dismissively — are backing Alexander.)

He has worked up a good case of scorn for Alexander, whom he once supported and whom he now sees as having fallen ito irrelevance from what had been a valuable public career. “How do you go from a job that pays $150,000 to being worth $40 million?” he asks rhetorically. “He just needs to take his money and go home.”

Ball gibes at the incumbent Senator, who back in 1978, dressed in a plaid shirt, had based his campaign for Governor on a walk across the state.”  Things — and Alexander — have changed, Ball maintains.

“He said in the primary that citizens of the state of Tennessee could ask him questions if they saw him walking down the street. Well, I’ve been in Tennessee for 65 years, and I’ve never seen him walking down the street. If I ever do see him, I’ve got some questions for him.”

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From the Editor: Endorsement Gate

“Lamar was proven right.” That’s the tagline at the end of one of Senator Lamar Alexander’s political ads. It follows a clip of Alexander and President Obama arguing over the cost of the Affordable Care Act. Alexander says premiums will go up. The president says it’s “not true.” So who’s right?

The Congressional Budget Office report on the health-care law says that premiums have gone down under Obamacare for comparable health insurance to that available before the law was passed. However, when you factor in people who didn’t have health insurance and therefore were paying nothing prior to the law’s passage, then yes, their rates have gone up — from nothing to something. In states that have opted in to the federal plan, rates have gone down, and the number of people who now have health insurance has dramatically risen. In other states, not so much.

So Lamar wasn’t “proven right.” In fact, a Washington Post “Pinocchio Test” of the ad says, “Alexander mixes up so many apples and oranges here that the ad is a virtual fruit basket,” and gives Lamar “two Pinocchios.” Meaning the ad has a high bull caca quotient.

Meanwhile, Alexander’s primary opponent Joe Carr is running ads condemning Alexander for supporting Obamacare. Oy.

And then there are Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey’s well-funded attack ads on three Tennessee Supreme Court justices, ads that link them to supporting, yup, Obamacare. The Tennesse high court has never issued a ruling of any kind on the subject. It’s a lie so blatant and low-down I’m amazed Ramsey can look at himself in the mirror.

Obama and Obamacare have become the ultimate stinkbombs for GOP candidates. Want to smear your opponent? Accuse him of supporting the president and/or the Affordable Care Act. It’s the new “He wants to take away your guns.”

And let’s not forget the “endorsementgate” brouhaha, as Flyer writer Chris Davis dubbed it. Ninth District Democratic congressional candidates Steve Cohen and Ricky Wilkins have spent the past two weeks sniping at each other over who is endorsed by the ACSFME union. This week, the ante was raised when a rogue fake “ballot” emerged wrongly suggesting Wilkins was endorsed by President Obama. The Democrats, unlike the Republicans, are actually seeking to be connected with the president.

I’m beyond weary of seeing and hearing this stuff. Thursday can’t come soon enough. No more signs, at least until October. No more duplicitous, hateful ads for a blissful couple of months.

I’m so confident that the entire electorate shares these sentiments, that I’m preparing a bumper sticker: “Bruce Was Proven Right.”

Categories
Cover Feature News

Gripes, Groans, and Grudge Matches in Shelby County Elections

CREDIT: Lauren Rae Holtermann

The mid-summer election cycle of 2014 began July 18th, with a stronger than usual turnout for an early voting period that will last through Saturday, August 2nd.

When the final votes are tallied late on the evening of election day, August 7th, several factors will no doubt have affected the outcome — ranging from dissension among Democratic activists regarding party endorsements for judicial candidates to controversies surrounding key campaigns to candidate matchups that will either settle old scores or create new ones.

It is no accident that ferment among Democrats is a key factor in what happens in the run-up to August 7th and beyond. The Democratic Party began the campaign year with something to prove.

In 2010, all Democratic candidates for county office were defeated by their GOP counterparts, and the scope of that defeat, in the face of what had seemed a formidable demographic edge for the Democrats in a majority African-American county, occasioned a reaction among local party cadres that was equal parts chagrin, disbelief, suspicion of being cheated, and a resolve not to let it happen again.

But Shelby County’s Democrats, who in theory should have a more pronounced demographic advantage than even four years ago, are in fact threatened with the prospect of another Republican sweep. This is due more to a series of Democratic misadventures than to any artfulness on the part of the Republicans, though the GOP’s substantial edge in financial resources is a factor to be reckoned with, as well.

As one indication of just how wide that gulf is, Mark Luttrell, the Republican incumbent in the race for county mayor, arguably the premier race on this year’s county ballot, ended the second quarter of 2014 — and began the stretch drive of his campaign — with a balance on hand of $132,417, while his Democratic opponent, former County Commissioner Deidre Malone, by contrast, could boast of only $38,914. 

And even those figures did not hint at the actual disproportion. During the second quarter of 2014, from April 1st through June 30th, Malone had spent $25,172, while Luttrell had put in play the whopping amount of $290, 210 — money which, among other things, paid for a series of seemingly nonstop TV ads featuring the telegenic incumbent. Meanwhile Malone was largely dependent on free media, which was hard to come by.

Similar discrepancies exist among the parties in other county races that occupy a relatively small but crucial portion of a long ballot that also includes state and federal primary races and school board elections.

Here’s a preview of some of the key races. Others are in the article “No ‘Down Ballot’ in Shelby County This Year” in this week’s “Political Beat”.

Lauren Rae Holtermann

Deidre Malone Vs Mayor Mark Luttrell

COUNTY MAYOR — Not only does the GOP’s Luttrell have the advantages of incumbency and funding, he has a public persona that is likable enough that even opponent Malone has been forced to acknowledge that “Mark is a nice guy.” 

She has a case to make that Luttrell has been indifferent or worse in matters ranging from Head Start, from which he extricated county government, or Title X funding for women’s services, where he acted to defund Planned Parenthood, or that he is overcautious in general. But such matters are hard to dramatize to a general public. Meanwhile, Luttrell is adept in seeking compromise, which he did this week in agreeing with Democrats to establish a county pre-K program.

Clear advantage to Luttrell.

SHERIFF — Bill Oldham, the GOP incumbent, has attracted no criticism to speak of in his workman-like first four years, and it is hard to see how deputy Bennie Cobb, the Democratic nominee, who, like other Democrats, has had limited exposure, can draw the contrast he needs to interest swing voters in making a change.

Advantage to Oldham.

Lauren Rae Holtermann

D.A. Amy Weirich Vs Judge Joe Brown

DISTRICT ATTORNEY GENERAL — At the beginning of the campaign year, D.A. Amy Weirich, a surprisingly easy victor over underrated Democrat Carol Chumney four years ago, was anything but a household word, and was potentially vulnerable to an adroit campaign by former Criminal Court Judge Joe Brown, a bona fide celebrity from 15 years as TV’s “Judge Joe Brown” and the possessor of democratic (small ‘d’) instincts and a real, if fitful, craftiness.

But Brown also possesses an impulse to implode, something he had telegraphed via some rash statements in pre-campaign public appearances.

An early tangle in Juvenile Court, which earned him a contempt citation, may actually have benefited Brown, who assumed the role of a champion of the downtrodden. But his recent intimation that his opponent was a lesbian, an adulteress, and an exploiter, utterly without evidence, and sticking to it, was the kind of mistake it’s hard to recover from, though Brown has made strenuous efforts since — seeking to conciliate (and even champion) the LGBT constituency.

(For comparison, though, here was Brown ad-libbing at large last fall at a Democratic Party “roast” of former Mayor Willie Herenton: “I’m damned if I’m going to get all worked up about this stuff coming out of San Francisco, when gay rights are more important than people having employment rights!”)

Weirich, meanwhile, has raised ample money to publicize her image as a public-safety pro, even if detractors see her as an overzealous prosecutor more interested in winning cases than seeking justice. That, indeed, is where her own version of I-make-no-apology comes in.

Jackson Baker

Brown (top) and Brooks (bottom) found themselves immersed in controversy, to the detriment of their campaigns and the Democratic ticket.

Judge Joe, the wannabe party “boss” (a boast of his from early in the campaign) still has an undefinable amount of grass-roots appeal in the inner city, but, tied up apparently by his ongoing divorce, the money Brown was going to bankroll the party ticket with never showed, and his GOTV efforts may be working more for the other side at this point.

Weirich.      

JUVENILE COURT CLERK — This is the other race where a Democratic Party advantage seems to have morphed into its opposite. Outgoing County Commissioner Henri Brooks began the campaign year as the recipient of public honors. By her steadfast persistence she had, virtually single-handedly, forced the U.S. Department of Justice to mandate overdue reforms at Juvenile Court (though, in fairness to outgoing Juvenile Court Judge Curtis Person, some of these may already have been underway).

Brooks not only had Ruby Wharton, wife of the city’s mayor, as her campaign chair, she was the winner of the Ruby R. Wharton Award for her court-reform efforts. Essentially, all she had to do to coast to victory over the low-profile Republican incumbent, Joy Touliatos, was to make nice and exercise a modest amount of outreach to constituencies other than the African-American one she claimed as her own.

Somewhat famously, she didn’t. Within a two-month span, Brooks overplayed her hand at a commission meeting, publicly brow-beating a Hispanic witness and insulting two of her colleagues; then got herself charged with misdemeanor assault and lost her Methodist Hospital job after witnesses described her as the aggressor in an altercation with another woman in the hospital parking lot; and finally was revealed not to be a resident of the district she served and had to fight off colleagues’ efforts to unseat her.

Meanwhile, Touliatos’ placid personality and stable service began to look better and better.

 Advantage, Touliatos.

COUNTY TRUSTEE — Republican incumbent David Lenoir has generally impressed neutral onlookers as having done a good job and has raised oodles of campaign cash to boot. Democratic nominee Derrick Bennett has done little campaigning and has made minimal impact.

Advantage, Lenoir.

ASSESSOR OF PROPERTY — Even among Democratic pessimists, this is the one county office that still seems winnable. The party nominee, Cheyenne Johnson, is a respected and experienced incumbent who won reelection handily two years ago and was unkindly forced to do it all over again this year after a legislative act forced the assessor’s four-year term into the same cycle as other county offices.

Johnson is running a determined race and has abundant support, some of it crossover, but her relatively nondescript opponent, Republican Keith Alexander, can boast some basic credentials and hopes to ride the Republican ballot into an upset.

Still leaning Johnson.

CRIMINAL COURT CLERK — The illness of Republican incumbent Kevin Key elevated his major assistant, Richard DeSaussure, into his de facto replacement, and though City Councilwoman Wanda Halbert, the Democratic nominee, appears to be working hard and should not be underestimated, DeSaussure appears to have a firm hold on other GOP coattails.

Advantage, DeSaussure.

CIRCUIT COURT CLERK — Republican incumbent Jimmy Moore is well-connected across party lines, while his opponent, Democratic nominee Rhonda Banks, is a neophyte without any connections at all.

Moore, easily.

PROBATE COURT CLERK — Republican Paul Boyd, who has the distinction of being his party’s ranking African-American official in county government, rode the GOP tide to an upset win four years ago and has worked hard to build his public image, even to the point of turning up at Democratic Party events this year. (“I just want them to know I’m their clerk, too,” he explained.)

Meanwhile, Democratic nominee William Chism may have won his primary mainly on the strength of having the same last name as outgoing County Commissioner Sidney Chism, a well-known party presence but no relation. He remains someone most of his party mates could not pick out of a lineup.

Advantage, Boyd.

COUNTY CLERK — Republican incumbent Wayne Mashburn, son of longtime independent clerk Sonny Mashburn, carries the family mantle, while Democrat Charlotte Draper has to overcome her party’s doldrums and a reputation as a perennial candidate.

Advantage, Mashburn.

REGISTER OF DEEDS — GOP incumbent Tom Leatherwood, once a hot-blooded GOP state Senator, has long since rounded off his edges and settled into the role of an experienced and respected administrator. Democrat Coleman Thompson is likeable, but he, too, has become something of a perennial.

Advantage, Leatherwood.

If you’re keeping score, that’s a Republican lead in nine of the 10 offices on the countywide general ballot, with an outside chance of finishing 10 for 10. Going into the stretch, it would appear that the Democratic effort to recoup for the local party debacle of 2010 is doomed to fall short — and this despite an ever-widening African-American predominance in the county population as a whole, the demographic fact that was supposed to insure long-term Democratic superiority.

And there is the example of Boyd to suggest that Republicans, whose efforts at outreach to minorities have been on again, off again, have an opportunity to make real inroads if county government follows the lead of state government in establishing the GOP as the official party of choice.

 THE SHELBY COUNTY COMMISSION — The one aspect of county government where Democrats have an edge at present and can be expected to keep it is on the county’s 13-member legislative branch, currently containing seven Democrats and six Republicans.

The new commission that will take office in September is basically already formed and will likely have the same seven to six ratio. Democrats could fare even better in the future if current demographic trends continue, as seems likely. And the commission’s adoption of 13 single-member districts to replace the old system of large, multi-member districts should reinforce and enlarge their majority.

Here is the rundown on the 13 Commission seats on the ballot:

District 1 (North Shelby County): Incumbent Republican Terry Roland of Millington is unopposed for a second term. 

District 2 (Collierville): Republican George Chism is unopposed.

District 3 (Bartlett): The GOP’s David Reaves, currently a member of the Shelby County Schools board, is unopposed.

District 4 (Germantown): Republican incumbent Mark Billingsley is opposed by a game Democrat, Jackie Jackson, but should prevail.

District 5: This East Memphis enclave is in theory contested by GOP incumbent Heidi Shafer and Democrat Taylor Berger, but Berger discontinued his campaign efforts months ago and Shafer will walk in.

District 6: Democrat Willie Brooks is highly favored over Republican David Shiffman in this Frayser-based terrain.

District 7: Democratic incumbent Melvin Burgess is unopposed.

District 8: Incumbent Democrat Walter Bailey, a lion of the commission, is highly favored over Republican Julie Ray.

District 9: Democrat Justin Ford has this South Memphis terrain to himself.

District 10: Democrat Reginald Milton has an able Republican newcomer, Geoff Diaz, to contend with, but the odds are well in his favor.

District 11: Democrat Eddie Jones, unopposed in this Whitehaven-based district, hits paydirt after several previous tries for public office.

District 12: Democrat Van Turner, the lawyer and former local Democratic chairman, is unopposed.

District 13: Republican incumbent Steve Basar would seem to be well ensconced in an East Memphis/suburban district with an ostensible Republican majority, but Democratic nominee Manoj Jain, a physician, is working hard, showing up everywhere, including Republican Party events, and has an outside chance of pulling off an upset.

Likely upshot: New commission, new faces, new directions, but the same old seven and six.

STATE AND FEDERAL OFFICES:

Governor: Republican incumbent Bill Haslam is slated for a slam-dunk win over several nominal candidates in the GOP primary and will be heavily favored in November over the victor in a nondescript Democratic primary field, likely to be former Sullivan County Commissioner John McKamey, an amiable yellow-dog Democrat who has visisted Memphis several times from his East Tennessee bailiwick.

U.S. Senator: Incumbent Republican Lamar Alexander started getting ready for a likely Tea Party challenge to his renomination two years ago, sewing up all the party endorsements that counted and most of the loose change that was available, too, amassing a campaign war chest that, as of now, stands at well above $3 million.

Often considered a moderate, Alexander has adjusted his rhetoric in a more conservative direction and remains a clear favorite over a large GOP primary field that includes only two opponents with even an outside chance to challenge his dominance. 

One is Joe Carr, an eccentric right-wing state representative from Lascassas in Middle Tennessee who has some appreciable Tea Party support and has mustered campaign help from the likes of former Pennsylvania Senator and 2012 presidential candidate Rick Santorum and talk show host Laura Ingraham. 

The other Alexander foe, perhaps a graver threat to Carr’s hopes than to Alexander’s, is deep-pocketed Memphis physician/businessman George Flinn, the former Shelby County commissioner and frequent candidate who began his race by focusing mainly on a health-care plan he offers as an alternative to the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). But Flinn, like Carr, responded to the stunning defeat of GOP House majority leader Eric Cantor in Virginia and the near defeat of Mississippi Senator Thad Cochran and upped his ante with a $2 million dump of his own cash into a race that now features several TV ads aimed at Alexander.

There’s a race on the Democratic side as well, with the leading contenders being two Knoxville attorneys, Gordon Ball and Terry Adams, both of whom have made frequent stops in Memphis during an all-out statewide competition that hearkens back to the old days of the solid Democratic South, when victory in a Democratic primary was, in the phrase of the time, tantamount to election.

That is no longer the case, of course, but Ball and Adams sense an opportunity to make at least a respectable dent in Alexander’s totals or, if the unthinkable should happen and Carr should overcome the incumbent Senator on a Tea Party surge, to have a legitimate chance at victory.

Ball and Adams are both solid campaigners, and they represent the poles of current Democratic thought. Adams was first in last year, having been recruited by the state party establishment. He focuses on the issue of economic inequality and is a rousing speaker on the stump. Ball, a multi-millionaire from his legal victories (including several over large corporations), is capable of self-financing and blends support of Democratic social policies with centrist political positions like his advocacy of a flat tax.

Adams never fails to note that Ball has in the past supported Republican political figures like Haslam and Alexander. Ball responds that some degree of political cross-pollination has historically been necessary in East Tennessee but is willing to write off his past backing of GOP figures as mistakes.

9th District, House of Representatives: Though there are nominal races on both the Republican and Democratic sides in the 8th Congressional district, which juts significantly into eastern Shelby County, it is all but a given that incumbent GOP Congressman Stephen Fincher of Frog Jump in Crockett County will triumph in his primary and in November.

Cohen brain trust at a recent event. From left: strategist Jerry Austin, campaign treasurer Henry Turley, campaign manager John Marek

It is probable, too, that 9th District incumbent Democrat Steve Cohen will emerge the winner, as usual, in a Democratic primary where, also as usual, he faces an opponent — this year’s version being lawyer Ricky Wilkins. It is unlikely, however, that Cohen will prevail with the 4-to-1 margins he has grown accustomed to against such prior primary rivals as Nikki Tinker, former Mayor Willie Herenton, and Tomeka Hart.

Wilkins’ cash on hand as of the June 30th reporting period was $87,034, no match for Cohen’s total of $887,251, but the challenger is running what seems to be a credible grassroots campaign and was able to boast the backing of 21 current and former elected officials at a press conference last week, though Cohen’s campaign has secured statements of disavowal from two of those, City Councilmembers Janis Fullilove and Edmund Ford Jr., neither of whom attended Wilkins’ press conference.

Even Cohen supporters concede that this year’s race will be a closer affair, however, and current estimates by neutral observers are in the range of a 70 to 30 percent edge for Cohen, with the possibility that the gap could close tighter than that, which gives the current race the sense of a grudge match that could continue in future campaign years.

In seeming acknowledgement, Cohen has mocked his opponent’s billboard slogan, “Ricky Wilkins, Your Next Congressman,” with the jibe that Wilkins can use it “over and over and over.”

There are no great issues dividing the two candidates, though Wilkins has made much over what he says is Cohen’s disinclination to get involved in “local” matters, like the running school-merger controversy of the past few years, while Cohen responds that his job is to defer to local officials, not to dictate to them.

Cohen is running on what he and his supporters regard as a considerable record of achievement in Congress, and even Wilkins plays off that sense with his frequently uttered tagline, “If you liked Steve Cohen, you’ll love Ricky Wilkins.”

Wilkins with supporters at a press conference.

Wilkins is African American, as all of Cohen’s previous primary opponents have been, and as something like two-thirds of the district’s voters are. Cohen has garnered significant majorities among black voters in his previous reelection efforts and hopes to do so again.

There is a Republican candidate, too. Charlotte Bergmann, a sacrificial victim two years ago and likely to undergo the same fate again. 

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Alexander vs. the NLRB?

U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander was in Memphis on Monday for a variety of purposes — one of which, perhaps coincidentally, was to see and be seeen on a day when his chief Republican primary opponent this year, state Representative Joe Carr, was the beneficiary of a Germantown fund-raiser.

Among other things, the senator made a pitch at a noon-time press conference at the University of Memphis area Holiday Inn for his bill to simplify student-aid applications and subsequently helped preside over the presentation of the Dunavant Public Service Awards (to Criminal Court Judge Chris Craft and Collierville town administrator James Lewellen).

In between those events, Alexander was asked about the news that broke Monday morning about the United Auto Workers (UAW) decision to withdraw its appeal to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) of a representation vote that went against the union at the Chattanooga Volkswagen plant earlier this year.

Earlier in the day, 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, at a press conference of his own, had expressed astonishment at the UAW action, on the grounds, as the congressman said, that the union had what he thought was a good case.

So did Democratic members of Congress, who had only last week laid the basis for a possible hearing on the Volkswagen/Chattanooga matter in Washington focusing on a UAW contention that Tennessee state officials — notably Governor Bill Haslam and Alexander’s Senate counterpart Bob Corker, along with members of the Tennessee legislature — had interfered with a fair and honest vote through their public statements and implied threats to withhold further state aid from Volkswagen if the union gained representation.

(Volkswagen itself, as Alexander acknowledged, had taken a neutral position — one which many believed favored the union cause.)

The reasons for the surprise UAW decision remained obscure, though rumors flew in some circles that it was all part of a maneuver to put the Haslam administration on the spot if Volkswagen chooses not to proceed with plans to build a new SUV line in Tennessee.

Whatever the case, Alexander professed himself pleased. “The UAW lost the election. Now it’s time to get back to buildng cars,” he said. He declined to comment directly on the union accusations against Corker and Haslam, other than to say he admired both officials and that they had “a perfect right to speak out on behalf of the people of Tennessee.”

Warming to his point, Alexander went on to declare that the UAW’s now-withdrawn appeal had been part of a “political sideshow,” and he professed himself critical about the NLRB itself, which, he said, had been tilting more and more toward the interests of organized labor instead of focusing on its intended purpose as an objective body.

Accordingly, said the senator, he and Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, the GOP’s Senate leader, were preparing a bill to “restructure” the NLRB. He did not elaborate further.

In other words, the Fat Lady may not have sung the terminal note on this issue.

• For the third election cycle in a row, Congressman Steve Cohen has been endorsed in the course of a contested Democratic primary by President Barack Obama.

Cohen, who is opposed in the primary by lawyer Ricky Wilkins, announced the presidential endorsement — an echo of previous primary-season endorsements in 2010 and 2012 — at a press conference at his Midtown home. Obama’s statement, released later via email, reads as follows:

“Congressman Steve Cohen has been a leader on justice and civil rights issues and has worked tirelessly on behalf of his constituents. His focus on bringing good jobs, affordable health care, and world class education to Tennessee is why I am proud to once again support his re-election.”

The formal response of Cohen, who was an early endorser of Obama’s presidential hopes in 2008, went this way:

“It has been my privilege to work with President Obama to make America more fair and just. Whenever I meet with him, we talk about Memphis and the needs of its citizens. I am always impressed with his compassion, dedication, and determination on our behalf. I appreciate the president’s faith in me. Together, we will continue to work every day to ensure that America is a country where if you work hard and play by the rules you get a fair shot.”

• If there is one thing that suburban candidates for the Shelby County Commission tend to agree on, it is that tax increases are off the table, in regard to both existing problems and to governmental innovations going forward.

That much was made clear Monday night when the four Republican candidates for the new District 3 County Commission seat met at the Bartlett Community Center for a forum conducted by the Northeast Shelby Republican Club’s Frank Colvett.

Early on, all four hopefuls — Sherry Simmons, David Reaves, Kelly Price, and Naser Fazlullah — took the no-new-tax pledge, and when moderator Colvett later turned the screw, asking the candidates how they would decide if faced with a choice of cutting county fire and police services by 5 percent or raising taxes, they all held the line — though with various degrees of unease.

With a regretful look, Reaves said services would have to be cut; Price said essentially the same but promised to work with administrators to make the cuts as harmless as possible; and Fazlullah and Simmons both suggested that more fine-tuning of the budget might allow the choice to be averted.

All except Reaves, who noted that the county tax rate had been increased last year and wanted further cuts, were willing to endorse county Mayor Mark Luttrell’s proposed $1.16 billion budget, however conditionally. Reaves suggested reductions could be obtained by eliminating out-sourcing of food services for county prisoners and instead using existing school nutrition sources and by consolidating IT services, a one-time Luttrell proposal that had proved to be a bugaboo with various turf-conscious department heads.

Another given in Republican circles is skepticism about governmental controls, a fact that elicited outright disapproval from three of the candidates of the currently controversial Common Core proposal for educational standards. Simmons, whose 35 years of teaching experience in Shelby County schools made her the only educator in the group, gave a grudging approval of the concept of uniform standards, provided that students were given time to adapt to Common Core’s testing procedures.

Summing up what seemed to be a group disapproval of subservience to “national models,” Reaves, an exponent of more vo-tech to counter poverty, complained that local school systems “should quit sucking money out of Bill Gates and the rest of his buddies.”

The other three candidates had some one-liners, too. Simmons, agreeing with the others about swearing off free sports tickets and other perks, made a tongue-in-cheek exception for national championship games featuring the University of Alabama. Price, suggesting that recent public-school changes had been mainly cosmetic and not for the better, said that if he changed his name to “Dr. J,” he still wouldn’t be able to play basketball.

For his part, Fazlullah, who proposed creation of a “fund” to assist small business, said that local government in the past had been subject to the Golden Rule: “Those who have the gold have made the rules.”

The candidates were split on some issues, like PILOTs (payment-in-lieu-of-tax provisions) to attract industry, with Reaves and Simmons approving PILOTs as necessary and Price and Fazlullah expressing doubt about their efficacy.

All in all, however, the quartet stuck fairly close to the traditional GOP talking points of low taxes, less government, and greater efficiencies.

Colvett had cautioned the candidates to avoid “personal” disagreements, and, in fact, the event was devoid of any significant disharmony, though Simmons and Reaves — or, more exactly, their supporters — have hit some sharply competitive notes in social media.