Tag: Manny Sethi

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Early Voting Numbers Skew Democratic, Black, and Older

Some fun facts: According to the calculations of Election Commissioner Bennie Smith, a statistician and professional elections analyst, some 81,000 voters took part in the early voting period in Shelby County, and the voting skewed Democratic, female, African-American, and relatively elderly.

The final voting figures as of Saturday, August 1st, were 54,400 Democratic, 25,800 Republican; 50,500 female, 30,500 male; 34,400 Black, 26,200 white, and 26,200 other. Of the 81,000 voters, some 69,900 were over the age of 50.

That last figure illustrates the disproportionate tendency of older voters to take part in elections, inasmuch as the over-50 segment of the society as a whole is only 45 percent. The average age of an eligible voter in Shelby County is 48.20.

by Gender

The eligible voting population comprises roughly 331,000 females and 240,000 males, a split of 57.97 percent to 42.03 percent. Ethnically, the voting population includes 199,000 African Americans, 139,000 whites, and 233,000 who consider themselves “other.” As the last week of the August 6th election round began, candidates were putting their best surrogates on display — hitchhiking, as it were, on other, better established, or more well-known political figures.

In the case of Tom Leatherwood, a Republican running for re-election to the state House of Representatives from District 99 (Eads, Arlington, eastern Shelby), the doppelgänger was Governor Bill Lee, down from Nashville. The two held forth to a sizable late-Monday-morning crowd at Olympic Steak and Pizza in Arlington, while partisans of Leatherwood’s GOP primary opponent, former Shelby County Republican chairman Lee Mills, picketed outside.

A little later on Monday, U.S. Senate candidate Manny Sethi, a Nashville physician and Republican newcomer who styles himself “Dr. Manny,” hit the stage of another well-attended event at The Grove in Cordova. He had in tow U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and Sethi, who is opposed by former Ambassador Bill Hagerty, a Trump endorsee, fairly quickly disposed of any idea that he might be the moderate in the race.

“I’m tired of this coronavirus, aren’t you?” Sethi said, addressing a seated crowd of which roughly a third were maskless. “Let’s fire Dr. Fauci!” he continued, going on to endorse the glories of hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug President Trump has touted as a potential antidote to COVID-19.

James Mackler, a Democratic candidate in the Senate race, has condemned Sethi’s position as one making him unworthy of serving in the Senate.

Sethi is one of two physicians in the Senate race. The other, Republican George Flinn of Memphis, has denounced Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic as being woefully insufficient.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

“Fire Fauci!” — Candidates Call on High-Powered Surrogates

CREDIT: JB

As the last week of the August 6th election round began, candidates were racing around putting their best surrogates on display — hitchhiking, as it were, on other, better established or more well-known political figures.
JB

Leatherwood (l) with Lee

In the case of Tom Leatherwood, a Republican running for reelection to the state House of Representatives from District 99 (Eads, Arlington, eastern Shelby), the doppelgänger was Governor Bill Lee, down from Nashville. The two held forth before a sizable late-Monday-morning crowd at Olympic Steak and Pizza in Arlington, while partisans of Leatherwood’s GOP primary opponent, former Shelby County Republican chairman Lee Mills, picketed outside.

Slightly later on Monday, U.S. Senate candidate Manny Sethi, a Nashville physician and Republican newcomer who styles himself “Dr. Manny,” hit the stage of another well-attended event, this one at The Grove, an establishment in Cordova. He had in tow U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and Sethi, who is opposed by former Ambassador Bill Hagerty, a Trump endorsee, fairly quickly disposed of any idea that he might be the moderate in the race.

JB

Sethi (r) with Cruz

“I’m tired of this coronavirus, aren’t you?” Sethi said, addressing a seated crowd of which roughly a third were maskless. “Let’s fire Dr. Fauci!” he continued, going on to endorse the glories of hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug President Trump has touted as a potential antidote to Covid-19.

James Mackler, a Democratic candidate in the Senate race, has condemned Sethi’s position as one making him unworthy of serving in the Senate.

Sethi is one of two physicians in the Senate race. The other, Republican George Flinn of Memphis, has denounced Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic as being woefully insufficient.

Meanwhile, Democratic state Representative Joe Towns, bidding for reelection in District 84, was the beneficiary of a Monday fundraiser at India Palace on Poplar. Towns had asked both Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris to be on hand. Strickland was able to make it, Harris was not. JB

Mills’ picketers at Leatherwood event.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

GOP Senate Candidate George Flinn Bashes Trump

George Flinn

Critics of Donald Trump express reactions ranging from mystification to outrage that the controversial president seems to escape adverse judgment from fellow Republicans. And indeed, there aren’t many who, like Utah Senator Mitt Romney, have been willing to take Trump to task.

For what it’s worth, Tennessee has a GOP candidate, one running for the U.S. Senate, who has looked at Trump’s record and is willing to call it blameworthy.

This would be George Flinn, the wealthy physician and broadcast magnate who has gained a reputation as something of a perennial candidate, pouring millions of dollars every two years into unsuccessful campaigns for this or that political office. Flinn served one term and part of another as a Shelby County commissioner, and he came close to winning the Republican primary for the 8th District congressional seat in 2016.

With only days to go before the state’s August 6th Republican primary, voters are asked to levy judgment on him as a candidate one more time. Flinn is attempting to distinguish himself from presumed GOP senatorial frontrunners Bill Hagerty and Manny Sethi by going where other Republicans — here and elsewhere — have feared to tread.

Flinn is blasting away at Trump, on two main grounds: 1) what he sees as the president’s slavish attitude toward Russian leader Vladimir Putin; and 2) Trump’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic.

“He won’t hold Putin to account for all the aggressive actions he’s taking against us in America,” saId Flinn, who expressed particular outrage at Trump’s inability or unwillingness to confront Putin over alleged bounties offered by the Russians to the Taliban in return for assassinations of American personnel in Afghanistan.

“They [Hagerty and Sethi] won’t say anything critical of Trump for this, but I’m denouncing it,” Flinn said.

The other issue Flinn raises is what he, as a doctor, sees as the president’s confused and belated responses to the Covid-19 crisis. “He’s finally been willing to set an example by putting on a mask. That’s 108 days and 138,000 deaths too late. And he’s wasted so much time taking nonsense about relying on hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug, as a cure for the coronavirus.

“And, instead of relying on Dr. [Anthony] Fauci and others, he’s recently been trying to give credibility to that woman who believes that people get the virus by having sex with demons in their sleep” This last was a reference to eccentric theories recently pushed by Stella Emmanuel, a Houston doctor.

Flinn pointedly recalled that the 2018 GOP Senate primary had been regarded most of the way as a duel between Republican rivals Randy Boyd and Diane Black, who fought each other to a standstill while a third candidate, current Governor Bill Lee, slipped by them both to win the primary.

Clearly, he is suggesting a similar outcome for his candidacy this year as Hagerty, a former ambassador to Japan who has been endorsed by Trump, and Sethi, a Nashville-area doctor, compete with each other, both keeping to laudatory or uncritical remarks about the president.

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Politics Politics Feature

Candidates for Senate and State House are Running Hard

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Politics Politics Feature

Looking Ahead to 2020 Elections

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

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

Torrey Harris

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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