Tag: Phil Bredesen

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Politics Politics Feature

Taking Turns in Tennessee and Shelby County Politics

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Among other outcomes desired by Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Lee was the voucher legislation long proposed by Germantown state Senator Brian Kelsey but now dropped in light of opposition from suburban school advocates.

But Lee, whom a recent Whit Ayers poll shows to be running a strong third in the ongoing GOP primary to U.S. Representative Diane Black and former state Economic Development Commissioner Randy Boyd, is still a strong believer in partnerships between government and the faith-based community. It’s the premise of his current statewide tour, the third so far in the campaign of the Williamson County businessman and farmer. Monday saw Lee and his wife Maria at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the Life Choices pregnancy care center in Memphis.

Lee was preceded to town by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Karl Dean, the former Nashville mayor, who was hosted at a Friday luncheon by another faith-based group, the Memphis Baptist Ministerial Association, at Mt. Moriah Baptist Church on Wellington. Noting that in recent times Republicans and Democrats have taken turns with two-term incumbencies as governor, Dean said “It’s our turn” to occupy the governor’s chair. And he also noted in a conversation with reporters after his public remarks that Phil Bredesen and Bill Haslam, the two governors preceding whoever is elected this year, had both, like himself, served previously as mayors. 

Jackson Baker

Bill and Maria Lee in Memphis

Dean deemed his service as mayor, a nonpartisan position, to be good preparation for the task of presiding over a state like Tennessee, with a population that stretches ideologically from left to right but has, for most of its history, kept a political balance.

All’s Well That Ends Well: The Shelby County Commission, with a light and theoretically non-controversial agenda to deal with on Monday, saw a bit of drama.

One audience member, District 13 Commission candidate Charlie Belenky, took issue with the body’s setting a relatively quick April 2nd date to appoint a successor to departing General Sessions Judge Larry Potter. Belenky’s point was that any appointee would have a running start and an advantage over potential election rivals. The commission’s retort was that the traffic in Potter’s court was so brisk as to permit no delay.

JB

Dr Yahweh, a.k.a. Lance ‘Sweet Willie Wine,’ at the dock during Monday’s Commission meeting

Another audience member quarreled in vain with the commission’s long-established practice of awarding grants to local nonprofit charitable organizations, the case in point being one to Memphis Inner City Rugby.

And a final audience speaker, the ubiquitous activist Dr. Yahweh, delivered a long philippic against what he deemed the poisonous evil of fluoridaton in local water. Against all expectations, he ended up earning an ovation as a hero, not for his anti-fluoride message, but for his proud history, 50 years ago, when, as Lance “Sweet Willie Wine” Watson, a member of the Invaders, he was associated with the cause of the sanitation workers striking that year and with the memory of the slain martyr Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

 

All’s Well That Ends Well II: Ed Ford Jr., a two-term city councilman, now one of eight candidates (7 Democrats and 1 Republican) seeking Position 9 on the Shelby County Commission, drew a slew of heavy hitters to a Monday evening fund-raiser at Alchemy restaurant. On hand were such as realtor Bobbi Gillis, Cooper-Young mogul Charlie Ryan, Grizzlies exec Jason Wexler, several sitting commissioners and fellow council members, businessman/political broker Karl Schledwitz, and former Mayor AC Wharton.

A grateful Ford delivered himself of some lengthy remarks in which he extolled the current council and remembered being the seventh or decisive vote in several controversial council measures, notably including a controversial one that altered the benefits package of Memphis poilicemen in the interests of the city’s solvency.

Wharton, whose election loss in 2015 may have owed something to that moment, responded with a reminiscence of his own, backing up Ford’s view. And, as an incidental part of the general kumbaya, the former mayor co-existed jovially with Schledwitz, a 2015 supporter whose inadvertently leaked election-day prophecy of a Wharton loss to Jim Strickland had been the source of tension at the time. 

For further political news and pictures, see also the slideshow An Eye on Politics at memphisflyer.com.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Bredesen, in Memphis, Sees Good Chance to Win Senate as Moderate Democrat

CREDIT: JB

JB

The former Governor schmoozed happily with a group of young Dreamers in Memphis.

Former Governor Phil Bredesen reintroduced himself to West Tennessee Democrats in a kickoff of his Senatorial campaign Thursday night in Memphis at the Old Dominick Distillery building downtown. A good crowd was on hand, a mix of old Democratic hands and a new wave of resistance people, with a  number of Dreamers present.

Bredesen, looking much the same as he did when left the Governor’s office in 2011, was introduced by local Democrat Greg Duckett as “a bridge builder and not a bridge burner,” as someone Democrats could unite behind and who wants to start a process of galvanizing forces and uniting them, as a respected business person trying to bring sanity to into a process where there is none., to build bridges in Washington and get things done in the best interests of the populace.

After being introduced, Bredesen threw a bouquet or two to Memphis, saying it was an incredibly vital city, with “politics kinda wild, like Chicago.”

He then shared some of the thought processes he’d gone through before making his decision to run. Originally, Bredesen said, the idea of running for the Senate was Number 93 on his list of 100 things he might like to do. But after incumbent Republican Senator Bob Corker dropped out he started getting calls, and he began thinking a lot about how unhappy he was with how things were going in Washington – a state of things that didn’t just begin with Trump;

He began thinking that he, as the last statewide Democratic office-holder, had the best chance of being successful. He thought about how he’d always tried to bring people along, from both sides of the aisle. “I didn’t just start this last year. People just want some motion. They want the ball moved. They want to answer some questions.”

He talked about how he’d met some Dreamers early in the evening and how immoral it was to let these kids struggle to hang on. “We need to go find common ground in Washington to deal with that, I need to start moving the ball and make some things happen.”

Bredesen spoke of his expertise in health-cafe issues and his background in resolving Tenn-Care problems as Governor. He said he honestly thought he could be the Go-To guy in the Senate on health-care issues.

He addressed the issue of whether Tennessee was an unredeemably Red State or whether it was possible for him to win. “I’m a little old to be going on suicide missions. I really think there’s a way forward. We really can elect a moderate Democrat to this state in Tennessee.” He spoke of having conducted polls that demonstrate that such a person could defeat “a hard-rock conservative” in Tennessee and polls that showed him on the winning side in a race against putative GOP Senate nominee Marsha Blackburn.

Again: “If I can get people to help, it’s a very doable, winnable race. We’ve always sent moderate people to Washington. It’s time to do it again. I’d be honored and proud to serve as a U.S. Senator.”

In a private interview with reporters afterward, Bredesen amplified on some of his views.

ON THE ISSUE OF HOW HE, LIKE LAMAR ALEXANDER AND BOB CORKER BEFORE HIM, COULD TRANSITION FROM BEING AN EXECUTIVE TYPE IN GOVERNMENT TO A LEGISLATIVE ONE:
To be honest, it was one of the biggest concerns I had when I was thinking about this. Going from being somebody like a mayor or a governor thinking you can make something happening on Monday morning to where you’re a junior member of a hundred large egos is sort of challenging.
What I found when I talked about it, and I talked to several people who were former governors I had known who were now in the Senate, Marc Jordan of Virginia was one of them. Tim Kaine became a friend of mine. What they both told me was don’t come here and expect to be Governor, but if you’ve got some expertise, a policy interest in some area, if you get on the right kind of committee – Health and Welfare in my case – you can really be effective.
In transitioning from business to government, I found that everything is more difficult in government. And it’s even harder if you are dealing with the whole country. It takes more cooperation.

ON THE STATE OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY IN TENNESEE: I’m not sure that the Democratic brand is damaged in this state. The issue is that Republicans are static in their party identification, while Democrats have started calling themselves independents. Now, Harold ford Jr. and I in 2006 we did stick together.

I wouldn’t be running against Bob [Corker], if he should get back in, or against Marsha. I just want to present myself, I want to learn Memphis issues. They aren’t the same as 7 years ago. I need to educate myself.

ON PRESENTING HIMSELF AS A MODERATE:
Oh yeah, because I am. I grew up in a small town with conservative ideas on fiscal solvency., I’m proud that as Governor I got the rainy-day fund up and got the state’s AAA rating back. We had to cut back on spending. There weren’t a lot of options.

ON THE SALVAGEAB8LITY OF THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT: I wasn’t a big fan of the ACA. I’m tempted to say ‘I told you so.’ But we’ve got to do something to stabilize those markets. Over the long run we’ve got to move into something bigger and better. There’s a lot I don’t know about how the Senate works, but I’m committed to coming into the situation and working purposely to find out how to get things done.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Roll of the Dice for Tennessee Democrats

CREDIT: JB

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JB

Bredesen in his campaign-announcement video

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

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

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

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

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

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Mackler Out of Senate Race, Yields to Bredesen

Mackler (l), Bredesen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Politics Politics Feature

The Bredesen Bubble; County Government Showdown

CREDIT: jackson baker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Politics Politics Feature

New Names on the Marquee

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Opinion Viewpoint

Tennessee Politics: Restless Bedfellows

Anybody who’s been paying the slightest bit of attention to Tennessee state government in recent years has surely noticed that we have what amounts to one-party government. Republicans run the roost, and Democrats are a rump group with minimal numbers and no power.

This state of affairs has existed for less than 10 years. Going into 2008, the year of Barack Obama’s election as president, Tennessee still had a nominally Democratic governor in Phil Bredesen, control of the state House of Representatives, and near-parity in the state Senate, where Republicans had the narrowest possible majority.

The turnover of a handful of seats in 2008 gave the GOP a majority of one in the House. 

It was only in the presidential off-year election of 2010 that the Republicans essentially swept the Democrats in legislative races and took firm control of both houses. That year, the gubernatorial race was basically a three-way affair involving Republicans Bill Haslam, Zach Wamp, and Ron Ramsey, with the general election contest between primary winner Haslam and Democrat Mike McWherter being a no-contest walkover for the GOP.

President Obama was reelected in 2012 with no help from Tennessee, an erstwhile bellwether state which at that point had firmly realigned with the Deep South politically. In the off-year election of 2014, the Republicans won their present super-majority. End of story?

Nope. What has gone on since has been the slow, but now obvious, development of a fissure in state Republican ranks. As it turns out, nature not only abhors a vacuum; failing an iron-handed dictator, it pretty much rejects a monolith, too, and, under easy-going Republican Governor Haslam, the natural yin and yang of things has begun to reassert itself.

Among state Republicans, this fragmentation first became noticeable in several of the legislative fights over gun bills — particularly those imposing official toleration of concealed weapons on or around business property. Those battles pitted Republican legislators loyal to (or indebted to) established corporate interests against Tea Party insurgents who were susceptible to the blandishments (or threats) of the faux-populist NRA.

The estimable journalistic-workhorse-turned-occasional-columnist Tom Humphrey did an insightful take this past weekend about a legislative Republican split over two matters — one, the so-called “bathroom bill” that would force transgendered persons to use only the public lavatory facilities of their birth gender; the other, a bill enshrining the Holy Bible as the official state book. Leaving aside the very real civil-liberties and First Amendment aspects inherent in both bills, the aforementioned corporate interests opposed them both because they were, in simplest terms, bad for business.

The Republican Party’s right-wing populists, on the other hand, favored the two bills as emblematic of their “values” issues, in defense of which they had drifted away from what they saw as an over-secularized, over-diverse Democratic Party.

This time, there was no powerful lobby like the NRA intervening, and business (aided by the Democratic minority) won, forcing the eventual scuttling of both bills. But there will be other such battles on the state front — each corresponding in rough (if inexact) ways to the current national schism between Trump supporters and the GOP establishment.

If all this bodes ill for the future unity of the Republican Party, the Democrats have their own fissures to worry about. The presidential-primary contest between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders has outlined an ongoing struggle within the Democratic Party as well — one similar in some ways to that afflicting the Republicans.

Sanders is clearly on to something with his unflagging emphasis on the core issue of economic inequality. He’s the one attracting the multitudes, building out from that central issue, while Clinton’s political base is more a matter of putting together a collection of special interests, patchwork-style, working from the outside in.  

Many of these she shares with Sanders — blacks, gays, women, civil libertarians, low-income voters, et al. — but one of them is hers alone: big money. She is still the likely primary winner, but her ties to the financial establishment leave her dependent on the amorphous appeal of “diversity” instead of the central one of reform.

If not this year, down the line, the Democrats in Tennessee as elsewhere will have to have their own internal reckoning.

Senior editor Jackson Baker is the Flyer‘s political columnist.

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Editorial Opinion

TN Supreme Court Surrenders on Attorney General

It was just a little over a month ago that Tennesseans did themselves proud by decisively rejecting a campaign, led by Republican Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey, to purge three state Supreme Court justices — Gary Wade, Connie Clark, and Sharon Lee — in a retention election.

Although Ramsey did his best to malign the three for this or that alleged defect, the real offense of these distinguished jurists was that they had been appointed to office by a former Democratic governor, Phil Bredesen. The state’s voters obviously discerned this purely partisan motive in the purge campaign and voted by a 2-to-1 margin to retain the justices, who won’t be vulnerable for another eight years. So far, so good.

Ramsey, in his campaign against the three justices, had charged, among other things, that — with state Attorney General Robert Cooper coming up for reappointment or replacement in the wake of the election — they would be unlikely to appoint a state attorney general who would enlist in the national GOP’s ongoing legal vendetta against the Affordable Care Act (aka “Obamacare”), as Cooper had declined to do. The justices, quite properly, dismissed the charge as irrelevant to their oath of office, which requires them to avoid prejudgments and to remain free of political motives (indeed, the fact that supporters, as well as foes, kept referring to them as “Democrats” was an improper stretch).

There was a political sequel of sorts to the retention election. The three newly retained Bredesen appointees, along with two others who had been appointed by GOP Governor Bill Haslam, now had the duty of deciding whether to reappoint Cooper or name a replacement. Justice Lee, who in the wake of the retention election was named chief justice by her colleagues, made a public statement offering reassurance that politics would not play a role in the appointment decision. Coincidentally or not, though, the eventual choice of the justices was Herbert Slatery, who served Haslam in the same role that Cooper had served Bredesen, that of chief legal adviser to the governor.

The appointment stuck in the craw of state Representative Craig Fitzhugh (R-Ripley), the Democrats’ leader in the state House, who praised Cooper for his achievements as AG and professed disappointment “that our Supreme Court has capitulated to Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey and the very special interest groups that tried to replace our justices just one short month ago.” Continued Fitzhugh: “While the people have shown they can be trusted to preserve the integrity of the courts, the Supreme Court justices have shown they are too susceptible to political pressure.”

Was Fitzhugh too harsh? Well, there was a reaction from the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), a Washington-based lobby that describes itself as “the only national organization whose mission is electing Republicans to the Office of Attorney General.” Said RAGA in a press release: “We are very pleased by the appointment of Mr. Slatery,” adding, after some boilerplate praise for Slatery’s legal prowess: “The appointment of Herbert Slatery brings the total number of Republican AGs across the country to 25.”  

We hope we — and Fitzhugh — are wrong, but it’s beginning to look like the defenders of nonpartisan justice in Tennessee, having won a battle only last month, have run up the white flag of surrender this month.

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News The Fly-By

Amazon Grace

Tennessee’s tax-free honeymoon with Amazon is officially over.

Tennessee residents will now see an additional charge on their Amazon purchases, as the online retailer is now required by the state to collect sales tax.

For years, Amazon purchases made by Tennessee residents were tax-free at the time of purchase. Emails were sent out annually, letting consumers know how much they had spent on Amazon purchases the previous year so taxes could be filed accurately, but it was up to the shopper to include those taxes in their tax forms.

According to Amazon, in certain states where the website does not have a “physical selling presence” and there are no laws specifically requiring sales tax to be added, the retailer is not required to collect such tax.

That’s due to the Internet Tax Freedom Act that was reenacted by former President George W. Bush in 2007. However, states are still able to enact laws requiring online retailers to collect sales tax.

Senator Jim Kyle of Memphis, who opposed the tax in committee, said requiring the sales tax has not been shown to deter online shopping, and Amazon collecting taxes will not make small businesses more competitive with online vendors.

“It’s still a tax increase that this Republican-led government has brought us,” said Kyle, a Democrat. “You can spin this however you want to, but people like you and me are paying for it.”

Republican Senator Brian Kelsey, who voted in favor of the tax, didn’t return calls for comment.

In Tennessee, the previous deal struck by former Governor Phil Bredesen allowed Amazon to build two distribution centers in the state, creating 1,500 full-time jobs and, despite the “physical selling presence,” the deal made it so that Amazon would not be required to collect taxes.

The current governor, Bill Haslam, signed a bill in 2012 that required Amazon and other remote sellers to not only collect state tax on goods, but also to build a new distribution center and maintain at least 3,500 full-time positions until 2016 — an additional 2,000 jobs than was in the previous agreement with Bredesen.

“There are a lot of contributing factors that go into our thought process as we decide where to place our fulfillment centers,” said Nina Lindsey, a spokesperson for Amazon. “Most importantly, we want to make sure a fulfillment center is placed as close to the customer as possible. We look closely at the local workforce, and we’ve found great talent in abundance across [Tennessee].”

The bill grandfathered in the two distribution centers in Chattanooga and Charleston built in 2011. Distribution centers in Murfreesboro and Lebanon opened last year. Last November, The Tennessee Journal reported an expected $8.8 million increase in revenue from the tax.

Tennessee joins 18 other states in being charged tax on online sales. Mississippi and Arkansas residents, however, remain free from tax collection by the online retailing giant.

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Editorial Opinion

A Farewell to Blather

There is a passage in Hemingway’s novel A Farewell to Arms in which the protagonist — an American ambulance driver serving on the Italian front — goes AWOL and observes of the ongoing carnage that was World War I that he didn’t “go to it anymore.” That’s sort of how we felt about the visit Monday to DeSoto County by Dick Cheney. Cheney was in Mississippi to promote the 1st District candidacy of Southaven mayor Greg Davis, the Republican nominee in an election to replace Roger Wicker.

And we didn’t go to check out Cheney. Not because we don’t have readers in northern Mississippi. We do. We hear from them and revere them. But we could have recited in our sleep Cheney’s mindless and meaningless salvoes on Davis’ behalf: “Americans need to keep more of their own money … stand up for the unborn … priority of the United States is to protect and defend … .” Etc., etc. All well and good, except that these bromides are unrelated to any goal pursued by an administration that in nearly eight years of flagrant waste and dangerous misjudgment has squandered American blood and treasure and human potential needlessly.

But that’s not the main reason why we didn’t go to hear Cheney. We’re really just disgusted with the way that war … er, that congressional race has been run. The last straw was the barrage of recent ads attacking Davis’ Democratic opponent, Travis Childers, as the exponent of some wholly imaginary “Obama-Childers” tax plan. Not that Childers was any paragon of forthrightness in his mealymouthed insistence on the obvious — that he and Barack Obama had never met, much less plotted tax agendas together.

There are good, bad, and indifferent Republicans. There are good, bad, and indifferent Democrats. And there are real issues in Mississippi, as in Tennessee — most of them local, economic in nature, and urgent. Dwindling incomes, the worsening housing crisis, the drastic decline in local and state government revenues, the erosion of social services at a time when they are needed most. To which emergencies, politicians like Cheney and the political-ad warriors to the south of us have offered little more than the proverbial sound and fury that signifies nothing. We choose not to go there.

Maybe Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen is on the right track and maybe he isn’t, with the budget-slashing economies he announced to a joint session of the Tennessee General Assembly on Monday. But Bredesen at least was focusing our attention on real issues and attempting a serious makeover of governmental priorities. Would that our local governments would do as much, instead of consuming an entire afternoon, as the Shelby County Commission did on the selfsame Monday, in arguing over, and then discarding, a score of formulas for determining the number of years that elected county officials should be permitted to serve.

There were good, bad, and indifferent proposals and good, bad, and indifferent justifications for them, but they all came to naught — as well they might, considering that the real urgencies threatening local government and an apprehensive local population were ignored in the process. This shadow-boxing can’t go on forever.