Tag: Ron Ramsey

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Politics Politics Feature

Party Talk: Partisanship Draws Post-Election Attention

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

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

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

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

Jackson Baker

Zach Wamp

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Cover Feature News

Wine in Grocery Stores: Tennessee Uncorked!

On Friday, July 1st, grocery stores in Tennessee will begin selling wine. Consider it the ripened grape of a years-long political battle, one that has created the biggest change in Tennessee booze laws since Prohibition.  

Tennessee is now one of 40 states that allows wine sales in grocery stores. State lawmakers passed the legislation in 2014, and since then, lawmakers in Colorado and Pennsylvania have passed similar wine-in-grocery-stores bills. But before Tennessee passed its wine bill, it had been 24 years since the last time a state passed a law allowing grocery wine sales.

“So, we don’t really know what to expect,” said Elizabeth G. Mall, a sales representative with Delta Wholesale, Inc. “July 1st is going to happen, and it’ll open the floodgates. Then, we’ll see.”

The Beverage Battle

Nashville was cold on that Monday in early March 2014; “weather-worn” was how The Memphis Flyer‘s Jackson Baker described it. But there were enough members of the Tennessee Senate to make a quorum. So, they got to work and passed SB 837, the “wine-in-grocery-stores bill,” on a vote of 23-4. It was a procedural move, really, as the Senate had approved its version of the measure months before, as had the House. But the bill needed that final vote to reconcile the House and Senate versions, before it could head to Governor Bill Haslam’s desk. Haslam signed it into law on March 20th. 

Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey was a prime mover of the bill and noted that it “allows for the expansion of consumer choice while protecting small businesses that took risks and invested capital under the old system.”

Ramsey’s quote was precise, exacting, the soundbite-iest soundbite you could possibly squeeze from a Christian, pro-business Republican. And it shows just how far the wine bill had come. Novels could be filled with the words spilled over the wine issue in its nine years under legislative review in Nashville. By 2014, the message had been so refined that Ramsey was able to crystallize it in one, easy-to-sell phrase.       

Grocery store owners and liquor store owners (and both sides’ lobbyists) had clashed in the halls and great chambers of the Tennessee General Assembly since 2008. Grocery stores argued for “customer convenience” (code for “big business should be allowed to sell wine”). Liquor stores argued the change would eat their profits, close their stores, and put thousands of Tennesseans out of a job (code for “breaking the decades-old monopoly liquor stores had held on wine sales”). Liquor stores were also helped by the unlikeliest of allies: the religious right.

During the debates, Randy Davis of the Tennessee Baptist Convention reminded legislators of the liquor-by-the-drink law they’d passed years before, which allowed cities to vote on whether to legalize liquor sales in restaurants. Davis was quoted in the Knoxville News Sentinel saying that the law had torn families apart and ruined friendships in Pigeon Forge. He wasn’t sure where wine-in-grocery stores would lead, but he begged lawmakers to vote against it.

The Tennessee Grocers & Convenience Store Association had formed a campaign for grocery sales called Red White and Food in 2007. The campaign had powerhouse partners such as Walmart, Kroger, BI-LO, Food City, Food Lion, Publix, and SuperLo Foods. Even with such big-business clout behind it, the issue (like a fine wine?) needed time to mature. 

Red White and Food kept at it, bringing a new bill to Nashville every year. Most years it was all but dead on arrival. It got close in 2013 but was defeated in a House committee by one (flip-flopped) vote. At the end of that session, Ramsey, the powerful Speaker of the Senate, said that the bill had a real shot of passing in 2014. This gave the issue a name-brand, high-level push and nearly a year for the interested parties to sort it all out. 

They came up with a compromise that promised a little something for almost everyone. Grocery stores got to sell wine. Liquor stores got to expand their offerings with beer, light food, mixers, and more — and they got a year to settle into their new situation. State coffers got — or will get — an estimated additional $13 million in tax revenues.

The religious right walked away empty-handed. 

Consumers will get added convenience and, perhaps, lower prices on booze across the board. Wine economists (yes, that’s a thing) at Cornell University said in a 2011 study that allowing grocery sales of wine lowers beer prices by about 4 percent, wine prices by about 13 percent, and liquor prices about 2 percent. 

However, the Tennessee wine-in-grocery-stores law requires grocery stores and liquor stores to mark up wine 20 percent from the wholesaler’s price.

William Cheek, an alcoholic beverage law expert with Nashville’s Bone McAllester Norton law firm, said it’s an oft-forgotten part of the law. “The 20 percent markup is based on the most-recent amount invoiced by the wholesaler,” Cheek explained. “For example, if a store buys wine at $5, the state minimum price is $6. If the store orders more of the same wine, and the wholesaler charges $6, all of the new and all old inventory in the store must be marked up to $7.20.”

Prices and more will be unveiled to all on July 1st, but one thing seems certain: For the first time in Tennessee, your bananas can ride in the same cart as your bottle of red. 

Bracing for Impact

Southwind Wine & Spirits on Hacks Cross is located right next door to Costco, which never mattered much in terms of competition until the bill passed allowing wine sales in grocery stores. 

local products at Doc’s.

“It’s a total game-changer for us,” said Southwind general manager Ryan Gill. “We’re going to have to transition to more liquor sales. We need to make sure we have a more knowledgeable staff that can give over-the-top customer service.”

Gill’s sentiments echo a widespread belief among local liquor store owners and retailers that, beginning July 1st, their businesses will be negatively impacted. 

As a concession for liquor stores, the wine bill allowed sales of lower-alcohol beers, mixers, wine accessories, food, and other party supplies. Liquor store owners were allowed to diversify their products in July 2014, giving them a year’s head start.

at Doc’s.

Some stores, however, were limited on what they could add, based on space or competition from nearby grocery stores. At Southwind, Gill says they can’t sell much low-alcohol beer because Costco has that market cornered, but the bill also allowed liquor stores to start delivering alcohol to events. Since Southwind provides the wine and liquor for the St. Jude golf tournament, Gill said that part of the business has helped some — but not enough.

“To be honest, our wine sales make 65 percent of our business, and everything they’ve given us in return might make up 5 percent. It’s not a fair trade,” Gill said. “But at least we got something out of it.”

Joe’s Wines & Liquor in Midtown added a beer and wine growler station after the bill passed, and while owner Brad Larson admits that’s helped “keep our regulars satisfied,” he said the ability to add food and party supplies won’t make up for the business he expects to lose on wine sales.

“I never wanted to be a grocer, but we had to put in things like chips and dips, sausages, cheeses, spaghetti, and spaghetti sauce,” Larson said. “It’s like a mini-grocery.”

Buster’s Liquors & Wines underwent a major expansion that opened last December, adding about 6,000 square feet to the 10,000-square-foot space at Poplar and Highland.

“We were really fortunate as far as timing was concerned,” said Buster’s owner Josh Hammond. “The day the bill passed, we called up the folks next door and started discussions with them and Loeb Properties about acquiring that space.”

The expansion allowed Buster’s to more than double its cold storage, increasing space for beer and cold wines. They added a growler station with a Pegas growler fill that allows customers to store unopened growlers for a month. There’s also a new wine-tasting station featuring 12 wines at a time. Hammond said they’re not able to do tastings every night because of staffing issues, but he eventually aspires to that. According to Hammond, the expansion, plus the ability to add new products, has boosted sales at Buster’s.

“It’s definitely helping. We’re already at about 5 percent of volume for beer sales and about 2 percent for food and accessories,” Hammond said. “We’re carrying ice now and Yeti coolers. We just started carrying kegs this week.”

As for retaining wine customers, liquor store owners agree their edge may come from better customer service and competitive pricing. Some Kroger stores will have wine consultants but only the larger stores. In most grocery stores, customers will be left on their own to figure out what wine to pair with pasta or what wine is best for a pool party.

“I went in to Kroger the other day and asked for lentils, and a guy told me to try the frozen food section. So good luck with help finding a cabernet or a sauvignon blanc,” Larson said. “You’re not going to get any service at Kroger. I can tell you that.”

As for pricing, a provision in the bill requires all wine sellers — liquor stores and grocery stores — to mark up wines by 20 percent. But some liquor store managers say they’ll be able to sell wines cheaper because they can order more cases at a time.

“Where I think we have a bit of an advantage is we can store more cases than grocery stores, so whereas I might be able to buy 100 cases of a product, Kroger will not be able to because they don’t have the capacity to store those cases,” said Philip Forman, the general manager of Kirby Wines & Liquors. “The bigger deal we can buy, the better the price will be. We’re confident that, price-wise, they won’t be able to beat us.”

Because of all the uncertainty with the future of liquor store businesses, not many new stores have opened since the bill passed in 2014. But that didn’t stop Doc’s Wine, Spirits & More in Germantown, which opened last summer, right after stores were allowed to diversify products.

“It’s a weird time in our industry, and we were the only ones that opened coming right at the idea that wine will be in grocery stores,” said Gill, who, in addition to managing Southwind, also manages Doc’s.

To set themselves apart from nearby grocers, Doc’s is starting a weekly wine academy (with tastings) for customers, and they focus on selling locally made artisan goods, like meats from Porcellino’s Craft Butcher, Phillip Ashley chocolates, and caramels from Shotwell Candy Co.

“We’re trying to create a more fun environment than just going into a store and grabbing a bottle of wine,” Gill said.

Will the new products, tastings, classes, lower prices, and customer service help the liquor stores retain their customers? Only time will tell. Most local liquor store owners remain cautiously optimistic.

“We’re anticipating some of our business going away, but when the dust settles, after six months or a year, I think some of those people will come back, especially when they realize we’ll either match or beat their price,” Forman said.

Going Krogering?

You’ve got a shopping cart filled with pasta, tomatoes, garlic, olive oil, mushrooms, and fresh basil — everything you need to make spaghetti with homemade marinara. But what wine to pair with it? At most grocery stores around town, you’ll be left on your own to figure that out. But at 12 larger Shelby County Krogers, a full-time wine consultant will be on-site to offer help. 

Derek Stamper is a wine consultant at Kroger.

The consultants will be overseen by Lauren Obermeier, the adult beverage specialist for Kroger’s Delta Division, which includes five states. Obermeier is in charge of all alcohol sales in the division. She explains what to expect from the new local Krogers’ wine selections and consultants. — Bianca Phillips

Flyer: Will Kroger be carrying high-end wines or mostly just low-cost varieties?

Lauren Obermeier: We will have everything from entry-level wines to very rare, high-end wines that we will get on special release. We’ll also have exclusive wines just for Kroger. 

Are the wine consultants experts hired from outside the store or promoted from within?

The wine consultants were all promoted from within Kroger, and they have taken more than 24 hours of classroom education and another four to six hours of online education for wine. There will also be continued education for our wine consultants in the store. They’re very knowledgeable about wine, and they’re ready to help and assist our customers and even teach them about wine.

What sorts of questions can the consultants answer?

Customers can ask them about pairings, what’s new in the market, what’s trending. If they’re having a party, they can ask what wine they should buy? What kind of meat would you recommend to go with my chardonnay? 

They can recommend food to buy with the wine you want or wine to go with the food in your cart. We also have [in-store] cheese shops, and the wine consultant can recommend what type of wine would go best with a certain type of cheese. We have a cheese master who can help our shoppers learn about the different cheeses that will go with wines.

What hours will they be available?

The wine consultants won’t be in on Sundays since we cannot sell on Sunday. And there will be another day of the week, probably a Wednesday, that they won’t be there. Otherwise, they’ll be there from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., 10 a.m.-7 p.m., and 11 a.m. to

8 p.m. [depending on the day and the store]. We can only sell wine between 

8 a.m. and 11 p.m.

Will Kroger stores have wine tastings?

Unfortunately, the bill doesn’t allow grocery stores to hold wine tastings in the store. We can taste steaks and cheese and all the food products. It would be such an added benefit if we were allowed to let our customers taste wine.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Tennessee Democrat and Republican Parties Both Facing Change

CREDIT: Nancy Chase

Even as the nation’s two major political parties, on the eve of their quadrennial confrontation, each struggle on a national scale with the task of redefinition, so do the same two parties in Tennessee.

In the nation at large, Democrats are still (technically) in the act of choosing between two would-be exemplars — one, Hillary Clinton, a seasoned and well-known figure touting the values of diversity and equal opportunity; the other, Bernie Sanders, a self-defined Democratic socialist focusing on the need for a “political revolution” to moderate the economic inequalities of a system rigged to benefit the wealthy.

Here and there, the differences between those two candidates (who, it should be said, have much in common) is seen clearly. In that sense, the Democrats are lucky. The Republicans have, in the course of primary races that were both numerous and confusing, found their choice ready-made — in Donald J. Trump, a wildly successful Manhattan real estate billionaire and a man whose views and attitudes toward most policy matters are, for better or for worse, vague and ever-fluctuating, clearly subordinate to the dictates of an undeniably unique personality.

The two state parties have, both within the last week, just concluded their annual banquets in Tennessee, events which are meant to define them to their respective constituencies. Paradoxically, each of the Tennessee parties veered in a rhetorical direction counter to that of the national parties they represent.

The Democrats held their annual Jackson Day Dinner in Nashville, Saturday before last, and their keynoter, the well-known consultant James Carville, made no mystery about who was likely to emerge from the ongoing Clinton-Sanders contest.

Nancy Chase

Carville at Nashville

Recounting for the party faithful at the state capital’s impressive new Music City Center a public encounter he had just had with a GOP opposite number of sorts, Karl Rove, Carville related how he teased Rove with the statement, “I believe the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party has the experience, the temperament, and the judgment to be president of the United States from Day One” (clearly a description of former First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State Clinton) and followed that up with a challenge: “Karl, tell us about the Republican nominee.” In Carville’s telling, anyhow, Rove could not respond in kind, but merely sputtered out the familiar attack phrases which Republicans habitually aim at candidate Clinton — FBI investigation, emails, Benghazi, etc.

The Republicans had gotten themselves “stuck” with Trump, a political anomaly, as a direct consequence of their having misled their basic constituency for a generation, Carville said, mentioning such notions as that President Obama was born in Kenya, that the planet Earth dated back only 5,000 years, that there was no such thing as global warming, that there had been weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that giving millionaires tax cuts would balance the budget.

“When people rise up and start believing all this nuttiness, why are you surprised? Let them believe whatever they want to. And anything Trump says, they believe it because they’ve been conditioned to believe it.”

Carville proclaimed that “our diversity is our strength.” He expressed pride that “my party nominated the first African-American candidate for president and will nominate the first woman.” He followed that with another dig at the GOP: “And no, you don’t get credit for Sarah Palin. Sorry.”

Carville’s de facto celebration of Clinton, his party’s still unchosen but likely nominee, contrasted with the Tennessee Republicans’ mum’s-the-word approach, at their annual Statesman’s Dinner at the selfsame Music City Center, this past Friday, toward Trump, a candidate whose nomination is virtually signed, sealed, and delivered already.  

Tellingly, in view of Carville’s apotheosis of Clinton, the Republicans’ choice of a keynoter was another woman, Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina, an unmistakably conservative office-holder but one who, in her own way, as the daughter of Indian immigrants, also stands for diversity, and who, in the past year, has made headlines by a) removing the Confederate flag from its former place of honor at her state Capitol building, and b) refusing, so far, to endorse Trump.

And, though he was the elephant in that room as in the nation’s media, Trump was roundly ignored in the evening’s rhetoric. The late U.S. Senator Fred Thompson was honored with due praise, as were the two living GOP Senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, as was Governor Bill Haslam and the retiring Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey, and as were numerous exemplars of the party’s legislative super-majority and command of the state’s congressional delegation.

Though he surely had support here and there in the room, Trump remained at best an X factor, an unknown on the other side of whom, chronologically, were such future-tense bench hopes as Haley.

Though she did not refer to the fact, keynoter Haley was the avowed target, outside the arena, of protesters, garbed in Confederate gray and waving rebel battle flags to demonstrate their outrage at her apostasy. The Republican brass inside surely had to be pleased by this semiotic hint that — on this matter, anyhow — they were on the right side of history.

Whatever its fate in the nation at large (“We’re looking at a 162-year-old political party literally cracking up right in front of us,” Carville said), the GOP seems destined to remain the ruling force in Tennessee for some time to come, though the Democrats had scored a coup of sorts by giving one of their major honors, the Anne Dallas Dudley Political Courage Award, to a couple who had distinguished themselves by fighting hard on behalf of Insure Tennessee, a Medicaid expansion plan proposed by Republican Governor Haslam but so far rejected by his party mates in the General Assembly.

For all their different directions — the Tennessee GOP still hewing to its historic distrust of social programs and ameliorist government in general, their Democratic counterparts continuing to see themselves as tribunes of the powerless — there are points of contact in the political middle. If the GOP members of the Tennessee General Assembly should, post-presidential-election, see fit finally to humor Haslam on the health-care matter, it will be through the medium of a task force appointed by Republican House Speaker Beth Harwell, whose power moves will doubtless fill some of the vacuum left by Ramsey’s departure.

Harwell, who is rumored to have gubernatorial ambitions, may, in fact, become the face of the Tennessee Republican Party in much the way that Tennessee Democratic Party chair Mary Mancini (whose GOP opposite number is Ryan Haynes, a male genotype) has become that of her party.

The Tennessee GOP boasts a fair number of women in office, although, truth is, it is miles behind the Tennessee Democratic Party in forms of diversity having to do with race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Still, there is a political middle, and, with any luck at all, it may get filled up at some point in the respective reconstructions just now beginning to occur in the two major political parties. 

There are signs of changes in both, locally as well as nationally. The GOP’s dominant business-minded faction is under challenge from the very uprooted populists it has seduced away from the Democrats, while the Clinton/Sanders yin-yang will play out for years — a difficult wrangle but, in the end, a necessary one.

Categories
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.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

De-Annexation: The Moral of the Story

As this week’s Flyer cover story notes, the city of Memphis — in the judgment of numerous spokespersons for city interests — may have dodged another bullet in the General Assembly this week. This was a bill, the product of

longstanding collaboration between various opponents of urban expansion in Tennessee, that would have crippled the efforts of Memphis to right itself and resolve what was already a difficult financial predicament even before the advent of the bill.

The bill, still not formally dead, is a measure to facilitate de-annexation by residents of incorporated cities. It was proposed by two House members from the Chattanooga suburbs who two years ago had succeeded in establishing the principle of consent on the part of residents about to be annexed. The new bill has, in the lexicon of our time, gone a bridge too far beyond that. It would allow referenda on the part of residential areas annexed since 1998 to de-annex themselves, even if, in the words of Memphis Chamber of Commerce head Phil Trenary, the results would be “swiss cheese” urban maps, with gaping holes marking where formerly contiguous Memphis neighborhoods had existed side by side. 

In the case of Memphis, there would be gaping holes in the city’s financial resources as well. Even those legislators who favored the bill — including suburban Shelby County legislators who helped to get it passed in the House of Representatives last week — acknowledged that it would occasion a $28 million annual loss in property tax and local-option sales tax revenues for the city.

And the bill’s proponents made no pretense of applying an objective standard to all urban areas in Tennessee. It singles out Memphis and four other areas — Knoxville, Chattanooga, Kingsport, and tiny Cornersville — as liable for redress penalties on account of allegedly “egregious” annexations of adjacent territories. That these annexations were all performed in perfect compliance with the letter of Tennessee law was of no matter to the authors of the bill. Nor was the fact that the bill would up-end the long-standing provisions of Public Law 1101, a.k.a. the Urban Growth Act, a compromise arrangement agreed upon in 1998 among representatives of Tennessee’s urban, suburban, and rural constituencies.

The Urban Growth Act was the result of positive and coordinated effort. The current attempt to dismantle it, which the de-annexation bill would achieve, is the consequence of ex parte vengefulness, by way of contrast.

Luckily, as detailed in the cover story, various representatives of Memphis and Shelby County interests mounted a coordinated effort of their own to get the bill sent back to committee this week, and, as of this writing, the chances of positively amending the measure seem good. Only one thing is lacking, a joining in the effort by representatives of Shelby County government per se. And that, we have the right to hope, will be forthcoming. 

After all, it would be county government that would have to shoulder the financial burden of, say, 150 additional Sheriff’s deputies, and as many new vehicles, in order to police the newly de-annexed areas. We’re all in this together, and that’s the moral of the story.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Second Efforts

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The de-annexation bill that was temporarily stalled in the state Senate on Monday of this week was, as this week’s Flyer cover story (p. 14) documents, the subject of concerted resistance activity on the part of Memphis legislators, city council members, and representatives of the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce.

Many of the same legislators were part of another never-say-die effort, this one mounted by the House Democratic Caucus, which got behind an effort by House Democratic leader Craig Fitzhugh (D-Ripley) to enable a non-binding resolution for a statewide referendum on Governor Bill Haslam‘s moribund Insure Tennessee proposal.

That proposal, which would have allowed some $1.5 billion in federal funds annually to further Medicaid expansion in Tennesee, has been so far bottled up by the Republican super-majority in the General Assembly. And Fitzhugh’s resolution itself was routed off to the limbo of legislative “summer study” as a result of a procedural gambit employed by Representative Jeremy Durham (R-Franklin), who was formally ousted from his House leadership positions recently because of allegations involving improper activities involving interns and female staffers.

Memphis representatives Joe Towns, Larry Miller, and G.A. Hardaway were among those speaking on behalf of reactivating Insure Tennessee legislation at a press conference last week in Legislative Plaza.

 

• Ninth District Congressman Steve Cohen began the week as a part of the entourage that accompanied President Obama on his history-making trip to Cuba, where the president furthered the official Cuba-U.S.A. relations he reopened last year.

The trip was the second one to Cuba for Cohen, who also was part of a delegation accompanying Secretary of State John Kerry to the Caribbean island nation in 2014. The Memphis congressman obviously went to some considerable effort to get himself involved with both missions. Why Cohen’s more than usual interest in the matter?

Well, first of all, the congressman has long advocated a normalizing of relations with Cuba, which became estranged from the United States during the height of the Cold War when Cuban ruler Fidel Castro instituted what he termed a communist revolution and cozied up to the Soviet Union, then a superpower antagonist to the U.S.

Cohen has favored rapprochement and an end to the still-active trade embargo on political and economic grounds, pointing out that the Cold War, at least in its original form, is long gone and that American enterprises, in Memphis as well as elsewhere, stand to prosper from improved relations between the two countries.

And there is the fact that, when Cohen was growing up, his family lived in Miami, the American city closest to Cuba and one containing a huge number of exiles from that nation.

But there’s more to it than that —as those Memphians know who were privy to an old AOL email address used by Cohen, one that employed a variant on the name of former White Sox baseball star Minnie Miñoso, who happened to hail from Cuba.

The backstory involving Cohen and Miñoso was uncovered this week for readers of the Miami Herald by reporter Patricia Mazzei in a sidebar on Obama’s trip to Cuba.

Mazzei related the essentials of a tale familiar to those Memphians who were readers of a Cohen profile that appeared in the Flyer‘s sister publication, Memphis magazine, in 2001. After noting that the young Cohen, who had always aspired to an athletic career himself, had been afflicted by polio at the age of 5, Mazzei goes to observe: “His parents, lifelong baseball fans, took young Steve, hobbled with crutches, to see Mom’s hometown Chicago White Sox at a Memphis exhibition game. Steve made his way near the field to plead for autographs.

“That’s when a pitcher, Tom Poholsky, handed him a real Major League baseball. It wasn’t from him, Poholsky told him. It was from an outfielder who couldn’t give the boy the ball himself because this was Memphis, in 1955, and the outfielder was black. The first black White Sox, in fact.

“His name: Minnie Miñoso. A native of Perico, Cuba.”

The young Cohen was struck by the fact that Miñoso, who for obvious reasons became something of a personal idol for him, had been so inhibited by restrictions that were part of an outmoded way of life, and his lifelong emotional attachment to the great Miñoso, who died only last year, ensued.

“I learned from Miñoso about civil rights, and I learned from Miñoso about Cuba, and I learned from Miñoso to be nice to kids,” Cohen said to Mazzei, who disclosed also that the congressman had toted a Miñoso-embossed White Sox baseball cap to Cuba on the Kerry trip with the aim of getting it to current Cuban president Raúl Castro.

He brought several more such caps with him to hand out here and there on the current presidential trip.

Jackson Baker

Roasted, toasted, and pleased about it all at a Democratic fund-raising “roaster” last Saturday honoring: (l to r, seated) Shelby County Commissioner Walter Bailey, former state Senator Beverly Marrero, and former City Councilman Myron Lowery. Standing is longtime former public official Michael Hooks, who applied the barbs to Bailey. The affair was held at the National Civil Rights Museum.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

State Senate Puts Off Action on De-Annexation Bill, Sends It Back to Committee

State Senator Lee Harris arguing for bill’s referral

Nobody’s going anywhere just yet. The bill (HB0779/SB074) pending in the General Assembly that would allow de-annexation by any area annexed by Memphis since 1998 has been referred back to committee.

Several factors combined to produce that result on Monday — including reservations about the bill expressed by Lt. Governor Bill Haslam and Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey) and phone calls to legislators by Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, abetted by on-site lobbying in Nashville on Monday by Memphis Chamber officials and City Council members.

But the actual mechanism that took the bill off the Senate floor and staved off a floor vote came on a motion by Senator Ken Yager of Kingston, chairman of the body’s State and Local Committee, who found the version that passed the House last week to be “totally unacceptable…bad law and bad policy.”

Yager based his objections mainly on the bill’s singling out a five cities (including Memphis) out of the 350 or so muinicipalities in Tennessee and its use of the hazy term “egregious” to describe annexations by those cities.

After the Senate sponsor, Bo Watson of Hixson, quarreled with that judgment and after a good deal of ensuing to and fro in debate, the Senate agreed to suspend the rules and refer the bill for reconsideration to Yager’s committee, which will hear it during a specially called session on Wednesday at noon.

Mayor Strickland and the Council and legislators representing Memphis itself have opposed the bill for numerous reasons, including the fact that, they say, it could cost the city $28 million annually in revenue and the loss of some 110,000 inhabitants, wreaking unintended consequences and havoc overall.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Behind the Bill

CREDIT: JB

NASHVILLE — Maybe it’s because Ron Ramsey, the powerful state Senate Speaker, Lt. Governor, and presumed political careerist, chose Wednesday as his time to announce his decision to exit politics, or maybe it’s just another indication of how Memphis and its perils rate low on the Richter scale of Legislative Plaza these days. Or maybe it’s just a matter of the calendar. JB

Strickland at Shelby delegation lunch

In any case, outside of those folks who, in one sense or another, represent the sphere of Memphis and Shelby County in Nashville, the Great De-Annexation Crisis has generated very little fuss and bother at the General Assembly in Nashville.

This is despite the fact that Memphis is one of only six municipalities in Tennessee that stand to lose from the de-annexation bill that swept through the House of Representatives on Monday night and has convulsed local government — the Memphis part of it anyhow — with its implications.

It was only on behalf of Memphis that several of the Representatives elected by the city — Joe Towns, G.A. Hardaway, Raumesh Akbari and Larry Miller — and two friendly helpers — House Democratic leaders Mike Stewart of Nashville and Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley — rose on Monday night to protest HB0779/SB0749, the bill brought by two Chattanooga-area Republicans that would allow residents of areas annexed by their municipalities since 1998 to de-annex.

Other cities charged by the bill’s sponsors with “egregious” and arbitrary annexations are Chattanooga, Knoxville, Kingsport and Cornersville. Cornersille? Yes, the tiny Marshall County municipality of 1100 souls was faulted on Monday night by bill sponsor Mike Carter (R-Ooltewah) for grabbing up nine local farms in an arbitrary annexation.

The only one of 16 or so amendments introduced by opponents of the bill that was accepted by Carter was one to delete Johnson City as an offender. What that east Tennessee city had done was to voluntarily consent to the de-annexation of a community called Suncrest and thereby earn a pardon.

It would seem that Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, for whom this is about the fourth or fifth crisis to hit him unawares during his short term, is agreeable to ceding two of the most recently annexed Memphis neighborhoods — South Cordova and Southwind. He said so to the press after a Wednesday lunch meeting of the Shelby County legislative delegation at Tennessee Tower that he and Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell had signed on to long before the current matter broke.

Those two de-annexations would only cost the city $5 million, Strickland said, as against the $27 million or so he estimates that de-annexations of every community absorbed by Memphis since 1998 would cost.
JB

…and wth the press afterward

The year 1998 is apparently being used as a demarcation point in the de-annexation bill because that is the year of what was supposed to be a settlement of the crisis caused by the fateful Toy Town bill of 1997. That measure, smoothed through the legislature by the late Senate Speaker John Wilder on behalf of a Fayette County client community, would have allowed communities of the most modest size to incorporate and, before it was finally declared unconstitutional by the state Supreme Court (on a caption irregularity, actually), it had already spurred dozens of would-be incorporation efforts on the borders of Memphis.

The resultant 1998 compromise bill assigned municipalities limited areas as expansion reserves and made the process of urban expansion more difficult. But that has clearly failed to appease the adversaries of urbanism, and one wonders if Strickland’s proffered sacrifice will be honored as a stopping point in a revised Senate version or serve merely to whet the appetite of the de-annexationists.

A dialogue Monday between Strickland and Rep. Curry Todd (R-Collierville), one of the more vocal advocates of de-annexation, was not promising in that regard. Todd insisted that the city, in a conference call held at some unidentified earlier point, had agreed to larger concessions, and Strickland (who would later say he had participated in no such conference call) would respond that it wasn’t so.

Beyond the offer to sign off on Southwind and South Cordova, Strickland also floated the idea of somehow  offsetting fire and police expenses and of adding utility and OPEB costs to the general obligation bonds that the bill would obligate the residents of any de-annexing area to pay out on a pro-rata basis.
JB

Germantown Mayor Palazzolo

Granted, the current situation is to the Toy Towns matter as apples are to oranges, but then Mayor Willie Herenton, for better or for worse, was less flexible on concessions by Memphis, and make of that what you will. (One historical analogy that definitely does hold is that County Mayor Luttrell, much in the manner of County Mayor Jim Rout in the Toy Towns era, professes not to be terribly troubled by developments.)

In any case, there may be beaucoup bargaining yet to come before the other legislative foot drops in a Senate vote, probably next week. For what it’s worth, Memphis Democratic Senator Reginald Tate is already showing signs of weakening in his sponsorship of the de-annexation bill under pressure from the media in exposing his legislative history.

Tate, who lost out on a vote to be Senate Democratic leader before the current session by a single vote, has in fact voted so often with Republicans, even on matters arguably counter to Memphis’ interests, that wags in  Legislative Plaza refer to his District 33 as “the Ramsey-Tate district.” JB

Curry Todd on the attack

For what it’s worth, spectators for the Monday night vote on de-annexation included a generous supply of mayors of suburban municipalities. Asked about that on Monday, Germantown Mayor Mike Palazzolo said his primary interest in being in town was to resist ongoing efforts to repeal the Hall Income Tax, the proceeds of which are significant add-ons to to the coffers of every municipality in Shelby County, including Memphis.

But Palazzolo acknowledged that his landlocked city would be an interested party if adjacent areas like Windyke became de-annexed in the wake of the current bill.

The question of whether and when such areas, if detached from Memphis, would be eligible for absorption by another municipality, is an intriguing one — and, oddly, several leading proponents of the bill, including Todd and Representative Mark White (R-Germantown) professed not to know what the bill provided in that regard, though House sponsor Carter dismissed the prospect of such re-annexations Monday night on the ground that the bill made them prohibitively difficult.

To say the least, there would seem to be much in the measure requiring a re-examination by all sides.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Making Tennessee Great Again!

I’m writing this from the restroom facility at Big Hill Pond State Park in southern McNairy County. On Monday, I commandeered the building, which contains the men’s and women’s restrooms, some racks of pamphlets, and two vending machines. There’s no one here right now, but I plan to stay as long as necessary to protest the fact that the state of Tennessee is run by oppressive know-nothings who wouldn’t know small government — or freedom, for that matter — if it bit them on their considerable backsides.

I’m talking about Andy Holt and Mae Beavers and Ron Ramsey and all those other dolts running things in Nashville, the people who think we elected them to fight an imaginary war against Sharia law and oppose gay marriage and suckle at the teat of the N.R.A. They’re not patriots. They’re self-aggrandizing morons, and I’m taking my state back. I want to make Tennessee great again.

I’m not kidding. I’ve had enough, and I’m serving notice: If the state of Tennessee wants this building back, they’re going to have to come and pry it from my freshly sanitized hands. And don’t think it’s going to be easy.

I’ve got a nice Beretta 12-guage automatic (the one I got as a wedding present from my brother-in-law), an (almost) full box of birdshot, and three pretty substantial bottle rockets. I’ve got four packages of thick-cut Benton’s smoked bacon, some nice sourdough loaves from Fresh Market, 15 Lindt Intense Orange chocolate bars, six heirloom tomatoes, several pounds of artisanal dark roast Kona, 12 bags of Skinny Pop, and two cases of Wiseacre Tiny Bomb.

Check and mate, my friends.

Not to mention, there’s enough toilet paper and hand sanitizer in here to last me ’til June, at least. And don’t forget those vending machines. Also, the Tuscumbia River is just over the hill, and I packed a sweet five-weight Sage and a nice selection of spring dry flies. A country liberal can survive. Underestimate me at your peril, Cousin Bubba.

Of course, I got the idea for this boondoggle, er, courageous stand for freedom, from those guys out in Oregon, the ones who bravely stormed and liberated an empty U.S. national park building that mostly catered to bird-watchers during migration season. Then they hung a bunch of U.S. flags everywhere and asked people to send help via the U.S. Post Office.

Because of that, some people are making fun of them, calling them “Vanilla ISIS” and “Y’allQueda,” but I think those right-wing mokes have the right idea. If you don’t like something, call the government’s bluff! Take over a federal building. For Freedom. And news coverage. What’s the worst that could happen? Not much, apparently.

So, here I am in good old Big Hill Pond State Park, making my own stand for freedom in sympathy with my Oregon brothers-in-arms. And like them, I’m locked and loaded and angry, and I’m not leaving until some big changes are made … or I get some airtime on national television.

So, Governor, er, Lieutenant Governor, Ramsey, you can send in the National Guard, I don’t care. Hell, send in ol’ Mae Beavers. I’d love to chat with that poofy-headed dipshizzle face-to-face. That’s right, you Nashville yahoos, I’m here on Tennessee state property in McNairy County, I’m Memphis as eff, and I’m not going anywhere. Come at me, bros.

Oh, and did I mention I’m white? Well, I am. Really, really white. Sooo … you know. Take it easy.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

2015: A Year of Change in Memphis Politics

Sitting uneasily at the same table for the annual Myron Lowery prayer breakfast on January 1, 2015 were future antagonists Mayor A C Wharton (left) and Jim Strickland (in center). At far right is Council candidate Mickell Lowery, who would be upset in a Council race by underdog Martavius Jones.

The year 2015 began with a bizarre New Year’s Day event in which Memphis City Councilman Jim Strickland was asked to stand up by a reigning figure in city politics, whereupon said official, council chairman Myron Lowery, basically called Strickland out for his presumption in considering a race against incumbent Mayor A C Wharton.

The year will end with the selfsame Strickland preparing to stand on a stage on New Year’s Day 2016 and take the oath as mayor, while both Wharton and Lowery exit city government, and Mickell Lowery, the latter’s son, wonders what went wrong with his own failed bid to succeed his father on the council.

On the national stage, similar head-scratching must be going on at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport and in other establishmentarian councils where the old reliable form sheets seem to have gone suddenly and sadly out of date.

Everywhere, it would seem, the representatives and figureheads of things-as-usual are hearing variations on “You’re fired,” which is how it might be put by Donald Trump, the real estate billionaire and political eccentric whose out-of-nowhere surge to the top of the pack among Republican presidential contenders is one of the obvious indicators of the new mood.

One of the most trusted end-of-year polls of the GOP race had Trump at 42 percent and Jeb Bush at 3 percent. Less extremely, back in our own bailiwick, the formerly invincible Wharton, whose two earlier mayoral races netted him victory totals of 70 percent and 60 percent, finished his 2015 reelection effort with a woeful 22 percent of the vote, a full 20 points behind the victorious Strickland, in what was essentially a four-person race.

It takes no crystal ball or soothsaying skill to see that there was discontent against traditional management — again, what we call the establishment — in all the public places: locally, nationally, and even statewide. Governor Bill Haslam, a pleasant, well-intentioned man with a little sense and sensibility, was spurned by the leadership and rank-and-file of his own Republican Party in the General Assembly in Nashville. 

His prize proposal, a home-grown version of Medicaid (TennCare) expansion called Insure Tennessee, was just different enough from the semantically vulnerable Obamacare to pass muster with the state’s hospitals, medical professionals, and — according to polls — the Tennessee public at large. It was opposed by the GOP speakers of the two legislative chambers in both a special session in February and the regular session later on and kept thereby from ever getting a vote on the floor of either the House or the Senate.

As Haslam noted in a barnstorming expedition across the state later in the year, the state also had a serious need for upgrading of its roads, bridges, and infrastructure in general, but — once burned and twice shy from the rejection of Insure Tennessee — he dared not advocate a gasoline tax or any other specific plan to raise revenue for infrastructure purposes. He was reduced instead to voicing a hope at each of his stops that an aroused public itself would clamor for such remedies. No such luck.

Meanwhile, the once-dominant Democratic Party had become such a shell of its former self that it was powerless to suggest anything of its own legislatively or to oppose any initiative of the Republicans, who owned a super-majority — and a Tea Party-dominated one — in both houses.

What the Democrats could do, in Shelby County and statewide, was outfit themselves with new leaders. Mary Mancini, a veteran activist from Nashville, became the new state party chairman, while Randa Spears was elected in Memphis to head Shelby County Democratic Party and to impose overdue reform on what had been some serious mismanagement of the party’s finances.

The local Republican Party elected a female chair, too,  Mary Wagner, suggesting the existence of a trend and the possibility that, as confidence in the old order continued to erode, political folks were increasingly looking to the women in their ranks as a source of new leadership.

• City and county politics were crucially affected by budgetary matters during 2015. 

In the case of the city, austerity measures approved by both Mayor Wharton and a council majority — specifically pension reform and reduction of health benefits for city employees — would taint public confidence in city government and shape the resultant four-way mayoral race to the incumbent’s disadvantage.

Even such seeming talking points for the mayor as the new Electrolux and Mitsubishi plants failed to diminish local unemployment to the degree that had been expected.

Mayoral candidate Harold Collins was telling with his mockery of the $10-an-hour jobs for temps he said prevailed at both locations. Memphis Police Association president Mike Williams embodied resentment of lost benefits for first responders in his mayoral bid. 

And, most effectively, the aforementioned Strickland hammered away at a triad of issues — public safety, blight, and a need for more accountability on the part of public officials — that his polling suggested were winning themes among voters of all ethnicities and economic classes.

Some considered these mere housekeeping issues, but as poll-derived distillations of the Memphis electorate’s concerns about the here and now, they were evidently on point — enough so that Strickland, in many ways a generic white man, would eventually capture 25 percent of the city’s black vote, pulling his mathematical share against African-American candidates Wharton, Collins, and Williams.

On the council front, six new members were chosen in open races, and in each case it was the most business-friendly candidate who won. This was undeniably the case with candidates such as Philip Spinosa, a young FedEx executive who raised a prohibitive $200,000 in an at-large race, avoiding public forums with his five opponents or much public contact of any kind except for a forest of yard signs bearing his name along the major traffic arteries of central and East Memphis.

Another financially well-endowed council newcomer, Worth Morgan, advertised himself similarly, but was willing to confront the rest of his field — and in the runoff a well-regarded Republican activist — in open debate, where he held his own.

Along with Strickland’s nonstop emphasis on public safety, there was an abundance of pro-police rhetoric among the winners of city races. The question — one that achieved the level of irony — was how all this public empathy, short of restoring lost benefits, could arrest the ongoing fallout from the ranks. Some 200 to 300 cops had already responded to benefit cuts by going elsewhere.

The general sense of rebellion that, in one way or another, seemed to characterize the political scene in 2015 may have found its fullest fruition in Shelby County government, where, after enacting various expected rituals of partisan rivalry amongst themselves, the county comissioners began to mount a coordinated campaign as a body against the administration of county Mayor Mark Luttrell. This development was a direct outgrowth of the budget season, during which commissioners on both sides of the party line convinced themselves that they were being spoon-fed half-truths about money available for public purposes and at year’s end were attempting to assert their own authority as superceding that of the mayor.

As with so much else on the political landscape in 2015, the accustomed way was under challenge. The new year of 2016 will presumably have to come up with some answers.