Tag: Stephen Fincher

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Bredesen Enters U.S. Senate Race

CREDIT: JB

The other shoe has dropped in the case of Phil Bredesen, now a full-fledged candidate for the U.S. Senate. The former governor of Tennessee from 2003 to 2011  JB

Bredesen in his campaign-announcement video

and the last Democrat to hold major statewide office in this increasingly red state, Bredesen had been publicly flirting for at least two months with the idea of returning to active politics as a Senate candidate.

Founder of a highly successful health care enterprise in Nashville, Bredesen served several effective terms as mayor of that city and, after one unsuccessful race as Democratic nominee for governor in 1994, losing to Republican candidate Don Sundquist of Memphis, he was elected Tennessee’s chief executive on his second try in 2002, defeating the GOP’s Van Hilleary.

In his political races, Bredesen, a native of upstate New York, would joke about his origins elsewhere by saying, “I got here as soon as I could.”

While there are no sure things in politics, the entry of Bredesen is no doubt troubling news to fellow Nashville Democrat James Mackler, a lawyer and former Iraq war veteran who had previously declared for governor, as well as to state Republicans, now observing a potentially divisive race for the GOP Senate nomination between 7th District Congressman Marsha Blackburn and former 8th District Congressman Stephen Fincher.

The GOP establishment wasted no time in officially dissing Bredesen’s candidacy.

Scott Golden, chairman of the state Republican Party, issued a statement beginning with the statement that “[former Governor Phil Bredesen’s record represents the Tennessee of yesterday when Democrats labeled extreme unemployment rates, higher taxes, and a total lack of government transparency as ‘prospering,’” and going on to cite alleged improvements in the state’s circumstances since then.

And Michael McAdams, regional press secretary for the National Republican Senate Campaign Committee, greeted the former governor’s announcement by saying, “Phil Bredesen officially announced he’s running for U.S. Senate today, and national Democrats couldn’t be happier. Bredesen is exactly the type of big government liberal national Democrats love.”

Both statements are somewhat at variance with the actual political state of things during Bredesen’s incumbency. Far from being a “big government liberal,” Bredesen angered many in the liberal wing of his party by presiding over a period of enforced austerity, drastically pruning the state’s TennCare rolls and imposing across-the-board budget cuts that were one percent more severe than the ones recommended the year before by the ultra-conservative Blackburn, then a state senator.

Republicans were seriously hampered in their efforts to oppose Bredesen’s reelection in 2006 because, in the view of many observers, the Democratic Governor had in effect enacted the chief elements in the Republican platform of that time. Bredesen was opposed in 2006 by a GOP sacrificial lamb, state Senator Jim Bryson of Nashville, who lost badly.

It remains to be seen, of course, whether Bredesen, politically inactive since leaving the governor’s office (though he had publicly floated his availability for a cabinet position in the Obama administration) , will strike voters in 2018 as yesterday’s newspaper.

There is no doubting, however, that he posseses residual name recognition and will have financial and political support in his race that no other Democrat running statewide since his tenure in office as enjoyed. Moreover, the video in which he announced his candidacy seemed clearly in line with the conservative hues of Tennessee in 2017.

Referring to his background as a businessman, Bredesen declares in the video that “We all know Washington is broken..[while] back here in Tennessee, we have some real problems.” He boasts his resistance as governor to a state income tax and says, “The Affordable Care Act needs fixing.”

He laments that Congress is “immoral the way they keep borrowing money with no end in sight.,” and contends, “I’m running for the Senate because I have the right kind of experience and the actual track record that it will take to start working across party lines to fix the mess in Washington and bring common sense back to our government.”

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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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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Taxing Times

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

“The average American family would get a $4,000 raise under the president’s tax cut plan. So how could any member of Congress be against it?”

That was Sarah Huckabee Sanders, speaking about President Trump’s tax “plan” last week. Trump claimed (falsely, amazingly enough) that his plan would be the “largest tax cut in American history.” Not even close, but who’s even counting the lies these days?

As writer Franklin Leonard smartly pointed out: “If I give 10 apples to one person and no apples to nine people, the average person has one apple. Why are nine people mad at me?”

This is a spot-on analogy for Trump’s approach. The real tax breaks under the plans being put forth by the administration and the GOP will go to the wealthy and corporations. The middle class will get squat, and as a bonus, the plan just passed by the Senate cuts $473 billion from Medicare and nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid over the next 10 years. These cuts will affect 125 million Americans.

Some break, eh?

Factcheck.org analyzed the Senate tax plan and released a report that stated in part: “For the highest earners — those in the top 1 percent and top 0.1 percent — nearly all would see lower taxes. Ninety percent of the top 1 percent — those earning about $900,000 and above in 2027 — would get a tax cut, averaging $234,050.”
Conversely, middle-income households ($50,000 to $90,000 incomes) would receive an average tax break of $660, and, according to Politifact.com, “by 2027, more than one of every four middle-income families would pay more in taxes.”

As has been the case in recent weeks, there was pushback from Tennessee Senator Bob Corker, who urged the president to quit negotiating before the final budget process begins. Corker has seldom been a warrior for the middle class, but at least he’s not groveling before Trump. That won’t be the case with the Republicans running to take Corker’s seat in 2018 — Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn and former Congressman Stephen Fincher.

Fincher was in the Flyer offices last week being interviewed by Senior Editor Jackson Baker. He talked a good game: “People want somebody to represent us and not fall into the trap of status quo politics, caring only about the next rung up on the ladder,” Fincher said. “Marsha’s a career politician, a career candidate, used to being on Fox News every night. I’m just a farmer from Frog Jump.”

That sounds good, but then the Frog Jump farmer added: “I intend to support President Trump. I think his policies are 100 percent spot-on.”

Lord help us. I keep wondering when the American public will begin to see this Tea Party/Trump agenda for what it is — a total capitulation to corporatism and oligarchy. It is not “Christian.” It is not “conservative.” It is not “patriotic.” It is a greed-based perversion of our democracy. And Trump’s divisive, childish, self-absorbed antics are dividing us more with each passing day.

I posted a column by satirist Andy Borowitz on Facebook the other day. The title was: “Trump Says He Is Only President in History with Courage to Stand Up to War Widows.” Borowitz “quoted” Trump as saying “You look at guys like Obama and Clinton and the Bushes, when it came to war widows, they all blinked. For years, we weren’t winning at widows.”

I count it as an indication of how far down the Trump rabbit hole we have gone that some people who read this weren’t sure it was satire. “Is this real?” one woman wrote.

Not yet. But when the president of the United States is so mentally fragile that he would attack the pregnant widow of a soldier killed in combat and call her a liar on Twitter, we’re getting close.

One assumes Fincher and Blackburn would approve.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Fincher Paid to Defeat Flinn in 8th Race, Publication Says

CREDIT: JB

JB

Fincher (l), Flinn

It will be recalled that Memphis physician/businessman George Flinn, a frequent candidate for political office, was edged out in the August Republican primary for 8th District Congress by fellow Memphian David Kustoff, a former U.S. Attorney.

Kustoff’s margin of victory, 2,689 votes, was earned late in the contest, it is generally acknowledged. Both campaigns were aware of polling that showed Flinn, who out-spent all others in the multi-candidate GOP race, was leading in various private polls until the last week of the campaign.

During that last week, a flurry of print and TV ads appeared in the district alleging that Flinn was on record as having supported a Democratic candidate. The Democrat had been Flinn’s son, Shea Flinn, who ran unsuccessfully for a state House seat some years ago, later was appointed to an interim state Senate seat, and still later won and served two terms on the Memphis City Council.

With election day almost on top of him at that point, candidate Flinn, a longstanding Republican, tried to point out the obvious — that he had merely been supporting his own son — but had little time to get that message circulated. Flinn’s people — and some outside observers as well — blame the last-minute anti-Flinn adds for his defeat.

Now, it develops, according to the Tennessee Journal, that those ads were paid for by the outgoing Republican 8th District congressman, Stephen Fincher of Frog Jump in Crockett County. In its October 21 issue, the Journal notes that $100,000 in late contributions by Fincher to Win for American PAC, which technically placed the anti-Flinn advertising, match up directly with the placement-time and amount of the ads.

Flinn had been among several candidates in 2010 who ran for the 8th District seat, won that year by Fincher, and had, as was the custom by all the candidates in the race, run negative ads against his opponents. But Flinn had supported Fincher during the now congressman’s successful reelection runs in 2012 and 2014.

Whatever may have motivated Fincher, Flinn himself seems to have been no stranger to Realpolitik. Though no evidence links him to the expenditures of another group, a 501-C4 organization called Power of Liberty, that group, which was able legally to conceal the identities of its donors, had launched issue-advocacy ads attacking every candidate but Flinn in the recent congressional race.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Crap Shoot in the 8th

I’m thinking of moving to Tennessee’s 8th Congressional District so I can vote for Karen Free Spirit Talley-Lane. Karen, or “Free” as I like to call her, is an independent candidate, one of 20 people vying to become GOP Congressman Stephen Fincher’s replacement, including four other independents, two Democrats, and 13(!) Republicans.

There are 13 Republicans running because the 8th District has been gerrymandered into a lockdown seat for the GOP. All one of these 13 boys has to do is win, say, 20 percent of the votes and they’re on their way to Washington, D.C. The actual election in November is a foregone conclusion.

And thanks to the GOP gerrymandering of the 8th District that occurred after the 2010 census, I wouldn’t have to move very far to vote for Free — just to the “finger” on the map that juts its way deep into east Memphis, into the heart of what used to be Democratic 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen’s district, including the area where many of the city’s Jewish voters live. Huh, what could they have been thinking?

No problem, they gave Cohen Millington in exchange. Seems fair, right?

Gerrymandering is the source of our congressional gridlock. It’s a system that allows office-holders to literally pick who gets to vote for (and against) them. The majority party in power after the census obtains the right to draw the borders of our districts and other various political bailiwicks. They almost always do so in a way that splits and scatters the opposition party’s voters and solidifies their own. That’s why members of Congress are very seldom defeated, unless it’s by a member of their own party in a primary. Since they don’t have to work across party lines in their home districts, there’s very little inclination to do so once they get to Washington. They just have to keep the homefolks in their own party happy.

And that’s why there is a mad scramble among 13 Republicans to win the GOP nomination in the 8th. Once they’re in, they’re in for as long as they want to be there.

Just eight years ago, things were reversed. Longtime Democratic Congressman John Tanner controlled the 8th District, winning election after election. In 2008, the GOP didn’t even field a candidate. Tanner won the general election with 180,000 votes to his write-in opponent’s 54 — almost literally 100 percent of the electorate!

Then Tanner retired, and in the 2010 “wave” election, Fincher beat Democrat Roy Herron. In the post-census redistricting, the 8th District got gerrymandered to ensure that it would remain Republican, at least until the next census. That was done by moving much of eastern Shelby County, a GOP stronghold, from the 9th District to the 8th.

Which is why the Memphis television and radio airwaves are now filled with ads from Republicans, each trying to outdo the others with their red, white, and blue credentials. David Kustoff is going to end Islamic terrorism; George Flinn is going to abolish Obamacare (with the help of those two white-haired biddies who love him so); and real conservative Brian Kelsey is going to be the most conservative conservative who ever conserved. It’s why we are being visited by the dregs of the recent GOP presidential nomination process — Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and others — who are pitching for one or the other of the Goopsters. It’s why city boys are putting on their best button-down plaid shirts and visiting tractor pulls and county fairs.

There’s been little independent polling, making this race a crapshoot in the most literal and metaphorical sense. The early thinking was that Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell had the inside track, which would be fine with me, frankly. He at least tried to push for Governor Haslam’s expansion of Medicare, indicating that he has a brain and actually cares about the area’s uninsured population and Shelby County’s overburdened hospitals. Having another congressman from Memphis couldn’t hurt. It certainly beats having one from Frog Jump, like Fincher.

I mean, as long as Karen Free Spirit Talley-Lane is out of the running …

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Politics Politics Feature

TN 8th District: A Matter of “Roots”

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

It has often been remarked that — the current fatigue with incumbents notwithstanding — the best way of running for a public office is to hold one already. Such would seem to be the case with Mark Luttrell, Shelby County’s incumbent mayor and the presumptive man to beat in the highly competitive Republican primary for the 8th District congressional seat.

Jackson Baker

Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell

How this maxim seems to work was demonstrated Tuesday, when Luttrell was invited to share his tidings with members of the Rotary Club of Memphis at the University Club, one week after his Memphis counterpart, Jim Strickland, had appeared. As was the case with Strickland, the county mayor was asked to deliver a non-political address, and, in keeping with the request, proceeded to deliver a nuts-and-bolts summary of his governmental situation.

He did so, and, unlike Strickland, was able to issue a series of optimistic financial forecasts. No looming deficits (something of a budget surplus, in fact), no prospect of a tax increase, and the good news that the Shelby County economy, after years of conteracting, had actually grown to the tune of one whole percentage point.

It was only in the brief Q&A that followed Luttrell’s remarks that he got a bona fide political question, and it was to the point: Why was he running?

The mayor seemed grateful for the opportunity to explain. First of all, he was term-limited as mayor, and he still maintained an urge to serve. Secondly, as a native of Crockett County and other points in the district, he was, he said, “the only one in the race who was deep roots” in both the urban and rural spheres. He had waited, he said, a month or so after incumbent Stephen Fincher announced he would not run again “to see who would step up” and decided it needed to be himself.

Never was a collective “dis” delivered more gently.

• Meanwhile, David Kustoff, one of the four other major rival entries from Shelby County and the one, his supporters insist, who is the true rival to Luttrell for the affections of Shelby County Republicans in the 8th, promptly set out to nourish those roots with a three-day tour of the district.

The tour began Monday in Covington, continued to Somerville, and finally to Germantown, for an opening of the candidate’s Poplar Avenue headquarters. Some 125 supporters and observers were on hand, as former Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout and Shelby County Commissioner Mark Billingsley took turns introducing Kustoff, a former U.S. Attorney for Shelby County. 

Kustoff’s tour continues on Tuesday, with stops in Jackson, Huntington, Camden, Paris, Dresden, and Alamo. On Wednesday, the candidate will be in Dyersburg, Tiptonville, Union City, Trenton, and Brownsville.

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Politics Politics Feature

There’s an 8th District Congressional Race!

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Yes, yes, in the wake of the Iowa caucuses, it would appear that the forthcoming March 1st Super Tuesday presidential primary in Tennessee is going to be hard-fought in both parties. And the down-ballot primaries for the one local race, that of general sessions clerk, will no doubt pick up some extra votes from the overflow.

But another political contest, involving any number of prominent local politicians, came out of nowhere on Monday to loom as this year’s feature race-to-be on the August 4th state primary ballot.

The outlook for this year’s race for the 8th District congressional seat transformed itself from a ho-hum incumbency-reelection effort into what is certain to be a hard-fought, free-for-all, with the surprise announcement that incumbent Republican congressman Stephen Fincher of Frog Jump, in Crockett County, would be bowing out after completing the present term, his third. Fincher’s stated reasons were of the sort that could certainly be taken literally, though they hinted at unsaid reasons that the state’s political class will doubtless spend a good deal of time guessing about.

Jackson Baker

Five hopefuls: (from l) Flinn, Kustoff, Kelsey, Leatherwood, and Basar.

“I have decided not to seek re-election to the 8th Congressional District seat this year,” the Republican congressman and well-known gospel singer said, in a prepared mid-morning news release. “I am humbled by the opportunity to serve the people of West Tennessee, but I never intended to become a career politician. The last six years have been the opportunity of a lifetime, and I am honored to have been given the chance to serve.”

But, while political observers were still scratching their heads in amazement, a small host of ambitious Republican politicians swung into action. Almost instantaneously came an announcement from radiologist/radio magnate George Flinn, who has sought the seat before, that he would be a candidate in the 8th again this year.

Flinn, a former Shelby County commissioner and frequent candidate for several other positions, suggested he had intended to challenge for the seat even before Fincher’s announcement and, by implication, might have influenced the incumbent’s decision: “I have been traveling in West Tennessee for the past few months and listening to citizens talk about their lives,  what is happening in our community. The overwhelming facts are that Congress has not been doing enough to address our needs. I have heard all of our concerns, and I am convinced that we must act. We are headed in the wrong direction, but we can fix things. That is why I am running for U.S. Congress in the 8th District of Tennessee.”

In rapid-fire order came announcements from other hopefuls, most of them clearly ad hoc statements prepared in haste.

There was this from former U.S. Attorney David Kustoff, who had previously run for Congress in the 7th District, much of which is now in the 8th District: “I want to thank Congressman Fincher for his service to our country and for fighting for conservative values in Washington. I strongly believe our state deserves a congressman who will continue the fight for Tennessee values and principles, and that is why I will be candidate for the 8th Congressional District. ”

And, not long after that, came word from Shelby County Register Tom Leatherwood, who had also previously sought election from the 7th. Said Leatherwood, who was already trying out the rudiments of a campaign speech: “I am throwing my hat into the ring for the 8th congressional seat. I believe I have a very strong, proven conservative record which will resonate in the district, having served two terms in the state Senate, where I helped kill a state income tax twice. I also served on the Senate Finance Committee, where we had to tell people no in order to balance the budget. This is the type of discipline I can bring to Washington.”

Virtually back-to-back announcements then came from state Senator Brian Kelsey and Shelby County Commissioner Steve Basar that they intended to seek the 8th District seat as well.  

Kelsey, who has long been expected to seek an open congressional seat, wasted no time in picking up a petition for the 8th District race at the Shelby County Election Commission and featured a photo of that act on his Twitter page. Basar, who had already floated a trial balloon for a candidacy in the 9th District against Democratic incumbent Steve Cohen, said a race in the 8th, where his domicile is, seemed a more obvious route to Congress. 

Neither Flinn’s entry nor Kustoff’s nor Leatherwood’s might have been unexpected, given their prior attempts at congressional service. Besides running in the 8th District in 2010, when he finished third in a three-way GOP primary race, Flinn ran unsuccessfully in 2012 as the GOP nominee against 9th District incumbent Cohen. He is well-known for his almost Trump-like willingness to self-fund his political races to the tune of millions.

Kustoff sought the 7th District seat in a four-way GOP primary in 2002 that also included then county commissioner, now state Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris and then City Councilman Brent Taylor. That race was won by current incumbent Marsha Blackburn. Reapportionment after 2010 resulted in the transfer of most of the east Shelby County portion of the 7th district into the 8th, which already included a generous section of northern Shelby County.

Leatherwood pointed out that he won 62 percent of the Shelby County vote in a 2008 direct primary challenge to Blackburn and that his Senate district included Tipton and Lauderdale counties, which also are contained in or overlap the 8th District. The county register also notes that Shelby County has accounted for as much as 55 percent of the total 8th District vote since the new district lines were established after the 2010 census.

That fact, the prominence of Shelby County in the 8th District, and especially of the Republican-dominated portions of Shelby County, may well have influenced Fincher’s decision not to seek reelection this year. He might have had thought processes similar to those of Blackburn, who did well in Shelby County against three natives of the county in the 2002 GOP primary but, as noted, lost the county to Leatherwood in 2008, and subsequently lobbied to move the western boundary of her district out of Shelby County.

Several Shelby Countians, including current Memphis City Council Chairman Kemp Conrad (who may yet be heard from this year), had in previous years thought out loud about a challenge in the 8th District, and have become a crowd, now that the district is an open seat.

Deadline for the Republican and Democratic primaries is April 7th. The Democratic front has been quiet apropos the 8th, but don’t expect that to last.

Jackson Baker

STANDARD BEARERS  — On exhibit at a fund-raiser at the James Lee House last month was an advance model of what will be sculptor Alan LeQuire’s permanent memorial to the Tennessee suffragists who fought for and won the vote for women in Tennessee — the decisive vote for the 19th (or Universal Suffrage) Amendment. The inset shows (l to r) Adrienne Pakis-Gillon, vice president of the Tennessee Woman Suffrage Monument, Inc. board; Perfect 36 member Jocelyn Wurzburg; and board president Paula Casey.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Aborting the Truth

I was outraged Monday morning when I read the Mallard Fillmore editorial cartoon in the Commercial Appeal. That’s the “conservative” cartoon the CA runs next to “Doonesbury,” the “liberal” cartoon. “Doonesbury” has been in 1970s rerun mode for months, so the liberal point of view, cartoon-wise, anyway, consists mostly of Zonker Harris stoner jokes. Hardly a match for Mallard’s Tea Party “humor.”

On Monday, Mallard Fillmore featured the spectre of death answering the phone for Planned Parenthood. The punchline: “How may I direct your call? Sales, Service, or Parts?”

It was a reference, of course, to a recent video which purported to show Indiana Planned Parenthood officials talking about “selling” fetal tissues for medical research. Within two days, the video was debunked as a misleadingly edited political hack job. The Indiana State Department of Health investigated the video’s allegations and found “no evidence that Planned Parenthood is involved in any way in the buying or selling of tissue.”

But that hasn’t stopped GOP legislators from holding “investigations” in more than a dozen states, none of which have turned up any evidence of illegal activities by Planned Parenthood. And it hasn’t stopped 8th District Representative Stephen Fincher from using the discredited video to raise money, as he pledges to “stop funding Planned Parenthood.”

It’s happening at the national level, as well. Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum, and most of the other GOP presidential wannabes are using the video to raise funds and stir up the far-right base.

And it hasn’t stopped the Commercial Appeal from publishing the patent falsehoods of Mallard Fillmore and those of numerous letter-writers who make equally specious claims. Publishing differing opinions is one thing; allowing your pages to become a forum for blatant lies is another entirely. I don’t know what they’re thinking over there.

The truth is, if you really want to stop abortion, you should make contraception as easily and readily available as possible, which is what Planned Parenthood is trying to do. Stopping abortion begins with stopping unwanted pregnancies. It’s that simple.

Here are few other facts: Only three percent of Planned Parenthood’s services involve abortion. The other 97 percent of its services include treating and testing for sexually transmitted infection and disease, contraception, screening for breast, cervical, and uterine cancer, pregnancy tests, prenatal services, adoption referrals, and urinary tract infection treatment. In other words, they’re providing much-needed medical care for those women who need it most — those most likely to incur unwanted pregnancies.

Painful as it may be to admit for abortion foes, Planned Parenthood probably prevents more abortions than it performs.

To reiterate: The Hyde Amendment already mandates that no federal funds can be used for abortion services. Planned Parenthood is not “crunching fetuses” and selling parts, as a recent CA letter to the editor claimed.

If you oppose abortion, I respect your right to do so, but it is still legal. It is not “murder” in the eyes of the law. I don’t like abortions, but I believe such a personal decision should be left to a woman, her doctor, and her conscience. If we disagree, so be it, but we should at the least agree to debate using facts, not propaganda.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Foreign Affairs Should Move to the Front Burner in Congressional Races

Former University of Memphis law professor Larry Pivnick, whose underdog candidacy for Congress in the 8th District is discussed in this issue, turned up at a meeting of the Germantown Democratic Club last week with copies of

a broadside he intended to pass out in support of his campaign. On a single sheet of paper were crowded 12 bullet points, dealing with foreign policy issues relating to Israel/Hamas, eastern Ukraine, and other potential flashpoints on most of the continents of the known world.

Another subject, that of the amount of attention, which the media owe a candidate like himself, a certifiable longshot, came to occupy Pivnick, however — to the point that, when his time came to say a few words, he ditched his intended subject and discoursed instead on the problems that political neophytes like himself have in transcending anonymity.

“Discoursed” is something of a euphemism; the (usually) mild-mannered ex-academic, who normally lectures in what might be considered a professorial style, was hot under the collar and, as a result, was making his points sharply, concisely, and directly — in a mode, in other words, that might work for him out on the hustings.

As for the discarded 12-point position paper, it is highly doubtful that there were — or are — any votes in it, however Pivnick might choose to deliver it. It has been a long time since foreign policy played a major role in determining the outcome of American political contests, and the further down the power chain you go — to the level of congressional candidates, say — the more minute is the impact of such matters on the electorate. That’s the bottom line — especially so, one might conjecture, in the mainly rural and agriculture-oriented 8th District, despite the inclusion of a hunk of eastern Shelby County in the redistricting that followed the census of 2010.

Even more to the point, freshly elected congressmen have almost no say on which committees they’re assigned to (Foreign Affairs is a plum for the well-tenured) and not much post-assignment influence in them for years to come. The more’s the pity. The fact is that rarely have so many global issues posed such direct import on the future of domestic circumstances in the United States — perhaps not since the end of the Cold War.

Or should we say the original Cold War. There may be further surprises to come from the hand of Vladimir Putin, but there is no great mystery as to what he is up to — a wholesale revision of the adverse circumstances imposed on Russia after the breakup of the Soviet Union under the terms of what former President George H.W. Bush used to call “the New World Order.”

That “order” is now under enormous strain and may not last. Clearly, the Middle East is undergoing unprecedented jihadist ferment virtually everywhere, and the decades-long standoff between Israelis and Palestinians is igniting disastrously, once again. There are multitudes of other such issues, and there would be worse things indeed than having a few more foreign policy mavens on hand in Washington, where they might find that their concerns have jumped all the way to the front burner.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Larry Pivnick: An Underdog With Bite?

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Larry Pivnick is a retired University of Memphis law professor, and he looks like a retired law professor — academician’s trimmed beard, thin-rimmed glasses, neat, muted suits, and all. He is one of four candidates for the Democratic nomination in Tennessee’s 8th congressional district, and the only Memphian.

He was aggrieved at what he saw as my summary dismissal last week of his chances of ultimately triumphing over the 8th District two-term incumbent, Republican Stephen Fincher of Frog Jump in Crockett County, and I can understand that. It’s flattering, in a way, that Pivnick thinks I have any great ability to advance or retard a political person or cause on the basis of what I have to say. I am, as they say, a messenger.

The reality is that the same partisan sea change has occurred in the nooks and corners of the sprawling and very rural West Tennessee terrain that makes up the 8th District as has occurred in the rest of Tennessee. It’s a red state, all right, and the 8th District is red, too — as was made clear by Fincher’s convincing 2010 margin over respected Democrat Roy Herron, now the state Democratic chairman.

And a further reality is that folks in the 8th aren’t inclined to change much once they’ve settled on somebody. They had Ed Jones for a long time until he retired, and after him they had John Tanner for a long time until he retired.

So is Pivnick, well regarded as a former assistant dean at U of M, wasting his time by running for Congress? He doesn’t think so, and I don’t think so, either. I’ve looked over his political raw material — including a set of policy positions and a nice-looking website, complex but accessible — and it is clear that Pivnick isn’t a mere eccentric who collected enough signatures to get himself on the ballot and is hoping for a miracle on the scale of the one that happened in the Red Sea in biblical times.

He has articulated positions on a range of issues, from education, health care, and jobs, which together constitute what he considers his “primary focus,” to defense and foreign policy, matters which today’s headlines tell us are rising in importance to the voters. Pivnick also tells me that he’s made several forays up and down the district, both listening and talking.

Does that mean he can beat Fincher? Now, I’m responsible for perspective as well as newsbreaks, and I don’t think I can say anything like that if I want to keep my columnist’s license active. I know too much about the political trends of District 8, the congressman’s funding, and the strength of his organization.

And there are other Democrats making valiant efforts to get the Democratic nomination in the 8th District, for that matter — Wes Bradley, Rickey Hobson, and Tom Reasons. The latter two — from Somerville and Dyersburg, respectively — have made conspicuous Memphis appearances, and whoever emerges from the pack will have the opportunity to turn the Democratic Party nomination into a bully pulpit — to articulate the party cause, as well as his own, to make such inroads as he can right now and more later on.            

The political process thrives on — nay, requires — candidacies such as those of Pivnick et al.

• Speaking of bully pulpits, Terry Adams and Gordon Ball, the two Knoxville lawyers who are vying for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate, continue to run hard — against each other and against the legacy of incumbent Republican Senator Lamar Alexander. Alexander has his own party opponents in Joe Carr of Lascassas and George Flinn of Memphis but is expected to prevail in the GOP primary.

Ball, who is largely self-funded and who has begun a fresh round of television advertising, and Adams, who has embarked on what he bills as a 100-stop statewide tour and has a TV spot up himself, are in agreement on most issues, including Medicaid expansion in Tennessee, expanded veterans’ benefits, and increasing the minimum wage.

Last week, the two shared a forum stage in Bolivar. They disagreed on matters such as the Keystone pipeline and the concept of a flat tax (Ball for and Adams against, in both cases), but they walked off the stage together, arm in arm. Either will make a solid general election candidate.

• What had started out on Monday evening looking like a potential embarrassment to the reelection campaign of 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen may have turned out on Tuesday morning to be a boomerang impacting the campaign of Cohen’s Democratic primary opponent, Ricky Wilkins.

A press release circulated Monday night by the Wilkins campaign had said that Local 1733 of AFSCME intended to hold a press conference on Tuesday morning to announce its endorsement of Wilkins.  

To most observers, including Cohen himself, that news came as something of a surprise. After all, as the press release noted, the congressman has been including the union local on his fairly lengthy endorsement list and did so as recently as last week.

Cohen could not be reached for a reaction late Monday night but was contacted early Tuesday morning as he was heading out for several votes on the floor of the House.”We don’t know what’s going to happen,” he observed about the then-pending press conference at local AFSCME headquarters.

The congressman said that, in any case, he had the endorsement of the national AFSCME union and had been reassured of support by leading figures in the union, both locally and nationally, with whom he has worked over the years.

Cohen said the union, which “used to be a strong voice,” had declined somewhat from its peak of local strength and influence, but that he had consistently bent his efforts toward keeping it strong. “I’ve always supported their aims,” the congressman said. “One reason I didn’t support the move to school consolidation back in 2010 was because of AFSCME’s opposition to it.”   

He termed the prospect of a Wilkins endorsement by Local 1733 “disappointing,” but he noted the widespread endorsements he had received from labor organizations at large and said, “It’s not going to make any difference in the long run. We’re going to win.”

As it happened, reporters who turned up at AFSCME headquarters on Beale for the advertised press conference on Tuesday were greeted instead by Wilkins and a team of campaign supporters, who’d set up outside the union building. Candidate Wilkins angrily lashed out at Cohen for “bullying” and for efforts he had allegedly applied to the leadership of the AFSCME local and others of the challenger’s supporters.

The upshot was that officers of Local 1733 had advised Wilkins that they were unable at this point to make any announcement. Wilkins insisted that he had been assured of the local’s support but would not forecast when or whether it might now be coming under AFSCME auspices.

Meanwhile, Cohen was publicizing endorsements of his own in new mailouts conveying his support of Assessor Cheyenne Johnson’s reelection campaign, the campaign of former school board member Freda Garner-Williams for Position 1 on the Shelby County Schools board, and that of David Upton for state executive committeeman in District 31.  

• The name of Herman Sawyer was inadvertently omitted last week from the list of Democratic candidates in the state Senate District 29; and Scott McCormick should have been listed as a school board candidate in District 5.