Tag: Tennessee Democratic Party

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Talking Politics Online

Those of you who cannot live without political dialogue are in luck — at least if you’re Democrats. The Tennessee Democratic Party is hosting a town hall of sorts on Facebook every Thursday for the duration of the pandemic. The first one is at 4 p.m. today (Thursday, March 26), accessible via the state party’s Facebook page, facebook.com/tndem.

Subjects to be discussed: “the current stage of TN’s legislature, where we are beginning this campaign year, the expedited budget process, and COVID-19.” Hosts are party chair Mary Mancini and State Rep. Mike Stewart, House minority caucus chair. (Scroll down for “Cocktails and Questions.”)

When we learn of equivalent Republican efforts, we’ll pass on information about those, as well.

Meanwhile, the proceedings of the now-suspended legislative session — including videos — are accessible at legislature.state.tn.us.

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Gubernatorial Candidates Dean, Fitzhugh Have Democrats Back in the Game

CREDIT: JB

The very fact that two name Democrats — former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and state House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh — are competing in a primary to become the party’s nominee for governor is something of a throwback phenomenon.

There was a time, lasting for the better part of a century, when victory in a statewide Democratic primary was inevitably reported in the press as “tantamount to election.” That sense of a solid Democratic South has expired pretty much everywhere by now, although the case can be made that in Nashville, and only in Nashville, it  JB

Karl Dean

still exists.

That’s because, for whatever reason, it’s still routine in Nashville for Democrats, both black and white, to win local elections there. And, to be a Democratic office-holder in Nashville, especially the office of mayor, is still, ipso facto, to have an eye on the governorship. It is no accident that the party’s last major statewide winner was Phil Bredesen, who was mayor of the capital city when he won the first of his two gubernatorial terms in 2002. (Bredesen is also, of course, the now out-of-power party’s hope to win a U.S. Senate race this year.)

It is no accident, either, that Karl Dean, a recent Nashville mayor, is a current candidate for governor. What’s more unusual is that he has an opponent, in Fitzhugh of Ripley, from a rural part of the state. West Tennessee rural, at that. A competitive Democratic primary for governor almost got started in 2010, but that was the year when all of the prospective Democratic candidates discovered — in the words of one of them, then state Senate Democratic Leader Jim Kyle of Memphis — that all the state’s yellow-dog Democrats had somehow become yellow-dog Republicans. All but one Democrat, Mike McWherter of Dresden, son of a former governor and eventual loser to the GOP’s Bill Haslam, would drop out.

But here we are in 2018, amid talk, even in Tennessee, of a Democratic blue wave, and, though it is still likely that the word “tantamount” will be applied to the winner of the four-way Republican primary for governor, a sense of optimism — or, at least, of revived respectability — is observable among Democrats.

Which is why, at Friday evening’s debate between Dean and Fitzhugh at Fairley High School in Whitehaven, moderator TaJuan Stout-Mitchell, citing local party Democratic chair Corey Strong as her source, informed the small crowd in the Fairley auditorium that “we love both our Democratic candidates. And we intend to stay a family when this is over.”

Not that there has been any prior animosity between the two candidates, although Fitzhugh, as the less well-funded underdog, has, Hail Mary-style, thrown one or two effective barbs Dean’s way in the course of the electoral season.

Not Friday evening, unless you count the jest he got off when, as he rose to answer a question, his microphone cord almost got tangled up with Dean. “I don’t want to choke you,” Fitzhugh apologized, adding, “yet.”

JB

Craig Fitzhugh

The two candidates had been asked, a few minutes into the debate, to share the same table because Dean’s mic wasn’t working. Moving over, he had hazarded a quip of his own: “Shall I repeat everything I’ve already said?”

Actually, there wasn’t a great deal of difference in what the two of them said. They agreed that West Tennessee, and Memphis in particular, had generally received the shaft from the powers-that-be in state government. They both looked askance at the state-run Achievement School District, comparing it unfavorably to the I-Zone institutions of Shelby County Schools. They both rejoiced at a recent court decision against the state practice of lifting one’s driver’s license as a penalty for not paying fines. And they both thought the GOP-dominated legislature’s refusal so far to accept Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act to be a huge and catastrophic partisan folly.

Each also championed the principle of diversity, deplored the use of excessive force and racial profiling by law enforcement, and praised the Hope Scholarship Program and the governor’s Tennessee Promise program of support for free community college tuition, though Fitzhugh was somewhat more insistent that the Hope revenue stream not be tapped to fund Promise.

Dean touted his experience as a onetime Public Defender as a useful experience informing his concern for unempowered minorities. Fitzhugh similarly cited his background as proprietor of a “Bank of the Little Man” in Ripley.

The one issue on which a genuine difference of viewpoints might have materialized was somewhat finessed when Dean — who, unlike Fitzhugh, has been a supporter of charter schools — professed his opposition to “for-profit” charters. Fitzhugh also found a bit of air between himself and Dean’s use of the term “forgotten” as an adjective indicating concern for various classes of Tennesseans — West Tennesseans, in particular — both in Friday’s debate and in a TV ad Dean has been running.

“I don’t call it ‘forgotten,’” Fitzhugh objected, reprising his own frequently expressed concern that the same attention be lavished on “those who live in the shadows of skyscrapers” as on those “in the skyscrapers” themselves. “I don’t like the term
‘forgotten,’” he repeated, advising that voters take a look at his record of ameliorative legislation. “I’ve never forgotten.”

A rhetorical point, perhaps, and one intended essentially to demonstrate a shade of difference, but it is possible that it is on the grounds of such shades and nuances that Tennessee Democrats will render their decision. But there is no party fissure here; either one of these men will suit the party faithful, who are clearly hoping that the era of Democratic no-names with no chance of winning is, at the very least, about to be over.

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

CREDIT: JB

JB

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Democrats Showcase 2018 Candidates at AFSCME Event

CREDIT: JB

JB

Sharing a laugh at Thursday night’s Democratic/AFSCME meet ‘n greet were (l to r) David Weatherspoon, who is eyeing a race for state Senate District 31; Allan Creasy, candidate for state House district 97, and John Boatner Jr., candidate for U.S. Congressional District 8.

For local Democrats, the timing worked out pretty well for Thursday night’s well-attended party Meet ‘n Greet at the Association Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees union building on Beale. This was the week, after all, when Democrats on the national level won important elections in states like Virginia and New Jersey.

And the presence at the event, which was co-sponsored by AFSCME AND the Tennessee Democratic Party, of ranking party officials at the local, state, and federal levels could not fail to reinforce the sense of a renascent political organization (the Shelby County Democratic Party was reborn recently after a year of enforced decertification).

On hand to address the troops were SCDP chairman Corey Strong, TNDP chair Mary Mancini, and special guest Jaime Harrison, associate chair of the Democratic National Committee.

All the speakers, clearly encouraged by the week’s electoral successes, were, in the lexicon of the Obama era, fired up and ready to go. Harrison paid tribute to Shelby County as “the heart of the Tennessee Democratic Party,” but, as he also noted, in candid acknowledgement of past under-achievements and setbacks, “there have been some problems with the heart.”

All that could change, Harrison said, echoing previous upbeat remarks by Strong and Mancini. Like them, he foresaw an energized party effort behind a new crop of Democratic candidates for major offices like Governor and Senator, as well as for legislative races and key local offices like Sheriff and Shelby County Mayor.

Reinforcing that prospect were a goodly number of local candidates in attendance, including Chief Deputy Sheriff Floyd Bonner (now aiming for the top job with an endorsement from current Sheriff Bill Oldham) and state Senate Minority Leader Lee Harris, who now seeks the office of County Mayor.

There were enough local officials and candidates fora variety of offices on hand that listing them all would incur the same difficulty that afflicts Academy Award winners at thank-you time on stage. The impressive thing about the turnout was that, besides the candidates running in the inner city for seats customarily held by Democrats, there were an unusual number of political newcomers on hand seeking to displace Republican incumbents in the suburbs — a la state Rep. Dwayne Thompson of District 96, who turned out an over-confident GOP predecessor last year.

Not bad as a warm-up event for the political battles of 2018.

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Rep. Ellison, Frontrunner in DNC Race, to be Honored Here

Rep. Keith Ellison

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), considered by many to be the front-running candidate to become chairman of the Democratic National Committee, will be honored next week at a “welcome reception” here co-sponsored by the Young Democrats of America and the Tennessee Young Democrats.

The event will take place at the Bluefin Restaurant, 135 South Main St., on Friday, December 9, at 7 p.m. Initial co-sponsors of the visit (listed in order of their appearance on the official invitation for the affair) are J.W. Gibson, Chris Anderson, the Tennessee Democratic Party, A C Wharton, the Shelby County Young Democrats, Brent Hooks, Hendrell Remus, and Vanecia Kimbrow.

Other co-sponsors will likely be announced subsequently.

Ellison was briefly profiled in a Flyer online article of November 13, which included the audio of a stirring address delivered by the Minnesota Congressman to a mixed Minnesota/Tennessee delegation at this year’s Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

Go here for that article.

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Dems on the Rebound

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

A group of 75 to 80 people showed up at the Steamfitters Union Hall Monday night for a session which was billed in advance as a “debriefing” with state Democratic Party chairman Mary Mancini — the first of several such affairs which Mancini intends to hold all across the state of Tennessee.

As the westernmost part of the state, Shelby County was as logical a starting point for such a mission as any. There were good reasons other than the strictly geographic for Mancini to start off her tour in Memphis, however. 

One reason is that Shelby County is one of three counties — Davidson (Nashville) and Haywood (Brownsville) were the other two — carried by the party’s presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 election. For the record, those three counties, plus Hardeman (Bolivar), were the only counties in 2012 that went for President Obama, the party’s standard-bearer that year. 

Shelby County — on the strength, essentially, of its large African-American vote — is something of a bedrock constant for Democratic presidential candidates, though not necessarily anymore for statewide candidates. Or, for that matter, for countywide candidates, given that Republicans have been accustomed, for the last several countywide elections, to get electoral sweeps, or near-sweeps.

A second reason is the fact that in January the state Democratic executive committee will meet in Nashville and elect a chair for the next two years, and it makes sense for Mancini, who intends to run for reelection, to touch base with Democrats in Shelby County, which is still the state’s largest county, population-wise.

This is especially the case inasmuch as wealthy businessman Bill Freeman, Mancini’s fellow Nashvillian and Tennessee’s most active donor to Democratic candidates and causes, made a conspicuous pre-election foray into Memphis in early November, during which he let it be known that he intended to run for governor in 2018. In the wake of the statewide election results, in which the Democrats lost one seat overall in the state House of Representatives and failed to gain in the state Senate, Freeman said point-blank that the party needed a new chair.

At this point, it remains to be seen whether there will be a Freeman-backed candidate for the chairmanship as such, but, given his gubernatorial ambitions and his known history as a generous source of party funds, Mancini is in no position to take Freeman lightly. That’s especially the case, since, as she acknowledged Monday night, the party had not possessed the $5 million or so this year that she estimated would have been necessary to provide full backing for all the candidates who ran in Tennessee under the party label. 

And a third reason why Memphis was a logical starting place for Mancini’s debriefing tour is the embarrassing one that there is at the moment no formal Shelby County Democratic Party, as such, the party organization here having been decertified by Mancini herself back in August, in the aftermath of a lengthy dispute between herself and an SCDP majority over the issue of whether and how to settle an ongoing financial scandal in the local party.

Jackson Baker

Allison Berger at Mancini debriefing

The local party had also, as Mancini pointed out at the time, endured “many years of dysfunction,” involving internecine warfare of various kinds, and there were any number of local party members who were more than ready to throw in the towel. 

In any case, there is a clear and present need for local Democrats to have an umbrella organization serving the entirety of Shelby County, and Monday night’s turnout was surely hearty enough to offer them some encouragement — especially since a goodly portion of the attendees seemed to be new faces, and several of those were willing to offer their own thoughts about how to develop a strong Democratic base in Shelby County.

Typical of these was Sean MacInnes, who introduced himself as a Christian Brothers University employee and suggested that there were numerous potential members of the Democratic base who were not being tapped and should be invited into active participation. 

Referring to statistics showing that 45 percent of the state’s electorate had not become involved in this year’s election, MacInnes said, “Those are the voters we should be reaching out to. We should be saying, ‘Why are you not involved in the political process? What is it that the Democratic Party should be should be doing for you and [to] represent you?'” He suggested more concerted party effort to reach potential party cadres on the internet.

And there was Alison Berger, an activist in efforts to curb gun violence, who said she discovered in her outreach efforts that it was the Democratic Party which seemed most to concur with her point of view and her goals. As a result, she said, she had become involved with “Pantsuit Nation” and other party-oriented organizations and causes. “Now, I’m a staunch Democrat,” she said, recommending that the party expand by seeking out alliances with single-issue groups like her own. On one key question, when the Shelby County Democratic Party might be able to reconstitute itself, Mancini pinpointed March as the normal time for local party reorganizations and the likely date for Shelby County as well.

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Winds of Change Roil Shelby County’s Post-election Politics

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The unexpected victory of Donald Trump in the presidential race will likely open up career opportunities for fellow Republicans — including some in the Memphis area.

One possible beneficiary is lawyer John Ryder, a longtime eminence in GOP affairs. Ryder has served as local Republican chairman, as a member of the Republican National Committee from Tennessee, and, currently, as general counsel to the RNC. After the census of 2010, Ryder headed up the Republican Party’s redistricting efforts nationwide, and the map he helped create has strongly reinforced the GOP’s hold on districts in the U.S. House of Representatives.

A partner at the Harris Shelton law firm of Memphis, Ryder was named Republican Lawyer of the Year in a ceremony in Washington, D.C., last month. That follows a year in which he served as a Trump delegate to the GOP convention in Cleveland and was a key member of that conventions’ rules committee.

Considering that Ryder, as general counsel, has essentially been the right-hand man of RNC chairman Reince Priebus, and that Priebus has just been designated by Trump to be the new president’s chief of staff, the question arises: Is Ryder a prospect to succeed Priebus as head of the RNC?

“That would be a decision reached by the president-elect,” Ryder said Monday in a telephone conversation that took place as he drove to Nashville, where he teaches a course at Vanderbilt. “We’re going to see what happens. A lot of different paths are going to open up in the next few weeks, and I’m looking to where I can best be of service to the republic.”

Ryder emphasized that “nothing’s been discussed so far.” As for the possibility of his being offered other positions in the official GOP network that stands to be expanded in the new administration, Ryder said, “I’m not particularly looking for anything. I’m not particularly expecting anything.”

Elsewhere locally, Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland, who served as Trump’s West Tennessee chairman, said he expected to have a say in whatever patronage positions might be available in his bailiwick.

Meanwhile, Tennessee Democrats may be looking to change direction in the wake of yet another election in which they failed to advance. Except for one upset win, that of Democrat Dwayne Thompson over GOP state Representative Steve McManus in state House District 96 (Cordova, Germantown), Democratic candidates lost all the legislative races in which they challenged Republicans. The net result was a loss of one seat in the House, which means that there will be 25 Democrats and 74 Republicans in the House come January; the state Senate remains at its current level: five Democrats and 28 Republicans. The Republican legislative super-majority holds tight.

And that’s not a satisfactory set of affairs for Bill Freeman, the wealthy Nashville businessman who is the chief Democratic donor in Tennessee and, as he made clear in a visit to Memphis earlier this month, has ambitions of running for governor in 2018.

Likening the party’s electoral showing to a dismal season in the NFL, Freeman told the Nashville Tennessean that, “we’ve got to look at every option, including a new chair.”

The current chair, Mary Mancini of Nashville, has no intention of giving up the job, however, and has said she will run for another two-year term. 

One of Freemen’s closest associates is former state party chairman Chip Forrester, who has served several chairmanship terms in different decades, who served Freeman as campaign manager in his unsuccessful race for Nashville mayor last year, and will probably head up a Freeman gubernatorial campaign in 2018 if there is one.

But there is no indication so far that Forrester is looking at another run at the party chairmanship, and Freeman is talking up Holly McCall, who early in the year declared for House District 65, then held by bad-boy Republican incumbent Jeremy Durham, an accused sexual predator. She eventually lost her bid for the seat to Sam Whitson, the Republican who ousted Durham in the GOP primary.

In a letter to members of the state Democratic executive committee emailed on Monday, Freeman put the kernel of his argument this way: 

“First and foremost, for all the effort that we focused on in Tennessee, we gained absolutely no ground in the state senate and had a net loss of one seat in the state house. Instead of moving the needle forward, we went backward. This is unacceptable. … We should have done better and done it more robustly. I believe we need new leadership to do so.”

Of Mancini, Freeman said, “She is a fine person and clearly committed to serving our party, but we have failed to grow as we all had hoped for during these past two years. … The poor results we have seen this past Tuesday show clearly that we need a change.”

Pointedly, Freeman made reference to “a critical statewide race for the United States Senate in 2018,” and said, “We must rebuild our party to have the infrastructure in place so that our Democrat nominees for governor and U.S. senator have the party machinery in place to succeed.”

Tennessee Democrats — and Mancini — did, however, have one legislative victory in the recent election that nobody saw coming except the participants in the winning campaign. As indicated, this was the upset win of Thompson, a genial human resources administrator and longtime Democratic activist, over state Representative McManus, a GOP legislative mainstay, in District 96.

Under the circumstances of the 2016 election cycle, which not only strengthened the GOP super-majority in Tennessee but put Donald Trump into the presidency and gave the Republicans control of the U.S. Senate and House, it is astonishing that Thompson should have won election to the state House from a suburban Shelby County district. It is doubly astonishing that he unseated an incumbent Republican to do so.

Not only was Thompson the only Democrat in Tennessee to unseat a Republican, he believes himself to be the only Democrat in the South to have done so.

Thompson’s victory over McManus, who had been serving as chairman of the state House banking and insurance committee, was by the total of 351 votes out of almost 28,000 cast, and that ultra-thin margin can be attributed to old-fashioned work ethic on the winner’s side and what has to be reckoned as complacency and over-confidence on the loser’s.         

McManus’ campaign war-chest totaled  $155,754.59 as of the third-quarter financial-disclosure deadline, dwarfing Thompson’s $5,088.20. Thompson later received an infusion of financial aid from the Tennessee Democratic Party: $1,500 in a direct outlay on top of a $13,100 in-kind contribution in the form of a “polling survey.”

In October, Thompson’s total expenditures of $13,817 were almost equal to McManus’, and the Democratic challenger targeted his campaign money well, spending some of it on some modest internet advertising that pointed out, among other things, the fact that he had a military record.

McManus’ confidence may also have stemmed from the fact that he had easily dispatched Thompson in their first match-up, in 2014, with 62 percent of the vote to Thompson’s 38 percent.

Thompson was determined to prove that District 96 was a swing district, composed of a working-class/middle-class mix that was susceptible to a Democratic appeal. He boasts that he and his campaign team knocked on a total of 12,000 doors in the course of the campaign, focusing on issues ranging from Cordova’s traffic problems to skepticism about charter schools and the need for reviving Governor Bill Haslam‘s dormant Insure Tennessee program for Medicaid expansion, which, he emphasized to voters, had been blocked in McManus’ committee in the special legislative session of 2015.

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State Party Head to Local Dems: Settle the Carson Matter!

Mary Mancini

There are, as it turns out, more guaranteed circumstances than the two most often noted: death and taxes. Right up there with those two, in terms of inevitability, is the fact of discord in state and local Democratic Party ranks.

The latest instance of such is contained in a letter dispatched to members of the Shelby County Democratic executive committee from state Democratic Party chair Mary Mancini. The letter deals with the long-festering case of former local party chairman Bryan Carson, who was forced to resign by the county committee in February of 2015.

The Mancini letter, in essence, mandates the terms of a resolution of the matter by the Shelby County party and provides a short deadline for doing so.

The executive committee’s action in early 2015 came after the county party had been fined by the state Election Registry for its failure to comply with financial reporting deadlines and after Carson had been unable to account for the disposition several thousand dollars in party funds. At issue also was the fact that the chairman had apparently switched bank accounts for the party funds without express authorization by the executive committee and had made several withdrawals from ATM machines without providing receipts.

The amount of the financial discrepancy has never been determined with exact accuracy, but a preliminary audit performed by committee members at the time of Carson’s resignation estimated the unaccounted-for amount to be at least $6,000. Another ad hoc investigating group on the committee has since arrived at a higher estimate for the missing funds, in the vicinity of $25,000, but there has never been absolute agreement on the committee on the validity of either sum.

Through his attorney, Robert Spence, Carson admitted no wrongdoing but offered to settle the dispute by compensating the local party for the $6,000 sum at the rate of $100 a month. There is disagreement as to whether the full committee was ever apprised of the offer, which in any case ceased to be active.

Compounding the confusion was the fact that Carson’s elected successor as chairman, Randa Spears, as well as the local party’s first vice chair, Deidre Malone, had both abruptly resigned their positions in April, each giving the press of other obligations as the reason for their departure. The Spears-led party had meanwhile missed another financial reporting deadline for this year and had been assessed a fresh $10,000 fine by the Election Registry.

At its regularly scheduled monthly meeting on Thursday, June 2, the executive committee elected a new chairman, Sheriff’s Department Lt. Michael Pope, and acted on a motion by defeated chairmanship candidate Del Gill to prosecute Carson for embezzling the larger estimated sum. That motion passed, fairly handily, but there has been no formal action on the matter by the committee since.

All of that formed the background for the Mancini letter, dated Friday, June 24, to the Shelby County executive committee, care of chairman Pope.

Mancini’s letter begins with a citation of party bylaws and state codes that, she says, assign her “both a supervisory and organizational role over each of the county executive committees that operate throughout the state.” The letter follows with a cursory and none too indulgent recounting of the Shelby County’s ongoing problems (“many years of dysfunction,” as she puts it).

Mancini then comes to the nut of the matter, prescribing a settlement in accord with the dormant offer made to the party by Carson through his attorney:

“With a looming election that is shaping up to be of monumental importance for our state and our country, and for the health of your organization and executive committee, it is my responsibility to inform you that you must agree to the arrangement that Mr. Carson pay the amount of $6000 at $ 100 per month for 5 years and be released from any additional claims and that Chairman Pope must sign all the necessary paperwork to honor that agreement or you will no longer be in compliance with your charter issued by the Tennessee Democratic Party.”

Ironically, perhaps, Mancini had in recent months been sounded out by disgruntled party members wondering if voluntary surrender of the local party’s charter might be a feasible option. She had always answered no to such inquiries.

The deadline for “signing the necessary paperwork and forwarding it to Mr. Carson’s attorney is Friday, July 1, 2016,” Mancini concludes.

Some party members are questioning Mancini’s authority to mandate an or-else solution of this sort, while others are ready to acknowledge that she has the right. In any case, there is no pending meeting of the executive committee until the regularly scheduled one of Thursday, July 7 and thus no opportunity for a committee vote before Mancini’s deadline.

Chairman Pope, however, has indicated he is prepared to accept Mancini’s mandate, but his authority to do so without a committee authorization is questionable. To say the least, confusion persists.

• Dynamic duo: During his first several congressional terms after being elected in 2006, 9th District U.S. Representative Steve Cohen cemented an alliance with venerable Detroit congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan), who then served as House Judiciary Committee chairman and regarded the Memphis liberal, a committee member, as something of a protégé and journeyed to Memphis on Cohen’s behalf.

When the Republicans captured control of the House after the election of 2010, the Conyers-Cohen tandem was not heard from with the same intensity, but it still existed. This week, after the landmark Supreme Court decision striking down the severe restrictions on abortion clinics imposed by a Texas state law, Conyers and Cohen reasserted themselves as a duo.

In a joint press release, Conyers, in his capacity as ranking member of the Judiciary Committee and Cohen, as ranking member of the Judiciary subcommittee on the Costitutional and Civil Justice, and Cohen, hailed the Court’s decision as a reaffirmation of “the fundamental cnstitgutional right of women to make their own decisdions about their health, their bodies, their families, and their lives.”

Said the two congressmen: “The Court correctly saw the Texas law for what it was, which was an attempt to severely restrict abortion rights and not one to protect women’s health” and that the Texas law “placed such substantial obstacles to a woman’s choice to have an abortion that its provisions were an “undue burden” on women’s constitutional right to choose….”

The Conyers-Cohen press release, one of several recently released by Cohen’s office, highlighted one of the incumbent congressman’s built-in advantages in generating media. Cohen has three opponents in the 2016 Democratic primary — Shelby County Commissioner Justin Ford, Larry Crim, and M. LaTroy Williams. Republican Wayne Alberson and independent Paul Cook will be on the November ballot.

• More fallout: The Court’s decision on the invalidated Texas statute, incidentally, will almost surely have repercussions in Tennessee, where the General Assembly in recent years had enacted laws with provisions almost identical to those in the Texas law, which basically required doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and imposed rigid standards on abortion clinics resembling those for hospitals performing outpatient surgery.

Laws passed by the Tennessee legislature in 2012 and 2014 had made similar specifications, which have been challenged in the U.S. District Court in Nashville.

• Promises, promises: The fact that a freshman seat In the U.S. House of Representatives — to be one of 435 — is the equivalent of landing an entry-level job in the federal government, the continuation of which is entirely contingent on the good will (or passing whims) of voters back home, is often lost sight of in the heat of campaigning. Candidates want to suggest that they can, all by themselves, shift national policy, and who can blame them?

Along this line, it will be hard for any of his competitors to beat two claims made by 8th District Republican congressional candidate David Kustoff in a TV commercial that just hit the airwaves over the weekend. The ad proclaims, of course, that Kustoff, the former U.S. Attorney for Western Tennessee, has impeccable credentials as a conservative and will, for example, oppose Obamacare, but it makes two additional claims that are unprecedented in their magnitude.

In the checklist of promises with which the commercial concludes, one learns that Kustoff will (drumroll) “end illegal immigration” and (thunder and lightning) “destroy radical Islamic terrorism.” Not to vote to do these things, mind you, but — well, just to do them.
Er…wow! •

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Calling to Account

All of a sudden, we’re getting into Rip Van Winkle territory. But the familiar universe doesn’t require a full 20 years, any longer, to be unrecognizable. Last year at this time, we here in Memphis knew that Nathan Bedford

Forrest was developing into a persona non grata — at least with a major part of our population. The name “Forrest Park” had already given way to the unoffending and somewhat antiseptic moniker, “Health Sciences Park.” But, a year ago, nobody was threatening to move the Confederate general’s statue or transfer his grave back to Elmwood Cemetery. Now both goals are established parts of the political agenda.

And it wasn’t long ago that we were reading articles celebrating the positive moral influence of comedian Bill Cosby on minority youth, and touting his then forthcoming revival tour as a wholesome experience for family audiences. Now, the man is in utter disgrace as an alleged serial rapist, unable to show himself in public for fear of derision — or encountering another process server.

And, hey, you local Democrats who look forward to buzzing up to Nashville for the next ceremonial Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner, be aware that by the time you get there, the names are likely to have been changed to reflect society’s suddenly unforgiving attitudes. Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, is lately fallen from favor, due to his status as a slave-owner. And Andrew Jackson? He’s lucky that it was Alexander Hamilton, and not himself, that was recently bumped off his spot on a currency note. Not only was Jackson a slave-owner, he was guilty of massacres of native Americans in Florida and of “ethnically cleansing” that territory for the sake of white folks wanting to move in. Democratic parties in Connecticut, Missouri, and Georgia have already purged the two names from the title spot for their annual banquets. And Tennessee state Democratic chair Mary Mancini has just sent out an email to party cadres informing them, via an official missive titled “The Legacy of Andrew Jackson,” that the Tennessean whose Hermitage mansion is still a much-visited tourist site may be about to lose his lease as a state hero.

Here’s Mancini’s clincher: “In 2015, we may very well decide to name our annual event after someone who better exemplifies who we are today. We may not. But either way, let’s not shy away from the conversation.”

Forrest, Jefferson, Jackson, and Dr. Huxtable! All gone from the icon list. Who’s next? George Washington?

The bottom line is that, in an age when social media have opened up everybody’s closets for inspection, nobody gets away with anything. Not even historical figures. We don’t know whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing. But it’s a thing, and we’d better get used to it.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Democrats, Others Urge New Special Session on Insure Tennessee

CREDIT: JB

JB

L to r, participants at Thursday’s press conference were Harris, Miller, Parkinson, Coffield, Kyle, Stewart, Coffield, and Roberson.

With what turned out to a providential act of timing — within an hour or two of Thursday’s latest Supreme Court decision upholding the Affordable Care Act — a group composed of state Democrats and local advocates of Governor Bill Haslam’s proposal for Medicaid expansion under the Act made a pitch in Raleigh for a new special legislative session to reconsider that proposal, Insure Tennessee.

The primary spokesperson for the group was state Democratic chair Mary Mancini of Nashville, and for obvious reasons her focus was on Democratic support for Insure Tennessee and partisan Republican attempts to obstruct it in a February special session of the legislature this year, as well as during the regular session itself.

Expressing pleasure at the brand-new Supreme Court decision, Mancini said, “passing Insure Tennessee becomes even more important now.” She noted that the aborted plan would have provided affordable health-care coverage for 280,000 currently uninsured persons statewide and “68, 000 right here in Shelby County.”

Pointing out that Haslam, a Republican himself, had been unable to garner support for his plan from the members of his party, Mancini said she and her fellow Democrats had persistently called on the Governor “and the Republican leadership” to support another special session, “and they have refused.” She accused Republicans of “focusing on politics rather than providing what the majority of Tennesseans want.”

Alluding to revelations (not always welcomed by the legislators in question) that a significant number of Republican General Assembly members who acted to stonewall Insure Tennessee were beneficiaries of blue-ribbon health insurance plans provided by the state, Mancini asked, “And why are they more concerned with hiding access to their own affordable health-care plans they get than they are with helping other Tennesseans get the same access?”

Other members of the predominantly Democratic Party group of presenters made such other points as that as many as 220 Tennesseans might have died during the last year for lack of an affordable health-care plan and that other matters of importance included jobs and the survival of hospitals, many of which have been over-burdened with emergency-room care for indigent patients.

State Representative Larry Miller, sponsor of the House resolution for Insure Tennessee (one which, like the Senate version, was blocked before it could get to the floor), promised to “name names” of local legislators deserving special blame for obstructing Insure Tennessee, and he did so, mentioning state Senator Brian Kelsey and state Representative Steve McManus.

State Senator Sara Kyle was equally blunt. “Stop being selfish!” she said, as a message to those Republicans who had bottled up the Insure Tennessee resolution in committee. “It’s a moral issue,” she added.

State Senator Lee Harris, the Senate’s Democratic leader, who had made a well-received appearance the evening before at a meeting of the Germantown Democrats, where he had addressed similar themes, made an effort to move the issue beyond pure partisanship.

Pointing out that polls show a clear majority of Tennesseans favoring Insure Tennessee, regardless of their party, Harris said the appeal for a new special session should by rights be directed to “a very narrow audience” of resisters, “a very small group of leaders on the other side of the aisle and extremists who have dominated the debate.”

Harris absolved “rank and file Republicans,” reminding his hearers that the plan’s author, Governor Haslam, was also a Republican, and he added a hat-tip for John Roberts, the GOP-appointed Chief Justice who had voted with the majority on Thursday to uphold the ACA against a lawsuit, King v. Burwell, that challenged it on largely technical grounds.

Another effort to bridge the gap between Democrats and Republicans was made by Ed Roberson, the current director of Christ Community Health Centers, a onetime Democrat who has been a financial officer in several prominent Republican campaigns over the past couple of decades.

Identifying himself as a Republican, Roberson professed solidarity with the others on Insure Tennessee and called it “unacceptable” that Tennessee should rank 44th in the nation in health-care and that Memphis should have been called the “unhealthiest” city in the country in one nationwide survey.

Roberson’s participation provided at least a measure of ecumenism to Thursday’s press conference, as did his presence side-by-side with Ashley Coffield, local director of Planned Parenthood — an organization that has often been at odds with Roberson’s over their different attitudes toward legal abortion but which in many instances provides overlapping medical care.

Participants at the press conference were Mancini, Harris, Miller, Kyle Coffield, Robinson, state Rep Mike Stewart of Nashville, and state Rep. Antonio Parkinson, whose local Raleigh office provided the venue.