Tag: Tennessee Democratic Party

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Despite Competing Partisan Claims, the 2015 Legislative Session Was Neither a Grand Success nor a Total Flop

CREDIT: JB

JB

GOP Leaders: (l to r) House Majority Leader Gerald McCormick, House speaker Beth Harwell, Governor Bill Haslam, Senator Speaker/Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris

NASHVILLE — Two sets of post-mortems on the 2015 session of the Tennessee General Assembly were held Thursday morning in the state capital — one by Governor Bill Haslam and the Republican leadership, another by the leadership of the Democratic legislative minority.

Haslam, flanked by House and Senate Speakers Beth Harwell and Ron Ramsey and by House and Senate majority leaders Gerald McCormick and Mark Norris, all sitting at a table in the old Supreme Court Chamber in the Capitol, opened up this way:

“The primary constitutional obligation of the General Assembly and the Governor is to present a budget that balances. This actually was an extraordinary year; not only did we do that, but if you think about it, the hardest time to govern is when you actually have extra money.” An A grade, all things considered.

Half an hour later, over in the Conference Room 31 of Legislative Plaza, it was the turn of House minority leader Craig Fitzhugh, standing primus inter pares among some 18 of his party members from both chambers (the total number of Democrats in both is 30, out of a total of 132).

Said Fitzhugh, by way of starting up: “We legislated quickly, and we passed a budget. That’s about it.” Inasmuch as the veteran Leader from Ripley was among the many in both parties and both chambers who had felt rushed by the session’s hyped-up pace and among the few who could not bring themselves to vote for the budget, that was a failing grade.

In fact, both Haslam and Fitzhugh were exaggerating.

The Governor actually made the claim that “all of what you would call Governor’s bills were passed,” when his most important initiative of all, his Insure Tennessee Medicaid-expansion plan, was blocked in both the special session that began the legislative year and in the regular session.

JB

Democratic Leaders: with House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh at podium; Others include House Caucus Leader Mike Stewart and Senate Minority Leader Lee Harris.

And, while Fitzhugh made a point of naming the failures of Insure Tennessee and of a late tax-relief bill to benefit veterans as reasons for his displeasure, it was also true that several measures opposed by Democrats were blocked as well, and by a bipartisan coalition. Among those were a bill to allow de-annexation of rebellious communities from cities and, for the third or fourth year in a row, a bill allowing for a modest school-voucher start-up.

True, a GOP-backed bill to strike down local options on banning guns in parks passed both chambers, but Haslam has made clear his disagreement with the bill and said on Wednesday that he would decide within a week — maybe as soon as Friday — whether to veto it.

UPDATE: To the surprise of most (and the acute dismay of many) the Governor signed the latest guns-in-parks bill on Friday, abolishing thereby the freedom-of-action of cities and other local jurisdictions regarding firearms in their park areas.

There was actual bipartisan concord on several matters — including virtual unanimity in passage of a home-grown educational standards bill to replace Common Core that was so similar in nature to the much-abused original as to be its fraternal twin.

And even the late failure in the House (on Wednesday) of a bill to permit in-state tuition for undocumented immigrants was not due to partisan disagreement — though a GOP right-winger, Rep. Matthew Hill (R-Jonesborough) may have sullied it for some Republicans by comparing it to President Obama’s immigration directives. The real problem may have been the absence of two Democratic supporters from the vote, both for work-related reasons.

House Democratic caucus leader Mike Stewart (D-Nashville) did what he could Thursday to deflect possible recriminations against the two, Bo Mitchell and Darren Jernigan, both from Davidson County, by saying, “This is a citizen legislature. Absences are going to happen.” The fact remains that the bill fell one vote short of the 50 needed for passage.

Stewart was less forgiving in the case of Insure Tennessee’s failure, clearly brought about by the failure of the Governor’s own Republican Party (with some exceptions) to support it. An “extraordinary failure,” the Democratic caucus leader called it, and, indeed, even as Haslam vowed at the GOP availability to continue supporting it as “the right thing to do,” Lt. Governor/Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey, sitting to the Governor’s immediate left, opted out loud for the alternative of a two-year scenario involving election of a Republican president in 2016 and conversion of Medicaid funds into pure block grants.

The Democrats, for their part, vowed to renew their support for Insure Tennessee. Fitzhugh announced that the combined party caucuses would be sending Haslam a letter before the week ended beseeching him to call another special session to deal with the measure. It’s fair to say that’s pretty unlikely, and the fact that next year is an election year decreases the likelihood of action in the 2016 session as well, especially given the scenario spelled out by Ramsey.

The Governor had expressed pride in getting safely through two “contentious” matters in the session just concluded. One was the Common Core matter, and that could be stacked up with other education-related successes of the Haslam agenda, including the roughly $170 million in “new money” appropriated for K-12 education and backing for higher education initiatives as well, including Drive for 55 and Tennessee Promise, both aimed at raising the level of adult post-secondary education.

Haslam was on thinner ice in expressing satisfaction in how the legislature had skirted (to his mind) major controversy in limiting anti-abortion legislation to the imposition of a 48-hour waiting period. The Democrats made whoopee on that matter, regarding which Planned Parenthood and various organized women’s groups remain outraged. “Their mission is to change the way women live. They are taking their rights away,” Rep. Sherry Jones (D-Nashville) maintained.

Still, a fair assessment of the just-concluded session from a neutral observer might be: Could have been worse; surely could have been better. Some of the outright wack stuff, like the attempt to make the Bible an official state book, was beaten down by bipartisan action, and there was intermittent harmony on other issues as well.

One such was the hectic pace of the legislature’s increasingly abbreviated sessions — an innovation that, quite obviously, has been driven by Ramsey, who has set mid-April adjournment deadlines for a body that in recent years had continued its deliberations well into summer.

At the Republican leadership availability in the old Supreme Court chamber, Ramsey had expressed pride in what he called cost-conscious “efficiency” gained from the sped-up pace and claimed, “We didn’t even feel rushed.” But, after a brief pause, in which he must have noticed either slight murmurs or rolled eyes out there among his auditors, he added, “OK, we were rushed.”

Earlier Thursday morning, a bipartisan group of legislators having breakfast at the Red Roof Inn, a modestly priced alternative to the state capital’s more expensive hostelries, sat together, grumbling about what they saw as a much too frantic pace, which one or two of them attributed to Ramsey’s need to get about his auctioneering and real estate businesses as early as possible in the spring.

In any case, these legislators agreed that key bills were being overlooked in the undue haste and some, like the in-state tuition bill which they all happened to support, had fallen victim to it. If there is a true bipartisan consensus developing on any one matter, this matter would seem to be it.

In any case, here it is, still April, and the General Assembly is over and out.

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Sara Kyle, “a Tennessee Woman,” Edges Closer to Running for Governor

CREDIT: JB

Sara Kyle with the media in Nashville

  • JB
  • Sara Kyle with the media in Nashville

Sara Kyle, the wife of state Senate Democratic leader Jim Kyle (D-Memphis) and a public figure in her own right from a once powerful Tennessee political family, just may be on her way into the political limelight again — as a Democratic gubernatorial candidate in 2014.

Without doing anything more than attending last Saturday night’s annual Jackson Dinner for statewide Democrats in Nashville, Kyle was a dominant personality at the event.

The longtime former member of the now sunsetted Tennessee Regulatory Authority was hailed from the dais by state Democratic chairman Roy Herron and others as a probable party standard-bearer next year, and responded to the crowd’s chant of “Run, Sara, Run” with a smile and broad waves.

“Run, Sara, Run” is also the working name of a website and draft movement, largely based in Memphis; three of its principals — Matt Kuhn, Michael Lipe, and Steve Ross — were on hand Saturday night and basked in Kyle’s reception by the crowd.

Kyle certainly is no stranger to politics. She was born into the extended Clement family, a niece to the late eminences Frank Clement and Annabelle Clement O’Brien — a former governor and a state senator respectively, each for several term — and cousin to former congressman Bob Clement.

She has also held public office herself, winning races for City Court judge in Memphis and for the old state Public Service Commission. When the PSC was transformed in the ‘90s into the non-elected TRA at the behest of former Governor Don Sundquist, Sara Kyle was appointed to the new agency and remained a member until resigning this year when administration-backed legislation limited the TRA’s scope and made it part-time.

In a later conversation with the Flyer and other media after last Saturday night’s event in Nashville, she would acknowledge a clear interest in running but would stop just short of declaring.

Pointedly, she declared no animus toward Governor Bill Haslam, her potential adversary. “I personally have never met Governor Haslam. I’m sure he’s personally well-liked I some sections of the state….I’ sure he’s a fine person. I understand his wife is from Memphis, and they’re well liked down here. But business is one thing and popularity is another.”

She continued: “I don’t agree with Governor Haslam on a lot of issues.” One of those concerned her own former agency, the TRA. “In his judgment he decided to abolish a consumer agency and make it part-time. Certainly I feel the citizens need a full-time service…an agency that will listen to them, take on problems and solve them.”

Kyle said that “citizens listened to me” in her earlier runs for office, and, in turn, “I sure listen to them.” Specifically, “in jobs where the rules are changing, they want me to hear them and listen to them.” In an apparent reference to Haslam’s decision not to accept Medicaid expansion funds, she cited “federal monies that are not coming into our state help our citizens, that are being blocked.”

She declined to delve into the particulars of that and other issues, emphasizing again that her current role is to “move about the state, listening to people.” Her de facto listening tour would last “for a few more months,” said Kyle, and for the time being she had no specific announcement plans.

If and when she did decide to run for governor, she expected to lean heavily on the help and advice of her husband, “one of the brightest political minds I’ve ever known.: Senator Kyle had launched a tentative gubernatorial candidacy in 2009 but suspended it some months later when he foresaw the Republican electoral tide of 2010. She was asked: How would her own experience be different?

“That was a different time,” she said, noting further that, as a PSC candidate in the ‘90s she had already had the experience of running a successful statewide race.

Kyle noted that her childhood was in Kingsport in East Tennessee, that she had finished high school in Dickson in Middle Tennessee, that marriage had brought her to Memphis, where she raised four children and won her judgeship, and that, from 1994 on, her state job had given her a wide focus.

“I’m a Tennessee woman,” she declared, and she sounded ready to demonstrate it on the stump.

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Judge Joe Brown, Ousted from his CBS Courtroom, Could Run for the Senate

JudgeJoeBrown.jpg

Remember “Send Brown Downtown?” No, probably not. Most of you weren’t fixated on the lengthy ballot that confronted Shelby Countians in the steamy summer of 1990.

The Brown in question was Joe Brown, candidate for Shelby County Criminal Court and, after he won that race, just plain Judge Joe Brown later on.

In a way he gave up that title, in a way he didn’t. In 1998 he attracted the attention of CBS producers, having won some notoriety as a result of handling an ultimately futile 1997 appeal by James Earl Ray of his 1969 conviction (via guilty plea) for killing Dr. Martin Luther King.

The result was that in 1998 Judge Joe Brown, Shelby County Criminal Court, became Judge Joe Brown of the eponymous TV reality show, Judge Joe Brown, which was paired by CBS Television Distribution with Judge Judy, starring retired Manhattan Family Court Judge Judith Sheindlin, in a national syndication package.

Both shows involved binding-arbitration situations staged as plaintiff-and-defendant courtroom drama with both the competing participants and the TV judge encouraged to ham it up.

For two years, Brown handled both the television show, installments of which were recorded in Los Angeles, and his regular judicial position in Shelby County, to which he had been reelected in 1998, the same year his TV show began.

The wear and tear of so much commuting, along with the far greater financial compensation of the television show, eventually convinced Brown to resign his judicial position in 2000 and focus on his TV career.

Cutting to the chase, last month Brown recorded his final installment of the show, which was canceled by CBS, following the failure of Brown and the network to reach agreement on a financial package. CBS, citing lower ratings, wanted to cut Brown’s compensation, publicized by the network as $20 million annually, although Brown, complaining about “Hollywood trick economics, said he was actually only paid $5 million a year.

In any case, the CBS-syndicated version of Judge Joe Brown is no more (Judge Judy was, incidentally renewed), and Brown is casting about for other syndicators for his courtroom theatrics. He and various partners are also purportedly planning a radio program to be called Real Talks With Judge Joe Brown.

And hark! The Hollywood Reporter maintains in a new article that Brown “also is considering offers to get involved in politics, which could include a run for the U.S. Senate from Tennessee.”

Since Brown has, during the years of his TV judgeship, occasionally returned to Memphis to host fundraisers for various local Democratic candidates, it is to be presumed that his party label as a Senate candidate would also be Democratic. Which means that if he availed himself of his first opportunity at a U.S. Senate seat, challenger Brown could find himself trying to put Republican incumbent Senator Lamar Alexander in the dock of public opinion in 2014.

Alexander should be forewarned: Though journalists who covered Brown as a Criminal Court judge were often impressed with his habit of dramatizing his opinions, they also saw him as being relatively mild-mannered with the contending parties in his courtroom.

But not so the Joe Brown of that Hollywood studio courtroom, who perfected the art of being stern, hard-edged, and sometimes even abusive with those upon whom his adverse judgments fell.

But stay tuned. Maybe there won’t be an Alexander-Brown showdown. Surely it’s as practical to be a faux legislator as a make-believe judge. Is it possible that, sometime down the line, maybe in 2014, we could find ourselves watching a new “reality” show entitled Senator Joe Brown?

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Ashley Judd for the U.S. Senate?

ashley_judd_casting_tn_vote_three.jpg

In the course of last summer’s Democratic convention in Charlotte, the Tennessee delegation was — as its chairman Chip Forrester and others rightly boasted — the most “diverse” in the state’s history, up to and including a transgendered delegate.

But on account of several consecutive elections that proved disastrous for Democrats — at least statewide — the delegation was somewhat poor in elected officials (although Memphis certainly supplied its share).

As a compensation, the delegation did have actress Ashley Judd on hand — a Kentucky native and sometime Tennessee resident who spent convention week with the contingent from Tennessee, which she proudly referred to as her “co-home state.”

And, in speaking of Tennessee and Tennesseans that week, Judd inevitably used the pronoun “we” — most spectacularly when — as pictured here — she cast the delegation’s votes for Barack Obama on nomination night. (She did so, it will be noticed, in the company of some of the state’s — and Memphis’ — finest; State Representative Larry Miller, 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, and Mayor A C Wharton.

Needless to say, Judd’s prominence in the delegation encouraged hopes that she might take a personal interest in the state’s politics. It was a subject much touched upon in Charlotte.

But, if Tennessee Democrats want her — say, for a U.S. Senate race in 2014 — they better be quick about making their bid. If an item this week in the online periodical Slate is accurate, Judd is now considering a run that year against U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Again, that’s her other “co-home state.”

Here was Judd as spokesperson for Tennessee last summer in Charlotte: