Tag: Tennessee Governor’s Race

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Can Dems Compete in Poplar Corridor in November?

(Graphic courtesy of Memphis consultant Cole Perry)

Whatever it might mean for the November election results, the August voting in Shelby County showed an interesting pattern vis-a-vis the race for the Democratic nomination for governor.

As noted by Erik Schelzig of the Tennessee Journal and as demonstrated in the graphic above (image courtesy of Memphis consultant Cole Perry) the Democrats’ second-place finisher statewide, City Councilman JB Smiley of Memphis, dominated primary voting in Shelby County, perhaps as expected, winning 61.99 percent of the county’s vote as a native son, with 48,650 votes. Second place in Shelby County went to Dr. Jason Martin of Nashville, who garnered 22.72 percent of the vote, with 18,005 votes. Martin finished first in the state as a whole and, consequently, is the party’s nominee in November to oppose GOP Governor Bill Lee.

What will be noticed from the graphic is the lengthy pink salient penetrating the county map from the east. This is where Martin netted from 40 to 60 percent of the primary vote and was the source of his strength in Shelby County. That portion of the county happens to be synonymous with what Schelzig and others call the “finger of love,” a section of the county peeled away from what used to be the 9th District and assigned by Republican redistricters to the 8th Congressional District.

Another way of describing the salient is that it is the Poplar Avenue Corridor, site of a good deal of upscale business and residential areas.

So what can be deduced from the map? Several things; one in particular: At least to a modest degree, the Poplar Corridor is potentially competitive in November between Martin and Lee. The rest of the county should go to Martin, though turnout for Martin as the Democratic nominee in November may lag behind what Memphian Smiley was able to attract in August.

And not to be neglected is that the 12,604 votes won in Shelby by third-place finisher Carnita Atwater, also a Memphian, most probably took enough votes away from Smiley to prevent his becoming the party nominee. He lost to Martin statewide by only 1,472 votes.

Ultimately, in any case, the odds of a Martin victory in November remain remote in that statewide voting remains overwhelmingly Republican.

Still, Democrats would be well advised to give that finger a shake.

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Politics Politics Feature

Political Time Warp

Jason Martin, Carnita Atwater, and JB Smiley (Photo: Jackson Baker)

We’re all entitled to a brain freeze once in a while. Who among us has not suffered one in an embarrassing public moment? But Carnita Atwater, a Memphian and a declared candidate for governor of Tennessee, went for gold with one on the night of Tuesday, July 12th.

The first comment Atwater made from the stage of the Little Theater in the Alma C. Hanson Student Center at LeMoyne-Owen College was in response to a lead-off question that moderator Jasmine Boyd addressed to all three candidates for the Democratic nomination — the others being Nashville physician Jason Martin and Memphis Councilman JB Smiley.

Atwater, an activist for the New Chicago neighborhood and a former nurse, would say the following:

“Thank you for that question. As the next incoming governor, I will have a plan that affords all Tennesseeans to have a seat at the table of prosperity. I will go and do questionnaires across the 95 counties to identify and assess the needs of each county. Most counties are different. Most counties have different needs. So I want to dictate to the community. I want to meet their needs. So that’s why I’ll do a questionnaire, do the accessibility, and then draw up my plan.”

Quote unquote.

Martin was next, delivering a well-considered statement stressing, among other things, the need to shore up public education, vo-tech and otherwise; to renew the matter, so far rejected by the Republican legislative supermajority, of accepting federal funds for Medicaid expansion; and to bring broadband to all corners of the state.

In his turn, Smiley — who is equal parts demonstrative and reserved and who would consistently feature some aspect of himself to answer to all questions — noted that he lived only three blocks away from the site of the forum in an underserved community and made a pitch for instituting a living wage and for workforce development programs because “the jobs are coming, the global city is here.”

At this point, Atwater had a question of her own, addressing it to Boyd: “I want to make sure I understand the rules. Do we have 90 seconds to respond? Because I noticed that others are getting one minute and 30 seconds. So I want to make sure we follow the rules.”

Very politely and without missing a beat, Boyd explained: “Yes, ma’am, one minute and 30 seconds is the equivalent of 90 seconds.”

And the forum went on from there, Atwater’s first questionnaire having gotten an answer of sorts. (More on the forum and the Democratic gubernatorial primary will be featured online at memphisflyer.com.)

• In addition to the state, federal, county, and judicial races covered in the July 14th issue of the Flyer (in this space and in that week’s cover story), several other races on the August 4th ballot, listed below, deserve attention. Only contested races are included for the categories indicated. Incumbent’s names are italicized.

Memphis Term Limits Referendum — One of the most widely anticipated measures on the August 4th ballot is a referendum for Memphis voters that would alter the current limit of two terms for mayor and City Council members, extending that limit to three terms. Interest in the referendum has been enhanced by a declaration from current Mayor Jim Strickland that he would seek a third term in 2023 if it should pass.

City of Memphis Special Election — Municipal Court Judge, Division 1: Kenya Hooks, Carolyn S. Watkins.

Shelby County School Board races — District 1: Chris Caldwell, Michelle McKissack, Rachael Goodwin Spriggs; District 6: Charles Everett, Timothy Green Jr., Kenny Lee, David Page, Tiffani Perry, Keith Williams; District 9: Joyce Dorse-Coleman, Rebecca Jane Edwards.

Arlington Municipal Election — Alderman, Position 4: Oscar L. Brooks, Jordan D. Hinders; Alderman, Position 5: Harry McKee, Steven Smith. School Board, Position 3: Jonathan Dunn, Hugh Lamar; School Board, Position 5: Dale A. Viox, Cathy Wilson.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

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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Bill Lee Closes Fast in GOP Primary

CREDIT: JB

JB

Gubernatorial candidate Lee works the room at Arlington’s Legacy Grill.

Is Bill Lee the new frontrunner among Tennessee’s Republican gubernatorial candidates? A recent poll says that he is, and the Williamson County businessman is now promoting that assumption on a last, pre-primary tour of the state at “100 town halls” (two of them in Shelby County on Thursday, a week before final voting on August 2nd).

Given the lingering consensus that, Democratic blue wave or no blue wave, Republicans are still the majority party in Tennessee, does the prospect that — with less than a week to go — Lee has taken over the GOP lead from the duo long at the top, Diane Black and Randy Boyd, mean that he is the state’s likely new governor?

“Maybe” is the right answer to all those questions. The poll reflecting a sudden come-from-behind lunge from Lee is by JMC Analytics and Polling, a Louisiana firm that is new to the headlines in Tennessee. So, make allowance for a degree of skepticism. It is certainly true, however, from an aggregate of various other polls over the last several months, that Lee had been maintaining a reasonably close third-place position behind Black and Boyd and was theoretically within striking distance of the Black and Boyd, should either or both of them falter.

And it is widely believed that both Black and Boyd, whose campaigns had largely become mere mechanisms for attacking each other, had indeed faltered, especially since their attacks had become progressively meaner-spirited and less connected to reality — accusing each other of being swamp creatures secretly disloyal to President Trump, as well as mad taxers intent upon robbing Tennesseans blind while gaming the financial system to enrich themselves. At no time has there been a reasoned dialogue between the two contrasting Black’s hard-shell Trump-style conservatism with the progressive governmental ideas of Boyd, an entrepreneur and former idea man for current Governor Bill Haslam who prefers now to be called “Conservative Randy Boyd,” as if that were the name on his birth certificate.

Meanwhile, Lee — a multi-millionaire like his two main rivals — has been steadily touring the state in the supportive company of his wife, Maria, stressing his religious faith and his rebound from previous family tragedies that included the death of his first wife from a horseback fall. Looking like a casually composed latter-day Marlboro Man, Lee has eschewed desperate attacks upon his opponents in favor of promises to help build a ‘better life” for all Tennesseans. Steering clear of ideology as such, and lacking a political record of any sort, he styles himself as a “conservative” and an outsider.

His current pre-election tour of Tennessee, in the same 14-year-old RV he has been using for the past year or so, made two stops in Shelby County on Thursday — one at noon at the Kooky Canuck eatery downtown, another at mid-afternoon at The Legacy Grill in Arlington, he greeted supporters, schmoozed with diners, and in general acted like a low-key Man of the Hour.

The restaurant at Arlington was filled with people, who were first treated to a stock campaign video, which recapped moments from the life and times of Lee, who was seen describing his first wife’s fatal horse-riding accident in a subdued but straightforward voice.

“Over time, we healed, we grew, we started laughing again,” Lee said on the video, explaining that he had made it his mission to “ work to change others, to make life better for other people,” not just the “1,200 hard-working pipe-fitters, electricians, plumbers of the Lee Company,” but others, including the inner-city child he mentored and the “guy from prison” he helped make a transition back to society at large.

“I started to think, What if I could do that for everyone in Tennessee? I believe I can. I’m sure going to try.

A local pastor then introduced the flesh-and-blood Lee to the crowd as “a man’s man, “farmer, husband, father, grandfather … not a career politician — in fact, he’s never run for office before — a passionate lover and follower of Jesus Christ.”

Lee came up to the front, dressed in casual shirt and chinos, suggesting that people were looking for a “conservative man of faith” and offering that as a description of himself. Hailing some Memphis-area cousins that were in the crowd, Lee cited the “transformational” nature of his family tragedy and in short order was joined at the front of the room by Maria, “God’s gift to me.”

He promised to take better care of the state’s teachers. “We test too much, and we may be testing for the wrong things.” He spoke of his wish to reform criminal justice and reduce “the revolving door” of recidivism, lamented that 15 Tennessee counties, all rural, were officially designated as in poverty, and got an extended round of applause when he rounded on the “dishonest, deceptive attack ads” that, he implied, his major GOP opponents were committed to.

“It’s everything that’s wrong with politics,” he said. “There’s a lot more truth you can find in the person behind those ads than in the person in those ads.”

There was more in that vein, and a nod to his independence and the fact that he was “not beholden to anybody,” donors, lobbyists, or legislators. He likened his “outsider” status to that of President Trump. “That’s why he’s been so effective.”

After his remarks, he and his wife greeted an impressive number of well-wishers who approached them.

He was asked if really had taken the lead. “We certainly know there’s a surge, and the momentum is there. I don’t rely on polls, but I do rely on the momentum and the electricity I see. In today’s world, people want a conservative and an outsider, and that’s me.”

Asked to define what he meant by the term “conservative,” he said it denotes a “playbook for the fundamental approach to governing, that limited government and small government is better, that fiscal governmency includes not allowing government to grow beyond what it should, and understanding there are conservative social values like being 100 percent pro-life.”

Some might think of all that as boilerplate, but Lee makes such statements with a seeming frankness and a confident if modest attitude. He is not one for hard and fast policy points, but in a contest where image counts for much, he certainly looks the part, and, after several months of trailing frontrunners Black and Boyd for first-place honors in the Republican gubernatorial primary, he may indeed be peaking at the right time.

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Diane Black Gets a Little Help from Her Friends

CREDIT: JB

When is a statewide political campaign also a natio nal campaign? Or perhaps that question is best turned around: How much do and should national JB

U.S. Rep. Diane Black and American Conservative Union chairman Matt Schlapp, who endorsed her gubernatorial candidacy, engaged in some mutual admiration on Monday.

issues influence, or even become, the substance of statwewide campaigns?

The question is undeniably relevant to the current campaign for Governor of U.S. Representative Diane Black, a Republican who seems at times to be running a national campaign and who, perhaps not coincidentally, made Memphis appearances Monday in the company of Matt Schlapp, chairman of the American Conservative Union, and Ben Carson, secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Schlapp, a familiar presence on national TV political talk shows, was at a Monday morning press conference with Black on Monday, where he endorsed her gubernatorial candidacy on behalf of the ACU, the nation’s oldest conservative lobbying organization, and Carson was a scheduled speaker, along with Black, at a Monday nighty panel discussion of the ACU’s Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) at FedEx Forum.

Schlapp said ACU had “been in the trenches” with Black for years, praised her work with the House budget committee, and avowed that there was “no better champion in the congress for our conservative values.”

Black reciprocated her pride in her high annual scores with ACU evaluations on issues and made the case that ACU values accorded well with Tennessee “core principles.” People from states like New york and California who come here and insist on less conservative concepts should be told, “that’s not how we do it here” and advised to “go back” to those states, said Black, who warned against Tennessee’s becoming a “purple” state like North Carolina next door.

During a brief meeting with local reporters, Black defended her solidarity with President Trump and her emphasis on such matters as immigration control at the nation’s southern border.

Issues like “sanctuary cities” and “in-state tuition” for illegals,” both of which she opposes, are important locally, Black said. “As Governor, I’d be responsible for making sure Tennessee is safe.” She added that her recent endorsements by the National Rifle Association and National Right to Life reflected the reality of these organizations’ issues as “concerns right here in our state.”

Asked about her showing in a recent Vanderbilt University poll, which gave her high name recognition statewide but included figures showing her unfavorable ratings higher than her favorable ones, Black answered, “What does the poll really mean? If you break those polls down, you see that they include liberals and moderates in there, and I’m obviously a conservative.”

She said it was “essential that I define who I am and what I’ve stood for over the last 20 years. I’m conservative, and I get things done.” She rejected opponents’ charges that she was a “career politician” and said, “What I really am is a career nurse,” as well as “a businesswoman, an educator,” and someone vitally interested in public policy. “I’m a very well-rounded person,” she said.

More than any of her GOP primary opponents, including former state Economic Development Commissioner Randy Boyd, who has called her “D.C. Diane” Black identifies with President Trump, who has returned the favor by praising her, especially for her work as House budget chair.

“Tax reform and GDP growth. I’m very proud of that,” Black said. “The President has vision and is a strong negotiator.” She was somewhat more conditional on the subject of the President’s recent announcement of tariffs against American trading partners. “That’s something you don’t do when there’s no problem,” she said, mentioning the state’s agricultural producers as being potentially vulnerable to retaliation.

 “It could be difficult if it’s not done in a fair way,” she said of the new Trump hardline on tariffs. “But he is one who bargains and bargains well.”

Black would appear twice later on at the CPAC meeting, held in the lobby of FedEx Forum, first with both Schlapp and Carson in a panel in which she and the HUD secretary made much of their Horatio Alger-like rise from youthful poverty (both, as they told it, having been raised in public housing) and later, in a concluding panel with Schlapp, in which Black underscored her pro-life credentials and the two of them led what was by then a much-diminished crowd in a valedictory pledge-of-allegiance to the flag.

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Federal Judgeship Rumored for Norris

For months now state Senator Mark Norris (R-Collierville), majority leader of the Senate, has been suspended between a long-standing ambition to run for Governor and the possibility of an appointment to a federal judgeship. Norris deemed the latter prospect “an honor” when asked about it by the Flyer in February.

New reporting from various Tennessee media sources would indicate that the honor could be imminent. Both the Tennessean of Nashville and the Chattanooga Times-Free Press have run stories indicating that Norris has lately been the subject of the kind of FBI background check that precedes such a judicial appointment.

Two District judgeships are open, one vacated by Judge Hardy Mays, another by Judge Daniel Breen.
Appointment to one of the judgeships, besides being a career milestone in itself, would make irrelevant an existing dilemma faced by Norris in his acknowledged contemplation of a gubernatorial race.

The GOP-primary candidates already declared — former state Economic Development Commissioner Randy Boyd and Franklin businessman Bill Lee — as well as another possible entry, 4th District congresswoman Diane Black, possess sources of funding, including private wealth, that Norris would have difficulty matching. And state House Speaker Beth Harwell (R-Nashville), who would draw on some of the same legislative support as Norris, is also thinking of entering the race.

Under the circumstances, there is little doubt that Norris, trained in Constitutional law and possessor of a contemplative mind beyond his demonstrated skills as a legislator and conciliator, would accept a judicial appointment.