Tennessee Nurses Association

**The Shelby County Republicans’ Master Meal (this year re-christened as “Reagan Day Master Meal) went off as usual at the Great Hall of

David Lillard at GOP Master Meal

Germantown on Thursday night, but this year, the event, which featured state treasurer David Lillard as keynoter, was characterized by an unusual omission. Despite the presence, at the front of the mammoth hall, near the dais, of two life-sized cutouts, one of the Great Communicator and another of the current president, the event featured no mention — that’s zero mention — of Donald J. Trump, the POTUS. Well, there was one mention, technically, when Lee Mills, chairman of the Republican Party of Shelby County, informed the several hundred arriving celebrants they could, if they chose, be photographed with either of the two cutouts, After that, nada — not from Lillard not from two prior speakers, state Senator Brian Kelsey or state Representative Mark White.

Considering that the Master Meal is an annual party event rivaling the RPSC’s annual Lincoln Day banquet, usually held in February, that was downright unusual. Keynoter Lillard did brag of the fiscal achievements of “state government” (which is to say the Treasurer’s office, assisted by the GOP-dominated legislature) but did no boasting whatsoever of Trump, nor, for that matter, of Republican Governor Bill Haslam.

Outgoing County Mayor Mark Luttrell came in for some praise and was granted a curtain call for a farewell speech, but most of the rhetoric of the affair went toward praising the pedigrees and boosting the chances of the many local Republican office-holders and GOP candidates for reelection against challenges from what Kelsey acknowledged was a newly invigorated Democratic Party. Mayhap an omen in all this? Or merely an oversight?

Chris Thomas

As usual, Shelby County Republicans turned out in force for their annual Master Meal at Germantown’s Great Hall.

**The Tennessee Nurses Association, local members of which gathered in Memphis at Coletta’s Restaurant in Bartlett earlier Friday evening to hear updates from Crystal Walker of the UT College of Nursing and TNA executive director Tina Gerardi, has been trying hard to have sit-downs with each of the six major candidates for governor, hoping, among other things, to get endorsements for state-authorized Independent Practice for nurse practitioners. The TNA remains hopeful, despite being stiffed by the GOP’s Randy Boyd, Diane Black, and Beth Harwell, who have failed so far to arrange a rendezvous with TNA officials. The two Democratic candidates, Karl Dean and Craig Fitzhugh, have each indicated support for Independent Practice authority, however, and hopes were high at the Friday dinner for a positive encounter on Saturday with Republican candidate Bill Lee, who had responded eagerly to an invitation to meet with TNA members during his planned “Super Saturday” event on Saturday at his Shelby County headquarters on Poplar Avenue. Meanwhile, all the candidates have received copies of a TNA questionnaire, the results from which will at some point be publicized by the nurses’ organization.

Another guest of honor at the Tennessee Nurses Association bash on Thursday night was Sara Kyle, the District 30 state senator who, along with her Senate colleague Lee Harris (now a candidate for Shelby County Mayor), is on what can only be called a crusade to cast out yet another Shelby County senator, Reginald Tate of District 33, in favor of Democratic challenger Katrina Robinson. Tate’s sins are those of incessant collaboration with the Republican powers-that-be in Nashville, the fact of using important committee memberships — Education, Health & Welfare, Finance, Ways & Means, Judiciary — not for the aims and purposes of his constituents or party-mates but to advance Republican goals often regarded as antithetical to his District 33 base. In an effort to propitiate the ire of his fellow Democrats, Tate resigned his long-term affiliation with ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), the Koch-brothers-funded source of arch-Republican legislation, but allowed himself to be captured, on-mic, at a recent TV appearance as calling himself a “black Republican” and denouncing Democrats as “full of shit.”

Worst of all, Tate made no effort to oppose the legislative action to withdraw a previous $250,000 grant to Memphis for its 2019 bicentennial celebration as punishment for the city’s taking down Confederate statues in time for this year’s April 4th commemoration of Martin Luther King events, just as he had made no effort to oppose the Norris-Todd bill of 2011 that resulted in the sundering of a merged city/county school system and the creation of breakaway school districts in each of Shelby County’s suburban municipalities.
Jim McCarter

State Senator Sara Kyle with TNA members

Ironically, Tate had scheduled his headquarters opening at 3556 Mendenhall for Saturday afternoon, at the same time that Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Lee was having a “Super Saturday” bash at his headquarters at 5576 Poplar.

Though the word “Democrat” does not appear on the senator’s signage at his new headquarters, neither does the word “Republican.” Tate did, in fact, have some identifiable Democrats at the opening, and, when he was asked about the public disaffection from him of fellow Senate Democrats Kyle and Lee Harris, he handed out a flyer listing various benefits to Shelby County which he said were results of his Senate tenure, and he suggested that the coolness to his candidacy of various Democrats owed more to their envy of his achievements (alternatively, of his legislative committee assignments) than to any partisan apostasy on his part.

Reginald Tate (2nd from right) with friends atSaturday headquarters opening. Flanking are County Commissioner Willie Brooks and Young Democrat Alvin Crook, with former City Clerk Thomas Long nearby.

**As for the aforementioned gubernatorial candidate Lee, he had several members of the TNA at his “Super Saturday” affair (which was to have included some door-to-door campaigning in nearby locations, that had to be postponed, pending a break in some sudden rain showers).

Neither his questionnaire nor those of his gubernatorial opponents have as yet been received and tabulated by the TNA, but candidate Lee made a point of acknowledging his support for one of the key wish-list items wanted by the nurses’ association, legislation enabling independent practicing authority for nurse practitioners. One of his auditors on Saturday was TNA stalwart Connie McCarter, who pronounced herself pleased.
Another candidate for governor, U.S. Representative Diane Black, has invited members of the association to meet with her during the course of a CPAC event at FedExForum on Monday.

Gubernatorial candidate Bill Lee with friends at Lee’s ‘Super Saturday’ event.

**Even as most local political attention is fixed on the races to be decided in the state and federal primaries and county general election August 2nd, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland made a major move to ready his reelection campaign for the city election of 2019. Strickland, who has been steadily been holding campaign fund-raisers, scheduled his most recent one for Tuesday of this week at the Beale Street Museum and Studio of the late Ernest Withers, the late revered photographic chronicler of the Civil Rights Revolution.

The crowded affair, at a minimum of $150 a head, drew a Who’s Who of influential black businessman and civil eminences, and suggested good tidings in 2019 for Strickland, whose 20915 upset victory over then Mayor A C Wharton, involved the draining away of significant African-American votes from Wharton. In his remarks to the group, Strickland did not fail to note that he had put himself on the line in the successful effort to buck state resistance in the removal of Confederate memorials downtown, that he had geometrically increased the amount of city contracts with black-owned businesses, and that he had addressed black voters’ concerns in numerous other ways.

It remains uncertain who Strickland’s opponents will be in 2919, though a former mayor, Willie Herenton, has proclaimed a wish to run, and Mike Williams, head of the Memphis Police Union, a fourth-place finisher in 2015, has already basically declared. Both are African-American. Strickland’s aim is clearly to stay a step ahead, and holding on to his impressive share of the black base is a key part of his strategy. JB

No, Elvis and BB, as famously pictured by Ernest Withers, are not quite life-size, but even if they were, they’d have had to defer, size-wise, to Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, who held a successful fund-raiser in the Withers Museum and Studio on Thursday night.

With the 2017 legislative session just three months away, Democratic leaders in the General Asembly have made it clear that they are in no mood to accept the healthcare compromise offered up by House Speaker Beth Harwell’s task force on the subject.

That plan, which is sure to be the subject of debate when the legislature convenes, is a much-winnowed-down and highly-conditioned version of Governor Bill Haslam’s ill-fated Insure Tennessee proposal, first introduced during a special session in 2014 and bottled up by a Republican super-majority then
JB

Rep. Craig Fitzhugh (D-Ripley), at Wednesday’s TNA forum, talks things over with District 96 House candidate Dwayne Thompson (center) and Thompson campaign adviser Bret Thompson.

and in another try since.

In a forum on state and federal legislation held Thursday night by the Tennessee Nurses Association at Jason’s Deli on Poplar, both state Senate Democratic leader Lee Harris of Memphis and House Democratic leader Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley denounced the would-be substitute plan presented by the Harwell task force, which bears the name “3 Star Health Insurance Pilot,” in the process renaming it. Their name for it? “Hooey!”

Instead of providing expanded Medicaid coverage for all Tennesseans currently uncovered by health insurance, this plan would, during a two-year trial period, offer coverage to uninsured veterans and people suffering from mental health needs, withholding any larger coverage pending a legislative re-evaluation that would include an opportunity to suspend the plan altogether through a variety of “circuit breakers.”

Harris drew first blood when asked about the task force plan: “Beth Harwell’s proposal sounds like a bunch of hooey to me. On our side of the aisle we are still pushing for expanded Medicaid in the form of Insure Tennessee or a similar alternative.”

Harris described Insure Tennessee as “the best way to take care broadly of a population that’s uninsured and [of] hospitals around our state that are suffering under financial strain and some of which are completely out of business.”

Insure Tennessee never got a fair consideration, Harris said, because “Republican party chairmen from around the state wrote in to Republican legislators and said ‘you better not consider Obamacare.’” Harris said the current “meltdown” in Republican politics caused by the internal party strive over Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy afforded Insure Tennessee a better chance of passage. In any case, “we don’t have to react to a bunch of hooey.”

Those remarks were basically seconded by Fitzhugh, who repeated the epithet: “This 3-start hooey is a bad idea.” Fitzhugh said “the worst part” of the task force proposal is that, instead of the 9 to 1 federal to state match proposed by Insure Tennessee, “in this 3-star plan it is only a 2-to-1 match, and the numbers aren’t going to work out. It’s going to be expensive to the state, and then they’re going to start crowing about what happened when we expanded Medicaid and the state did it on their own and almost sunk our ship.’”

Fitzhugh also drew attention to the fact that the state, under the 3-star plan, could continue to be denied the $1.5 billion in annual federal funding it would draw under Insure Tennessee. “The only upside” of the task force plan is that it would “keep the issue alive,” Fitzhugh said.

Two Democratic candidates for the House — Dwayne Thompson, running against incumbent Republican Steve McManus in District 96, referred to the task force plan as a rudimentary program…Obamacare Very Light” and said “my opponent bottled [Insure Tennessee] up in committee.

Thompson indicated that, if elected, he would attempt to amend the task force plan so as to broaden its coverage if Insure Tennessee itself could not be considered. He was seconded in that respect by Democratic candidate Larry Pivnick, running against incumbent GOP Rep. Mark White in District 83. “If they offer the compromise bill first I’ll move to amend it to include everybody. We have to call the question.”

Mark Lovell, unopposed after defeating incumbent Curry Todd in District 95, and the only Republican in attendance who was running for a state position, commented that he himself was “fortunate to be able to buy my own health insurance,” but said he thought the task force plan would “fix a huge void” and that “we should do whatever we have to do to take care of certain other people. We all need to make sacrifices.”