Tag: Tennessee Republicans

Categories
Cover Feature News

Who’s Got the Power?

Illustration: Adobe Stock

Tennessee Republicans cannot stand the federal government telling them what to do — especially when a Democrat’s in the White House — but they do love telling Tennessee’s biggest cities what to do.

Republicans cry “overreach,” in general, when the feds “impose” rules that “overrule the will of the people of Tennessee.” (All of those quoted words came from just one statement on abortion from Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti, who yells “overreach!” the loudest.) But they call it “preemption” when they do it to Memphis and Nashville — their favorite targets — leaving big-city locals to bemoan that same overreach.

When punching up at the federal government, Tennessee conservatives send angry letters to the president lamenting rules they have to follow to get big “seductive” tax dollars. But they don’t often win much in this process.

When they punch down at cities, the power struggle really comes down to rural conservatives exerting whatever influence they have to temper (squash) the sometimes “woke” ideas of urban progressives. They have a lot of power to do this, as state law does, usually, preempt local law.

So, Republicans do what they want in the Tennessee General Assembly and say, “See you in court,” because cities don’t typically give up their authority without a legal fist fight. (This happens so much state Democrats say Republicans pass lawsuits, not laws.)

But cities lose these fights often. Some of that is thanks to the powerful state AG’s office, who gets in the ring for state conservatives. That office has even more punching power with a brand-new $2.25 million, 10-member unit. It force-feeds conservative priorities in Tennessee cities and blocks D.C.’s liberal agenda.

Here’s an example of this double-edged subversion: Skrmetti, the Republican AG, cried “overreach” when a 2022 USDA rule said LGTBQ kids had to have access to lunch at school. But when Memphis and Nashville tried to decriminalize cannabis in 2016, a state Republican said, “You just can’t have cities creating their own criminal code, willy-nilly.”

Same coin. Two sides. Yes, state law rules most times, but the premise of the argument is the same. State citizens and city locals know what’s best for them and pick their leaders accordingly. Then, an outsider who, maybe, doesn’t share their values, swoops in to make locals comply with theirs. It’s like, “Hi, you don’t know me but you’re doing it wrong and are going to do it my way.”

In this game, Memphis has been on the ropes at the legislature this year. State Republicans want to take away some of the power from the Shelby County district attorney. They want to remove a Memphis City Council decision on when Memphis Police Department (MPD) officers make traffic stops. They also wanted to dilute local control of the Memphis-Shelby County School (MSCS) board with members appointed by the governor. But they decided against it. Details on many of these and some from the past are below.

Meanwhile, some Republican lawmakers have looked up, wondering if they could really cut ties with the federal government. They took a serious, hard look at giving up $1 billion in federal education funding for state schools. They wanted to do it “the Tennessee way.” Left to guess what that meant, many concluded they hoped to eschew national discrimination protections for LGBTQ students.

This year, a state Republican hopes to establish state sovereignty. He wants to draw a clear line between state and fed powers and to install a committee to watch that line. It’s not a new idea, but it’s always had “don’t tread on me” vibes.

The road from Memphis City Hall, to the State Capitol, to Congress and the White House is littered with complaints (usually court papers) about political subversion. All the hollering and legal fights along the way have to leave voters wondering, who’s got the power?

Steve Mulroy (Photo: Steve Mulroy | Facebook)

District Attorney Power Battle

A legal battle over who has the power to decide on some death penalty cases has been waged since Republicans passed a bill here last year.

That bill stripped local control of post-conviction proceedings from local district attorneys and gave it to Skrmetti, the state AG. In Memphis, the bill seemed largely aimed at Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy, with some concerned he may be lenient for those facing the death penalty.

“This sudden move appears to be a response to the choices of voters in both Davidson County and Shelby County, who elected prosecutors to support more restorative and less punitive policies,” Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty said at the time.

Larry McKay, who received two death sentences for the murders of two store clerks in Shelby County in 1981, requested a court review of previously unexamined evidence in his case. Despite the new law, McKay’s attorney sought to disqualify Skremtti’s office from reviewing the case because he was not elected.

His attorney argued the new law infringes on the responsibilities of local district attorneys. The big changes made in the legislation also violated the state constitution, the attorney said.

Mulroy agreed.

“The newly enacted statute is an unconstitutional effort to divest and diminish the authority granted to Tennessee’s district attorneys general by the Tennessee Constitution,” Mulroy said at the time. “The new statute violates the voting rights of such voters because it strips material discretion from district attorneys, who are elected by the qualified voters of the judicial district.”

But state attorneys did not agree.

“The General Assembly was entitled to take that statuary power away from the district attorneys and give it to the Attorney General in capital cases,” reads the court document. “They have done just that and their mandate must be followed.”

But in July Shelby County Judge Paula Skahan ruled the Republican legislation did violate the state constitution. New arguments on the case were heard by the Tennessee Criminal Court of Appeals earlier this month. No ruling was issued as of press time. However, an appeal of that ruling seems inevitable, likely pushing the case to the Tennessee Supreme Court.

Pretextual Stops

State Republicans are actively trying to undermine a unanimous decision of the Memphis City Council to stop police from pulling over motorists for minor things like a broken taillight, a loose bumper, and more.

This council move came three months after MPD officers beat and killed Tyre Nichols, who was stopped for a minor traffic infraction. The local law is called the Driving Equality Act in Honor of Tyre Nichols.

Council members said police time could be better spent, that the stops expose more people to the criminal justice system, and, as in the Nichols’ case, could be dangerous. The stops also disproportionately affect Black people, who make up about 64 percent of Memphis’ population but receive 74 percent of its traffic tickets, according to Decarcerate Memphis.

The council’s decision made national headlines. But it found no favor with Republican lawmakers.

Rep. John Gillespie (R-Bartlett) introduced a controversial bill this year that would end that practice and reestablish state control over local decisions on criminal justice.

“We’re simply saying a state law that’s been on the books for decades is what we’re going by here,” Gillespie told Tennessee Lookout earlier this month. “And if there are people that have problems with what state law is, then maybe they should change state law instead of enacting local ordinances that are in conflict with state law.”

He initially cooled on the matter, promising to pause his bill for further review after Nichols’ parents spoke at a press conference.

“I am just appalled by what Republicans are trying to do in this state,” Nichols’ father, Rodney Wells, said at the event.

Gillespie promised Nichols’ family he’d hold the bill but surprised many earlier this month when he brought it to the House floor for a vote, which it won. Some said Gillespie acted in bad faith. State Rep. Justin Pearson (D-Memphis) said he straight-up lied to Nichols’ family and subverted local power to boot.

“You, as a person who lives in Shelby County, seek to undo the will of the people of Memphis and Shelby County,” Pearson said on the House floor. “The Wells family spoke with him briefly; he told them this bill wouldn’t come up until probably next Thursday.”

The Senate approved the bill last Thursday. It now heads to Gov. Lee for signature.

Six school board members for Memphis-Shelby County Schools met with three state lawmakers representing Memphis on Feb. 14, 2024, at the state Capitol. Their agenda included pending legislation from Rep. Mark White and Sen. Brent Taylor, both Republicans, to authorize Gov. Bill Lee to appoint additional members to the board. (Photo: Courtesy Memphis-Shelby County Schools | Chalkbeat)

MSCS School Board

State Republicans want to control schools here, too.

Rep. Mark White (R-Memphis), chair of the House Education Committee, filed a bill earlier this year that would add six governor-appointed members (read: more Republican influence) to the MSCS board. When he filed the legislation, he said he was unimpressed with the slate of those vying for the district’s superintendent job and concerned about students falling behind state standards on reading and math.

“I’m very concerned about the district’s direction, and I just can’t sit back any longer,” White told Chalkbeat Tennessee. “I think we’re at a critical juncture.”

However, MSCS board chair Althea Greene said at the time that White’s proposal was unnecessary.

“We may have had some challenges, but more interference from the General Assembly is not warranted at this time,” she said. “We have to stop experimenting with our children.”

Since then, the MSCS board chose Marie Feagins as the district’s superintendent and she got to work early, before her contract was supposed to start. Also, White paused his bill earlier this month to give board members a chance to submit an improvement plan. White said the plan should show how they’ll improve on literacy, truancy, graduation rates, teacher recruitment, underutilized school buildings, and a backlog of building maintenance needs, among other things, according to Chalkbeat.

While it’s the newest move in state “overreach” into schools here, it’s hardly the first. State Republicans once seized dozens of schools in Memphis and Nashville as laboratories for what they called “Achievement School Districts.” After more than a decade, these schools only angered locals, showed abysmal student performance, and now seem to be on their way out.

Cannabis

For six weeks back in 2016, Memphis City Council members debated a move that would have decriminalized possession of small amounts of cannabis in the city.

Hundreds were (and are) arrested each year on simple possession charges, and most of those arrested were (and are) Black. Council members didn’t want cannabis legalization; they wanted to steer folks away from the criminal justice system. They hoped to keep them out of jail and avoid a criminal record, which could hurt their chances at housing, employment, and more.

The city council — even though some had reservations about it — said yes to this. So did the Nashville Metropolitan Council. State Republicans said no.

Upon their return to the Capitol in 2017, they got to work ensuring their control over local decisions on the matter. A bill to strip this control easily won support in the legislature and was signed by then-Gov. Bill Haslam, who said he acted on the will of state lawmakers.

“You just can’t have cities creating their own criminal code, willy-nilly,” Rep. William Lamberth (R-Cottontown), the bill’s House sponsor, told The Tennessean at the time.

Then-Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery issued an opinion that said, basically, cities can’t make laws that preempt state law. With that, Memphis resumed regular enforcement of cannabis laws.

Ranked Choice Voting

In two elections — 2008 and 2018 — Memphians chose how they wanted to pick their politicians, but they never got a chance to use it. State Republicans said no.

Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) would have allowed voters here to rank candidates on a ballot, doing away with the need for run-off elections that always see lower voter turnout. It was new and different but voters here “decided, over and over again, to give it a try,” reads a Commercial Appeal op-ed from 2022 by Mark Luttrell, former Shelby County mayor, and Erika Sugarmon, now a Shelby County commissioner.

However, state Republicans then-Sen. Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) and Rep. Nathan Vaughan (R-Collierville) filed a bill to upend the voters’ decision for good with a bill to end RCV in Tennessee. Kelsey said it was about voter clarity. Opponents said it was about more.

“If the bill passes, it will disrespect Memphis voters, make a mockery of local control,” Luttrell and Sugarmon said in the op-ed.

In the end, the state won. The bill passed and RCV was banned, with added support and sponsorship of Memphis Democrats Rep. Joe Towns Jr. and the late Rep. Barbara Cooper.

State Sovereignty

“So, you hoe in your little garden and stay out of our garden,” said Rep. Bud Hulsey (R-Kingsport).

He was explaining to the House Public Service Committee last year how the country’s founders designed the separation of powers between the state and the federal governments, how it was supposed to work, anyway.

But federal government agencies — not elected officials — issue rules pushed on to “we, the people,” he said. They tear families apart. They split marriages. They end lifelong friendships, he said. They bring bankruptcy and suicide. He gave no more details than that. But he was sick of it and said the bill he brought would fix it.

When some Republicans here aren’t busy in committee or court, rending control from local governments, they like to think about state sovereignty. They want to defend Tennessee from the feds, especially when a Democrat is in the White House. They want to know what the exact rules are and to tell D.C. “don’t tread on me.”

Since at least 1995, bills like these have been filed here and there in the state legislature. There’s a new one pending now. In them, “sovereignty” sometimes sounds like a preamble to “secession.”

Hulsey’s bill didn’t go that far. He really wanted to set out a way to nullify D.C. rules he didn’t like. Lee’s office was against it, though. Senate Republicans were, too. The idea failed to even get a review in the Republican-packed Senate State and Local Government Committee. Conservatives worried “nullification” could also nullify big federal tax dollars.

That 1995 bill demanded, “The federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of its constitutionally delegated powers.” Another Republican sovereignty bill later would have voided the powers of any representative of the United Nations once they entered the state.

One in 2014 (that was signed by the governor) simply expressed the state’s sovereignty to set educational standards. A 2016 bill said the feds “seduce” states to go along with their new rules with federal funds they treat as grants, not as tax funds for the state. Another in 2013 would have formed a committee to see what financial and legal troubles could be in store for Tennessee if it scaled back or quit the “state’s participation in the various federal programs.”

Ten years later, this idea is back. The “Tennessee State Sovereignty Act of 2024” would form a 10-person committee to watch and see if any federal rule violates the Tennessee State Constitution. If it does, “it is the duty of both the residents of this state and the General Assembly to resist.”

Now, if that don’t say “don’t tread on me” …

In the Senate, the bill was deferred until near the end of session (usually meaning they’ll get to it if they can). A House review of the idea was slated for this week, after press time.

Education Funding

Sovereignty bills rarely go anywhere but in talking points for reelection campaigns.

However, last year high-ranking Republicans took state sovereignty a step beyond rattling a saber. They announced a bold plan to have a serious look at if and how Tennessee could cut ties with the feds and their $1 billion in education funding. If it did, Tennessee would have been the first state in history to decline such funds.

“We as a state can lead the nation once again in telling the federal government that they can keep their money and we’ll just do things the Tennessee way,” House Speaker Rep. Cameron Sexton said at an event in February last year.

He didn’t outline what the “Tennessee way” entailed, though he complained about testing mandates and strings attached to funding. Many said the big federal string Republicans wanted to cut was the one attached to Title IX mandates. Title IX prohibits discrimination based on sex in education programs and activities that get federal money. The Biden administration has promised an update to these that could strengthen protections for LGTBQ students.

Tennessee has passed more anti-LGBTQ laws than any other state, according to the Human Rights Campaign. The week of March 4th alone, 18 such bills were before state lawmakers and targeted diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; made it easier to ban books; and attempted to legalize discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

State Republicans have passed bills to mandate transgender students only play on sports teams that match their gender at birth. They have mandated which bathrooms trans people have to use (a decision struck down by a federal judge). They’ve allowed teachers to go unpunished if they refuse to use pronouns that students identify with. They’ve wanted certain books with LGBTQ themes banned at school. They’ve wanted LGBTQ, especially gender identity, issues banned from discussion in sex-ed classes. This list goes on and on.

However, the precise motive for looking into cutting those federal education dollars was never stated. Some said it was always good to review the relationship between nation and state. In the end, Republicans spent a lot of time and money to research the idea but set it aside. They took the federal money and the strings attached anyway. But taking it so seriously was maybe that “don’t tread on me snake” just shaking its rattle.

“Deep in my Soul”

Separation of powers is a doubled-edge sword. It’s that cartoon drawing of a big fish eating a small fish that is getting eaten by the even bigger fish. It’s a “layer cake” form of federalism.

Call it what you will, but it’s clear locals want to make their own decisions. For Hulsey, the Republican talking about who tends whose garden, the idea runs deep.

“I stood up on that House floor over there a few weeks ago and we raised our hand, and we swore to 7 million people in this state, we swore not that we would rake in all the federal money we could get,” Hulsey told committee members. “We swore that we would always defend the inalienable rights of Tennessee people by defending and upholding the Constitution of the United States and the constitution of the state of Tennessee.

“We should not be for sale. I want to tell you that deep in my soul, I have a conviction that is deep-seated. I believe that if state legislatures in this country do not stand up and hold the federal government to obey the Constitution of the United States, we could very easily lose this republic.”

Categories
News News Blog News Feature

Tennessee’s New School Library Law Puts Burdens on Teachers

Photo by Joe Ciciarelli on Unsplash

On a large colorful rug, several schoolchildren sat with their legs crossed. Others stretched out on their stomachs. All were poring over pages and unraveling words and stories from books like “Pete the Cat,” “Time for Breakfast,” and “The Tiny Seed.” 

It’s reading time in Tahna White’s kindergarten classroom.

Her self-funded library collection anchors a joyful and eye-catching corner of her teaching space at Lowrance K-8 School in Memphis. Minutes earlier, her students were browsing through blue, purple, and green book bins sorted by themes like llamas, plants, feelings, and stories written by Eric Carle.

“They absolutely love going through these books,” said White, who has a master’s degree in language and literacy and has amassed about 500 children’s titles during her 20 years of teaching.

Still, White is prepared to box the books up and take them home if Memphis-Shelby County Schools directs her to catalog each one under a new state law aimed at school libraries.

“The task would be enormous, and I don’t know when I’d have time to do it myself,” she said. “Pretty much all my parents work, so it’s unlikely they’d have time to volunteer and help.”

Teachers and school leaders across Tennessee are trying to figure out how to satisfy recent state guidance on the 2022 library law. The statute requires public schools to scrutinize their library materials for “age appropriateness” and publish the full inventory for parents to view online.

Republican Gov. Bill Lee said the purpose was to “ensure parents know what materials are available to students in their libraries.”

But an Aug. 11 memo to district leaders said that under the law, a library collection is not limited to materials found in a traditional school library. It also includes “materials maintained in a teacher’s classroom,” wrote Christy Ballard, general counsel for the state education department.

Soon after, several school systems, including large districts in Chattanooga and Murfreesboro, instructed their teachers to begin cataloging their classroom collections by title and author, along with a brief description of each book — just as the new school year was beginning. 

“So most teachers have hundreds of books,” said third-grade teacher Sydney Rawls, whose viral TikTok video showed her spending one Saturday creating an inventory, book by book, at Mitchell-Neilson School in Murfreesboro, south of Nashville.

Rawls described how her students beg to read from her collection after they finish a test or assignment, “and I have to say no, you can’t, because I haven’t had a chance to go through all of them to catalog them, to write them all down.”

For White and other educators who may face the same task, the answer may be just removing the books they’ve personally curated for their classrooms. It’s an option that some teachers have discussed on social media.

Removing reading materials to comply with a state law would be an ironic twist for a state that has been trying for years to help its children become better readers.

Only one-third of Tennessee fourth-graders earned a proficient reading score in 2019 on the most recent national tests conducted by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also called the Nation’s Report Card. 

In Memphis, home to the state’s largest district, nearly 80% of students aren’t reading at grade level.

The same legislature that passed the governor’s library proposal, dubbed the “Age Appropriate Materials Act,” approved a raft of measures the prior year aimed at improving students’ literacy skills. 

As a result, all K-12 schools have adopted phonics-based reading instruction, while colleges have revised their training accordingly for aspiring teachers. Also, beginning this school year, one controversial new law increases the likelihood that schools will hold back students who aren’t considered proficient in reading by the end of third grade.

The prospect of children losing access to books because of teachers balking at cataloging their collections is something the governor and the law’s two GOP sponsors — Sen. Jack Johnson and Rep. William Lamberth — aren’t talking about. 

None responded to questions or accommodated interview requests from Chalkbeat. 

Others involved in the library law’s development say they were taken aback by the state’s broad interpretation of what constitutes a school library.

“We don’t think that was the legislative intent,” said Dale Lynch, who leads the state’s superintendents organization. 

“It obviously means a whole lot of work for teachers.”

Lindsey Kimery, past president of the Tennessee Association of School Librarians, said the governor’s chief of staff and policy adviser never mentioned classroom collections when discussing the legislation with representatives of her group earlier this year.

“It’s exactly the kind of thing that we were afraid of,” she said of the law’s expanded scope. “At the end of the day, this creates one more barrier to easy book access for students who have no problem accessing things like video games or cellphones.”

State Rep. Sam McKenzie, who serves on a House education committee, doesn’t recall classroom book collections being discussed during debates about the legislation. 

The Knoxville Democrat plans to propose his own legislation next year to clarify that the library law does not extend to classrooms.

“This is a classic example of government overreach,” he said. “We need to get out of the way and let our teachers teach.”

Tennessee was already under a national spotlight last school year for several high-profile book bans.

Then lawmakers passed several bills aimed at restricting the kinds of books that students can read. In addition to the governor’s library review law, one measure lets the state textbook commission overrule local school board decisions and remove materials from school libraries statewide if they are deemed “inappropriate for the age or maturity levels” of students.

Tennessee was also among the first states to enact a law intended to restrict classroom discussions about the legacy of slavery, racism, and white privilege. 

“What’s driving the whole debate is a push to get rid of books about race, gender, and sex,” said JC Bowman, executive director of the Professional Educators of Tennessee. 

But fourth-grade teacher Karolyn Marino worries that, based on how educators are responding to the state’s definition of a school library, classic books will get pushed out of classrooms.

“Somehow, this law went down a rabbit hole that’s gone too far,” said Marino, who teaches in Williamson County, south of Nashville, and also serves on the board of the Professional Educators of Tennessee. 

“It’s not that the ‘Adventures of Huckleberry Finn’ will end up in a trash can; it’s that Huck Finn will end up somewhere in a box,” she said.

Marino’s district, Williamson County Schools, is still determining how to comply with the law and new guidance, as are most school systems across Tennessee.

“Metro Nashville Public Schools was already in compliance with the new law based on the classic definition of a school library,” said spokesman Sean Braisted, noting that district leaders are developing a plan to address the broader interpretation.

“We will seek to do so in such a way that minimizes any burden placed on teachers who are rightfully focused on providing the academic instruction and support to their students,” he added.

That could mean giving teachers a tool to create a listing of their classroom collections without typing it out by hand. With the right resource, they could just scan a barcode on each book to automatically fill in the title, author, and description. 

But such tools don’t come cheap. Kimery, who coordinates library services for Nashville schools, priced one system at $64,000 a year.

Others, like Williamson County’s Marino, say the state should pay teachers a stipend for any additional work required under the law.

The legislature’s fiscal analyst didn’t identify such potential costs when studying the governor’s proposal. The bill’s fiscal note said schools and districts “will be able to comply with the proposed legislation using existing resources during the normal course of business; therefore, any fiscal impact to state or local government is estimated to be not significant.”

In Memphis, White is ready to pack up her books if her district doesn’t come up with a workable plan for complying with the law. But for now, she is using them every day to help her students with reading, which is considered the foundation for learning and success in all subject areas.

“Our goal is to create lifelong readers,” White said, “but you can’t do that without books.”

Marta W. Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Busted Bootstraps

Photo: Kilmer media | Dreamstime.com

And then Jesus drug tested everyone using taxpayer money before deciding if the lazy, freeloading masses were worthy enough to receive fish and bread.

“I can’t feed these people,” said GOP Jesus, an internet meme. “It will destroy their incentive to better themselves.”

Once their urine tested clean, Jesus reminded them that this was temporary assistance and warned against becoming dependent on his handouts. He went on to explain that tax revenues were actually for corporate subsidies and funding war. — Reddit meme, 2021

Tennessee Capitol Building as viewed from Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park in Downtown Nashville (Photo: Brandon Hooper)

Tennessee Republicans believe that “giveaway money” (more commonly called unemployment benefits) is funding a “lifestyle alternative,” keeping many “from pulling up their bootstraps and achieving the American dream,” and that 300,000 Tennesseans should not have healthcare.

This year, GOP lawmakers cut the time for state unemployment benefits in half. They cut the time Tennesseans could get unemployment benefits from the federal government by two months. They also said no (again) to $1.4 billion that would have expanded TennCare, Tennessee’s Medicaid program.

As for the free money from the federal government, Elena Delavega, the poverty expert from the University of Memphis, said she’s wondered why lawmakers would not take it, and she then came to a disturbing conclusion.

“Sometimes — and I don’t want to think so — it seems like the purpose is to, in fact, hurt people,” said Delavega.

Cutting unemployment benefits and failing again to expand TennCare were two major moves that affected poor people across Tennessee, one of the 10 poorest states in the country. Insiders would add to that list other moves affecting mass incarceration, hikes on loan fees, education spending, “right to work” labor status, PAC donation limits, and more.

To outsiders, it may seem like the GOP supermajority that has run Nashville for the last 10 years has professionally crafted an anti-poor, pro-business playbook, locked arms, and expertly executed dozens of moves to lock the state deeply in conservative economic theory.

But it looks more coordinated than it is, according to one insider who said Republicans in the Capitol were just not that put together. The source organized the state GOP in three groups: a majority who treat the job like a “social hour or retirement home” and go along with whatever their majority leaders command, another group comprised of “true believers” — some of whom believe their “own bullshit,” and a final group that carries out the bidding of corporate special interests, chambers of commerce, and the institutional donor class.

“Business essentially runs the Capitol up here with the exception of the crazies in the gun lobby and the anti-LGBTQ community,” the source said.

It’s no secret that Republicans hate government handouts. Remember Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queens”? Well, maybe they just hate some handouts, it seems. They crow about taking $1 billion in CARES Act funding to shield business owners from unemployment insurance hikes, and they use millions of dollars in federal handouts for an ongoing series of multi-million-dollar, no-bid contracts related to COVID-19. Tennessee Lookout editor Holly McCall found that more than a dozen Tennessee GOP lawmakers took federal handouts to bail out their businesses during the pandemic.

Still, government handouts are bad for poor people and the working class, they seem to say. On May 12th, for example, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee tweeted, “Work is good for the soul, good for families, and good for Tennessee. We shouldn’t be incentivizing people not to do it.”

When asked why it seemed GOP lawmakers targeted poor people, Eric Atkins with the Tennessee Poor People’s Campaign responded with a question of his own.

“Well, how many lawmakers in Nashville do you think we can classify as poor?” Atkins asked.

Governor Bill Lee (Photo: tn.gov)

Kicking the TennCare Can

If he wanted to, Governor Lee could Thanos-snap his fingers and expand TennCare, flowing $1.4 billion into the state. Lawmakers here have possessed the tools to do this since 2014, even during the tenure of the Trump adminstration. They have not.

Then-Governor Bill Haslam said no to even the thought of it in 2013. Back then, he was arguing with federal officials for his “Tennessee Plan,” a nontraditional, private schema for broader healthcare access. For weeks, Haslam had been dogged with questions on whether he would take the promised $1 billion (at the time) available under the Affordable Care Act to expand TennCare rolls. “Governor Bill Haslam finally had something to say on the issue Wednesday, and it was a very hedged no,” the Memphis Flyer’s politics editor Jackson Baker wrote at the time.

There was a problem with the money then, and it still exists today: the word “Obama.”

“What the governor would like to do, to appease his base, is have access to the Obamacare dollars without subscribing to the Obamacare plan,” state Representative G. A. Hardaway (D-Memphis) told Baker in 2013.

Republicans at the time said the Affordable Care Act was shoved down their throats by a Democratic majority, led by then-President Barack Obama. Right-wing talk show hosts and keyboard warriors vilified Obama, called his healthcare solution “socialist,” and dubbed it “Obamacare.” It’s been a lightning rod Tennessee GOP members still won’t touch.

When asked about years of failure to expand Medicaid here, state Senator Raumesh Akbari (D-Memphis) signaled exasperation and irritation with a “wooooooooo” that indicated the subject was still a hot button. She remembered her days in the House, hearing each day of how much money Tennessee was giving to other states by not expanding Medicaid, but other members at the time said, “We don’t want to be tied to Obama. This is Obamacare.”

She describes the ongoing unwillingness to expand it as a “politics-over-policy situation.” For it, 964 Tennesseans died from 2014 to 2017, according to the latest data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a left-leaning Washington think tank. Many say the decision has also expedited the closure of 13 rural hospitals, the second-most closures in the country behind Texas, according to Becker’s Hospital Review.

“We just went through the worst health crisis in 100 years, and you had people in rural communities who had to be airlifted to Vanderbilt and to parts of Memphis just so they could seek care,” Akbari said. “A lot of our complications from COVID come from chronic diseases that certainly could have been managed better through actual, preventative healthcare.

“And the fact that the federal government is giving us an added financial incentive to expand Medicaid and we don’t, to me, it’s criminal.”

Expanding Medicaid would have a bigger economic hit than Amazon moving to Tennessee, said Michele Johnson, executive director of the Tennessee Justice Center. Pushing $1.4 billion into the state’s economy that would ripple out to businesses and people across the state. It would also save Tennessee taxpayers $900 million over two years. But those facts pale to another.

“We know that people are living shorter lives,” Johnson said. “They’re dying of preventable causes, and they’re suffering in ways that they would not be suffering if they were in most any other state in the nation.”

Lt. Governor Randy McNally (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The door cracked on TennCare expansion earlier this year, but just a tad before it was slammed shut again. High-ranking Republicans, including Lieutenant Governor Randy McNally, said they just wanted to peek at the sweetened pot for Medicaid expansion left by President Joe Biden. It didn’t happen here. Nor did it happen in Alabama or Wyoming, where conservative lawmakers reviewed similar deals for expansion.

Conservatives across the country are softening on expansion, according to a story by The Pew Charitable Trusts. The story said it wasn’t quite a “conservative bandwagon but momentum is certainly moving one direction.” Many states — including red states — are watching the benefits seen with expansion in other states.

Jesse Cross-Call, a senior health policy analyst with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told Pew that “there’s been a ton of evidence showing large gains in healthcare coverage, while helping states economically and keeping rural hospitals open. And it hasn’t hurt state budgets. It remains a really good deal for states to cover hundreds of thousands of people.”

While the door shut on traditional Medicaid expansion, Republicans were catcalling a new, experimental healthcare plan from Governor Lee, approved in the waning days of the Trump administration. That plan, Lee says, would give Tennessee more control of healthcare spending, save $1 billion annually, and, somehow, not change eligibility, meaning the folks who can get TennCare today could get it under his new plan.

In a January tweet, Lee said Tennessee will “lead the nation with our innovative solution to Medicaid,” and “this new flexibility under the block grant model allows us to improve the health of Tennesseans and our communities.” The first reply to his tweet was from @NashvilleChick who wrote, “murderer.”

“Real Ebenezer Scrooge Stuff”

Republicans here never out and out called anyone “lazy.” But though they never used the “l” word in committee meetings or on the floors of their respective houses, they came close, and it was plain they thought it.

In numerous anecdotes, they’d get heated — angry — as they recounted stories of their business buddies who just could not find anyone to hire for their restaurants. One Knoxville House member got so hot, he said he wished Amazon wouldn’t bring any more jobs there; there was no one to work, he huffed into the microphone. The GOP members’ reason, according to their gut and not one single piece of data, was that people were getting government checks and staying on the couch.

State Representative Kevin Vaughan (R-Collierville), sponsor of legislation cutting state benefits, said when people “on the interweb” and “on the Twitter” talk about this issue, “they get pretty passionate.”

“The origins of this bill is financial mathematics on how to make sure that a trust fund is available to the citizens of Tennessee when they need it,” Vaughan began, giving the mechanical, high-minded explanation of the bill that had become his standard rhetoric as he shepherded it through the committee system. But on the House floor for the final vote that day, he didn’t stop himself there. “But we have seen our country in the last six months devolve into a situation where people are counting on and relying on the checks from the government, instead of pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and achieving the American dream.”

Vaughan’s bill, co-sponsored by state Senator Jon Lundberg (R-Bristol), cut the amount of time Tennesseans could get state unemployment from 26 weeks (just over six months) to as low as 12 weeks, the lowest in the country. In his nasally Michigander drawl, Lundberg repeated time and again that “the 10-state average of [unemployment benefits in] Southern states is 11.5 weeks. Tennessee is the highest of those states.”

The Republican supermajority, it seemed, wanted to line up at the bottom when it came to how much help they gave to citizens in need. Lundberg’s only regret, he said, was that the new structure could not go into effect any faster than in 2023.

“This is some real Ebenezer Scrooge stuff,” argued state Senator Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville) from the Senate floor last month. “There is no economic theory that suggests that cutting off benefits actually pushes people to work. Actually, I would say the last 12 months disproves that. You haven’t had a lot of Tennesseeans who’ve just stayed at home over the last 12 months; they’ve gone back and gotten jobs.”

Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell said last month the bottlenecks in the labor markets could be because of lingering COVID concerns, the inability to find childcare, and more. But he said it “was not clear” that they were caused directly by unemployment checks. But that word from the Fed chair didn’t stop Tennessee Republicans from laying the blame right at the feet of the unemployed.

“To tell you the truth, I’m not sure what world my colleagues from the other caucus are living in,” said state Senator Mike Bell (R-Riceville) on Democrats’ arguments against the cuts. “You go around any county in this state right now, and you see ‘Help Wanted’ signs everywhere. … The jobs are out there, and it’s time we quit incentivizing people staying home.”

A Capitol insider said the benefits cuts were sold by Republicans through anecdotes, not data, and all of them saying one thing: Democrat checks are making folks not want to work anymore.

For instance, Bell pointed to the “guy who is building my cabinets right now,” who is now having to build his own cabinets “because he can’t find anybody to show up for work.” State Representative Eddie Mannis (R-Knoxville) said the workforce in Knoxville was so sorry he complained of 750 new Amazon jobs there, saying, “I’m, like, don’t bring any more jobs or companies here. We don’t have the workforce to fill the jobs we have.” State Representative Pat Marsh (R-Shelbyville) complained he had 100 idle trucks with no one to drive them.

“When you get a mailbox check every week, human nature is you’re sitting at home, and some of those people need to go back to work,” Marsh said. “We have to cut out this giveaway money and get our people back to work.”

State Representative John Ray Clemmons (D-Nashville) attempted to dispel some of what he called this “false narrative” with facts. The max state payout is $275 per week, he explained, or $6.88 per hour, or $1,100 per month, or $13,200 per year. Add $300 in the current federal unemployment benefit, and the number rises to $27,600, just slightly above the federal poverty limit for a family of four, he said.

“The unemployment system is in place for a reason,” Clemmons said, “so don’t use the false narrative that people want to make less than the minimum wage as an excuse for them not filling jobs. Workforce issues in this state have been an ongoing problem.”

It’s clear Governor Lee believes the narrative, though. In an executive action last month, he opted Tennesseans out of the $300 in additional federal unemployment benefits. The day after, he hit send on that tweet about how “work is good for the soul, good for families, and good for Tennessee. We shouldn’t be incentivizing people not to do it.”

“Luxury of Ideology”

The debate on Medicaid expansion is ongoing in 12 states. The debate on unemployment checks and workforce shortages is national as evidenced by the talking-heads’ rhetoric last week following the slightly disappointing May jobs report.

But people here need help now, said Johnson from the Tennessee Justice Center, and they don’t have the luxury of ideology. When asked if it seemed Republicans here actively schemed against poor people, she said it was more a “failure to understand regular Tennesseans.”

“Are our elected officials sitting around trying to figure out how to torture poor people? I don’t think so,” Johnson said. “But I think it’s a lack of accountability and curiosity [of everyday citizens] that is, frankly, very deadly for the people of the state. And I think we’ll be paying for it for generations.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Tennessee Democrat and Republican Parties Both Facing Change

CREDIT: Nancy Chase

Even as the nation’s two major political parties, on the eve of their quadrennial confrontation, each struggle on a national scale with the task of redefinition, so do the same two parties in Tennessee.

In the nation at large, Democrats are still (technically) in the act of choosing between two would-be exemplars — one, Hillary Clinton, a seasoned and well-known figure touting the values of diversity and equal opportunity; the other, Bernie Sanders, a self-defined Democratic socialist focusing on the need for a “political revolution” to moderate the economic inequalities of a system rigged to benefit the wealthy.

Here and there, the differences between those two candidates (who, it should be said, have much in common) is seen clearly. In that sense, the Democrats are lucky. The Republicans have, in the course of primary races that were both numerous and confusing, found their choice ready-made — in Donald J. Trump, a wildly successful Manhattan real estate billionaire and a man whose views and attitudes toward most policy matters are, for better or for worse, vague and ever-fluctuating, clearly subordinate to the dictates of an undeniably unique personality.

The two state parties have, both within the last week, just concluded their annual banquets in Tennessee, events which are meant to define them to their respective constituencies. Paradoxically, each of the Tennessee parties veered in a rhetorical direction counter to that of the national parties they represent.

The Democrats held their annual Jackson Day Dinner in Nashville, Saturday before last, and their keynoter, the well-known consultant James Carville, made no mystery about who was likely to emerge from the ongoing Clinton-Sanders contest.

Nancy Chase

Carville at Nashville

Recounting for the party faithful at the state capital’s impressive new Music City Center a public encounter he had just had with a GOP opposite number of sorts, Karl Rove, Carville related how he teased Rove with the statement, “I believe the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party has the experience, the temperament, and the judgment to be president of the United States from Day One” (clearly a description of former First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State Clinton) and followed that up with a challenge: “Karl, tell us about the Republican nominee.” In Carville’s telling, anyhow, Rove could not respond in kind, but merely sputtered out the familiar attack phrases which Republicans habitually aim at candidate Clinton — FBI investigation, emails, Benghazi, etc.

The Republicans had gotten themselves “stuck” with Trump, a political anomaly, as a direct consequence of their having misled their basic constituency for a generation, Carville said, mentioning such notions as that President Obama was born in Kenya, that the planet Earth dated back only 5,000 years, that there was no such thing as global warming, that there had been weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that giving millionaires tax cuts would balance the budget.

“When people rise up and start believing all this nuttiness, why are you surprised? Let them believe whatever they want to. And anything Trump says, they believe it because they’ve been conditioned to believe it.”

Carville proclaimed that “our diversity is our strength.” He expressed pride that “my party nominated the first African-American candidate for president and will nominate the first woman.” He followed that with another dig at the GOP: “And no, you don’t get credit for Sarah Palin. Sorry.”

Carville’s de facto celebration of Clinton, his party’s still unchosen but likely nominee, contrasted with the Tennessee Republicans’ mum’s-the-word approach, at their annual Statesman’s Dinner at the selfsame Music City Center, this past Friday, toward Trump, a candidate whose nomination is virtually signed, sealed, and delivered already.  

Tellingly, in view of Carville’s apotheosis of Clinton, the Republicans’ choice of a keynoter was another woman, Governor Nikki Haley of South Carolina, an unmistakably conservative office-holder but one who, in her own way, as the daughter of Indian immigrants, also stands for diversity, and who, in the past year, has made headlines by a) removing the Confederate flag from its former place of honor at her state Capitol building, and b) refusing, so far, to endorse Trump.

And, though he was the elephant in that room as in the nation’s media, Trump was roundly ignored in the evening’s rhetoric. The late U.S. Senator Fred Thompson was honored with due praise, as were the two living GOP Senators, Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, as was Governor Bill Haslam and the retiring Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey, and as were numerous exemplars of the party’s legislative super-majority and command of the state’s congressional delegation.

Though he surely had support here and there in the room, Trump remained at best an X factor, an unknown on the other side of whom, chronologically, were such future-tense bench hopes as Haley.

Though she did not refer to the fact, keynoter Haley was the avowed target, outside the arena, of protesters, garbed in Confederate gray and waving rebel battle flags to demonstrate their outrage at her apostasy. The Republican brass inside surely had to be pleased by this semiotic hint that — on this matter, anyhow — they were on the right side of history.

Whatever its fate in the nation at large (“We’re looking at a 162-year-old political party literally cracking up right in front of us,” Carville said), the GOP seems destined to remain the ruling force in Tennessee for some time to come, though the Democrats had scored a coup of sorts by giving one of their major honors, the Anne Dallas Dudley Political Courage Award, to a couple who had distinguished themselves by fighting hard on behalf of Insure Tennessee, a Medicaid expansion plan proposed by Republican Governor Haslam but so far rejected by his party mates in the General Assembly.

For all their different directions — the Tennessee GOP still hewing to its historic distrust of social programs and ameliorist government in general, their Democratic counterparts continuing to see themselves as tribunes of the powerless — there are points of contact in the political middle. If the GOP members of the Tennessee General Assembly should, post-presidential-election, see fit finally to humor Haslam on the health-care matter, it will be through the medium of a task force appointed by Republican House Speaker Beth Harwell, whose power moves will doubtless fill some of the vacuum left by Ramsey’s departure.

Harwell, who is rumored to have gubernatorial ambitions, may, in fact, become the face of the Tennessee Republican Party in much the way that Tennessee Democratic Party chair Mary Mancini (whose GOP opposite number is Ryan Haynes, a male genotype) has become that of her party.

The Tennessee GOP boasts a fair number of women in office, although, truth is, it is miles behind the Tennessee Democratic Party in forms of diversity having to do with race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Still, there is a political middle, and, with any luck at all, it may get filled up at some point in the respective reconstructions just now beginning to occur in the two major political parties. 

There are signs of changes in both, locally as well as nationally. The GOP’s dominant business-minded faction is under challenge from the very uprooted populists it has seduced away from the Democrats, while the Clinton/Sanders yin-yang will play out for years — a difficult wrangle but, in the end, a necessary one.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Fallout From GOP Falling-Out

Fallout continues from the bitterness that flared up within Republican ranks at the close of the 2013 legislative session on Friday, April 19th, the date pre-ordained by Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey (R-Blountville), speaker of the state Senate and, up until quite recently, the virtually unchallenged spokesperson for the Republican legislative supermajority.

As was chronicled in the Flyer two weeks ago, GOP members of the state House of Representatives vented their anger at domination by the Senate (read: Ramsey) in the session’s last week and made a point of soundly rejecting a judicial redistricting measure that had been personally shaped by Ramsey and was greatly prized by the Senate speaker.

Ramsey retaliated by making sure that a bill to strengthen the state board of education’s control of charter-school authorizations, one tailored by House speaker Beth Harwell (R-Nashville) to counter a local Davidson County situation, was kept from a vote in the Senate.

Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey

The speakers made no effort to hide their exasperation with each other and with the actions of the other chamber, and the usual end-of-session press conference with Governor Bill Haslam was scrapped, replaced by a hastily thrown-together affair in which Haslam met reporters in the company of the House and Senate majority leaders.

This past week, another shoe dropped in the GOP’s intramural feud. The Tennessee Republican Caucus, a fund-raising body that has traditionally raised money and shared it equally with GOP members of the House and Senate, has been dissolved, apparently at Ramsey’s initiative.

Henceforth, the Republican caucuses of the two chambers will be responsible for their own fund-raising. For his part, Ramsey made it known that, with one exception, he will no longer personally assist House Republicans in their independent fund-raising efforts. (The exception is Representative Timothy Hill, who hails from Ramsey’s home town of Blountville.)

Each of the two speakers has also lunched privately with Haslam since the session’s close, but neither has met with the other speaker.

The legislature’s Democrats — a minority of seven in the 33-member Senate and 28 in the 99-member House — are publicly enjoying (and encouraging) the spectacle of Republican falling-out but privately are aware that the schism is of little practical benefit to Democrats, whose underdog status is more or less guaranteed for at least a decade by the redistricting which occurred under Republican auspices after the census of 2010.

The chief practical effect of the GOP schism is to end the brief era — from 2007, when Ramsey ousted Democrat John Wilder from his longtime perch as Senate speaker, to the stormy end of the 2013 session — when Ramsey’s word was law on Capitol Hill, almost literally.

In case after case in recent years, Ramsey — and the Senate — prevailed over the wishes of Haslam and Harwell, most notably in 2011, when Ramsey insisted on attaching the abolition of collective bargaining to the governor’s education-reform package.

A sign of the change to come may have occurred this year when Haslam yanked his pilot bill creating a moderate voucher system for public schools rather than permit state senators Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) and Dolores Gresham (R-Somerville) to expand the bill’s reach.

• Memphians are prominent in the membership of a legislative delegation headed this month to Turkey and Azerbaijan, and the trip, reports the Tennessee Journal, is “financed by groups tied to a Muslim leader who runs a network of charter schools in the United States.” The Journal cites Nashville’s WVTF-Channel 5 as the identifying source.

The sponsoring groups are the Turkish American Chamber of Commerce of the Southeast and the Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians. Both allegedly are tied to Fethullah Gulen, who became controversial two years ago when former Memphis mayor Willie Herenton cited Gulen’s charter-school network as a possible tie-in with Herenton’s own proposed charter-school network. The former mayor has since recast his proposed charter-school framework without reference to Gulen’s network.

Memphians making the trip are state senator Kelsey, representatives Mark White, Antonio Parkinson, Joe Towns, Johnnie Turner and state safety commissioner Bill Gibbons.

• As noted last week in both this space and the Flyer editorial, Maxine Smith passed from the mortal realm into the immortality that history confers on those adjudged to have rendered significant service.

Smith was properly appreciated by a celebration of her life at the Jesse H. Turner St. Freedom House on Vance Avenue on Friday and by a memorial service and all-day visitation at Metropolitan Baptist Church on Walker Avenue on Saturday.

The service at Metropolitan was presided over jointly by the Rev. Billy Kyles, a civil rights icon in his own right, and by the Rev. Rosalyn Nichols of Freedom’s Chapel Christian Church, Smith’s own, where a smaller, private service was held for her on Friday night.

Smith was known to enjoy a good laugh, and the service at Metropolitan, where humorous anecdotes and reminiscences were encouraged and abounded, reflected that fact. At one point, industrialist/philanthropist Pitt Hyde concluded a heartfelt tribute with the notion that Smith’s arrival at the Pearly Gates would be certified by St. Peter as proof of Martin Luther King’s celebrated statement regarding the content of one’s character outweighing the color of one’s skin.

Hyde slipped somewhat in the pronunciation of “skin,” making the phrase sound like “the color of one’s sin.” The audience in the packed church roared its appreciation of the inadvertent double entendre. As one attendee said later, “Maxine would have loved that.” Ninth District congressman Steve Cohen, who followed at the dais, looked back at the seated Hyde with a mischievous smile, and said, “Pitt, I promise you, I won’t tweet that.”

Hyde, Cohen, and others who offered recollections about Smith teared up, as well, but the sorrow was leavened with laughter. Call it the joy of remembrance.

• Even as Smith was being extolled and remembered, another death of some consequence occurred late last week — that of Jerry Cobb. The unofficial leader of what amounted to a permanent dissenting minority in the Shelby County Republican Party, Cobb was well-known as a gadfly’s gadfly — a term he came to embrace once he was made aware of its connection with Socrates, a previous disturber of the peace.

Cobb, a general contractor who continually sought maximum transparency in the bidding for public construction projects, was sometimes to the right and sometimes to the left of his party’s mainstream. He was rarely in its center, inasmuch as he saw his main mission as being that of challenging the status quo. Survived by his wife Edna, who sustained him in life, he was well liked, even by his adversaries.

• A resolution which ostensibly would have put the Shelby County Commission on record as supporting the Second Amendment was rejected on Monday by the commission, a majority of whose voting members saw it as going much further than its stated purpose.

Speaking for the majority, Commissioners Walter Bailey and Steve Mulroy both argued that the resolution contained clauses suggesting that county government could and should “nullify” federal statutes and urging local law enforcement officials to take the lead in doing just that.

The resolution’s sponsor, Commissioner Terry Roland of Millington, stunned the audience at one point by saying, “If I come to Memphis, Tennessee, I’m packing heat. So anybody out there listening, if you want to try something, it’s on you, but I’m packing heat.”

Speaking for the resolution, Commissioners Heidi Shafer and Wyatt Bunker said its chief purpose was to encourage support for the Second Amendment and to make citizens aware of their rights, not to challenge the federal government. Various amendments to soften the language of the resolution were considered but rejected. The resolution was defeated by a vote of five for and six against, with one abstention.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Political Peace, Not War

This month’s election had bittersweet results for Tennessee’s Democrats. You were happy that President Obama was reelected and happy that the U.S. Senate remained under Democratic control, but in our home state, we were left to deal with a different kettle of fish.

On the plus side, the state Democratic caucus has its choice of phone booths and closets in which to hold meetings. The bad news is that there would be room left over for the brooms and cleaning supplies. Despite national triumphs for Democrats, in Tennessee, the Republicans are ascendant, enjoying a level of legislative and executive authority that would make a monarch blush.

The real good news is that state Democrats, for the first time in a long time, are free to lead. As Janis Joplin famously sang, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” Democrats are free from worries about holding onto majorities and leadership positions and free of worry about what redistricting will look like.

In many ways, we are free of decision-making of any kind. After all, the Democrats don’t even have to show up for the Republicans to conduct the state’s business. But in a world where nothing you do matters, the only thing that matters is what you choose to do, and just because we don’t have power doesn’t mean we don’t still have responsibility. This responsibility is far more than being the loyal opposition. We Democrats must do more than brandish partisan language and perpetuate the politics-as-team-sport analogy that is becoming a serious drag on our democracy.

The truth about our politics is that neither party has a monopoly on good ideas, patriotism, or decency. Yes, we live in a new world, where people retreat to their separate corners and use the internet and social media to build their own personal echo chamber, but every new world becomes old at some point.

Through our recent losses, Tennessee Democrats have won an opportunity to begin leading down the road away from the straw-men mythologies that we in both parties have built up around each other. If the 2012 election proved anything, it’s that the mass of people who don’t watch cable news channels and who don’t immediately memorize the talking points of the various parties wants our leaders to work together. Being in a super-minority presents the opportunity to constantly offer compromise.

Now, I realize that the true believers will see this as appeasement talk, that the blogosphere and the media want the never-ending battle to continue, but it doesn’t have to be that way, and that is not the path back to a more balanced legislature.

Democrats still have a valuable voice in the governance of our state, but it will be wholly wasted if we use it to shout at the Republicans. Honey catches more flies than vinegar. Internet hyperbole and cable talking heads do nothing to build a better Tennessee. Democrats are not going to win back seats by pointing out what Republicans do wrong and what we don’t like about them.

Instead, the path back to power is by getting things done, and the only way to get things done is by working with the Republicans. Yes, there will still be those times when we will not see eye to eye, when a confrontation must be had, but just maybe we can lead the way to a time when disagreements over ideas will not mean demonization of those with whom we have disagreed.

Governor Haslam currently enjoys widespread bipartisan support across the state. We should reach out to the governor and any other Republican we can work with to find the areas where we agree — on the budget, on education reform. Republicans on a national level are forced into doing some soul searching; Democrats in this state must do the same.  

No amount of money, no amount of organization, and no amount of internet chatter is going to change the balance if we aren’t working to improve the state. And that requires cooperation, not conflict. It won’t make for good headlines, it won’t fire up a particular base for an individual candidate, but it will leave an opening. The media thrives on conflict. The Republican majority is so big now that the only way it can pick on someone its own size is by fighting itself. Democrats have other things to do than to get in the way of that coming conflict.

Shea Flinn, a Democrat, is a member of the Memphis City Council.