Tag: Tom Leatherwood

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Which County: Shelby or Fayette?

Lee and Amber Mills’ residence on Shane Hollow Drive in Arlington (Photo: Jackson Baker)

Back in 2015 Tom Leatherwood, as Shelby County register, signed and thereby authenticated the deed of Lee and Amber Mills for a brand-new house at the Shelby County address of 12903 Shane Hollow Drive in Arlington.

In 2022, Lee Mills, an airline pilot and a former chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party, is hoping to unseat Leatherwood in a race for the District 99 state House of Representatives seat.

It would be Mills’ third effort to defeat Leatherwood for the seat, beginning with a decision in 2018 by the county GOP steering committee to designate Leatherwood as the party nominee rather than Mills after the death of the long-term holder of the seat, Ron Lollar. Mills then made an unsuccessful run against the then-incumbent Leatherwood in the 2020 Republican primary.

County line map showing the Mills’ residence in Fayette County (Photo: Courtesy Lee Mills)

But the third time may not, even potentially, be the charm for Mills if a ruling by the state election coordinator, Mark Goins, is sustained in the courts. In a letter to Mills on April 18th, Goins informed Mills that his residence was in Fayette County, not Shelby, and quoted from Article II, Section 9 of the state constitution: “No person shall be a Representative unless he shall be a citizen of the United States, of the age of twenty-one years, and shall have been a citizen of this state for three years, and a resident in the county he represents one year, immediately preceding the election.” (Note: Italics added for emphasis.)

The determination, said Goins, had been made by Doug Himes, an attorney who had worked on the 2020 House redistricting legislation, using census guidelines. And Goins included with the letter a map clearly showing the Mills residence and most of the subdivision that contains it to be in Fayette County.

Lee Mills protests that he and his wife have paid county property taxes on the Shane Hollow dwelling since 2015 and that the premise of a Shelby County address has been accepted as valid in several other civil transactions. He cites Tennessee Code Annotated 5-2-116, a provision of which declares that in “circumstances where a dispute arises concerning the location of a county line for purposes other than property taxation … the state board of equalization shall not have the authority to locate a county line so that property that has been assessed for property taxation purposes in one (1) county for five (5) years or more is located in a different county.”

The Shelby County Election Commission has asked for a declaratory judgment on the matter, which is scheduled for resolution in Chancery Court and has been assigned to Chancellor Jim Kyle. Lee Mills vows that an adverse decision will be appealed.

Meanwhile, a related circumstance is that of Mills’ wife Amber Mills, who has represented District 1 on the Shelby Commission since her election in 2018 and has been certified as a candidate for re-election by the Election Commission. Amber Mills was the only candidate listed on the Republican primary ballot this week.

At this writing, no legal challenge has been made to the validity of Commissioner Mills’ presence on the ballot, and, if she is subsequently certified by the Election Commission as the winner of this week’s primary, that fact will undoubtedly loom large in legal proceedings involving her husband’s case.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Cancel Culture and Other Myths

Photo: Richard Van Der Spuy | Dreamstime.com

That does it. Let it be known, with the Memphis Flyer’s readership as my witness, that the 64th annual Grammy Awards officially obliterated the last ounce of patience I had for any argument about so-called cancel culture.

No, I’m not upset that Cedric Burnside’s I Be Trying won Best Traditional Blues Album — last year, the Flyer listed it as one of our top 10 albums of the year, and I’m always pleased when this publication’s record of excellent taste is affirmed.

Rather, I’m totally unsurprised but equally disgusted that comedian and serial masturbator Louis C.K.’s album Sincerely Louis C.K. won the Grammy for Best Comedy Album. A headline from The Hollywood Reporter really sums it up: “Louis C.K. Wins Grammy for First Special Since Sexual Misconduct Allegations.” For those who don’t know or don’t remember, in 2017 five women accused C.K. of sexual misconduct, including masturbating in front of them. The comedian eventually admitted that “These Stories Are True.”

But I don’t want to get off track. It’s not so much that C.K. won a Grammy that upsets me, though I can’t say I’m wild about that development. Rather, it’s that a very vocal contingent of the population will undoubtedly continue to crow about cancel culture despite clear indications that it’s nonexistent.

“What about former Mandalorian actor Gina Carano?” some devil’s advocates might ask. To which I would promptly respond, “Oh, you mean the woman who claimed that being a Republican — a choice one makes — is akin to being a Jewish person forcibly relocated, tortured, or exterminated during the Holocaust? Yeah, pretty tone-deaf and egregious thing to say, right? She’s the star of the forthcoming Western film Terror on the Prairie.”

Oh, and she’ll be at Fan Expo in Dallas in June. She’s still getting work, still collecting checks, and I would be flabbergasted if she doesn’t publish a ghost-written book about the evils of liberalism soon. Carano vs. Cancel Culture: My Stand Against the Elites or something like that.

Look, cancel culture is not real. It’s made up, a bogeyman to drum up right-wing outrage and pearl-clutching fear in Fox News viewers. “You can’t say anything these days. You can’t even publicly denigrate another person for their culture. I ask you, what is the world coming to?”

But why invent a completely cuckoo culture war? It’s the easiest way to get people to vote against their own self-interests.

I’ve made a point to shy away from fuming about hypocrisy — the hypocrisy is the point, it seems. It’s an expression of power, of tribal solidarity. But something about this whole cancel culture debate has really ruffled my feathers. Consider how big a fuss is made, nationally and locally, about protecting children. From critical race theory, from CBD and Delta 8, from predators, from confusion about why little Sarah’s got two mommies. And yet Tennessee state Rep. Tom Leatherwood’s HB 233, which sets up a common-law marriage between “one man” and “one woman,” has no minimum age limit. The Sexual Assault Center of Middle Tennessee said this in a statement: “The Sexual Assault Center does not believe the age of consent should be any younger than it already is. It makes children more vulnerable to coercion and manipulation from predators, sexual and other.” Does that sound like a bill presented by people overly concerned with protecting children?

We have got to get beyond these cancel culture/culture war concerns. There are real, dangerous threats facing us. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just this week released a report that it’s “now or never” if we want to limit global warming. Limit. Not stop, but limit. We are wasting time, energy, and money on spurious arguments when we should be working to end climate change, to end the current pandemic and prepare for the next one, to combat the housing crisis, to focus on any number of other concerns that actually limit many people’s quality of life.

If you agree, I suggest that you do as I will, and shut down any cancel culture talk with one little phrase. I think it will be as useful as “State’s rights to do what?” — the question I use to nip discussions about the “true” cause of the Civil War in the bud.

The next time someone tries to warn me about cancel culture, I’m just going to say, “Louis C.K. won a Grammy for his first special since his sexual misconduct allegations.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

On the Docket: Bills Before the General Assembly Could Alter the Local Status Quo

CREDIT: TN State Senator Brian Kelsey

A persistent issue in Tennessee government is that of whether state law should trump the preferences of local jurisdictions. Two tests of the proposition are now before the General Assembly. One concerns Senate Bill 29 by state Senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown). Passed last week by the Senate and pending in House committee, the bill would strike down local residence requirements for first responders.

Another measure, House Bill 1280, by state Representative Tom Leatherwood (R-Arlington), would outlaw partisan primaries for judicial or local political offices in counties containing populations greater than 500,000 (Shelby County and Davidson County). This bill is now before the Senate State Local Government Committee and the House Elections and Campaign Finance Committee. In a preliminary committee vote, the Shelby County Commission voted 7-2 last week on a resolution to oppose the Leatherwood bill.

Joining other bar associations statewide, the Memphis Bar Association issued a statement on Friday “strongly condemning” a Republican-backed Tennessee House resolution that would initiate a process to remove Nashville Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle from office. House Resolution 23 (HR 23), said the MBA, “is as undemocratic as it is dangerous and flatly forbidden by the separation of powers principles enshrined in the Tennessee Constitution.”

The resolution, sponsored by state Representative Tim Rudd (R-Murfreesboro), has numerous GOP signers in the state House, and at least one Republican state Senator, Frank Nicely of Strawberry Plains, has indicated he will sponsor an equivalent resolution in his chamber.

TN State Senator Brian Kelsey

Ruling on a suit last year by Up the Vote 901, a Memphis group, and the state ACLU, Lyle ordered state absentee voting restrictions relaxed to allow universal mail-in voting in view of the ongoing pandemic. The state appealed, and her order was later modified somewhat by the state Supreme Court, but it resulted in the acknowledgment of COVID-19 as a factor weighing in favor of an absentee-voting application.

• It is hard to believe that I won’t get to see Drew Daniel again. Although he had become 40-something and thereby ineligible to be a member of the Young Republicans, he was given permanent status as “honorary elder” by that local group even as he rose in estimation among his party’s seniors, winning their Statesman Award in 2019 for the 9th Congressional District.

Though he was a legacy Republican from an established GOP family, he was an almost archetypal version of the youthful political activist — the eternal volunteer and doorbell-ringer — idealistic, dedicated, in for the outreach as well as the fellowship. He was somehow untarnished by the seamier, cynical side of politics and utterly uninvolved with anything slashing or over-ideological.

Drew died over the weekend, and this came as a total surprise to many who knew him. He apparently suffered from diabetes, a disease that, it would seem, figured in his demise. Granted, he was physically frail in appearance, though appearances could be deceiving. He was a runner and was used to running 10 miles a day. As recently as the big snow, he kept to that pace while the rest of us were shivering in our blankets. I always enjoyed seeing Drew on my political rounds. He was the sincerest and best kind of citizen, and as likable as anybody I’ve ever known. I don’t know how many friendships he had across party lines, but he deserved to have many.

• Former Memphian Hendrell Remus, who was recently elected chairman of the Tennessee Democratic Party, will have a homecoming of sorts on Wednesday, March 24th, when he becomes the guest speaker, via Zoom, for the Germantown Democratic Club, an unusually active group that is resuming its pattern of regular meetings, suspended during the pandemic, and hopes to be resuming in-person meetings in short order.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

In Preliminary Vote, County Commission Says No to Nonpartisan Mandate

State Rep. Tom Leatherwood

Back in 1992, the Shelby County Republican Party, under its then new chairman Phil Langsdon, resolved to put a move on the Democrats and petitioned the local Election Commission to have a Republican primary for the offices of Assessor and General Sessions Clerk, the two countywide offices scheduled for that year’s election.

Up to that point, races for all the county offices required by the state constitution or county charter were nonpartisan, and coalitions of candidates’ supporters could and did cross all kinds of party and ideological lines at election time.

Unofficial estimates of party affiliation favored Republicans at the time, and the local GOP wanted to take advantage of the fact while there was still time, before ongoing population shifts created an African-American majority in the county, one inevitably inclined to be heavily Democratic. (An emergent African-American majority in Memphis had just elected Willie Herenton, the city’s first Black mayor.)

The GOP got its primary, and its nominees easily won the two races on the ballot that year, running against incumbents without party labels. In 1994, with a fuller roster of county offices on the ballot, the GOP held another primary, and its nominees swept the general election against independent candidates and candidates “endorsed,” but not officially nominated, by the county’s Democrats.

That was enough to cause the Democrats to resolve thenceforth on partisan primaries of their own for countywide office, and ever since, both parties have conducted primaries for all county offices.

Though many local Republicans began to worry that their party was pressing its luck, the GOP’s momentum was such that it even carried the party’s candidates past the 2010 census, when the long-foreseen ethnic population shift occurred in the county at large. Republicans swept that year’s county offices, too, and continued to do well vis-a-vis Democratic nominees in the next several countywide elections.

Things changed big-time with the “blue wave” election of 2018, won resoundingly by Democrats over their Republican counterparts. And in the 2020 election just concluded, the pattern of Democratic demographic superiority resoundingly repeated itself.

One result was House Bill 1280, introduced in the Tennessee General Assembly this year by District 99 state Representative Tom Leatherwood. The bill would require that “in any county with a population greater than five hundred thousand (500,000), according to the 2010 federal census or any subsequent federal census, regardless of the form of government, elections for all offices that are elected in a countywide election and elections for the legislative body must be nonpartisan.” The bill also mandates nonpartisan elections for judicial offices in counties so populated.

It will be observed that only two Tennessee counties have populations that large and would be affected — Shelby and Davidson (Nashville), the same two counties that, by similar mathematical pre-selection, were singled out in Governor Bill Lee’s 2019 school voucher bill, which was held discriminatory and unconstitutional by the courts, but which is undergoing judicial appeal at the moment.

HB 1280, should it pass, is likely to undergo similar adjudication. But the Shelby County Commission is acting to head off the measure now before it can get to the law books.
By a 7-2 vote in committee on Wednesday, the Commission adopted a resolution opposing the measure, which will come up for a vote before the Commission’s next public meeting on Monday.

“We’ve been here before. This is like the voucher bill,” Commissioner Van Turner reminded his colleagues. The two votes against opposing HB 1280 came from Brandon Morrison and David Bradford, both Republicans.

Incidentally, that part of the proposed measure applying to judicial elections would affect only Davidson County, which currently does have partisan elections for judges, but none for expressly political positions.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Early Voting Numbers Skew Democratic, Black, and Older

Some fun facts: According to the calculations of Election Commissioner Bennie Smith, a statistician and professional elections analyst, some 81,000 voters took part in the early voting period in Shelby County, and the voting skewed Democratic, female, African-American, and relatively elderly.

The final voting figures as of Saturday, August 1st, were 54,400 Democratic, 25,800 Republican; 50,500 female, 30,500 male; 34,400 Black, 26,200 white, and 26,200 other. Of the 81,000 voters, some 69,900 were over the age of 50.

That last figure illustrates the disproportionate tendency of older voters to take part in elections, inasmuch as the over-50 segment of the society as a whole is only 45 percent. The average age of an eligible voter in Shelby County is 48.20.

by Gender

The eligible voting population comprises roughly 331,000 females and 240,000 males, a split of 57.97 percent to 42.03 percent. Ethnically, the voting population includes 199,000 African Americans, 139,000 whites, and 233,000 who consider themselves “other.” As the last week of the August 6th election round began, candidates were putting their best surrogates on display — hitchhiking, as it were, on other, better established, or more well-known political figures.

In the case of Tom Leatherwood, a Republican running for re-election to the state House of Representatives from District 99 (Eads, Arlington, eastern Shelby), the doppelgänger was Governor Bill Lee, down from Nashville. The two held forth to a sizable late-Monday-morning crowd at Olympic Steak and Pizza in Arlington, while partisans of Leatherwood’s GOP primary opponent, former Shelby County Republican chairman Lee Mills, picketed outside.

A little later on Monday, U.S. Senate candidate Manny Sethi, a Nashville physician and Republican newcomer who styles himself “Dr. Manny,” hit the stage of another well-attended event at The Grove in Cordova. He had in tow U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and Sethi, who is opposed by former Ambassador Bill Hagerty, a Trump endorsee, fairly quickly disposed of any idea that he might be the moderate in the race.

“I’m tired of this coronavirus, aren’t you?” Sethi said, addressing a seated crowd of which roughly a third were maskless. “Let’s fire Dr. Fauci!” he continued, going on to endorse the glories of hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug President Trump has touted as a potential antidote to COVID-19.

James Mackler, a Democratic candidate in the Senate race, has condemned Sethi’s position as one making him unworthy of serving in the Senate.

Sethi is one of two physicians in the Senate race. The other, Republican George Flinn of Memphis, has denounced Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic as being woefully insufficient.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

“Fire Fauci!” — Candidates Call on High-Powered Surrogates

CREDIT: JB

As the last week of the August 6th election round began, candidates were racing around putting their best surrogates on display — hitchhiking, as it were, on other, better established or more well-known political figures.
JB

Leatherwood (l) with Lee

In the case of Tom Leatherwood, a Republican running for reelection to the state House of Representatives from District 99 (Eads, Arlington, eastern Shelby), the doppelgänger was Governor Bill Lee, down from Nashville. The two held forth before a sizable late-Monday-morning crowd at Olympic Steak and Pizza in Arlington, while partisans of Leatherwood’s GOP primary opponent, former Shelby County Republican chairman Lee Mills, picketed outside.

Slightly later on Monday, U.S. Senate candidate Manny Sethi, a Nashville physician and Republican newcomer who styles himself “Dr. Manny,” hit the stage of another well-attended event, this one at The Grove, an establishment in Cordova. He had in tow U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and Sethi, who is opposed by former Ambassador Bill Hagerty, a Trump endorsee, fairly quickly disposed of any idea that he might be the moderate in the race.

JB

Sethi (r) with Cruz

“I’m tired of this coronavirus, aren’t you?” Sethi said, addressing a seated crowd of which roughly a third were maskless. “Let’s fire Dr. Fauci!” he continued, going on to endorse the glories of hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug President Trump has touted as a potential antidote to Covid-19.

James Mackler, a Democratic candidate in the Senate race, has condemned Sethi’s position as one making him unworthy of serving in the Senate.

Sethi is one of two physicians in the Senate race. The other, Republican George Flinn of Memphis, has denounced Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic as being woefully insufficient.

Meanwhile, Democratic state Representative Joe Towns, bidding for reelection in District 84, was the beneficiary of a Monday fundraiser at India Palace on Poplar. Towns had asked both Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris to be on hand. Strickland was able to make it, Harris was not. JB

Mills’ picketers at Leatherwood event.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Grudge Match: Leatherwood vs. Mills

Tom Leatherwood, the Republican state representative in House District 99, was greatly relieved on Tuesday of this week. He had just relocated in a temporary hotel after damage from the tornado that swept through Nashville on Monday night had made his regular hotel unliveable.

But he was forced to take note of a new threat taking place over the course of the current election season. That comes from an ongoing challenge to his renomination from Lee Mills, who, until a change of guard last year, served as chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party.

After former longtime State Representative Ron Lollar unexpectedly died in July 2018, with that year’s election season underway, the local GOP steering committee met to select an alternate candidate for the District 99 position on the general election ballot. Mills was one aspirant; Leatherwood was another, and he ended up prevailing.

“It wasn’t but two weeks or so later that I heard they were getting ready for an effort to see me defeated the next time,” said Leatherwood, the “they” being Mills and his wife, Shelby County Commissioner Amber Mills. “She’s using her office to promote her husband’s political ambitions,” he said.

Friends of Mills are now circulating a story that a delegation from the Shelby County Commission headed by Amber Mills was snubbed by Leatherwood, who allegedly declined to meet with the commissioners when the group was in Nashville last week on the occasion of Shelby County’s official Day on the Hill, an annual pilgrimage to the state capital.

“That’s a lie,” Leatherwood said emphatically, when asked about the story. “No one ever made an appointment to see me.” He said he could affirm that he himself was never contacted by the delegation. Members of his staff, like those of other legislators, could not confirm or deny the fact of an appointment request, having been asked to stay away from the Hill on Tuesday in the wake of the tornado damage.

Leatherwood said he did not fear the challenge from Lee Mills, contrasting his campaign war chest of some $100,000 with a far lesser amount he said had been raised so far by his GOP opponent.

“I’ve never wanted to destroy an opponent the way I want to destroy him,” Leatherwood said of Mills. He boasted his own support from within Republican ranks and said the activities of Lee and Amber Mills could have the effect of indirectly helping Democrats in their designs upon other legislative positions, particularly the open District 97 House seat and the District 83 seat now held by Republican Mark White.

There are Democratic candidates in both of those races, but so far not in District 99.

In District 97, now held by the retiring Republican Jim Coley, two Democrats — Allan Creasy and Gabby Salinas, both veterans of hard-fought but losing races in 2018 — vie for the nomination, along with Ruby Powell-Dennis and Clifford Stockton III. Two Republicans, Brandon Weise and John Gillespie, who has been endorsed by Coley, also seek the seat.

Democrat Jerri Green will oppose White in District 83.

Democrats once dominated the Shelby County legislative contingent but in the last few decades have had to yield the suburbs to Republicans. They have had one signal victory in their recent effort to make inroads in eastern Shelby County: Democrat Dwayne Thompson won House District 96 in 2016 in an upset over then-Republican incumbent Steve McManus; in 2018 Thompson successfully defended the seat against Republican challenger Scott McCormick.

This year, Thompson faces a primary challenge from fellow Democrat Anthony Johnson, while Republican Patricia Possel will seek the office on the Republican side.

…

Like duellists, potential general election opponents in House District 96, Dwayne Thompson, Democrat, and Patti Possel, Republican, stood back to back and handed out literature at the AgriCenter during the recently ended Early Voting period.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Crap Shoot in the 8th

I’m thinking of moving to Tennessee’s 8th Congressional District so I can vote for Karen Free Spirit Talley-Lane. Karen, or “Free” as I like to call her, is an independent candidate, one of 20 people vying to become GOP Congressman Stephen Fincher’s replacement, including four other independents, two Democrats, and 13(!) Republicans.

There are 13 Republicans running because the 8th District has been gerrymandered into a lockdown seat for the GOP. All one of these 13 boys has to do is win, say, 20 percent of the votes and they’re on their way to Washington, D.C. The actual election in November is a foregone conclusion.

And thanks to the GOP gerrymandering of the 8th District that occurred after the 2010 census, I wouldn’t have to move very far to vote for Free — just to the “finger” on the map that juts its way deep into east Memphis, into the heart of what used to be Democratic 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen’s district, including the area where many of the city’s Jewish voters live. Huh, what could they have been thinking?

No problem, they gave Cohen Millington in exchange. Seems fair, right?

Gerrymandering is the source of our congressional gridlock. It’s a system that allows office-holders to literally pick who gets to vote for (and against) them. The majority party in power after the census obtains the right to draw the borders of our districts and other various political bailiwicks. They almost always do so in a way that splits and scatters the opposition party’s voters and solidifies their own. That’s why members of Congress are very seldom defeated, unless it’s by a member of their own party in a primary. Since they don’t have to work across party lines in their home districts, there’s very little inclination to do so once they get to Washington. They just have to keep the homefolks in their own party happy.

And that’s why there is a mad scramble among 13 Republicans to win the GOP nomination in the 8th. Once they’re in, they’re in for as long as they want to be there.

Just eight years ago, things were reversed. Longtime Democratic Congressman John Tanner controlled the 8th District, winning election after election. In 2008, the GOP didn’t even field a candidate. Tanner won the general election with 180,000 votes to his write-in opponent’s 54 — almost literally 100 percent of the electorate!

Then Tanner retired, and in the 2010 “wave” election, Fincher beat Democrat Roy Herron. In the post-census redistricting, the 8th District got gerrymandered to ensure that it would remain Republican, at least until the next census. That was done by moving much of eastern Shelby County, a GOP stronghold, from the 9th District to the 8th.

Which is why the Memphis television and radio airwaves are now filled with ads from Republicans, each trying to outdo the others with their red, white, and blue credentials. David Kustoff is going to end Islamic terrorism; George Flinn is going to abolish Obamacare (with the help of those two white-haired biddies who love him so); and real conservative Brian Kelsey is going to be the most conservative conservative who ever conserved. It’s why we are being visited by the dregs of the recent GOP presidential nomination process — Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum, and others — who are pitching for one or the other of the Goopsters. It’s why city boys are putting on their best button-down plaid shirts and visiting tractor pulls and county fairs.

There’s been little independent polling, making this race a crapshoot in the most literal and metaphorical sense. The early thinking was that Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell had the inside track, which would be fine with me, frankly. He at least tried to push for Governor Haslam’s expansion of Medicare, indicating that he has a brain and actually cares about the area’s uninsured population and Shelby County’s overburdened hospitals. Having another congressman from Memphis couldn’t hurt. It certainly beats having one from Frog Jump, like Fincher.

I mean, as long as Karen Free Spirit Talley-Lane is out of the running …

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

First Licks in the Tennessee 8th District

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

As introductory campaign events go, the forum for 8th District congressional candidates held Tuesday night last week by the East Shelby Republican Club at Germantown’s Pickering Center was somewhat tentative — as most such debut cattle calls are — but it contained plenty of foreshadowing of the slings and arrows to come.

Four of the main GOP players were there — state Senator Brian Kelsey, radiologist/radio executive George Flinn, Shelby County Register of Deeds Tom Leatherwood, and advertising man/consultant Brad Greer of Jackson. Missing among the touted contenders were former U.S. Attorney David Kustoff and Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell.

The outlier of the group, both geographically and, to a large extent, philosophically, was Greer, whose chances for prevailing are maybe not quite as good as those of then state Senator Marsha Blackburn when she ran for the 7th congressional seat in 2002 against three Shelby Countians— the aforesaid Kustoff, then Shelby County Commissioner (now state Senator) Mark Norris, and then Memphis City Councilman Brent Taylor. 

Blackburn, whose home base was Brentwood in Williamson County, campaigned well across the 7th District, even in Shelby County. She would win easily, taking advantage of the split vote among Shelby County natives, none of whom exactly ran like a house afire anyway.

But if Greer’s public image is not as well honed as was Blackburn’s, who at the time was one of the preeminent leaders of the anti-income tax movement in Tennessee, he has even more opponents from Shelby County than had Blackburn in 2002, and thus can count on an even more advantageous split.

Jackson Baker

(l to r) Brad Greer, George Flinn, Brian Kelsey, and Tom Leatherwood in Germantown

Flinn, Kelsey, Kustoff, Luttrell, and Leatherwood (to list them in the order of their campaign financial holdings) could very well divide the vote in their home county of Shelby, wherein resides 55 percent of the 8th District electorate. And that could pave the way for an upset victory for Greer, whose Madison County bailiwick is closer to the traditional heartland of the District, which since 2010 has been served by Crockett County resident Stephen Fincher, who is voluntarily relinquishing the seat.

That might especially be the case if the 8th District votes according to the same pattern as in March on Super Tuesday, when the distribution of votes for the hotly contested Republican presidential primary was, according to Greer, 60 percent in the non-Shelby part of the district and only 40 percent in the Shelby County bailiwick of Flinn, Kelsey, Kustoff, Luttrell, and Leatherwood.

To be sure, Greer has some competition of his own among fellow Jacksonians Hunter Baker, David Bault, and George Howell, none of whom, however, have raised much money at this point or figure to run well-supported races. And prominent Madison County kingmaker Jimmy Wallace, a major force behind Fincher, is putting his eggs this time in the basket, not of Greer, but of Kelsey, who also has good support and fund-raising potential in the Memphis area.

For the record, candidate cash on hand, as of the first-quarter reporting period, was: Flinn, $2,930,885; Kelsey, $439,005; Kustoff, $319,682; Luttrell, $144,570; and Greer, $103,713. No one else had amassed $100,000, or anything close to it. (And Flinn’s total should be taken with a grain — or perhaps an airplane hangar — of salt. Like Donald Trump at the presidential level, he is wealthy enough to self-finance, and, unlike The Donald, actually does so to a substantial degree; he does minimal fund-raising as such.)

All of the foregoing is a recap of the basic paper facts. Last week’s forum at the Pickering Center gave a partial foreshadowing of how the race might be run and of some of the intangibles involved. Herewith are some (admittedly sketchy) reviews of how and what the participating candidates did:

First up was Greer, who established the fact that he represented rural Tennesseans and had handled 18 West Tennessee counties in the 2006 U.S. Senatorial race for Republican victor Bob Corker. He distinguished himself from the others when an audience member asked about trade policy, and Greer wasted no time blasting away, Trump-like at the purportedly ruinous effects of various free-trade pacts on ordinary working folk. “I don’t give a good rat’s ass about other countries before my fellow countrymen,” Greer declared, in what may have been the line of the night.

Flinn was next, and right away declared his fealty to presumptive GOP presidential nominee Trump. He went on to express, as he does in his now-frequently-appearing TV ads, some of the well-worn GOP shibboleths of recent years, fretting that “we’re being killed by entitlements,” and promising to “represent you to D.C., not D.C. to you.” (I can’t help fantasizing about what would happen if the genial and accomplished Flinn dispensed with such pedantic bromides and let fly something defiant about the independence secured by his self-financing, a la “If you like Trump, you’ll love me!”)

Kelsey was third to speak, and in his allotted two-minute introductory spiel, he must have used the self-defining phrase “proven conservative” perhaps 50 times. Okay, that’s hyperbole, but variations on the phrase dominated his brief remarks to an overwhelming degree. In fairness, he did get to elaborate on his record during the Q-and-A portion of the evening, touting his sponsorship of a constitutional amendment to ban a state income tax and his enmity-to-the-death for Medicaid expansion.

Most compellingly, Kelsey signaled his willingness and intent in the future to attack the absent Luttrell, a supporter of Governor Bill Haslam’s ill-fated “Insure Tennessee” proposal: “We have Republicans in this very race who supported extending Obamacare.” And later: “As I mentioned before, we have Republicans who want to expand Medicaid under Obamacare.” 

And there was Leatherwood, whose hold on his county register’s job owes much to a neighborly demeanor and a competent, customer-knows-best attitude but who, when running for offices of partisan consequence, prefers to present himself as some kind of avenging Robespierre of the Right. He vies with Kelsey in his contempt for “socialism” and regard for “free enterprise” and, on matters of education policy, gave notice of his wish to purify both state (“Frankly, TNReady is merely Common Core by another name”) and nation, promising to support the abolition of the Department of Education.

In brief, Flinn, Kelsey, and Leatherwood all essentially stuck to well-worn Republican talking points, and Greer evinced at least some disposition, in this year of Trump and Sanders mass assemblies, to go yellow dog.

The next forum for these Republican contenders is scheduled for this Thursday night in Dyersburg.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Poll shows large Luttrell lead over other Shelby Countians in 8th District race.

A po

Luttrell

ll completed by the Remington Research Group of Kansas City shows Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell to have a commanding lead over other Shelby County candidates in the 8th Congressional District Republican primary.

The poll, conducted on February 29 and March 1 involved “686 likely Republican primary voters,” with a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percent, according to Remington director Titus Bond.

Below is the tabulated response to the question, “ If the candidates in the Republican primary election for United States Congress were Brian Kelsey, David Kustoff, Mark Luttrell, George Flinn, Tom Leatherwood and Steve Basar, for whom would you vote?.”

Mark Luttrell: 26%
George Flinn: 11%
Brian Kelsey: 9%
David Kustoff: 8%
Tom Leatherwood: 7%
Steve Basar: 1%
Undecided: 38%

The press release announcing these results said further:

“In addition to his ballot strength, Luttrell possesses the strongest image rating of all the potential Republican candidates. 43% of likely Republican primary voters view him favorably with only 5% viewing him unfavorably. This is by far the strongest image rating of the field by more than double his nearest competitor.
“Luttrell enjoys massive support in the Memphis media market where he receives 33% support. The Memphis media marketanchors the district, comprising more than 71% of Republican primary voters.

“’Mark Luttrell holds a strong advantage in the early stages of this race. In a winner take all primary, other candidates will have to spend significant sums just to match Luttrell’s current ballot position and favorability,’ said Titus Bond, Director of Remington Research Group. ‘Mark Luttrell is the heavy early favorite in this Republican primary.’”

Asked the obvious question about the poll — whether he or his campaign had commissioned it — Luttrell said no.

There was no explanation as to why several declared candidates from outside the Shelby County area were not included in the questionnaire.

[pdf-1]

[pdf-2]