Girls Gone Wilder: Kurita Impedes The Senate From Being The Senate
Posted on June 27, 2008 at 8:57 amIn what has to be a relatively unprecedented move, former Lt. Governor John Wilder travels all the way from Fayette County to Clarkville to campaign for Democratic state Senate candidate Tim Barnes and holler at his opponent, Democrat incumbent State Senator Rosalind Kurita:
It was Kurita who cast the deciding vote to end Wilder’s run as Senate speaker in January 2007, enabling Republican Ron Ramsey to claim a key post that had been controlled by Democrats for 140 years.
At the time, Kurita said the change would end the “stagnant environment” that had blocked progress in the Senate and the state.
Kurita also stepped up to the role of Senate Speaker Pro Tempore after casting the vote against Wilder.
Both Wilder and Barnes stopped short Thursday of pointing to that pivotal vote as the single reason why they’re working together to replace her in the Senate’s 22nd district.
“I’m not going to criticize Senator Kurita for voting for a Republican,” Wilder told an audience of about 100 people at the Barnes barbecue event.
Instead, he said the Tennessee Senate needs “statesmen,” implying that Barnes brings more integrity to the job, and is more in touch with the voting public’s wishes, than Kurita.
“His (Barnes’) family came out of the cotton fields of (Crittenden County) Arkansas, and I came out of the cotton patch. Anybody that grew up on a farm knows that being involved in agriculture teaches you values,” Wilder said.
“We need this gentleman up there, because we need the Senate to be the Senate.
Comments
6 Responses to “Girls Gone Wilder: Kurita Impedes The Senate From Being The Senate”
I wonder how many GOP voters will cross over and vote for Roz in August? Also I wonder if Steve Gill or Valentine have thought about doing their own version of “operation chaos” in this district?
Terrific development.
“We need this gentleman up there, because we need the Senate to be the Senate. Yeah, the old boys’ club.
Wilder gets no love from me. If he was serious about maintaining control he should have groomed a successor and put them in place himself. All the evidence suggests that he had no plans whatsoever for what should happen to either the Democratic Party or the Senate after he left office. Was he just going to keep the job until he dies, and let everyone else sort out the mess after he’s gone? If so, that’s a very selfish perspective.
The General Assembly is no one’s fiefdom, and Wilder had had the job long enough. It only took one vote to send him back to his cotton gin. Better that Ramsey should have it than some random knucklehead who siezed power in the chaos after an unexpected and unpredictable death in office, which is exactly what Wilder was on course to do.
Auto, would you do Kurita?
If President Bush has been backing Kurita, there must be something wrong with her politics. He is about to be impeached again. Tim Barnes isn’t bought by corporate and his politics are legitmate. A deciding factor for me was the extra 2 cent cigarette tax she added onto the other 45 cents, making her equally guilty of violating the constitution with illegal taxation and malitias confiscating vehicles on the borders of Tennessee for being over the limit on cartons of cigarettes.
She has to go, her politics are trash, and Tim Barnes at least tried to run a respectable race, but all she did was dig her claws into his back as much as possible. Someone with her lack of integrity to her office, her party, and to her people, should be more worried about her own behavior and not so obsessed with a DUI on Barnes.
I hope the recount makes him the victor in this race.