Stansell Can’t Say For Sure He Didn’t Vote For Patrick Buchanan

By Kleinheider Posted on July 2, 2008 at 8:31 pm

I must say I read with interest the news this morning that a Democratic 52nd State House District candidate voted in the 1992 Republican primary. It was interesting not only because it was his very well-financed opposition chose to divulge the information and thus acknowledge their underdog adversary (a clear indication that the man much have some traction) but because that election was so very interesting.

1992, you see, was my political awakening. It was not an election I was able to vote in but it was the first one that I was really engaged in and I can’t imagine having a better one.

An incumbent Republican President, the heir of the Reagan Revolution, goes back on his his pledge not to raise taxes. Despite his sheparding a coalition force of the freedom lovin’ world to drive Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, he attracts a primary opponent. Unusual for a Republican primary of an incumbent president.

That candidate, Pat Buchanan, did not win a primary, of course, but his nearly forty percent share of the vote in New Hampshire shocked the establishment and probably emboldened a certain independent Texan, just one month and some change later, to go on Larry King Live and announce an “openness” to taking a few of his millions of dollars out for a whirl on the campaign trail.

This is to say nothing of the Democratic primary which featured the populist liberal Jerry Brown shopping a flat tax, a Southern Governor with serious scandal-related issues and a Greek deficit hawk former Massachusetts Senator who sounded quite a bit different than the Greek Massachusetts Governor who had nabbed the nomination just four years previous.

It was a truly glorious election to behold in many, many respects.

But back to Stansell. Having experienced the same election at only a slightly younger age than Stansell, I thought it very revealing that he viewed his vote in 1992 “as an act of rebellion.”

Now in the right context, as counterintuitive as it may be, I suppose one could vote for George Bush the Elder as an act of rebellion but as a young conservative of that era myself, I knew where young conservatives stood in that election.

Young people do not generally vote in elections, but when they do, they tend to go for more pure, less comprising men of politics.

In 1992, that was Pat Buchanan. Stansell tells Mr. Braisted he can’t remember whom he voted for in that primary but he thinks it was the incumbent President Bush the Elder. Intrigued by a the prospect of a nineteen year old man not sure of whom he voted for in his first election, I called Mr. Stansell just to see how the same question others had asked him would fall on my ear.

When asked, he reiterated that he likely voted for Bush. “I can’t give you a definite answer. I don’t wanna lie and say I’m sure because I’m not. But like I said, I’m almost positive,” said Stansell.

I decided to ask the question another way. You see, in 1992, there were only three men on the ballot here in Tennessee for the Republicans. There was the incumbent president. There was the conservative commentator Pat Buchanan. And, finally, there was former Klansman David Duke.

I asked Stansell, since he wasn’t sure and there were only three options, whether it was possible he voted for David Duke.

“Absolutely not,” asserted Stansell, “David Duke stands for everything I am against, now and then.”

Of course, I next asked him if could say with 100% certainty that he had not voted for Pat Buchanan.

“No, I can’t say that. Like I said, my Republicanism back then was an act of rebellion against my Democratic family so that kind of a vote would foot that bill. But am almost certain I voted for Bush, ” Stansell said.

When asked to put a percentage on it he said there was a 10% percent chance he voted for Buchanan and a 90% chance he voted for Bush.

Now, what does all this mean in the end? Not a damn thing. 19 year olds do a lot of silly things. Stansell tells Post Politics that his college experience ended up reinforcing what his Democratic parents had taught him and based on his activities since then there is certainly no reason to think this man is either a closet Bushie or Buchananite.

So what was the point? Why did Stewart’s campaign put this little birdie in the ear of Chris Hambry of the City Paper?

Well, again, Mr. Braisted says it was probably was done because it was fun. Maybe so.

But, then again, you don’t have to have the cynicism and Waller hatred of a Scenester to understand that the crew at Waller know political campaigns. They know better than most which buttons to press and when and, most importantly, those not to press. It is hard to believe that a Waller partner’s campaign would willfully provide this information, on the record no less, to a news organization without realizing that they were giving an underfunded underdog opponent a chance to get his name in the paper.

Folks who may have never heard the name Eric Stansell before today, after reading the City Paper, went and Googled his name and ended up right here.

Sure, it is important to define your opponent and you definitely want to do that — if you think you have an opponent worth defining.

If Stansell is as outmatched as some portray him to be, it would seem silly to give him any kind of exposure, any opportunity to get his name and his message out there.

Is it fun to do opposition research and then put it out there for the world to see? Sure, but a campaign with some discipline would not have publicized that information “for fun.” Mike Stewart is not raising the kind of money he is raising “for fun.”

So this episode either tells you that a Waller attorney has a State House campaign with no discipline or, the more likely scenario, this was a very calculated dissemination of information designed to serve a specific purpose and accomplish a specific end.

What that end is exactly is up to interpretation but it certainly wasn’t done “for fun.”

SEE ALSO: GoldnI

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Tags: 52nd District, Eric Stansell, Mike Stewart, Rob Briley, state house, Waller Landsen  

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