A Republican In The Legislature Only: House GOP Votes To Keep Williams

By Kleinheider Posted on March 11, 2009 at 10:19 am

Despite being expelled from the Tennessee Republican Party by its chairwoman Robin Smith back in January, Tom Humphrey reports that Speaker Kent Williams is a Republican — at least as far as the House GOP Caucus is concerned.

Since going back on his promise to vote for Jason Mumpower for house speaker and instead joining with 49 House Democrats to elect himself speaker, Williams status as a Republican has been a matter of some debate.

While he was allowed into an open caucus meeting in February, he has been subsequently turned away from such caucus meetings this month. Republican Leader Jason Mumpower as well as Caucus Chair Glen Casada have previously asserted that they had the power to ban Williams from the caucus without the benefit of a vote.

But on Monday night there was a vote — and Kent Williams prevailed:

“I think the sentiment is to allow Kent to come into the meetings,” he said during a brief interview today. Mumpower said he assumes that will include the right to vote on caucus matters.

Mumpower refused to provide any details of the vote, but other Republican legislators say a substantial majority favored Williams’ continued presence at caucus meetings.
“I don’t want to betry the confidence of caucus members,” said Mumpower in declining to give vote totals.

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Tags: Carter County Republican, Glen Casada, Jason Mumpower, Kent Williams, Robin Smith, TNGOP  

One Day, And This Day May Never Come, We’re Gonna Call On You To Break Some Ties

By Kleinheider Posted on March 2, 2009 at 10:51 am

Rep. Mike Turner on what the House Democratic Caucus expects from the Carter County Republican Speaker:

“Our goal is to have (voting) ties. The only person who can break ties at this time: we put him in the position, My job is to tell (Speaker Kent Williams) who put him there. I’m not his best friend. Gary Odom has a lot of clout with the Speaker (Williams) as does Speaker Jimmy Naifeh. Which is coming from the extremes on our side. One has one ear; the other one’s got the other. My job is to tell the Speaker (Williams) when he has irritated us on something. They kicked him out of the Republican party. They have not kicked him out of the Republican caucus. All that stuff is in a flux. We don’t know if he’ll be real active, going around trying to break ties. if he is that could cause real problems. Hopefully, on the real regressive stuff we can hold ‘em to three-three, five-five, or six-six on the various committees.

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Tags: Carter County Republican, Hermitage, Kent Williams, legislative breakfast, Mike Turner  

One Shot, Two Kills: Odom Was The Mastermind Of The Speaker Williams Coup

By Kleinheider Posted on February 20, 2009 at 8:16 am

Jackson Baker reveals that Speaker Jimmy Naifeh was not aware of the plan to get all 49 Democrats to collude in electing Rep. Williams Speaker until the last moment:

Longtime House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh was never a party to the arrangement and only came to know of it at 5 p.m. the day before the scheduled Speaker election. Naifeh had in fact consistently importuned Williams (along with other friendly Republicans) to vote for him as Speaker right up until the eve of the vote. “And I couldn’t vote for Speaker Naifeh. I just couldn’t,” says Williams, who bases that resolve on his having given a now famous public vow to vote “for a Republican.”

Again, Williams insists and Odom concurs that Naifeh was utterly ignorant of the plot and knew nothing of it until the last minute, as it were, and then, with his own dreams of retaining the Speakership expiring, merely acquiesced.

This directly contradicts a widespread suspicion among Republicans and, for that matter, some Democrats not now serving in the legislature that the wily Naifeh must have had a hand in the undertaking. (One such Democrat was former state representative Kim McMillan of Clarksville, who served as majority leader under Naifeh and is now a candidate for governor. While making a visit of her own to Memphis on Wednesday night, McMillan, a Naifeh loyalist, made it clear she thought the longtime Speaker had to have been a participant in the plot. “That just sounds like Speaker Naifeh!” she said with an admiring smile.

But not so. In point of fact, Odom – who had intended to challenge Naifeh for the Speakership had the Democrats maintained their majority – chose, when asked point-blank, not to dispute the interpretation that his involvement in the Williams affair had been aimed at both Naifeh and Mumpower.

SEE ALSO:
Jeff Woods
Mediaverse

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Tags: Carter County, Carter County Republican, Gary Odom, Jimmy Naifeh, Kent Williams, Speaker election