Leave Doug Henry Alone!
Posted on October 2, 2009 at 10:19 amIn 2002, the rap against State Sen. Douglas Henry was that, while he was a fine gentleman legislator who had served his district well for 30 years, he was old, tired and resting on decade-old laurels.
That’s pretty much still the rap against him.
Back in ‘02 Henry’s Democratic challenger was Jeff Wilson, a former journalist turned software developer, who decided that someone should stand up for a new generation of Democrats in west Nashville. Wilson wondered aloud how long the state needed to continue to bear the burden while Henry pursued “his hobby of being in the state Senate.”
The answer from the district was four more years — and another four after that.
Now, in 2009, yet another young progressive, a downtown lawyer named Jeff Yarbro, is calling for Henry’s ouster. A co-founder of the “Kitchen Cabinet” meetings featuring young progressive professionals gripping and grinning with the party’s power elite, Yarbro is no stranger to either the grasstops or grassroots of the Democratic Party.
A fund-raising invitation which fell into media hands shortly after his campaign announcement boasted an impressive list of boosters that included both Obama fund-raiser Jerry Martin as well as Chip Forrester’s arch-nemesis in the race for party chair last year, Charles Robert Bone.
In only its first 24 hours, it was clear Jeff Yarbro’s campaign was no joke. After the first report by NashvillePost.com’s Ken Whitehouse, the announcement news was soon blanketing the media and the blogosphere. The campaign, even its embryonic stages was clearly calm, cool and coordinated — with a campaign kitty of 50K and rising.
Yarbro’s strategy seems similar to Republican Bob Krumm’s in 2006: heavy emphasis on honoring Sen. Henry’s service and little criticism of the man’s ideology or agenda. As Yarbro told the Associated Press, “I don’t think of this race as running against Douglas Henry. I’m running for the state Senate.”
Easy to say, of course, but harder to do. That’s the rub running against Henry. He is such a beloved figure, it is impossible to go negative against him. Not that there isn’t plenty of stuff that on paper looks damaging. But using it would provoke the kind of backlash you’d get if you hit your grandpa in the face — at Thanksgiving dinner.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against positive campaigns. Our politics would be much better if everyone was running for something rather than against it. But politics rarely works that way. You have to draw distinctions and communicate why change is urgent. All this talk of “working to continue Senator Henry’s legacy” doesn’t cut it.
An attractive young professional with progressive ideals and the establishment at his back can mount a formidable effort — but this is Doug-freaking-Henry. Elder statesman. Icon. A man who had been on the ballot longer than his challenger has been alive. It seems like, to win, Yarbro needs something more.
Of course, I wouldn’t be the first to suggest that a “win” for Yarbro in 2010 doesn’t necessarily have to achieve electoral victory.
A savvy young lawyer like Yarbro never knows what opportunities might pop up in the future — maybe a stint as party chair, maybe a run for Congress. Who knows? A respectable loss to the oldest of the old guard doesn’t hurt an ambitious young guy with an eye to the future.
The question that Democratic voters of the 21st District need to ask themselves is what it gains them to give the hook to Sen. Henry? What’s the rush?
Why work to unseat a Democratic state senator when what Democrats really need is an all out assault for control of the state House?
Democrats have limited time and resources at their disposal to save their future viability in state and federal politics. The state Senate is gonna be Republican — that’s a lock. But Democrats have a shot at taking back the House. A small shot, granted, but a shot nonetheless. A Democratic state House gets the party the seat at the redistricting table they desperately need. Without it, the GOP could wipe away the chances for Democratic revival in our time, literally, with the stroke of a pen.
Why expend the resources to defeat Henry now? He has been in the Senate this long, what is four more years? Is Henry that bad a senator?
Hell, not even Yarbro himself will say that. So what’s the reason? Is the need for progressive leadership that urgent or is this more about personal ambition? Is this less about what is at stake for the 21st district than what is at stake for Yarbro — now and in the future?
With all the problems Democrats have in Tennessee, one would think an effort to swap a Democrat with a Democrat in the state Senate would be the last thing they would concern themselves with.
Sen. Doug Henry On ‘The Twitter’
Posted on April 2, 2009 at 2:10 pmSen. Doug Henry on the difference between a QWERTY keyboard and a standard numeric telephone keypad and other things during a debate over a ban on texting while driving.
“Mr. Chairman, now with the seatbelt business, I opposed it then and I oppose it now because its not the state’s business if I want to spill myself all over the highway. Ah, but with the Twitter, he hinders me, he’s liable to have a wreck. He’s driving down the road, twittering, and I’m trying to drive in the lane and here he come.
Now I think the distinction between the two is that the first one you infringe upon my liberty. The second one is an infringement on my person by a fellow citizen…
….Now I wouldn’t recommend it, but I can keep my eye on the road and also dial a number on this one. But I defy you, even if you’ve got the eyes of a buzzard, to make a message on this and keep your eyes on the road.
Now if you’re a court reporter or something and trained in the Querty keyboard, do that for a living you can, but if you’re just an average driver who tries to go down the road and punch out a message on this thing you can’t do it.”
SEE ALSO:
Jeff Woods
Hank Hayes
Senator Henry Will Not Retire
Posted on July 28, 2008 at 6:31 amDru Fuller reports that Senator Doug Henry intends to seek a 19th term in the state Senate:
Veteran State Sen. Doug Henry announced at the Davidson County Democratic Women’s annual picnic that he is running for re-election in two years. The 18-term senator has already begun raising money for his race for a 19th term. Henry has served 36 years in the Senate and two in the House.
Henry handily defeated Republican challenger and blogger Bob Krumm to secure his 18th term in 2006.
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Putting The Personal, The Politics and the Partisanship Over Principle And Previous Votes
Posted on May 27, 2008 at 5:36 pmClint Brewer today attempts to make the case that Senator John Wilder’s failure to extend the Tennessee plan for judicial selection was not a case of partisan politics, as Wilder himself asserted upon his defeat on the Senate floor, but instead was simply a case of senators following a tradition laid out by Senator Wilder of respecting the committee system.
In trying to bypass the committee system and bring the bill straight to the floor it was Wilder, Brewer suggests, who violated the status of the Senate being the Senate.
Regardless of what you think of the Tennessee Plan or Wilder, anyone who watched this video had to be struck by the sadness of the display. Here was, in essence, a Tennessee political icon, asking former allies who had stood with him before to stand with him again.
Was it partisanship that led the Republican coalition to stand with their new Speaker in insuring that the Tennessee Plan, as presently configured, would die or was it just politics.
When Wilder had power, he was the one, he was the dealmaker, he could get members to break way from their party caucuses and join him. That was because he had power and a political future.
It was not party, principle or a spirit of bipartisanship that led folks to follow Wilder before. Wilder held the gavel. He was the shotcaller. He may have been a benevolent dictator in the past but the point was he was no kind of dictator at all anymore.
He was asking these Republicans to go against their Speaker, the future of their party, out of personal loyalty. His central argument was not for the Plan, but for him. Sure, he articulated a defense but the speech was designed not to be persuasive on the merits of the plan. It was an opportunity for Wilder to drop names, Woodsen, Crowe, Burchett in an attempt to make a personal appeal for support.
It turned out, however, that his relationship with these Republicans was not personal but political. They did not go against “principle” to vote with Ramsey anymore than they did when they went with him.
In fact, if there is to be charges of partisanship, if by partisanship one means putting party before principle, one could point just as easily to other side. While people accuse Rosalind Kurita, of playing Ron Ramsey’s lapdog in this vote, that charge is capricious when one considers that Kurita is the senate’s chief populist when it comes to “democratizing” offices.
She wants just about every office one can think of voted on by the people, one could not imagine her feelings would be different on the subject of judges.
Senators Jim Kyle and Doug Henry, however, voted against implementation of the Tennessee Plan in 1994. One would expect, at least in Henry’s case, he did so based on his strict constitutionalism, what changed this time?
Was it partisan politics that lead these Democrats who voted against the plan then to embrace it now? Was it personal?
Or was it, just as Brewer suggests, just politics?
Senate Bigwigs Back down From Quid Pro Quo On Open Government
Posted on April 23, 2008 at 10:48 amJohn Rodgers reports on big open government news this morning out the Senate Finance Committee. It appears that the quest for a quid pro quo from open government groups has been abandoned:
The Senate Finance Committee gave its unanimous approval this morning to the first major change to the state’s open records law in 25 years, sending the measure to the Senate floor.
The Finance Committee approved the bill after Senate Democratic Leader Jim Kyle of Memphis backed away from a move to require good government groups involved in the open records bill to disclose where they received their funding.
See the bill here and Rodgers explanation of the differences between the Senate and House versions here.
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