Rep. Gary Odom Apologizes To Caucus For Talking To Reporters

By Kleinheider Posted on March 3, 2009 at 1:45 pm

Odom addresses the controversy which erupted after he was quoted by Jackson Baker taking credit for the Speaker Williams coup and blaming Jimmy Naifeh for Democratic losses ths past November:

“Gary Odom got up and apologized to the caucus and to the speaker, and that’s pretty much the gist of it,” says Rep. Charles Curtiss, who had been openly critical of Odom for his remarks. “Then Speaker Naifeh got up and said that, for the benefit of the caucus, he wanted to put the whole episode behind us and move forward. Everybody seemed to be in agreement, and we left out of there hopefully all going in the same direction.”

Curtiss says Odom claimed he was misquoted in the Flyer. “He apologized for talking to the press, and I’m sinning right now talking to you,” Curtiss says. “He said that things were added to what he had to say and it distorted exactly what he intended to say. I have no way of knowing one way or the other. He seemed sincere to me. Nobody said anything negative to be honest with you. He spoke and Speaker Naifeh spoke and that was pretty much the gist of it.”

SEE ALSO:
Jackson Baker reflects on the controversy.
Andy Sher weaves the whole contro together quite nicely.

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Tags: Charles Curtiss, Gary Odom, Jackson Baker, Jimmy Naifeh  

Mark Brown Defends The Message

By Kleinheider Posted on November 20, 2008 at 11:01 am

Senate Democratic Caucus Political Director Mark Brown looks back at the strategies of campaign 2008 with Jackson Baker:

Brown also takes exception to my having noted that official Democratic Party statements attempted misleadingly to saddle write-in candidate Rosalind Kurita, a Democrat who had significant Republican help, with support for a state income tax solely because she was financially backed by former Republican governor Don Sundquist. (For the record, Kurita was resolutely opposed to Sundquist’s income tax proposals as a senator.)

Brown’s response to that is something of a nolo contendere. After acknowledging that “we hit Kurita on Sundquist because Sundquist gave her campaign contributions,” he amplifies on that later by claiming that Republicans often have made unfairly sweeping allegations concerning Democratic support for an income tax (a point well taken), so that “[w]e pushed back by pointing out that Republicans were taking campaign contributions from Don Sundquist, the father of the state income tax; however, other than press releases and a few automated calls, this was never a major piece of our messaging.”

I’ll let that statement speak for itself.

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Tags: Don Sundquist, Income tax, Jackson Baker, Mark Brown, Rosalind Kurita  

Tinkering With The Math

By Kleinheider Posted on July 18, 2008 at 7:39 am

Jackson Baker gives the 9th District Democratic Congressional Primary his signature treatment:

Tinker’s decision to run again this year is probably influenced more by simple mathematics than anything else. Having finished only a few thousand votes back of Cohen in a field of 15, most of whom (including Cohen himself) competed with her for the district’s black vote, why should she not, two years later, try to go one-on-one?

She has been designated as a “consensus” black candidate this time around by several holdouts for the idea that a black, and only a black, should represent the 9th District in Congress. Perhaps foremost among those is the Rev. LaSimba Gray, who led a failed effort to settle on such a candidate two years ago but whose choice this time around was almost a matter of default.

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Tags: , Jackson Baker, Nikki Tinker, Steve Cohen