A Bold Charge
Posted on August 6, 2008 at 10:07 amSenator Mike Williams’ shill blogger alleges he knows at least one of the reasons the Senator voted for John Wilder, instead of Republican Ron Ramsey, for Speaker in 2005:
The disembodied voice on the other end of the line says, “Mike, this is Jeff Hagood. I just wanted you to know I won’t be running against you. But there’s something else you should know. Ron Ramsey (then Senate Republican Caucus Chair whose primary task is preservation of Senate Republican incumbent seats) and Bob Davis (then Tennessee State Republican Party Chairman whose bylaws at the time prohibited involvement by party officers or officials in primaries) came to me and asked me to run against you. I wasn’t the one who came up with the idea. But I want you to know that I will not be running against you.”
You’ve got two seconds to figure it out. Gee, why didn’t Mike Williams commit to vote for Ron Ramsey for Speaker when Ramsey came to him in January 2005 and said, “Mike, I guess it’s a little bit too late to ask for your vote.”
UPDATE: Contacted by Post Politics Deputy Chief Of Staff to the Lt. Governor, Lance Frizzell, said that charges that Ramsey had recruited an opponent for Williams were “not true.”
Democratic Senator Rosalind Kurita Fights Back
Posted on August 4, 2008 at 11:14 amAs we mentioned last night, Senator Rosalind Kurita has gone negative in her Democratic primary race for her state Senate seat.
After voting for a Republican Speaker in 2007 and refusing to commit to supporting the Caucus candidate in 2009, several of Kurita’s Democratic colleagues have lined up with money and district visits to help Tim Barnes defeat Kurita.
Until now, Kurita had been running warm and fuzzy media not even mentioning her party affiliation or her opponent. Not anymore. Ros has unleashed the dogs:
No Nobility In Stability
Posted on July 11, 2008 at 7:11 amThe Thicket reports that only Tennessee can match New York in stability of leadership in its upper legislative chamber:
The only other chamber we can think of that has had only four top leaders since 1965 is the Tennessee Senate where John Wilder served as lieutenant governor (by virtue of being elected speaker of the Senate, not statewide) for 36 of those years (1971-2007). None of the three other Tennessee lieutenant governors during this period were Jared Maddox (1965-67), Frank Gorrell (1967-71), and Ron Ramsey (2007-) served more than four years, but Wilder’s longevity enables them to match New York.
SEE ALSO:
The Peebles
permalink | Comment on this post
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.
Wilder’s Last Letter
Posted on June 25, 2008 at 9:17 amFormer Lt. Governor John Wilder pens an interesting farewell letter sent to state newspaper editors weaving, once again, the power of cosmos into his rhetoric:
“We need statesmen,” Wilder, of Mason, said in the letter as he referred to the vote. “We do not need 17 Republicans and one independent Democrat, Kurita, letting someone vote them (as a block). I feel bad about this statement, but it is the truth.”
He described himself as a “Jeffersonian Democrat.”
“I would not have been state senator and speaker of the Senate if it were not for the African-Americans and Independent Republicans,” he wrote. “Democrats made the most difference, but it would not have been enough because my district is 60 percent Republican.”
SEE ALSO:
John Wilder’s retirement speech
Wilder’s final battle for the Tennessee Plan
Wilder on the cosmos
Getting Right With Wilder
Posted on May 28, 2008 at 1:35 pmYesterday, we pointed out that state Senator Jim Kyle, despite his accusations of disloyal and partisanship against those who voted against John Wilder’s attempt to extend the Tennessee Plan for selecting judges, had in 1994 originally voted against the Tennessee Plan.
Asked for a response to the apparent inconstancy, Senator Jim Kyle’s office released the following statement short, simple and unusual for a politician:
“John Wilder was right. I was wrong.”
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?
Gotta Go To Kmart
Posted on May 26, 2008 at 10:24 amFormer Tennessean columnist Tim Chavez asserts that the retirement of the longest serving leader of a legislative body in modern history from the Tennessee State Senate is really not that big of a story:
Too much attention in the local news media has been focused on the retirement of state Sen. John Wilder for being in office since Abraham Lincoln was president. He also had led the Senate since George McGovern ran for president. Gee, if longevity is so newsworthy, I’m wearing underwear I’ve owned for 10 years as I type this blog post. Anyone want a picture and an interview?
permalink | Comment on this post
Wilder’s Last Act: Quest To Revive The Tennessee Plan Dies For Session
Posted on May 20, 2008 at 9:32 pmAn inglorious end to a glorious career:
Ken Whitehouse reports this evening that Senator John Wilder has lost his fight, in his last legislative session, to preserve, protect and extend the Tennessee Plan for selecting Supreme Court and appellate judges.
Wilder pleaded last week in the Government Operations Committee not to allow the provision to sunset. He was unsuccessful then and he was unsuccessful again tonight when he tried to move the the resolution to the floor.
During a long speech Wilder implores the body and calls out specific past allies to do this one last thing for him but none of the Republicans who had in the past stood with him in bipartisan battles joined him on this one.
See the video above and the full report on the main site from Ken Whitehouse for the sad story of the lion’s last roar.
SEE ALSO:
Peebles
Newscoma
Kumari
Chris Sanders
Campfield
Hobbs
Williams
Frank
Brooks
Huddleston
A Judicious Decision
Posted on at 7:08 amBill Hobbs graciously puts the revelation that House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh’s wife is lobbying on the judicial selection issue in perspective:
On the ethics meter, though, this one isn’t as bad as the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association lobbyist having an affair last year with the married chairman of the House Judiciary Committee while the committee was handling legislation of great interest to the Trial Lawyers Association. By the way, Naifeh - who rules the House with near-dictatorial dominance and controls through manipulation of the committee system the progress (or lack of progress) almost every single piece of legislation that gets filed - didn’t know about that ethically scandalous situation either. Wink wink.
Speaking of the Judicial Selection Commission, the legislation reauthorizing its existence for another few years (without which Tennessee would return to direct election of judges starting in 2010), was thought to be dead, but Terry Frank notes an item buried deep in the Sunday Knoxville News Sentinel that indicates state Sen. John Wilder has found an obscure rule which he will attempt to use to bring the legislation to the floor on the final session of the Senate, Tuesday, March 20.
Frank’s blog post neatly summarizes the three main points of view on the Judicial Selection Commission, which affects both state Supreme Court judgeships and appellate-level judgeships.
SEE ALSO:
Terry Frank
Kay Brooks
Channel 5
Recent Comments
All these comments are just proof that Tennessee is a backwoods, white trash redneck state, that...
# LeftWingCracker writes “Would people REALLY rather have Mr. 894-Out-Of-899 than...
The Messiah only had to go back forty-five years to find a Democrat that would defend the...
How is he going to rebuild our military when he’s said repeatedly he plans to cut...
I’m going to have to take an Advil. Maybe three or four. I have discovered that...
C’mon. Barry is still mulling over what he should do. He will be mulling it over while...
Wouldn’t it be refreshing if ALL the candidates told the truth about...
It’s sad, but can’t you really just replace all the usage of the words...
Obama can write any script he wants at this point. He is great at delivering a...
Why are reporters so concerned about who is feeding whom? Is it because...