Say What Now?
Posted on November 24, 2008 at 12:49 pmFormer Lt. Gov. John Wilder lays his political demise at the feet of Bill Frist:
In 2007, after 36 years as speaker, Wilder announced his candidacy for reelection. But his peers, who elect a speaker for each legislative session, would not have it. Wilder was defeated by state Sen. Ron Ramsey, a Republican from Blountville.
Wilder’s defeat undoubtedly opened the door for his official exit from the Tennessee Senate.
He seems to attribute his defeat to partisan politics.
“Being involved in government has been rewarding to me, to see the results we got, doing what was right for the state,” he said. “But we didn’t have partisan politics until two years ago when (former U.S. Sen.) Bill Frist had to get involved. Until then, he stayed out of it. But he had to do what they told him to do.”
Which was what? In his reply, Wilder refers to himself in the third person.
“I believe he got some senators to vote against John Wilder. I know he did. Sure did,” he said. “I gave it 44 years of my life, the best part of my life. I always wanted to do God’s will. I didn’t know what it was, but I really believe He wanted me to be there more than he wanted me to teach Sunday School class or something.”
SEE ALSO: Pith
Senate District 26 Becoming Ground Zero In The Battle To Control The State Senate
Posted on October 13, 2008 at 12:53 pmDolores Gresham gets a bit of help from the Republican State Leadership Committee in her bid to claim the seat of the former Democratic Lieutenant Governor John Wilder for the GOP:
SEE ALSO: Gresham’s “Friends” are doing her a solid as well.
Bringing Out The Big Guns In Senate District 26
Posted on at 11:57 amGovernor Bredesen will be in West Tennessee Wednesday trying to get that early vote out for Randy Camp.
Kurita Answers Motions Filed By Defendants In District Court Case
Posted on October 10, 2008 at 8:08 amSenator Rosalind Kurita’s attorneys answered yesterday various motions by defendants Tim Barnes, the Tennessee Democratic Party, and several state officials urging the United States District Court for Middle Tennessee to dismiss or abstain from judgment in the Fourteenth Amendment case brought to it by Kurita.
Senator Kurita, the certified victor in the 22nd District State Senate Democratic Primary, on Sept. 13th saw her election declared “incurably uncertain” by the Tennessee Democratic Party Executive Committee acting as the State Primary board.
A tri-county convention of executive committee members in the three counties of her district then voted 61-4 to install her opponent, Tim Barnes, as the Democratic nominee. Kurita is currently running as a write-in candidate.
Most political observers believe that the moves against Kurita by Democratic Party officials was payback for her 2007 vote for Republican Speaker of the Senate Ron Ramsey.
Kurita has charged the party with violating her Fourteenth Amendment rights in removing her name from the ballot as the Democratic nominee for the 22nd State Senate District.
At issue in the case is T.C.A. § 2-17-104 which designates a political party’s executive committee as the “decider” in the case of a contested primary election.
Barnes and other defendants contend that this law was properly applied in the contested election and that the court has no reason to intervene in the matter.
Senator Kurita, in filings by her attorney James Bopp, contends that “T.C.A. § 2-17-104 does not contain any standards or procedures that must be followed by a state primary board in resolving a primary election dispute.”
Kurita’s lawyers make the case that it is thus irrelevant whether due process is afforded in a particular case or not. They argue that T.C.A. § 2-17-104 is unconstitutional because it “empowers the state primary boards to adjudicate protected rights without due process of law.” In making this argument, however, they do not concede that due process was followed in this case.
Kurita’s lawyers’ full answer to the motions filed by Barnes et al is linked here. Defendants’ motions are available below.
A trial on the merits remains scheduled for October 10, 2008, at 10:00 a.m. Today.
SEE ALSO:
TNDP’s motion to dismiss or abstain
Tim Barnes motion to dismiss
State defendants motion to dismiss or abstain
Pounds Of Flesh: Running Up The Score On Kurita
Posted on October 1, 2008 at 2:42 pmThe Tennessee Democratic Party has sunk to a new low this afternoon. After apparently just discovering that tonight’s Rosalind Kurita fundraiser featuring Republican luminaries from the state Senate was being held at Justin Wilson’s Cherokee Equity Corporation, the party released this statement.
NASHVILLE – Rosalind Kurita has shown her true political stripes by putting her career ahead of her principles. Tennessee Democratic Party Chairman Gray Sasser released the following statement in response to a fundraiser for Kurita tonight at the Cherokee Equity Corporation. Cherokee Equity Corporation board member Justin Wilson, in his capacity as Deputy Governor to Republican Govenor Don Sundquist, was one of the architects behind Sundquist’s disastrous state income tax plans.
“Rosalind will say or do anything to help her floundering campaign. Kurita now sides with the income tax proponents of the Tennessee Republican Party for her personal career advancement and for no other reason. Today, we find that she has cast her lot with Don Sundquist and the income tax wing of the Tennessee GOP. She is so desperate to fund her campaign that she will cozy up to any special interest
Please. Like the architects of Tennessee’s state income tax were all Republicans, right?
In fact, one of the big ones, if I remember correctly, was former State Senator Bob Rochelle, who happens to be the lawyer that defended Kurita at that tribunal where the Democratic Party overturned her certified election.
Why not include that in the release? It would certainly bolster the argument-by-association that the Democratic Party is making here, would it not? Is it that Bob Rochelle is too big to mess with? Too much in the good graces of “the club” so to speak, whereas Kurita has been suitably separated from the herd so much that she deserves no courtesy for years of service as a Democrat, is that it?
Followers of Tennessee politics know that Kurita had nothing to do with the income tax. She voted against it.
That opposition, and her love of the guns, are about the only “Republican” things about her. Which is why this all out assault on a lifetime Democrat is so preposterous.
Rosalind Kurita is a progressive populist. She is a nanny statist. She views government as a force for good. The woman is securely within the Democratic ideological spectrum.
Yes, she voted against a Democratic Speaker. So what?
Everybody and their momma knew that Wilder was past his expiration date. Everyone. Nobody, however, was man enough to pull the trigger. Why? Because, under Wilder, Democrats had power.
The only way keep that power was to nominate Wilder, who was capable of peeling off then-Republican Mike Williams for that magic 17.
Democrats love to paint Kurita’s vote against Wilder as a craven power play. Was the power she would gain for her issues and her district by voting for Ramsey an attraction for her? I’m sure they were. No politician walks around trying to get themselves marginalized and she had sat on the Democratic bench quite a few years getting ignored.
But accusing her of a power grab is a bit of the pot calling the kettle black.
John Wilder, essentially a Dixiecrat who stayed in power by ceding a good portion to Republicans, needed to go. The Democratic Party could keep stumbling along in the Senate on the back of, a legend no doubt, but a doddering old man. Or, it could cut loose of the Dixiecrat, let the Republicans have control for a time, and grow a new Democratic Party based, not on power or the good ole boy network, but on progressive ideals.
Kurita saw the opening to drive a stake into the heart of the old Tennessee Democratic Party and she took it. Her vote for Ramsey was a conservative vote, but it was cast for reasons both personal and progressive.
Deep down many Democrats know that Rosalind Kurita is not the crypto-Republican they have painted her to be. They understand why she did what she did, whether they agree with it or not.
If Democrats and Kurita had gotten together and agreed to let the past be the past and work towards the future of a new Democratic Party, all of this would have been unnecessary.
Rosalind Kurita, after all, is a populist, pro-choice on abortion, good government Democrat. She obviously is a bold woman, she wasn’t going to stay put as Ramsey’s pet Democrat for very long.
But because she stood up, after years as a good foot soldier, and attempted to grab a little something for her agenda and in the process free the party of the Old Ways, Senator Jim Kyle got mad and he just couldn’t just let it go. When overtures were made to smooth things over, Kyle, time and time again, chopped up the waters.
It is my belief, and only my belief, that Rosalind Kurita would have voted for just about any Democrat for Speaker except Jim Kyle next year had she been elected as a Democrat. Joe Haynes, Lowe Finney, anyone — she would have voted for them. That is purely my speculative belief but I do not believe it is an unreasonable one.
So, when people call Kurita selfish, it always hits me as curious. Did she vote against Wilder for totally selfless reasons? No, of course not.
But this Jim Kyle-driven assault on Kurita stems from one fact and one fact only. Jim Kyle wants to be speaker. Democrats could have gotten a Democratic speaker (assuming the other numbers were there) with Rosalind Kurita, that much is clear to most political observers, it just wouldn’t have been Jim Kyle.
So, even if one grants that what Kurta did in 2007 stemmed from personal ambition, one must also grant that the political destruction of Rosalind Kurita was motivated by ambition as well — Jim Kyle’s ambition.
Of course, this is all a moot point now. What’s done is done. The Democrats threw away a perfectly good Democrat, a Democrat who had the strength to do what was necessary to “refresh that tree of liberty” and give the party room to grow.
Now, Kurita has been driven out, into the arms of the Republicans, a party with which she has little ideologically in common with. If she somehow manages to win now, with Republican money, managers and a bad taste her mouth for the Democratic Party, there is no chance in hell of her voting for a Democratic Speaker.
The thing is, it didn’t have to be this way. There are Democrats who know this. Not all of them, but many do. Yet they continue even after the deed is done, even after Rosalind Kurita has been stripped of her election, to pile on.
The game is the game, for sure, but this woman was a Democrat until they threw her out. She could have run as an independent, or even a Republican, and won easily. But she didn’t, she entered the Democratic Party primary. Just about the only place she could possibly lose this election. I think some grassroots Democrats currently following the cues of their leadership need to ask themselves why she did that.
Rosalind Kurita is not even on the ballot. I ask you, if the Tennessee Democratic Party can’t beat a woman who isn’t even on the ballot straight up without resorting to painting her an income tax supporter because of the owner of the venue of her fundraiser, what good is the Tennessee Democratic Party?
The Democrats have taken Rosalind Kurita’s party and her ballot position away from her. Is enough, not enough at this point?
It’s All About Values, Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge
Posted on September 23, 2008 at 4:29 pmIn what is surely meant as a subtle reference to this, the TNGOP makes an independent expenditure on behalf of Rep. Dolores Gresham who is taking on Randy Camp in state Senate District 26, currently held by John Wilder:
The Kurita Conundrum Explained
Posted on September 16, 2008 at 7:52 amRead the full news analysis by Ken Whitehouse.
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Write-in Ros: It’s On, Son
Posted on September 15, 2008 at 12:10 pm
Post Politics has confirmed that Senator Rosalind Kurita has indeed filed, in each county of the 22nd State Senate district, a certificate of write-in candidacy. Senator Rosalind Kurita will be an official write-in candidate for reelection to the seat she now holds.
Her name will not be on the ballot but any registered voter in the district will be able to cast their vote to keep Rosalind Kurita in the Tennessee state Senate regardless of what a tri-county convention, tasked by the Tennessee Democratic Party Executive committee to resolve “incurable uncertainties” in the election, decides.
When asked by Post Politics why she took this unusual step, Senator Rosalind Kurita responded, “I think it’s obvious why this step was necessary. This is America. You don’t just let someone steal an election.”
Kurita credits supporters with helping her recognize what she needed to do.
“I received so many calls and messages of support since Saturday, it has really been overwhelming,” Kurita explains. “So many people I know have called and told me, ‘You’re a fighter, Rosalind, fight this.’ So that’s what I’m doing.”
PREVIOUSLY:
The Show Trial At The Sheraton
Write-In Ros?
TNGOP Decries Treatment Of Kurita
Posted on September 14, 2008 at 8:14 pmRobin Smith on the shenanigans at the Sheraton:
“The actions of the TN Democrat Executive Committee damage the health of our voting process with an infection of backroom deals and electioneering further disenfranchising the electorate”, remarked Robin Smith, Chairman of the Tennessee Republican Party. “Removing Tennessee’s highest elected Democratic woman from a race that she won, kicking to the curb the supporters of Hillary Clinton, and rabidly attacking Sarah Palin are stunning tactics from a party that depends so heavily on the demographic of women voters and claims to be the party of ‘women’s ‘rights’.”
“The standard practice of political thuggery only adds to the frustration that voters have in the political system. The repeated calls for ‘women’s rights’ and ‘voter’s rights’ rings hollow and vacant when Democrat Party leaders orchestrate a different outcome of an election after the voters have spoken,” concluded Smith.
“While a strong woman bucks her party to do what’s best for her state with a record of reform is nominated as the Republican Vice Presidential candidate, another strong woman, with a reformist streak voting for what she believes is best for her state, has her election made void by the Tennessee Democrats.”
Lessons From A Law Student
Posted on at 5:13 pmThe hijacking of the 22nd state Senate primary by the Tennessee Democratic Party Executive Committee does not lead Ilissa Gold to see good things for the party in the years ahead:
So what have we learned from all of this? That the Tennessee Democratic Party is corrupt, infiltrated by special interests, is still very much a good ol’ boys’ club, and is far more interested in maintaining the status quo than in taking risks and actually making gains. All of this might have been ok back in the days of the Dixiecrats. But Obama’s ascendancy has highlighted all of these problems. It’s no longer a sustainable way to run a party.
I’ve met Gray Sasser several times. He’s a very nice person and he genuinely wants Democrats to win throughout the state. But he’s not doing anything to make that happen. He and the rest of the party have put forth a strategy of keeping the powder dry until 2010, when the big prize of the governor’s mansion is at stake. But that strategy is going to blow up in all of their faces.
Because why vote for Democrats if a primary can be so easily overturned if the party doesn’t like the outcome? Why campaign for Democrats if the party doesn’t value your contribution? Why try to get involved period if they’re fighting tooth and nail to hold on to their own power at the expense of everyone else?
SEE ALSO:
The assassination of Rosalind Kurita
The Smoky Room Politics Of The TNDP
Clusterf**k in Clarksville
The Ousting Of State Senator Rosalind Kurita Is Wrong
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
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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?
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