Putting The Personal, The Politics and the Partisanship Over Principle And Previous Votes

By Kleinheider Posted on May 27, 2008 at 5:36 pm

Clint 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?

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Tags: Doug Henry, Jim Kyle, John Wilder, Judicial Selection, Randy McNally, Rusty Crowe, Tennessee Plan  

A Judicious Decision

By Kleinheider Posted on May 20, 2008 at 7:08 am

Bill 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

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Tags: Betty Anderson, Jimmy Naifeh, John Wilder, Judicial Selection