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.
State Senate Committee Assignments…
Posted on January 15, 2009 at 1:16 pm…are being reported by the folks over at Bass, Berry and Sims right now on Twitter.
MORE: Ken Whitehouse
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Tim Burchett All In For County Mayor
Posted on November 20, 2008 at 10:20 amIt was expected but now it’s official. State Senator Tim Burchett is tired of making the trek to and from Nashville and will pursue office closer to home. The big question is: who will replace him? Will tireless campaigner Stacey Campfield make a run for the upper chamber? Or will it be a certain antiwar congressman’s son?
SEE ALSO:
KnoxViews
Granju
Chris Sanders
Dude, They Kicked Her Out, Not The Other Way Around
Posted on November 2, 2008 at 11:27 pmSean Braisted asserts that State Senator Rosalind Kurita finally showed her true colors as a “Republican” when she contributed a sizable sum to the Tennessee Republican’s Legislative Campaign Committee.
Now, let’s get this straight. Rosalind Kurita is a pro-choice nanny-statist. Always has been, always will be. If she wanted to be a crypto-Republican, she would have ran straight-up as an Independent in her relection bid instead of running as a Democrat, the only way she could could lose.
What exactly would you have her do? Contribute money to the party that ousted her? Please. While we all like to talk about political parties as though they are about principles and ideas, in the end, parties are just a means to an end. That end, of course, being political power. Parties are not think tanks. They are not universities. They are entities created to achieve electoral victories
Republicans out of pure political opportunism are helping her as best they can. She is returning the favor. It’s just politics, pure and simple.
Kurita needs to get elected. Democrats won’t help. Republicans will. But Kurita is Kurita.
I haven’t seen her change a ideological or policy position to suit her new political friends. You can call her a “Republican” if that makes you feel better, but if you believe that she is any less a champion of the progressive ideals that many would call “Democratic”, you are fooling yourself.
She may have drew first blood by expressing her disgust with the good ole boy Dixiecrat Democratic leadership in the Senate by voting for Republican Speaker Ron Ramsey, but it didn’t have to end this way. The Democratic Party pushed her away just as much more than she pulled away from it.
Bonafide Disaster For Tennessee’s Open Primary System
Posted on September 16, 2008 at 9:55 amJoe Lance reflects on “the Kurita situation“:
This idea of “challenging bona fides” doesn’t sit well with me. And it doesn’t even make much sense, if you think about it: after all, what does party registration mean, when each major party strives to put up the biggest tent, and therefore each attracts ideological opposites to stand warily alongside each other?
SEE ALSO: Silence
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Cost of Legal Challenge May Be Prohibitive For Kurita
Posted on at 7:01 amThe Associated Press speaks to Kurita attorney, former Senator Bob Rochelle:
Rochelle said any legal challenge would likely be based on due process grounds. He said Kurita didn’t have the power to subpoena witnesses at the hearing, and the case did not have to follow rules of evidence used in courts.
“The allegation would be that the hearing was a facade, and that she was entitled to a fair hearing,” Rochelle said.
But the cost of an appeal in federal court could play a large role in whether Kurita decides to take that route, he said.
“It’s a difficult and an expensive situation,” Rochelle said.
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A Dissenting View
Posted on September 15, 2008 at 10:01 amThe oft-ornery, contrarian Jeff Woods takes a different view of the political demise of Senator Rosalind Kurita at the hands of the Tennessee Democratic Party Executive Committee:
It’s not that the senator voted against John Wilder for speaker. Wilder was part of the Democrats’ problem. With his alliance with Republicans, he held power for power’s sake. He never tried to advance Democratic Party policies. He opposed most of them, in fact. So Kurita could have voted to oust Wilder to elevate a real Democrat to the speakership. Senate Democrats should have banded together and done that many years ago.
But Kurita voted against Wilder and gave Senate control to the Republicans. To a Democrat, that has to be unforgivable. The only way for Democrats to push their policies through the legislature is to impose party discipline. In the Senate especially, that’s been a foreign concept. That’s why every year the House passes Democratic initiatives only to see them fail in the Senate. Kurita’s ouster sends the message that Democrats finally might be serious about getting something done in state government.
Where The Boys Aren’t
Posted on at 9:24 amSean Braisted takes issue with the meme that those who executed the political lynching of Rosalind Kurita were “good ol’ boys”:
There are an equal number of men and women on the board of the TNDP. There is a man and woman elected to the committee in each of the state senate districts in Tennessee. The chair is a man, the vice-chair is a woman. And while Sasser didn’t vote either way last Saturday (I don’t think he could as he was not an elected member of the committee), the Vice Chair, Elisa Parker, did vote to throw back the election to the county level, and with a 33-12 vote, more women than not voted to accept Barnes’ side of the story. In Nashville, from what I recall, both Jerry Maynard (19) and Will Cheek (21) voted against the measure.
SEE ALSO: Jerry Maynard explains his vote.
Thief
Posted on at 7:25 amCity Paper editor Clint Brewer calls a spade a spade when it comes to what happened to Rosalind Kurita this Saturday:
Tennessee Democrats will have a day of reckoning when it comes to this vote. Sadly, party elders seem to be squandering the leadership of Chairman Gray Sasser, one of the more informed and strategy-minded chairs in recent memory.
Even worse, Tennessee Democrats now appear to care more about politics and holding power than they do actual democracy.
Write-In Ros?
Posted on September 14, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Just as the Tennessee blogosphere seems unanimous in rebuke of the Tennessee Democratic Party Executive Committee’s handling of Tim Barnes’ challenge to the results of the 22nd state Senate District’s Democratic primary, reports and commentary on the decision, including Post Politics, have been similarly unanimous in portraying the decision as a death blow to the political career of Rosalind Kurita.
The tri-county party convention will most certainly, it has been said, decide in favor of Barnes and, with no candidate on the ballot as either a Republican or an independent, victory is assured to Barnes in the general election. Tim Barnes will be the next state Senator from Clarksville.
Or will he?
Remember, the “Senate is Senate,” as they say, and it will be the Senate which has the final say over whether Tim Barnes is seated or not. Just as in the case of Ophelia Ford, the state Senate has the ability to void any election to its body. This would, as in the Ford case, likely lead to a lengthy court fight.
To void the election, Republican would need only a simple majority. The question is, will they have it? Just as it would take 17 votes to unseat a Senator Barnes, so too do the Republicans need 17 votes to keep their majority in the Senate.
Kurita was the famous seventeen vote that installed the first Republican Speaker since Reconstruction. Senator Williams, the former Republican now independent, will almost certainly not vote for a Speaker Ramsey again.
After last week’s news regarding his Republican opponent, it is starting to look more and more likely that the incumbent Independent will keep his seat. If Williams holds, along with the rest of the Democrats, you’ve got a potential speaker Kyle, who, one would expect, would see absolutely no problem with Barnes’s road to the Senate.
But if Ramsey is the next speaker, he, by definition, has his seventeen. Would it be worth the hassle to void the election of Barnes and risk lawsuits and the like just to install an independent Democrat who may or may not support him on crucial issues important to Republicans.
Yes, she will have a personal loyalty to Ramsey. But at the end of the day, no matter what anybody says, the woman is no Republican. She is a progressive. A populist, nanny statist-type of progressive, but a progressive nonetheless.
But is there another way? Can Kurita stay in the Senate without depending on either her local county Democratic officials or Lt. Governor Ramsey?
This is Tennessee, Kurita cannot pull a Joe Lieberman and run as an independent as the filing deadlines for both party candidates and independents are on the same day, in part so as to prevent that very thing.
There is one final recourse, however. In Tennessee, on the fiftieth day before the election, any man or women eligible for an office can file, in each county that makes up the district of the listed office, a Certificate of Write-In Candidacy.
The fiftieth day before this year’s November 4th election is tomorrow, September 15, 2008.
PREVIOUSLY: The Show Trial At The Sheraton
East Tennessee Progressive Says Kurita Decison Bad For Democrats
Posted on at 3:47 pmR. Neal weighs in on the show trial at the Sheraton:
As it is, a distinguished state senator with a long and successful record of advancing progressive legislation on education, health care, equal opportunity for women, and more, a senator who represented the interests of military personnel and their families attached to the 101st Airborne in Clarksville during a time of war, and one of the few women serving in the Tennessee Senate, has been thrown under the bus because of some inside baseball and hard feelings over one political misstep.
Her replacement will not yield the same power, and this diminishes the Democrats’ influence in the Senate whether or not they are able to gain numerical control.
Ironically, the 33 to 11 vote by the TNDB Executive Committee gave Barnes a larger margin of victory (22 votes) than Kurita got in the primary. It helps that they were the votes that actually counted.
PREVIOUSLY:
The Reactions
Past Tense: Oatney On His Support For Mike Faulk
Posted on September 12, 2008 at 11:37 amLongtime supporter and potential constituent, David Oatney, blogs his feeling on the allegations surrounding 4th District state Senate candidate Mike Faulk:
In Mike Faulk’s case, the reality that he knew what the consequences of his actions could be, yet continued engaging in morally deviant behavior speaks to his judgement. Were Faulk not involved in politics, what he did would still be equally henous, but would be a private matter with sad but private consequences. In public life, the kind of behavior Faulk is accused of is a private matter that has very public consequences-it could cost Faulk not only the election, but what appeared to be a very bright political future.
I still consider Mike Faulk a friend, and I probably always will. His saving grace may be that his opponent also has a chequered past , but I’m not sure it is wise to make who can out-philander whom the central issue of an election campaign. Merely because he is a friend does not mean that Mike Faulk deserves victory. He himself has undermined his opportunity and has let down not only his supporters, but the people of the 4th District who deserve much better representation than what we currently enjoy.
Mike Faulk’s “temporal punishment due to sin” may be that he can get the good Lord’s forgiveness, and even the forgiveness of his political friends, but must pay for his actions with his political career.
No Worries
Posted on at 10:36 amSean Braisted makes a funny about the predicament in which Mr. Mike Faulk finds himself:
Under the New Moral Code adopted by the GOP circa September 1st, 2008, Mike Faulk need only admit he did something wrong, offer to marry the young Republican, and they will be lauded for their strong commitment to family values and examples of the redemptive nature of prayer.
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Campfield A Definite Maybe On State Senate Race
Posted on August 20, 2008 at 6:10 amRep. Stacey Campfield on whether he will run for what shall be the open Senate seat of Tim Burchett in 2010 who announced yesterday his intention to run for Knox County Mayor in 2010:
I will say what I have said all along. All things are on the table. I never try to limit myself or my options. I have been receiving a lot of calls today as this story broke (My phone went through two batteries in about 6 hours). My top goal right now is to work as hard as I can to get more Republicans elected to the legislature. We will see how things progress after the November elections.
Ray’s Reasoning For Recount
Posted on August 14, 2008 at 1:51 pmAs has been reported, 8th District state Senate candidate and incumbent Sen. Raymond Finney has petitioned the Tennessee Republican Party for a recount in his election defeat to state Rep. Doug Overbey.
However, at this link, you can see a confidential copy of the official petition for recount outlining the Senator’s reasoning for making the request.
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:
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