Pounds Of Flesh: Running Up The Score On Kurita

By Kleinheider Posted on October 1, 2008 at 2:42 pm

The 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?

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Tags: Gray Sasser, Jim Kyle, John Wilder, Ron Ramsey, Rosalind Kurita, The Tennessee Democratic Party, Tim Barnes