Cost of Legal Challenge May Be Prohibitive For Kurita

By Kleinheider Posted on September 16, 2008 at 7:01 am

The 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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Tags: Rite-in Ros, Rosalind Kurita, State Senate, theivery, they stole it, Tim Barnes, Write-in Ros  

Write-In Ros?

By Kleinheider 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

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Tags: Rite-in Ros, Rosalind Kurita, State Senate, theivery, they stole it, Tim Barnes, Write-in Ros  

East Tennessee Progressive Says Kurita Decison Bad For Democrats

By Kleinheider Posted on at 3:47 pm

R. 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

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Tags: lynching, Rosalind Kurita, State Senate, theivery, they stole it, Tim Barnes