[UPDATE]:
[UPDATE] 2:
Pith reports that state Dem leaders saw this debacle coming but were powerless to stop it (why I have no clue. How about a campaign that says “DON’T JUST VOTE FOR THE FIRST NAME ON THE LIST THEY’RE PROBABLY DUMBASSES. THINK BEFORE YOU VOTE.” Whatever). Anyway, Mary Mancini’s name is being floated to replace Roy Herron, and I think it’s a damn good idea. She’s probably tuckered out from the state senate race though.
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Unless this is some kind of scam, this is the guy who won the Democratic nomination for the Governor’s race in yesterday’s primary. His “maine intention” is to bring the Bible back to schools, he wants to raise the state speed limit to 80, tells everyone to join the NRA, and wants to “buy hugh deers for our Wild Life areas.”
His was the first name on the ballot; as we’ve seen in the past (*cough*cough*Mark Clayton*cough*cough), the first name on the ballot is usually the craziest mo-fo hoping to scam state Democrats into the nomination. Looks like it’s working. (No, I did not vote for him. I would not be scammed.)
This is a ginormous embarassment for the TNDP. Another illiterate clown running on the TNDP ticket. I don’t understand why we can’t find a decent Democrat for these races. Yes, Bill Haslam will most likely win but for crying out loud, a campaign now lays the groundwork for future races.
I just don’t get it. Why does the TNDP want to be associated with illiterates and buffoons?
Southern Beale 
OMG
He’s from my home county.
However, I do agree about protecting the Catoosa WMA from Haslam’s attempts to sell it off to his cronies.
I just fired off an angry letter to Roy Herron. I am sure he won’t bother to answer or will send a form letter.
God bless a;ll the people in his district. Clearly the teachers in his life never had the chance to touch him.
Feel the empathy from us South Carolina Dems. A few years back, we wound up electing Alvin Greene as our candidate for a Senate seat. Then the question became: Who?
As the NYT accurately reported, “Because everyone wants to know how Mr. Greene, an unemployed Army veteran who had been completely unknown until Tuesday, inexplicably defeated a heavily favored former legislator and judge to become the state’s Democratic nominee for the Senate — and the state’s latest political circus act.
“Mr. Greene had just a few peaceful hours to savor his victory in the tiny, ramshackle home he shares with his elderly father along a quiet highway in Manning, where he has been bunkered since election night. Then, The Associated Press reported that Mr. Greene was arrested in November and is facing a felony obscenity charge; he is accused of showing pornography to a University of South Carolina student. He had been discharged ‘involuntarily’ from the Army and showed no signs of having waged an actual campaign in recent months — no advertising, no staff, no money.
“Mr. Greene, who declined to comment on the obscenity charge, would not say how he came up with the $10,440 to register his candidacy. Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina and the House majority whip, suggested that Mr. Greene was a ‘Republican plant’ and that the circumstance reeked of the ‘shenanigans’ that have become the state’s trademark.”
>>>Why does the TNDP want to be associated with illiterates and buffoons?
So they can appeal to the Republican base?
Yes, SB, you are correct on all counts including the fact that Roy Herron did not support a single ‘good’, viable, competent candidate. He did support G. Gordon Ball, the ‘cough’, ‘cough’ Dem in NAME ONLY. Ball jumped in after our awesome VETERAN, Small business owner and true Democrat, Terry Adams because of support from the GOP. Roy Herron never recognized ANY of our STATE- wide candidates. Ball announced 3 weeks ago that he was so rich that he was just going to pay for his own campaign. What he did not reveal is that he is/or was a Republican and lawyer who works for Pilot Oil and Haslam. And Terry ran a super campaign all across the State, put together a great team, then lost by less than 1,000 votes. And our John McKamey WAS a super candidate, but he even wrote a piece about the “alphabet” would get in his way of his winning the Primary…as Charlie Brown was the first name on our Dem Ballot. Plus Brown didn’t even campaign. John had great grass roots support but had very little money and great endorsements. So y’all are correct. Our voters have doomed themselves of 4 more years of Haslam, Alexander and the GOP for 4 more years. We worked so hard across this State for BOTH candidates, but here it is hard to win with no millions, in an honest campaign.
Actually, that is not the case. Herron was among those who recruited Adams to run in the first place. I saw him at an Adams fundraiser in Nashville.
But Herron probably does bear some responsibility for Brown — as equally does the TNDP Executive Committee, which has done nothing whatsoever to fix this kind of problem in the two years since the Clayton debacle. They could have kicked him off the ballot earlier this year when they did that to Clayton (two years too late, but still…), but I guess they were too busy bitching at Herron and thinking about getting good seats at the next bean supper or national convention. Chairman, legal counsel, executive committee members, county chairs of the Tennessee Democratic Party — it seems to me they are all falling down on the job.
And Mary Mancini is an OK person, but do we really think another East Nashville coffee house hipster is what we need as State Chair? I mean, really, has the unparalleled disaster that was Chip Forrester already disappeared from people’s minds?
….but do we really think another East Nashville coffee house hipster is what we need as State Chair?
She doesn’t live in East Nashville, actually. She lives in Woodland-In-Waverly. Clear on the other side of town. And it’s not like we’ve had a plethora of East Nashville hipsters running the TNDP, either. Nice little progressive stereotype you’ve got there, too bad it’s not even close to being true.
TNDP needs an overhaul. Progressives have long been kicked under the bus by the start party, when we’re the ones doing the work. Has a woman ever been in charge of the state party? I don’t know but it would certainly be a breath of fresh air.
OK, Ms. Literal, the point is this. As good as Mary Mancini is — and she would have been a good State Senator for her district — she just doesn’t know a damn thing about Tennessee outside of the music clubs and the coffee houses of Nashville. That doesn’t necessarily reflect badly on her, but it’s true, and it makes her unlikely to succeed as chair.
You tell me how she is going to recruit and strategize for a state legislature seat in, say, Paris or Tullahoma or Cookeville. Or do the fundraising necessary in Chattanooga, Knoxville and Murfreesboro. And, believe it or not, we will never win back a majority in Tennessee if we cannot compete outside of Nashville and Memphis.
Forrester and his crew never got it: you cannot win by doing GOTV in Nashville. And it really doesn’t matter if a chair is as pure as the driven snow on every issue. In fact, we don’t even need to know where he or she stands on issues at all. We need to know that he or she can run the party, get the job done, and win some elections. So we need a chairperson with a statewide perspective and a statewide strategy to win, not an acceptable issue list for the idealists.
And, yes, to answer your question, Jane Eskind was chair of the TNDP and did a pretty good job of it,
That’s bullshit. Mancini ran Tennessee Citizen Action for years, they lobbied the state legislature on issues affecting working people all across the state. She’s been to rural communities on worker’s rights and healthcare issues. Why don’t you just admit it, you don’t know a damn thing about her, you’ve just got some kind of anti-progressive, anti-Nashville stick up your ass.
And you can knock Nashville all you want but that’s where the money is. Good luck finding anything but a DINO outside Nashville, Chattanooga and Memphis. And those people won’t raise one penny. There’s no money in Tullahoma and Murfreesboro, what the hell are you even talking about?
I don’t know why you keep bringing up Chip Forrester. He and Mancini are absolutely nothing alike except both live in Davidson County. You seem to have a problem with Nashville. I suggest you pull out a map and remind yourself where the state capital is. It’s not Murfreesboro.
Oh please. Check my posts at any site over the past 10 years, and it will take you three minutes to see that I am as liberal, if not more so, than anyone around, including you. And I call myself a liberal, rather than progressive, because I am not afraid of the label. I doubt that you and I don’t disagree much on any issue you can name, except apparently who can be an effective and successful Democratic chair.
Reread my post. I didn’t say we should raise money in Tullahoma. I used Tullahoma as an example of a place we used to have Democrats in office, especially in the General Assembly, and as a place we need to be able to recruit candidates and plan a winning strategy to elect them. Look, if we can’t start winning in places like that, we can’t have enough Democrats in office to put the skids on the teabagger crazies. And the difference in my and some of my fellow liberals is that I am a lot more interested in actually winning elections than in making sure a state or county chair has voted and talked exactly the way I want him or her to over the course of a lifetime. I just doubt that Mary would be effective in planning a statewide strategy. I’m sorry she lost her Senate seat; she would have been more effective there than as state party chair.
And there is indeed plenty of money in Murfreesboro (again, for example). Some of the party’s best donors (and one of the biggest) live there, but have dried up with Forrester and Herron. I hope the next chair (Herron has zero chance of getting reelected) will be an effective fundraiser. I don’t like the importance of money in politics, but I can’t wish it away.
<facetious>Because they don’t think the Republicans should have all the fun?</facetious>
Or, y’know, what andyaxel said.
🙂
Here in California, there’s a whole system designed precisely to prevent the first person on the ballot from having an advantage. The Secretary of State creates a randomized alphabet and lists the candidates in order according to the randomized version rather than the conventional alphabet. Then they start at a different point in the order in each precinct. It makes counting the vote more complicated, but it eliminates the risk that a candidate will win just because they’re first on the ballot.
We need something like that here. But also, our state party did kick Mark Clayton off the ballot this time, they could’ve kicked Charlie Brown off too if they’d been a little more on the ball.
First, Mary Mancini would do a great job at Party Chair. She has a good work ethic, she’s smart, and I believe she would see the importance of AT LEAST trying to be competitive in rural areas. Good lord, if we could at least make the R’s spend money in those areas, it would be an accomplishment. But for the last 10 years or so, the State party has ignored Robertson County. Our County chairs have been a joke, from Farmer to that kid would was duped by the Repubs and ended up in jail. (Can’t remember his name, I’m getting old) They keep sending 20 yr old Nashville kids here to help run marginal candidates in tough campaigns. (See, Carneal, Paul) We have no Party infrastructure here whatsoever. But I fully agree with the idea that if we don’t ever get competitive outside of metro Nashville, we will continue to be irrelevant.
Some of the Davidson County chairs have been a joke, too. We had a pedophile a few years ago. The executive committee has been full of good ol’ boys who just want to yak on the golf course. I remember showing up at TNDP’s Nashville HQ waaaay back during the Gore-Lieberman campaign and offering to volunteer, and being given the brush-off. The state party has been in disarray for a LONG time and needs a complete overhaul. Framing the issue as rural vs urban areas completely misses what’s wrong with the party as a whole.
I say Southern Beale for Congress and Mack for her special envoy to the Frisbee Golflympics!
Hey Demo! Did you change email address? Mail to you has been returned.
Mack:
I did but it was a while back. I’ll send you one, let me know if you get it.