Newscoma

In a quote from a Jackson Sun in a story about Tennessee delegates in Denver for what could prove to be one of the most historic democratic conventions of my lifetime, I found this quote which I thought was right on topic.

James Buckley, a delegate from Antioch, hopes Obama and Clinton supporters can show unity at the convention.

“Verbal dissent should be placed in the appropriate place: in the baggage before we leave,” said Buckley, 59, a union representative in the Nashville office for the United Steelworkers.

But Buckley is realistic about the potential for public dissent.

“Of course we will, we’re Democrats,” Buckley said. “First we have to b—- about it,” then move on.”

Heh.

The city of Jackson has been held accountable for legal fees incurred due to a public records lawsuit.

The city of Jackson must pay The Jackson Sun more than $41,000 in legal fees and expenses for a public records lawsuit the newspaper filed against the city.

Chancellor James F. Butler ruled in the case Tuesday citing a statute in the state Public Records Act that allows a court to assess all reasonable costs involved in obtaining a public record from a government entity that has willfully refused to disclose it.

Snip

In the 2005 lawsuit, The Sun said that city officials wrongly denied access to public records and failed to respond to the newspaper’s request for those records. The newspaper contended that the city either wrongly claimed the requested records, were not open to the public or ignored the requests.

The newspaper was seeking access to three groups of information:

Field interview cards, which are police files created when officers stop citizens, question them and sometimes photograph them without making an arrest.

Financial records for the Diamond Jaxx, whose owners had notified the city of plans to relocate because of consecutive years of losses.

The January 2005 911 tape of a call made by a victim in the Tennessee Department of Transportation garage shooting involving David Lynn Jordan.

 The story is here.

Don McLeary is being featured today in the Sunday edition of The Jackson Sun. You remember Don, don’t you, the democrat who was a state senator who jumped parties a couple of years back

Then Lowe Finney beat him in the November 2006 elections. I’ve written about McLeary several times over the years here, here, here and here.

The story is interesting. It’s actually fair on a lot of levels but the thing I’ve said since McLeary made the jump, lost the race and then decided to run against Harris for the Madison County Mayor’s slot is that you aren’t really going to know who your friends are because are you their friend. When you do the sort of whirlwind dance that McLear has done on the local political scene, you make enemies. The story says this:

The same convictions that got him to the state Senate are also what drove him to cast a career-devastating vote against a partisan colleague.

And the convictions that led McLeary to switch parties and give his one-time allies time to groom his replacement in Nashville are the same ones that pushed him to become a surprise candidate for county mayor in the Feb. 5 Republican primary.So far, that run has been met with reluctant support and criticism from some one-time backers, who say challenging interim Madison County Mayor Jimmy Harris should not be McLeary’s battle.

Still, McLeary maintains he has the experience and eagerness to cull the best from a mostly powerless position.

But he also admits that if he loses in February, there won’t be much ability to run left in his legs.

McLeary should have let the fervor die down over his convictions (and I’m sure he has them but I still think that’s the weakest part of the story by the Sun. My first post written about him was called Actions Create Reactions. Two years later, I think I was right on this.) He should have waited before seeking another elected seat if he wanted to stay in public office. I’m not knocking his convictions, I’m knocking his decisions because they were very poorly thought out.

It was dumb politics.

Finney has the Senate seat, most likely, as long as he wants it. The Harris race is a different creature, but he is the incumbent (I admit openly I don’t know a ton about him other than what I’ve read.)

Trust is important in politics because it’s hard to discern. And in partisan politics, loyalty is everything.

The question no one is asking is McLeary loyal to his party and to those voters who put him in the Senate or is he loyal to his own objectives.  Because the voters put McLeary in Nashville as a democrat.

And they took him out.

Just saying.

Reports that Mike McWherter isn’t going to run against Sen. Lamar Alexander have surfaced this morning around the blogosphere.

I’ll be honest, I know nothing, but I’m wondering a couple of things.

First of all, would the Lott resignation and Alexander immediately looking at seeking  his Republican Whip position be part of McWherter’s reasoning not to run. When you think about it, and Sean Braisted has it right, the Dems most likely won’t sink a lot of money in the campaign. There was a certainty to McWherter seeking the seat (or at least the illusion of one) less than two months ago.

Would recent events, combined with former Sen. Fred Thompson’s decision to seek the presidency, force McWherter back into the shadows? And when I say shadows, I basically mean back into a pretty cushy position of being a kingmaker and not one of the kings (elected folks) as McWherter has been very successful in some campaigns around the state, including Sen. Lowe Finney’s.

Another thing really hinges on whether or not McWherter wanted to run in a race that he didn’t have a guaranteed win. McWherter’s father, Ned, was very popular during his time in Nashville. A loss is not something that the younger McWherter even wants to chance right now. It’s a lot of money, a year’s worth of campaigning and a tight race.

For one thing, it’s a loss for northwest Tennessee, who after years of being power hitters in the state’s capital when Ned was there (and even from the day’s of Fats Everett while he was in Congress in the sixties) has seen a decline of power. Sure, Jimmy Naifeh is the house speaker, Philip Pinion is the chair of house transportation commission, but those positions don’t have, for lack of a better word, the sexiness that Ned’s glory years did in the past.

In some ways, most likely McWherter had a better chance of beating Alexander than anyone else. On the other hand, I can’t help but wonder why he pushed for it across the state, then backed up.

Curious. I guess that’s why they call it an exploratory committee.

Apparently McWherter found something in his explorations he didn’t like.

Oh, Coach and former Sen. Don Mcleary. How I question your brain cells? Yeah, it’s official. He was campaigning on Black Friday in Jackson, where he will be seeking the Madison County Mayor’s slot.

I want to be the people’s mayor,” McLeary said.

Yeah, but your competition is the guy that helped you switch parties.

Harris responded in a telephone interview that he had been “a very big supporter and contributor” to McLeary’s campaign last year. McLeary had been a Democrat but switched to the Republican party during his re-election bid to the District 27 state senate seat.

He lost the election to Jackson attorney Lowe Finney, a Democrat.

He’ll start his campaign bang-shang-lang next month:

McLeary said he and his family will begin campaigning Monday with a 60- to 70-stop tour of Madison County. Harris said Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey will headline his Christmas campaign kickoff event at 5 p.m. Dec. 11 at the Old English Inn.

Current Madison County Mayor Jimmy Harris must be growling mad.

Mr. Mcleary, you aren’t going to have a friend of the world by the end of 2008 if you keep this up.

I told you this would continue.