“Don’t pi** on my leg and tell me it’s raining” is one of the McWherterisms that stuck with me after covering state government back in the day. Another was the Golden Rule: “He who’s got the gold makes the rules.”
Ned McWherter was a plain-spoken Blue Dog Democrat who never made you guess what was on his mind.
I think I know what he’d say about Rep. Elaine Davis’ House Bill 817, which has been approved in both the state House and Senate but needs some slight tweaking before it can move on to the governor’s desk, where it will undoubtedly be approved and will change the way Knoxville city elections are structured. It will mostly affect the way members of city council are elected.
Elaine Davis
But it probably won’t help Republicans get elected which, of course, is the real aim of the bill, despite claims to the contrary.
Neither Davis, who is new to the General Assembly, nor her Senate sponsor, Frank Niceley, who is not, are eligible to vote in Knoxville city elections. Niceley lives in Strawberry Plains in Jefferson County and takes pride in being a one of the most right-wing senators in Tennessee’s increasingly Paleolithic legislature.
And yeah, there’s a lot of competition for this position, but Niceley keeps lapping his rivals with stuff like wanting to abolish popular elections for U.S. Senators in favor of reverting to the 18th century practice of allowing state legislatures to appoint them; changing the legislature’s street address from John Lewis Boulevard to Donald Trump Drive; and praising Hitler as a self-made man and role model for homeless people who aspire to better lives.
Davis, who lives outside the city limits in south Knox County, made multiple unsuccessful runs for office before walking into a district gerrymandered to fit her résumé.
Sen. Frank Niceley
Both non-Knoxvillians claim they are dabbling in city politics because they are all about protecting the civil rights of Black city voters who are in danger of being disenfranchised, or something, if the current method of electing city officials is allowed to continue.
Granted, lots of people are perplexed by Knoxville city elections, beginning with the fact that they are non-partisan and off-year. City Council candidates run in district primaries held on the last Tuesday in August in odd-numbered years, like 2023, so this state-mandated change could become law right smack in the middle of primary election season (this is something original Senate sponsor Richard Briggs, who also doesn’t live in the city but got queasy about participating in Davis’ charade, wants to change).
The top two vote-getters in the city primaries move on to a citywide runoff election in November. The winners, once elected, have traditionally concerned themselves with local issues rather than partisan politics. The present city council mostly seems to work well together, regardless of party. Republicans want to change that, too.
Knoxville’s minority voters are concentrated in District 6, which is primarily in East Knoxville, although their percentages there have been dwindling in recent years, and they no longer constitute an outright majority. Republican legislators claim they aim to protect these minority voters from having their choices nullified by majority voters in the citywide general elections. Meanwhile, recent history shows that it is increasingly difficult for Republicans to get elected to city office.
Maybe a discussion of the mechanics of city elections is worth having. But the two current sponsors are the wrong people to lead that conversation, which is probably why Davis has sought cover by invoking the name of Pete Drew, a Black former legislator who shares her views about the city’s election method.
What Davis, who started her political career as a Democrat, doesn’t mention is that Drew, a Republican who was elected to the legislature as a Democrat, is now a perennial candidate who sees himself as a threat to every office despite not having won a race since he switched parties in 1982.
Historian Bob Booker, who served as Knoxville’s first Black state legislator in 1966–1972, issued a big horse laugh when he heard that Davis had cited Drew as the inspiration for her foray into city politics. He said the reason Drew hasn’t been able to win another election in 40-plus years of trying isn’t because Drew changed parties – it’s because the Republican Party put him on their payroll, which didn’t sit well with Knoxville’s Black community.
“When we found out that Pete was on the Republican Party’s payroll, we knew we couldn’t trust him anymore,” Booker said. “They’d offered the same deal to me.”
Booker said he opposed the changes in city elections when they were first introduced but believes they have worked out well for his community. It’s fair to say that he does not support the Davis/Niceley Civil Rights Bill of 2023.
Davis’s attempt to cast herself as the reincarnation of Fannie Lou Hamer isn’t helped by the fact that she and her political ally, consultant Erik Wiatr, who makes a living off these races, supported two white city council candidates who lost their district primaries to women of color in 2021 and went on to challenge them in the general election. It didn’t end well for them. Incumbents Seema Singh in District 3 and Gwen McKenzie in District 6 stomped mudholes in their GOP-sponsored opponents.
And now that it’s getting increasingly hard for Republicans to get elected in the city, the GOP has resorted to big government remedies: gerrymandering and brute force.
Look what they’ve done to Nashville, which is trending bluer and more progressive every year. That city, which produces about 40 percent of the state’s sales tax revenue, has been assaulted by the GOP-owned legislature in too many ways to count since the city declined to invite the Republican National Committee to hold its 2024 nominating convention there. Carving the Democrat-favoring city up into three Republican-dominated congressional districts sent secret agent economist/international anti-child trafficking fighter/superstar Andy Ogles to Washington with a résumé that probably made George Santos weep with envy.
So maybe Knoxville should be thankful that Speaker Cameron Sexton and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally (the Oak Ridger who represents a big swath of Knoxvillians who probably don’t even know he’s their senator) didn’t allow their minions to do anything worse to us than let Davis and Niceley pretend to care about civil rights. They’ve got the gold and make the rules. But when that bunch tells you it’s raining, you’d better look up and make sure there are clouds in the sky.
Betty Bean writes a Thursday opinion column for KnoxTNToday.com.