Paul Crilly: Before Republicans got so mean

Betty BeanKnox Scene

Back when my parents were young and broke and saving every penny they could scrape together to buy a house of their own, we lived with my grandparents, which meant that I spent my formative years in a staunch Republican household. My grandparents took my brother and me and as many other kids as they could pack into their Nash Rambler to church and Sunday School every week and were the kindest people I’d ever know. Everybody said Granddaddy looked like Ike. I was proud of that.

When I asked him what the difference between a Republican and a Democrat was, he told me that Democrats believed in easy money and Republicans believed in hard work. That sounded right to me because he worked just about all the time, although he also said if you loved what you did, you’d never work a day in your life. He had a crazy three-octave laugh, a big baritone singing voice and was the youngest son of a Union infantryman, which made him literally a cradle Republican. The church we attended – First Methodist – was founded right after the Civil War by Union veterans, including Parson Brownlow.

People on Granddaddy’s mail route called him the Singing Mailman and crowded around his truck at lunchtime to listen to him sing and play his autoharp. He’d bring home stray kittens and puppies and took part-time jobs directing local church choirs. Although Grandmomma said he was tight as Dick’s hatband and stingy as Jack Benny, he loved to dress up as Santa Claus and hand out gifts and food and sing Christmas carols at the American Sunday School Union’s missions up in coal country every December. He and my grandmother saved all year for those coal camp Christmas parties. He was the skinniest Santa you ever saw, but the kids never seemed to notice.

He paid no attention to the talk he caused downtown when he started including the church custodian’s grandchildren in the crew he hauled to Sunday School, but I got mad enough to fight one of the boys who talked bad about him. When I asked my grandmother why taking kids to church made them mad, she lowered her voice and said “they” didn’t like us bringing Colored People to Sunday School. I said what about “Red and Yellow, Black and White, they are precious in His sight” and she said those boys were probably just mean Democrats.

I realize that this is going the long way around to make the point that Republicans didn’t used to be the kind of people who would crack jokes and spread rumors about an 82-year-old man getting his head bashed in by a lunatic with a hammer.

Nor were they the kind of people who’d storm the Capitol looking to kill the vice president and the speaker of the House just because they were sore losers. And they weren’t the kind of people who’d spread stupid tales about school children using litter boxes or threaten the lives of doctors who wanted us to get vaccinated.

Republicans I grew up knowing were rational people who could defend their political positions without accusing their opponents of wanting to cut off little boys’ peepees.

All this pondering caused me to remember a Republican I used to know who served on the Knox County Election Commission until he voted the wrong way for a commission administrator and got booted for failing to toe the party line. I didn’t agree with him about much because he was extremely conservative and palled around with people like Bill Dunn. He started out deeply suspicious of the election process but changed his mind when he was able to get up close and personal with the way votes were counted. I hadn’t heard a word about him for many years and wondered what happened to him.

So, I went looking for Paul Crilly.

Turns out he isn’t hard to find. The former assistant professor of electrical engineering at UT is now a professor of electrical engineering at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy where he is Cyber Systems section chief. He’s no longer involved in politics, but he pays attention to what’s going on. He confirmed my recollection that he had little confidence in the way votes were being counted by the Democratic majority when he was first appointed to serve on the Election Commission.

He said he checked his Grand Old Party hat at the election commission door after he was appointed, and carefully scrutinized the situation before deciding that there’d been no hanky-panky. Some mistakes and mechanical failures? Yes. But no foul play.

“There was no funny business with the counting. Whoever won could know they won fair and square,” he said. “Going in, I was pretty skeptical – probably a little cranky – about early voting. But I found out that some of that was ignorance on my part. Nobody could really hack into the machines. In the end, I had complete confidence in the voting process. Didn’t see any slipups, although they do happen sometimes – my wife got an absentee ballot in the mail but didn’t ask for one. Those are the kind of things that still bother me.”

Crilly served from 2001-2011 when he was not reappointed because he voted to keep incumbent administrator Greg Mackay – a Democrat – on the job for another term after the new Republican majority took over (it was technically illegal to fire election commission staff for partisan reasons, but nobody paid much attention to that).

“When they asked me who I was going to support, I said ‘I’m going to vote for the best person.’ And that person was Greg. I just had more confidence in him,” Crilly said.

“So next time they made appointments, they booted me off the commission. They were determined to put a Republican on there.”

Crilly doesn’t have any regrets or hard feelings and is still a Republican although he’s not involved in politics anymore. He supported John Kasich for president in 2016 and wishes Trump had been “more presidential.” He’s “not impressed” with “all this conspiracy stuff.”

Crilly’s only run for elected office ended in defeat when rising GOP star Jamie Woodson beat him out in the Republican primary for a state House seat in 1998. A couple of years later, she nominated him to the Election Commission vacancy, and he says he enjoyed his work there, but is content no longer being in the fray.

“There’s a place for good honest debate, he said. “And I would still vote for a Republican for governor or the legislature, but I won’t vote for a corrupt Republican.

“I vote every November, but that’s the extent of my political involvement. When I retire maybe I’ll work as a poll worker or on a library commission. I really like libraries a lot. But I have no desire to run for office. People had a chance to vote for me and they picked somebody else and that’s OK with me.”

Granddaddy would have liked Paul Crilly just fine.

Betty Bean writes a Thursday opinion column for KnoxTNToday.com.

 

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