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Conservative effort to oust Tennessee Supreme Court justices fails
Three of the court’s five justices were targeted in retention election
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com
NASHVILLE (CFP) — Conservative critics of Tennessee’s Supreme Court have failed in their campaign to oust three of the court’s five justices, which would have given Republican Governor Bill Haslam the power to appoint a new majority on the state’s highest court
Chief Justice Gary Wade
Tennessee voters decided to retain Chief Justice Gary Wade and Justices Cornelia Clark and Sharon Lee in the August 7 vote. The three targeted justices were all appointed by former Democratic Governor Phil Bredesen.
In Tennessee, justices don’t run directly for election, but voters decide every eight years if they should be retained. The Supreme Court also has the power to appoint the state’s attorney general, which uniquely in Tennessee is neither elected nor appointed by the governor.
Support for retention of all three justices topped 55 percent.
Critics of the three justices accused them of being soft on crime, particularly in death penalty cases. The effort to oust them was lead by Republican Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey and supported by Americans for Prosperity, a political operation funded by the billionaire Koch brothers from Kansas.
The justices raised and spent more than $1 million defending their record.
Tennessee primary: Lamar Alexander wins, Scott DesJarlais in cliffhanger
Alexander beats back Tea Party U.S. Senate challenger; DesJarlais battles to keep U.S. House seat amid messy personal scandal
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
NASHVILLE (CFP) — U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander has taken a major step towards securing a third term by easily beating back a Tea Party-inspired GOP primary challenge from State Rep. Joe Carr.
U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander
Alexander took 50 percent of the vote in the August 7 primary, where he faced Carr and five other challengers. Carr, who had the support of Tea Party and outside conservative groups that had targeted Alexander for defeat, took 41 percent.
Alexander was one of five sitting Southern Republican senators targeted in primaries this year. All five survived.
In a closely-fought Democratic primary, Gordon Ball, a former federal prosecutor, narrowly defeated Terry Adams, a Knoxville attorney, by less than 2,000 votes. Ball will face Alexander in November.
After a fractious primary in which half of the voters from his own party voted for someone else, Alexander, 74, sounded a note of conciliation in his victory speech at a Nashville pizza parlor, reaching out not only to his GOP opponents but also to Democrats and independents.
“After we make our speeches, we’re going to have to roll up our sleeves, get together, work with each other and get something done,” he said. “That’s the Tennessee way. That’s the American way.”
Meanwhile, in Tennessee’s 4th District, with some absentee and provisional ballots still to be counted, incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais held a lead of just 35 votes over his primary challenger, State Senator Jim Tracy, amid a messy personal scandal that took a toll on DesJarlais’s popularity.
U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais
Given the district’s strong GOP tendencies, the GOP nominee will be favored for re-election in November over Democrat Lenda Sherrell, a retired accountant from Monteagle.
DesJarlais, 49, was facing voters for the first time since lurid details emerged from the case file of his bitter 2001 divorce from his first wife. In it, the congressman admitted having a string of extra-martial affairs and — perhaps even more damaging for an avowed right-to-life lawmaker — encouraging his then-wife to have two abortions.
DesJarlais (pronounced Dez-yar-lay), a medical doctor, also admitted having relationships with two female patients, which prompted the Tennessee State Board of Medical Examiners to reprimand him for unprofessional conduct and fine him $500.
Details about DesJarlais’s divorce became an issue in his contentious 2012 re-election campaign, which he won with just 56 percent of the vote. However, he successfully fought to prevent release of the full transcript of the case file until after the election.
Chris McDaniel wants Mississippi GOP to name him winner of U.S. Senate runoff
McDaniel slams supporters of U.S. Senator Thad Cochran for “dirty tricks”
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
JACKSON, Mississippi (CFP) — Citing widespread voting irregularities, State Senator Chris McDaniel is asking the Mississippi Republican Party to overturn the results of the June 24 primary runoff and declare him the U.S. Senate nominee instead of incumbent Senator Thad Cochran.
State Senator Chris McDaniel
“They asked us to put up or shut up. Here we are. Here we are with the evidence,” McDaniel said at an August 4 press conference. “What we’re going to show is a pattern of conduct on the part of a number of people that demonstrates a problem with this election. The evidence is clear.”
“We saw the dirty tricks. We saw the dirty money come from Washington D.C.,” he said. “Through the actions they took, they moved more than 40,000 Democrats into the Republican primary, and in so doing, mistakes were made.”
McDaniel led Cochran in the first round of voting on June 3. But after making direct appeals to Democratic and independent voters to cross over and vote in the runoff, Cochran erased McDaniel’s lead and won by 7,667 votes.
About 67,000 more people voted in the runoff than in the primary, and in Hinds County — which includes the predominantly black city of Jackson — Cochran’s margin of victory was 11,000 votes, nearly double what it was in the first round.
State law only allows voters to cross over to vote in the Republican runoff if they didn’t vote in the Democratic primary in the first round. McDaniel’s attorney, Mitch Tyner, said there were at least 3,500 crossover votes that should not have been allowed.
Tyner also said another 9,500 votes were “irregular,” and 2,275 absentee ballots were improperly cast. Those votes, together, are more than Cochran’s margin of victory.
McDaniel is asking the executive committee of the Mississippi Republican Party to declare him the winner, rather than calling for a new election.
“We anticipate that after they review the challenge that they’ll see Chris McDaniel clearly, clearly won the Republican vote on the runoff,” Tyner said. He said the state party doesn’t rule on the challenge in 10 days, McDaniel will go to court to overturn the election.
McDaniel also asked the executive committee to hold a public hearing to consider the evidence his supporters have collected.
“This is an opportunity for our party to take the lead on honest, good and transparent government,” he said.
U.S. Senator Thad Cochran
Responding to McDaniel’s challenge, Mark Garriga, an attorney for Cochran’s campaign, said “we are dedicated to the defense of the votes of those Mississippians who voted on June 24 for Thad Cochran as their United States Senator, an election which has been as thoroughly reviewed and examined as any in modern Mississippi history.”
“The filing of this challenge marks the point where this matter moves from an arena of press conferences and rhetoric into a setting where nothing matters but admissible evidence and the rule of law,” Garriga said in a statement.
The bitter Senate race in Mississippi pitted Cochran and the state’s Republican establishment against Tea Party activists and outside conservative groups — such as the Senate Conservatives Fund, FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth — that strongly backed McDaniel.
Cochran was one of five Southern Republican senators targeted in primaries this year. Four of them survived, with a fifth race to be decided August 7 in Tennessee.
View video of McDaniel’s press conference:
Poll: Arkansas U.S. Senate race is still a dead heat
Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton’s slight lead over U.S. Senator Mark Pryor is within the margin of error
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
LITTLE ROCK (CFP) — Less than four months before election day, a new poll in the U.S. Senate race in Arkansas shows a statistical toss-up between Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Pryor and his Republican challenger, U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton.
U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton
The Talk Business & Politics/Hendrix College poll of 1,780 likely voters showed Cotton with 44 percent support, compared to 42 percent for Pryor. That was within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 2.3 percentage points.
The latest poll showed a slight shift from April, when Pryor held a 3-point advantage over Cotton. But the race still remains a toss-up, despite a deluge of negative television ads aired by both campaigns and their allied outside groups.
U.S. Senator Mark Pryor
Cotton partisans have hit Pryor for his ties to President Barack Obama, particularly his vote in favor of Obamacare. Pryor and his advocates have hit Cotton as being a tool of outside billionaires and out of touch with Arkansas voters, highlighting his votes against the federal farm bill and disaster relief.
In the latest poll, Cotton held a nearly 17-point margin over Pryor among independent voters. But Pryor held a 5-point lead among female voters and a whopping 57-point lead among African-Americans, who make up about 16 percent of Arkansas’s population.
David Perdue wins Georgia GOP Senate runoff
Perdue defeats U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston and faces Democrat Michelle Nunn in November
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
ATLANTA (CFP) — First-time candidate David Perdue has taken a major step toward securing a seat in the U.S. Senate by narrowly winning the Republican runoff for Georgia’s open seat.
U.S. Senate nominee David Perdue
Perdue, a businessman from St. Simons Island, defeated U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, 59, an 11-term congressman from from Savannah, with 51 percent of the vote to 49 percent for Kingston.
Perdue led after the first round of primary voting on May 20. Although Kingston secured endorsements from the third and fourth place finishers in the crowded primary, Perdue carried the vote-rich Atlanta suburbs in the runoff to claim victory.
Perdue will now face Democrat Michelle Nunn, the daughter of former Georgia U.S. Senator Sam Nunn. Despite the Peach State’s Republican tilt, recent polling has shown a potentially competitive race this fall.
Perdue made clear in his victory speech that he plans to tie Nunn, who is running for office for the first time, to President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders in Washington.
“We’ve got a mission in front of us. Our opponent should not be taken lightly,” he said. “This fall, we’re going to have a clear choice. And that is a choice we’re going to have to win for our kids and grandkids. We’ve had enough of this the last six years.”
Democratic nominee Michelle Nunn
Nunn, 47, was the CEO of the Points of Light Foundation, affiliated with former Presdent George H.W. Bush.
During the heated runoff campaign, Kingston ran ads attacking Perdue’s conservative bona fides on issues including the Common Core education standards and immigration.
Perdue criticized the veteran congressman for being part of the high-spending Washington establishment.
The seat opened up when U.S. Senator Saxby Chambliss decided to retire.
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