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Poll shows just over one week from Nashville mayoral race, O’Connell leads pack
The first poll in the Nashville mayor’s race since businessman Jim Gingrich suspended his campaign on July 17 shows Metro Councilmember Freddie O’Connell leading the field. The poll was conducted by Washington-based GBAO Strategies on behalf of the Tennessee Laborers PAC July 17-19 and surveyed 500 local voters. GBAO has conducted polls for the Laborers […]
Dancing backwards in high heels
In his 1978 book “The World According to Garp,” John Irving wrote, “In this dirty-minded world you are either somebody’s wife or somebody’s whore, or fast on your way to becoming one or the other.” While I don’t agree with Irving, there’s some applicability in how politics treats women who run for office or serve […]
O’Connell mayoral campaign snaps up former team of Jim Gingrich in Nashville
The campaign team of former Nashville mayoral candidate Jim Gingrich, who suspended his campaign on Monday, will join the staff of Metro Councilmember Freddie O’Connell. Sources in both campaigns say the Gingrich staff took an internal vote on which candidate to move to, after almost a week of wooing by other candidates. “We are incredibly […]
Gov. Ron DeSantis woos Tennessee Republicans at state party dinner
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, wooed more than 1,850 Tennessee Republicans at the state party’s annual fundraising dinner in Nashville, an event at which the specter of former President Donald Trump loomed. State Republican officials said the event was one of, if not the largest events of its […]
As COVID-19 emergency orders end, more than 31,000 lose TennCare coverage
More than 31,000 Tennesseans have lost health care coverage as the state’s safety net insurance program winds down from the COVID public health emergency. An “unwinding report” obtained by the Tennessee Lookout documents that, as of April, slightly more than 80,000 people were eligible to have TennCare coverage renewed. Of those, more than 21,500 failed […]
Former Democratic Tennessee lawmaker Roy Herron dies after jetski accident
Roy Brasfield Herron, former state lawmaker and former chair of the Tennessee Democratic Party, died in Nashville’s Vanderbilt University Medical Center on Sunday, one week after sustaining injuries in a jetski accident on Kentucky Lake. He was 69. “Roy loved his family with all his might,” said the Rev. Nancy Carol Miller-Herron, Roy’s spouse of 36 […]
Nashville Justice League launches to help progressive city council candidates
The Nashville Justice League, a political action committee comprised of progressive organizations, is relaunching in time to support candidates in the Aug. 3 Metro Nashville municipal elections. Founded in 2019 by the Central Labor Council of Nashville and Middle Tennessee, TIRRC Votes and The Equity Alliance, the organization executed grassroots campaigns on behalf of 15 […]
What you do matters.
After spending a few days in Washington, D.C., recently for an editors conference, I found myself with a few hours before my plane back to Nashville and decided to go to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The museum opened in early 1993; three decades later, it was still packed, and that’s a good thing. […]
Federal court temporarily halts Tennessee ban on transgender care for minors
In a partial victory for transgender Tennesseans, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday on portions of new law prohibiting trans minors from obtaining gender affirming care, ruling the law likely violates the First and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. Judge Eli Richardson granted the injunction to the plaintiffs — among them, parents […]
Federal prosecutors will not oppose request for subpoena of texts, phone records in Cothren, Casada case
Prosecutors will not oppose a request by attorneys for Cade Cothren, former chief of staff to former Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada, to subpoena records between Cothren and a potential witness in the upcoming trial of Casada and Cothren on federal bribery, theft and kickback charges. The response by prosecutors, filed in federal court on […]
Shelby County Schools sued after banning “School Board Five” from meetings
Five Memphis education advocates have filed suit against the Shelby County Board of Education and the district’s chief safety and security officer, alleging their First and 14th Amendment rights have been violated after they were banned from attending school board meetings. Tikeila Rucker, Rachael Spriggs, Damon Curry-Morris, Amber Sherman and Lajuana Abraham — also know […]
What’s in a name? Translating Tennessee’s laws
Tennessee lawmakers like to give fancy names to laws that don’t remotely represent what the titles suggest. For instance, Gov. Bill Lee on June 5 ceremoniously signed the Transportation Modernization Act at a table by the side of Donelson Pike in Nashville, surrounded by a clutch of lawmakers as airplanes from the nearby Nashville International […]