Stockard on the Stump: Tennessee Rep. Ragan calls crossover voters ‘immoral’

The Tennessee Legislature’s most amiable (?) member is battling to keep his seat after a 258-vote loss in the House District 33 Republican primary where he claims Democrats voted illegally.

Rep. John Ragan of Oak Ridge sees no conflict, either, between Tennessee’s standing as an open primary state and a new law requiring voters to be bona fide party members to vote in either a Republican or Democratic primary, a situation creating the political conundrum of our time. Forget about those stinking independents.

Ragan, an accessible yet abrasive 14-year lawmaker, took one on the chin to former Clinton police chief Rick Scarbrough last month. But in the same vein as former President Donald Trump, he can’t take defeat in the Anderson County area.

Ragan contends people who were “legally qualified” to vote in the Republican primary were “negated” by unqualified people.

“The idea that opposition party members will attempt to influence selection of their opponents’ candidates is unethical, and in my mind it’s even immoral,” Ragan says.

The Tennessee Republican Party Executive Committee is set to take up the matter Monday, according to the Tennessee Journal, which also reported Anderson County elected officials urged the party committee not to take up the matter.

They don’t need much reason, either, to reverse the outcome, even though proving crossover voters beat Ragan will be difficult. They could be backing Scarbrough as first-time Republican voters, after all.

The idea that opposition party members will attempt to influence selection of their opponents’ candidates is unethical, and in my mind it’s even immoral.

– Rep. John Ragan, R-Oak Ridge

Figuring out the inexplicable is hard.

Will the committee turn the open primary system on its head to satisfy a lawmaker who has fewer friends than Attila the Hun?

Word has it Republican committee members have already identified some people who crossed over. Whether they’ll be charged with misdemeanors is unclear, although that could be considered a bit of voter intimidation fitting of the retired Air Force pilot’s antics.

It could boil down to this: People in District 33 just got tired of Ragan and wanted new blood.

Even some Republicans in the Legislature are tired of Ragan’s ways, including his penchant for pushing culture-war bills that pit people against each other and cause unwarranted friction. As chairman of the Government Operations Committee, he spent much of last year beating university presidents over the head about students in protected classes.

At the end of this year’s session, Republicans killed his bill that would have prohibited reparations to descendants of slaves.

Going deeper than Ragan’s personal issues, the concept of having an open primary while requiring voters to be bona fide party members is hard to track.

Are Democrats and Republicans going to go back to 2008 and 2010 to see whether Republicans crossed over and voted in Democratic primaries? And what of other Republican primaries in recent years when no Democrat awaited the GOP winner?

Like it or not, the state still has a 60-40 split, and those 40% want to be heard.

Anderson County Elections Administrator Mark Stephens, whose office no longer has anything to do with Ragan’s challenge, points out voters have to exercise their “conscience” at the polls, since Tennessee is an open primary state, poll workers don’t look back to see whether a person voting in the Republican primary is bona fide.

Some Republican lawmakers have been trying to close primaries for years, so leaders threw them a bone this year that only muddies things.

This race could make their case.

“I do believe in five to seven years, Tennessee will be a closed primary state,” Stephens says.

It could come sooner.

But Republicans better be careful or they could go the way of the horse and buggy, much the same as Democrats did in the South over the last two decades. They already hold supermajorities in the Tennessee House and Senate, eight of nine congressional seats, the governor’s office, election commission majorities and control of numerous local governments, even those that are nonpartisan.

Getting greedy could come back to haunt them in just a few years. The question is whether they’re smart enough to stop the snowball before it starts rolling. It could be moving already.

“Who’s gonna play the Opry”

Republican primary outcomes are causing a bit of a domino effect in the Legislature’s leadership posts, mainly in Senate education and House finance committee chairmanships.

The defeat of Sen. Jon Lundberg by Kingsport pharmacist Bobby Harshbarger with the help of his mother, U.S. Rep. Diana Harshbarger and former President Donald Trump, and the upset of state Rep. Patsy Hazlewood by Michele Reneau in Hamilton County created vacancies in the critical positions.

Senate and House speakers won’t announce new chairs until early 2025, but favorites are expected to be Sens. Bill Powers of Clarksville and Dawn White of Murfreesboro for the Senate Education post and Reps. Gary Hicks of Rogersville and Ryan Williams of Cookeville for the House finance leadership role.

Hicks, who already serves as finance subcommittee chairman, says the job remains Hazlewood’s until November, but he notes it is a “prestigious” job lawmakers aspire to hold.

One drawback for Hicks could be his opposition to private-school vouchers, which House Speaker Cameron Sexton is supporting. But Hicks says if selected for finance chairman he would “give it a fair shot” with a roll-call vote. The question never reached the finance committee this year before falling apart in negotiations with the Senate.

For Williams, reported by the Tennessee Journal to be another candidate, elevation to finance chairman would mark a return from irrelevance. Just a few years ago, he held the House Republican Caucus chair’s post until Glen Casada vaulted to the speakership and banished him to the legislative hinterland.

Williams’ office at that point was in a seldom-traveled corner of the Cordell Hull Building in an area reserved for dratted Democrats and other unsavory characters.

Sexton’s ascendance to the speakership gave Williams new life and a chairmanship of the mighty Appropriations Committee, which could be a way to slide him over to finance.

Williams already serves on finance, too, and led the fight to pass a massive business tax break this year after initially challenging it.

The question is whether Sexton wants to reward him further for backing private-school vouchers, which seem to be the driving force behind almost every bill these days.

Stop the gouging

Sen. Charlane Oliver and Rep. Aftyn Behn, both Nashville Democrats, are calling on Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti to join a bipartisan federal task force fighting grocery price gouging.

A letter from Oliver and Behn to the AG shows Tennessee has the nation’s second-highest inflation rate, which makes it harder for folks to go to the grocery store. Their request is for Skrmetti to join the Agricultural Competition Partnership, a group made up of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and 31 state attorneys general, that’s concentrating on cutting food prices by dealing with corporate consolidation and anti-competitive practices in agricultural markets.

“High prices at the grocery store have weighed heavily on Tennessee families, and they deserve to know that their state government is taking every possible step to ensure fairness in the marketplace,” Oliver said in a statement.

Behn, who tried to eliminate the state’s grocery tax this year, pointed out Republican lawmakers voted instead to give billions of dollars in tax breaks to corporations, many of them from out of state.

The Attorney General’s Office has a task force set up to combat President Joe Biden’s policies. It seems only fair for that group of legal experts to get involved in a matter that hits every person at the kitchen table.

For some reason, though, the Stump is not anticipating such a move.

Families First diapers

Young Nashville mother Jasmine Allison says she’s been scraping together enough money to pay for diapers only by the “grace of God.”

But through a new TennCare program offering free diapers to women with children up to age 2, Allison will get a financial boost to keep her 5-month-old son and 2-year-old daughter in clean diapers.

“It will help the baby because he needs ’em and her, because she … runs through diapers like crazy,” Allison says.

The Nashvillian was one of several women applying for the TennCare Families First program during an event Wednesday at Pruitt’s Discount Pharmacy on Dickerson Pike. The state is putting about $30 million toward the diaper program, which is providing recipients up to 100 diapers a month, as part of savings it generates through a Medicaid waiver from the federal government.

Huggies and Cuties are available, and Pampers and Luvs are coming along soon. TennCare and CoverKids members are encouraged to sign up tn.gov/ten ncare and check with pharmacists to see if they’re participating. Since the start of August, 9,000 families have registered.

“Diapers are something every family needs when they have a child and they’re incredibly expensive. It’s really difficult,” Gov. Bill Lee says.

Interacting with the women and their children and understanding they’re in a “more difficult spot, you kind of know that you’re meeting a real need,” Lee adds.

Is expansion needed?

No doubt thousands of people – and babies – across the state will benefit from this program. The question is whether it should be widened to take in another group, the Legislature, for example.

From peeing in office chairs to making crappy arguments on the House and Senate floor, they need something to catch the waste.

“It’s not easy facing up when your whole world is black.” Rolling Stones

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