The 64 Republican seats in the Tennessee House of Representatives would seem to give the House Republican Caucus the ability to choose the Speaker that the Caucus would desire-the nominee of the Republicans' picking, something that didn't happen in the last General Assembly. A source inside the House Republican Caucus has informed The Examiner on the condition of anonymity that at least one outgoing House member is trying to influence the outcome of the Speakers' race, and not necessarily from just within the Republican Caucus.

 

"[Rep.] Joe McCord [R-Maryvile] is trying to cobble together a coalition of losing Democrats and shaky Republicans to insure that Beth Harwell (R-Nashville) is elected Speaker regardless of who the [House Republican] Caucus picks," said the source, who was one of the Republicans re-elected to their House seat Tuesday.

 

If there is any truth at all to this story, it ought to give the reader pause because Tennessee certainly has a history of strange shenanigans when it comes to electing leaders of our legislative bodies that goes well beyond January 2009. In 1987, it appeared as though the late former Lieutenant Governor John Wilder would finally end his long run when Tennessee's Senate Democrats nominated former Democratic Senate Leader (later Tennessee Secretary of State) Riley Darnell of Clarksville for Lieutenant Governor and Speaker of the Senate, but the Republican Caucus nominated Wilder and six Democrats crossed the floor to insure that Wilder remained in power. Wilder did it again in 2005 because then-Republican Senators Mike Williams (R-Maynardville), and Tim Burchett (R-Knoxville) voted for him despite a one-seat Republican Senate majority at the time.

 

Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey insured his own election to the Senate's most powerful post because former Democratic Senator Rosalind Kurita voted for him in addition to members of his own Republican Caucus. And we all know that Kent Williams was made Speaker of the House because of a Wilder-esque maneuver in which the Democrats nominated him and then he voted for himself. To say that something bizarre can't happen in the vote for the Speaker's chair in the House would be ignoring the fact that the bizarre has almost been the routine in the Tennessee General Assembly up to this point in modern history.

 

None of this should be seen as a personal maligning of Rep. Beth Harwell (R-Nashville), who would actually be a fine Speaker of the House in her own right. However, the way in which a person wins that post-one that is in fact probably more powerful, along with the Lieutenant Governor, than the Governor himself in Tennessee-is as important as winning itself, because it ought to be won with honor. With 64 seats in the new House of Representatives, Republicans have nothing if not a clear mandate from the people of Tennessee to govern-indeed it is the loudest and most clear political mandate that the Tennessee Republican Party has ever had. That means that it is not only the right of the House Republican Caucus to nominate the Speaker, but it is the duty of every single Republican in the House to vote for that nominee. Why? Out of respect for the mandate from the voters that the House of Representatives be run by Republicans from top to bottom. No more split committees or Democratic committee chairmen-the voters elected too many Republicans for that practice to continue.

 

Some readers familiar with the history of this writer's political work and the leadership choices he has championed in the past may say "now Oatney, aren't you being a bit of a hypocrite...Joe McCord may be an outgoing Representative, but he is still a concerned citizen. Doesn't he have the right to make his preference for House Speaker known to his successor and others in the hopes that they might support that person? After all, you actively supported your own Representative when he attempted to run for Speaker Pro Tempore two years ago."

 

It is very true that this writer was loud and vocal in his support for Frank Niceley (R-Strawberry Plains) when he ran for House Speaker Pro Tempore two years ago. It was this writer, along with then-Representative Stacey Campfield of Knoxville, who had actively encouraged Niceley to run for the post in the first place. [I believed it would be a wonderful thing for our largely rural district which had been so long neglected under Democratic rule in the Legislature-DMO] There seem to be two critical differences between the Niceley situation two years ago and this alleged attempt by Joe McCord to elect Beth Harwell as Speaker by any means necessary. First, neither myself, then-Representative Campfield, nor any supporter of Frank Niceley in or out of the House went (at least to the knowledge of this writer) to any Democrats to get them to cross over and vote for Niceley to insure Niceley's election as the House Number Two regardless of the vote in the Republican Caucus. Those of us who supported Representative Niceley were willing to accept the verdict of the Republican Caucus, win or lose, and Niceley was ready to vote for Steve McDaniel (R-Parker's Crossroads), who had defeated him in the caucus tally, on the floor had Jason Mumpower been elected Speaker.

 

Secondly, neither myself nor any of Niceley's "citizen" supporters asked for anything in return had Niceley become Speaker Pro Tempore except a "thank you for your support." We believed in Frank so we supported him, and that belief was our only reason for the vocal support that we gave. According to our confidential GOP Caucus source, however, that may not be the case for Joe McCord. "McCord wants to be the next [House Chief Clerk] Burney [Durham]," said the Republican member.

 

Longtime Democratic-appointed House Clerk Burney Durham will likely be replaced in the new Republican order, and supposedly McCord believes that Durham's replacement should be himself. If McCord wanted to stay on the Hill so badly, why didn't he just run for re-election? Perhaps he saw the tsunami coming and figured that his past dalliance with former Democratic House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh would come back to bite him as a regular member in the blood red Republican House?

 

If all Joe McCord is doing is pushing for Beth Harwell for Speaker because he thinks Harwell is a great choice, that is his privilege as a citizen and even as a former member of the House. If McCord is attempting to cobble together the Democratic Caucus and his own peculiar version of the "Naifeh Boys" in order to insure that Harwell is made Speaker so that he can get the House's most plum political appointment, that is a sick perversion of the results of a clear Republican mandate-one that would send all the wrong signals to a Tennessee electorate that has sent a clear message that they don't want their House run the way it "has always been."