Tennessee Republican Chairman Chris Devaney was re-elected to another term in that partisan office by the Republican State Executive Committee Saturday. Along with Devaney’s return to position, the SEC voted to send Committeeman Mark Winslow’s resolution giving the State Republican Party an official position on the issue of closed primaries-namely that it would favor them-to the Issues Committee. All the usual suspects are now busy complaining that Representative Debra Maggart, the member who sponsored the original closed primary bull in the last General Assembly, has changed her position on closed primaries. Maggart has not changed her position-she still favors the closed primary, but she also knows that the Republican majority has bigger fish to fry.

This writer also favors closed primaries, but if it doesn’t happen anytime soon, it isn’t the end of the world politically, either (and let us be honest-it isn’t going to happen anytime soon). Not enough support exists within the General Assembly for a closed primary bill to pass during this session, and the move represents such a radical change in the voting system that even many rock-ribbed Republicans question whether making the primaries a closed affair might have a negative impact on party growth.

Much of the open opposition to closed primaries inside the Republican Party is coming from East Tennessee, and that likely has a lot to do with why primaries won’t be closed in the near future. East Tennessee Republicans may have a reputation-one that is much overstated, it should be noted-for being “moderate” Republicans and for not being as conservative as the rest of the State. Those of us who live in the ground in rural East Tennessee can attest that this stereotype isn’t necessarily true, as East Tennessee voters tend to be as conservative and sometimes more so than other parts of the State. One thing East Tennesseans are, however, is a stubborn lot, and they don’t like being told by someone in Nashville that they can’t do what they have always done. The very fact that Tennessee primaries have been fundamentally open for such a long time and that voters have been allowed to choose their primary without party registration is the very reason a lot of rural East Tennessee Republicans are saying they don’t like it. “Who the Hell are they to tell me which ballot I can choose and that I have to register? We’ve not done it that way before.”

While it may seem like a contradiction in terms, that same stubbornness is what made East Tennesseans vote Republican when it wasn’t cool. While the rest of the State was sending Democrats to the General Assembly and to Congress as a matter of course, East Tennessee consistently voted Republican, and it wasn’t just because of the War Between the States-ask an old timer in these parts about the public reaction when the TVA confiscated farmland to build its dams and flood for its lakes. It wasn’t the dam building and the electric power that people had a problem with, but the fact that the TVA never returned land to families which did not flood at all. The federal government-then led by Democrats-was seen to have dealt unfairly with the people here and taken them for granted. Even during the height of the Great Depression, East Tennessee remained a Republican stronghold.

It is because of that loyalty to the GOP of such long standing and longsuffering that localized opposition to closed primaries in East Tennessee may be the straw that breaks the idea for the time being. For all of the talk about the Republicans being the Statewide majority party-and they (we) most certainly are-the geographic base of the GOP in Tennessee is still at its strongest east of the Cumberland Plateau. If support for closed primaries is not widespread in East Tennessee, the issue will not resurface again for a very good while indeed.