Tag: State Sen. Mae Beavers

Mark Pody Favored to Win Special Election to State Senate on Tuesday

Tim Dukeman

State Rep. Mark Pody (R-Lebanon), the Republican nominee in Tuesday’s special election in Tennessee’s 17th State Senate District, is heavily favored to defeat the Democratic nominee Mary Alice Carfi in the traditionally conservative district.. The seat was vacated by longtime incumbent State Senator Mae Beavers (R-Mt. Juliet), who resigned the seat in August to run for the Republican nomination for governor of Tennessee. Pody is favored in a district that elected Beavers to four consecutive terms in the Tennessee State Senate. In her most recent General Election matchup, she won 62% of the vote in 2010, winning the race by a margin of 24 points. After that resounding defeat, the Democratic Party did not field a candidate against her when she ran for re-election in 2014. Tennessee’s 17th district is heavily Republican, but that is not the only reason to expect a Pody victory. He has also been endorsed by The National Federation of Independent Business, a leading Tennessee small-business association, as the group announced in a statement: “Mark Pody is the clear choice for small business in the special election in Senate District 17,” said Jim Brown, state director of NFIB/Tennessee. “He has earned NFIB’s endorsement with his fiscally responsible approach to managing…

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Mae Beavers Says UT-Knoxville Chancellor Decision to Reinstate Pride Center Shows Disrespect

Tennessee Star Staff
Tennessee Star

  Conservative Republican Gubernatorial candidate State Senator Mae Beavers (R-Mt. Juliet) expressed “disappointment” on Friday night in an exclusive interview with The Tennessee Star that the Chancellor of the University of Tennessee – Knoxville, Beverly Davenport, has announced plans to reinstate the Campus Diversity Office and hire a new Director of the LGBT Pride Center despite the Legislature defunding the highly controversial office last year. Earlier in the evening, Beavers, an announced candidate for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, touched briefly on the issue in her remarks to the Cannon County Republican Party Reagan Day Dinner in Woodbury. It was important, Beavers said in her talk, that we uphold the morals of our country as our Founding Fathers intended. She noted that the diversity department at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville had been mired in controversy, and for those reasons had lost significant state funding in the Tennessee General Assembly’s budgeting process. “They got their money back,” Beavers told the crowd of about 125, then added that the administration at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville then proceeded to hire a head of the “Pride Department.” Williamson County businessman Bill Lee, another announced candidate for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, also spoke at the event,…

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Mae Beavers Will Not Attend Reagan Day Dinner Featuring Announced and Expected GOP Gubernatorial Candidates

Wendy Wilson

  State Sen. Mae Beavers (R-Mt. Juliet) will not attend an event tonight (Thursday) where six other announced and expected Tennessee Republican gubernatorial candidates will be speaking. The event, the Rutherford County GOP Reagan Day Dinner, will  be held at the Stones River Country Club in Murfreesboro at 7 p.m. Beavers had previously been listed as a speaker. Beavers told The Tennessee Star she has a conflict in her schedule and is unable to attend. She hasn’t formally announced an intention to run in the 2018 race but said Wednesday she is still considering it. “We’re still 18 months out,” she said. Beavers said people across the state are encouraging her to run and have offered to help her campaign. She is liked by conservative Republicans who value her fiscal and social conservatism. Those still scheduled to participate in Thursday’s debate include businessmen Randy Boyd and Bill Lee, Congresswoman Diane Black, State Senators Mark Green (R-Clarksville) and Mark Norris (R-Collierville), and Speaker of the State House of Representatives Beth Harwell (R-Nashville). Boyd and Lee are the only ones who have officially announced an intention to run. Click here for more information about the debate.

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The Tennessee Star Tops 1 Million Website Visits in Less Than 4 Months

Admin
Tennessee Star

  FRANKLIN, TENNESSEE (Tuesday, May 23) — Today The Tennessee Star announced its online news site has had ONE MILLION visits since its launch February 6. “The Tennessee Star is the only consistently conservative media outlet in the state of Tennessee. This is a conservative state, and Tennesseans have wanted a fact-based news site with a conservative perspective for many years. That’s what we offer, and that’s why we’ve seen such tremendous traffic,” said Managing Editor Christina Botteri. “People are smart and they want to be informed and not preached at or dictated to, and I believe that is a big part of why we are growing at such a substantial rate – especially compared to other area news outlets,” she said. Judson Phillips, a long-time conservative activist and Tea Party Nation founder agreed. “I am not shocked at the excellent performance of The Tennessee Star.  While the Gannett-owned papers read like newsletters for the Tennessee Democrat Party, The Star goes after important stories that the liberal media will not touch,” Phillips said. While the raw viewership of The Tennessee Star is remarkable, media experts also recognize the impact and influence the upstart news outlet is already having at Legislative Plaza. “Attracting one…

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Senate Passes Joint Resolution to Elect Tennessee’s Attorney General

Christina Botteri
Tennessee Star

State Senator Mae Beavers (R-Mt. Juliet) successfully began the process to amend the Tennessee Constitution to allow the State Attorney General to be elected by a popular vote, with the passage of Senate Joint Resolution 57. “Currently, the attorney general is twice removed from those he or she is supposed to represent – the people of Tennessee,” said Senator Beavers aid in a statement disseminated to media by Republican Press Secretary Darlene Schlicher.  “It is time we let the citizens have more of a say in their government.” The Senate Join Resolution passed overwhelmingly 22 – 8. To amend the Tennessee Constitution, the proposal will require a simple majority by the 110th General Assembly currently in session, and then a two-thirds majority in the 111th General Assembly elected in 2018. After passage in 2018, the amendment would go to a statewide referendum in 2022. Finally, in order to be adopted, a proposed constitutional amendment needs 50 percent-plus-one votes more than the number of votes cast in the gubernatorial election. The statement reads: [pdf-embedder url=”https://tennesseestar.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Beavers-elected-AG-2017-floor-vote.pdf” title=”Beavers elected AG 2017 floor vote”]  

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Gov. Haslam Has Cut State’s Portion of Highway Fund Budget by $56 Million Annually, Compared to Predecessor

Laura Baigert
Tennessee Star - Gov Haslam

During the six years he has served as the head of Tennessee’s state government, Gov. Haslam has cut the state’s portion of the Highway Fund budget by an annual average of $56 million when compared to his predecessor, Gov. Phil Bredesen. In the last six years of Gov. Phil Bredesen’s eight-year term, between FY 2005-06 and FY 2010-11, the annual average state allocation to the Highway Fund was $833 million. While the actual dollars fluctuated from year to year, overall the Highway Fund budget grew about 12 percent in those six years. Under Gov. Haslam, the state’s portion of the Highway Fund budget shrank to an annual average of $777 million during the six years between FY 2011-12 and FY 2016-17. That is  an average annual reduction of $56 million, an overall reduction of 7 percent. The total Highway Fund grew 2 percent per year under Gov. Bredesen, and has been reduced 1.1 percent per year by Gov. Haslam. In that same six-year period, Gov. Haslam’s total state budget grew 18 percent. “The detailed breakdown of reduction in road spending under Governor Haslam is shocking but, unfortunately, not surprising,” State Sen. Mae Beavers (R-Mt. Juliet) tells The Tennessee Star. “I…

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Protesters Storm State Senator’s Office, Intimidate Staff, State Troopers Ordered to Stand Down

Admin

State Senator Mae Beavers (R-Mt. Juliet) knew Tuesday morning could turn out to be an unpredictable one. She was told to expect an “in-office protest” this morning. Then she was told it was cancelled. Sen. Beavers and her staff – that day, a single young woman – arrived in her offices at the regular time to conduct the people’s business: meeting with constituents and fellow elected officials, answering questions about her pending legislation, and returning calls and letters from the people she represents in and around Mt. Juliet. “It was shortly after 11 a.m. when about a half-dozen people filed into my office and started demanding to see me,” Beavers said. According to Sen. Beavers, she was in a meeting with an Administration official, when the protesters’ incessant knocking on her inner office door and loud speechifying became a distraction. “When I opened my door a couple of times to ask them to quiet down, they tried to force their way into my office,”  she said. They were unsuccessful. Meanwhile, out in the reception room, Beavers’ young staffer was surrounded by the protesters. One protester, a woman, stood behind her and took several photos of the receptionist’s computer screen and work. The Administrator departed, and for the…

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WWTN Callers Blast State Senate Majority Leader Norris for Weak Response to Protesters

Tennessee Star Staff

State Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris (R-Collierville) was interviewed by Ralph Bristol on 99.7 FM WWTN’s  Nashville’s Morning News on Friday about the shouting down of State Sen. Mae Beavers and State Rep. Mark Pody by protesters at the Capitol earlier this week. Norris’s response to those protesters was panned by irate listeners who called in to Bristol’s program in the ensuing two hour on-air town hall that broke out over the airwaves. Appearing on Bristol’s program a day earlier, Beavers said she wanted to see action taken against the protesters. “What if anything needs to be done about it?” Bristol asked of the aggressiveness of the protesters towards Beavers and Pody. “I think we need to be sensitive to… whether its her concerns or a constituents concerns . . .we need to be sensitive to her concerns and whether when having a press conference of that nature folks should follow people into their office,” Norris responded. “But we all, including Sen. Beavers are, for the right to assemblage and open government, and a lot of the best stuff that gets done happens when we have that kind of open consideration,” he continued. “There’s sometimes a fine line between free…

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Gov. Haslam Proposes Free Community College For ‘All Adults’ in State of the State Address

Tennessee Star Staff

Gov. Haslam proposed free community college for “all adults” in his State of the State address last Monday “I am proposing that Tennessee become the first state in the nation to offer all adults access to community college free of tuition and fees,” Haslam said: Just like the Tennessee Promise, Tennessee Reconnect will provide last-dollar scholarships for adult learners to attend one of our community colleges for free – and at no cost to the state’s General Fund. With the Reconnect Act, Tennessee would be the first in the nation to offer all citizens – both high school students and adults – access to a degree or certificate free of tuition and fees. No caps. No first come, first served. All. Just as we did with Tennessee Promise we’re making a clear statement to families with Reconnect: wherever you might fall on life’s path, education beyond high school is critical to the Tennessee we can be. We don’t want cost to be an obstacle anyone has to overcome as they pursue their own generational change for themselves and their families It was unclear if by “all adults” he intended to include illegal aliens currently residing in the state. In the…

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