Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed official guest host Aaron Gulbransen in-studio to discuss the strategic, issue-free campaign of TN-5 candidate and retired Brigadier General Kurt Winstead.
Leahy: We are less than one month until Election Day for the Tennessee 5th Congressional District primary – well, all the other primaries as well for the various state offices, state senate, and state legislature. But I want to talk in this segment about the 5th Congressional District GOP primary.
Early voting begins a week from Friday, and Kurt Winstead – I want to talk about Kurt. He’s one of nine qualified candidates. He’s one of five who’s been invited to The Epoch Times debate on Tuesday, and he’s one of four who’s accepted that invitation.
Apparently, Speaker Harwell has not yet accepted that invite. We’re encouraging her to do so, by the way. But I think, here he is, he’s a retired brigadier general in the Tennessee National Guard.
You would think he would be able to use that issue to his advantage; however, Aaron Gulbransen – the official guest host of The Tennessee Star Report and our lead political reporter at The Tennessee Star – Aaron, it looks to me like the Tennessee National Guard issue of the Tennessee National Guardsmen who have refused to take the COVID-19 vaccine, who now have not been paid, those who have chosen not to take the vaccine, apparently on June 30th – they’ve not been separated yet, but that process is basically happening, and they expect it to happen.
General Winstead, who left, I think in early 2021 – the mandates came down a couple of months later – has not distinguished himself in his responses.
Basically, he said, yes, I’m with Governor Bill Lee here, who’s basically done nothing. It looks like a missed opportunity to me for Brigadier General Kurt Winstead. Your thoughts?
Gulbransen: It’s a blown opportunity for both Governor Lee and Brigadier General Winstead, who seem to be coordinating on this.
Leahy: What!? Coordinating?
Gulbransen: They say the exact same message. They say it within hours of each other on the same radio station.
Leahy: Not ours, but our friends at the other radio stations.
Gulbransen: So it’s very interesting.
Leahy: But they also share in common a consultant, a good guy: Chris Devaney, a very good guy who, let’s face it, was one of the key players in navigating the surprise primary win of Bill Lee in August of 2018 over Diane Black and Randy Boyd.
It looks like they’re trying to do the same issue-free campaign with retired Brigadier General in the Tennessee National Guard Kurt Winstead.
Gulbransen: And past tense seems to be prologue, in terms of how candidates operate who don’t want to talk about issues. So you look at Governor Lee’s response on this, and as we just said, it’s been exactly the same. And Winstead has just said, oh, this is all Obama’s … that’s a Freudian slip there …
Leahy: It’s Biden’s fault.
Gulbransen: Well, who’s really in charge of it? But this is really the Biden administration’s fault, there’s nothing the governor can do – which is just absolute baloney.
And Winstead’s response has infuriated people. I can’t even repeat some of these comments. I’ve had to block some of them out on some of our articles.
Leahy: Who has been infuriated?
Gulbransen: Guard members that are losing their jobs. They don’t understand why somebody who had authority over them at one point in time is not supporting them.
Leahy: Is not standing up for them.
Gulbransen: And also, these are very smart people, right? They don’t understand why he’s not doing something that would appear to be in his own best interest as a candidate.
Leahy: [Speaking directly to Winstead, assuming he may be listening] General Winstead, you’ve been in-studio here before, and I know [the guardsmen] listen to this program. You have less than a month to kind of clear all these things up. We’d be delighted to have you in here in-studio, and we can talk about these things in a very nice, polite way.
But I think let me just say what I’ve noticed. If you look at his campaign messaging, it is largely issue-free. I mean, what do we know about Kurt Winstead? We know he’s a retired brigadier general. We know he married his childhood sweetheart.
Gulbransen: Right.
Leahy: And that he grew up on a farm. That’s it on issues. He’s made a number of missteps here. It seems to me he never talks about the fact that his childhood sweetheart, Beth Winstead, is one of the most well-connected and powerful Democrat lobbyists in the state.
Gulbransen: Yes.
Leahy: He doesn’t talk about that.
Gulbransen: And a good source of his fundraising, too. If you were to go through his campaign finance reports, a lot of those max-out donors to him have donated to the Biden 2020 campaign, Hillary Clinton for president in 2016 …
Leahy: And we know that in 2006, he donated to the pro-choice, pro-abortion…
Gulbransen: – Open borders –
Leahy: … and a State Senate candidate who was running against Jack Johnson back in 2006. Apparently, he’s donated to other Democrats. I don’t think he actually had a Republican record until 2010. Now, 2010 is when the state changed. That’s when the state changed to majority-Republican. It sounds a little bit opportunistic on his part. And again, it’s sort of an issue-free campaign. If he were to be elected, how do you think he would vote? What would his Heritage Foundation rating be?
Gulbransen: Maybe 65 percent, maybe.
Leahy: He would probably be, in my view, the most liberal member of the Republican delegation if he were to be elected.
Gulbransen: The two things that he trumpets in his campaign are also flaws right now. He trumpets being a National Guard general.
He’s not doing anything for the guardsmen to keep their jobs. And then saying he’s a conservative from conception, which is an unforced error on their part in their ads, when clearly he was not.
Leahy: He wasn’t a conservative till 2010. Now, Kurt, General Winstead, these are straight-up critiques, and we believe in a free exchange of ideas here. So come on in, face the fire. We’ll talk about it.
Listen to the interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
