Live from Music Row Monday 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 all-star panelist Ben Cunningham in-studio to discuss the four candidates who have been removed from the GOP primary ballot due to Tennessee Republican party bylaws.
Leahy: Ben, that was a very good interview, I thought, with John Newman, who’s running for mayor of Madison County.
Cunnigham: It is.
Leahy: It’s two hours to the west, but it’s a Tennessee deal.
Cunningham: A well-informed guy, has been around a long time, but I think is a fiscal conservative. So it’s nice to see that. And it’s nice to see that tax rate below $2.
Leahy: Yeah, I know. It’s Madison County morning here on The Tennessee Star Report, AJ Massey, who’s one of the other two candidates running for the Republican nomination for county mayor in Madison County, will be here with us. So we’ll get his view as well.
Cunningham: And two recent rankings again, have shown the state and local tax burden in Tennessee as the lowest in the nation.
The Tax Foundation and Wallet Hub both came out and showed us at, I think it was 48 and 49. But Alaska is always the lowest because they have huge fees from oil and gas.
Leahy: The oil and gas, yes.
Cunningham: And I think they even get a rebate tax check up there. The fact that we have fought over the years to keep taxes low is showing great rewards for us. And it will continue to show great rewards for us if we continue to elect people who will keep those tax rates.
Leahy: You mean Tennesseans who understand how Tennessee got here. (Chuckles)Â
Cunningham: Exactly.
Leahy: By the way, Alaska seat Sarah Palin has announced. The Dean of the House of Representatives, the longest-serving member, Don Young, passed away. He served in Alaska from what, 1972? Long time.
Cunningham: He was an institution.
Leahy: Passed away. And there’s a special election. Sarah Palin is jumping in. So we’ll see how that all plays out. Speaking of congressional district races, we have a report here from our own Aaron Gulbransen. By the way, isn’t he doing a great job for us?
Cunningham: He is.
Leahy: He loves politics and he loves reporting on it. He’s all over the 5th Congressional District race. Here’s the latest in terms of who’s in and who’s out.
(Aaron Gulbransen clip plays)
As of April 7th, the date of the qualifying petitions filing deadline, the Tennessee Secretary of State’s office has approved the submissions of 14 candidates in the race for Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District seat.
11 Republicans, one Democrat, and two independents are listed by the Tennessee Secretary of State’s office having their petition signatures approved. This is Aaron Gulbransen reporting for The Tennessee Star and the Tennessee Star Report.
Leahy: He gets a lot of information into 15 seconds.
Cunningham: You’ve got to listen closely.
Leahy: He’s not a native Tennessean, and you can tell. Like me, he’s from New York state, originally from Long Island via Virginia.
Cunningham: We have lots of great activists here locally who have come to Tennessee from other places.
Leahy: From other places. Brad Lytle, who is the chairman of the Wilson County Republican Party, has been here for four years. He comes from upstate New York nearby, not too far from where I come from. But I moved here 30 years ago.
Cunningham: I’m not a native.
Leahy: You’re an Alabamian.
Cunningham: That’s right.
Leahy:Â But you’ve been here how long? 40 years.
Cunningham: Forty years.
Leahy: I got 30 years. I think I qualify. We’ll see. So, interestingly enough, twists and turns. This is particularly interesting.
So Morgan Ortagus, Robby Starbuck, Baxter Lee, and Stewart Parks, four of those eleven who submitted petitions, they are off the GOP primary ballot, effective today.
Cunningham: And explain this to me. This is not related to the legislation that was just passed.
Leahy: Not related to the law.
Cunningham: You’ve got to have a three-year residency. Why were they excluded?
Leahy: Because according to the Tennessee Republican primaries and, by the way, they’re off the ballot for now. They’ve got a chance to get back on – asterisk. We’ll see how that plays out. So here’s the way it works. The Tennessee Republican party has bylaws. It says you have to be a bona fide Republican to get on the primary ballot.
And the key elements of that is you have to have been active in the party and one of the following two: you must have voted in three of the last four statewide GOP primaries or you must be vouched for to the satisfaction of a special committee which consists of all of the state executive committee’s members from the counties that are part of the current or former 5th Congressional District.
Cunningham: The vouching process, I’ve always kind of wondered about that.
Leahy: A lot of people have kind of wondered about that.
Cunningham: People saying, I like this guy.
Leahy: I like this person, and that’s one thing.
Cunningham: I vouch for them. I mean, surely it’s a little more than that.
Leahy: Well, it’s not automatic. No, it’s not automatic. It has to be presented that their Republican bona fide status is vouched for, in a compelling way, to the satisfaction of the now, I think it’s a 17-member adjudication committee. On that adjudication committee of the state executive committee, Scott Golden, the chairman and then two people from each of the six counties currently in the district and then two people from each of the two counties from the previous district, which is what it is today but will not be in the primary election. So that’s Cheatham, Dickson, Davidson, Wilson, Williamson, Maury, Marshall, and Lewis. So that’s eight times two equals 16 plus Scott Golden equals 17. I think that’s 17 and I think our story had it as 15. But I think it’s 17. Those four have been challenged because they don’t meet those standards for various reasons, and the challenges have been documented and they’ve been presented by bona fide Republicans.
Listen to the full interview here:
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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.
A number of weeks ago I wrote a comment speculating that Ortagus was a plant by the donks who would be elected under the guise of a Republican while in reality she was a RINO. I was accused of being a conspiracy enthusiast by some liberal “useful idiot”.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/04/president_trump_has_to_be_very_careful_with_his_endorsements.html
What I have learned about the democrats is, the more unbelievable it sounds the more believable it is. Just look at the lengths they went to in their plan to keep President Trump from a second term. Those lying, cheating, immoral, minions of the anti-Christ will stop at nothing to do the bidding of their globalist masters. I put the probability at 50% that America will be embroiled in a full scale world war through the intentional actions of the democrats (what ever happened to the “anti-war ” party) before the 2024 elections so they can retain control of our Nation.