Public affairs strategist and all-star panelist Clint Brewer (pictured right) joined 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. – Monday morning on the newsmakers line.
At the top of the second hour, Brewer weighed in on the recent coup against Memphis State Representative John DeBerry (pictured left) and commented that he finds the whole situation to be very troubling. He further went on to express his concern stating that we may have reached a point in this country where you could be removed from your party because you are working across the aisle with other legislators.
Leahy: We are joined this morning by our good friend and all-star panelist Clint Brewer. We reported on a very troubling story that happened last week and I’d like to get your reaction to it. The state executive committee of the Democratic party, by the way, it’s majority white. About two-thirds white. 66 members.
They voted to oust a respected state representative who’s strong Christian and black form the party. He served in the Tennessee General Assembly since he was elected representing Memphis 26 years ago in 1994. This sounds like a Stalinist-Trotskyike purging to me. What do you think Clint?
Brewer: I think its a travesty. I mean John DeBerry is a statesman. John DeBerry is a really good legislator. That’s the problem. Forget about the party. Forget about race. The gentleman just represents his district well. And he gets along with people and he’s respected.
Not only by his own actual people who serve in the legislature in his own caucus but by those across the aisle. I don’t know how we’ve gotten to the point in this country where you can’t work across the aisle without being removed from the ballot. I mean that is preposterous.
Leahy: The Tennessee Democratic Party has apparently been taken over by these far-left, I’ll call them quasi-like Trotsky-like socialist democrats. They put together a 29-page complaint. They didn’t show it to him. And basically they did this mystery coup attack and threw him out. We haven’t seen the details. But it looks like that the vote may have been along racial lines. It’s just stunning.
Brewer: Well it is stunning. The Democratic Party in Tennessee, I don’t know what passes for the Democratic Party now in Tennessee. They maybe ought to take a look at who represents them. Because in the legislature they are almost exclusively African Americans. to win elections still in this state are African American. So really maybe it should be the other way around. Maybe the people putting their names on the ballot and going to Nashville to serve ought to be telling these folks how to get it done. Not the other way around.
There is one guy who keeps getting re-elected who’s kind of the old rural yellow dog Democrat. John Mark Windle has been there for a long time. Other than John Mark Windle most of the leadership and elected legislators are in fact black in the Tennessee Democrat Party.
Brewer: I’m not sure where the state executive committee finds it in the best interest of the Democratic party to do something like this. Of course, it’s not the first time. Race wasn’t involved, but Rosalind Kurita, if you recall over a decade ago was removed from the ballot by the party for working across the aisle. When I started covering the legislature many moons ago when the Democrats had control of the legislature and the governor’s office and basically everything in the state, East Tennessee Republicans were the only Republicans in office.
Mountain Republicans. And they would come to Nashville and be very statesman-like in order to get their community’s taken care of. Their constituents taken care of. Their bills passed. They would work across the aisle and it wasn’t looked at as something nefarious or negative. It was looked at as being realistic and pragmatic.
I think Representative DeBerry is just trying to represent his district and being realistic about it. I think there aren’t as many differences between these platforms between the two parties as folks think. Representative DeBerry represents a district that has some challenged schools in it and he supports school choice.
I think you’ll find that more and more in urban settings whether the Representatives are black or white. School choice is something that needs to be talked about. It’s puzzling me to me when you have a guy in a solid seat and a long time leader of the party and remove him without a conversation. It’s very troubling.
Leahy: All the polling shows that black voters even more than white voters support school choice. It’s like two thirds that support vouchers and they don’t want to be stuck going to these awful public schools that they are currently stuck with. And Representative DeBerry is serving the interests of his district by voting for school choice and vouchers.
The left-wing Democratic socialist’s attorney Jan Lentz who filed the complaint doesn’t live in that district. I don’t know if she wants to deprive residents of that district from having a good school. By the way, John DeBerry is apparently going to appeal this to the executive committee. At first, I think he didn’t want to because he said they are obviously biased and won’t give me a fair shot.
I think it’s a good idea for him to appeal it because that means that Democratic Party chair Mary Mancini is going to have to reveal how she voted. She said that before she wasn’t sure it was a good idea. But it was 41-18 to kick him out of the party. We don’t know how Mary Mancini voted.
Brewer: Yeah. Or if she had to. I don’t know what the rules are. I don’t get it. School choice and issues like that, I’m a little on the fence on school choice myself. What I would like to see is these large urban school districts actually mend themselves. (Chuckles) And actually fix themselves.
Leahy: So you obviously believe in the Easter Bunny then? (Laughs)
Brewer: We’ve been waiting so long for it to happen. As long as I’ve been around Nashville we’ve been waiting. Think about it. The Nashville public schools are one of the largest economic drivers in Middle Tennessee because they keep sending families out of Nashville into the suburbs to go to school.
Leahy: And the results are awful in terms of the ability to teach reading and math at least according to the Tennessee Higher Education Commission. They said that 60% of high school students that went on to state schools needed remedial math and reading. That’s pretty bad.
Brewer: It is. And I’m not going to say its not a challenging environment. You have children at every school where this happens. In a large urban city, you’re having a lot of kids with difficult family structures regardless of race. You have more concentrated poverty in urban environments because there is just more people. So some of these schools are very difficult to teach in because the children that show up aren’t necessarily ready to learn at no fault of their own.
You are wondering if you are going to eat on the weekend or if your parents are going to even be around. Again, this is regardless of race. It’s difficult on any kid in a learning environment. It’s hard to teach there but it needs to at some point we have to find some kind of public policy that addresses the issue. And if people don’t like school choice I think they need to come up with those answers.
Leahy: But of course you know that since the Titans came to town and the money they got from the city and the state legislature was apparently sold on the idea that it would improve the school systems. It hasn’t quite worked, has it?
Brewer: Well, it hasn’t. Look at other large states. I remember going on a trip and I got to actually hear from Mayor Daley in Chicago about how they re-booted the Chicago public school system because they were experiencing so much white flight and gentrification. It was a brokered deal between the very Democratic leadership in Chicago and Republicans in the state legislature.
Leahy: And their schools have performed so well since haven’t they? Not! (Laughs)
Brewer: At least they are trying right? I think my point is that these issues force and create some different alliances. I think you are seeing a shade of that here. Representative DeBerry sees it and tries to address it.
Leahy: He’s a great guy.
Listen to the full second hour 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.
Or they could remain democrats and be referred to as fools.
You simply want the Democrats to be carbon-copy Tea Party Republicans with the only difference being their party label! If the Democrats take your advice, they might as well fold and call themselves Republicans like Phil Bredesen.