A Tennessee Democratic Party committeeman is in trouble after he reportedly spoke a little too candidly about problems within his organization.
This, according to Nashville Public Radio, which reported that party officials want that man, Charlie Clark, to resign his position. Clark reportedly represents Davidson County at the TNDP State Executive Committee, the station reported.
“I think some people would rather have TNDP and TNDP committees operate in secrecy,” Clark reportedly told WPLN Thursday.
“But, I think bringing things and information to the public is important for transparency and trust.”
Clark reportedly said the organization has a “lack of direction,” and he also said Chair Mary Mancini should step down because she has no strategic plan to move the party forward.
“But, in a certified letter sent to Clark, TNDP leaders claim Clark has ‘trashed’ the organization,” Nashville Public Radio reported.
As The Tennessee Star reported, Mancini won another two-year term as the party’s leader in January.
It was a landslide victory for Mancini over her only serious opponent, Holly McCall. Mancini received 48 votes from the members of the Democratic Party State Executive Committee, while McCall received just 19. A third candidate, M. LaTroy Alexandria-Williams of Memphis, finished a distant third place with two votes.
Another candidate, Christopher J. Hale of Murfreesboro, withdrew from the contest before the vote was taken.
During Mancini’s tenure, no Democratic candidate for statewide office has come close to winning. The party’s best chance to secure statewide office–former Gov. Phil Bredesen–was crushed in last November’s general election for the U.S. Senate by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).
Despite spending more than $7 million of his own money and receiving $12 million from a PAC affiliated with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Blackburn thumped Bredesen at the polls, winning by more than ten points.
In November 2016, President Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by 26 points.
Bredesen in 2018 and Clinton in 2016 performed abysmally statewide, each winning just three of the state’s 95 counties.
Under Mancini’s leadership, Tennessee Democrats have been unable to improve upon the lopsided Republican majorities in both the Tennessee House of Representatives and the Tennessee State Senate.
The last time Democrats came close in a Tennessee gubernatorial election was in 2006 when Phil Bredesen was elected to a second term as governor.
As The Star reported in March, Mancini got caught saying Tennessee is a racist state.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Charlie Clark” by Charlie Clark.
Actually that’s exactly why bredesen and dean lost. Fact is there’s still somewhat of a moral fiber left hanging on in the state of tennessee found outside the suburban areas. The cities such as Nashville and Memphis have succumbed to the sodom/gomorrah ideology thus accepting anything and everything depraved. That depravity has blinded your ability to think morally sound or even sensible. Thank God for those who still vote against those who endorse liberalism/socialism in this state. Against those who endorse same sex marriage, transgender, and ultimately anything considered normal /moral.
My father has also gotten the racist label. Lies. According to BostonGlobe, Only the State Department has jurisdiction over refugee placement and, once it determines host cities through a complex evaluation process, it contracts with local agencies to oversee refugee arrivals. These resettlement organizations, using federal, state, and private funds, provide services such as basic needs support, ESL instruction, and employment assistance. Federal data show refugees are assimilating just fine here. Massachusetts is among the top performers in refugee employment: 73 percent of refugees who enroll in state programs find work. Such immigrants can bring new life to struggling cities. So how was my father criticized for saying “We do not have the capacity to take this on. The burden lands on my doorstep as mayor of Springfield.”
It’s true. Check it out.
Bredesen and Dean lost, not because both were too liberal, but because they both were too conservative. Their strategy not only failed to win over enough conservative votes to enable them, with or without any help from progressives and leftists, to win, but ended up alienating their left base. When the leftists and progressives decided to stay home and boycott the election, it only helped Lee and Blackburn, especially the former, to win by landslide margins.
I’m fed up with this advice that Democrats in Tennessee need to be carbon-copy Tea Party Republicans to win. Just how much has that advice helped Democrats here?
One should “hunt where the ducks are.” The ducks, in this case, are the progressive and leftists. Governor Brownlow was smart enough to realize this no-brainer, unlike our Blue Dog Democrats. During Tennessee’s post-Reconstruction period, he realized that none of the re-admitted white voters in 1867 would vote for him no matter how far to the right he bent over backwards to please them. So, he and his fellow Reconstruction Republicans, took a very bold step: they enfranchised all voting-age black men and combined their votes with those white men (women did not vote back then) to barely offset the vote by the re-enfranchised pro-Confederate whites. It worked like a charm. It continued to work for a few more Tennessee state-wide elections thereafter. Amazingly, Tennessee enacted this universal black male suffrage measure at least two and a half years before any other state, North or South, followed suit. The rest of those states had to wait until 1870 when Congress finally passed the 15th Amendment.
I am not saying that Democrats can toss away all the right wing votes in this state, but they also need to hold on to their progressive base as well. They need all the votes they can get from either end of the political spectrum!
In other words, “thread the needle’ or “walk the tightrope”!