Live from Music Row Thursday 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 and The Epoch Times Editor-at-LargeRoger Simon in-studio to talk about his work in progress, The Southbound Train and the Fifth Congressional District’s pool of candidates and potential candidates
Leahy: Joined in studio by our good friend all-star panelist, Old Hickory, Roger Simon. He’s lived in Tennessee for three years and seven months. He’s lived here longer than the combined amount of the one announced candidate for the Fifth Congressional District Robby Starbuck.
Birth name, Robert Starbuck Newsom. I confirmed that with him last night. Robert Starbuck Newsom, currently planning to appear on the ballot as Robert Starbuck Newsom “Robby Starbuck.”
That’s his current plan. May have to change that. He came here in 2019. And then Morgan Ortagus, who registered to vote according to our records, in November, like November 28th of 2021. Less than two months ago.
If she runs, she’ll get Donald Trump’s endorsement. I’m almost certain she will run. That announcement will be coming shortly. I would like to get your take on the political analysis, Old Hickory.
Simon: (Southern accent) We oldtimers are a little suspicious of all these folks.
Leahy: I know you’re a Tennessee old-timer for three years and seven months. All these newcomers are coming in and seeking to represent you, at least those two. But there’s more that are going to look at it.
Simon: (Southern accent) Well I’ll get my gun out. Here’s what I think everyone should do. There could be four people running, actually, four pretty interesting people running. Much more interesting than in most elections.
Leahy: That’s a very good point. We got two of them already.
Simon: Robby Starbuck and Morgan Ortagus.
Leahy: Who are the other two? Possibly Beth Harwell, former Speaker of the Tennessee House. She’s been here since she came in the early-mid 1980s. She went to Lipscomb. She’s been here for more than three decades.
Simon: Oh, my God. Really? An Old Hickorette. (Laughter) And, Andy Ogles.
Leahy: Mayor of Maury County. Born and raised in Middle Tennessee, lived here all his life.
Simon: Now as a writer, as a nice thing for me is I happen to know all four of these people, so I can talk to all four of them. But that’s not a good thing either, because I think they’re all nice people and I don’t want to offend all four of them.
I’ll have no friends at the end. (Leahy laughs) But here’s what I suggest for the listeners. And that is whatever prejudices you may have about these four people right now, try to put them away and consider this thing beginning now rather than you knew so and so last Easter or whatever. Because you’re going to learn a lot of new things about all of them.
Leahy: Yes, very good point.
Simon: And also it’s going to be, I think, probably the most-watched congressional election in the country.
Leahy: It’s a bellwether and great fodder for your new book, The Southbound Train.
Simon: Oh yes. The juicier it gets, the better. (Chuckles)
Leahy: By the way, tell people the premise of the book and how if they are somebody who recently came to Tennessee in the past couple of years, how they can give you their story for possible inclusion in this book. Who’s the publisher?
Simon: The publisher is Encounter Books, which is very prestigious.
Leahy: When is it likely to be published?
Simon: Probably in the fall.
Leahy: Before the election maybe?
Simon: Maybe, maybe not. That’s a whole other story because the supply chain issue has hit publishing and getting paper is a problem. Getting printers is a problem.
Leahy: It’s a big problem. You’ve written how many books? 20 or 30?
Simon: This will be 14.
Leahy: Yeah, that’s a lot.
Simon: Too many books. Not enough time. Having fun. I wrote a bunch of movies, too. I have calluses on my rear end.
This is about the people who have moved from blue states to red states and this incredible migration or immigration, some call it that’s gone on in this country and how it will change it or might not change it. And that’s why maybe after the break I’ll invite everybody to write me.
Leahy: There you go. Tell me, how do they write to you? [email protected]?
Simon: You got it. [email protected]. You can sing The Wagon Wheel along with Darius Rucker. And then you’ll remember.
Leahy: There you go. So send in your stories to Roger. Now about this new district. It looks like the governor is going to sign the new map. It looks like that it will survive court challenges.
And the district includes one-third of the lower third of Davidson County. It includes also Williamson County, the eastern part and the western part of Wilson County and then the rural suburban counties of Marshall, Lewis and Maury County.
750,000 people in the district and about a third of them live in Marshall, Maury and Lewis County. About a third of them live in Williamson and Wilson County, I think. And about a third of them live in Davidson County.
I may have that a little bit off, but generally speaking. And we don’t know exactly how many are newcomers that have only lived there, say for two years or less. But let’s say it’s five to 10 percent. It’s some number. This is going to be a fascinating race. How would you handicap the race?
Simon: (Laughs) Yohoho! I’ll handicap the Australian Open. I think actually it’s going to start out with a relatively even playing field here.
Leahy: One is likely to get in, two possibly will get in, and then a fifth, Brig. Gen. Kurtis J. Winstead, whose wife is a big-time lobbyist for the tech guys.
Simon:Â That is making a warning. Warning. Warning. Lobbyists for Big Tech is what the Republican Party does not want in Congress. Thank you very much.
Leahy: Speaking of which, we ran a story about Morgan Ortegas showing her with Bill Gates.
Simon: Being with someone, that’s guilt by association.
Leahy: That’s a good point.
Simon: I would think one of the things that should reassure the voters is taking these four people, I would bet that they’ll vote any of them in Congress they would have the same vote 85 percent of the time.
Leahy: We’ll find that out. I’m not sure if I would necessarily agree with that. I think if I were to look at them and say, which one is going to get the highest conservative rating, my guess would be Andy Ogles, followed very closely by Beth Harwell, followed by Robby Starbuck, and Morgan Ortagus, then followed by Kurt Winstead.
Simon: I certainly agree with you on Winstead.
Leahy: Morgan Ortagus, we don’t know where she stands on a lot of domestic policy issues.
Simon: We should find out.
Leahy: We’ll ask her if she decides to run, but this is not a positive for her. We got a story on this that in 2016 she was a surrogate for the Jeb Bush campaign. He’s not a very conservative guy. He’s a big Common Core guy.
Simon: On the education level, he had a lot to be desired.
Leahy: But she served the Trump administration from 2019 to 2021 at a pretty high level.
Simon: Yes.
Leahy: I mean, communications spokesperson for the secretary of state, probably the best secretary of state in modern American history. That’s nothing to sneeze at.
Simon: Not at all. So we’re going to find out. That’s why this is going to be a terrific educational election, too, for people, because there are real issues that are going to be discussed here.
Leahy: Will it come down to money?
Simon: Well, I don’t know.
Leahy: It’s going to be expensive, right?
Simon: It’s the job of people like us to make it not about money.
Leahy: It’s always about money. (Chuckles)
Simon: You know I love H.L. Mencken who said if somebody says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.
Leahy: The great American writer from the 1920s.
Simon: Baltimore Journalist. But what I say, it’s our job not to make it about the money, is that those of us in the media, our job really is to expose what these people are thinking. And your job as a voter is to read and listen to us and evaluate whether we’re a bunch of liars, which, of course, we are.
Leahy: Speak for yourself Old Hickory, Roger Simon! (Laughter)
Simon: But you know what I’m saying. There’s more to it than billboards. I think people are a little sick of billboards.
Leahy: I’ll tell you also, what we don’t know is Robby Starbuck has announced and I think he’s made it very clear he’s staying in the race. And we’ll have Robby in.
Morgan Ortagus almost certainly is going to get in the race. I mean, it would be very embarrassing for President Trump to have said if she gets in the race he’ll endorse her, and then she’d say, oh, never mind.
Simon: She was down to Mar-a-Lago over the weekend. So obviously, there was a lot of jaw jaw going on.
Leahy: We don’t know if Andy Ogles will get in. We don’t know if Beth Harwell will get in, and we don’t know if Kurt Winstead will get in. But one thing that I will say, whoever’s in, I will be delighted to have them all here in studio for an hour. We’ll talk to them about these questions.
We’ll ask the questions. And if they want to have a debate, I will be delighted to moderate the debate if they do that. I don’t know if they’ll want to do that.
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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.
