Ben Cunningham, founder of the Nashville Tea Party and the Tennessee Tax Revolt, and The Tennessee Star’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy questioned U.S. Representative John Rose’s (R-TN-06) recent claim that he participated in the grassroots movement that defeated a proposed state income tax in 2002, following a report by The Star that found the photograph Rose shared as evidence was taken at a 2004 reunion event rather than during the protests.
During Friday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, Leahy and Cunningham discussed the four-year campaign against former Governor Don Sundquist’s proposed income tax, with Cunningham describing the public pressure campaign as the deciding factor in defeating the measure.
“The pressure that we exerted was the key,” Cunningham said. “Because like in so many cases, there was pressure within the legislature, the Senate especially, to negotiate a deal.”
“And everybody said, ‘We need a new revenue source.’ That was always the catchphrase. ‘We gotta have a new revenue source,'” he added. “And basically code word for we need to get deeper into your bank account, basically.”
Leahy credited Cunningham, conservative talk radio hosts, thousands of protesters, and Republican lawmakers with defeating the proposal, specifically highlighting U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), then a state senator.
“Marsha was really the leader of that,” Leahy said.
“She was the person that really turned the tide,” Cunningham added.
Cunningham recalled Blackburn ultimately urging supporters into action after negotiations over the proposal continued.
“When Marsha finally got a snoot full of it, she said, ‘Look we gotta do something.’ And so she emailed Phil Valentine and said, ‘Call out the troops.’ And the troops did come out and stopped it,” Cunningham said.
The discussion then turned to The Star‘s report published Thursday, which found the photograph Rose posted on social media depicting a red truck equipped with a locomotive horn was taken at a 2004 Tennessee Tax Revolt reunion event, two years after the income tax fight concluded.
Summarizing his report, The Star’s lead political reporter Tom Pappert said Rose claimed in a social media post that he helped drive the truck around the Capitol during the 2002 protests.
“He attached a photo of a red truck, but that red truck turns out to have been photographed in 2004 and not 2002 when the horn honking actually occurred,” Pappert said. “We did some digging. We found out it was actually photographed at a reunion event.”
Pappert added, “We can’t find any evidence John Rose was actually a part of this thing. We also asked him for more information, any other photos, any accounts, and he wasn’t or did not provide them to us yesterday.”
Asked whether investigators identified the “friend John” Rose referenced in his post, Pappert said, “We don’t have the name of the friend John, and we even looked at probably 200 photos that are now, 25 years old or whatever it is trying to see if we could find a photo of John Rose riding around in this truck… We were unable to find any such photo.”
“I think it speaks to the importance of the Tennessee tax revolt that now here we are, two decades later, and gubernatorial candidates feel the need apparently to claim some fame from it all these years later,” Pappert added.
Leahy then questioned the credibility of Rose’s account.
“The claim by John Rose that he participated in the Tennessee tax revolt is simply not credible,” Leahy said. “It’s not credible.”
Leahy noted Rose had not publicly discussed participating in the protests until this week and also pointed to Rose’s appointment to Sundquist’s cabinet shortly after the income tax proposal was defeated.
Cunningham, one of the organizers of the Tennessee Tax Revolt, said he remembered the truck but did not remember Rose participating.
“I remember the truck with the horn. That was a big deal and lots of fun,” Cunningham said.
“But I have no recollection of John Rose participating, but again, there were thousands of people there. But…it is interesting at the very least that this claim was made 24 years after the fact.”
Leahy also asked whether it was plausible that Sundquist would have appointed someone who actively opposed his income tax proposal to his administration.
Pappert responded that Republicans active during the debate had rejected that possibility.
“Multiple Republican organizations and Republicans who were active in public life at the time have said no, that Sundquist held a grudge essentially against those who were agitating against his demand for an income tax, and would never have appointed these people to the administration,” Pappert said.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network.
Photo “John Rose” by John Rose.Â
