Blount County Resident and Retired Attorney Mark Pulliam Describes Woke Questionnaire Distributed by Election Administrator

Live from Music Row Friday 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 Blount County resident and Misrule of Law blog creator, Mark Pulliam to the newsmaker line to talk about the woke questionnaire distributed to county candidates by the administrator of elections.

Leahy: We are joined now on our newsmaker line by our very good friend Mark Pulliam, who writes at the Misrule of Law, retired attorney, former Californian, former Texan, now a resident of Tennessee. Good morning, Mark.

Pulliam: Good morning, Michael.

Leahy: Now, the very first question I have to ask for you, Mark, is this. When did you officially become a Tennessee resident?

Pulliam: (Laughs) I have no plans on running for office.

Leahy: Just go with the flow here. When did you officially become a resident of Tennessee?

Pulliam: I think September 1 of 2019.

Leahy: September 1 of 2019. Okay. Now, for the record, you do not reside in the 5th Congressional District in Tennessee, which is Davidson County and the suburbs of Nashville, and some rural counties.

Pulliam: I never have.

Leahy: But you are a resident of the state of Tennessee.

Pulliam: Yes.

Leahy: You could legally and at present constitutionally declare yourself a candidate for the GOP nomination in the 5th Congressional District in Tennessee. Just for the record, are you going to run for Congress in the 5th Congressional District of Tennessee?

Pulliam: It seems like everybody else is, but I have no current plans.

Leahy: (Laughs) That’s very good. The filing deadline is April 7.

Pulliam: I still have time to change my mind.

Leahy: You’ve lived here longer and almost as the same time as Robby Starbuck, who we’ve called a carpetbagger. But you’ve lived here longer than Morgan Ortagus, who registered to vote here just three months ago, and David Vitalli, who registered to vote here less than a year ago. And like Morgan Ortagus, neither of you live in the district, so you could still have time. The filing deadline is April 7.

Pulliam: And unlike some of those candidates, I’ve actually voted in Tennessee, and I actually voted in the state I lived in before I moved here.

Leahy: There you go. (Laughs) Well, so much for the fun on the carpetbagging issue. What’s going on in Blount County?

Pulliam: One of the roles that I play here is I have a Facebook page called Blount County Conservative Sentinel, and I really try to be sort of the watchdog of what’s going on.

And Blount County, like a lot of places in Tennessee, faces challenges from both the progressive activists and also from the establishment.

Many communities and Blount County is no exception, has a swamp consisting of developers, the Chamber of Commerce, and so forth.

And in some communities, they have basically taken over local government and have been in charge for so long, they forget that there’s a public that they’re supposed to at least pretend to be representing.

And here in Blount County, we have elections this year, and some of the elections are coming up. We have a primary in April, and the Blount County Chamber of Commerce, which, like a lot of Chambers around the country, has gotten woke and sent out a candidate questionnaire.

And one of the questions they asked candidates, and this is in a county that voted 71 percent for Donald Trump, what kinds of policies, if any, will you pursue to promote social and racial justice in our community?

I found that part of the questionnaire to be kind of noteworthy, and I called attention to it on my Facebook page. But then the establishment took it up a notch and the Chamber requested our local administrator of elections, a $94,000 a year public employee, to forward that questionnaire to the candidates who had qualified for the ballot, even though that’s not within the purview of the administrator of elections job.

Her job is to get people on the ballot and then to conduct fair and impartial elections. But when she received a request to forward this to the candidates, she gladly did so with a transmittal email that sort of suggested that it was semi-official that candidates should fill out this questionnaire.

And one of the candidates contacted me with this and seemed to me that this was totally out of bounds. And I raised questions about it.

Why is our administrator of elections using her county email address on work time, doing the administrative errands of the Blount Chamber of Commerce?

And so far, I have received no response from her from the election commission in Blount County, to whom she reports. And I’ve contacted the Secretary of State. I’ve contacted our local district attorney. And so far, radio silence.

Leahy: Is there a mechanism for ending this practice?

Pulliam: I’ve been assured secondhand that it won’t happen again. But it won’t happen again, is not really a satisfactory explanation for why did it happen this time? I think they get so used to doing things and they expect nobody to notice or check that they feel like they have a license.

And fortunately, one of the other conservative news outlets in Tennessee, the Tennessee Conservative News, picked this up and ran a story that I hope causes some embarrassment over there.

And not just about their woke questionnaire, but the idea of asking our elections official to serve as their errand boy to solicit responses to their questionnaire.

It kind of shows what their true attitude is, that they’re in charge and that these public employees, county employees, really work for the chamber and not for the taxpayers.

Leahy: How much in danger of wokeism is Blount County now? Do you have a wokeism index for local governments that we could develop and apply to all the 95 counties in Tennessee? And where would Blount County fit?

Pulliam: We’re not as woke as certain people wish we were, but we did get a former chair of the Blount County Democratic Party was elected two years ago to the Maryville City Council, which is something that wouldn’t have happened five years ago.

So we’ve had inroads into our local schools. These are being resisted. The good news is in Blount County that if you alert the residents to what’s going on, they will step up and oppose it.

And so we’ve had successful initiatives in our local school boards to get certain books taken out of use because they’re age-inappropriate.

But it’s an ongoing battle and the wokeism will make whatever inroads people allow it to happen. It’s not because the public wants it, but it’s because there’s this constant pressure that if you don’t pay attention and if you don’t push back, it will seep over you, just like the tide.

Leahy: Are you a popular guy in Blount County, Mark, or are there certain places where you come in and they run for the hills?

Pulliam: Like anything, you can judge somebody by their friends and their enemies. And I have plenty of both. No, I think in establishment circles I’m regarded as the skunk at the garden party and they’ve been having quite a party for a long time.

But in other circles, I’m heralded as somebody who is doing something that needs to be done and that a lot of people don’t have the stomach for.

Leahy: Let’s ask you about that. When you say establishment in Blount County, who does that entail?

Pulliam: We have the Chamber which has brought three Amazon warehouses to Blount County. So all these groups seek more power, more revenue. And so that’s your local Chamber. We have an industrial development board that makes these backroom deals with taxpayer subsidies and so forth. And Bill Lee shows up.

Leahy: And says hello. So he’s sort of on that list. Mark Pulliam of The Misrule of Law, thanks so much for joining us today. Come in studio sometime again soon.

Pulliam: Thank you, Michael.

Listen to the full interview:

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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.