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-Large Roger Simon and founder of Nashville’s conservative alternative, The Pamphleteer‘s Davis Hunt in-studio to further discuss the background of DA candidate Sarah Beth Myers (pictured above).
Leahy: We are joined in studio by all-star panelist Roger Simon and founder of The Pamphleteer. Nashville’s alternatively conservative, I think, daily.
Hunt: Yes.
Leahy: On the web at pamphleteer.co. You can go sign up and get their newsletter. Today they’re announcing the Flat Curver Awards. This is actually from yesterday. That’s interesting. What are the Flat Curver Awards?
Hunt: The Flat Curver Awards are accolades for people in the community who responded positively or negatively to COVID.
Leahy: Okay, good. Well, you’re also focused on this DA race between Glenn Funk, it’s an eight-year term here in Metro Davidson County.
Simon: Who started that? Eight years for the DA.
Leahy: That’s a long time. Are other DAs up for eight years or is that just unique to Davidson County?
Hunt: I’m honestly not sure. It’s eight years here.
Leahy: It’s a long time.
Simon: You better not make mistake, voters.
Leahy: If you look at elected terms of anywhere in the United States at the federal level, the longest term anybody has is six years.
Simon: Six years for the U.S. Senate.
Leahy: That seems also like a long time, but that’s the way it’s put in the Constitution. But the local office length of eight years.
Simon: I’ve never heard anything like that.
Leahy: I’ve never heard of it, anyways. And the origin, I suppose the origin is somewhere deep in the bowels of the Metro charter, back in 1965. But again, it seems like things change rapidly, and what if the district attorney isn’t doing a good job and you want to get rid of them? And recalls are very difficult, even questionable in legality sometimes.
Simon: This woman who is running on a false premise and pretending she’s kind of a moderate when she’s absolutely a progressive –
Leahy: Her name is Sara Beth Myers –
Simon: I mean, that would be a swindle on the city, and especially at a time when everybody in this country is concerned with crime on the streets, and she wants to go soft on criminals rather than the Giuliani direction of broken windows, which cleaned up New York. Now, New York is now in terrible shape. And Nashville ain’t far behind. Sorry, folks.
Leahy: Now this is interesting. She was, I guess, a Vanderbilt law grad. She started this group called Awaketn.org. She was with the Nashville DA office in August of 2012. Didn’t Glenn Funk fire her?
Hunt: Right. The first day he got in the office, he fired her.
Leahy: Maybe there’s a little bit of irritation.
Simon: They claim these progressives, they want to help minority communities, yet it’s a minority community that is most preyed upon by crime.
It’s one of the most despicable things going on in our country that they make that pretense. And it’s terrible to minorities.
Leahy: The organization she founded, Advocates for Women’s and Kids’ Equality. It’s Awake on the web at Awaketn.org. She’s no longer on the board. She announced her run for district attorney. When did she announce that, Davis?
Hunt: At the end of last year, I think. I was clued into it because the Nashville Scene did a profile of her, and it kind of set off alarm bells. I was like, if the Nashville Scene did i …
Leahy: Let me guess, was it a fawning profile?
Hunt: Oh, yeah, of course, naturally. But if the Nashville Scene is profiling her, you got to wonder what’s going on with them.
Simon: You have to wonder about this women’s equality rhetoric when 60 percent of college students are women.
Hunt: Yes.
Simon: How about men’s equality?
Leahy: So what do we know about this race with Glenn Funk versus Sara Beth Myers? This is for the Democratic primary on May 3rd. The general election for local and county offices is August 4.
It’s a peculiarity of Tennessee, Roger, that actually, I think that all these offices ought to be November elections, but that’s how it’s done in Tennessee.
Simon: Yes. It’s an odd choice. I have to go back from my book and really research why is this.
Leahy: The other thing that’s weird about this, when I moved to Tennessee 31 years ago …
Simon: Well, you’re really old.
Leahy: (Laughs) And I first went in and I went to vote in a primary, I thought, well, it’ll be on a Tuesday and they hold the primary on a Thursday. And I kept thinking why? Everybody else in the country holds it on Tuesday. There’s a reason.
Simon: Yes.
Leahy: I still haven’t discovered the reason, Roger, but that’s the tradition.
Simon: I have to go back and reread that book about The Hopewell Box. A lot of the reasons are in there.
Leahy: That’s a great story about Nashville history and the Democratic machine in Davidson County in what, the ’30s, ’40s? It’s a great book. The Hopewell Box. Crom Carmichael speaks highly of that book.
Simon: It’s very interesting. And a lot of people say that the Southern Democrats of that time are very similar to the Southern Republicans of today.
In many ways the same people. There are good exceptions, but it’s worth reading that if you really want to understand the politics of the area.
Leahy: Davis Hunt, the founder of The Pamphleteer, give us some more insights as to how this race is going to play out. Basically winning the Democrat primary on May 3 is tantamount to winning the general elections.
Simon: They’re not running anyone.
Leahy: The Republicans aren’t running anybody, apparently, and Independents won’t have much of a chance. How does the race look right now?
Hunt: Glenn Funk is beating Sara Beth Myers by a significant margin in funding dollars.
Leahy: Just like whoever the guy was that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat way back in 2000. (Laughs)
Hunt: Oh, God.
Leahy: Way back in 2006.
Hunt: Was that really the case.
Leahy: Yes. Out-raised her significantly.
Simon: Yes.
Leahy: He had no idea she would beat him like a drum.
Simon: I don’t think this woman has Ocasio-Cortez AOC. We have to admit, as much as I don’t like her, she has tremendous political talent.
Hunt: She runs openly as a progressive, too, whereas Sara Beth doesn’t.
Leahy: That’s a big difference.
Hunt: Sara Beth is representing herself as a moderate, depending on who she’s talking to. She’ll play up her moderate talking points. She’ll play up her nonprofit work.
And she’ll play up that stuff when she’s talking to some people. And then play up her progressive bona fides when she’s talking to others.
Leahy: Her background, according to her website, is an accomplished civil rights attorney with local and federal experience.
Hunt: She’s got the Ivy League credentials that I know you guys love.
Leahy: Vanderbilt law.
Hunt: Yale undergraduate, too.
Leahy: Oh no! Is that true? Is she a Yaley?
Hunt: She got her Masters at Yale.
Leahy: Where did she do her undergrad?
Hunt: Masters and undergrad at Yale.
Simon: She’s a very nice, obedient girl. (Laughter) When I was a Yaley the most interesting figure on campus was one John Kerry. That tells you everything you need to know about Yale.
Leahy: Yeah, exactly. Your complaint about her is that she’s misrepresenting who she really is.
Hunt: Yes, 100 percent.
Simon: That’s one complaint.
Leahy: To that point, I’m looking at her bio. at Myersforda.com about page. It doesn’t say she went to Yale.
Hunt: Really? She probably didn’t want to play up her connections to that.
Simon: That’s really immaterial whether she went to Yale. We can be sarcastic about the Ivy League, but we went there. Good and bad people with that.
Leahy: She was also fired in the DA’s office when Glenn Funk took over. She was an assistant U.S. attorney. She served as civil rights coordinator and human trafficking coordinator for the middle district of Tennessee. On paper, she looks moderate.
Simon: You’re reading it from a website.
Leahy: Of course. I’m making a point here.
Simon: Do you want to read my author website and see what people say about me that I selected for it?
Leahy: You’re a wonderful guy.
Simon: Genius, great author, and the like.
Leahy: Davis, will you come back and give us an update on this race?
Hunt: Yes, of course.
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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.
Photo “Sara Beth Myers” by Sara Beth Myers.Â
