You have my sympathies having Cooper as your representative.
If I recall correctly, DesJarlais is the first Republican elected in our district since the Civil War so it CAN be done. Don’t give up hope. Y’all just have to find the right person.
Ya know, as many times as I’ve seen the Corlew and Rose ads on tv, I never knew which district they were running in. I’m troubled, too, by how much the others have raised vs. what Judd has. I’m going to have to dig to see who’s giving to their campaigns. I can’t help but wonder if the State GOP is pulling their crappy stunts again this election that they pulled two years ago. They were throwing support behind liberal candidates running as “R”s and might be doing it again.
No, there were others before DesJarlais. Remember, Cooper used to represent that district from 1983-1995. Van Hilleary won it in 1994 when Cooper ran unsuccessfully for the Senate. Janice Bowling (now a State Senator) should’ve won it in 2002 when Hilleary left to run for Governor, but she was outspent and Lincoln Davis had the district lines redrawn to get him in.
Before Van Hilleary in 1994, the last Republican to win the seat was in 1920 during the anti-Wilson landslide (Warren Harding won TN, the GOP took 5 out of 10 House seats, they’d have won a Senate seat had one been up, and an elderly Alfred Taylor finally took the Governorship decades after his brother Robert beat him as the Dem nominee in the “War of the Roses.”). Wynne Clouse, the GOP victor, knocked out the Dem incumbent, Cordell Hull. Alas, Hull came back in 1922 and took the seat again. Of course, it was also the seat that sent the Gores, too.
In any event, as for my district, there’s almost no Republican presence in Nashville. We do have 1 GOP State Senator out of 3 seats, but he’s no prize (Steve Dickerson, the most liberal Republican in the body - in fact, he’s to the left of my Black Democrat State Senator, Thelma Harper). Out of 10 House seats, there’s only 1 Republican, and that’s Speaker Harwell. There’s an even chance she may be replaced by a rich Democrat running on his daddy’s name and fame (and $$). Harwell refused to chop up the Nashville districts in order to get more Republicans. We should have at least 4 out of the 10 seats to correspond with the State Senate seat Dickerson holds. Harwell would rather elect Democrats that will kiss her ass than solid Conservative Republicans who won’t.
I’m wary of the fact the GOP steadfastly refuses to enact reasonable and necessary methods for choosing our nominees. We MUST end open primaries. If Democrats know they won’t be able to elect a member in 7 out of 9 seats and countless other legislative seats, they can just go into the GOP primary and choose the most RINO fake. That has to end. Add to that, with no runoff, they could install said fake RINO with as little as 20% if you have a badly divided field. 80% of the candidates could be Conservative, and a district will get stuck with a weasel. Again, this MUST end.
We also should have something similar to Utah with a pre-primary convention that has the activists meet the candidates face to face and they get thoroughly vetted. If a candidate is overwhelmingly supported, they get the nomination outright. No Democrat chicanery.
Like you suggested, there are too many Republicans in this state that are comfortable with the chicanery to keep movement Conservatives and reformers out of office.