Stockard on the Stump: Blackburn camp nearly wrote losing playbook

And the band played on and on … It seemed they would play the entire Merle Haggard box set before U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn came out and claimed victory Tuesday night in Tennessee’s gubernatorial race.

No doubt, folks in the Blackburn camp were getting antsy as the vote differential with Democrat Jerri Green ran between 2 and 6 percentage points, winding up at a resounding 2.5-point margin for the Republican nominee in the reddest state in the country.

Blackburn could blame independent David Hatley for stealing 9% of the vote, but those weren’t votes for the upper East Tennessee hot tub mogul — who flushed $12 million down the toilet — as much as they were votes by Republicans who weren’t exactly enthused with Blackburn. That’s putting it kindly.

When Blackburn finally saw there weren’t enough votes left in Shelby County to push Green past her, she emerged with other victorious folks at The Pinnacle in Nashville, such as U.S. Rep.-elect Johnny Garrett of Goodlettsville, U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann of Chattanooga (trying to garner Blackburn’s U.S. Senate seat), and Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson (still counting votes in the Tennessee Senate speaker’s race). 

We had been promised they would speak. But alas, time was running short.

In what might have been her most conciliatory statement ever, Blackburn said she realized every Tennessean didn’t vote for her but that she would be a governor for every Tennessean.

In fact, she received 45.5% of the vote, less than a majority and hardly a mandate, to Green’s 43%, according to the Secretary of State’s unofficial results. That’s 957,136 for Blackburn, 902,953 for Green and 195,564 for Hatley, who merely gave Republicans who don’t like Blackburn a chance to vote for a conservative. Former Lipscomb professor Lauren Pinkston didn’t even pick up the 2% she projected, coming in at 1.25%, 26,200 votes.

Election party emcee Clay Travis, a lawyer-turned-conservative radio host, claimed that while it was a rough night nationwide for Republicans, “it hasn’t been a tough night for the great state of Tennessee.” 

At least not until you look at the facts.

Democrats picked up six state House seats, the largest pickup in three decades. And even after Republican lawmakers tried to fix the election by splitting Memphis’ majority Black congressional district, the GOP barely won those races and jeopardized Republican U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais, who is looking for 280 votes in what appears to be a loss to Democrat Victoria Broderick. She has claimed victory, but he hasn’t conceded.

After squeaking past Green, Blackburn bragged about a grass-roots campaign that ignored the media and focused on regular folks. Readers might recall she told NewsChannel5 she talks to Tennesseans every day as she refused for the umpteenth time to take a reporter’s questions.

Realists might say her campaign people wrote the book on how to darn near lose a race that shouldn’t be close. 

For instance, Blackburn depended on dark-money groups to attack Hatley, refused to debate her opponents, never sought the backing of primary rivals, state Rep. Monty Fritts and U.S. Rep. John Rose, and pretty much rested on her laurels as a career politician who encouraged people to throw rocks at the state Capitol during the income tax debate a quarter century ago.

She was fortunate that the Democratic Party never really got behind Green or spent heavily to elect her. TV viewers saw a barrage of anti-Hatley ads and a few Blackburn spots with former swimmer Riley Gaines fretting about transgender athletes but nothing positive about Blackburn and hardly anything about Green.

In her victory speech, Blackburn conceded that she realizes Tennesseans are hurting economically, though she failed to mention the pain stems from President Donald Trump’s policies. And she threw out words such as workforce development in a press conference with Gov. Bill Lee Wednesday, as well as affordable housing and workforce housing, which apparently are supposed to excite liberals and the unwashed masses.

Blackburn’s also broaching the idea of property tax breaks for seniors and young homebuyers, which sounds great but will put her in direct conflict with local governments that depend on that revenue to operate. Besides, Tennessee already has tax relief programs for seniors.

In a state known for moderation, she also continued Tuesday night to hammer socialists, communists and Islamists, none of whom hold much sway in these parts. Blackburn kept up the tough-on-crime tack too.

“We’re going to hunt down and we are going to prosecute these child predators, and if they molest and rape our babies, they need the death penalty,” she said, adding her administration will make that a priority.

That also sounds grand. But Tennessee has a law authorizing the death penalty for aggravated child rape. It runs counter to U.S. Supreme Court precedent.

Maybe the state legislature can fix that too.

Blackburn did promise reporters during her press conference that she would be keeping them busy. To be sure, she took more questions from different outlets Wednesday than she did for an entire year.

Voucher roadblock

Blackburn keeps dancing around a major expansion of the state’s private-school voucher programs but clearly wants to do something. 

The state has one for low-income students in Nashville, Memphis and Chattanooga and a separate one for everybody else that can be expanded by 5,000 students every year, depending on the number of applications and legislative funding. 

It’s so popular that even some Republicans call it a “giveaway.”

During her victory speech, Blackburn fell back on one of her talking points, saying the state needs “to expand educational opportunities for every child so parents don’t have to win the lottery in order to have a say in their child’s education.” We’re guessing that means expanding vouchers, which are costing the state upwards of $300 million already.

The blue wave they say didn’t hit Tennessee caused a problem, though. Democrats flipped six state House seats, and several reliable GOP voucher votes lost in primaries. In light of those changes, they’ll be lucky to keep the so-called Education Freedom Scholarship alive, much less twist enough arms to expand a program that hands out about $7,500 a year to kids, regardless of family income, for private-school enrollment.

Rejuvenating the conflict

Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell, who has been navigating a mine field in the Republican-controlled legislature for several years, said this week he was “proud” to have directed more than $125,000 from his leadership PAC to back Democratic candidates and protect voting rights.

“For years, the Republican supermajority has interfered in local decisions, from attempting to seize control of airport authorities in Nashville and Chattanooga to dictating the size of our Metro Council,” O’Connell said. (The Tennessee Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of the state on those battles, cutting Nashville’s city council in half.)

But that didn’t keep O’Connell from saying those types of state moves caused “confusion and costly legal fights.” 

Republican lawmakers have been going after O’Connell almost since he took office, yet he’s been meeting regularly with Lee to find some sort of common ground. After all, he points out, Nashville is the state’s “economic engine,” and he’s looking to work with “anyone” at the Capitol who’s committed to moving the city forward economically.

Considering his backing of Democratic candidates, it’ll be interesting to see if anyone wearing red will give him a call. Blackburn laid down a bit of a gauntlet this week, saying she will not allow any sanctuary cities, even though the legislature banned those in 2018, (O’Connell wasn’t thrilled with a state-federal immigrant roundup in South Nashville) and giving hope to Lower Broad bar owners that the state will rescue them from higher Metro property taxes. 

We wonder when O’Connell will have his first meeting with Blackburn and whether they’ll both emerge unscathed.