Tate says he is a compromiser; colleagues disagree
Reginald Tate didn’t see this coming. The Memphis Democrat has represented District 33 in the Tennessee Senate since 2006. During that time, no one challenged him for the seat, which comprises Hickory Hill, a mostly-black, middle-class neighborhood caught between ruin and revival, and parts of East Memphis.
Come Aug. 2, though, Tate must battle Katrina Robinson, an entrepreneur who operates a vocational nursing school, to keep his seat. But that’s not what blindsided him. What blindsided him was his Democratic Senate colleagues, Minority Leader Lee Harris and Sara Kyle, throwing their support behind her, not him.
“No, I wasn’t expecting that,” said Tate, who decried their endorsement of Robinson whose sister, Sherra Wright, is awaiting trial for the murder of her former husband, ex-basketball player Lorenzen Wright.
“Her family has a history with the legal system, but they’re having her go against me. There are only five of us (Democrats) in the Senate…this sends a message that we don’t have our act together,” said Tate.
Tate knows some of his votes didn’t sit well with Democrats. Among other things, he joined Senate Republicans in voting to bar Planned Parenthood from receiving funds from TennCare, the state’s Medicaid program, and for a law to make it more difficult to remove Confederate monuments – a vote he defends as a way to thwart attempts to remove monuments to African-Americans.
He also opposed expanding TennCare in a March committee meeting.
Tate defends votes against Democratic base
But Tate said since Democrats are outnumbered in the Senate, they weren’t going to win on the Planned Parenthood issue, as well as other hot-button topics, no matter how he voted.
He also defends his votes as pragmatic; that to get anything done for his constituents means going along with Republicans whose votes he may need on other issues – such as providing education for inmates.
“Do you know how hard that was? To get that money to help inmates to get a degree?” he said. Understood. But Tate is wrong. First, it’s not impossible for Democrats to find Republicans to cooperate on issues that transcend party politics while sticking to Democrat principles on other issues. A clear example of that is, well, Harris. Harris, a candidate for Shelby County mayor, is a Democrat who represents much of the core city of Memphis, but he and Brian Kelsey, a Republican representing Germantown, Cordova and East Memphis, co-sponsored a bill to protect the Memphis Sands Aquifer.
They withdrew that bill because the Tennessee Valley Authority agreed to much of what the bill required, such as seeking approval from a board to pump more than 10,000 gallons of water a day from the authority, Harris said. But their united push for a law likely influenced that.
“The wells are closed, so TVA pretty much did what we wanted them to do,” Harris said.
Harris also worked with Sen. Bo Watson, R-Hixon, to pass a bill that requires all Tennessee schools to test for lead.
He also said that in 2017, GOP members helped cosponsor 12 bills he proposed.
Yet Harris didn’t believe to get that done, he had to side with his GOP colleagues on voting against Planned Parenthood or other issues important to the Democratic base that elected him.
Then there’s this.
A sign of weakness or selling out Democrats?
If Democrats are perpetually in danger of being outnumbered by Republicans on hot-button issues, then what would Tate have lost by voting for what his base and party supports?
If a Democrat vote against defunding Planned Parenthood wasn’t going to change the outcome, then neither would a Democrat vote for defunding it. In fact, Tate could have just abstained from voting.
However, he claims that would have shown weakness.
Obviously, a Democrat in the staunchly conservative Tennessee General Assembly is in a tough spot. The decision against giving Memphis $250,000 for its bicentennial as punishment for removing Confederate statues is evidence of the vindictiveness to which some will resort.
But when people vote to send Democrats, or for that matter, Republicans, to the legislature, they expect them to get programs and initiatives funded, but not at the cost of selling out their principles, or not being a voice for them on other issues that govern their lives.
While it’s good, for example, that Tate got GOP colleagues to sign off on funding inmate education, if they struggle to get health care once they are released because TennCare wasn’t expanded, that can thwart their efforts to start a new life.
Worse, the idea that politicians must go along with stances that most of their constituents abhor to score a few victories fuels disenchantment with politics. It causes people, especially many of the struggling constituents that Tate represents, to lose faith in the vote.
And disillusionment is the last thing anyone, especially people in that district, need.