WHEN IS REASON COMING BACK TO TENNESSEE POLITICS?

During a Health committee meeting last month, state House Rep. Yusuf Hakeem, D-Chattanooga, argued the case for a bill he co-sponsored that would make abortion legal in cases of rape and incest. It failed because GOP lawmakers refused to go along with it.

“I would hope that we can see that the humane thing for us to do would be not force those persons under those circumstances to carry that child,” Rep. Hakeem said during the Feb. 6 committee meeting. “I give as much to the life of a woman as I do the life that they carry.”

But Rep. Andrew Farmer, a Republicans from Sevierville, was unmoved.

“It makes it sound like all lives brought into this world are worthless and have no meaning if they came from rape or incest,” he said at the meeting. “I’m expressing the opinions of my constituents and of myself.”

Well, Farmer might want to check what his constituents really believe and pay attention to what public opinion polls show.

In a fall of 2023 Vanderbilt University poll, 77% of Tennesseans believe that abortion should be legal in cases of rape or incest. Sixty-four percent of Republicans share that same view, the poll showed.

This disconnect between legislative action and public opinion shows up again and again, like reruns of a bad movie. The supermajority GOP approves or denies legislation that many Tennesseans don’t agree with. From abortion exceptions to gun reform to withholding federal money for K-12 schools, lawmakers are increasingly out of step with where the Volunteer State is.

DEEPLY ONE SIDED

Tennessee is a broadly conservative state, that is clear. The Vanderbilt poll showed that a little less than 50% of Tennesseans identify as conservative. Between 10-20% are liberal and moderates make up 30%, according to poll data.

For most of the 20th century, Democrats had the same supermajority that Republicans now have. The swinging of the political pendulum started about 30 years ago; since then the number of Republicans in the General Assembly has doubled.

According to a Times Free Press article by reporter David Floyd, in 1992, about 35% of the state House of Representatives and a little more than 40% of the state Senate were Republican. Today, 75 of Tennessee’s 99 state representatives, or 76%, and 27 of the 33 state senators, or 82%, are Republicans.

As Republicans maintain their grip on power and control in Nashville, they do so by ignoring the priorities of many of the people they serve.

Regardless of party, we are in need of good governance that is shaped by what the voters want.

SCARCITY IN REASONING

Liberals are not looking for a supermajority; they want to be heard. The Democrats in this state are not some crazed group of radicals motivated by hyper-partisan intentions. They want to ensure that their constituents, and even some who are not heard by their own GOP leaders, are represented in the lawmaking process. It’s pretty simple, folks.

So why does the GOP supermajority choose to ignore the will of the majority of Tennesseans? The answer goes straight to politics: In moving further to the right, Republicans have used fear to motivate voters, but they also fear facing political opponents to their right in the primary election. The GOP supermajority has a perverse incentive to vote the way members do. And the disconnect widens.

Tennessean Van Jones, a CNN political commentator, offered a look into what is happening in the Volunteer State in a Sunday program titled “What happened to Tennessee? The Battle of Blue and Red.” In the TV special Jones spoke with Matthew Shoaf, who was elected to the Sumner County Commission in 2022. Shoaf was among a group of “constitutional Republicans” elected that year who were able to form a 14-member majority on the 20-member panel.

The constitutional Republicans went after fellow Republicans for not being conservative enough. Shoaf and others wanted to ensure their deeply conservative views were heard.

“You claim to stand for individual liberties but you’re not standing against governing overreach,” Shoaf told Jones. “You’re either actively participating in it or you are acquiescent to it. In either case, you gotta go.”

Tennessee’s GOP would do well to look down the road a bit: Public opinion is shifting. Demographics are shifting. The balance of power will shift too.

Reclaiming a sense of reason in the state’s Capitol will require the moderate demographic to challenge the views of not only the GOP but the fringe part of the party. The next time Van Jones, or any other celebrity pundit comes to Tennessee to do a mini-documentary on Tennessee politics, let’s make sure it’s because we shifted away from the hyperpartisanship that has a stranglehold on our state.

Let’s bring back reason to Tennessee.