On March 16, the Tennessee House State & Local Government Committee amended HB 3060 to permit a candidate to file simultaneously as an independent candidate, and as a declared write-in candidate in a partisan primary for the same office.
If the candidate then lost the primary, he or she could still run as an independent candidate. See this story, which explains the motivation for the bill. The Speaker of the House is a Republican, but he is considered a traitor by his own party, because he became speaker with the votes of all the Democrats in the House, plus his own vote. As speaker, even though he is a Republican, he has appointed an equal number of committee chairs from each of the two major parties. The Republicans, in retaliation, had announced that he would not be allowed to file for re-election in the Republican primary this year. But if the bill is signed into law, he could be a write-in in the Republican primary. Since no other Republican has yet announced plans to run in his district, he could surely win a Republican primary as a write-in candidate. And if some other Republican does file for that primary, and defeat him, he can still run in that district as an independent.
What will the Governator do?
BTW, they’re ALL Governators now.
TN has an advanced case of party hack disease since the gerrymander results are close/tied.
P.R. and A.V.
An interesting little amendment and subcommittee hearing (look up HB 3060 and find the video link for 3/16, skip the opening banjo sequence if you like). The amendment is linked-to in the article.
HB 3060 as filed, would have changed the filing deadline for write-in candidates from 50 days before the election to 80 days. Since the primary is in early August, this drastically cuts the time following the primary in which a candidate could file as a write-in candidate after the primary. In 2008, there were 85 days from the primary to the general election. The contest of Rosalind Kurita’s nomination of the state party was not heard by the Democratic primary board until September 13. So if the original bill had been in effect in 2008, she could not have run as a write-in candidate in the general election.
But the amendment completely replaced the entire bill, and added other provisions relating to write-in candidates.
Under current law, a primary candidate must be a bona fide member of the party. But the amendment said that this did not apply to write-in candidates (this explains the ‘Nazi’ reference in the article).
The amendment also provided that if a write-in candidate were certified as the winner of a primary, that this would not be subject to contest before the party primary board. Tennessee primaries are conducted entirely by the state, but contests are heard by the state party executive committee acting as a primary board, with no real law controlling their decisions and activities.
And finally, it provided that if a candidate had filed as an independent candidate, and then won the primary as write-in, it would be OK so long as he withdrew as an independent candidate within 10 days.
In Tennessee, the filing deadline for independent and primary candidates is the same time (April 1st this year). So it would be rather unusual circumstances, where a candidate filed as an independent rather than in the primary, and then declared as a write-in candidate for a party nomination, and won that nomination. If you were known well enough to win the primary, you would have filed for the primary in the first place.
But in cases where no candidate had filed in one of the primaries, an independent candidate might jump into a primary with no filed candidates, and end up with the nomination, and then drop his independent candidacy.
The subcommittee started out with chair skipping through bills because the sponsor was not there or ready to present their bill. He remarked that they might be out of there in record time.
They then get to HB 3060, and the sponsor presents his amendment, vaguely explaining its purpose. House Speaker Williams was then recognized to speak in favor of the amendment and against the party hierarchies, who he suggested could not actually win an election if they ran for office.
One of the members suggested that action be deferred for a week to avoid a bloodbath in full committee next week, but the amended bill was passed out of subcommittee.
The subcommittee then went back to HB 3019, which had been skipped over early. HB 3019 would take the political parties out of settling contests over primaries (as had happened in 2008, and resulted in the ousting of Rosalind Kurita from the nomination in which she received the most votes). There was some technical discussion including legal staff of the subcommittee, and a representative from the SOS, involving who would hear the contests, and whether contests could be settled in time for ballots to be printed for the general election, etc. Someone said they thought the bill was going to be given to an inter-session study committee.
At this time, the sponsor of the bill asked to be heard. He said that it appeared that everyone else was taking over his bill, and he hadn’t intended it to become the Rosalind Kurita memorial bill. He then asked to withdrew the bill. He then walked out forcefully. The chair noted that the bill had been withdrawn and went on to the next bill.
The filing deadline for 2010 is April 1. It would seem unlikely that a bill would be passed through the full committee, passed by both houses and signed by the governator by then. So at best you might get a bill that could take effect between the filing deadline for on-ballot candidates and the primary.
Since Tennessee already requires independent candidates to file at the same time as primary candidates, and the filing requirements are the same and minimal (25 signatures and no filing fee), Tennessee should go to a non-partisan Top 2 primary.
Williams should just run as an independent and caucus with us. Either that or run as a Dem. He’ll never be allowed to sit in the GOP caucus ever again.