Tennessee major parties held their primaries on Thursday, August 2. The surprise winner of the Democratic Party primary winner is Mark E. Clayton, a floor finisher who did not campaign and whose issue stances are completely at odds with the Democratic Party. See this story about the primary.
The unofficial vote totals are: Mark Clayton 48,126; Gary Gene Davis 24,789; Park Overall 24,263; Larry Crim 17,383; Benjamin Roberts 16,369; Dave Handock 16,167; T. K. Owens 13,366. The total turnout, only 160,463 votes, is quite low, although Democratic primaries in Tennessee typically have low turnout in August. In 2008 only 183,348 voters voted in the U.S. Senate primary in August, although the 2008 Democratic presidential primary in February had 624,764 voters.
On August 3, the Democratic Party formally disavowed Clayton and said it might seek court action to replace him as the nominee. See this story. Whether a party can do that in Tennessee is still unsettled. The 6th circuit heard a somewhat similar case from Tennessee on January 17, 2012, and still has not handed down its decision. The U.S. District Court in that case, Kurita v The State Primary Board of the Democratic Party, said a party can replace a primary nominee with someone else.
Tennessee has open primaries. The Green Party, the Constitution Party, and the Libertarian Party, all have U.S. Senate nominees in Tennessee this year. However, the Tennessee Elections office so far refuses to list the Green Party nominee and the Constitution Party nominee on its web page, even though in February a U.S. District Court put those parties on the ballot and they certified their nominees. Thanks to Bill Van Allen for this news.
One more plurality extremist nominee in a robot party hack gang ???
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
ONE election day per cycle.
The thing that stood out to me in the articles I’ver ead abt this is that the state Democratic Party is urging potential Dem voters to write someone in, not vote for the Green candidate. To me it seems like the Dems don’t want to encourage any legitimacy to the Greens.
I should have said that the state Dems are encouraging people to write someone in and not even suggesting voting for the Green candidate. I have not seen the state Dems encouraging people NOT to vote for the Green, they’re just not even mentioning it as a possibility.
@3. That’s typical. Same thing happened in South Carolina when the SCGP was running Tom Clements. After Alvin Greene won the nomination, Tom spoke to a few county Democratic organizations, but secured no endorsements. There were a few Democratic write-ins as well, none of whom mentioned Tom, only Greene. They received no DP support though, and only collected a few 1,000 votes. Tom got 121,000+.
Anyway, the Dem leadership knows its running a ramshackle monopoly and won’t do anything politically to undermine that. Expect them to ignore the Senate race entirely if this court challenge fails.
Mark Clayton is awesome! I will be donating to his campaign.
Deran:
“To me it seems like the Dems don’t want to encourage any legitimacy to the Greens.” The truth is the Dems don’t want to encouage legitimacy to anyone but a Dem. The same can be said of the Republicans.
The 6th Circuit affirmed the district court decision in the Kurita case on July 5, 2012.
In Tennessee, the political party determines election contests of primary nominations. The results certified by the state election officials showed Kurita with an apparent 19-vote victory.
The apparent loser, Tim Barnes, filed an election contest alleging that Republicans had voted in the Democratic primary, and that election officials had given Republican ballots to some would-be Democrat voters.
The state executive committee acting as a contest board decided that there were enough irregularities that they couldn’t be sure who actually won, and declared the nomination vacant. The Democratic executive committees of Montgomery, Cheatham, and Houston counties then chose Barnes to be the nominee Theoretically, this was a totally new process, with no regard to the primary candidates or results. Barnes was unopposed in the general election, other than Kurita’s write-in effort.
The district court seemed to think that LaFollette was the guiding case, and the Democratic Party could select whatever nominee however it wanted. Kurita claimed that she had a property right to the nomination, and that the Tennessee law that provided that the political party could take the nomination from her denied her due process.
It might have been better pursued as a voting rights case. Tennessee has appeared to have vested the choice of legislative nominees in the voters of the Democratic Party (it does not do so for all offices). A voter has a right that “an election” be conducted in a fair manner. If election officials had made mistakes, permitting “Republicans” to vote in a Democratic primary, or preventing “Democrats” from voting, then the logical response would have been to hold a new election – assuming that the litigants in the election contest could not demonstrate that there were “Republicans” who had voted for Kurita – the burden of proof would require that be shown that they were indeed “Republicans” and had also actually voted for Kurita, or that there really were “Democrats” who had been dragooned into the Republican primary.
This would at least have set a precedent for the current situation, where it can’t be plausibly denied that Mark Clayton was the choice of Democratic voters.
The Kurita election, this senate primary, and the ongoing party recognition litigation demonstrate that Tennessee should adopt the Top 2 Open Primary.
Tennessee has quite reasonable candidate ballot access, other than being somewhat early for an August primary. The August primary is a reasonable date given the 45-day requirement of the MOVE act.
Once you eliminate “nomination rights”, the primary becomes a straightforward government-executed procedure, and election contests would end up in court, or the legislature, or Congress, and not in some private organization.
# 7 How soon before SCOTUS brings down a 2000 Bush v. Gore type HAMMER on the skulls of the EVIL morons in primary elections also ???
— as if earlier SCOTUS primary cases were NOT enough –
See the 2 Texas White Primary cases, Smith v. Allright 1944, etc.
Sorry – each party hack GANG is NOT an independent EVIL empire doing whatever IT wants to do.
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P.R. and nonpartisan App.V.
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