Local Democratic Party supporters appear to have forgotten first lady Michelle Obama's admonition to "go high" in their campaigns.
Following challenger Khristy Wilkinson's attempt to drag incumbent Sen. Todd Gardenhire's marriage from two decades back into their state Senate race and Melody Shekari's transference of a friendly campaign photo with U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann into an attack, the Hamilton County Black Caucus is trying to tie Gardenhire to what the group says are his pre-Civil War ancestors who were slave traders or slave owners.
"The [organization]," it says in a news release, "is calling on Sen. Gardenhire to apologize and denounce the terrible and ugly past of his family heritage."
It further says it "is calling on every leader of good will regardless of political affiliation to state in straight words whether they condone or denounce Sen. Gardenhire's tactics and family heritage."
If any political race across the country has taken such a low road, we haven't heard of it.
The problem is, according to Gardenhire, one of the men the group refers to as a slave trader, W.C. Gardenhire, is not a direct ancestor of his. The other man, George Gardenhire, may or may not be an ancestor, he said, because he had several George Gardenhire ancestors.
In fact, though, the state senator is no more responsible for what his ancestors may or may not have done more than 150 years ago than members of the Hamilton County Black Caucus are for what their ancestors may have done.
The group further takes exception to a mailer by the state senator that says he has "Tennessee values," and Wilkinson has "Detroit values." Wilkinson lived both in Detroit and Grand Rapids, Mich., before coming to Chattanooga. The group oddly claims the state senator has made the comparison because Wilkinson, who is white, "is from a majority black city."
We believe Gardenhire's aim was a good bit simpler - she's not from here; I am.
Detroit, in fact, has experienced bankruptcy, high crime rates and does have a large black population. But if one goes along with the line of logic from the Hamilton County Black Caucus, one would conclude the group believes the Michigan city's black population is responsible for the bankruptcy and crime. The state senator, after all, didn't make the comparison; the group did. We think that's a lot of blame to put on one race.
The Hamilton County group also took issue with Gardenhire's use of black faces to represent the minority engineering scholarships he saw to it would be awarded at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in place of one year of funding for the school's Office for Diversity and Inclusion.
Gardenhire, proving no good deed goes unpunished, was trying to find a compromise this spring that would pass muster with General Assembly members, who were furious with the school's "Sex Week" student activities, suggested use of gender-neutral pronouns and excision of the word "Christmas" from holiday parties. Gardenhire said he was inspired to make the suggestion after emails from minority engineers advocated that he re-direct the money into scholarships.
We hope the last few days of these campaigns won't be filled with such disgusting garbage.