School board races in two districts
Come March, you may be anxious to fill in the space for your favorite candidate in Tennessee’s presidential preference primary, but there won’t be a lot of primary competition on the rest of the ballot.
Qualifying closed Thursday, and the only primary contest on the county general ballot will be the Circuit Court race between current Sessions Court Judge Alex McVeagh and attorney Michele Coffman. Criminal Court Judge Amanda Dunn, appointed earlier this year to fulfill the unexpired term of Tom Greenholtz, who was elevated to the Court of Criminal Appeals, drew no Republican opponent and will have no Democratic opposition in August. Similarly, Marty Haynes will be seeking his third term as assessor of property and will not face an opponent in March or August. Neither will District 3 Hamilton County Commissioner Ken Smith, who is running to fill out the unexpired term of now-state Rep. Greg Martin.
However, the election will offer primary races for two Hamilton County Board of Education seats. In District 4, Democrats Missy Crutchfield and Jackie Anderson-Thomas will vie to replace two-term board member Tiffanie Robinson, an independent who is not running for a third term. Since no Republican qualified, the primary winner will take her seat on the board in September.
In District 7, Republicans Ed Garcia and Jodi Schaffer will square off to replace Joe Wingate, who is retiring after two terms. The winner of that primary will face independent David Sean Kelman in the general election in August.
In the other races, with no primary opposition, Republican Steve Slater and Democrat Tammy Barnes in District 1, Republican Ben Daugherty and independent Crystal Boehm in District 2, Republican Felice Hadden and Democrat Angie Stone Jackson in District 10, and Republican Sherrie Guinn Ford and incumbent Democrat Jill Black in District 11, will face off in August.
Look for the March election to be quiet but the county general election in August to be a little hotter.
Reversal of fortune
Some times, the good guys win one.
Earlier this fall, the Hamilton County Board of Education voted 7-3 to prevent students at Chattanooga Center for Creative Arts from making a trip to Europe for D-Day commemoration ceremonies in June 2024. Board members said they felt with wars in Ukraine and Gaza that it was too dangerous for students to visit a country that is thousands of miles from either battle zone.
Evidently, board members heard from parents and constituents, one of which was Dr. Shae Connor, wife of District 3 school board member Ben Connor.
In a letter to board members, she wrote of a school trip she made to France when she was 15 that she said “changed her life.” “For the first time,” she wrote, “I saw opportunity stretch out before me. My worldview was expanded to include people who look, think, believe, and act differently than what I was used to, but also at the same time, the world got smaller, more approachable, and no longer seemed out of my reach.” She said she later spent a semester in France while she was a college student, and while on a train from Normandy to Paris, was approached by a Frenchman who asked if she was an American and told her how grateful he was the U.S. helped liberate his country and end fascism there.
In concluding, in part, Connor said: “Please know that when you make decisions to ban international trips for high school students, you may be having more of a negative impact on an individual’s life than you could ever imagine. You may be closing a window to the world that they will never be able to open themselves.”
Ben Connor brought the trip back up for consideration during Thursday’s meeting, and it passed 7-4.
Trump-eted lead
Tennessee is still Trump country, according to a recent Vanderbilt University poll.
Not only is he the pick of 56% of respondents to be the Republican presidential nominee in March’s state primary, but his likely general-election opponent, President Joe Biden, has the worst approval rating (27%) of any U.S. president in the nearly 13-year history of the poll.
While U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, is underwater in her approval rating (41% approve, 46% disapprove), she also has a 17-point lead over state Rep. Gloria Johnson, one of the Democratic candidates for Senate in the August 2024 primary, in her bid for re-election.
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty R-Tennessee, has a slight net positive approval rating (38%-34%), and Gov. Bill Lee is unchanged in approval (53%) from a May poll.
Clarification: In a Dec. 5 editorial on this page, some readers may have been confused about the words and intent used to recount some recent votes by congressional Democrats.
To clarify, U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Memphis, voted to censure Palestinian American U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Michigan, who had repeatedly made antisemitic and anti-American remarks during her tenure in Congress. He also voted to oust U.S. Rep. George Santos, R-New York, from Congress over numerous charges he is facing for his role in a range of schemes involving personal and campaign finances (and to which he has pleaded not guilty).