Leatherwood goes after Blackburn on effectiveness, ethics, but faces fund-raising troubles

U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn is facing perhaps her most serious primary competition from Shelby County Register of Deeds Tom Leatherwood, who is questioning her conservative status. Matthew Williams/File/The City Paper

Since 1974, no incumbent member of the U.S. House of Representatives has been beaten in Tennessee. Politically, being a member of Congress from the Volunteer State has been a pretty safe job.

Gerrymandered districts designed for one-party control and the perks and powers of incumbency typically propel sitting Congressmen to re-election time and time again, often with pesky but unserious opposition to entrenched members.

Perhaps that is why the conservative street fight that is becoming the Republican primary in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District — which includes part of Davidson County — is so surprising.

Tom Leatherwood, Shelby County’s Register of Deeds and a former two-term state senator, is mounting a Republican primary campaign against U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Brentwood) — a regular face on Fox News and arguably Tennessee’s most high-profile conservative.

Since her initial election in 2002, Blackburn hasn’t fended off any serious threats — in the primary or the general elections — has moved up the GOP House ranks in Washington and been widely speculated as interested in making a gubernatorial bid in 2010.

How could Leatherwood, who describes himself as “very conservative,” best Blackburn and overcome the three-term incumbent’s natural advantages — name identification and campaign cash?

Since declaring his candidacy, Leatherwood has gone after Blackburn on essentially two fronts — ineffectiveness for being part of the Washington GOP establishment that strayed from party principles and alleged unethical behavior regarding campaign finance bookkeeping errors and contributions going to family members.

“The country is in just too critical of a position to have people messing around up in D.C. the way they are,” Leatherwood said in an interview. “I think she’s become self-serving and it’s become more about enriching herself, the family, holding onto power rather than solving these problems that our country is facing.”

Blackburn’s campaign self-reported campaign finance errors, which amounted to about $100,000 in unreported campaign contributions and about $286,000 in campaign spending. They acknowledge that campaign funds have gone to members of her family, specifically her daughter, for fund-raising services that didn’t stray from what campaigns typically pay for similar tasks.

‘Hand to Mouth’

While running against Washington, D.C. is a popular tactic, Leatherwood’s candidacy could be hamstrung by a lack of fund-raising success in a sprawling district that ranges from eastern Shelby County to southern Davidson, encompassing the state’s two largest media markets.

Leatherwood acknowledges he hasn’t been raking in the campaign contributions, but he would not disclose how much money he raised during this year’s second quarter.

“We are a hand-to-mouth campaign,” Leatherwood said. “Raising money is difficult.”

While second quarter numbers aren’t yet disclosed, at the end of the first quarter Leatherwood had just $3,359 in cash on hand compared to Blackburn’s bulging bank balance of $803,000.

The vast majority of the money Leatherwood took in during the first quarter he had loaned himself. Of $24,840 in receipts, he loaned his campaign $21,481. He had received just three contributions from other individuals.

Meanwhile, Blackburn raised $618,000 in contributions in the first quarter, about $340,000 of which came from individuals and $274,000 from political action committees (PACs) or other committees.

Bruce Oppenheimer, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University, said Leatherwood’s lack of campaign cash will make his primary challenge difficult because he needs money to make an issue of Blackburn’s difficulties, such as campaign finance reporting.

“It’s hard for me to believe that she’d lose a primary,” Oppenheimer said.

Leatherwood says he has run television advertisements in Shelby County, Jackson and Montgomery County.

Been there, done that.

While the fund-raising shortfall may be daunting for him, Leatherwood has overcome an opponent more entrenched than Blackburn before.

In 1992, Leatherwood scored a surprising election to the state Senate after defeating veteran state Sen. Leonard Dunavant in the Republican primary. Dunavant had been a member of the Senate since 1973.

Leatherwood said he ran against Dunavant simply because Dunavant sponsored a bill to impose a state income tax during former Gov. Ned McWherter’s administration.

It was the first political win for Leatherwood, who prior to politics worked in the oil exploration industry managing a field crew and later became a public school teacher. He is married with four young daughters.

Leatherwood’s defeat of an established incumbent rankled what was then a state Senate where sitting members didn’t go down in defeat often.

“There was some, I guess, a little bit of hard feelings by some people when he first came up there,” said Sen. Randy McNally (R-Oak Ridge), who served with Leatherwood. “But he overcame that fairly well.”

Leatherwood term limited himself and left the Senate in 2000, actually serving two years in the same Senate as Blackburn where each were fervently opposed to the income tax. He was elected Shelby County Register of Deeds in 2000.

Like his opposition to a state income tax that forced him to “not sit idly by in 1992,” Leatherwood explains on his Web site that he must run for Congress while “Congressional ethics and conservative leadership are well on their way to a total meltdown.”

Pork-barrel vendetta

Leatherwood says that Blackburn is part of the problem relating to conservative meltdown and not part of the solution.

The two were not always political opponents. In 2004, Leatherwood says he supported Blackburn’s re-election, contributed money to her campaign and worked on her behalf.

Since then, however, he says he’s become “very disappointed” in what Leatherwood calls Blackburn’s “ineffectiveness and unethical behavior.”

The ineffectiveness charge mainly centers on Blackburn being part of what was once a Republican majority in the U.S. House that lost control in 2006. He puts the blame on “pork-barrel spending” and high deficits that Leatherwood says grew faster under Republican control than Democratic.

Darcy Anderson, a Blackburn campaign spokeswoman, said Blackburn called for a one-year earmark moratorium because she recognized the spending had become “worse and worse.”

“She has been one of the people who has stood up in those Republican conferences and has told Republicans that we need to focus our agenda because it’s gotten off track,” Anderson said. “She hasn’t been afraid to do that.”

More specifically on Blackburn, Leatherwood says he differs from her on three economic issues. He says that while she has called for a one-year moratorium on earmarks, he would not file any earmark requests at all.

In addition, he is opposed to the economic stimulus checks recently delivered to many Americans’ mailboxes, saying they were a “Band-aid” and added $170 billion to the deficit. Blackburn favored them.

Lastly, Leatherwood is also against a federal gas tax holiday that Blackburn says she can support if it’s accompanied with a one-year moratorium on pork-barrel spending.

FEC complaints flying

The unethical charge against Blackburn focuses on her campaign’s troubles with keeping proper tabs on her campaign finances and the “funneling” of about $400,000 in campaign cash to her daughter’s fund-raising company and other family members for campaign services. Other analysis put that figure in the $300,000 range.

Leatherwood was critical of paying family members for campaign services early in his candidacy but Blackburn’s campaign gave added ammunition for Leatherwood’s charges earlier this year.

This spring, Blackburn self-reported to the Federal Election Commission hundreds of thousands in campaign bookkeeping errors dating back to 2002.

Those errors amount to Blackburn’s failing to report about $100,000 in contributions and about $286,000 in spending since 2002.

“I think people know that that is wrong,” Leatherwood said.

Blackburn’s troubles caused her to be the subject of a FEC complaint lodged by a watchdog group from Washington, D.C. and a Germantown, Tenn., resident.

But Leatherwood has also been the subject of a recent FEC complaint brought by a Collierville, Tenn., resident.

The complaint says some of Leatherwood’s advertisements didn’t have him approving the message in his own voice, didn’t disclose who paid for his yard signs and didn’t show his campaign’s Web site as an expense on his campaign disclosure reports.

In response, Leatherwood says his reading of FEC rules and regulations doesn’t require him to approve the message for the specific ad he ran and that his Web site expenses will be disclosed on his second quarter report.

He admits fault for not having a disclaimer on who paid for his yard signs promoting his candidacy.

The Blackburn campaign’s Anderson says that Leatherwood’s incompliant yard signs are still up.

“I believe that he needs to talk the talk and walk the walk,” Anderson said. “He has been negative from our campaign from the beginning about issues that he is now facing with the FEC and when we have corrected the problem, he has not corrected the problem.”

Leatherwood said his campaign’s potential FEC problems with Blackburn’s don’t equate and comparing the two “is ridiculous.”