Will big money Tennessee Dems 'Move On'?

This past weekend the Tennessee Democratic Party Executive Committee voted to install Chip Forrester of Nashville as their new state party chair. This move came despite the fact that Governor Phil Bredesen, every Democratic congressman save one, and most of the living former state party chairs endorsed Nashville attorney Charles Robert Bone.

The more “liberal” or “progressive” element of the party celebrated Forrester’s election while more conservative Democrats shook their heads and thought things couldn’t get any worse for them.

Forrester is an affable, bow tied, bespectacled liberal. He has a long history of involvement in the Tennessee Democratic Party dating back to the days of former Gov. Ned McWherter’s campaign and as a state director for then-U.S. Senator Al Gore.

What has conservative Democrats chagrined about Forrester is both superficial and substantive. Superficially, outside of the Nashville beltway it is hard for these Democrats to see Forrester being able to relate to farmers and factory workers. Substantially, they still remember the fact that Forrester forsook his political family and mounted a quixotic campaign against entrenched Democratic Congressman Bob Clement in 1992. The timing couldn’t have been worse because not long after Forrester mounted the challenge, Gore became Bill Clinton’s running mate and Forrester was shut out of the campaign.

While Forrester has rehabilitated his political image with this election, the question still remains whether he will have the gravitas to move his party forward. Right now, his election is simply a personal accomplishment, time will tell if it is anything more than that.

The decision by the Tennessee Democratic Party’s executive committee to install him was a repudiation of their elected leaders. When Bredesen, and Congressmen Bart Gordon, Lincoln Davis, John Tanner and Jim Cooper weigh in on a state party race and lose there is no other way to interpret it. The reasons for the rebuke range from lack of personal attention to dissatisfaction over the loss of the State House and State Senate to personality conflicts.

In the middle of this are the people who write the checks for both the candidates and the Democratic Party. They aren’t the ones who go out and wave signs, they are the ones that pay for the signs.

To say that many of them are wary of Forrester is an understatement. That is not to say that they are happy with Bredesen either.

The City Paper reached out to some major Democratic donors and asked them where they stood. These individuals are more apt to let their wallets speak than speak publicly and spoke freely with the understanding that their names would not be used.

One major Democratic contributor said that he felt Forrester, Bredesen and the state executive committee were out of touch with the mainstream and would be concentrating his political largesse on organizations with a track record.

"I will continue to give to the party to do things I believe the party and Chip have an aptitude for doing — perhaps grassroots and the traditional attack dog role — but will also fund heavily other efforts that are focused and have a history of success,” this donor said. “I will fund the House Caucus and I will particularly fund efforts as directed by Tanner, Davis, Cooper and Gordon, who have the most to lose, and thus will be the most focused on getting the job done and done right.

“The days of my giving and raising and hoping the money is spent wisely are just plain over,” the contributor continued. “The days of giving unconditionally to an organization run by a committee that could care less what I think are over, too. I will give to the Tennessee Democratic Party but am damn well going to demand that whoever is spending the money knows what the hell they are doing. Most of us think the four congressmen and their political operations are just frankly better suited, with help from the House Democratic caucus, to handle the heavy lifting that is in 2010.”

Another said that he hoped that major donors should band together and look at what organizations like MoveOn.org were doing and just bypass the state party structure altogether.

Formed in 1998 as a response to the impeachment of Clinton, MoveOn.org is a liberal public policy advocacy group and political action committee that was created outside of the Democratic National Committee structure to fight for Democratic causes and candidates. While at first many establishment Democrats wanted the group to die, it has been integral part of the rebirth of the national party.

The donor we spoke to said, “MoveOn.org was created because the national party had to cater to factions and was ineffective, at least that is how I see it. I have looked around and have seen other states have had similar Democratic organizations pop up because their state party organizations were incompetent. Maybe that is what we should do here.”

Two states that have such organizations are Texas and Georgia. Texas has the “Texas Blue Dog Coalition” which according to their Web site, “Blue Dog Democrats are Yellow Dog Democrats that hold to traditional, moderate-to-conservative-views on certain issues based upon deeply held personal, cultural or religious beliefs, and may otherwise be Progressive and Populist, but have been ‘choked blue’ by increasing Party opposition to these views.” In Georgia, the “Red Clay Democrats” have a similar agenda.

Whether or not groups of this nature get off the ground in Tennessee is questionable, but Tennessee Republicans aren’t waiting to find out. After Forrester’s election as Democratic Party chair this past Saturday, the state Republican party sent him a public congratulations and then reminded their faithful that in 1999, as a member of his party's executive committee, Forrester voted for a resolution calling for creation of a state income tax.

Welcome to the party, Chip. You have a lot of work to do.