WKNO TRANSCRIPT
CHRISTOPHER BLANK (Host): Halfway through early voting, people are returning to the polls in numbers that reflect the 2018 midterms. That was during Donald Trump's first presidency. What can we expect in the home stretch to Nov. 3rd? With us to talk about that is political analyst Otis Sanford. Welcome back.
OTIS SANFORD: Thank you, Chris. Thank you for having me.
BLANK: Let's start with the governor's race. Sen. Marsha Blackburn is still the front-runner here, but her campaign strategy has always been that Tennessee Republicans will choose her because, maybe, she's best friends with Donald Trump, or just the Republican option. Is that still true?
SANFORD: It is true based on her position on this. That's exactly what she's expecting. She feels entitled to it. And she is not running a decent campaign in my mind because she's not addressing the issues, she's not debating. So she just expects loyalty from Republicans and Independents who have supported the party in the past.
BLANK: We've seen some challenges recently. The independent candidates, especially, have really gotten out there in these last few weeks. Do they pose any sort of threat to her winning this election?
SANFORD: Oh, I think David Hatley poses a threat here. He is siphoning off some votes that probably would have gone to her because people just don't like the politics of Marsha Blackburn. And there are a lot of Republicans who don't like that, and I've spoken to a lot of them. So yes, I think that she is going to lose some votes to the main Independent candidate, which is Hatley.
She's still the front-runner, but it's not inconceivable that she could lose this race.
BLANK: Blackburn is among many Republican candidates nationwide who refuse to debate or answer basic policy questions. And that is especially true in Tennessee. We've seen in the congressional races, State Sen. Brent Taylor did not debate. Charlie Hatcher appeared in a forum, but he didn't debate Chaz Molder. What has changed in politics recently where Republican voters don't feel like they need to hear from their candidates?
SANFORD: These candidates, especially for congressional seats in Tennessee, they feel as if the race is already won because of the gerrymandering that has gone on, and they don't feel like they need to or want to debate because they don't want to have to address the national issues here. This to me is a nationalized election now. All the issues that are filtering down from the national level, from the federal level, from the White House, it is impacting voters this year more than any other time in the Midterm. And these Republicans don't want to address those issues. The war, affordability, corruption in the White House: they don't want to have to address that. So they are running away from debates. And certainly Marsha Blackburn, who is a sitting senator right now, she doesn't want to have to address all of these things because they don't have an answer for why things are so terrible and why Donald Trump is so unpopular.
BLANK: Well, finally Otis, we have to talk about the Memphis City Council because the meeting this week was almost as chaotic and dramatic as the last one. And all of this is over data centers. The council said no to a one-year moratorium on new data centers, which kind of flew in the face of public opinion. So what did they decide on at this meeting this week?
SANFORD: Frankly, I don't know what they did. I know what they didn't do. They did not listen to a lot of their constituents who are saying let's put a pause on this. And I think they should have listened. There's nothing wrong with putting a pause on to make sure that the public is being protected here in every way. Not just infrastructure, but other areas. And this city council failed to listen to the public. I think it's going to come back to haunt some of some of them in next year's city elections.
BLANK: Well, have you ever seen this before in Memphis where council members are getting into shouting matches with citizens right now? I mean, we've seen people banned from city hall, including one of the council members (had not not a ban, but she was stripped of her leadership roles for 30 days.)
SANFORD: Yeah, that was the strange one. But yes, I have seen this before. There is some precedent for this, Chris. If you go back to, say, around 1973, for example, the city council and members of the audience that included at that time a state representative Harold Ford Sr., they got into a big shouting match over a plan by the city council to provide government funding for private schools. Desegregation was going on in the city schools, and the city council wanted to give private schools some taxpayer money. That became very heated. And then if you go back to 1968 when the city council and the sanitation workers were at odds, there was a huge uproar. Wasn't violent or anything, but sanitation workers were not happy that the city council was not listening to their needs. So there is a precedent for this, and it's just a shame that history is repeating itself here, and it looks like the city council is the one that is being tone-deaf.
