No Elegy Needed: Does political accountability exist?
We explore Tennessee as a case study for political accountability (or lack-thereof) as well as what we've been up to lately.
No Elegy Needed is a newsletter and supplemental musings in word form from Appodlachia.
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Sleep on it: Does political accountability exist? Maybe in Tennessee? Maybe not…
[From Chuck Corra]
“Sleep on it” is a term I grew up using that I inherited from my parents. It means to take a piece of information and mull it over for a while before coming to a conclusion or making a decision about it. I’m naming my column in our substack “Sleep on it” because I hope that’s what readers will do with the information in it.
Accountability seems like a dream in politics now.
It used to be that pulling a legislator’s vote record and pointing out their hypocrisy would be enough to oust them in the next election, but not so anymore.
Now incumbency advantage isn’t a new thing, but gerrymandered districts at a state and federal level combined with a polarized media that silos people increasingly into places that affirm their pre-existing viewpoints, it becomes harder and harder to hold elected officials accountable (i.e. voting them out).
You’re the only Ten I see: A Volunteer State (flawed) case study
Yes, my former home of Tennessee that I love so much and miss so dearly. Tennessee might be a test case for how accountability is dealt with in the GOP (since they seem to be the most insulated from controversy).
In Tennessee, the threshold for accountability is apparently embarrassing your party or violating federal law…
Tennessee is no stranger to the feds busting into the state capitol (literally) and hauling politicians off in paddy wagons
Operation Tennessee Waltz was a FBI/TBI sting operation that led to the arrest of seven Tennessee state legislators for taking bribes. My old boss in Nashville was working in the legislature at the time and his recounting of that morning was WILD.
But this case involved mostly democrats. The next examples involve Republicans, the party that has recently thrown accountability out the window.
The Pants Candy incident: Piling on bad press
Disgraced former Tennessee state rep, Jeremy “Pants Candy” Durham, managed to cross the threshold of accountability after over two dozen women accused him of sexually inappropriate behavior - the crescendo on an investigation into his campaign finances which led to him being expelled from the TN house by a vote of 70-2.
The attorney general found 22 women who said Durham had acted sexually inappropriate with them. The report includes an array of allegations, from lewd comments and inappropriate hugs to giving beer to and having sex with a 20-year-old "college student/political worker" in his legislative office and home.
Source: The Tennessean
I won’t go into detail about how he got the name “pants candy” - you can google it if you want - but I will leave you with this glorious Nashville Scene cover for that year’s Boner Awards.
However, this example was in a pre-Trump elected president era. Jeremy Durham was a controversial figure before this happened, and the GOP was probably happy to get rid of him. He lost his primary that year and was succeeded by Sam Whitson.
The Party Fowl Bathroom Incident: cutting the snake off at the head
I’ll spare the bitter details of this one, but this incident in Tennessee made certain “locker room talk” bad enough to lead the then-Speaker of the House Glen Casada to resign.
Tennessee House Speaker Glen Casada, a Republican, said on Tuesday he plans to step down from his position after lewd and racist text messages between him and his former chief of staff were leaked to the media.
…texts were leaked to the media in which Casada and his now-former chief of staff, Cade Cothren, traded lewd remarks…the messages show Casada egging on the aide as he bragged about a sexual encounter in a restaurant (Party Fowl Hot Chicken) bathroom, as one example.
Source: NPR
This was in addition to scrutiny over finances, including giving his Chief of Staff a hefty salary upon taking office as speaker. Despite all this, including losing his speakership, Casada still remained in the House and won re-election. So while his party held him somewhat accountable, his constituents did not.
Robin Smith: A more recent example
This month, GOP Rep. Robin Smith resigned after being charged by the feds with wire fraud for allegedly taking “kickbacks” from an illicit campaign vendor started by Cade Cothren (lol).
Again, I won’t go into the details here - the Tennessee Lookout has a great write-up about it - and there is A LOT to come from this. But her resignation is significant because it indicates the charges have some teeth, presumably.
What to make of all this?
Great question. I’ve been musing on this a lot.
Political accountability is very hard to come by nowadays. These examples in Tennessee are just a small swath of probably hundreds of examples throughout the country of lawmakers doing stupid shit and getting called out for it. Durham was held accountable by his voters and by his party; Casada was somewhat held accountable by his party, but not by his voters. And we won’t know about Robin Smith but something triggered self-accountability in her to resign (that’s a generous way of saying she’s probably working with the feds to try and not go to prison).
So accountability exists, but several factors affect it:
How it affects the broader party
Political dynamics of the district
Severity of incident
Media surrounding it.
Media is one of the biggest things within our control. We have to counter the pro-GOP media in order to get the truth and the counter-narrative out there. We try to do this to a small extent on Appodlachia, but the Tennessee Holler is also doing a great job of this as well - in addition to the number of watchdogs like Tennessee Lookout and Phil Williams with NC5 (among many others at the Tennessean etc.)
Apologies for the lack of dog pics today, that will be remedied in future substack posts :) AND Look for stuff from Big John soon!
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