I was very busy traveling this week and didn't have time to check who won the TN Democratic Party's primary for US Senate seat. Last night I caught a tail end of Rachel Maddow Show (it was promised to be a really good one - and it was) to find out that a guy named Mark Clayton had won the primary. And apparently, as first reported by Rachel and now even in the state's biggest (and fairly conservative) newspaper "The Tennessean", this Clayton guy is really not a Democrat, never voted for a democrat in his life (except for himself this time around), and that he also belongs to anti-gay hate group.
Unbelievable, right? How could the Dems vote for this guy? Could this be an accident? I strongly believe this was not an accident. Here's what happened when I went to vote during early voting period.
I must preface that this is only my second time voting in my life because I became a US citizen in early 2010. I had voted in that year's election so I don't know how everything works with respect to voting rules yet. So last month when I went to vote in the Democratic primary and once I provided my ID and other required documentation, I was put in line to wait until more voting booths become available. In front of me stood a tall gentleman in his late 30s - early 40s who also waited for an open booth. When two booths opened up, we were both directed to the booths and the people that get the machines ready proceeded to press the buttons so we could start voting. It was at that time, the man who stood in front of me asked the working volunteer if he would still be allowed to vote for Republicans in November if he voted in the Democratic Primary this one time. I didn't think much of it at the time but I wondered about it because as a new voter I didn't know what the answer to that question was.
But I was trying to focus on my own voting and not taking too much time while doing so because there were other people in line to vote, so I proceeded to vote for the best Democratic candidates.
By the time I finished voting, I had already forgotten about the question the man who stood in front of me asked and I went on with my life.
Fast forward to yesterday when I first heard the news about TN primary on the Rachel Maddow Show. When I was doing the research, Mark Clayton, the winner of the primary, really stood out to me as the craziest, I mean totally wacko candidate of the bunch, and even at that time I thought that Mr. Clayton couldn't belong to the Democratic Party. However, pretty much all but one (Park Overall for whom I voted) were either pro-life, deeply Christian, and overall conservative, so I thought: "It must just be the way Tennessee is these days".
So after a moment of disbelief I started thinking how could this have happened? Was this really an accident? Do Democrats of the state really support the things Clayton talked about on his website? No. No freaking way. And then it struck me. The guy in front of me! The guy who was asking all these questions about being able to vote for Republicans in November if he voted in the Democratic primary that one time. He must have been a Republican cross over to vote in our primary. It was all planned! How could 48 thousand plus people vote for someone who hasn't done anything during the campaign, whose political signs I haven't seen anywhere?
I have heard about all sorts of shenanigans in politics, but this episode really touched me. I am so mad this happened. I am so upset about this that I strong think that we, Democrats of Tennessee, need to do something about it. I know the state's Democrats have disavowed his candidacy and encourage to write in a candidate - any candidate but him - but we need to do more. We need to back a real Democrat and write in that candidate to send a message that we are not "dead" as some have called our party in the state. Let this event be a wake up call for all Democrats, not just the ones in Tennessee, but everywhere where Democrats have no solid chances of winning. We need to be better prepared to deal with such situations, to make sure this never happens and we should never give up just because we live in a heavily conservative state.
So what can we do? If you're in TN or have some ideas, please share in your comments. Park Overall, the most progressive candidate of the primary, placed third with 15% of the vote (.3% less than Gary Davis, a guy who wants to cut foreign aid, to do away with federal programs and restore state's right to give people full control of their own healthcare) and I hope we can get behind her candidacy for the write-in campaign. What should the next steps be? What tools can we use to start a campaign that informs people of what happened? How can we effectively spread the word about who the Dems' real candidate is?
Can you help?