The following article is taken from the June 2009 issue of the Main Street Journal. Click “Subscribe Online” above to start your subscription.

Red State Blue State
By: Michael Roy Hollihan

While the rest of the nation seemingly was swamped in a tide of blue in the 2008 elections from Force of Nature Barack Obama, Tennessee went red. It supported Republican John McCain by a margin almost identical to Obama’s national win (except in heavily African-American Shelby County). Building from the previous election cycle, where Republicans finally claimed the State Senate (now 19 to 14), voters in 2008 elected a Republican House majority. The General Assembly was Republican for the first time in more than a century. The Obama tide battered the walls of Tennessee, but didn’t breach them.

State Democrats, dismayed and baffled, were at a loss to explain our resistance to the Blue Wave. They determined to remedy the situation. As Commercial Appeal columnist and ardent Obama supporter Wendi C. Thomas recently put it, “I regret focusing last year on what would happen in Washington and ignoring what could occur in Nashville…. I wish we’d all realized that, say, in October. If we had, we might have less to grumble about now.”

Democrats maintained that Tennessee couldn’t possibly be as Republican as all that. When they almost grabbed control of the House through Democratic Leader and Representative Gary Odom’s plotting with Republican Rep. Kent Williams, there was hope in their ranks that Republican plans would be thwarted. Many Republican themselves feared as much. The House ended up in a 49 – 49 deadlock, with Speaker Williams the single outsider.

But, if you agree that legislators, thanks to their need to regularly answer to the voters who keep them in office, are more in touch with the will of the people than newspaper columnists and editors, and party activists and bloggers, then the evidence so far has been clear: Tennessee really is a conservative state!

Despite hopes that Democrats could maintain the cohesion that exemplified that first day in the Legislature while Republicans fought and disagreed amongst themselves, it has been Democrats who have constantly split their votes on one major issue after another.

Take the general issue of guns, one that Republicans have been trying to bring to the Legislature for many years. During his reign as Speaker, Jimmy Naifeh routinely bottled up gun-rights bills in committee, killing them through his own executive fiat and denying committee or floor votes. Once his chokehold was removed, Republicans began pushing through a number of gun-rights bills and – surprise, surprise – it turns out he had a reason for his dictatorial actions. Democratic representatives crossed the aisle.

The bill allowing gun-carry permit holders to carry in establishments that serve alcohol passed in the House, 66 to 23. The Senate vote was even more lopsided: 26 to 7! Democrats split evenly in the Senate, 7 and 7.

The bill allowing permit holders to carry in State, County and City parks passed the House, 77 to 14. A related bill, limited to State parks, passed the House, 71 to 22. The Senate? Try 24 to 8.

The bill that sealed the State’s database of gun carry permit holders’ information, in response to the commercial and propaganda exploitation of it by two of the state’s newspapers, succeeded in the House, by an astonishing 83 to 12! In the Senate committee (it’s awaiting a full floor vote), the margin was 6 to 2.

The issue of abortion is another contentious one. The House recently took up the bill to allow voters to decide if they want to place more restrictions on access to abortion, via enacting an amendment to the State’s constitution. It is one of the starkest dividers of parties and politics nationally, and a sure prod to state-level activists. Democrats have been issuing dire warnings all session. And, it turns out, with reason. The House vote? 77 to 21, with half of Democrats concurring! In the Senate, it was even more lop-sided, with a vote of 24 to 8.

Democrats have shown on occasion, on some classically Democratic issue votes, they can hold themselves together, as with the vote to prevent local communities from enacting ‘living wage’ laws. The Senate vote was a pure party line vote of 18 to 13. But even then, they are divided on other issues core to them, as with the bill to make it easier for charter schools to be formed. That bill passed the Senate on a 22 to 7 vote; the seven ‘no’ votes were dominated by Davidson and Shelby County Democrats, where teachers unions are fighting charter schools.

Republican fears at the start of the session haven’t materialised. And Democratic hopes of a scattered and bickering Republican House delegation have proved illusory. Speaker Williams hasn’t proved to be the thin Republican edge of a Democratic scythe slicing through their agenda. Williams has repeatedly refrained from putting his vote into breaking ties in committees, in large part because it hasn’t been needed. He’s behaved just like a Republican House Speaker would be expected to. One has to wonder if he’ll be re-admitted to the party some time later this year. Republicans have been able to bring up issues they’ve been denied for years and hold together to move them forward.

Time and again, it has been Democrats who have been divided by issues that they should be strongly united over. They are the ones who seem scattered and indecisive. And conservative, compared to their party’s progressive wing. It’s been a consistent 3 or 4 to one victory, Republicans and defectors over the other Democrats, on these big issues. That only happens because at least some (and often more than half) of Democrats break with modern and traditional party doctrine.

Will Democratic hopes of reversing this situation materialise? Don’t be surprised if, all other things being the same, Republicans don’t pick up some more State seats next election. Look for a much lower turnout in the African-American community, even with a possible Steve Cohen – Willie Herenton fight in Memphis’ US Ninth Congressional District. Compared to the historic Obama juggernaut, it’s just not the same level of motivation.

The Democratic party’s State leadership has been divided into two camps. The progressive activists are lined up under putative party Chairman Chip Forrester, but the folks who control the money managed to get Forrester’s pick for financial chair ousted after a struggle. Those money men are lined up with the more traditional Bredesen wing of the party and have forced a power-sharing arrangement on Forrester. The party held a big retreat to solidify themselves under this unusual setup, and came away singing hallelujahs and hosannas. But how long that lasts once pressures, competitions and divisions reassert themselves remains to be seen.

And both parties have a serious motivation to hold together: redistricting. After the 2010 census, the majority party in the Legislature will get to draw the new lines of their districts, giving themselves huge advantages in future elections and denying voting strength to the loser.

Republicans, despite predictions and fears, have kept themselves together. Democrats have not. What does that say?