(C) Tennessee Lookout
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Stockard on the Stump: Covenant parents form nonprofits to reform gun laws, but will it be enough? – Tennessee Lookout [1]
['More From Author', 'July', 'Sam Stockard']
Date: 2023-07-23
Covenant parent Sarah Shoop Neumann became “part of a horrific narrative” she and her family never wanted when a person gunned down three 9-year-old students and three staff members at the tiny church-related Christian school March 27.
It’s a harsh reality they can’t escape.
“The mass shooting at our beloved school has forever been threaded into the story of our lives,” Neumann said Thursday, moments after her group prayed on the steps of the state Capitol for lawmakers to take action.
It’s part of a 40-day prayer session to effect change, though it could take 40 years.
Neumann and about 60 other Covenant School parents formed two nonprofits in an effort to protect children from gun violence, Covenant Families for Brighter Tomorrows, which will focus on the impact and prevention of school shootings and bolster mental health support, and Covenant Families Action Fund, which will push legislative changes for school safety.
They’re already lobbying lawmakers for stronger background checks for gun buys, safe gun storage and red-flag laws designed to keep guns away from unstable people.
Where were these young, rich white mothers when the Black kids in my district and Memphis were getting slaughtered? ... It doesn’t mean their issues aren’t valid, but it’s a little bit hypocritical. – Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga
Gov. Bill Lee floated a proposal in April for an extreme risk protection order that would allow law enforcement, after a due process hearing, to confiscate weapons from people deemed a risk to themselves and others.
It went over like a lead balloon.
Critics of rock monsters Led Zeppelin said the same thing about the band when it formed in 1969. So these parents have a glimmer of hope, but only a faint one when it comes to tightening gun laws.
A mental health-related bill is being prepared for the proposed Aug. 21 special session, which is still awaiting an official call from the governor. Senate leaders don’t want to come away empty-handed, and a mental health bill is likely the only measure they can muster that has a chance.
Some rigid lawmakers don’t want to show up at all, and most are unlikely to back a softening of gun laws.
Sen. Todd Gardenhire, a Chattanooga Republican who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, believes the Legislature would do better to wait until it has more time in the 2024 session to go over any bill. Gardenhire joined a public records lawsuit with The Tennessean asking the court to open the writings of the Covenant shooter, a move being opposed by many of the school’s parents.
Gardenhire said Thursday he considers the Covenant parents to be late to the debate.
An offshoot of people originally from the Green Hills and Belle Meade area, but now a statewide group called Voices for a Safer Tennessee, recently hired two heavy-hitting lobbying firms to represent them in the special session. It is not directly related to the two nonprofit groups announced Thursday, but Gardenhire is lumping them together.
“Where were these young, rich white mothers when the Black kids in my district and Memphis were getting slaughtered?” Gardenhire said Thursday. “… It doesn’t mean their issues aren’t valid, but it’s a little bit hypocritical.”
The parents’ pain and fear is real and lasting, nevertheless.
Neumann held her 6-year-old son, Noah, up to the microphone at a Thursday press conference at the Cordell Hull Building where he said, “I don’t want any guns today or any day, and I love my school.”
Joining the 21st century
The Legislature is spending an estimated $1.12 million — not to update the press corps booths — to replace what are considered outdated voting and message display boards. The House chamber also will have new voting consoles.
The equipment and operating systems in both chambers are so old they can no longer be repaired if they break down, according to Connie Ridley, director of the Office of Legislative Administration.
House Speaker Cameron Sexton said old equipment has been replaced over the last few years and work remains. Previous and current replacements in the chambers deal with audio and communication equipment and servers.
“In order to halt unnecessary delays for the legislature — the obsolete equipment needed to be replaced,” Sexton said this week.
I’m told the boards are high-definition, so no complaining about fuzzy video screens.
Climbing the ladder
Rep. Bryan Richey hasn’t been in the House a full year — a fairly unproductive one at that — and already he’s running for state Senate.
Richey, a Maryville Republican who defeated the popular moderate Bob Ramsey a year ago, announced on social media this week he will seek the District 2 Senate seat. It’s held by Sen. Art Swann, also one of the more moderate members of the Republican-controlled upper chamber. No word on whether Swann is stepping down next year.
Richey’s most notable achievement this year was to write a letter to the governor urging him not to call a special session for fear it could be marred by protests that would make an April rally against gun violence in the Capitol look like a Sunday school class.
Richey is right about one thing: It’s going to be chaos — if the governor ever calls it.
On the road again
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke last weekend at the annual Republican fundraising dinner in Nashville and is following that up with a money drive of his own for the 2024 presidential campaign.
DeSantis is set to hold an event Tuesday in Franklin chaired by Jessi and Jo Baker, Richard Bunch, Charlie Cato, Cordia Harrington, Sudha Reddy and Emily and Chris Walker. The co-chairs are to raise $25,000 each.
But while DeSantis might have a toe-hold with some Republicans, he got the cold shoulder from U.S. Sens. Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn and Gov. Lee, all of whom no-showed the Statesmen’s Dinner but appeared via video. How warm and thoughtful.
Hagerty and Blackburn are endorsing former President Donald Trump in his third presidential bid, despite a litany of federal charges against him and investigations —or maybe because of those probes — which are all laid at the feet of President Joe Biden, because everyone knows the current president planted those classified documents at Mar A Lago and disguised his voice as Trump’s to call the Georgia secretary of state and demand he find a few thousand more votes for the election that was stolen by Republican-controlled election commissions nationwide.
Maury avoids Hillsdale politics
In a nod to civility and the democratic process, Maury County School Board Chair Michael Fulbright postponed a vote on the American Classical Education (ACE) charter schools application this week, despite favoring it and having the chance to pass it.
ACE is the conservative Hillsdale College-affiliated charter chain looking to expand in Tennessee.
The board met Tuesday but wound up deadlocked. They didn’t have enough votes to approve or deny the application because two of the 11-member board were absent to attend a funeral.
Those two members are likely to vote to deny the ACE’s application.
A quirk in Tennessee’s charter law says if the school board doesn’t vote to deny the application, it’s automatically approved after 90 days of its submission, which would be July 29. The vote was 5-4 in favor of approving the charter school, but to take any action (approve or deny), there had to be six votes at minimum, not just the majority of members present.
Fulbright voted to approve the charter school but decided — despite a chance to run out the clock — to hold another school board meeting next week before the deadline to vote on the application again.
“I could play politics here if I wanted to, but I won’t,” Fulbright said.
Clearly he’s not running for the Legislature, because he wouldn’t fit in.
Who’s in charge?
Ask state Republican lawmakers, and they’ll say their newly-appointed board oversees the Metro Nashville International Airport.
Ask the Nashville Mayor’s office or the legal director, and they’ll say the board of city appointees remains in charge.
Ask the Federal Aviation Administration, and they say they’ll only recognize the original one until a court decides who’s in charge.
Ask the court, and they have yet to have an answer.
All of this created an awkward position in which both boards met at the same time on the same day this week.
To add to the drama, the mayor-appointed board voted at its meeting to hire legal counsel to sue the state-appointed board.
This could be the first time – although some smarty-pants will find another case – that a board sued itself.
The end of the line? The latest stalling tactic by former Sen. Brian Kelsey leading up to his sentencing hearing was slapped down by a federal judge: “All counsel shall appear before this Court on July 27, 2023 at 9:00 a.m.”
What he said
The third set of counsel for former state Sen. Brian Kelsey filed a request recently seeking a 30-day postponement of his July 27 sentencing date in connection with a federal campaign finance conviction and — possibly — a move to sue his former lawyers.
In response, U.S. District Court Judge Waverly Crenshaw issued an order saying both defendants, Kelsey and Josh Smith, owner of The Standard, an exclusive Nashville restaurant where Republicans cut deals, and “all counsel shall appear before this Court on July 27, 2023 at 9:00 a.m.”
That’s it. If only journalists, including yours truly, could be so brief.
Crenshaw didn’t say whether he would sentence them on that day or send a message that these hijinks have to end. He also didn’t specify whether he wants all of Kelsey’s new counsel, Alex Little and Zachary Lawson of Burr & Forman, or those plus the other four who’ve been given the heave-ho to appear. Either way, the fees are mounting.
The judge’s terse order could be a bit of foreshadowing, meaning this might be Kelsey’s last hurrah.
“I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when.”
WRITER’S NOTE: Tennessee Lookout reporter Adam Friedman contributed to this report, but you’ll have to figure out which part.
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