Blue Collar Muse

I told my son this morning I was going to watch history being made. Little did I know…

After a historic November election, today was supposed to be another historic day in the Tennessee politics. The GOP would seat it’s first House majority in almost 150 years along with a Republican Speaker of the House. It was supposed to be Jason Mumpower. It ended up being Kent Williams. The plummet from top to bottom took about 90 minutes.

Immediately after the 106th Congress was sworn in, Democrat Gary Odom moved for a 30 minute recess. He said it was for pictures. Or perhaps the final touches were being put on what was to come.

After recess, the first order of business was electiing the Speaker of the House. As expected the GOP nominated Jason Mumpower. After his nomination was seconded, Rep. Glen Casada raised his hand to be recognized as did Rep. Odom. The outgoing Speaker, Jimmy Naifeh, recognized Casada first who immediately moved nominations be closed. That motion was seconded. Before a vote on the measure, Naifeh recognized Odom who asked to add another nominee for Speaker. In response, Naifeh actually said he knew Rep. Odom had a nomination and he should not have recognized Rep Casada. He retracted his recognition of Casada to allow Odom to make his nomination. Rep. Mumpower objected saying the Casada motion, properly made and seconded, needed to be voted on first. This led to a 20 minute discussion with attorneys and officers over how to proceed.

Mumpower eventually withdrew his objection and Rep Odom began his nomination. There was open laughter in the gallery when he said his nominee was known for putting people over partisanship. It would have been justifiable laughter had Odom nominated Jimmy Naifeh as expected. His next words prompted a stunned silence in the chamber. He said it was probably the first time in Tennessee history that a member of one party nominated a member of the other party for Speaker. The name he put forward? Kent Williams, Republican from Carter County.

The nominations closed and voting began. Each member’s name was called and they called back their choice: Williams or Mumpower. Whether tradition or theater, the roll was alphabetical by party starting with Democrats. 49 names were called, 49 times one name was called back - Kent Williams. Every Democrat voted the party line.

Read the rest of this post here …

Popularity: 8% [?]

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009 at 5:22 pm and is filed under 2008 election season, Congress, Democratic Party, GOP, Individual Responsibility, Nashville Nuggets, Politics, Tennesee Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.