UPDATED: How I Voted–2010 Edition

I voted early this year, when I was home in Nashville visiting family. Here’s a sample ballot, and below is how I voted:

• Governor: Bill Haslam, Republican. I did not initially support Haslam in the primaries – he was one of the few candidates I didn’t actually get to meet this time. Many thanks nonetheless to Ken Marrero, who made every effort to include me in his candidate forums for bloggers before I shipped off to DC for grad school. Though I’m obviously looking from afar, Haslam has run a stellar campaign, has a lot of street cred with voters across the political spectrum, comes from a family that built a retail empire (Pilot gas stations), and recently came out strongly in favor of Second Amendment protections, vowing to sign a bill that would repeal firearm carry permit requirements, if the General Assembly presented him with one. I once received a free membership to the NRA, which I later cancelled (because, MAN, do they send a lot of junk), but I only recently became a gun owner. My 90-year-old grandfather gave me a 1955 Smith & Wesson .357 that my grandmother had given him for Christmas when my father was a little boy. It is not the place of the Tennessee government to tell me when I can or cannot carry that firearm.
• U.S. House, 5th District: David Hall, Republican. Not only did Blue Dog Democrat Jim Cooper vote for PPACA (ObamaCare), but he sold out the district, joining the “shovel-ready” stimulus shenanigans, and doled out over $80 million to Vanderbilt University (his largest contributor). I once blogged:
  

  [T]here are some VERY objectionable items on Coop’s list of handouts: over $80 million to Vanderbilt University – a.k.a. The Harvard of the South – which has plenty of its own money: a $2.8 billion endowment (of which it uses a paltry 4.8%) and tuition around $49,000 per undergraduate student x 6,600 kids, not to mention a swath of booster contribution packages ranging in value from $100 to $45,000 a pop. It’s not a huge shocker, really, after this gift from John Q. Taxpayer, that Vanderbilt issued a statement the other day, endorsing the Democratic Party’s healthcare reform plan (which, according to blogger Katherine Miller, is quite unprecedented for the Black and Gold):

  Vanderbilt University supports the comprehensive health care reform legislation pending before Congress. As one of the largest private employers in Tennessee and the home of one of the nation’s leading academic medical centers, Vanderbilt cares deeply about the health and well being of its patients, employees, students and fellow citizens. The mission of our academic medical center is to advance health and wellness for all people through preeminent programs in patient care, education and research. We believe that health care reform is urgently needed and that this legislation will enhance health security, improve the public health care infrastructure, and reduce the impact of uncompensated care on healthcare providers such as Vanderbilt.

  Reducing the number of uninsured Americans is simply the right thing to do. Further, we believe the initiatives to encourage improvements in quality, patient safety, delivery system improvements and payment reforms should help moderate the rising cost of health care, thereby benefiting our economy and the nation’s financial health. Beyond these general benefits, we believe the demonstration projects and other initiatives to encourage improvements in quality, patient safety, delivery system reforms, and payment reforms will lead to valuable and cost-saving systemic reforms.

  We know that leaving uninsured care to the nation’s emergency rooms and failing to address the rapidly increasing costs of health care is no longer economically sustainable or morally defensible. While this bill is not perfect, there will be ample opportunities to make adjustments as its provisions are implemented over the next few years. As a center of education for the next generation of health care providers, a major provider of health care regionally and nationally, and as the second largest Tennessee-based employer in the state, Vanderbilt believes the reforms embodied in the legislation will improve our health insurance and health care delivery systems and is pleased to offer its support for this effort.

  Adding upper-crust insult to lower-to-middle-class injury, the projects for which Vandy’s funds were earmarked – $4m to acquire a nuclear spectrometer for an advanced biology lab, for example – couldn’t be further from the Democrats’ stimulus messaging, which talked about propping up America’s blue collar worker with shovel-ready infrastructure projects. My own alma mater - Belmont University, home of the 2008 Town Hall Debate between Senator John McCain and now-President Barack Obama – received porkulus funds too – $86,049 to help fund student work-study programs (which is 1/1000th of the monies Vanderbilt received).

  You can find the data for the claims I make above at this Google Maps-powered tool. So, bye-bye, Coop. I hope you don’t win, although you probably will anyway.

• State Senate District 21: Douglas Henry, Democrat. You can view a list of the senior statesman’s legislative sponsorships in the last session by clicking here, and I don’t approve of every item on the list. But efforts to secure privacy for citizens when using a Social Security number to do business with private or public enterprises (privacy, self-ownership), reduced sentencing guidelines for non-violent criminals (civil liberties), and tort liability reform won enough praise for me to return the man to office. Some of Henry’s more active interests will no doubt be tempered as Republicans take more seats in the House this year, and as Bill Haslam likely becomes the next governor.
• State House District 56: Beth Harwell, Republican. I first met Ms. Harwell in early 2009 (I think) when the Americans for Prosperity Foundation hosted an event at the Hermitage Hotel in downtown Nashville, where Arthur Laffer–creator of the (in)famous “Laffer Curve”–promoted his recent book, The End of Prosperity: How Higher Taxes Will Doom the Economy–If We Let It Happen. Ms. Harwell took heed, it seems, because as Chairman of the Commerce Committee, she helped pass a balanced budget without instituting a state income tax and helped cut over half a billion dollars in state spending (or, 2.29% of Tennessee’s budget). That may not seem like a lot of savings in that particular context, so let me put it this way: Tennessee spends approximately $6.8 billion dollars on TennCare, the state’s failed “Medicaid waiver program” (universal health insurance), so $650,000,000 represents a near-10% savings of those outlays. Advantage: Harwell.
• State Constitutional Amendment: No. This one may seem a bit backwards, especially for those who know me pretty well and know where I stand on various issues. But read the language of the proposal (emphasis mine):
  

  Shall Article XI, Section 13 of the Constitution of the State of Tennessee be amended by adding the following sentences at the end of the section:

  The citizens of this state shall have the personal right to hunt and fish, subject to reasonable regulations and restrictions prescribed by law. The recognition of this right does not abrogate any private or public property rights, nor does it limit the state’s power to regulate commercial activity. Traditional manners and means may be used to take non-threatened species.

  I hope the bold-facing makes my opposition more clear, but just in case: I have rights because I was born with them, not because a government was benevolent enough to grant them to me. Further, constitutional governments are designed to constrain governments such that the rights of individuals are protected from the abuses of those in power. As a free marketer, why would I want to amend a constitution if that amendment didn’t limit the state’s power to regulate commercial activity? About the only worthwhile clause in the entire amendment is the one that says (in essence) “this granting of a right to the citizen will at least not interfere with any of his existing property rights.” But how can we really be sure the state government believes those property rights to be as sacred and essential to me as I do when they presume to be in the business of permitting me to do this, that, or the next thing?

• Metro Charter Amendment: Against. This one was a no-brainer. You can click over to the sample ballot to read the full text of the proposal, but here’s the summary (as presented on the ballot):
  

  This amendment would allow employees of the Metropolitan Government to also serve as part-time employees of the Metropolitan Board of Public Education to lead, teach, or coach students in extra-curricular activities and/or to serve as substitute teachers, and would allow certificated employees of the Metropolitan Board of Public Education to teach community education classes on a part-time basis. The Civil Service Commission would have the responsibility for adopting and promulgating rules and regulations necessary for the implementation of this amendment.

  So basically, you’re asking me to cosign the nuts taking over the nut house? If this isn’t a recipe for corruption in Nashville’s already abysmal school system, then I don’t know what is. I’ll keep looking for a reliable data set here, but the latest figures I can find are from 2003 – the data suggest that Davidson County has only three schools in the top 100 in the state, and while two of those are #1 and #2, respectively, they are both magnet schools–Hume Fogg and MLK–and very few people survive the lottery for entry at either. What this amendment purports to do is basically to permit Metro school employees fight over who gets overtime pay. Sure it’s subject to a rule-making by the five-member Civil Service Commission, but those five are handpicked by the mayor and confirmed by 2/3 of the City Council–not by parents whose children will ultimately be affected by the decision. So, because there are TONS of opportunities for corruption baked into this ill-conceived measure, it earned a resounding “NO” vote.

And there you have it–my votes for 2010. I hope you voted too!