Posted on 04/15/2022 9:05:41 AM PDT by Wuli
The Tennessee Legislature’s plot to knock a Trumpy candidate off the ballot this year has failed. Morgan Ortagus, who worked in President Trump’s State Department, moved to Nashville last year and is running for an open House seat. A week before the April 7 filing deadline, the Legislature passed a bill to require three years of residency.
This is possibly unconstitutional, but it also stinks like the swamp. A key sponsor of the bill supports one of Ms. Ortagus’s opponents, former state House Speaker Beth Harwell. What an exclusive little club. Gov. Bill Lee neither signed nor vetoed the residency legislation. No action by Tennessee’s chief executive means a bill becomes law after 10 days. That happened Wednesday.
This is possibly unconstitutional, but it also stinks like the swamp. A key sponsor of the bill supports one of Ms. Ortagus’s opponents, former state House Speaker Beth Harwell. What an exclusive little club. Gov. Bill Lee neither signed nor vetoed the residency legislation. No action by Tennessee’s chief executive means a bill becomes law after 10 days. That happened Wednesday.
But the filing deadline for candidates was last week, and state officials are saying the residency rule doesn’t apply retroactively. Mr. Lee must have known what he was doing. If he wasn’t prepared to veto the bill—and Tennessee has a weak veto that can be overridden with a simple majority—then delaying the law’s effective date was a shrewd prudential move.
“We feel the voters are best able to determine who should represent them in Congress,” Mr. Lee’s office says. Right on, and may the best candidate win. If voters think Ms. Ortagus is a carpetbagger, and if they want a warhorse like Speaker Harwell, fine.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
Uniparty (aka deep state) attempts to thwart “Trumpy” candidate. I’m shocked!
Carpetbaggers. We don’t like carpetbaggers.
So, don’t vote for them. That’s all.
And I have no horse in that race.
But, maybe other voters think longer-resident candidates are not speaking for/representing them, and a “newcomer” is closer to the kind of representative they are looking for. That should be determined at the polls, not by last minute rigging of the laws.
We support this measure here in Tennessee, 100%. We don’t want RINOs and other entitled carpetbaggers who claim to represent us when they merely represent themselves. This was the worst endorsement of a House candidate by President Trump, hands down.
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