There is something of a problem in the name of Nathen vaughn. He is black and Democrat but extremely level headed and well liked. He served for many years on a city council and excelled at common sense hard fiscal decisions.
I do not support him and in fact tagged him a Goreon which was probably unfair. He's better than that.
The first thing he did on getting elected to the Tennessee House was join the black caucus and become tainted with the stench of the Black Memphis political crooks even tho they are 550 mile away.
He will not say yet if he will run but might prove a little stronger than the usual hacks the rats dredge up for the token run here in the 1st District.
Meanwhile, the Republican hacks are jumping out of the wood work. I've seen no one mentioned today that is worth a damn.
Nathan Vaughn was a bit of a fluke, anyhow, winning a GOP legislative district largely because of the situation involving the now-deceased fmr Rep. Keith Westmoreland and the bitter infighting to get a GOP successor. I had heard that many local Republicans tried to get Vaughn to switch parties to ensure he could stay in the seat as long as he wishes, though that became moot once he managed to win reelection as a Democrat.
I can almost guarantee if he ran for Congress, especially being anchored down with Harold Ford, Jr. as the Senate nominee, he'll lose big. It's interesting how those jumping into the race read almost exactly like a retread of when Jimmy Quillen retired in 1996. Rep. Stacey Campfield, who is our sole legislative blogger, seems to think that Rep. David Davis is the best of the bunch so far. The worry is that the horrid uber-RINO pro-income tax apostate Zane Whitson may jump in and take advantage of the fact that the rest of the field is mostly Conservative. With no runoff, a candidate could conceivably get 10% and be nominated for the general. Even Bill Jenkins won in '96 with only 18% of the vote, beating his nearest competitor, Sen. Jim Holcomb, by only 300 votes (who also received 18%).