Republican political strategist Steve Gill joined Wake Up Memphis Monday to discuss the latest news coming out of Nashville.
Gill explains how the three-year residency requirement bill, which is making its way through the General Assembly, could knock a couple of candidates out of the heated race.
Read Gill’s analysis below:Tim Van Horn: What’s the big story in Nashville this week when it comes to the General Assembly?
Steve Gill: Still watching to see what happens with this three-year residency requirement, the Senate has passed the three-year residency requirement to run for Congress or the U.S. Senate in primaries in Tennessee. The House has instituted a delay in it. Going into effect. The Senate bill would go into effect right away with this three-year requirement, which would knock off two or three candidates, who are wanting to run in the new 5th Congressional District in Middle Tennessee. The House added a delay to put it into effect after this election cycle, and a lot of people are pointing out that delaying it once. I think the Senate in the House there been like 135 to 1 vote for this legislation. They clearly know it’s wrong to just parachute in and run in Tennessee. So the debate right now is, do you delay it before going into effect or do you have it go into effect immediately? The house may take it up again as early. I guess the Senate may take it up today. It’s getting confusing. The Senate may take up the House bill that passed with the delay as early as today. It may be Thursday morning until they essentially reject the house version and toss it back to the house for consideration of whether or not they will concur with the Senate version, in which case it passes and it goes to the governor. If the House delays or doesn’t withdraw the amendment that delays it going into effect immediately, then there’s a motion to recede is the terminology, and they go to a conference committee that the House speaker. Appoint and the Senate majority leader, the lieutenant governor appoint and then the two sides with a handful of senators and House members try to work out the differences if they can. Then it goes back. Both sides voted again. If not, then it, then it dies. There’s a lot of concern that the House speaker, Cameron Sexton, is either slow walking or trying to kill this in committee, so it’ll be interesting to watch this week to see if the House members basically ignore Cameron Sexton’s efforts to kill it. And nobody really knows why he’s wanting to kill it, but he’s definitely slow walking as he’s saying he’s not against it. He’s just against it going into effect now again, what’s his what? His intention is anybody’s guess. He’s apparently wanting to run for governor in another four years, and some people speculate that he wants it to go into effect to prevent people from parachuting in and running against him, but doesn’t really care if they’re doing it against other people right now.
Van Horn: Oh, OK. And the reason they’re making haste specifically, Steve, is because of the way that the congressional districts were re divvied up and that District five is right now that is like the crown jewel to go after in the state of Tennessee. Is that fair to say?
Gill: Yes, and I think the question right now also is the state executive committee of the Republican Party is delaying until after April 7th to look at the challenges that have been filed with respect to three of the candidates at least about their Republican status. And they’re wanting to wait until after April 7th because one of the three that parachuted in rugby, Starbucks Newsom, came in from California just a year or so ago. He’s threatening to run as an independent if he gets kicked off the ballot if they wait until after the April 7th filing deadline. Then he can’t run as an independent, so the state executive committee is wanting to wait until after the April 7th filing deadline, which is coming up quickly so that he can’t run or any of the others can simply file and run as an independent.Van Horn: Wow, that’s some deep 3-D political chess right there. My brother Steve Gill joining us from the Gill report.
Listen to the full interview here:
