The below are my impressions of each candidate in the upcoming August 7 primary elections for US Senator from Tennessee. These impressions are not scientific, and are based solely on their websites and any knowledge I happen to have of them. The below should be weighted exactly as much as you weight my opinion on anything. Overall, what I'm trying to do is see which candidates I cannot vote for, and narrow the field. Please, nobody take anything I say as an attack or an indictment. I'm not trying to be mean; I simply have to make observations, some unflattering, to direct my vote correctly.
US Senate, Republican Primary
Christian Agnew
This candidate apparently believes that English should be the official language of the United States, but doesn't have very high standards about its use. Putting aside my revulsion at poor use of language, I like that he actually tries to explain that Common Core is a voluntary state-led program, not a federal mandate. Other than that, his positions are generic Republican: blame our problems on the ACA, illegal immigrants, welfare abuse, foreign aid, and deficit spending. Also, don't take his guns. Nothing particularly interesting here.
Lamar Alexander
Our incumbent has the usual disease of incumbents: they often don't state their ideas or positions, they just run on their record and how much money they've raised.. The specifics of Alexander's record he chooses to point out are wholly unremarkable: balance the budget (how?), repeal the ACA (and replace it with what?), and oppose Obama at every possible turn regardless of what he's actually doing.
Joe Carr
Again, a generic Republican candidate. He'll defend our rights to own guns, number one issue. Makes me feel better, I can't go a week without someone trying to take my guns away. Number two issue, government waste, specifically like ACA and TARP. Reasonable people can differ over whether spending $180 billion a year to provide insurance to the poor is wasteful, but TARP was a loan that was 97% paid back and certainly saved thousands of jobs, so calling it wasteful is just misinformed.
And apparently we need to both lower taxes (specifically on the rich, since he supports a flat tax) and balance the budget. Where does he plan to cut over a trillion a year out of spending? No clue, but you can not do that without gutting at least one of the military, social security, or medicare. There isn't enough spending elsewhere to do it. Carr gives the usual Republican buzzwords, with the usual complete lack of thoughtfulness or detail.
George Shea Flinn
Few stated positions, and seems to focus most of his attention on the ACA, with a little to spare for border security. To his credit, he proposes a semi-detailed alternative to the ACA, and seems to have some clue what he's talking about, unlike most Republican candidates. He does repeat some of the more bizarre talking points, though. (Where in the ACA does it give Washington control of my medical decisions, again?) I find his lack of position statements on other issues unfortunate. One of the few is a statement on Iraq and Israel which, frankly, shows very little knowledge of the history or the situation. Dr. Flinn is clearly capable of some degree of independent thought, which is better than most candidates do, but he's still pretty isolated from broader reality.
John D King
Once again, the usual three or four Republican position statements, though in this case clearly typed by the candidate himself. Quite a bit of misinformation, and there are zero details as to how he would improve the lives of Americans. Except the rich, who of course pay too much in taxes. Entitlement programs (first among which are Social Security and Medicare) are "ridiculous", and clearly to be eliminated, presumably to afford those tax cuts for the rich.
One of his more amusing claims is that a "huge portion" of our deficit spending goes to foreign aid. Try $50 billion out of a $900 billion deficit. Also, he says that much of this money goes to places where "the majority of their population would like nothing more than to destroy us and our way of life". I'd love to know where those places are; most people just want to be left alone, no matter where they are. And $3b of that aid goes to Israel every year. Does he want to cut that? Unclear, but I doubt it.
Brenda S Lenard
Lots of position statements. (The first is on the Constitution, and the text is amusingly copied straight from whitehouse.gov. Not sure what the significance of that is.) She's all about how horrible the economy is, but doesn't propose any particularly novel or useful ideas: lower taxes, reduced regulation, cut spending. (I'm totally unclear how that last one is supposed to create jobs, but it's a talking point, it doesn't have to make sense.) Her education platform says that schools must operate in transparency, but there's no indication of what that means on a practical level, or how it would help anything. On every issue, there are nice little essays, and relatively little misinformation compared to other candidates. But there are no details, and it's all based around the usual Republican talking points. No apparent original thoughts.
This is getting boring.
Erin Kent Magee
Now this guy has original thoughts! He wants to "win the war on terrorism" by "dispatching the National Guard to control crowds of dissidents", and by "designating Radical Islam as a cult (not a religion entitled to protection under the 1st Amendment)". He's all about the second amendment, but the first? Gut it. I suppose the message of this candidacy is that, yes, Republican candidates could be worse.
So there we have it, a wholly unremarkable field of candidates. I don't expect any one of them would act particularly different than any other. Out of them, I'd probably pick Lenard or Flinn. They at least have repeated fewer of the usual lies.
US Senate, Democrat Primary
Terry Adams
Well-written policy statements on a decent number of issues. Many are typical Democrat talking points. But they're real Democrat talking points, not the caricatures Republicans set up. If your only picture of what Democrats stand for is "bigger government, more taxes", look at this guy's site. It's a good example of reality. He's also got some original ideas which, on the surface, make some sense. He supports an amendment to get money out of politics, which none of the Republican candidates mentioned. I'm not jumping up and down saying he's the next Jed Bartlet, but best guess is that I'd feel good with Terry Adams as Senator from Tennessee.
Gordon Ball
This candidate also has well-written policy statements on a wide range of issues. His includes a brief and reasonable statement in favor of the Second Amendment, which is unusual for a Democrat. He both praises and criticizes the ACA, meaning he's capable of nuanced thought. This is another candidate I'd feel good about winning.
Larry Crim
Mr. Crim seems to have a lot of ideas, but his website is almost incomprehensible. I'm not going to lie to you and say I read it all. I don't see anything I strongly object to, but just the fact that his campaign website is that badly organized doesn't speak well to his organizational skills or support.
Gary Gene Davis
Again, this website is very difficult to read, and I don't see much that resembles policy statements or ideas.
The Tennessean provided a decent summary of the Democratic candidates a couple weeks ago.
TL;DR
The Republican candidates are mostly interchangeable, and often frighteningly ignorant. Which candidate you should vote for depends, of course, entirely on your priorities. Unfortunately, our broken voting system doesn't let you express honest opinions due to strategic concerns. If you want to vote for the Republican candidate who I'd be most likely to like, I'd go for probably George Flinn or Brenda Lenard. If you want to defeat the incumbent at all costs, Crim appears to be the frontrunner. And if you're afraid of Crim because he's Tea Party (not an unreasonable position), clearly you should vote for Alexander. For me, I'd probably vote Alexander in this primary.
For Democracts, it's a toss-up between Adams and Ball. I can't tell enough difference between them from their websites to decide between them. If this is your dilemma, I'm afraid you'll need to gather more data. Either seems like they would do a fine job.
I'm disappointed that there is little or no mention by anyone about the abuses of the NSA. One Republican candidate may have mentioned it briefly, but only just. Clearly both parties are completely on board with the destruction of our privacy rights.
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