The below are my impressions of each candidate in the upcoming August 7
primary elections for Governor of 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.
Republican Candidates
Mark Coonrippy Brown
(Warning: there's an auto-play video at this link. Bad etiquette on the part of the Tennessean, but there's no candidate site.)
Brown appears to be a guy running to make a specific point, not to win. I enjoy the video, actually. He seems to be a normal human being, I don't get the usual anger or superiority complex that you get from a lot of candidates, nor do I get the idea that he's trying to make emotional appeals. But without detailed position statements it's difficult to give him a good description. I'm not really convinced he'd make a good governor. "There are simple solutions for simple problems" is a nice phrase. Unfortunately, in my world, for every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, elegant, and wrong. But it's difficult not to like him, for the two minutes you see of a video.
Bill Haslam
The incumbent is running on his record, which I'm not really going to judge right now. For objective information, I can say that he seems to have reasonable organizational skills, can communicate in English, and that the state hasn't utterly collapsed under his administration. He has, however, completely failed to come up with an alternative Medicaid expansion, which kinda screws a lot of Tennesseans. So there's that.
Basil Marceaux Sr.
I can only let this candidate speak for himself.
Donald Ray McFolin
(Warning: there's an auto-play video at this link. Bad etiquette on the part of the Tennessean, but there's no candidate site.)
Another candidate running to make a specific point, this one about special needs education. Again, he seems like a normal person trying to make the world better with whatever platform he can get.
Democratic Candidates
Charles V. "Charlie" Brown
No website, no position statements, no comments from the candidate at all. Just a facebook page full of people asking what he stands for, and with the candidate's name misspelled.
Kennedy Spellman Johnson
Another candidate with no website and no detailed position statements. Well, you can go here, but there's nothing to see. I can't say anything about this candidate.
WM. H. "John" McKamey
An actual website! With positions! Only a few, and they're very vague. (Education is good. People making more money is good.) Nothing obviously objectionable, but it's like a bare-minimum campaign, only one step up from not having a site.
Ron Noonan
This candidate doesn't even have a facebook page, just a twitter feed. Another not particularly serious candidate.
TL;DR
Out of the four Republican candidates, Haslam is the only one with a chance of winning. If you don't support Haslam, either because he's Haslam or because you don't like incumbents, I'd probably go for McFolin.
Out of the four Democrat candidates, the only one that looks even remotely serious is McKamey. I don't know why I'd even consider voting for any of the others, and they're not doing anything to convince me I should.
Slim field.
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