One Rough Campaign

In 1991, state Sen. Douglas Henry explained to The Tennessean his notion of honor. “If Mrs. Henry and I were out and somebody offered her an insult, it would be my responsibility to punish him on the spot,” the aristocratic Southerner told the morning daily.

Well, candidate Jeff Wilson, who’s hoping to remove Henry from his 21st District state Senate seat, is not insulting Mrs. Henry, at least as far as we know. But he is most certainly trashing the male member of the duo.

“How long should the state have to suffer so that one man could pursue his hobby of being in the state Senate?” says Wilson, a former journalist turned software developer. In fact, Wilson’s entire campaign hinges on the premise that as chair of the Senate’s Finance, Ways and Means Committee, Henry is to blame for the state’s long-running fiscal soap opera. “He’s helped make the mess. I’ll help clean it up.”

From now until the Aug. 1 Democratic primary, Jeff Wilson, 46, will portray himself as the embodiment of fresh and progressive thinking while painting his 76-year-old pro-life rival as an entrenched and stale member of the Tennessee General Assembly and as an author of the budget stalemate. That strategy might work, as a potentially close race develops in the district, which covers the southern and western parts of the county.

Then again, Henry’s notions of fiscal conservatism, morality and tradition—coupled with a seemingly incongruent progressive streak—have pitched a broad tent covering an array of devoted supporters. A quintessential Southern gentleman whose grandfather C.A. Craig was one of the founders of the National Life insurance company, Henry was born into wealth and has served in the state Senate since 1971.

“Labels don’t matter much when you talk about Sen. Henry,” says former Metro Council member Stewart Clifton, a liberal who currently does lobbying and consulting work for various nonprofits. “In terms of issues that I would consider progressive, including program and funding bills for children in need, he has been completely progressive.” Clifton says, however, that he does differ with Henry on the issues of taxes and abortion.

Belle Meade businessman Ed Nelson, chairman of Nelson Capital Corp., has known Henry for nearly 50 years. “I believe that Sen. Henry is very sensitive to all financial matters that come before his committee,” Nelson says. “He has a great sense of fair play.”

And it also helps that as chair of the Senate finance committee Henry is able to keep a watch on funding initiatives that would harm Davidson County. “He is really great at catching things that affect local governments,” says Anna Windrow, a lobbyist who represents Metro. “He has been on the finance committee so long that he has a corporate memory.”

But Wilson claims that the senator is living off his past accomplishments while not receiving scrutiny for his starring role in one of the state’s most disdained institutions, the Tennessee General Assembly. “Some of the achievements they talk about were 10 and 20 years ago,” Wilson says. “There is a political clique that consistently supports Sen. Henry that overlooks the fact that he is wrong on so many issues.”

And perhaps the most important issue Henry is “wrong” about, Wilson says, revolves around the state’s fiscal crisis, in which lawmakers are struggling to scrap together about $800 million to balance the budget. In past years, lawmakers have crafted Band-Aid solutions to overcome deficits that have required closing state parks and raiding one-time-only funds. With a respectability level hovering somewhere between the Catholic Church and Arthur Andersen, the General Assembly has managed to infuriate all political persuasions, from those who thump for an income tax to those who want to slash spending.

During this debate, Henry has not been a player. Recently, Tennessean political columnist Larry Daughtrey described his finance committee as “increasingly irrelevant.” Maybe that’s because Henry himself hasn’t proposed a viable solution to the current mess.

“I’m not sure many people understand the realities of the state budget,” Henry says. “You can’t cut across the board.”

But Henry is not keen on an income tax either, which for many people is the alternative to cutting spending on education and health care. “The income tax is viewed as a bad idea by most people in Tennessee, including myself,” he says. “A tax on earned income is a penalty for success.”

So where does that leave Henry? The state senator has come up with his own solution: implement a statewide property tax and broaden the sales tax base to include more services. But neither of those ideas have a lick of support on the Hill, leaving Henry a lonely and inconsequential figure at a time when a senator of his stature could be dominating the stage. Henry does say that he could support an income tax if it were the only alternative to the hard-core DOGS—or bare bones—budget; but he has not exactly gone out of his way to express that point of view.