Political Notes
Last week, Jesse Hughes, the mouthpiece for Republican state senators, sent an email through the legislative email service intended for a colleague, responding to news that Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen was hospitalized for flu-like symptoms after returning from vacation out West. The message was only two sentences long, but it seemed to take a certain pleasure in the governor’s ailing condition.
“If it’s Lyme disease,” the first sentence read, “it can last several months and could make a person too weak to campaign!” Notice the exclamation point. Bredesen, it should be noted, faces re-election this fall against a little known Republican state senator named Jim Bryson.
Hughes’ second sentence was more like speculation and didn’t end in an exclamation point. “Then there’s Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, which is where he just got back from a while ago.” At the bottom of the email, Hughes included some helpful links about this nasty affliction. Maybe lymphoma or a nasty staph infection would completely waylay the governor. Who knew?
Apparently something went wrong—Hughes claimed his computer malfunctioned—because his email didn’t arrive in the mailbox of a fellow Republican operative. It went instead to Lydia Lenker, who happens to be the governor’s press secretary. About five minutes after the message was sent, Hughes must have realized his mistake because he quickly sent another email to Lenker trying to explain himself. “My computer has crashed twice today and somehow it was sent out while I was checking on tick illnesses,” he wrote her.
Then came the kicker. Hughes wasn’t wishing, as it seemed in his first email, that Bredesen’s convalescence would be serious and lasting. On the contrary. Hughes claimed he was actually preparing to help the governor in his hour of need. “I was going to ask the person I was trying to send it to to pray for Governor Bredesen. When I went back to send it, the message had gone out.”
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Yeah. Right.
Hughes didn’t return several messages asking for further explanation. But Bredesen’s campaign spokesman, Will Pinkston, offers a two-sentence statement of his own: “Anytime you see an email punctuated by exclamation points, it signals a certain amount of glee. Jesse’s email came across as thoroughly distasteful, but for the time being we’re willing to take him at his word that it was unintentional.”
Purcell spotted in Little Rock
Mayor Purcell probably thought he could drive his wife and daughter to California without being recognized. Yeah, no.
Last weekend, the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Ark., was hosting a free bash in celebration of the former president’s 60th birthday. While revelers were passing through the security area, former Banner reporter Rob Moritz and his wife Gwen, who now live in Little Rock, glanced up and saw “a very familiar face but completely out of context.” Gwen asked Rob who it was, and he said it was Nashville’s mayor. So Gwen turned around and asked the mayor, “Aren’t you Bill Purcell?”
He answered yes, then proceeded to explain how a bill becomes a law—starting, of course, right around the time the Mayflower landed in Plymouth.