Political Notes
by Bruce Dobie
Ned McWherter vowed that, once he had left the governor’s office, he was going to sit in his house by Kentucky Lake. There, he vowed, he would spit, shoot empty beer bottles, pee in open fields, cuss, dip Skoal, step in dung, tip over cows and pursue other good works likely to increase his standing in the eyes of his fellow Tennesseans.
The truth is, however, that McWherter’s telephone hasn’t ever stopped ringing. He’s getting calls for advice, counsel and support. Questions about the still distant 1998 Tennessee gubernatorial race are being broached.
With Don Sundquist appearing not exactly vulnerable, but definitely prone to stumbles, names are already cropping up either as:1. people who are on McWherter’s short list for governor or 2. people who have at least talked to Ned about the possibility of running for governor.
We have only two names:
The first is U.S. Rep. John Tanner, who might well be McWherter’s first choice. However, there are a number of reasons why Tanner is an unlikely gubernatorial candidate: He passed on the Senate seat that McWherter wanted him to take when Al Gore became vice president. He is now ensconced in Washington as congressman from a West Tennessee District, a position he may want to hold on to for a while.
The second name cropping up is former HealthTrust CEO Clayton McWhorter, who recently watched as his company was gobbled up by Columbia HealthCare. With oodles of money, and his private business affairs absolutely in order, McWhorter might be ready for another challenge.
Belmont Butch
Butch Eley, who has held a number of top positions in Metro Government and who most recently served as president of the local consulting firm The Ingram Group, has taken a job at Belmont University. As vice president for university relations, Eley will oversee the university’s relations with the outside world.
Word has it that Eley was helping the university, from which he holds both undergraduate and graduate degrees, in its search to find someone to handle the job. The more he looked at it, and the more the university talked to him about it, the more they both realized he was the guy to do it.
Replacing Eley as president of The Ingram Group is Lewis Lavine, who, for some time, has been bopping back and forth between the Alexander presidential campaign to the consulting firm.
