Monday, April 6, 2009
Legislature / Politics / Woods Ramsey Takes Flak for Calling for Ethics Rollback
Posted by Jeff Woods on Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 5:55 AM
"Lt. Gov. Ramsey helped end what was known as the 'legislative session shakedown' in 1995. Now that he's running for governor, the ethics law that he sponsored has become inconvenient. We can't go backwards on ethics reform. In the name of good government, Lt. Gov. Ramsey should immediately retract his comments." "His influence is wide and far-reaching. His desire to collect campaign contributions as legislation reaches these committees raises serious questions about the Lt. Governor's belief in good government policies. His position is nothing but a self-interested ploy that harms the progress we have made in Tennessee."The state GOP responds:
The truth is, no law will stop unethical people from taking money they shouldn't take, as Mr. Forrester should well recall given the handful of Democrat state senators who are now ex-state senators - three of whom are convicted felons - after taking money they shouldn't have taken.Pith asked Ramsey about this last week, and he said he hasn't made up his mind yet whether to try to lift the ban. If he passed such a bill, presumably he could raise money for the governor's race during next year's session. The betting here is that it eventually will dawn on Ramsey that (a) this looks really bad politically and (b) he probably couldn't push this through the legislature if he tried. Democrats would unite against lifting the ban just to screw with Ramsey, and Republican supporters of Bill Haslam and Zach Wamp wouldn't go for it, either. Haslam raised another $300,000 at a Knoxville fundraiser last week.
Comments (2)
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Very bad politics for Ramsey. As Jim Kyle said, if you want to raise money during session to run for governor, quit the Senate. Putting such a focus on the issue isn't bright either. Why not run a TV spot telling the state that you don't care much about your day job - speaker of the Senate? You're only concerned about running for governor.
Kudos to Chip for trying to weigh in on a substantive issue, but . . . why did he send this out on a Friday afternoon, guaranteeing that it won't get much media attention? And did he not see the boomerrang that came back and smacked him in the face? (Speaking of which, did the TNGOP do their blog post on Saturday or Sunday?)
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I agree that Ramsey's whining is self-serving bullshit at best, but does Chipper Forrester have any moral authority on which to criticize him? Chipper supported allowing Democrat state Senators under indictment for accepting bags of cash from FBI agents to serve during the special session on ethics that came about because of their arrest?
Chipper has been a Democrat Party insider for a quater of a century. The mud and muck of every Democrat scandal during that time is on his hands.
