The Next Race for Governor - Part 1

If you’ve been wondering when the 2022 race for governor will kick off, it happened on Monday night. It just wasn’t called that.

The occasion was Gov. Bill Lee’s ‘State of the State Address’ in Nashville, given just down the hill from the Capitol. He spoke mainly of his spending priorities for the new year, though little of what classroom teachers and others were hoping to hear, but his message was clear on the fundamentals of present-day arch-conservative ideology.

Here’s why:

Among Tennessee’s three highest-ranking Republicans – Lee, plus U.S. Senators Blackburn and Hagerty, all of whom have been devout pro-Trump politicians – Lee will be the first of them to face re-election in a post-Trump environment. And it was obvious he thought it important to stake his flag as far to the right as possible. Otherwise, he runs a risk of being “primaried” in 2022 by an even more conservative character who may be even further to the right than himself.

Unlikely? It could happen in this time of uncertain and uncharted transition for the GOP. There is no consensus as yet about how Republicans, post-Trump, are supposed to behave.

What we used to think of as the regular Republican Party today has many different characters claiming some part of that troubled label. A number of these, you may have noticed, aren’t too respectful of either tradition or incumbents. In the face of this new roiled context, Lee’s speech on Monday left little doubt that he intends to leave little air in the room for such renegades.

The litany was clear on Monday evening. With the GOP supermajority arrayed before him on the main floor of the War Memorial Auditorium, Lee at least made his themes clear:

God (is good)

Guns (are a must, the more the better, and preferably without even carry carry permits for adults anymore)

Government (which is too intrusive, just ignore how more than a third of what Tennessee’s state government spends comes from Washington)

Victory in the campaign ahead, normally a cinch for an incumbent Tennessee governor, has a bunch of problematic aspects at the moment for Republicans. With Donald Trump out of the picture (as the sole face and animating energy for all GOP campaigns) there’s an unfamiliar, un-rooted feeling now in the air.

In any case, how mainstream GOP candidates respond over the next year to this new environment – and how primary voters respond to them – will be a test of all candidates facing re-election in 2022. They don’t have Trump to parade behind anymore.

Republican office-seekers may find themselves in a new territory by primary voting time next year, robbed of their more comfortable reliable, safe, anchoring message of “Whatever Trump wants, I want too.”

In this next period, such candidates may actually have to speak and think for themselves.

May it be so. 

 

© Keel Hunt, 2021