How did Cathy Quist, clerk of Circuit and General Sessions Court, become a political bullseye?
by David Madison
Her ambition wrapped in a power blazer and boosted by heels, Cathy Quist kicked down the courthouse door a little over a year ago, all smiles and full of political promise. The newly elected clerk of Circuit and General Sessions Court unseated the entrenched, 18-year- old beehive bureaucracy of opponent Lillian Bean by convincing voters she was the candidate with a heroine's clasp on the future.
But since taking office, Quist's administration has stalled under the weight of old-fashioned political snarls. A turf battle and cigarette break whisper campaign has erupted against the clerk, whose lawyerly style of management has invited confrontation.
Upon taking office, the former deputy law director traded days spent doing legal research and crafting strategy to become the boss of 100 or so bookkeepers, file clerks and judicial assistants. In the courtrooms Quist administers, judges rule on traffic tickets, misdemeanor crimes, felony arraignments and civil proceedings that include everything from small claims to larger suits over malpractice and automobile accidents.
When Quist crashed this scene, she was a rising star. Now a political pile-up has made her the county's most embattled office holder. Among her current entanglements lies a bitter feud with Law Director Richard Beeler, her former boss and political ally. The rookie clerk has also gotten crossways with Sessions Court Judges and defense attorneys, who are suspicious of Quist's connection to Sheriff Tim Hutchison.
Quist's critics say Hutchison's political machine has motored in to take the place of Bean's old-girl network. A growing segment of the courthouse crowd can hear the wheels of justice letting out a slow, vindictive squeak as the county becomes increasingly bogged down by a trifling variety of Sheriff-related conflicts.
There have been blowups over the issuing of warrants, accessing court files, and the installation of a new computerized surveillance system. Pull the focus close on each of these squabbles, and through a politically colored lens, some see evidence of a Hutchison-Quist connection. It's an alliance that's intensified Quist's troubles with Beeler, who has personal and political bones to pick with the newly elected clerk.
Quist says the bad blood with Beeler is stalling her efforts to modernize the clerk's office. Lingering ghosts of the Bean Machine are creating other problems, says Quist, sounding both defensive and overwhelmed.
"When I was elected, I stepped into someone's power puddle that not only operated this office, but was a strong entity in the political community," says Quist, describing her initiation as a first-time office holder. "The hardest thing for me is definitely the politics and seeing the bullets and arrows coming."
Quist will likely remain in the fray because her power puddle sits at the hub of courthouse operations. Her actions affect the work of other courthouse players, and so far, Quist has used her puddle to make waves.
Friends & Enemies
Voters certainly expected Quist to shake up the clerk's office when she took over last year. Backed by shrewd television ads, Quist was able to make the public actually care about who becomes Clerk of Circuit and General Sessions Court. Along with the races for Knox County Trustee and Register of Deeds, the clerk's contest is usually about as exciting as the color beige.
But Quist's red hair and honor student smarts combined to engage the public. She made an attractive candidate, and her achievements as deputy law director give her the resume of a buttoned-down crusader. The race became professional dynamo v. political war horse. Quist beat Bean handily, seizing the office with 56 percent of the vote.
The job now hers, Quist must quiet the knocks and pings still lingering from her freshman year.
"Bean was just an old country girl. She knew what she didn't know," explains one veteran attorney. He says the former clerk was smart enough to let her deputy, Laura Chambers, manage circuit court. With Quist, says the attorney, "She doesn't know what she doesn't know."
The political education of Cathy Quist began during her six year stint as deputy law director. Under Beeler, Quist handled cases for the Knox County School Board, building upon her private practice work as a divorce attorney.
With divorce cases, says Quist, the litigants are "Often very angry. You really see, to say it nicely, a range of emotions."
The same can be said about the rocky relationship between Quist and her enemies, including Beeler, someone she once considered a confidant. Quist remembers a morning in the spring of 1997 when Beeler returned to the Law Director's office from a breakfast meeting with other Republicans. He was stewing mad over something Bean had done and Quist listened to him vent.
"He said, 'I wish we had someone to run against her,'" recalls Quist. "He was just standing there looking out the window and I said, 'What about me?' And he looked stunned."
Beeler eventually warmed up to the idea, though today he downplays his involvement. Quist says she started getting serious about a run against Bean after experiencing her own troubles with the clerk's office.
In a way, Quist unofficially kicked off her campaign with stash of confiscated marijuana.
The Sheriff's Department needed to file a warrant with Bean's office before it could destroy the seized weed. Quist assisted a deputy with getting an order signed by a judge, but then met resistance when she went to Bean's office to receive a warrant.
"When I had trouble filing that I thought it was ridiculous," says Quist. "A bunch of defendants aren't going to come in and say, 'Hey, you can't burn my dope.'"
At one of her first fund-raisers, Quist joined a modest huddle of supporters at Club LeConte. The group, which included Beeler, would soon snowball toward the most impressive upset in county politics this decade.
On election night, Quist celebrated at the Radisson Hotel. She remembers how, "[Beeler] looked proud. I was giving a speech and looked over and he looked very proud. But when it didn't work out with his wife, that was it."
And so began the current feud between Beeler and Quist. Beeler puts one foot up on his desk, and between drags off a freshly lit Salem, details his fallout with Quist and unlikely romance with his second wife, Debbie Pryer.
Beeler met Pryer in an Internet chat room for skydiving enthusiasts. "She posted a question about an upcoming boogie (parachute lingo for 'gathering'). I responded and it went from there," says Beeler, who jumps with his wife on weekends at the Jacksboro Airport.
Pryer left a corporate job in Topeka, Kansas, to move to Knoxville. Quist thought her administrative experience would be asset in the clerk's office, but after only two weeks on the job, Pryer was terminated.
In a letter to Knox County Commissioners, Quist explains how, "Ms. Pryer would apparently express her frustrations with the position to her husband instead of to me." Pryer's after-work complaints caused "difficulties," says Quist, who accuses the law director of storming down to the clerk's desk and openly chastising her in front of other employees.
Quist's letter tells commissioners, "This occurred during an extremely sensitive time as I had just taken office and was attempting to establish camaraderie and unity within the office."
Beeler counters by accusing Quist of making him a scapegoat for her own mismanagement. Naturally, Quist disagrees. She vows to eventually hire her own attorney to replace Beeler, who represents all of Knox County's elected officials.
Two weeks ago, listeners to the Hallerin Hill show on 990 AM heard all about Quist's plan to dump Beeler as her office's attorney. She popped into the station on her way to work after listening to Beeler give his side of the story during a phone interview. The two went at it over the air; an exchange that later prompted complaints from County Commissioner Larry Clark, who said such radio sparing, "Bothers the hound out of me."
It's Quist's allegiance to Beeler's likely opponent in the next election that really has the law director chapped. Mike Ruble, house counsel for the sheriff's department, recently held a fund raising golf tournament, but has yet to formally announce his campaign. If he runs, Ruble will face Beeler in the Republican primary in March.
Growing a bit rosy just above the collar, Beeler says Quist has stumped for Ruble at work, gathering her employees together and telling them to support his opponent. That same day, says Beeler, "I had five calls before 3 o'clock," from Quist staffers complaining about the alleged speech.
"That's untrue," insists Jeff Gleeson, a former elections commissioner turned Quist deputy. Gleeson says his boss has never urged employees to support Ruble or any other candidate. "It's not Cathy's style," he says.
It's true that when Quist slips into work mode, she maneuvers mostly behind the scenes like an attorney pulling strings. Unlike Bean, Quist doesn't mingle her way into a deal, patting backs and making chit-chat. She conveys a deliberate, "workman-like style," as one local attorney puts it, that makes her political persona appear as cloistered as a sealed legal brief.
Quist admits, "I'm not a political person."
When asked if the contentious last year has provided any valuable lessons in diplomacy, Quist smiles and sighs, "Gosh... I don't know."
There's no doubt that Quist has the brains, charisma and instinct of a politician in the making. But she lacks the endearing panache of a confident manager.
"Why don't you walk through your office and say howdy to your employees once in a while?" asks a fellow courthouse office holder, comparing Quist's "aloof" approach with the Bean Machine's, "how ya doin' sugar," school of management.
Responding to her critics, Quist offers an obvious reminder, "I'm a different person all together. And that's been hard because I think there were things my predecessor could do and not be questioned about. But most everything I do I've been questioned about."
Of course, such scrutiny comes with the territory. By entering politics through Circuit and General Sessions Court, Quist may have aspired for advancement more than the specific duties of a clerk. She saw no open doors above her in the law director's office, so a move against Bean looked like a good leg up career-wise.
About her new job, Quist says she likes, "the big policy decisions and making those projects work." Unfortunately, many of Quist's policies and projects are mired in the tangle of courthouse politics, making them at best, works in progress.
The Trouble Spots
In her crusade to modernize the clerk's office, Quist has become openly frustrated with the resistance she's encountered. The clerk denies playing politics with the issue and insists she's just trying to make necessary improvements, especially to the woefully inefficient civil division of General Sessions Court.
Tucked in a back corner on the main floor of the City/County building, this small claims office is filled with desks, ledger books and clerks recording cases in longhand. The place feels prehistoric. It's a bureaucratic fossil Quist wants to unearth and chuck out the window with other, dusty relics leftover from the Bean Machine.
After all, modernization was a major theme of Quist's campaign. But by impatiently demanding computer upgrades, Quist has invited resistance from the law department, county commissioners and data processing chief Dick Moran.
Moran says it's going to take two years for his office to provide the computers and software Quist says she needs immediately.
For $130,000, Quist wants to purchase a software package designed to make more defendants pay their fines and court costs. In fiscal year 1998-99, at least $7.2 million went uncollected. But with a software upgrade, says Quist, the county could see a significant bump in collections.
However, until the Law Director's office approves the purchasing contract, Quist's software upgrade will remain on hold. Beeler says the warranty on the software is flawed. Quist disagrees, and says Beeler is using the contract as a political chip against her.
Inevitably, Quist will be judged by how much money she manages to collect over the remaining three years of her term. In a move that should generate both revenue and the support of at least one commissioner, Quist recently hired Mark Cawood as a kind of court fees bounty hunter. Cawood has worked collections before, calling on delinquent accounts for his sign business. He's now going through a stack of files piled against the wall at the back of the office in Circuit Court searching for unpaid fees and fines.
As a Quist employee, Cawood says he will recuse himself from votes affecting the clerk's office. His part-time job will pay $25,000 a year.
That's a generous salary, considering how little Quist pays some of her full-time employees. Several staffers still make less than $18,000 a year, while other new hires brought on by Quist are pulling down salaries of $40,000 and more. In general, the staff is better compensated than it was under the Bean regime, but morale in Quist's office has continued to dip in the last year.
The grumbling may be greatest among Quist's bench clerks, the administrative assistants who work closely with judges and attorneys in the courtrooms. Under Bean, clerks stuck with the same judge year after year. When Quist decided to break up the routine and reassign bench clerks to different duties, some quit.
"I don't know if I've learned to finesse employees," admits Quist, who has also had trouble getting along with the Sessions Court Judges.
Around mid-October, Quist's office stopped inputting information from hand-written warrants into the computerized Justice Information Management System, or JIMS. She complained that the process was time consuming and costly.
The judges in General Sessions Court fired back, issuing an order that only computer generated warrants be used. If Quist's office continued to file hand written warrants, ones not logged into JIMS, then the judges said the clerk would be held in contempt of court.
Before the shoving match between Quist and the General Sessions Judges could escalate any further, County Commissioner Mary Lou Horner stepped in. She dismissed the whole mess as a "turf war," one County Executive Tommy Schumpert hopes to disarm with a series of mediation pow wows. Schumpert will break bread with Quist and other elected officials again on Nov. 30.
While Schumpert's peacemaking efforts may bring everyone to the table, clearing the air between courthouse factions may be easier said than done. That's because Quist and Hutchison are viewed by some as tentacles of the same beast: One that stands directly at odds with both judges and defense attorneys.
The Sheriff Connection
The back story shaping the way Quist is perceived by her rivals goes like this: When she ran for office, her campaign was partially managed by Bill Boyd, Hutchison's former chief deputy.
Boyd also happens to be Quist's fiancee. She's pals with the sheriff and his current chief deputy, Dwight Van de Vate, but that's where the intrigue stops, says Quist.
Now enter the public defender's office. For months, public defenders and other, private defense attorneys have weathered a roller derby like slap match with the sheriff's department. The two groups have gone round and round over an array of legal issues, all having to do with the sheriff asserting control over how defense attorneys do their job.
Around the same time defense attorneys and the sheriff were duking it out over access to defendants at the Detention Center, Quist suddenly restricted access to court files in her office. Defense attorneys, accustomed to breezing in and out of clerk's offices, began to sense similarities in the way they were being treated by Quist and Hutchison.
Out at the detention center in East Knox County, security has gotten so tight that defense attorneys are not allowed to bring paper clips into the building. Now at the clerk's office, the same attorneys are greeted by recently installed surveillance cameras. It's a precaution the clerk says will help keep documents from getting lost and money from being stolen.
Ironically, the cameras have generated greater scrutiny of Quist, especially among those who view her office as a fiefdom in Hutchison's empire.
Speaking for the sheriff's department, Chief Deputy Van de Vate chuckles about those who characterize his boss as Tim the Conqueror. He says false perceptions about an unholy Quist-Hutchison alliance have "marginalized" the clerk.
"Everybody wants to make her a product of someone else," says Van de Vate. "They walk up, smack Cathy and say, 'Tim, you bastard.'"
Though she's not an outspoken critic of Quist, former judicial commissioner Brenda Lindsay believes Hutchison is trying to expand his power base into the clerk's office. For six years, Lindsay worked around the clock, screening arrest and search warrants. She would quiz officers requesting warrants and stop them from arresting or searching suspects if they didn't have enough probable cause.
When officers didn't have sufficient evidence, says Lindsay, sometimes "They would try intimidation."
"They would basically say, 'Sign the fucking warrant,'" recalls Lindsay, now an attorney in private practice. "You laugh, but that's what they said."
Judicial commissioners like Lindsay are appointed by the General Sessions judges. In some counties, employees in the clerk's office sign and issue warrants.
Over time, says Lindsay, Hutchison has tried to exert an increasing amount of influence over judicial commissioners. First he moved them out of the jail downtown and into the detention center.
"Our office had to be where he was in control," says Lindsay, who believes there's been some discussion about replacing judicial commissioners with employees in Quist's office.
"Oh yes, that was definitely talked about," says Lindsay, recounting the scuttlebutt shared out at the Detention Center. "Not openly, but it was definitely talked about."
No one, including Lindsay and the Sessions judges contacted by Metro Pulse, believes there's an actual plan afoot to get rid of judicial commissioners. But the threat of such a change is apparently enough to get the courthouse crowd talking.
"If that was going on, I'd know about it," says County Commissioner Horner. Chief Deputy Van de Vate dismisses the idea, describing it as "systematically not possible."
The Martha Phillips Example
There is a place in the Knox County Courthouse where a clerk can watch her shop tick along unmolested by political infighting. It's Criminal and Fourth Circuit Court, home to Clerk Martha Phillips.
For 16 years, Phillips has been the clerk of Criminal and Fourth Circuit Court, which handles divorces and criminal cases passed up from General Sessions court. She's worked for the county for a total of 50 years, giving her a half-century head start on Quist.
Phillips won't comment on the troubles now embroiling Quist's office. She wants to remain neutral, and besides, Phillips is too busy to pass judgment anyway. In the last four years, her office's work load has increased by 400 percent.
In that time, Phillips has added no additional staff. Nor has she gone to the County Commission asking for additional funds to help make ends meet. Her office is self-sufficient. It survives on the revenue it generates, while providing the time-consuming service of issuing protective orders. In one recent case, says Phillips, a mother took out an order against six of her sons because "they just beat her up whenever they feel like it."
Quist, no doubt, would like a protective order of her own. The "bullets and arrows" keep coming, with the latest anti-Quist ammo arriving as a series of anonymous swipes at her office, sent without a signature to "county commissioners, community leaders and media at large."
These transparently pro-Beeler manifestos pour salt in Quist's most sensitive wound: Her office's finances. "Considering that she has not turned over one dime to the county in collected fees, is it really practical for the county to fund her every whim?" ask Quist's anonymous enemies.
The clerk's books are indeed in the red, but that's because when Quist began her term, she borrowed about $750,000 to cover operating expenses. The county typically makes such loans to new office holders, so her current debt is not a sign of financial trouble.
At least, not yet. Quist must increase the amount of revenue generated by her office or face even more political flack. Other criticisms could come from defense attorneys such as Don Bosch, who went to law school at UT with Quist. Bosch says that since Quist took over, the clerk's office has become much less user-friendly.
"Instead of taking seconds or minutes," as certain routine procedures did under Bean's administration, says Bosch, "it takes hours and days."
Quist's office will improve with time, assures Sheriff Tim Hutchison. "She has a vision," says Hutchison of Quist. "But it takes a long time to develop that vision into a productive arm of government."
Quist the politician, says Hutchison, is being defined day by day by "what she's been forced to go through."
How Quist will emerge in the end, says Chief Deputy Van de Vate, remains to be seen.
"Here is a young, soft-spoken, five-foot-tall, female attorney who came in and dislodged what was probably the most powerful political machine in Knox County. Was it a fluke or does it mark a fundamental change in the political guard?" asks Van de Vate, who adds, "The answer to that is not yet known."
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