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Eye on the Bumper

Moving from church parking lots to the regional malls for our unauthorized, not-to-say sneaky presidential campaign bumper sticker survey, President Bush appears to retain his lead in Knox and Blount Counties, despite his campaign’s slip nationally after the first candidate debate. Here’s how the sticker war stacked up one weekday around lunchtime this week: At West Town Mall,

26 Bush-Cheney bumper stickers to 14 for Kerry-Edwards; at Knoxville Center Mall, 20 for Kerry-Edwards to 16 for Bush-Cheney; and at Foothills Mall in that Blount bastion of blind Republicanism, 29 for Bush-Cheney to 9 (must be tourists) for Kerry-Edwards.

No Democrat Detector?

Last Thursday, the biggest debate-watching party was downtown at the City-County Building. Part of a national campaign organized under the auspices of the Commission for Presidential Debates, which organized the actual debates themselves, it was sponsored by the new Howard H. Baker Center for Public Policy and co-sponsored by the city and county mayors. Knoxville Director of Development Bill Lyons moderated the post-debate discussion. Throw an event associated with the names of well-known Republicans like Mike Ragsdale, Bill Haslam and former Sen. (and Bush Ambassador to Japan) Howard Baker himself, and who shows up? Democrats, of course. The attendance of approximately 250 was, by the most conservative estimates, more than 90 percent pro-Kerry. It was so overwhelmingly pro-Kerry that, during the discussion, some Democrats complained to Lyons that there weren’t enough Bush supporters in attendance; most estimates of pro-Bushites were in the single digits. Lyons explained that the Republicans were having their own partisan debate watch at Bush HQ. However, another analyst suggested that Republicans have more difficulty navigating downtown because their cars are too big.

Due to the building’s new high-security measures, the wait to get through the metal detector was sometimes 10 minutes or more. Frustrated with the wait, some peeled off, opting to watch the debates in low-security downtown pubs. However, a few spectators who arrived late for the post-debate discussion, which went on until well after 11 p.m., walked in unchecked, just like they used to in lower-security days, a month ago. The guards seemed to stop searching as soon as Bush and Kerry’s images had left the screen.

The Baker Center will host another DebateWatch on Oct. 13 at University Center Auditorium—sans metal detectors.

Separate But Equal Voting

Occasionally a Knox County resident has to leave God’s Country and live temporarily in some foreign place, like an embassy in Poland. Ambassador Victor Ashe was perturbed to discover that his absentee ballot from the Knox County Election Commission did not include an opportunity to vote on the wheel tax.

E-mails ensued.

Seems overseas ballots had to be mailed by Sept. 18, and the wheel tax repeal referendum wasn’t officially put on the ballot until the Knox County Commission meeting last week. The Knox County Election Commission has notified the ambassador that he, and other voters residing overseas, will get a separate ballot this week on just the wheel tax issue.

Evangelicals Downtown?

Cedar Springs Presbyterian may seem the quintessential suburban church. More evangelical than mainstream Presbyterians, they’re one of West Knoxville’s largest congregations. But at the moment, they’re also sponsoring the first new downtown church in many years. Though it bears the vaguely Episcopalian-sounding title of All Souls Knoxville, the church is reportedly non-denominational but evangelical. Pastors are John Wood of Cedar Springs, and Doug Bannister of Fellowship Evangelical Free Church on Middlebrook Pike. It meets on Sunday evenings at 6—in the Henley Street rooms of the Knoxville Convention Center.

Peter Johnson, the church’s business administrator, says church members have been watching downtown’s “renaissance” with interest. “It would be a shame to leave a spiritual component out,” he says. He acknowledges that there are five large churches downtown already, but, he says, “nobody else meeting exclusively on Sunday night.” He says they have hopes of a permanent location. “But hopes are hard to fund,” he says. The KCC seemed like the best deal for the time being.

Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam is an elder at Cedar Springs, and like his predecessor, he has been trying to drum up interest in the so-far underused KCC. Johnson says “as far as I know,” Haslam is “not pulling any strings for us.” Johnson says the church is a paying customer and has been dealing directly with the KCC’s leasing agent, SMG. So far, the experiment seems to be working out well for the new church; their three services so far have drawn around 250 people each.

Another State Witch Hunt

Two members of the state accountancy board, one of them from Knoxville, accepted a trip to Hawaii from a company they later awarded a $160,000 contract, and now people are trying to make a big deal out of it.

Two members of the board, Chair Mike Vaughn of Brentwood, and Vice-chair Mark King of Knoxville, accepted airfare to Maui, accommodations at the Maui Hyatt Regency and “ground transportation.” Ground transportation could be audit speak for a rental car, but we aren’t sure. Could have been a limo.

A couple of observations. How tedious it must be to serve on the state accountancy board overseeing, well, accounting. They had a conference in Maui, and the chintzy state of Tennessee wouldn’t pay for them to go. But after accepting the trip, what kind of rude bastards would they be if they didn’t give the company a lousy $160,000 state contract to administer testing services?

Although the company offered to pay for all five members of the board to go to Hawaii, there were two other members who went to the conference but insisted on paying their own way. What’s that all about? If these ethics questions keep arising, we’re going to get to a place where people will only want to serve on boards out of a feeling of public service. It could mean a breakdown in the entire structure of state government.

October 7, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 41 © 2004 Metro Pulse