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| Mark Clayton |
In a story found in The Tennessean, we have this poor fellow,
a conservative Democrat, being aggressively rejected by the party
he represents on the November ballot. He is conservative, has ties to a
local tea-party group, is pro-life and anti-gay marriage and the
"big tent" Democrats want nothing to do with the man.
Understand that if he won the November election, which is out of
the question, he would be allowed to participate in the Democrat Party
Caucus. He would never be awarded a committee chairmanship. Such is
the sad state of affairs within the "party of the people."
Let's not forget, "the people" voted him into the Senate
race, last Tuesday -- blog editor.
******
From The Tennessean: The party
of Cordell Hull, Estes Kefauver and Al Gore Sr. and Jr. won’t have a
standard-bearer — or at least not one it can stomach — in Tennessee’s next U.S.
Senate race.
Less than 24 hours after a man espousing conservative and
libertarian views surprised the state’s political scene by winning
the Democratic nomination, the Tennessee Democratic Party disavowed
him, saying he’s part of an anti-gay hate group.
The party said Friday that it would do nothing to help Mark
Clayton, 35, who received nearly twice as many votes as his closest challenger
in Thursday’s seven-candidate primary, winning the right to challenge
Republican U.S. Sen. Bob Corker in November.
"The only time that Clayton has voted in a Democratic
primary was when he was voting for himself,” the party said in a news release.
“Many Democrats in Tennessee knew nothing about any of the candidates in the
race, so they voted for the person at the top of the ticket. Unfortunately,
none of the other Democratic candidates were able to run the race needed to
gain statewide visibility or support.
“Mark Clayton is associated with a known hate group in
Washington, D.C., and the Tennessee Democratic Party disavows his candidacy,
will not do anything to promote or support him in any way, and urges Democrats
to write-in a candidate of their choice in November.”
Clayton defended his work for Public Advocate of the United
States, the pro-life, pro-marriage group in question, and said he was
disappointed with the Tennessee Democratic Party’s “zero-sum politics.”
“It’s not necessarily surprising, unfortunately,” he said in a
phone interview. “But that’s not the way I deal with my political opponents. I
have good friends who are liberals.”
Clayton acknowledged his social conservative instincts but said
he’d been deeply disappointed by the presidency of George W. Bush, the last
Republican to occupy the White House.
Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Chris Devaney gloated on
Twitter about the opposition party’s failure to find a suitable candidate.
“Nice vetting job by the Dems,” Devaney wrote.
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| She lost to Mark Clayton by a 2-1 margin |
The reaction wasn’t any more sympathetic in some Democratic
quarters.
“What a debacle in Tennessee,” the liberal Daily Kos website
wrote Friday morning, hours before the party announced its decision. “It's not
like Democrats were ever going to have a shot at unseating freshman Sen. Bob
Corker, but at least our preferred candidate, actress and activist Park
Overall, is a real Democrat. The guy Dems did nominate seems to be anything
but.”
Clayton
said he’s an unpaid vice president and does occasional writing for Public
Advocate of the United States, which was designated as “an anti-gay hate group”
by the Southern Poverty Law Center in March. A story
on the center’s web site says
Public Advocate “has spread lies and vitriol about LGBT people to raise funds,
impede progress toward greater equality and to deny LGBT people basic dignity
and respect.”
The organization says on its own site that it has worked to support
a “federal traditional marriage (man-woman) amendment to the Constitution to
defend traditional marriage from assaults from those who claim to promote ‘same
sex marriage’.”
Clayton said the group protects “the rights of people who don’t
want to live their lives differently.” He said the Southern Poverty Law Center
teaches a “gender-bending” curriculum and uses its national list of hate groups
as a fund-raising strategy.
The Clayton
campaign’s Facebook page champions
three major positions: strict adherence to the U.S. Constitution, family
stances that are pro-life, and keeping the country from turning into “AN
ORWELLIAN SUPER STATE.”
Sean Braisted, a Democratic Party spokesman, left the door open
for a possible legal maneuver to try to get Clayton’s name off the Democratic
line of the November ballot.
“The only option we are taking off the table in this situation,”
he said, “is supporting Mark Clayton.”
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