Tennessee’s Political Protection Racket – WSJ

Ms. Ortagus isn’t from Tennessee originally, but then neither are many of her neighbors. The population of the Nashville metropolitan area grew 21% between 2010 and 2020, as newcomers flocked to the state without an income tax. Voters can decide if Ms. Ortagus is a carpetbagger, and if they care.

Yet lawmakers want to narrow the people’s options pre-emptively by disqualifying anyone who hasn’t lived in Tennessee for three years. One of the bill’s sponsors, state Sen.

Frank Niceley,

supports a different candidate, former state House Speaker

Beth Harwell,

according to NBC. “I’ll vote for Trump as long as he lives,” he said. “But I don’t want him coming out here to tell me who to vote for.”

This is rotten no matter what you think of Mr. Trump. State lawmakers want to help an insider candidate by blocking an outsider from the ballot. Worse, they’re doing it in the middle of the campaign, days before the filing deadline. Gov.

Bill Lee’s

office says he’s “still reviewing” the legislation. Tennessee has a weak veto, so the Legislature could override him with a simple majority.

A lawsuit from voters in Ms. Ortagus’s camp is likely, and here’s where the plot thickens. The U.S. Constitution says a member of the House must be 25 years old, a U.S. citizen for seven years, and an inhabitant of the state she represents. That’s it. States once tried to place term limits on their congressional delegations, but the Supreme Court said no in a 1995 case, U.S. Term Limits v. Thornton. “Allowing individual States to craft their own qualifications for Congress,” the majority held, would “erode the structure envisioned by the Framers.”

Tennessee might reply that Thornton was a 5-4 decision, and the Court has changed. “Nothing in the Constitution,” Justice

Clarence Thomas

wrote in dissent, “deprives the people of each State of the power to prescribe eligibility requirements for the candidates who seek to represent them in Congress. The Constitution is simply silent on this question.” If a petition came along, would Justice Thomas pitch his colleagues on ditching Thornton?

It’s a fascinating legal question. But what’s happening in Tennessee this week isn’t a scholarly case for restoring state election powers. It’s a grubby example of insiders deciding they want to keep political offices in the club.