politicsLetter To The Editor
The Greeneville Sun
Feb. 16th, 2010
Have you noticed that you sometimes don't see many new names on parts of the ballot in Greene County and the incumbent often runs unopposed? In this letter, I'll try to explain one possible reason why this is. It seems that you can no longer just get the required signatures from local voters and get your name on the ballot. Now an unelected board decides who gets to run for government office and who doesn't.
Several years ago some of the people who were in office at the time, got together and helped make some rules for anyone who would want to run for Road Superintendent in the future. One of the qualifications was the person would have to be a road crew supervisor for at least 4 years. That happened to be the exact number of years that any first-term superintendent who was currently in office would have at the end of their term; thus qualifying them to run again. However, if a man had worked in the road business for 10, 20, or even 30 years and knew pretty much everything about the job, he would not be qualified. Since then only one new man has qualified to run for Road Superintendent in Greene County.
I realize that having some minimum qualifications for an elected position can be a good thing, but not when the qualifications are so narrow that they exclude 99% of the population, including many people who could do the job very well. Will a board somewhere decide next to only allow you to run for County Commissioner or Alderman if you have a degree in political science? Elected positions in this country should mostly be decided by voters. Then, if the person does a bad job, they can be voted out during the next election. Having a group of people who are already in power decide who is going to be elected is the way other countries do it.
12 years ago my brother, Billy Darnell, went to work for the Greene County Road Department, and 10 years ago he was elected as Road Commissioner in the 2nd Division. He has been re-elected twice since then. Road Commissioners have some of the same responsibilities as the Road Superintendent, but there are three commissioners. Each commissioner supervises one third of the county according to the original 1936 law. Many of the past superintendents were first elected as commissioner before being elected as superintendent. None of the commissioners were invited to the meeting to decide the new qualifications for superintendent.
This past year, after being encouraged by many people, Billy decided to try to run for Road Superintendent. He quickly got the required signatures and sent the paperwork to Nashville. He got back a rejection letter requesting to see his diploma. He sent a copy of the diploma then got back another rejection letter saying he still wasn't qualified. Billy drove to Nashville for the next meeting. He took with him two notarized letters from past road department employees stating that during his 10 years as Road Commissioner he had been their direct supervisor. He also took several other notarized letters from people who had problems with their roads and had told Billy about them and had personally watched him overseeing the repairs. Still, at the end of the meeting, along with several other people from other districts, he was denied permission to run.
I want to make two points here. One is that the qualifications are entirely too exclusionary, eliminating many well-qualified people who could do the job as Road Superintendent. The other is that Billy Darnell still meets the minimum qualifications, but has been denied his right to run for a publicly held office by an unelected group of officials.
Our elected officials and the committees they appoint are human. They sometimes have a tough job and they make mistakes just like the rest of us. I think they have made some big mistakes this time and I hope they reconsider their decisions. If they don't, Greene County voters may have very limited choices to vote for in future elections. They will have to decide who their Road Superintendent will be during this primary election between one of two men who have already held the job. (Nobody qualified on the Democratic ticket.) And they will not be able to vote for a new, well-qualified man who would make a great Road Superintendent.
Eddie Ray Darnell 1060 Piney Grove Rd Greeneville, TN 37743
Here is our picture with him.
Several weeks after the cruise, we were laid over in Nashville, so we went downtown. We first went to Legends Corner where we saw a guy named Thom Shepard perform. He wrote the David Ball song, "Riding With Private Malone" and the Craig Morgan song, "Redneck Yacht Club". We spotted Mark Wills in the back of the room and got our picture taken with him.
After an hour or so, we decided to walk down Broadway to see what else was going on. We saw several tour buses parked on the street and when we got to them we saw one of those velvet ropes, like they have in Hollywood, going into one of the venues with a long line of people behind it. We didn't bother getting in line because we figured the odds of us getting in were between 0 and 0. But as we walked on down the sidewalk we heard someone yelling "Eddie, Eddie". I thought, "That would be quite a coincidence if we ran into somebody we know here in Nashville". Then we spotted our new buddy from the cruise, Tim, coming down the sidewalk.
He asked us if we were here for the showcase. I said "What showcase"? He said "Cody and some other country music stars were having a showcase there". Cody McCarver is the keyboard player for the "Confederate Railroad Band" and he has a couple of country hits himself. Then Tim said, "Come on. I'll get you in". It's a good thing nobody in the line behind the velvet rope had a feather, because they could have knocked us over with it as we walked by them and were escorted inside.
One of the first country stars that we saw was "Cledus T Judd". He was a co-host for the event.
The other co-host was "Mr Belding" (Dennis Haskins) from "Saved By The Bell".
Here is Cody McCarver performing. That's Jimmy Dormire in the background. He's a great guitar player.
Cody spotted us and came over and told us how much he appreciated us coming "all the way to Nashville to be at his showcase". I didn't know what to say at first, but then I thought, no, I'm not going to lie. I said, "Man, we were just walking down the street and Tim ran us down". He looked a little disappointed and I quickly said, "But we're sure glad to be here", so the awkward moment passed quickly. We saw him in Knoxville a few weeks later and he told his buddies that story and we all got a laugh out of it.
Several other new country stars performed as well.
This is Amanda Hinkel.
And this is Daryle Singletary, who performed several songs.
About half way through the the night, Danny Shirley, Confederate Railroad's lead singer, came strolling in. He came over to where we were and talked to us a bunch. Then Mark Wills came in and he and Danny stood there beside us, talking up a storm. How cool is that?
I didn't have to move to take this picture. This is where we were all standing. Danny did a radio interview during the time he was there and they gave him some very nice T shirts, which he gave to us before he left. It sure is nice to be liked.
Sorry to post such a long blog but nights like this don't happen very often and I wanted to post quite a bit about it. Here is one more picture of our buddy, Tim, playing fiddle on stage. He also played harmonica and lap steel.
Here is a view from the top deck of the ship, just before we left port.
That night we saw a show in the ships main theater. Here are some pics.
The next day we saw an ice carving show on deck.
Here is the deck.
We went to the Confederate Railroad Band's acoustic show. The guy on the left is Rusty Hendrix, their new lead guitar player. He toured with Sammy Kershaw for many years.
Here is our group with the leader of the band, Danny Shirley.
Our first stop was in Puerto Rico, near where Christopher Columbus first landed. Here is a statue of him.
This is the old fort.
And here is the ship in the dock in Puerto Rico.
We had another enjoyable weekend at home this past weekend. Saturday, we got together with the family including our Great-Nieces and Nephews from South Carolina. We played with the horses, played chess and basketball, and fixed homemade pizza for dinner. Here is a picture of our future Rock Star, Great-Nephew, Nolan.
Sunday, we went to our friends, Sandy and Shila's house and decorated pumpkins. We had the news turned on and they were reporting on all of the negative campaigning, and our pumpkin got a little sick of it.
Before we left home yesterday, we stopped by the early polls and voted. Here is the new video from Andy, Opie, and Fonzie.
