BusinessTN

The decision of the General Assembly to move Tennessee’s presidential primary up to Feb. 10 has most believing that the Volunteer State, unlike in past years, will play a more significant role in determining which of the 10 Democratic presidential candidates will be chosen to challenge President George W. Bush. However, some pundits are of the opinion that Tennessee will actually pick the winner. Their logic? It’s a given that Iowa Rep. Dick Gephardt will win the Iowa primary and former Gov. Howard Dean will win the New Hampshire primary, meaning no clear message will emerge from those earliest primaries. After those states and before Tennessee, seven other states will hold primaries, which includes only one southern state, South Carolina. Pundits argue again that no clear message will emerge from that crowded field since several different winners will claim states as geographically variant as Arizona and Michigan. That leaves Tennessee and Virginia as the only primaries to take place on Feb. 10. Together they make up a large voice in Southern politics and encompass several major media markets (including Washington, D.C.) a plus for news coverage. Similar to the fourth quarter of a football game, should one candidate of the remaining field win both Tennessee and Virginia on Feb. 10 it could be a decisive day.

•Gov. Bredesen in October completed a $2.75 million purchase of 11 acres adjacent to his $4 million Nashville home on Chickering Road. It was the second largest residential real estate transaction in Davidson County in 2003. The purchase grew Bredesen’s holdings in the swanky Nashville neighborhood of Forest Hills to almost 81 acres, purchased for a total of $8.3 million over the past two decades. Bredesen and First Lady Andrea Conte never moved in to the Governor’s Mansion, which is undergoing extensive repairs. Periodically, Bredesen’s neighbors on Chickering Road are aware of when the governor arrives home by the sound of the helicopter landing at the property. No word yet on if a landing pad will be built at the renovated executive residence on Curtiswood Drive.

•Interim treasurer Dale Sims, or whoever is elected to the permanent post, will be responsible for again reminding lawmakers of a budget crisis on the horizon. It’s a crisis that wasn’t able to generate large headlines last session as lawmakers focused on steep departmental cuts. But a drop-off in the state’s investment portfolio last year will result in Tennessee having to budget just south of an additional $100 million to bolster its employee pension fund in fiscal year 2004-2005. A strong fourth quarter rally in 2003 provided a large boost; however, the state still ended the year below assumed gains of 7.5% on its over $23 billion fund, prompting a higher recommended contribution rate for July 2004. A recent Fitch Ratings report warns that unless the equity markets revert quickly to late 1990s form, the funding needs of pension expenses for state and local governments could be expected to rise sharply over the next several years.

•Days after legendary singer/songwriter Johnny Cash died, Sen. Lamar Alexander made an impassioned, albeit mostly overlooked speech from the floor of the U.S. Senate scolding Tennessee’s universities for failing to recognize the work of country music songwriters as literature and to set up chairmanships within their English departments to treat them as poets. “Why has Vanderbilt not done more about the literature that is country music? Or why does Belmont University in Nashville or the University of Tennessee or University of Memphis not do it,” Alexander asked, according to a transcript on his Web site. “Why do we wait for the New York Times…to tell us that Johnny Cash and Hank Williams were also among the best poets when Vanderbilt University, among others, lives right there among them?” Alexander left out of his diatribe the one state institution, East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, which has a program that approximates his idea. ETSU has a full-fledged Appalachian Studies program within its English department that includes a comprehensive study of bluegrass music. Perhaps the program could serve as a good model for the institutions Alexander does name in establishing a formal country music study.