Thu
May 20 2010
01:30 pm
Mike who?
By: R. Neal

WVLT is the only local news media that covered Mike McWherter's visit to downtown Market Square last night.

Topics:
gonzone's picture

wbir

Submitted by gonzone on Thu, 2010/05/20 - 1:49pm.

And WBIR has an office right there on the square!

bizgrrl's picture

He can't get no respect in

Submitted by bizgrrl on Thu, 2010/05/20 - 1:59pm.

He can't get no respect in these parts.

Rigsby Werner's picture

That's the power of pilot advertising, the NS is no exception

Submitted by Rigsby Werner (not verified) on Thu, 2010/05/20 - 2:27pm.

The daily rag routinely passes on what McWhorter says and does, all in the glare of thousands of dollars of pilot advertising and thousands of free Friday newspapers given away at your local pilot fuel center.

jbr's picture

Maybe they are waiting to

Submitted by jbr on Thu, 2010/05/20 - 4:51pm.

Maybe they are waiting to pick it up off the AP wire.

It was a little chilly last night.

Bbeanster's picture

It's sort of hard to pretend

Submitted by Bbeanster on Fri, 2010/05/21 - 6:21am.

It's sort of hard to pretend that he's a serious candidate.

R. Neal's picture

Well, he's pretty serious. He

Submitted by R. Neal on Fri, 2010/05/21 - 6:56am.

Well, he's pretty serious. He put in $1 million of his own money. I know that's not quite Haslam money, but still.

Anyway, which comes first - average folks not taking a candidate seriously thus the media ignoring them, or the media ignoring them thus average folks not taking them seriously?

Bbeanster's picture

Anyway, which comes first -

Submitted by Bbeanster on Fri, 2010/05/21 - 7:59am.

"Anyway, which comes first - average folks not taking a candidate seriously thus the media ignoring them, or the media ignoring them thus average folks not taking them seriously?"

I don't know about anybody else, but I don't take Mike McWherter seriously because I don't like his positions on issues (he's conservative as any republican) and while he seems nice enough on the occasions when I've met him, he's pretty much just a pale, more conservative, far less powerful imitation of his daddy. The major criticism of Haslam has to do with his family money buying the race – how is McWherter any different (other than not being as smart or as personable and never having served in any elected office)? What's he done besides run his daddy's businesses?

R. Neal's picture

So basically, they're the

Submitted by R. Neal on Fri, 2010/05/21 - 8:18am.

So basically, they're the same except Haslam was Mayor of Knoxville and McWherter has the name advantage.

Anyway, yeah, we get conservative Democrats for candidates. What else is new?

If you compare their issues pages, though, there is a difference. A big difference on some issues.

McWherter

Haslam

I'll take the slightly less conservative, slightly more progressive type who will promote public education and continue Bredesen's as-good-as-we're-going-to-get-in-Tennessee agenda over the voucher toutin' Bible thumpin' gun totin' guy every day.

Bbeanster's picture

No, I didn't say they are the

Submitted by Bbeanster on Fri, 2010/05/21 - 8:59am.

No, I didn't say they are the same. Haslam has stood for election twice and won. McWherter has flirted with running more times than I can count and followed through only when the field was so weak his name and money could run them all out. And although the younger McWherter might be marginally more liberal than Haslam, all we have is his word for it – no track record to look at, unlike Haslam, who has proven to be a reasonable guy in his seven years as mayor.

Sammy's picture

Completely agree with this

Submitted by Sammy (not verified) on Fri, 2010/05/21 - 10:22am.

Completely agree with this statement. I don't believe a man should start his political career as a governor, I also find McWherter to just be a flat out bad candidate. Among the Democrats running, he was the worst among all of them and just came out because he had the most money.

All that said, I doubt that I will be voting for him in November.

R. Neal's picture

He's also a terrible public

Submitted by R. Neal on Fri, 2010/05/21 - 10:23am.

He's also a terrible public speaker. Needs to take some lessons from Herron. OK, maybe not Herron.

Haslam's not all that inspirational, either.

Basically, we have a couple of uninspiring candidates. So I'll vote on principle.

Anonymouser's picture

People have taken it as a given that

Submitted by Anonymouser on Fri, 2010/05/21 - 1:52pm.

...the next Governor will be GOP for so long that we're only now waking up to the fact that that's not necessarily written in stone. I think that's part of it -- a big part of it. Until McWherter got in there was no one who had much of a chance but at the same time he waited too long to get in. He needs to make some noise NOW on some issue that distinguishes him from the rest.

Also, going unchallenged is working a bit against him in terms of getting early press. It's like the 08 primaries where democrats had a hot race and so got all the press whereas McCain couldn't buy any until the general because it was settled.

Mike Cohen's picture

McWherter

Submitted by Mike Cohen on Fri, 2010/05/21 - 2:06pm.

Trying to look at this as a former journalist, I'm not sure I see much reason to cover this. He's running in a primray...unchallenged. Not a lot of news value there. The republican side gets more news coverage because you have three candidates in a highly contested race.

I think when we get past the primary and it's D vs R you'll see a lot more coverage when either candidate is in town, especially when appearing at groups with people from both sides, or who are undecided.

You can jump the media for this all you want, but I think it's a reasonable journalistic call at this point in the race.

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