Tennessee Guerilla Women: Nashville Democratic Activist Renounces Party: 'I will vote for John McCain'

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Nashville Democratic Activist Renounces Party: 'I will vote for John McCain'

"On behalf of my daughter, my sister and myself, I am disgusted with this party. I will vote for John McCain."

-- Alma Sanford

It seems like an epidemic . . . women leaving the Democratic Party. Alma Sanford is the chair of the Tennessee Democratic Women's Political Action Committee. The longtime party activist has committed untold hours to the project of opening politics up to women in this good old cretin boy state. Alma represented the state at the DNC as a pledged Clinton delegate. She was recently honored by the National Federation of Democratic Women as humanitarian of the year. Alma Sanford has been a committed party activist for more than 30 years. Especially, she is a leader of Democratic women.

After Tennessee Democratic Party leaders pulled a fast one right out of the Donna Brazile and Howard Dean DNC playbook, it is foolish to believe that Alma Sanford will be the only Tennessee woman to register her protest by leaving the party already infamous for betraying women. (But I wish they would vote Green!)

Party officials voted Saturday to steal an election by declaring Sen. Rosalind Kurita's 19-vote primary victory invalid, or "incurably uncertain." Just like at the infamous May 31st DNC meeting, the male candidate and the party elders won. And the woman candidate and the voters lost.

Oh well. It's not like there's a shortage of women in the state legislature. Oh, wait. Of 132 legislators, 23 are women and 109 are men.

Alma pretty well sums it up: "[I]t's not my party anymore. They have put poison in the well, and have run the older women out of the party."

Nashville Post:

Citing actions by Tennessee Democratic Party Chairman Gray Sasser, as well as spokesman Wade Munday, and the general mistreatment of Democratic such as Hillary Clinton and Rosalind Kurita, Sanford said she no longer considers herself a Democrat.

“I will vote for John McCain,” Sanford stated unequivocally.

Sanford was upset not only with the Kurita decision today but with what she claimed was encouragement by Sasser to Hillary Clinton delegates in Denver to break Tennessee law by voting for Barack Obama.

Sanford also expressed dismay directly to spokesman Munday, who listened intently and respectfully to her comments to reporters, that he did not renounce Congressman Steve Cohen in his weekly newsletter for comments he made comparing Hillary Clinton unfavorably with the Glen Close character in Fatal Attraction.