Will Rogers once said that every election day, the voters of Oklahoma stagger to the polls and vote “dry.” Well, a few weeks ago we sober Tennessee voters staggered to the polls and voted for our right to buy a bottle of wine at the Piggly Wiggly. (“I’ll have a fine Piglet-Fuisse, s’il vous plait!”)

We also voted to amend our state Constitution to make sure we never, never, never have a state income tax in Tennessee even if the sales tax reaches 25 percent, in which case we will pass another Constitutional amendment banning the sales tax and just close the state.

We the people also passed a Constitutional amendment that guarantees our right to elect our Supreme Court Justices and other appellate judges … only we don’t get to elect them. The governor gets to pick them, the legislature then gets to let the governor know whether the lawyer he picked is okay for the job, and then we voters get the right to say whether the judge who was picked by the governor and approved by the legislature, is okay with us, but we only get to say that after the judge has been on the bench for several years.

Sometimes I think John Jay Hooker makes some very good points.

And we Tennessee voters did something else on election day. We said we didn’t want any Democrat holding a statewide office in Tennessee, and we don’t want that many of them holding local offices.

We Tennesseeans made it perfectly clear at the ballot box that we don’t want a Democrat to be governor or United States senator or attorney general or highway commissioner or dog catcher.
We did not pass a Constitutional amendment banning Democrats from holding public office, but Lieutenant Governor Ramsey is probably working on such a proposal at this very moment.

Just six years ago, the Tennessee General Assembly was controlled by Democrats. But now there are only five Democrats left in the 33-member State Senate. That’s right, only five. The Tennessee Democratic Party barely has enough state senators to have a basketball team, and if one of them fouled out, they would have to play 4-on-5. Well, actually, in the Tennessee State Senate they would have to play 4-on-28.

Tennessee has become a one-party state and John Wilder must be rolling over in his grave.    

In one respect, this is nothing new to me. I am 62 years old and grew up in Tennessee, and therefore I can vividly remember when Tennessee was a one-party state, and that party was … the Democratic Party!

When I was a boy only two people were allowed to be governor of Tennessee. One was named Frank and the other was named Buford, and they were both Democrats. Frank Clement and Buford Ellington just took turns being governor, and the Republicans didn’t even bother to run Charlie Brown against them.

In those days, Tennessee was populated by something called “yeller dawg Democrats,” people who would vote for the Democratic nominee for public office even if he was a yeller dawg. When you stop and consider that two of the men that the Tennessee Democratic party nominated for governor in the 1970s went to prison, you have to admit that maybe we would have been better off if the Democrats had actually nominated a yeller dawg.

But now the yeller dawg Democrats are on the endangered species list. In fact, unlike the snail darter, they are almost extinct.

But I truly believe there is one lawyer in Tennessee who could actually bring back the Tennessee Democratic Party and the two-party system to the Volunteer State.

Believe it or not, that lawyer is Lewie Donelson. Yes, Lewie Donelson, the senior partner of the state’s largest law firm and the man who a half century ago brought the two-party system to Tennessee by creating the modern Republican Party.

If the truth be known, Lewie Donelson was born and raised a Democrat. He is the great-grandson of Andrew Jackson Donelson, and he did not become a born-again Republican until the 1950s when he decided to make his conversion so that Tennessee could have a Republican party that actually challenged yeller dawg Democrats.

And so Lewie Donelson begat Howard Baker who begat Bill Brock who begat Winfield Dunn who begat Lamar Alexander who begat Bill Frist who begat Fred “Reverse Mortgage” Thompson who begat Don Sundquist who begat the entire Haslam family. Well, okay, it didn’t quite go in that order, but you get the idea.

It was Lewie Donelson who killed yeller dawg Democrats just like Davy Crockett killed a “bar” when he was only three.

And now, at the tender age of 97, Lewie Donelson is the one man in Tennessee who could bring back the party of Andrew Jackson.

I’m sure you are thinking, “Bill, get real! There is no way Lewie Donelson is going to go back to being a Democrat.”

In the words of the noted political philosopher Lee Corso, not so fast, my friend!

I truly know for a fact that Mr. Donelson is open to the idea, because I heard him say it! A few months ago I was at a Memphis bookstore when Mr. Donelson signed copies of his autobiography, Lewie. He made a few remarks, in the course of which he said, “I only became a Republican because I felt Tennessee needed a two-party system. Well, we Republicans have been so successful that I’m thinking about going back to being a Democrat!”

Mr. Donelson then tilted his head back and did his trademark Lewie Donelson laugh.

Mr. Donelson was probably only kidding, but if I were Roy Herron, or one of those five Democrats left in the State Senate, I would give him a call.

BILL HALTOM is a shareholder with the firm of Lewis Thomason. He is a past president of the Tennessee Bar Association and a past president of the Memphis Bar Association. Read his blog at www.billhaltom.com.