All the attention is on Dr. Richard Briggs as he has said that he intends to challenge State Senator Stacey Campfield. Briggs is working hard to keep his visibility high in hopes to raise much needed funds and hoping to scare any other opponents out. That won’t happen. There will be multiple candidates.
Also, Campfield has support. In December 2010, Campfield was the recipient of the 2010 Man of the Year designation from the weekly throw newspaper, The Knoxville Focus. The Focus owner and publisher was a supporter of Madeline Rogero, a vicious opponent of the Senator. Also, the operator of the Focus weekly telephone polling is acting as Briggs campaign manager. But being man of the year,is a designation that Campfield can remind everyone of.
Briggs stated on State your Case with George Korda on WNOX 100.3 on Sunday that he has consistently always supported Campfield in the past.
Campfield’s conservative political views and welfare accountability initiatives are sound and well thought out. The problem is, as with most conservative government principles, that they are hard to articulate and very hard to explain in a media grinder that just wants to show insensitivity and demonstrate calleous disregard for people’s needs. What Campfield is trying to articulate is that the state government doesn’t have a nickle to spend to continue to fund an ongoing lifestyle of dependency on government services which breeds and multiplies into another multiple person generation of government dependence. That may have been well and good for the industrial north as their factories and economies were shuttered and moved elsewhere, however, it will not and cannot work in Tennessee. Taxpayer dollars are better spent elsewhere, with the possibility that a government dependent may eventually have the desire and the opportunity to go back to work.
Campfield has a long list of supporters and sufficient contributors to return to Nashville as a state senator. His conversations, points, and authorities play better on the front porch or in the den as opposed to a 15 second sound bite pulled apart by a local station. There will be at least 4 people in the race, perhaps 5 if another doctor on the west side jumps in.