Recent editorials from Tennessee newspapers:
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Aug. 10
The Johnson City Press on a woman representing the 1st Congressional District’s seat in the U.S. House of Representatives:
A significant step in local history largely escaped notice Thursday night as the excitement wrapped up in the bitter contest to replace Phil Roe in Congress.
For the first time, both major party nominees for the 1st Congressional District’s seat in the U.S. House of Representatives are women, all but guaranteeing a woman will take the oath of office in January.
Since Irishman John Rhea won election in 1805 after Tennessee’s at-large district was reapportioned, the seat has been occupied by men. That is with the sole exception of May 1961 to January 1963 when Louise Reece completed the term of her late husband, B. Carroll Reece.
Since 1881, the 1st District has been represented by Republicans. So we like GOP nominee Diana Harshbarger’s chances of continuing that streak. The political novice emerged from a crowded field to win the nomination after aligning herself with President Donald Trump and eroding confidence in her opponents with attack ads and mailers.
In the Nov. 3 general election, she will face off with Democratic Party nominee Blair Walsingham, an Air Force veteran and business owner from Hawkins County.
So barring an unlikely surge by an independent candidate, the 1st District will send a woman to Congress.
This milestone is notable in part because it coincides with the century mark for the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The amendment was ratified Aug. 18, 1920 - 100 years ago nine days from today - awarding women their rightful ability to vote. When Harshbarger and Walsingham face off Nov. 3, the contest will be 100 years and one day after women first cast votes in the national election.
Here in Washington County, voters will send a woman to the state House for the first time in 30 years. Rebecca Keefauver Alexander trounced longtime incumbent Matthew Hill in Thursday’s primary for the GOP nomination. She will be unopposed in the fall.
Other women in major leadership roles here include Johnson City Mayor Jenny Brock, Washington County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Leighta Laitinen and recently promoted Johnson City Deputy Chief of Police Debbie Botelho.
While we still have a long way toward breaking the glass ceiling in government and other sectors, the progress in Northeast Tennessee for women is encouraging. We hope girls and young women are taking note and will step up in the years ahead.
Online: https://www.johnsoncitypress.com/
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Aug. 4
The Greenville Sun on schools conducting classes online:
Leaders in the two local school systems made the right call recently to keep schools closed and conduct classes online when the academic year starts this month. With the COVID-19 virus spreading rapidly through Greene County, they really had no choice.
There are challenges. Some students don’t have access to reliable internet service. Some count on meals served at school. It won’t be easy. Then again, nothing about his pandemic has been. Hopefully, the lessons learned when schools were forced to shut their doors and continue classes online in the spring will provide a roadmap.
What’s changed since the spring is the rate of new infections, not just here but across the state and in many places around the country. In Greene County, as Eugenia Estes reported in the Saturday edition, the case count exploded in July, from 85 at the beginning of the month to 344 on its final day, according to the Tennessee Department of Health.
The first three days of August provided no reprieve, with 27 new cases reported over the weekend and Monday.
Classes were scheduled to start this week in Greene County. Doing that in person while these conditions persist would have been a dangerous mistake, and not just for the students.
Of the more than 110,600 Tennessee cases counted at the time of this writing, nearly 18,000 - 16 percent - were in patients 20 and younger. More than 5,000 of those cases were in children 10 and younger. While four (we’ll not say “only four” when it comes to children dying) of those cases had resulted in death, it only stands to reason that if a child has the virus, he or she can pass it along to someone at far greater risk of potentially deadly outcomes. That can include a teacher with an underlying medical condition or a grandparent with a weaker immune system, such as those in the 61-and-older range who currently account for 14 percent of Tennessee’s cases and 80 percent of its virus-related deaths.
And as much as we’d like it to be true, no magic pill has been proven to ward off COVID-19. Of hydroxychloroquine - the most widely touted “miracle cure” for the coronavirus - President Donald Trump’s testing czar, Adm. Brett Giroir, assistant secretary of health and human services, said on the NBC Sunday program “Meet the Press” that the nation needs to “move on” from the debate over the drug and that there is “no evidence” to show it is an effective treatment (viral online videos starring doctors who also believe dream sex with demons causes some ailments and alien DNA is used in medical treatments notwithstanding).
While there may yet be an effective therapy to lessen the effects of the virus - a Reuters story Sunday sounded an optimistic note about one that has been used in emergency cases - our best hope for a return to normalcy is an effective vaccine. Our best bet for curbing the spread of COVID-19 right now is everyone taking responsibility for doing their part, including mask-wearing and social distancing. Our best option for protecting our children, and those they love, is not forcing them back into classrooms while that’s not safe.
Online: https://www.greenevillesun.com/
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