Opportunities that we think of around. You know i take i mean 128 around boston or Silicon Valley or for that matter, in northern virginia. Now, im afraid that time is. And chariot has flown it being 50 minutes after the hour of. Please respond to. The applause for our authors. My name is bradley sides im going to be the host of the session this morning. Im the author of the short story collection those fantastic loves and the upcoming collection, crocodile tears they can cause the flood. Its my pleasure to host the session this morning. Were here for welcome capitol hill. As you can see, were with authors joel ebert, Erik Schelzig and were going to talk much more about this book for the next 45 minutes or so. So a couple of housekeeping notes before we get started and im going to read these so i make sure i get everything. Please consider checking out humanity. Tennessee literary website. Its w ww dot chapter six dawg. You can find reviews interviews, all kinds of things with tennessees literary community. Also, as a reminder, the festival depends upon individual donations, among other sources, to remain completely. You may donate at the humanities tennessee website, which is h u m t in dawg. You can also donate on site by scanning the qr codes that are around the building or by venmo and venmo can be at h m t in joe and erics book along with all of our other authors books is available for sale at the Parnassus Book sales area, which is just outside this building, where a portion of all proceeds directly benefits the festival. Also, if youd like to get your copy of their book signed after this session, they will be available for signing at 11 00. And the blue tent, which is outside this building as well for this session. Joellan, eric have agreed to introduce their book and then well talk about some of the various contents of the book following their discussion. Well leave plenty of time for questions. So please be thinking about questions. If you have a question you would like ask, please line up at the mark over here. So that will be able to hear you clearly as we get started with the q a session. So i think thats about ill go ahead and introduce joel and eric in, then well get started. Joel ebert joined the university of chicagos institute of politics in 2021. After nearly a decade of reporting on state legislatures and government, including for the capital journal. And pierre, south dakota, the charleston daily mail and charleston gazette mail in West Virginia and the daily line in illinois. After joining the tennessean in 2016, ebert reported on serial Sexual Harassment allegations against the then representative, jeremy that ultimately resulted his ouster from the house, wrote several developments in the scandal leading to representative lynn cassada becoming the first House Speaker to fail to his full term and 126 years in launched a political podcast. Green divisions ebert, a bachelors degree in english from the University Illinois at chicago. Erik schelzig was named editor of the tennessee journal in 2018 after 12 years as an Associated Press house correspondent in nashville, where he chronicled the states change from democratic to republican control. He previously worked for the wire service in West Virginia and florida. Jones started his career with the Center Public integritys International Consortium of investigative journalists and later spent a year in germany covering the aftermath of the 11 terrorist attacks as a visiting reporter for the Washington Post and the news magazine der spiegel, chozick has a masters degree in Political Science from George Washington university. Generic welcome to the southern festival. We introduced your book to us. Thanks for having us and thank all you for joining us today. So, yeah, eric and i decided in 2021 to write a book of focusing on tennessee government and politics and the idea kind of came about. I had been a reporter at the tennessean for a few years at 2016 till about 2020, and i had covered several political scandals at the time, and i had also been really into looking back at retrospectives in history. So at one point in my coverage at the tennessean, i was looking back at the 40th anniversary of Lamar Alexander being sworn in early as governor and was fascinated with the story. Interviewed then u. S. Senator alexander and told this story when i was reporting at the tennessean. And it got me thinking, hey, this is cool, lets do more research on history and retell these stories. So i did another one on operation in rocky top, which is a political scandal that took place in the 1980s. That one of its central characters is lieutenant now Lieutenant GovernorRandy Mcnally into, a corruption scheme, an illegal bingo. And so i took told that story again and did a podcast. And so at some point in the i thought to myself and i talked to eric, who is a competitor of mine technically, and i said, hey, nobody put this all in one place. There are all these theyre contained largely to newspapers or online archives. Theres one book that kyle hunter, a really excellent recap of what is called the coup. When Lamar Alexander was sworn in early to oust ray blanton. But i thought it would be great to kind of compile all of this in one place. And at that point, we decided, you know, this has some legs because we had covered some other political scandals. And i let you kind of allude to some of those. Oh, well, yeah. Was joel said somebody ought to write a book. And i said, yeah, somebody should. And lo and behold, i was roped into it and it was a labor of love, lets put it that way. Yes. So we basically started with the we had to figure out a timeline and we figured thought at first wed start at the beginning of tennessee history and work our way up and quickly realize that that would be a far too long tome that nobody would want to read. So we decided to cut it off at 50 years, which roughly my life span. So was sort of, you know, used as a bookend. So we started in the seventies with this ray blanton scandal, as is jules alluded to, and worked our way up through actually almost this spring before our editors finally told us no more. We got photo of the tennessee three in there just as the final sort of, you know, event and i guess our plan was to sort of just talk each chapter. Real quick, to give you a sense of what we talked about and yeah, so we kind of split the book up in an unusual way, mostly because we knew we needed to be cognizant each others time. And so i focused on the first couple of chapters, again, because i did some of these retrospectives for the tennessean. So i did the first chapter, and it was about governor blanton, you know, kills book kill. Hunts book is amazing, but i wanted do a little bit more about who ray plant was. So we requested records from the fbi, which were very enlightening. At one point there was ray gets into congress and he writes a letter to j. Edgar hoover and asks him to be on his weekly radio show and j. Edgar says, oh, man, id love to do it, basically. But scheduling wont allow that. And i thought that was a really interesting thing because. Within years, a few years. He is a subject of jay hacker, hoovers fbi because of rape. Blantons and this is a character who basically is very bombastic. Hes somebody who you was sort of a the naysayers, you know, get up tell reporters im not taking any more negative questions. He literally said that to reporters the time and throughout time as governor was always under fire. He would take trips to jamaica on the new state airplane and he would bring his personal physician a mistress and a political donor. And he would say that was legitimate business trip. And so reporters were always, you know, kind of scouring, you know, misdeeds. And then ultimately he was implicated for essentially a corruption scheme where. Members of the administration were selling pardons for cash blanton. Wasnt ultimately lee fingered or nailed for that by the fbi . It was years later, after he was out of office when he was ultimately charged with selling what was it, a liquor. Liquor like store license . Yeah. Yeah. But he did serve time in and so that was of the foundation of this this, you know, the beginning of the book. Chapter two is about about the butcher family, essentially jake butcher and his brother, s. H. Butcher. Were running a bank system in knoxville area. And this is around the time when the worlds fair is there. In 1982. And essentially kind of a cautionary of two businessmen moving too fast. Weve seen, you know, recent banking scandals like the whats the one . What sam bateman, whats the one that they just had this year . Thank you, fdx weve seen, you know, sort of signs of this nowadays, but basically in the 1982 period there was less of some of these banking and these two brothers were fast and loose with some of the rules. They were taking money from, one bank and kind of putting it in another and acting like they had more financial standing. They actually did ultimately world bank or that world worlds fair ends. And within days they are charged in one of the largest scandals of, Business Financial wrongdoing in the country. At the time it was a fascinating tale for us and it fits in the book because jake butcher for governor twice he was the democratic nominee. He almost became governor. And so it kind of fit that scheme of these are political power players. Even if they arent in office, then wild influence, largely because jake butcher was heavy democratic donor. He had the ear of president jimmy carter and so it was just kind of an extra little bite to get this chapter in this book. And then the third chapter, the first three i wrote, the chapter was on operation rocky top. And this was a fascinating story, again, involving Lieutenant GovernorRandy Mcnally, who at the time was a lowly state lawmaker. He went from the house to the senate and he ultimately was tipped off about a corruption scheme that was basically it sounded like they there were bingo licenses in the state at the time. You cant gamble in the state of tennessee. Its illegal, but there was an exception. Charitable bingo. And so what ultimately happened was this was a major scandal where you saw bingo operators that were much like you know, kind of like the mob. They werent really in it for charity, were in it for money. And there were a lot of bad actors. Randy mcnally up working for the fbi and is undercover or while having a microphone and recording interactions with his fellow and lobbyists at the state legislature for two and a half, maybe three years, i think and ultimately there were dozens of people charged in this major corruption scheme called operation rocky top. There were two people that were implicated in it that ultimately decided not face charges at the time. Secretary state gentry crowl he ended up committing suicide. He was alluded to in this this scheme and there was one other state lawmaker who was it tangentially facing charges that he decided to take his own life as well. So it was a fascinating chapter that really kind of saw. You saw undercover operations. You saw an undercover agent who was working as a lobbyist in the state legislature for years that really led to a lot of reforms and thats kind of one of the other themes of this book is you saw any time there was corruption or misdeeds that there were generally an attempt to have some sort of course correct, even though sometimes it enough and what we found is once the course correction took place, there would be immediate efforts to dial back by lawmakers who, of course, dont like anyone looking over their shoulders and and second guessing their their activities and deeds. So basically, once a decade, wed have another big scandal. And after the big one that happened with the bingo about ten years later, theres another one called operation tennessee, named after another Tennessee State song, which sort of outraged lawmakers that the state songs would be taken in, such as the good news is, i think we have 11 state songs now. So theres three so more investigate more scandals to fill. So rocky top was an undercover sting, a bribery sting where an fbi basically paid off five. Now former lawmakers to pass a bill to recycle all electronic goods. And the sort of leading character in that thing was a guy named john ford, senator john ford from memphis, who had been an incredible mover and shaker at the capitol down here forever. And known for his sort of flamboyant lifestyle and his penchant for driving at triple digit speeds down i40 to memphis and back. And early on, he got he got pulled over and claimed he had legislative immunity that nobody could give him tickets because he was a lawmaker, which turned out not to be the case. And then he got into a sort of fight with a bunch of truckers who were on i40, who got on the radio together and tried to box him in to keep them from passing in in his mercedes and at which point he allegedly opened the sunroof and started waving a gun around, he claimed no, no, it wasnt a gun. This was a newfangled thing at the time called the cell phone, which of course, were pretty blocky. And heavy. And he went to trial and actually was acquitted. Interestingly, the at the time the leadership of the senators speaker john wilder, who down there for nearly 30 years as speaker, they all rallied around him and said, no, no, hes a great guy. He would never do anything bad. And their character witnesses and and basically rallied, you know, circle the wagons around him, which is something that we saw repeatedly throughout the course of the book, where someone get in trouble. Everyones saying, no, no, no. This is just you know, this is just media and political opponents. And whoever and. That was fine until finally it wasnt. Ultimately, when there is fbi video of ford taking payments of hundred dollar bills and hes has to resign and was convicted it sort of was the culmination and again another spurt of ethical sort of ambition that didnt really stick that much either. The next chapter we had was actually about representative Jeremy Durham, who we alluded to i think earlier, who a sort of up and comer, a really aggressive and and bright light in the Republican Party. And but apparently didnt care too much for the rules and also had a very you disturbing, you know, allegations of sexual predatory conduct at. The capitol with, you know, interns lobbyists any any any woman basically was up there the a lot of these stories were broken by my colleague here and and our our our friend dave bouchet, who was a reporter for the tennessean the time as well. And dave helped us write this chapter, which is really great to get the sort of, you know, first eye view that, you know, the real of the guys that they wrote these stories. I wrote some of them for the ap as well, but they broke a lot of the the big news in the end that the attorney general an investigation and put out a report and detailed 22 instances of Sexual Misconduct which led him to be thrown out of the legislature at the time. The first one or the second one since reconstruction. And of course, weve had more since that was really kind of reopened. The floodgates incidentally, one of the women quoted in this report was complained to the durham and and said, no, leave me alone, you know, youre married and im you know, im an intern or i forgot what she was and this isnt right. And his to her was. Well, you know, this the way things are around here. Welcome to capitol hill, which we made the title of of our book when Speaker Senate speaker ron ramsey heard about this, he was outraged. And, you know, and he said when, i hear someone say, welcome to capitol hill. It just me want to smack them in the mouth, which was, you know, a typical statement for ramsey was it was a great quote at the time the next chapter that we had was was about glenn caserta who was the speaker some of might recall was a fairly recent development as he was elected speaker in 2019 and had been in the legislature for, you know, close to two decades and had really been working steadfastly to leadership is what he really wanted to accomplish. Within six months he was drummed out and was gone and is now know out of the legislature and really a story about the quest power and then sort of not what to do with it and then having you know basically an aide named Kate Catherine with whom he exchanged really sort of horrific Text Messages which once joel ebert here got his hands on, reported on of just racist, you know, misogynistic claims and basically thought that his people would sort of ignore this and basically circle around him, like they had sort of he said, oh, this is locker room talk, sort of channeling donald trump. And he went on talk radio and said, dont worry, nothing else is going to come out. And of course, more came out and in end there was a confidence vote, a no vote, and he lost it overwhelmingly and was the first speaker. And, you know, 130 odd years did not serve his term as full term as speaker of the house. So a pretty momentous change up there in attitudes. And then the final of full chapter we did was about some Campaign Shenanigans that are going on up there in and are still ongoing. And the trials are still pending involving actually cassidy after he was drummed out of speaker. Another lawmaker named robin smith, who has pleaded guilty and the same kate, catherine who put together a sort of campaign vendor that they called Phenix Solutions anonymously and they were going to try to get money from state and from from lawmakers to do their mail and in their legislative correspondence, sort of under the under the cover of anonymity. And theyve been charged or charged with kickbacks and bribery and, other things related to that is a guy named brian kelsey is a former state senator who was also indicted and guilty finally to basically funneling his campaign money. Its illegal to use state Campaign Funds or federal. And so he took that money from a state account, gave it to these other Political Actio