The week in politics: Will Tennessee see a new third party on the 2024 presidential ballot?

Could Tennessee voters have a new third-party presidential ticket to vote for next year? The group No Labels hopes so.

No Labels, which has been around for more than a decade, is pushing a potential 2024 unity ticket due in large part to the prospects of a rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

"Our goal is to break the logjam in D.C." and "present a centrist opportunity," former Democratic Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, who is helping lead the effort, recently told The Tennessean.

The group is working to get on the ballot across the country and has either qualified or is active in 27 states, said Ryan Clancy, the group's chief strategist.

"We see a real path to victory here," he said.

In Tennessee, the group needs 50,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot and says it is roughly halfway toward the goal.

No Labels cites polling they conducted late last year that shows large numbers of Tennesseans would prefer that neither Biden or Trump run again. In its poll, only 25% of Tennesseans surveyed said Biden should run again; 46% wanted Trump to run in 2024.

"There’s never been a path this clear," Nixon said. "This is the widest opportunity for a third-party candidate in any sort of modern history."

State revenue shortfall will curb one-time spending next year

Shortfalls in state revenues this year will rein in one-time spending plans for next year, Gov. Bill Lee says.

In September, state tax revenues totaled $2.2 billion, which while higher than last year, is $7.4 million less than the budgeted estimate, according to the Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration.

"Clearly, we will not have as much surplus spending available for one-time spending in this next year's budget, as we've had as we had in last year's budget," Lee told reporters during a news conference on Thursday. "And you'll see that as we make budget requests."

In the first two months of this fiscal year, revenues have come in $46.9 million less than budgeted estimates, according to the state.

"We've had remarkable years of surplus for the last couple of years. We knew that couldn't continue forever," Lee said. "We had the fastest growing economy in America and that generates really big surpluses when you have such a low tax structure as we do. But it can't last forever and it's beginning to taper off, we just need to predict it appropriately."

Budget hearings for the 2024-25 fiscal year will be held next month.

Senators told to prep for tighter budget

Meanwhile, Sen. Bo Watson, R-Hixson, told his Republican colleagues on Thursday to start preparing for significant budget reductions.

Watson gave a revenue and finance briefing to the GOP caucus at their fall retreat, and told senators Tennessee needs to outperform its budgeted growth this year to make up for a revenue shortfall from the previous fiscal year. Revenue growth is slowing across the board, Watson said.

"It's going to be a tighter budget than we've probably seen since 2014," said Watson, , the chair of the Senate finance committee.

Republican senators urged to beef up new voter outreach

Gregory Gleaves, a Republican political strategist, encouraged state senators to strengthen new voter outreach efforts, particularly in suburban districts, as new residents continue to move to Tennessee.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Johnson, R-Franklin, offered a cautionary tale to his colleagues during the fall caucus retreat, pointing to his 2022 primary strategy that nearly cost him his office.

Gleaves classified voters by number, from 0 to 4 or 5, with the lowest numbers assigned to Tennesseans who had never voted. Typically, the "0" voters and "1" voters were unengaged, and Johnson said his primary campaign focused more on capturing the 2-4 voters.

But when election day came around, more than 50% of the voters who turned out were among the 0-1 classification.

"We did not focus on those people," Johnson said. "For all of you up (for reelection) next year, be reaching out to those voters."

Tennessee Democrats to bring back safe gun storage proposal

Two state representatives are planning to bring back a proposal to encourage Tennesseans to store firearms safely inside of locked vehicles.

Rep. Caleb Hemmer, D-Nashville, and Sen. Jeff Yarbro, D-Nasvhille, announced that they will propose legislation again in January to require anyone found to have left an unsecured firearm in their vehicle to take a court-approved gun safety class.

More than 1,000 guns have been stolen from vehicles in Nashville so far in 2023, according to the Metro Nashville Police Department.

“This is not just a Nashville problem. We know that Tennessee is the only state that has four cities in the top 15 list of cities where guns have been stolen from cars — and Memphis is number one on the list and Chattanooga is number two,” Hemmer said in a statement. “The number of guns that are now in the hands of criminals is still staggering and we know that stolen guns are the number one weapon of choice for felons to use in criminal activity."

Hemmer and Yarbro filed a similar bill earlier this year, but Republican leadership tabled all gun-related bills after a shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville left six people dead.

"Having an extra 1,000 illegal guns on the streets this year is a deliberate policy choice," Yarbro said. "The legislature passed laws that created this epidemic of gun thefts that endangers us all, and the legislature has a moral responsibility to fix it."

Lee talks trade with British ambassador

Lee met with British Ambassador to the United States Dame Karen Pierce during her visit to Nashville.

"It really was about how can we develop trade more robustly, you know, how can we look at opportunities to work together how to create a potential memorandum of understanding for trade partnerships," the governor told reporters during a news conference on Thursday.

Britain is the No. 3 nation for foreign direct investment in Tennessee, with 116 British businesses located here, employing more than 11,700 people, according to the Department of Economic and Community Development.

Rose, Harshbarger, Blackburn call to rename BLM Plaza after pro-Hamas posts

Three Republicans in Tennessee’s congressional delegation are among a group of Republican lawmakers calling for Washington, D.C. Mayor Murial Bowser to rename Black Lives Matter Plaza in D.C., “due to that movement’s celebration of violent antisemitic terrorism.”

BLM Plaza is a two-block pedestrian area near the White House emblazoned with the words “Black Lives Matter” painted in 35-foot-tall yellow letters on the pavement. The area was created in 2020 after the death of George Floyd.

U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, and U.S. Reps. John Rose, R-Cookeville, and Diana Harshbarger, R-Kingsport, joined 23 other Republicans in a letter sent to Bowser on Monday calling for the plaza to be renamed.

The letter cites social media posts and public statements made by BLM chapters in D.C. and Chicago following a bloody attack by Hamas on Oct. 7 in which Hamas militants brutally killed Israeli civilians and took more than 100 people — including Americans — hostage. Shortly after the attack, the Chicago BLM Chapter posted a now-deleted image on social media of a Hamas militant paragliding into Israel with the caption “I stand with Palestine.”

“BLM continues to openly celebrate the anti-semitic Hamas terrorist attacks against Israel,” the letter states. “This stance is irreconcilable with American Values. … We therefore urge you to immediately rename the Black Lives Matter Plaza, to remove the associated street painting in the plaza, and to end the city’s celebration of this terrorist sympathizer group.”

Blackburn proposes to defund universities that promote antisemitism

Blackburn also is proposing cutting federal funding for colleges and universities that fund or facilitate events that promote violent antisemitism, according to a release from her office.

Blackburn joined six other Republicans introducing a bill dubbed the “Stop Antisemitism on College Campuses Act.”

According to the Anti-Defamation League, threats and violent language targeting the Jewish community in the United States and Israel increased by 488% in the hours after the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.

Students for Justice in Palestine chapters at Georgetown University, Columbia University, New York University and the University of California Los Angeles have held rallies and called Hamas' attack a "historic win for the Palestinian resistance."

“Following Hamas’ slaughter of over 1,400 Israelis on October 7, we witnessed vile protests in celebration of the attacks by student groups on college campuses across the country,” Blackburn said. “The federal government should not be giving one dollar to colleges and universities that aid and abet antisemitic student groups who glorify acts of terrorism. The Stop Antisemitism on College Campuses Act will ensure that taxpayer dollars are not going toward virulently antisemitic students who want to see Israel destroyed.”

Catch up on the week

Tennessee sues federal government over family planning funding

Beacon poll: Democrat Marquita Bradshaw outperforms Rep. Gloria Johnson in Senate matchup

Speaker bids for US Reps. Mark Green, Chuck Fleischmann short-lived

US Rep. Mike Johnson elected House speaker: How the Tennessee delegation voted

Tennessee sues Meta, Facebook parent company, over marketing 'addictive' product to kids

UK ambassador discusses Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan in Nashville: 'This was a heinous attack'

Free speech fight: How the Israel-Hamas war is roiling colleges in Tennessee and beyond

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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: The week in politics: No Labels seeks spot on the 2024 TN ballot