The World According to Oatney

Ragsdale's game of dodge 'em

For a very long time now, local radio talk show host Terry Frank and myself have both been reporting about the allegations of Tyler Harber. Harber is a former political operative for Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale who was placed on the Knox County payroll so that he would be available to work as one of Ragsdale's political henchmen-his real job was to find whatever dirt he could on Ragsdale's "enemies" so that Ragsdale could use that information against those who were opposed to him-most of these are fellow Republicans.

Harber first stated his case in a series of reports in the Halls Shopper to controversial reporter Betty Bean. Ragsdale's reaction to the reports was to simply call Tyler Harber "a troubled young man" and to dismiss the reports as rubbish. The Knoxville News-Sentinel completely ignored the Harber story, and it became the province of the local blogosphere alone. I strongly suspected that may be the case when I became aware of the story's existence several days before it broke in Halls-and my source was not Ms. Bean. The only person connected with the mainstream press who dared to write anything about the Harber Affair was WATE-TV news anchor Gene Patterson, who wrote of it on his blog. Even then, the story didn't appear on television for quite some time after the blogs and the Shopper put it in print.

When the story festered for several days and then weeks in the blogosphere and the mainstream press began to examine Harber's allegation that he had hacked into internal Republican private e-mails to spy on potential Ragsdale foes, the Knox County Mayor's Office said that Harber did this on his own and that Ragsdale and his minions had nothing to do with it. When Harber persisted in saying that Ragsdale and his deputy Mike Arms put Harber up to hacking e-mails and ultimately obtaining the medical records of Tennessee Conservative Union President Lloyd Dougherty and Vice President Kelvin Moxley, Ragsdale and his supporters proceeded to say that Harber never tells the truth.

The issue is not whether Harber is ethically challenged-there is little doubt that he has a history of being less-than-trustworthy. The issue at-hand is that if any of Harber's allegations are true, it would raise the question of whether Mike Ragsdale should stay in office at all, not merely whether he is qualified for higher office. Many of Ragsdale's supporters are well-meaning, but they are ignoring the fact that Ragsdale's administration has shown itself to lack moral rectitude and good judgement. If Mayor Ragsdale is as innocent as he claims, he should welcome every opportunity to investigate these allegations. A clean Ragsdale would come off smelling like a rose. Instead, Ragsdale and his supporters have spent considerable time trying to dodge questions over Harber and concern themselves with Tyler Harber's ethics rather than their own. This is a pattern for Ragsdale: When he comes under scrutiny, he doesn't deal with the charges against him, he plays a game of dodge and deflect.

Labels: Local politics

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 2:26 AM 2 comments

Mike Ragsdale: Crook, fraud, and political sham?

Part one of the Tyler Harber story officially broke in yesterday's Halls Shopper News. Here are a few juicy tidbits from the story and my comments based on what I know about all of this:

The day after the Aug. 3 county general election, an e-mail titled "Ragsdale missing me now" appeared in various local in-boxes and on Web sites. It listed the defeats suffered by candidates supported by county Mayor Mike Ragsdale and contrasted this string of losses with wins rung up when 24-year-old political operative Tyler Harber worked for Ragsdale. Soon, message boards and courthouse hallways were buzzing with conversation about Harber, who disappeared from the scene 17 months ago under a cloud of scandal that included a police chase, a missing computer and allegations of computer hacking - none of which produced any charges against him.

This is quite true-Harber has never been charged, but the allegations he is making could bring charges against him, and potentially others.

One of Harber's de facto duties was to keep his hands on the political campaigns of Ragsdale yes-men and make sure that those opposed to Ragsdale were taken down.

"He took me to his office and told me, 'The first day I was elected to Commission, I started working on being elected county executive. Now, the first day I am county executive, I'm going to work on being governor. I want you to help me be governor.' "

Read that again. At the time, Harber was 19 years old and was cutting his teeth on politics. I was 19, in college, and cutting my teeth on politics once-not all that long ago. I was a young idealist and I wanted to change the world. If someone with power, like a Ragsdale-type, had come to me and said "I want you to help me be governor," I would have eaten that up. My guess is that Tyler Harber did just that. This confirms what several of us have known for some time. Mike Ragsdale had plans for Nashville, and Knox County was a trainstop along the way for him. Perhaps those train tickets have just been cancelled.

Harber went on the county payroll as an employee of Information Technology Services, headed by Dick Moran. "But, most of my time, I spent with Mike," he said. "I would pick the man up from his house. I would be with him all day long, and I would drop him off at the end of the day. I was his body man. We would talk politics, policy and everything else in between. It sort of ‘married’ me to him."

You really can't blame Harber here. He was living the life that most of us who have ever been political activists or involved in the arena dream of-especially at that young age. He was close to a power circle and was part of the action. In his mind, I am sure he believed he was making a difference for the better.

"After I moved over to probation, the cover story was that I'm there to make sure the electronic monitoring (ankle bracelets) were working. That was my cover story. I had zero caseload and never saw a single probationer. I had no obligation or task relative to IT or Pretrial Release and Probation, although I did help Todd and Dick with some things, when they asked. "I even learned how to put on and operate an electronic tracking device in case a journalist ever asked me to do so (they never did). When there'd be a TV story about electronic tracking, I made sure I was there. … Eventually, I was moved to an office on the 6th floor of the Andrew Johnson with Community TV, where there were not so many eyes."

So the whole thing was really a cover-Tyler had a job, but it wasn't doing what the official documents said he was doing. What was Tyler's job?

Perhaps emboldened by the docile reaction to the $6 fee hike, Ragsdale proposed an additional $30 wheel tax. Once again, the commissioners gave him what he wanted, but this time with a little opposition - it passed 16-3. Rumors swirled that Ragsdale swore to take revenge on Mark Cawood, Paul Pinkston and Mike McMillan, the three commissioners who voted against the tax.

A big part of Tyler's job was to dig up dirt on Commissioners who were representing the people of their districts as opposed to the interests and political aspirations of Mike Ragsdale, and put plants in the mostly conservative Republican anti-Ragsdale anti-tax groups.

"When we started pushing our allies to vote for the property tax, we put them in jeopardy, and that is something you never want to do. Everything was going good up until then, but we got a whole lot more paranoid and a whole lot more power hungry, and got involved in a whole lot of things we shouldn't have gotten involved in," Harber said. "We raised a lot of money under the table and behind closed doors for our anti-wheel tax referendum campaigns. "No one is pro-tax. That's where this anti-Ragsdale sentiment came from. It's the way we forced the issue that caused the opposition. "I prepared an opposition report and the idea was floated that we put some 'plants' into the referendum organization to get information as to how many signatures they were getting. Our information was dead-on." This assessment was validated by none other than Ragsdale's chief of staff, Mike Arms. In a March 20, 2005, News Sentinel story by Scott Barker, Arms said, "Lo and behold, when it was all said and done, (Tyler) was pretty close. He knew how many had signed it at the Halls Wal-Mart.”Harber says his 'plants' (whom he would not identify) were able to make at least 2,000 signatures go away. "We decided to subvert, steal and destroy as many petitions as we could get our hands on. We were trading real petitions for fake petitions so they would think they had more names than they actually had."

Ladies and gentlemen, stealing election petitons and/or tampering with them is a crime akin to vote-tampering, it is a felony that can garner prison time. In admitting to this, Mr. Harber is opening himself up for said prison time. He didn't have to do this in the least, but I suspect he is interested in justice, and that he will likely talk to authorities who may now want to know what Mike Ragsdale knew about these activities. In the weeks ahead as this story continues to be published in parts in the HSN, Harber will tell more about hacking computers to dig dirt on opponents of Ragsdale, his wheel-tax, and his political aspirations.

One interesting note from the story:

One of Cawood's constituents, Greg "Lumpy" Lambert, showed up the day of the final wheel tax vote wearing a giant screw through his body. Come Sept. 1, the Powell used car dealer will be known as commissioner Lumpy Lambert and will join Cawood in representing District 6. Considering that Cawood fended off a general election challenge from county employee Chuck James, a Ragsdale-backed candidate who had supported the wheel tax, and Lambert beat Ragsdale-blessed opponents in both the primary and the general elections, these two seatmates probably won't be harboring any warm fuzzy feelings toward Mayor Mike.

Long Live Lumpy. I sincerely hope that Lambert does exactly as I expect he will do and fights Ragsdale every step of the way to bring justice to the people who were sold a bill of goods on the wheel tax. Democrats should pay close attention to this. Those of you who are Democrats (especially in East Tennessee) know that I am a Republican and my politics are different than yours, usually quite radically. Note, however, that the Democratic Party is so weak in Knox County that Ragsdale and his minions have been known to clandestinely back Democrats in order to prevent anti-Ragsdale people from being elected. There are some who believe that the whole Randy Tyree for Sheriff campaign was a set-up to try and bring down Sheriff Tim Hutchison, who is an opponent of Ragsdale-and of course, Democrats wouldn't know the wiser, they would simply be happy to have a candidate.

I'm not saying that I believe that (or that I don't), but I have heard the idea floated in more than one place.

It is also worth noting that some of the anti-Ragsdale candidates would be less likely to support the sham industrial park deal for East Knox County that a whole lot of people in that heavily Republican part of the world oppose. Hence, do not be surprised to see the business rammed through before Lumpy and the Gang are sworn in September 1st.

One of the things Harber alleges is that the pro-Ragsdale candidates did badly in the Primaries and elections because in losing Harber, Ragsdale lost his dirt-digging abilities. Lumpy Lambert was one of those anti-Ragsdale candidates who won. Another candidate that the Ragsdale machine tried to defeat was State Represenative Stacey Campfield, and they did so by putting up Gary Drinnen, who is a long-time GOP hack who had Ragsdale's blessing and who is apparently quite familiar with Tyler Harber. Now that Drinnen got his arse kicked, don't be surprised if the Ragsdale people now try to back Schree Pettigrew in a secret or underhanded sort of way in order to try and oust Campfield.

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 7:34 AM 6 comments

Harbergate: The Chairmen's Affair

The latest, last, and juiciest part of the Tyler Harber story is up on the Halls Shopper News, it is so big that I had traffic over it before I made this post and before I even saw the story myself. In the name of fairness to all involved, I am going to try and give more than one view, but I will admit to the reader that I have as much faith in Mike Ragsdale as I do in the Prophet Muhammed (read: I have none whatsoever).

The press account of the Harber badge-flashing incident (both sides agree that he was drinking on the Cumberland Avenue strip):

Harber was accused of flashing a badge and handing her a business card on the back of which was scrawled a threat to sic the health department on her employer. The card identified him as a “special assistant” to the county mayor. Copper Cellar employees handed the card over to internal affairs investigators from the Knox County Sheriff’s Office. Harber got some bad press, a three-day suspension and a reputation as a bully out of the deal.

His version of these events is different:

“In the first place, the probation badge was a wallet itself, and I carried it as a wallet. She saw my badge when I got it out to pay the bill. I gave her one of my county business cards and asked her to have her manager call me. I was pretty hot about the whole situation. Did I write on the card? No. I never saw the card after that, and I was, like, ‘Bring it. I’ll take a handwriting sample.’ I did not leave my card so I could shut the place down.

“We left immediately after paying and I never threatened to close them down. We weren’t drunk, we were just loud. We weren’t the only ones in the place enjoying happy hour.”

I'll be straight here-this is the one part of the story I have trouble with, largely because I was a politically active 20-something not all that long ago. I've been there and done that. I remember when I went to school in Ohio and was heavily involved in College Republicans and Young Republicans. I might as well admit that I had my fill of imbibement a few times during those years, and was intoxicated in public on a couple of occasions (I am telling loyal readers this because those who are opposed to me will find out soon enough, and I am all about honesty, because no one can use something against you if you admit to it beforehand). It was embarrassing enough that only close friends who were there and can make a good joke of it know all that happened, but too much alcohol can make you behave either like a crackpot or a jackass. Thankfully, I never made the kind of scene Harber is accused of making, and never got into any trouble at all, but I did make a fool of myself. If I were overly concerned with self-image, I might not fess-up to acting a fool when I had too many either, Tyler. What I do buy into is what allegedly happened the next day-this I think Harber is being truthful about.


When word of the Copper Cellar incident reached the sixth floor of the City County Building, Harber got called into the mayor’s office to do some explaining.

“Mike Arms sat me down. Ragsdale was out of town. Arms said ‘Let’s just eat crow and make it go away,’ and I did. I turned in my probation badge and my card and took three days off – but I wasn’t guilty. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

So a County employee shows his Probation badge while allegedly making an ass of himself in public and the reaction is "let's make this go away." Harber may be telling a half-truth in this instance, but some forget that "half-truth" means that there is some truth there that needs gotten to.

The next part of the story is the part that prompted so much traffic to my e-mail inbox yesterday. It is the election (or as Harber says, the selection) of Brian Hornback as Knox County Republican Chairman.


The next race that commanded Harber’s attention was much smaller in scope – Brian Hornback, a recently defeated school board member, became the Ragsdale-approved candidate to chair the Knox County GOP. Team Ragsdale had been having trouble with the incumbent chair, Chad Tindell, because Tindell was refusing to hand over the extensive mailing lists that party volunteers had compiled during the presidential campaign.

“We had supported Chad Tindell,” Harber said. “We sent out his letters to the executive committee, we got his stickers and his stationery. The deal was, we support him for chairman, he helps us out when he can, and we support his judgeship.

“On occasion, he, Ragsdale, Arms and I would discuss a judicial race. We never had problems with him until we got close to opening the Bush /Cheney office. We wanted to put some people in, and he was blocking it. We were co-chairing the campaign with Haslam, so any kind of list generated goes to the (chairs), who are usually two elected officials.

“That’s the spoils of war, and he flat-out refused to give it to us. Ragsdale was mad. Chad’s first excuse was that Ragsdale wasn’t entitled to it; the second excuse was that I would just try to sell it. Ragsdale charged me with getting that list. He told me ‘This is going to be essential to us to run our re-election.’

So former Chairman Tindell refused to hand over the list to Ragsdale/Haslam because he feared Harber would try and sell the list and he probably knew that Mike Ragsdale had motives with the list that went well beyond the Committee to Re-Elect the President (historical pun very much intended). Ragsdale wanted to use the list for his own ends, and Harber says that Ragsdale's reaction involved installing one of his supporters as County Chairman.


“There was only one way to get those lists away from Chad – we didn’t oust him, but we sort of went in sideways. We ran Hornback, but I tried to stay as far in the background as possible.

“We really set it up so he got elected unanimously. We heard through the grapevine that Chad was going to try to keep his office people in, and we felt that, as with any new administration, new people come in. We helped Brian get together a list of people who would be loyal to Brian and Ragsdale. As soon as he gets elected, he announces the staff changes and thanks me and Adam Groves (Harber’s partner in the consulting firm).

Machines work in this way and it is not uncommon for high-profile officialdom to install their own people in partisan positions in order to insure their hold on power. This is how Richard J. Daley stayed in power for so long in Chicago in spite of the fact that most of his opposition came from inside the Democratic Party. This same method is not immune from use by Republicans either, as the use of political dependency is how Charles P. Taft gained power in Cincinnati and how the Taft Family kept power in the Queen City and controlled (and still controls) the State Party in Ohio for many years. This political dependency has a price for morally superior candidates who are Republicans-they lose because of the machine. In Ohio, the baggage of the Taft Machine will cost Ken Blackwell his long-awaited election as Governor, even though he has fought the Tafts for most of his career. Somewhat similarly, the Ragsdale Machine of Knox County, Tennessee was too powerful for the "Little Engine" Steve Hall to overcome, and the squeaky-clean Hall couldn't be given a chance, because Mr. Wheel Tax just had to be Governor, and all of "his people" have to be in place so his Machine can run effectively. I've lived in cities that have had Machines, so I know the way that they work all too well and I know what Machine politics look like.

I'd like to believe that Brian Hornback, who I consider a friend, is not dependent for office on Mike Ragsdale. However, I should point out that it was my observation during the recent Knox County Mayoral Primary that Brian's support for Mike Ragsdale was not very well-hidden. Of course as a Republican Primary voter, Brian is entitled to support who he likes, but call me wierd-if I'm county Chairman, I am staying far away from contested primaries and issues where fellow Republicans are at odds, as taking sides in intra-party debates makes it appear as though a person is a tool of one side or the other, whether that is actually the case or not.

To be fair to the good Chairman, he had a response to some of the allegations regarding his candidacy for Chairman and the list. He told The World exclusively:

I find it interesting in Part III that Bean reports alot about me, but she NEVER contacted me (email, phone message at home or the KnoxGOP office) about the story or comments about what was said.

Bean should definately have tried to contact all the players in this story, and especially Hornback since Harber made some specific claims about Hornback in the HSN.


In my campaign for Chairman. I paid (personal funds) for my stickers that were used at the Lincoln Day Dinner. I called every precinct chairman and key player and personally asked for their support. I campaigned the old fashioned way. I had the support of EVERY elected official in Knox County, including the Sheriff and the Mayor.

That Hornback had Ragsdale's support seems to be quite obvious. Tyler Harber's story seems to be that Brian was Ragsdale's man for Chairman. I cannot comment as to whether he had Sheriff Hutchison's support, but I believe him when he says that he did.

Chad Tindell did not assist my campaign in any way. He did attempt to recruit any living being to run against me.

So what was Tindell's beef? Was it simply "I don't like Brian Hornback," was it "Hornback is a threat to Tindell," or was it the healthy fear and dislike of the Ragsdale Machine that many good Republicans and conservatives have developed? Well, I don't know. I haven't spoken to Mr. Tindell about this, nor has he made any attempt to contact The World regarding the Harber story. About the List, Hornback says:

With regards to the list. The Executive Committee and I within one week gave the list to EVERY Republican official. During the Mayoral race I gave it to Steve Hall twice.

Hornback goes on to say "Bean has a bias against me and it shows."

That may be. To tell you the truth, I do not know if Betty Bean is an anti-Ragsdale Republican (like me, Steve Hall, Stacey Campfield, Sheriff Tim Hutchison, and many others), a liberal Democrat, or an independent. My own bias against Mike Ragsdale is obvious here, and now that I don't live in Knox County anymore, I feel far more free to bring out the heavy cannons to fight Ragsdaleism to make sure that the poison to conservatism that is Wheel Tax Mikey spreads no further than Main Street in Knoxville. In that vein, Brian has to understand that while he may want to ride the Ragsdale gravy train wherever it ends, Mike Ragsdale is not exactly Mr. Popular with those of us who believe in low taxes, small government, and property rights. A lot of good people do not trust the man. It is quite easy to understand, then, why some of the same folks who do not trust Ragsdale would also fail to trust those who associate with him by extension. If Betty has it out for Mike Ragsdale, it should not extend to failing to call Brian Hornback to follow up on this story.


UPDATE: (2:17 pm 9/4)-Brian Hornback has more to say, this time about the political e-mails that were hacked into by Tyler Harber. In an e-mail to me, he writes:

"The emails did not come off of the party's hard drives. As I understand the story (from the press coverage) Tindell's personal computer was where the emails were originally."

Indeed he is right here, and if I conveyed the wrong impression, I apologize. Mr. Harber alleges that "Team Ragsdale " retrieved e-mails through the use of Tyler Harber that were originally on Chad Tindell's computer-thus making the crime all the more heinous.

About GOP computers, Hornback says-

"A party computer was not used for any activity, except to store data.

Both party computers were donated. Only one of the units is still "operational". However, the data is in the hands of the party."

---------


Chad Tindell tells his side of the story about the purpose of "the lists" and why access to them was regulated to Betty Bean:


“It was back during the Bush/Cheney campaign. I had the idea that we should collect the names, addresses and phone numbers of anybody who came in the campaign headquarters – get them on the mailing list. With the help of Gary Drinnen, we developed these lists. We ended up with a few thousand people who’d come into the office. We had college students in the back who were putting these names into the computer in a data base. They were always intended to be property of the Knox County Republican Party.

“I’d heard rumors that Tyler wanted the lists. I don’t remember if he said he wanted it or the mayor wanted it, but I gave him a response he wasn’t happy with. I explained I did not want to turn loose of a valuable party asset.”

Tindell said any Republican candidate who wanted to use the list could do so, by sending his or her mail piece to the party office, or by having a mail house request the list. He considered this a safeguard.

“Let’s say, for example, that someone who had a political consulting company wanted to use it for their own benefit. I think Tyler was a bit aggravated, and I copied Ragsdale on all the e-mails I sent to Tyler. I wanted the mayor to know what he was saying, and I wanted him to know that I was willing to help him however I could. My goal was to help Republicans, and I thought we could best help Republicans if we maintained that list. I wasn’t doing anything that should have upset the mayor.”

If there is any truth to what Tindell says here, then he was engaging in what is common procedure for most county political parties around the country. Any compiled list of volunteers or potential volunteers has to be carefully guarded. It can't be handed out willy-nilly, not even to people with the Mayor's office. That said, as we just read, there are two versions of this story, there is Tindell's version, and there is Brian Hornback's version. Chairman Hornback is clear that Tindell tried to find someone to run against Hornback. According to Tindell:


Tindell says he decided not to seek a second term and did everything he could to help Hornback, who, once elected, “stands up and thanks the people who helped him. I’m almost positive one of them was Tyler Harber. He then announces that some new people would be in charge of the office. The women who had volunteered and worked literally full time, all day long for months and months were told ‘You’re not needed anymore.’ They were crying and upset and asking what had they done to get run out of the place. These nice, church-going, hard-working women were asking me what they’d done wrong.”

You don't do that to the Church Ladies. I think every County GOP in America has a couple of Church Ladies in the office-you know, the sweet woman who answers the phone and takes your question or inquiry or what have you. The Church Lady is a uniquely Republican feature that can't be found in other political parties, and I just couldn't dream of doing anything to hurt the Church Ladies.

But what happened to the computers?


Tindell recalls Harber coming up to him after the convention and complimenting him.

“He said ‘Chad, I’ll just tell you. You are the best chairman the party ever had.’ Then he goes off and I get in my truck and go to lunch. A little while later, I get a phone call from one of the ladies who’s been kicked out. They’d gone back to collect their personal belongings and when they got there, there were these people taking all the computers. Friends of Tyler. The ladies freaked out. By the time I got there, just the ladies were there, and I later discovered the ladies had called the press.”

Tindell said he learned later that all the password-protected computer hard drives had been copied, and he wasn’t sure why.

“I was contacted by the media, made contacts with members of the media and was critical of what had gone down.”

What happened was that Tyler Harber hacked e-mails off Chad Tindell's computer and took these to Mike Arms. An anonymous source seconded the Harber story to The World that just as Harber describes, Ragsdale lackey Mike Arms admitted that he saw the private e-mails that Harber claims to have presented to him, and by extension, to Mike Ragsdale.


On Monday, Harber said he delivered the e-mails to Arms, who reviewed them and called Ragsdale. “He calls Ragsdale and says, ‘You need to see these when you get in this afternoon.'"


“He gets out a highlighter and starts highlighting passages that really (anger him). He has me make copies and he sits there steaming. One thing that really makes him mad is a conversation between Chad and two other people who were saying things like ‘Chad, why don’t you run for county mayor’ … That sent him over the top. He was already mad about Chad withholding the list.

“Chad was a well developed enemy, so he picked up the phone and calls Chad and says ‘Chad, we’ve got your e-mails. I’ve seen everything you’ve written. We’re not helping you. You’ve made yourself an enemy.’ He had similar conversations with two other people and then he pats me on the back, tells me I did a good job, and that was it.

“If Ragsdale hadn’t flown off the handle and made those calls, there would have been no police investigation, and we would have kept on with business as usual.”

Good job? Let's see, hacking into Chad Tindell's hard drive and getting anti-Ragsdale e-mails and tipping off the Mayor to who he needs to target within the Party is a good job...it is also criminal activity. If all Ragsdale did was use these e-mails to discover the activities of his Party opponents, he was an accessory to a crime, as was Mike Arms. If all they did was look at the e-mails, they possessed stolen property.


Tindell had a busy Monday, too. First, he checked around to see if anyone he’d e-mailed had forwarded his e-mails to anyone. The answer was no.

“Soon, I was firmly of the opinion that he (Harber) had them.”

That afternoon, Republican party officials called a meeting to sort things out. They asked Tindell to attend. During the meeting, he got an urgent call from GOP activist Tammy White Miller.

“She said ‘I just got a call from Mike Ragsdale. He said your e-mails got delivered to him.’ I knew then what had happened,” Tindell said. Miller and another friend, lobbyist Susie Alcorn, had been e-mailing him to congratulate him on the job he’d done as party chair.

“They made a joking comment to me – ‘How does County Mayor Chad Tindell sound?’ I told them I thought Mike Ragsdale had that job for the next four years. I don’t think the mayor read that part. The whole thing was a joke. They were political friends of mine.”

When Tindell returned to his office, a message from Ragsdale was awaiting him. He called the mayor and tried to explain:

“I was saying, ‘Hey look, Mike, this isn’t true. I support you. This was just chitchat among friends.’ Once I got the call from the mayor, I knew my computer had been violated. I went home, unplugged my computer and took it to a computer expert … he looked it over and found some remnants of what he termed a Trojan Horse, which can be planted in your computer. At that point, I’m very worried. I’ve got my personal tax information, lawsuit information from work. It was suggested to me that it was a federal crime, so I called the FBI. I could have called a whole lot of different people and made a stink if I was motivated by politics. …”

This is the mark of a man with a dictatorial personality. Mike Ragsdale was so afraid of opposition that he turned on Tindell over e-mails from a couple of activists that could easily be explained. It is classic meglomaniacal paranoia, and it is a trait exhibited by the Mayor of Knox County who wants to be our Governor...sounds wonderful, doesn't it?

Harber on leaving town:


“At this point, when I’m talking to Arms about it, we are under the impression that this group of deputies was acting outside the law. They are out to get Ragsdale and they’re going to do anything it takes to do it.”

Sounds to me like they were/are out to uncover criminal activity. Thanks to Harber's desire to get back at Ragsdale, who he believes "betrayed" him, it is being uncovered for them.


“He (Arms) asked me about my computer at work, and I didn’t think there was anything on it, but I told him I’d take care of that. I immediately went to the AJ building to put my computer in a location that was not easily accessible to this group of people that we thought was operating outside the law. I didn’t take it outside the building. Arms had told me to secure my stuff, to make sure they had no way of getting to us.”

After that, Harber went to Groves’ house off Western Avenue, staying in contact with Arms via cell phone.

“This was a problem of mammoth proportions,” Harber said. “He said he had just talked to (Police Chief) Sterling Owen. He was going to try and get some city involvement.”

Harber left Groves’ place, and “as soon as I pull out of Adam’s driveway, here was this guy right on my tail. I immediately call Arms and tell him I’m being tailed. He tells me just to go back to Adam’s house, and we’ll get some city cops out there. By this time I’d gotten onto 640 headed toward Western Avenue, but the guy was so close to me I was afraid if I slowed down he would hit me. At this time, I passed up Western Avenue, so I sped up to get away from him. He seemed to be trying to nudge me. Soon as I sped up, he turned on his blue lights and a blue Explorer turned on its blue lights, and I tried to call Arms. One of the guys comes up, in plain clothes, he shows me a badge. The guy behind me came up and started cussing and screaming at me. I opened the door and they dragged me out of the car.”

Harber was cuffed and put in the back of a cruiser. He says he was never read his rights even though he spent 30 minutes in the cruiser while they went through his car. Finally, Butch Bryant, an attorney who works for the Sheriff’s Office, got in next to him. Someone pushed a button on the in-car recorder, but Harber refused to talk.

“The cuffs were so tight I couldn’t feel my right hand.”

Suddenly, everything changed. The cuffs came off and he was handed a speeding ticket. They were like, ‘Here’s your ticket. Drive safe.’ ” Later he heard that Sheriff Tim Hutchison ordered his release. He spent the night with a friend, not willing to return home.

The next day, he went into the office and met with Arms and Ragsdale. He agreed to resign, and Ragsdale agreed to pay him $14,000 from his campaign fund and give him a job working on his ’06 re-election campaign, effective immediately.

“After I gave my resignation, I went to Atlanta to clear my head. I was a little spooked, too. I was still under the assumption that these guys were operating outside the law. I get back the next week, call Arms. I still had my laptop and phone. I turned all my stuff in, met with Todd Cook, Dick Moran and John Gustin to do it. We stood around and joked. Here’s where things went south on me – after they turned the computer over to the Sheriff’s Office."

So the deal is that they turn over Harber's information to make him the fall guy while Ragsdale/Arms come off squeaky clean. I suppose Ragsdale thought Harber would be too frightened to rat.


“I asked when I could get to work on the campaign.

“Arms just flat out told me it wasn’t going to happen. Conditions weren’t right for Ragsdale to give me my severance pay. It was just too hot. When Arms told me I should just leave town, I knew I had been sold out. I can’t recall anything that has hurt me more than to have been sold out by two men to whom I had been extremely loyal, did every single thing they asked of me.

“Mike Ragsdale betrayed me. Flat-out betrayed me. I was completely and utterly devastated. Everyone knew that I was Ragsdale’s boy. I was with him all the time. Everyone knew I was the bullet taker. They’ve tried to spin that I was a rogue, operating independently – but that just doesn’t wash. How does an unknown kid get all these political clients who just so happen to be Ragsdale’s friends? I made a damn good living, and it sure wasn’t on what I was making from the county. They were paying me to do political work and my job was to do whatever they told me to do.”

Mike Ragsdale should remember the old saying my mother used to tell me growing up-"your sins will find you out." Ragsdale thought he could get everyone else to take the heat for the misdeeds of his administration, but the buck stops with him. At the very least, Mike Ragsdale's political career is finished and he will fade into political oblivion in 2010. At most it will be found that he was complicit in these crimes in an investigation. I personally believe that he likely was, but even Mike Ragsdale deserves a fair hearing in the justice system. The fact that he does not embrace an investigation to clear his name says a lot about the situation.

Could Mike Ragsdale read the e-mails?


“I wasn’t the only one who could get these e-mails – there were a number of people, including Ragsdale and especially Arms, who had enough knowledge about the e-mail situation to have retrieved them themselves. They were just asking me to do some leg work.

“If Ragsdale was going to fire me over the e-mails, why didn’t he fire me Monday? He only got antsy when it started coming to light, and that probably wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t flown off the handle and made those phone calls.”

Harber was the fall guy. This is why Ragsdale can say Harber is "a troubled young man." I am sure he is-I would be too if the man who "made" me used me and then threw me away. Tyler Harber was and is a criminal, of that I have no doubt. Criminal behavior, however, is often learned by surrounding yourself with people who commit crimes or see no harm in doing so.

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 5:10 AM 5 comments

Mike Ragsdale makes me laugh

I think Gene Patterson got it right about the Harber investigation a few days back when he stated the obvious:

Van DeVate points out that the resolution calls for a probe of the activities of Tyler Harber, not County Mayor Mike Ragsdale. Of course, anyone following this story knows that Harber is tied to Ragsdale and any investigation of Harber would include ( I would assume) a review of Ragsdale’s role (if any) in Harber’s activities.

Just who do the Mayor's office in Knox County think they are kidding here? You can't investigate Tyler Harber without investigating Mike Ragsdale, since Harber is tied to Ragsdale whether the Ragsdale people want to admit that or not. Mike Ragsdale and his allies know that he is in hot water and they are merely trying to deflect attention from the reality of the situation.

If Ragsdale hasn't done anything wrong (as he, Arms, and Van de Vate all claim) then what does he have to gain by playing this game with the press-of which we can safely say at this point that bloggers are a part-that he is not under investigation?

That line would be a real clincher on the old game show Make Me Laugh.

Since Mike Ragsdale won't state the obvious, I will do it for him. If Tyler Harber were the only person being investigated, this would be a non-story. It is a story because Mike Ragsdale, the Mayor of Knox County, is alleged to have used Mr. Harber to do his bidding and find out information about his political foes, many of which were and are fellow Republicans. Much of that information is alleged to have been obtained in illegal fashion via e-mail and computer hacking, and in one case the violation of a person's medical confidentiality. At the very least Mike Ragsdale is accused of turning a blind eye to this disgraceful activity, and at most he stands accused of complicity in it.

Yes, Mr. Mayor, you are under investigation.

(Hat tip: Terry Frank)

Labels: Local politics

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 6:44 AM 0 comments

Knox County Government could sink in the Harber

Terry Frank blogged on Friday about an upcoming series in the Halls Shopper News to debut today about Tyler Harber, who is a former Knox County "politico" (in Knox County that means GOP hack) and was a political gofer and bagman (officially emplyed by the office of Probation and Pre-trial Release) for Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale. My hunch is that Terry is not writing everything she knows about Harber or the "work" he did-in fact I'd bet a million dollars she knows a heck of a lot more than she is ready to tell us right now.

However, I do know some of what Harber will likely reveal in his tell-all to Ms. Bean. I have been made privy to this information from sources that I deem highly reliable. None of my sources are a liberal or a Democrat, and none of them were involved in the things that Harber will reveal-but know people who were. I have not been told not to reveal most of what I've been privy to, but I do want to be cautious because I believe much of what Harber will reveal will soon be the subject of a major investigation if it is not already.

Among the things Harber may reveal today is that he was a Ragsdale "bagman," and acted as a "mole," spying on the internet activity of opponents of Mike Ragsdale. Harber had an accomplice in this, as he didn't know much about computers. His accomplice did, however, and that person is currently a promenent member of Tennessee's blogging community. I will say that I read this individual's work quite regularly, and they've always struck me as the genuine sort, so it wouldn't surprise me if this individual cooperated with any ensuing investigation that may come out of all this.

One of the people that may have been the target of Ragsdale's ire is Tennessee Conservative Union Chairman Lloyd Daugherty. Now I don't have the personal relationship with Daugherty that many other East Tennessee conservatives are fortunate to have, but I have done a couple of shows (editions of the old Tennessee Confidential) on Daugherty's Southern Roots Radio, and we have talked on the phone a couple of times when I've called into his morning radio show. We don't always see eye to eye, but Lloyd strikes me as a very genuine person, a straight shooter, and an individual who has a heart-and-soul commitment to conservative ideals. Daugherty, who has been known to be critical of Ragsdale (along with many other true conservatives) may have been the target of a clandestine "investigation" that Tyler Harber was responsible for carrying out. From WATE reporter Gene Patterson on his blog:

Expect a quote or two from the head of the Tennessee Convervative Union, Lloyd Daugherty. Harber alleges Daugherty was the target of a clandestine investigation.

Daugherty joins us for the Final Word segment Sunday on Tennessee This Week. He says you can hear more about the Halls News series from Betty Bean Monday morning on his radio show, “The Voice.” Frank Cagle will also join the discussion.

This is all very serious business that we have to believe that Mike Ragsdale and his cronies are hoping simply blows over. The facts seem to be that Ragsdale received information that was obtained in this illegal fashion and at the very least attempted to use it to entrap his political opponents. Whether he knew that his bagman Mr. Harber was obtaining information through computer hacking is still an open question, but I believe Mr. Harber will likely tell us that Mike Ragsdale did know.

One person who will likely want to find out if Mike Ragsdale knew that people in his administration were involved in computer hacking to find damaging information on people Ragsdale perceived as a threat is Sheriff Tim Hutchison. Contrary to the beliefs of some local liberals and Democrats, there is utterly no love lost between Hutchison and Ragsdale. I'd bet the ranch that Hutchison is chomping at the bit to turn Ms. Bean's story into a wholesale investigation, and you can bet he'll be looking straight at his nemisis (that certain local politicos don't want you to believe is his nemisis) Mike Ragsdale. If something is rotten in Knoxmark and Ragsdale is in any way involved, Hutchison will be looking to find out about it, and he'll be looking very hard.

One of two things is going to happen here. Either the Ragsdale machine will do everything they can to discredit Harber and try to throw Ragsdale's critics and any potential investigation off-track (something they already seem to be trying to do), or Hutchison will press on and we will get to the bottom of this.

What did the Mayor know, and when did he know it?

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 6:33 AM 5 comments

Tyler Harber rumor

I have heard a rumor (and I say it is a rumor because I have not talked to anyone who can confirm it) that one of the reasons Tyler Harber is clamming up and not saying much at all about his exploits in the Ragsdale administration after giving a tell-all interview to Betty Bean is because now everyone is calling Tyler-at work.

I don't know how true this is, but Harber may have been a bit more willing to talk to Gene Patterson if his work phone weren't ringing off the hook with requests for exclusives every five seconds. If this rumor has any truth to it, Harber could lose his job because too many people are calling him with Harbergate questions on company time.

If this is the reason Tyler Harber is not talking, please remember to use more tact when dealing with this important story.

On a side note, don't you think the News-Sentinel waited a bit long to "check out" Harbergate. One thing is certain: Jack McElroy is no Bob Woodward.

(Hat tip: Terry Frank)

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 1:41 PM 0 comments

Heads may roll in Harber Affair

As people who follow Knox County politics are aware, the cat is now out of the bag in the Tyler Harber Affair. The Knoxville News-Sentinel has released 33 pages of e-mails that were allegedly stolen by Harber in an attempt to dig up political dirt on potential opposition within the Republican Party to Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale.

Apparently, the KNS decided, in Jack McElroy's infinite Godlike wisdom, that the story which has been covered for months by Betty Bean, The World, Terry Frank and Gene Patterson is suddenly worth serious mention.

The e-mails paint a disturbing picture of GOP reaction to Mike Ragsdale's dictatorial desires for total control. They also show that he went so far as to put his own loyalists in charge in order to insure that he got what he wanted, and that he used Tyler Harber to do it in an effort to appear as if his own hands were clean.

The e-mails also tie Adam Groves to the affair in a very direct way, and in at least one of the communiques Groves admits his tie to Tyler Harber but says he was trying to break it but "no one has given me an opportunity to make it happen."

After the release of these e-mails, there is no way that the Knox County Commission can avoid a serious investigation, and the fiction that Ragsdale is perpetuating that he is not being investigated is all but dissolved. Heads will roll, but it may not be the heads Mike Ragsdale would want-one of the heads may be his own.

In related news, Terry Frank is reporting that former GOP Chairman Chad Tindell has been threatened by Ragsdale hatchet man Mike Arms.

Labels: Local politics

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 8:18 AM 2 comments

Something to hide

Those who didn't see Terry Frank on Tennessee This Week yesterday missed a real doozy. Watching the show got me to thinking, however, and asking what I think is a fair question:

It is quite clear that Tyler Harber has issues, but Terry asked (as did Frank Cagle) quite rightly, that if Harber was such a troublemaker, why did the Mayor's office keep him around so long? Second chances are one thing, but when you get around to the seventh and eighth chance, something is fishy.

My big question is this: If Tyler Harber is such a liar, why wouldn't Mike Ragsdale want a full, complete, and total investigation into this entire matter? If Harber is making all of this up, as the Mayor Ragsdale and his defenders are alleging through his surrogates in his office and in the press, Ragsdale should welcome and embrace an investigation because he will come off smelling like roses. This is not what Ragsdale is doing-he is just trying to avoid the issue, butter
it over and cover it up. That makes me believe that there is a lot more to the Tyler Harber story.

We'll have more on this story tomorrow after today's second part of the Halls Shopper News series.

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 7:24 AM 2 comments

Harbergate

Most regular readers from East Tennessee have by now read the first two parts of Betty Bean's expose and interview with former Mike Ragsdale bagman Tyler Harber in the Halls Shopper News. Many have wondered whether the media will cover this continually developing story, and not a few (myself included) have speculated that the reason the story is receiving no coverage is not because it is a non-story, but because much of the local press is either A) pro-Ragsdale or B.) frightened of the Ragsdale machine.

As much as the mainstream media in East Tennessee wants to avoid this story, the hour may soon be upon all of them where they will be compelled to cover Harbergate out of necessity. Sources close to the situation who have asked not to be identified have informed The World that while law enforcement authorities have not yet chosen to inform the press, the promised investigation into Tyler Harber's conduct while he was an employee of Knox County is underway, and that ascertaining what Mike Ragsdale and/or Mike Arms knew about the activities of Tyler Harber and Adam Groves and how much of it was done at the behest of one or both. The World has been informed that Harber and Groves are both "singing like canaries" in ways not fully revealed to the HSN. Further, the investigation is apparently yielding some fruit, because we have been informed that higher authorities may want to examine the case.

At the very least, Mike Ragsdale's political career is finished, because the questions surrounding this investigation will follow him on any campaign for Governor, and so when his term expires in 2010 he will be removed from the employments of public life. At most, Mike Ragsdale could be in very big trouble, and has far more to be concerned with than whether he will be living in the Governor's Mansion in five years.

Finally, a few of you have asked me privately why I will use anonymous sources while not allowing anonymous commenters, some say I am exercising a double standard, and you have no way to know that I am not just making all of this stuff up. Firstly, blogging is still new in the journalistic world and it is not yet an exact science. I wasn't going to have people posting with no name claiming to be a high-ranking official (that happened on a couple of occasions) when I cannot track them without using time I do not have. (I note that blogger doesn't even require you to use your real name.) However, when I quote from anonymous sources to you, I can track the source myself, I know who told me. Withholding names upon request is an old journalism practice that I firmly believe in adhering to when asked because it is one way to earn and keep the trust of your sources. If, in the eyes of some, that makes me less credible, so be it. I intend to do things right, not play dirty pool like certain people in the political establishment do. My duty here is to bring my readers the truth as I see it, and in doing that I shall do the very best that I can.

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 7:38 AM 1 comments

A pattern of abuse and corruption

There were many media outlets that didn't think the Tyler Harber Affair was noteworthy enough to follow up on-they did not think, apparently, that someone of Harber's arguably shady reputation could be indicating corruption on a much larger scale in the Knox County Mayor's Office. Only one major media personality kept the heat up constantly. The rest of the press didn't even get on the story until the furor was already fading. Virtually no one in the major local press (the Knoxville News-Sentinel has previously been known to treat Ragsdale as if he were the Second Coming) recognized that this story could be an indication of much larger problems in the Ragsdale regime in Knox County, Tennessee

Mike Ragsdale wanted Tyler Harber to "help me be Governor,' and whatever one might think of Harber personally, his story about corruption, cronyism, phony job appointments (such as his own), and misuse of public funds should have triggered a widespread media investigation of improprieties in the Knox County Mayor's Office. The signals were there, Harber blew the whistle, but no one except the local blogging community really bit.

Now we learn of the depth and breadth of abuse of Knox County purchasing cards by officials in the County Mayor's inner circle. Ragsdale's own Executive Assistant Margie Loyd charged $227.56 for two lobster tail lunches at Regas-and two more lobster tails to go! Loyd also charged a cruise she took to the county at $900. She has since had to reimburse that money, but likely would not have had all of this not been discovered.

I understand that county and State officials have a need to build relationships and have lunch or dinner with Commissioners and community members as part of doing business-that's politics. Does it have to cost the taxpayers that much? Regas is delicious and all, but it is also East Tennessee's most expensive restaurant. It is the place you take your friends to celebrate when you have plenty of money to burn. If I am going to lunch or dinner on government business and I know the taxpayers are footing the bill, Red Lobster will do just fine, thank you-and even cheaper than that if possible.

Knox County Finance Director John Werner has been forced to resign over the repeated misuse of public funds in the Mayor's Office.

“I’m disappointed and frustrated at recent events,” Ragsdale said. “I’ve made it clear that the misuse of public dollars will not be tolerated.”

Mr. Mayor, where is it that you suppose that so many people in your inner circle got the idea that it was perfectly fine to use their county cards for everything under the sun?

Labels: Local politics

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 10:12 AM 0 comments

Covering Harbergate

It seems that in the East Tennessee blogosphere, the only people covering the breaking of the Tyler Harber story on a regular basis are Terry Frank and myself. I can't speak for Terry, but I have gotten a lot of comments privately from people who are reading our posts on Harbergate, and the nature of the response I am seeing and hearing to the coverage of this story is overwhelmingly positive. People have written, called, and e-mailed me saying things like "keep up the heat," "way to go," "keep the fire under their a**," and one person said "thank you for being a voice of the people." I'll bet Betty Bean has gotten that sort of reaction times 10,000, except from the people who are feeling the heat from her expose.

Terry Frank deserves some real kudos for her latest work, as she has uncovered the location of Tyler Harber himself. The apple falls not far from the tree, and Mr. Harber goes not far from the political limelight.

Now that we know where Mr. Harber has "set up shop," as Terry puts it, perhaps he would consider giving a second interview...and this time to one of East Tennessee's blogging community?

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 7:17 AM 0 comments

The Harber torpedo

Part two of Betty Bean's interview with Tyler Harber appeared in yesterday's Halls Shopper News, and as with last week's first part, I think this week's portion can be broken down with commentary on what we've read. I can also reveal the name of a person who I said was involved last week but I could not reveal their name.

This week we learn the depths to which the Ragsdale people are willing to sink to get their way.

One of the main reasons he felt that Ragsdale, as he put it, had emerged “extremely victorious” from the election season was because they had gotten rid of sitting County Commission chair Leo Cooper. A top Team Ragsdale priority had been to gain control of County Commission, and toward that end, they had turned their attention to Cooper, a retired principal and restaurant owner and multi-term commission chair. Cooper, an independent, stubborn man, had incurred the wrath of developers by opposing some big projects, and they were looking to run someone against him. But that’s not the biggest reason he had to go, Harber said.

“Cooper was a major influence on that commission. He was one of that old guard – along with Howard Pinkston, Frank Leuthold, Billy Tindell – that had a lot of power. We wanted to break that gang up so we could have a rubber stamp vote for our agenda.”

Now, to be fair, Tindell may have had partisan reasons for his opposition to Ragsdale, but "Team Ragsdale's" enemies' list was apparently a completely bi-partisan affair. If you weren't going to give Mike Ragsdale his way, you were marked for extinction. Sounds like the agenda wasn't conservative or liberal, but an agenda of power.

Stabbing people in the back and double-crossing them certainly wasn't beneath the Ragsdale machine if Harber is be believed.


The second name on the list was County Commission administrator Ray Hill.

In our eyes, he had a lot of power. Plus, he was supporting all the candidates we were against,” Harber said. “We saw him as a major stumbling block.”

It took awhile, but Commission voted to abolish Hill’s job the following year after he was accused of discriminating against two female office staffers. He now says he had no knowledge that the Ragsdale administration wanted him removed.

“I’ve always thought Mike Ragsdale was my friend,” Hill said.

Whether the reader believes this story of how Ray Hill was "gotten rid of" or not, one has to admit that it would make sense that if you want somebody dumped out of the picture without their really knowing what was going on, you use a conveniently presented reason (discrimination charges) as the excuse and make it appear that another person or body (i.e. the Commission) did the dirty work, and not you.


The head of Pre-Trial Release and Probation was let go early on. So was Edmund Bolt, director of the health department. Rumor was that Bolt was “not a team player.”

Today, he says he never heard that story.

“I was in Mike Ragsdale’s administration for six months and worked directly under Cynthia Finch. “I was called into his office one day and dismissed. The only reason given was that he did not like the direction the health department was going. There were a lot of internal politics and I wouldn’t want to be back there.”

Just what does "not a team player" mean in this context? I suspect that it means "not anyone's robot." I might agree with somebody's politics, and I might even vote for them, but that doesn't mean that when they say jump, I must say "how high." Bolt's words at the end about internal politics tell us that as the very least, Ragsdale was cleaning everyone out of Knox County Government who was opposed to him.


“Ragsdale was scared and jealous of the sheriff even before he became mayor,” Harber said, adding that the first opportunity to stick it to Hutchison came about after the News Sentinel did some stories examining Hutchison’s business ties with impoundment lot operator Randy Hinton, who held a county contract. The stories included questions about Hutchison’s mountain retreat and allegations that he was running a construction company in partnership with Hinton.

“When (the story) first came out in the paper, I didn’t have anything to do with it. But once it did come out, Ragsdale and Arms wanted to continue the media coverage, so they got me to write a number – I’m talking about dozens – of letters to the editor against Hutchison, and (other members of Team Ragsdale) would go and find people to sign them. And then we’d either create an e-mail address for them to use, or we’d print out a hard copy and get them to sign it.”

If there is any truth to this, the Party of the Donkey should wake up and smell the morning coffee. Why do I say that? In the recent Knox County Sheriff's campaign, we heard a lot about so-called "politics" in the Sheriff's office. All of that started with these letters to the editor. If what Harber says has any truth at all to it, the whole "Hutchison is a politico and not a Sheriff" media job started with the Ragsdale/Arms team.

I have to hand it to Ragsdale, because if the man is anything, he is a master politician. Starting a propaganda blitz against a political opponent inside your own party and then getting the other party to pick up on that and use the things in that propaganda blitz as the reason to try and topple your opponent is no easy task. If Mike Ragsdale managed to do this, he may be a sly and untrustworthy wolf, but he is brilliant.

Up to this point in Part II of the Harber interview, everything is "plausibly deniable," and the Ragsdale machine can claim none of it happened quite that way seven ways to Sunday. The next part, however, simply made me want to vomit, and exposes that Mike Ragsdale is more than just a smooth but heartless political operator. If these next allegations have teeth, Mike Ragsdale is a hateful man.

Other “enemies” included radio talk show hosts Lloyd Daugherty and Kelvin Moxley.

“They were beating us up pretty bad over the wheel tax, and we heard a rumor that they were on TennCare, so I was told to go over to the health department and find out.”

Harber said he subsequently picked up a sealed envelope at the health department.

“I took the envelope to Mike, and Mike and I never opened it because I knew most certainly that had to be illegal. But it was their plan that if one or both had TennCare, they were going to get some media play out of it and try to destroy their credibility. I never heard any more about it, and I never asked,” Harber said.

I am going to look on the bright side and hope and pray that Ragsdale had the simple human decency not to open that envelope. I am going to be positive and believe that because we did not hear anything about it in the press. What Lloyd Daugherty, a man who I admire a great deal-even from a distance-said next hit the nail on the head:


“I sure hope this is not true. I consider Mike Ragsdale a political adversary, not an enemy.

"But there really is this sense out here that you better watch out if you buck these people,” he said. “At one time, I couldn’t work for a couple of years – I was in intensive care for nearly a month – and was wiped out financially a couple of times. Nine years ago, I had my left leg amputated.

“Personal attacks against Kelvin and me are one thing, but this was a clear attempt to find information to intimidate a very small segment of the media because we were asking questions and not toeing the establishment line. If that doesn’t reek of Watergate, I don’t know what does.”

As a person with a disability, I find these kinds of tactics sick beyond all telling and any man who would allow this sort of character assassination of what amounts to a media critic under their nose and in their administration is a person who is entirely unfit to hold the public trust. Using what are essentially medical records as a means to try and silence your opponents-or even threatening to do such a thing-is more than a low blow. More than just illegal, it is unethical and morally wrong.

I don't have tons of time to go into Ragsdale's grudge against Sen. Jamie Woodson (my now-former State Senator) over the Coster Shop landfill contamination issue in South Knox, but Harber claims that he went to work for Woodson's (then known by her former name Jamie Hagood) Primary opponent Billy Stokes at Ragsdale's behest because Ragsdale was "furious" with Jamie Woodson.

The website caswalker.com was, according to Harber, used as a way to guage anti-Ragsdale sentiment and used to single out Ragsdale opponents who worked in county government. Candidate Stokes vehemently denies his campaign had any involvement in the caswalker.com scheme.

“I hated that Web site and am really embarrassed that I defended Tyler and Adam when they lied to my face about their involvement. I think all that garbage about Jamie on there hurt me by implication and a lot of people thought it was generated by me solely because it was so nasty toward her.”

I believe Stokes is being truthful when he says the site made him feel offended and embarrassed. I believe him when he says he had nothing to do with caswalker.com, but that doesn't mean Ragsdale/Arms weren't at least letting the business go on-and that may just be the tip of the iceberg.

Harber says he did mislead Stokes and was really doing what he did because he was working for Mike Ragsdale.

“I had to lie to him. What good would it have done to tell him about it at that point (deep into the campaign)? I was working in his campaign, but my real employer was Mike Ragsdale, and it would have been very detrimental to both of them to admit such a thing – and she would have just beaten us even worse than she did.”

Who is the "Adam" Stokes spoke of? I can now reveal that this person was none other than blogger extraordinaire Adam Groves, one of Tennessee's most influential bloggers, and apparently the technical tour de force behind CasWalker and Harber's other schemes for the Ragsdale machine. He was the blogger I spoke of last Monday when I said that a well-known political blogger was involved. Groves is the author of Tennessee Politics, which may be our State's most widely-read political blog. I can't speak with certainty, but I believe that Groves is the kind of person who would co-operate with any serious investigation.

One thing that I don't buy from the story is that Ragsdale favors a consolidated Metro government because that would somehow benefit him-it would not. It would favor the City of Knoxville because the city has more votes and would favor Bill Haslam as Mayor of Knoxville to be the ultimate power broker. He may favor such a government to gain Haslam favor, however.

If you thought this week was juicy, the third part next week should blow us all away.

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 7:36 AM 0 comments

Investigating the Harber Affair

Frank Cagle is no left-wing nutcase-and he is no supstantiator of Leftist conspiratorial paranoia, and Cagle is calling for a Grand Jury investigation into the conduct of the Ragsdale administration. Cagle's column in the MetroPulse is the most sensible column about what I am now terming "Harbergate" or "The Harber Affair" that I have yet seen written:

Harber says he didn’t do anything without the approval of the Ragsdale administration. I find that hard to believe. I know I’ve accused the county mayor of taking stupid pills, but I don’t believe he is insane. But these allegations cry out for serious investigation. There need to be more sources on the official record than Harber.

Just so that Cagle (and everyone else) knows, there are more sources on the "official record" than just Harber. Adam Groves is one of these sources, and my sources, all of which have asked to remain unnaimed, are telling me that Groves is substantiating nearly everything that Harber is saying. Tyler Harber's story of stealing wheel-tax petitions and tearing them up on Ragsdale's orders has been confirmed to me by a source who claims to have witnessed the event and is willing to substantiate it to the proper authorities, and may already have done so. I know some folks might have a problem with a Democrat D.A. investigating this-fine. I am sure a more neutral party could be persuaded to investigate if Randy Nichols is seen to be a problem. However, I don't see Nichols as a difficulty, except that he may be too slow to act when facts are presented, and I am sure whoever is investigating it will do it impartially. Readers should be aware that I am not certain who is taking the lead in this investigation, I have merely been made aware that it is already underway.

Mark this day down, because rare is the day I cite the MetroPulse for anything.

(Hat tip: Terry Frank)

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 7:26 AM 0 comments

Let it all hang out

There has been some speculation about the nature of the call for an investigation into the Harber Affair in Knox County. Are there some who think that merely calling for an investigation will be enough to silence those of us who have spent a whole lot of time and energy beating the drum for this entire matter to be thoroughly examined. Of course, just bringing it to the floor isn't enough-for the Harber Affair to be resolved in an appropriate manner the Knox County Commission must investigate the matter with the power to subpoena evidence.

Gene Patterson is quite right that it will take 13 votes from the Commission to investigate with subpoena power. As of this morning it has been passed from several sources to The World that the Commission does not have those 13 votes, but it could have them in the coming days. That is why there may be a method to Greg "Lumpy" Lambert's madness. Lambert is telling the press that he believes Mike Ragsdale is innocent but that this investigation is needed in order to "clear people's good names." It is good logic, because if Mike Ragsdale, Mike Arms, and the rest of the County Mayor's office is innocent of any wrongdoing, they would want an investigation-so would Ragsdale's supporters on the County Commission and in the Knox County Republican apparatus. The reason that an innocent Team Ragsdale would welcome an investigation into the Harbergate Affair is because if Mike Ragsdale is innocent, he comes off smelling like a rose. If he and his supporters on the Knox County Commission are intent on avoiding an investigation, it appears that they may have quite a bit to hide.

For the record, Mike Ragsdale has denied any wrongdoing in a very public way, as he appeared on Tennessee This Week and broke a lengthy silence about the Harber Affair. President Nixon also denied wrongdoing in the Watergate Affair, but when the matter was actually investigated the truth of that denial became far less clear.

It is quite understandable that there are a lot of folks that want to give the Mayor the benefit of the doubt, but if Mike Ragsdale is truly innocent the investigation will bear that reality out. A lot of people have asked me why I am still interested in Knox County politics even though I now live in Jefferson County. It is simple-Mike Ragsdale wants to be our Governor one day, and Tennesseans need to know whether this man is worthy of the office. Mike Ragsdale has been accused of using his agents-one of which was Tyler Harber-to launch political hit jobs against people who were opposed to him or his programs. These hit jobs are alleged to have been accomplished in ways that are blatantly illegal, including (but not limited to) hacking into computers and/or reading private e-mails. These are tactics that make the Watergate plumbers look like quiet secretarial staff by comparison. What is even more despicable in a personal way is that many of these people are fellow Republicans who rightly opposed him on the wheel tax, and that is at least part of the reason that Mike Ragsdale is an unpopular man in many conservative circles in East Tennessee

If Ragsdale is found to have had any role at all in such activities, however small that roll might have been, the necessary steps should be taken to remove him from office post-haste. If Mayor Mike Ragsdale is indeed found to be completely innocent as he himself claims, then the man who would be Governor comes out of an investigation looking like such a good public servant that his enemies will do anything to destroy him. If Ragsdale has done nothing wrong, he not only has nothing to lose from an investigation, he has everything to gain politically.

I challenge Mayor Ragsdale to let East Tennesseans see and hear of his innocence, and let us judge the situation for ourselves. As an innocent man who has been falsely accused (and who wants to be Governor in 2010), not only should he embrace a full and complete investigation, it would speak volumes about his character if he openly encouraged commissioners to vote for the subpoena power so that his innocence (and the "personal vendetta" he alleges that his opposition has against him) might be proven for all to see.

Further, when these special hearings begin, let them be televised on T-SPAN government access all over East Tennessee so that the public can see just how badly an innocent man has been maligned. The major Knoxville television stations might consider airing large portions of the hearings each day so that the maximum number of citizens can be made aware of this terrible miscarriage of justice. Let us have Harber in the morning, Harber in the evening, Harber at suppertime. When everything is finally aired in the open, then the people can determine who they believe.

Then again, if the Mayor is innocent and his supporters on the Commission do not join other Commissioners in voting for subpoena power, then reasonable people must then be forced to ask: What are innocent people hiding from?

Labels: Local politics

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 11:29 AM 0 comments

Will Adam Groves please report to the press room...?

I have to give props to Terry Frank because she beat me to the punch yesterday in posting the news that Gene Patterson used her tip to contact Tyler Harber, who has now decided to shut his mouth like a clam because he has "moved on with his life." I don't think that has a thing to do with it-instead I think that Harber is shutting up because of a threefold combination of fear of legal trouble, fear of Mike Ragsdale, and fear that once he tells all to the larger press, he'll never be able to return to the political world again.

Unfortunately (much to the apparent consternation of leftist blogger R. Neal) Harber isn't talking, and it is quite apparent that someone closer to this story is going to have to talk to the wider press (probably Patterson, who is trying his best to give the story legs) in order to get the public wheels in motion at the local level. I agree with Terry Frank that a person who could do this if Harber is going to try and run away is Adam Groves.

I'm sure Terry and I have some similar sources, because like Terry I heard that Adam "spilled his guts," only the words I heard (from two sources) were that he "sang like a canary" to the Sheriff's Office. Now I have a disclaimer here: I do not personally know Groves, but I do know a number of people who do. Everything I have heard about Adam seems to indicate that he is a genuinely decent human being. I think he should come forward and do the talking that Mr. Harber will not do. Like many Tennessee netizens, I read Adam's Politics daily. Will he be willing to come forward in the interests of justice?

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 7:12 AM 0 comments

Harbergate: One more step to investigation

The Intergovernmental Affairs Committee of the Knox County Commission voted yesterday to recommend an investigation into the Tyler Harber Affair to the full County Commission. The resolution was sponsored specifically by Commissioners Moore (R-Chairman), Lambert (R-a Commissioner who was endorsed for election by this website and who made the formal request for the probe), and Cawood (D). It is fitting that the formal resolution should be brought forward by two Republicans, the effective leader and a freshman Commissioner, and seconded by a well-respected Democrat.

From the News-Sentinel yesterday:

Earlier, Dwight Van de Vate, spokesman for Ragsdale, said the mayor's office has "no problem" with the commission looking at the mayor's office or his employees.

That's good to know, because that is all anyone who ever pushed for this investigation was asking for: If Mike Ragsdale is innocent, let his office be opened and the proof be given.

It would seem to me to be accepted political wisdom that those with nothing to hide submit freely to such probes, sometimes even as a matter of public routine. With that in mind, here is some sage advice to Team Ragsdale: If you don't want to be suspected of wrongdoing, do not act in a way to make people be suspicious that you may, in fact, be doing wrong.

I heard a quote from Commissioner Greg "Lumpy" Lambert this morning on WIVK: "Someone [in the County Mayor's Office] must be doing something wrong, or they wouldn't be trying so hard to leave doors unopened, but surely no one is guilty of everything that [Tyler Harber] alleges." I don't know, Lumpy-it doesn't look good to me at all when Ragsdale is continually trying to dodge being investigated by using the old "move forward" line. Rumors now abound that people close to the investigation, such as former GOP Chairman Chad Tindell, have been threatened will more embarrassment. Just a week ago, Ragsdale denied he was under investigation...now that it is ubundantly clear that he is, he is trying to dodge the truth by accusing investigating Commissioners of "playing politics," and calling the actions of the Commission "distasteful."

Apparently, anything that might make Mike Ragsdale look bad is distasteful. I wonder what propaganda Joseph Goebbels Dwight Van de Vate will spew today?

Ein volk, ein Reich, ein Ragsdale!

Labels: Local politics

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 7:13 AM 0 comments

Possible major development in Harbergate

The World has received late word from a very reliable source that a prominent member or members of the Knox County Commission may (stress may) move for the Commission to launch its own investigation into the Harbergate Affair and whether crimes or any other improprieties were committed by Knox County Mayor Mike Ragsdale or any of his agents or the personnel of his office in relation to the allegations made by Ragsdale's former bagman Tyler Harber.

In specific terms, did Ragsdale have an enemies list-and/or did he attempt, through his surrogate Tyler Harber, to obtain damaging information about his opponents or potential opponents by illegal and/or unethical means?

This story is rapidly developing, and The World will keep readers posted as we are informed of the latest developments.












Knox County Criminal Mayor
Mike Ragsdale

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 7:31 AM 0 comments

Keeping up the fight for justice

In recent days, a few folks have asked me privately why I keep "obsessing" over the Tyler Harber Affair. I do not think I am obsessing, as the charges Mr. Harber is making are serious and it isn't my fault that the press in East Tennessee is guilty of an abject failure to do their job (the lone exception to this seems to be Gene Patterson) leaving it to the poor bloggers to do their job for them.

Just because the mainstream media collectively decides to ignore something does not mean that there is no story worth telling. Merely because the large press agents decide not to cover something does not mean the situation doesn't exist. Failure of an event to appear as the lead headline at six o'clock does not mean that the event did not take place.

So it is the case with Harbergate. The Ragsdale machine and their allies in certain of the local media outlets are doing everything in their power to make this story go away. If I'm Mike Ragsdale and I have an ambition to be the Governor of Tennessee in 2010, I do not run from a media blitz on this issue or a full scale local, State, and federal investigation. On the contrary, I would embrace an investigation and I would say both to the press and to the police "here, take whatever you want, learn everything you need to know, we'll give you whatever you need." Innocent men do that because such a posture exonerates them, and if Mike Ragsdale did no wrong and he were to take such an attitude, he would come off smelling like a rose politically. What's more, if Mike Ragsdale opened himself up to a complete investigation where we all could see what was going on and all of these charges were proven totally baseless, I would be the first to congratulate Ragsdale and apologize for the trouble.

Mike Ragsdale isn't doing that, however, he is just waiting for what he hopes will be a blowover. Well, I've got news: Mike Ragsdale may have powerful friends, he may have the local media on his side, and he even has a mouth on talk radio to do his talking for him, but there are a few of us who will not let this story go away until Mike Ragsdale lets it all hang out and we can see the proof of his involvement or lack thereof for ourselves. We will keep fighting until the "powerful people" pay attention to this and the people of Knox County and all of East Tennessee know that their government is acting with justice.

posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 6:43 AM 1 comments