Endorsements from local candidates who are still enmeshed in their communities are rather important. I have asked democrats here about who they are going to support and they don’t always know the candidates. Seriously, they don’t or they know them as “that” guy. You know, “that” guy that worked in the courthouse in Knoxville or “that” guy with the combat boots or “that” guy with the auto business and so on. So, when Finney says I’m backing Padgett, they know Lowe. And for some folks, if it’s good enough for Lowe, it’s good enough for them. Not everyone is this way, don’t get me wrong and I’m by no means saying that’s always the way it is, but our access is much more limited than let’s say, someone who lives in Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville or Chattanooga.

Suppressing the expression of hate does not kill it, but lets it fester, grow, and reemerge more powerful than before. Let us have the courage of our convictions - awful ideas must be confronted with reason and destroyed, not shrunk from and prohibited. Only one unconvinced that his beliefs are correct wishes for the government to intercede and take on the weight.

“The issue is that when you have state-wide elections, basically for appellate judges, the only people who care about those are people with very narrow special interests. They’re expensive elections because they’re state-wide, and I just think you’d have this scramble to have, you know, every interest out there whether it be business or trial lawyers or anybody else trying to elect their judges and we’d have a vastly worse system than we have today.”

A request for comment from the McCain campaign directly was not answered.

But other Republicans rushed to Culvahouse’s defense. Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who has known Culvahouse since the two native Tennesseans worked for Sen. Howard Baker (R-Tenn.), said Culvahouse is “one of America’s best-respected and most able lawyers.”

Culvahouse’s counsel to Reagan during the Iran-Contra hearings also should not harm McCain, Alexander said.

“That’s what lawyers do, they help clients deal with problems and President Reagan had a problem,” Alexander said. “If he was President Reagan’s lawyer in 1987 and 1988 and he was not involved in Iran-Contra, he should have been fired for malpractice.”