Tennessee minorities are underrepresented in state legislature, but are attitudes changing?

June 16--NASHVILLE -- Two bills, similar subject, same sponsor, but starkly different outcomes: after a long, sometimes bitter debate, the state House of Representatives rejected a hard-fought bill to let Tennessee-raised children of undocumented immigrants pay in-state tuition at state colleges rather than out-of-state rates three times higher.

Less than two minutes later, with no discussion at all, the House voted 94-1 to approve the next bill on the agenda, allowing North Mississippi residents to pay in-state tuition at the University of Memphis -- the latest of several discounts by Tennessee universities trying to attract out-of-state students.

Would the outcome on the immigrant tuition bill have been different if the Tennessee General Assembly more closely resembled the changing population of Tennessee?

A new analysis by The Associated Press finds minority residents are underrepresented -- in terms of the numbers of seats they hold relative to their shares of state populations -- in 47 state legislatures across the country, including Tennessee's.

The differing results in the tuition bills provides a glimpse at the problem.

As dozens of teens brought to Tennessee illegally by their parents -- many of them years ago -- watched from the public galleries, lawmakers took turns bashing the first of the two back-to-back tuition bills. State Rep. John Ragan, R-Oak Ridge, suggested that once the students turn 18, they become "lawbreakers" themselves and owe "restitution" to taxpayers.

"I support the Tennessee Constitution ... that says victims of crimes are entitled to restitution by lawbreakers. Illegal aliens have not only broken our immigration laws, they've raided our national and state treasuries for benefits and services that we provide for our own citizens. Where are the penalties? Where is the restitution?" said Ragan. "At the age of 18 these people in your bill are no longer minors; therefore the decision to stay in this country is not their parents', it's theirs.

"... Continually flouting the law does not deserve a reward at taxpayer expense."

Rep. Mark White, R-Memphis, who sponsored both tuition bills the House considered that day in April 2015, was emotional at times in his defense of the "Tuition Equality" bill and of the students who spent months visiting lawmakers in support of it. The veteran conservative legislator and businessman regularly travels to Panama to check on the work of a nonprofit he created to help school poor children there.

The state Senate had approved the same bill a week earlier, on April 16, 2015. This spring, with the clock ticking on the two-year legislative term, White tried again to build support for House passage. He finally admitted defeat on the session's last day, saying he lacked the votes to resurrect the bill for another vote.

Data provides evidence of the lack of diversity in minority representation.

White residents comprised 74.5 percent of Tennessee's estimated 2014 population of 6,549,352, but white lawmakers held 84.7 percent of the total 132 seats in the state legislature -- a difference of about 10 percentage points, according to the AP analysis.

African-Americans comprise both the largest minority in Tennessee's population and the largest bloc of seats held by minorities in the General Assembly. But they are underrepresented relative to their percentage of the state's population: blacks comprise 16.8 percent of all Tennesseans but hold 13 percent of the legislative seats -- 17 seats out of 132 (three of the Senate's 33 seats and 14 in the 99-member House).

From there, the drop-off in minority representation is dramatic. There is a man born in India, and a Native Hawaiian in the House, counted as a minority in the AP analysis. And Sen. Dolores Gresham, R-Somerville, a Texas native and granddaughter of Mexican immigrants, is considered the first Latina in the legislature.

Despite those numbers, only 11 states have lower levels of white "overrepresentation" in their state legislatures than Tennessee. Thirty-five states have larger rates of overrepresentation by whites, several where whites hold more than 20 percent more seats than their share of populations. In three other states -- Hawaii, Maine and Montana -- whites hold fewer seats in their legislatures than their percentage of their state populations, according to the AP analysis.

And there is evidence that with Tennessee's growing population of minorities, especially Hispanic and Latino residents, that change is coming even in politics.

In 2014, Sabi "Doc" Kumar, born and educated in India, won election in the state House. He's in Robertson County, a growing but still rural district north of Nashville where 84 percent of the 67,024 residents are white. Kumar, a Republican and surgeon in Springfield, easily defeated three opponents in the GOP primary, and the Democratic nominee withdrew before the general election.

Kumar has practiced surgery in Springfield since 1977, teaches Sunday school in his Methodist church and is active in community affairs. He campaigned on conservative issues and has voted conservative in the House. He's running for a second term with no GOP primary challenger and a Democratic opponent in November.

He wasn't the only immigrant on the 2014 state legislative ballot in Tennessee but was the only one who won.

Mwafaq Aljabbary, an Iraqi Kurd who resettled in Nashville with his wife in the 1990s and won U.S. citizenship, ran a distant third in the GOP primary for a Senate district in Nashville ultimately won by a Democrat. Aljabbary, a Muslim active in Nashville's growing Kurdish community, received only 346 votes out of 4,829 cast in the GOP primary.

Also in Nashville, Republican John Wang -- who immigrated from China 22 years ago speaking little English but who built an insurance business -- lost a House district race to Democrat Jason Powell but with a respectable 43 percent of the vote.

Despite Tennessee's growing Hispanic and Latino population -- which makes up 4.9 percent of the state population, the state's second largest minority behind African-Americans -- there is no new Hispanic candidate for the Tennessee legislature this year.

Eben Cathey, a Rhodes College graduate and advocacy director for the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition, said Monday he believes that will change as the state's minority population grows. At TIRRC, he helped mobilize scores of undocumented students from across the state to meet with their legislators in support of the Tuition Equality bill.

Cathey said he believes attitudes contributing to the bill's defeat are changing.

"Tennessee is a new destination state. Immigrants are choosing to come to Tennessee instead of New York or Chicago or Los Angeles because we are growing, vibrant and a great place to put down roots. I believe that as demographics continue to shift, we will see that represented in who our elected officials are."

Cathey said Hispanics make up about half of the state's immigrant population but Tennessee has communities from all over the world. "The immigrant community is becoming a significant voting block. In the context of this election year, we've had a very sizable surge in voting registration. We've registered hundreds who are tired of the rhetoric and TIRRC will reach over 20,000 immigrant voters in a get-out-the-vote drive we do every election year."

He said despite its failure, the Tuition Equality bill got 49 votes in the House (one short of passage) and passed the Senate. Supporters will continue to push for approval. It was championed in the Senate by one of that body's more conservative members, Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga.

That it came within one vote of passage represents a shift in legislators' attitudes, Cathey said. "In many of the districts where immigrant populations are growing, we are seeing progress. As with anything, when constituents reach out to representatives and are sharing their stories, when representatives can speak with a young student who lives in their district and wants to go to college, lots of times that representative is going to represent that community," Cathey said.

That was true with Rep. Pat Marsh, a Republican from Shelbyville who spoke in favor of the bill on the House floor after Rep. Timothy Hill, R-Blountville, declared that if he could vote "no" twice on the bill, "I'd be happy to do so on behalf of my district."

Said Marsh: "I live in Bedford County and our schools are probably 25 percent immigrants there. We're already paying for these students. I go into the local schools and see these immigrants in leadership roles in our schools. They're the star athletes. They're the star students. They deserve a chance to move forward in their lives ... These students who are getting an education are going to be paying a lot more taxes and be a lot more productive constituents in my county."

And there was also the legislature's passage this year of a resolution requiring the state to sue the federal government to block refugee resettlement in Tennessee.

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