Surprises But Little Consensus In District 31 Special Election

By Eleanor Boudreau

Memphis, TN – Ask the two candidates for Tennessee's District 31 state senate seat what they agree on, and you're liable to hear a long silence.

In the run-up to the December 1st special election, Republican Brian Kelsey and Democrat Adrienne Pakis-Gillon have disagreed on government spending, guns in parks, and the need for a debate.

Both candidates do want to create jobs, but they have very different opinions on how to do that.

Kelsey advocates tax cuts for small businesses. He said Tennessee made, "a huge mistake in accepting all these Obama stimulus dollars."

Pakis-Gillon isn't bothered by that spending. Before embarking on her career she borrowed money to get a master's degree in business administration. She offered this analogy:

"I took ten years to pay it off. I believe that my personal life and my husband's professional life have benefited from that investment we made almost 30 years ago," she said. "And so I think sometimes you have to step back and evaluate making an investment to move forward, and move beyond the status quo. And look at it that way, we're moving forward."

It isn't surprising that a Republican and a Democrat would split on President Obama's stimulus package. Still this race is a little surprising. The state senate seat opened up suddenly after Republican Paul Stanley resigned following an affair with an intern.

This time last year Kelsey was serving as a state representative and working as a lawyer. And Pakis-Gillon was celebrating Obama's election while trying to figure out how to keep her and her husband's law firm afloat during tough economic times.

Neither candidate was thinking about running for state senate.

And it may surprise some that a Democrat wants to run in this race at all. The District 31 seat was held by Republican Curtis Person for decades. Then, when Person resigned in 2006, fellow Republican Paul Stanley whopped his Democratic opponent with 62 percent of the vote.

Still Pakis-Gillon likes her chances. She says her district is changing.

"I did not enter this on just some kind of a whim," she said. "There is a great deal of diverse population now throughout the community in that we've just got to get our message out to democratic voters in this district. Because in the past we haven't had good, qualified, strong Democratic candidates for them to come out and vote for."

Kelsey also like his chances for the historically Republican seat. He's confident, but maybe not as confident as past Republican candidates. "It's going to be a very hard fought race," Kelsey said.

The last day for early voting for the District 31 senate seat is November 25th. The election is December 1st.