From a Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle editorial in favor of wine in food stores:

The only reason government should interfere with the free enterprise system is to protect consumers from fraud and taxpayers from having to bail out those “too big to fail”.

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We lost count of our positive editorials some time ago. Let’s just say every major newspaper in the state has supported selling wine in food stores. And, in some cases, we’ve had multiple editorials. The latest is courtesy of the Clarksville Leaf Chronicle. Here’s a quick excerpt:

This all comes down to a basic issue. The state shouldn’t be in the business of protecting businesses from competition. Grocery stores shouldn’t be restricted on wine sales, and liquor stores should be allowed to sell the mixers and other items whose sales would contribute to their bottom lines.

We’ll toast to that.

A couple of dueling letters to the editor from this week in the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Obviously, we favor the second one.

Letters: The numbers tell a different story

Letters: In a state of denial over beer

The Red White and Food campaign is back. 2010 is Round Three of the battle to give Tennessee consumers the choice of buying wine in Tennessee food stores.

Here’s what’s happening with the campaign:

• Tons of members. Red White and Food now has more than 22,000 members. These are Tennessee consumers who want to ability to buy wine where they buy food. At this time in 2009, the campaign had 3,500 members. We are grateful to everyone who has joined the campaign and showed support.
• New legislation. We have three pieces of legislation this year:
  • SB 3577/HB 2948 would allow localities to have public referendums on wine sales. We’ll blog a lot more about this bill next week. This bill is new in 2010.
  • SB 3576/HB 3003 would allow Tennessee wineries to sell directly to food stores. This bill is also new.
  • SB 120/HB 1158 would create a statewide license allowing food stores to sell wine. This is the same legislation we have proposed the last two years.
• New signs in grocery stores. You’ve probably noticed the new signs in more than 200 grocery stores across the state. Our membership has grown by 1,500 since we unveiled the new signs in December. We expect the signs to stay out all year.
• Email-a-palooza. Contacting legislators is the single most important action any supporter can take. Thanks to our new GetActive system, it’s easy for consumers to find their two legislators (everybody has one Senator and one Representative) and send them an e-mail. It takes just minutes. Last month, members sent more than 3,000 e-mails to legislators asking them to support the sales of wine in food stores.

Consumer support is our best path to victory. Just compare the Red White and Food Facebook page with our opponents’ page. We have more than 7,000 group members. They are trying to get to 500.

We plan to blog several times a week throughout the session.

Thanks again to everyone for their support. We look forward to your comments.

And, don’t forget to follow us on Twitter.