Month: January 2002

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

BAKKE POLL SHOWS WHARTON WITH BIG LEAD

A mid-December poll taken under the supervision of veteran political consultant John Bakker shows that Shelby County Public Defender A C Wharton, the Democratic candidate with whom Bakke is working, commanded a majority of the likely Democratic primary voters asked for a preference among party candidates for Shelby County mayor.

Wharton’s standing in the poll of 606 voters, surveyed between December 10th and 14th, was at 51 percent, as against 13 percent for Bartlett banker Harold Byrd and 11 percent for Midtown State Representative Carol Chumney.

The poll also showed that, when matched against Republican Larry Scroggs in this year’s general election, Wharton would enjoy a ratio in his favor of two to one, Bakke said.

Scroggs, a state representative from Germantown, is the only Republican to have announced for county mayor so far and the only one tested, although Bakke acknowledged that County Commissioner Clair VanderSchaaf, who has talked about running, would bge a figure to reckon with also, should he decide to make the race.

Isaac Ford, who has filed as an independent candidate, was not included in the survey, nor was radiologist/radio-station owner George Flinn, who filed as a Republican, then withdrew his petition, and is considering re-filing as an independent.

Categories
News The Fly-By

MIRROR, MIRROR, ON THE WALL. . . .

Editor’s Note: For what it’s worth, and for purposes of comparison with our perceptions of today, this is what ran in FLY ON THE WALL this time a year ago:

We at the Flyer are always looking for hard-hitting, investigative stories. However, when the sidewalks are covered in ice and the streets are a slushy mess, it s hard to pound the pavement in search of the truth. In times like these, sometimes we have to create the news. Trying to fill space, we wondered whether the rest of the world would be physically attracted to our city leaders. To find the answer to this question we posted pictures of Mayor W.W. Herenton and all of the city council members on the Am I Hot Or Not web site (http://www.amihotornot.com) so that people the world over could rate this city s, er, governing bodies on a scale of 1 to 10. We also posted Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout s photo but it was inexplicably rejected by the web site s monitors. Here are the results in no particular order:

  • E.C. Jones 4.9

  • Tajuan Stout Mitchell 2

  • Brent Taylor 5.6

  • Janet Hooks 4.6

  • John Vergos 5.1

  • Edmund Ford 3.9

  • Barbara Swearengen Holt 1.3

  • Joe Brown 6.4

  • Rickey Peete 6.2

  • Myron Lowery 4.2

  • Pat Vander Schaaf 1.6

  • Tom Marshall 7.5

  • Jack Sammons 7.7

  • Mayor W.W. Herenton 7.9

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

HERENTON TO RUN AGAIN, MAY AFFECT COUNTY RACE.

Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, who many suggest could be Mayor for Life, indicated Tuesday that he might harbor some such notion as well, unveiling the general outlines of a “five-year plan,” adding as a sort of modest footnote “if I am reelected in 2003 — I don’t want to be presumptuous.”

The de facto announcement of reelection plans was but one highlight of Herenton’s annual speech at The Peabody to participants at city councilman Myron Lowery‘s New Year’s Prayer Breakfast. The mayor also hinted that he might choose to intervene in the forthcoming Shelby County Mayor’s race and reiterated his determination to push for city-county consolidation, with the important exception of city and county schools.

Consolidation was, in fact, the key component of the five-year plan (along with a stated intent to shore up education and the criminal justice system) and, Herenton seemed to suggest, the possible determinant in deciding whom he might support for county mayor.

The mayor proposed to begin immediate — but unspecified — measures to bring about consolidation in the realm of law enforcement but said he intended to “say No to the consolidation of city and county schools.” He proposed instead to “freeze school system boundaries” for the existing Memphis and Shelby County systems and to institute “single-source” funding for the two systems.

As an apparent response to continued complaints from county officials and suburbanites about the current method of routing state funding to the two systems through an average-daily-attendance (ADA) formula favoring the city schools by a 3 to 1 ratio, Herenton proposed “equalized expenditures,” so long as special provision was made for “at-risk youngsters.”

After his public remarks, the mayor would condemn as “divisive” a recent proposal for separate special school districts made to a state legislative committee in Nashville recently by county school board chairman David Pickler.

Though he did not target specific individuals in his speech, Herenton also professed to be outraged by the inability of officials at the state and county levels to solve looming financial problems and at the weaknesses in the Memphis school system revealed by the city system’s disproportionately poor showing in recent state testing.

After the mayor’s speech, various members of his audience, ranging from members of his own circle to participants in this or that mayoral campaign, indicated they thought Herenton’s prospective intervention in the 2002 county mayor’s race would not occur before the end of the primary process, which so far includes State Representative Larry Scroggs on the Republican side, and, on the Democratic side, Shelby County Public Defender A C Wharton; Bartlett banker Harold Byrd, and State Representative Carol Chumney.

Herenton said he would make no endorsement “at this time,” adding that, aside from his judging candidates on their integrity, experience, and ability — and on their commitment to consolidation — he would not be bound, in deciding on an ultimate endorsement, by restrictions of gender, race, or party.

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

tuesday, 1

And speaking of Isaac Hayes, he will be the special guest at today’s New Year’s Day Jazz Champagne Brunch at the RadissonHotel Memphis, where the menu includes ribs, chicken, collard greens, chitterlings,black-eyed peas, and champagne. Sounds like a throw-down to me.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

CARDINALS WIN LIBERTY BOWL, BAG BYU 28-10

The Louisville Cardinals thought they would have to use offense to beat Brigham Young. The defense made that plan unnecessary.

Dave Ragone threw for 228 yards and three touchdowns, and the defense came up with five sacks and three interceptions as No. 23 Louisville beat No. 19 Brigham Young 28-10 Monday in the Liberty Bowl.

Ragone described the defensive play as unbelievable.

“They shut down one of the best offenses I’ve ever seen,” he said of the Cougars, who own the nation’s top unit.

For BYU (12-2), the loss marked yet another disappointing end to a season that held the promise of an undefeated season just a month ago.

The Cougars lost their third straight bowl game and 10th in their last 14 despite an offense that averaged 542.8 yards per game and set a school record by averaging 46.7 points a game. But All-American running back Luke Staley, the nation’s leading scorer, was out because of ankle surgery.

Louisville kept the Cougars from finding a rhythm.

The defense held BYU quarterback Brandon Doman to 18-of-37 for 192 yards. The defense repeatedly gave the Louisville offense a short field, and three of the Cardinals’ TD drives were 54 yards or shorter.

“They were kind of pushing up and waiting for me to run around and do some things,” Doman said. “I wish I could go back and play that game again because we had some other plays in mind, and we just simply had some miscues.”

Defensive tackle Bobby Lefew and his teammates hoped they could keep the Cougars to 25 points. They wound up limiting BYU to its lowest point total of the season and a season-low 276 yards.

“We knew we had to hold them down, so our offense could outscore them, and that’s what we did,” Lefew said.

The victory allowed the Cardinals to finish off the best season in school history.

The Cardinals hadn’t won a bowl game since the 1993 Liberty Bowl, a three-game skid that included a loss to Colorado State here last year. They improved to 11-2 for the most victories in a season, topping the 1990 mark of 10-1-1, their only other year with double-digit wins.

“This is something we needed,” Louisville senior receiver Deion Branch said. “We’ve been dying to get it. It was just something that was there for us, and we haven’t taken it. There was an opportunity today, and we took advantage of it.”

Ragone, Conference USA’s offensive player of the year, tossed TD passes of 1, 34 and 27 yards. He was 19-of-28, and Branch had six catches for 88 yards and a touchdown.

Everyone expected a high-scoring game, and it looked like the teams would oblige as Zek Parker took the opening kickoff 70 yards for Louisville, and Henry Miller scored from 1 yard out four plays later for a 7-0 lead.

But Louisville kept BYU scoreless through the first quarter for only the third time this season, and the Cougars needed some trickery to finally reach the end zone. Doman lateralled to left tackle Dustin Rykert, and he ran 10 yards for the score and a 7-7 tie with 7:56 left in the second quarter.

The Cougars tried another trick play late in the first half, lining up for a punt on fourth-and-5 and snapping the ball short to Ned Stearns. But Rod Day stopped him for no gain, turning the ball over at the BYU 40 with 2:16 left.

Ragone moved the Cardinals 40 yards over nine plays, tossing a 1-yarder to tight end Chip Mattingly just before halftime for a 14-7 lead.

Cougars coach Gary Crowton said that gave the Cardinals momentum going into halftime.

“At that time, I felt like they wouldn’t be expecting it, but we didn’t execute it well, and they did a good job defensively. But I was hoping to get a big play in the last two minutes so that we would have momentum because we got the ball in the second half … It just didn’t work, and my hat’s off to them,” he said.

BYU had chances to keep the game close, but the Cardinals came up with an interception in each half to end drives in their own territory. The second came at the end of the third quarter when Curry Burns picked off Doman’s pass at the Louisville 17 and the Cardinals up 21-10.

Ragone needed only five plays to score, finding Ronnie Ghent for a 27-yard TD and a 28-10 lead.