It was around this time 10 years ago, in this very space, that I
assayed a notion on the congressional race about to be run by state senator
Steve Cohen that got his dander up and kept it there during the whole of that
campaign season.
Cohen, I said in essence, could not win a race that saw him
matched against 26-year-old Harold Ford Jr., the son of the outgoing
congressman, who was backed by what was then still a fully functioning monolith,
the much-vaunted “Ford machine.”
True, there was a third candidate in the race, then-state
representative Rufus Jones, who had the nominal support of Mayor Willie Herenton,
his former brother-in-law. In theory, the presence of Jones, an African American
like Ford, created the possibility of a racial split in the Democratic voter
base, one that many assumed would be augmented by the ongoing political rivalry
between Herenton and Ford Sr.
Note: Senator Cohen, a longtime supporter of equal rights on the
racial front and many others, was the last candidate in the world who would have
A) thought in black-and-white terms and B) consciously attempted to foster such
a wedge among the majority black population of the 9th District.
Au contraire. As he began his race,
Cohen cited the resounding words from Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream”
speech that foresaw a time when people would be judged by the content of their
character, not the color of their skin. One thing that, perhaps justifiably,
irked Cohen about the Viewpoint I wrote was that in it I noted a minor fluff in
his paraphrase of King and used that as a metaphor for his projected
difficulties in the primary contest to come.
Although Cohen’s heart and mind were in the right place (along
with his voting record), he would find it difficult, I argued, to accommodate
his civil-libertarian focus to the bread-and-butter preoccupations of the black
majority — especially when that majority, like the white one which had preceded
it historically, would instinctively close ranks around a candidate of its own.
Cutting to the chase: As I expected, Jones proved — for all his
worthiness — to be the odd man out. The black population coalesced around Ford,
and Cohen finished well behind. On election night, before a TV camera, the
senator, never one to dissemble, expressed his disappointment concerning the
racial-bloc nature of the voting.
Fade to the present: Cohen is running again for Congress, he
cited the “I Have a Dream” speech once more, the 9th District is still a
predominantly black one, and here I am assaying a notion about the race. But, to
invert that famous French phrase, the more things stay the same, the more they
change.
For one thing, Cohen’s preoccupations in the state Senate,
manifested most notably in his last-ditch resistance to Governor Phil Bredesen’s
TennCare cuts, have reflected more and more directly the economic concerns of
the 9th District’s black population.
For another thing, there is no Ford-machine monolith to contend
with. Despite the presence in the race of a family member (Joe Ford Jr., freshly
returned from California), there were several prominent Fordites in Cohen’s
crowd Monday, cheering him on as he filed at the Election Commission. For that
matter, there are numerous other candidates who have reason to expect support
from present or former members of the Ford organization.
Most importantly, race consciousness as such seems relatively
absent from the proceedings this year. Few, if any, of the candidates in this
year’s 9th District field — Democratic or Republican, white or black — seem
preoccupied with achieving a designated ethnic outcome, and even word of mouth
on the matter is relatively desultory. There is little likelihood that the
candidate field, including several promising newcomers, will be pared down, for
“consensus” reasons or any other, by next week’s withdrawal deadline.
It is an environment, in short, conducive to Dr. King’s
colorblind thesis. Some years after that first race, Cohen graciously conceded
that I’d been right in my forecast about that year’s results. I see a more level
playing field this year, one that will fairly test the senator’s credentials —
and those of his opponents. I hope I’m right again.