The difference between GOP senatorial nominee Bob Corker
and his Republican primary opponents, Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary,
was in the quality and frequency of his advertising vis-à-vis theirs. For a
solid month Corker, a self-made multi-millionaire with healthy backing from his
party’s establishment, was able to introduce himself to the state’s TV viewers
as an accomplished mayor, an adroit businessman, and a friendly, somewhat
countrified fellow with an extra-nice mom.
Poor Bryant and Hilleary, both running unimaginative and
negative campaigns, might not have been able to compete even with equivalent
financing, but the fact is, they didn’t have enough campaign money to counter
the television onslaught, and they fell steadily behind. Ironically, their last
chance came in the last two weeks of the campaign when, for reasons yet to be
explained, Corker (who was well ahead in the polls at the time) took to
attacking his opponents with advertising that was not only negative but
demonstrably misleading.
Bryant and Hilleary counter-attacked, pointing out that
neutral observers expressly belied the content of Corker’s attacks and
considered them unfair. They lost anyhow, but with another month and another
million apiece, the two hapless ex-congressmen have been able to make up some
ground.
The experience is relevant to what has happened to Corker
in his current campaign against Democrat Harold Ford Jr.
For several weeks as the general-election effort against
Ford got under way the former Chattanooga mayor ran TV commercials virtually
non-stop — but not the sort he had used to establish himself as a likeable,
trustworthy figure in the primary. Rather, he filled the airwaves with negative
attack ads, like his last ones against Bryant and Hillary.
It was almost as though he had established a groove — a
rut, rather — and couldn’t get out of it. Worse, Corker himself didn’t figure in
any of them except as a late-appearing figure whose voice-over, in accordance
with Federal Election Commission regulations, “approved” the ads. Worse yet, the
ads were as misleading as those against Bryant and Hilleary had been. Worst of
all, his new opponent, Ford, had the money to compete with him on the airwaves.
Ford was in the attack mode, too, and his own ads were no
model of fairness or accuracy, either. But he was in them, an undeniably
telegenic and persuasive presence, and that set him apart from his opponent.
Corker’s early lead evaporated, and Ford caught up and began to race ahead.
But wait! In the last week or two, there was Corker with
his doting cutie-pie mom again, and here comes another commercial featuring the
Bobster himself, talking regular-folks common-sense talk about those blowhards
in government and how a straight-arrow businessman like himself could straighten
out all the stuff they’ve got wrong.
This reversion to best-foot-forward politics is the
apparent result of a shakeup in the Corker campaign. Tom Ingram, a
veteran operative who has been serving as Senator Lamar Alexander‘s chief
of staff, is the new campaign manager, taking over from Ben Mitchell, and
the new ad strategy is first fruit of that change.
Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, the bleeding in the
Corker campaign seems to have been stanched, and now he and Ford are now trading
leads in this or that poll.
*Undeniably, Ford has momentum — the result of his
star quality and campaigning skills as well as what could turn out to be a
national buyers’-remorse reaction to the Bush administration.
But, though the fact seems to have escaped most observers
in the national media, Ford has critics within his own party — most of them on
the left, to be sure, and not nearly as numerous as his detractors imagine but,
arguably, influential beyond their numbers and, inarguably, out of love with
their party’s nominal standard-bearer.
The reason? What they see as Ford’s apostasy from
Democratic Party precepts. This includes his votes with the Republicans on such
thematic/social issues as the flagburning and marriage amendments and Congress’
mandated medical review in the Terri Schiavo case, economic issues like the
bankruptcy bill and extension of the Bush tax cuts, and a plethora of
national-policy concerns, such as Ford’s continuing support of the Iraq war
effort and his go-along votes on national-security issues.
Two of the latter occurred within the last week, as the
Memphis congressman cast yea votes on two administration-backed bills — one
extending broad authority to the president to define torture as it applies to
captured enemy aliens, the other granting the chief executive the power, in
effect, to decree warrantless surveillance. On the former bill, Ford was one of
34 House Democrats to vote as he did, on the latter one of 18.
Especially given apparent popular disenchantment with the
Iraq and with President Bush’s conduct of both it and the War on Terror
generally, Ford’s actions reignited the always-simmering discontent among his
hard-core Democratic critics, who consider Republican attack ads on Ford as too
“liberal” to be somewhere between an unintentional irony and a bad joke.
Not to talk too far out of school, but several indisputably
Republican and/or conservative sources acknowledge the possibility that Ford’s
increasingly conservative rhetoric may be more than election-year posturing.
One GOP loyalist and
erstwhile Bryant supporter is resolutely behind Corker, but he recently
conceded, somewhat reluctantly; “Harold Ford Jr. may be as conservative as it is
possible for an African-American Democrat to be.”
Tellingly, Ford’s campaign paraphernalia does not feature
the word “Democrat,” and, in a campaign that has focused unusual attention on
the longtime Republican preserve of East Tennessee, seems almost to have
proscribed use of the word on the stump. Even in home-town Memphis, he told a
headquarters crowd back in April, “I’m not a Democrat running up to Washington
yelling ‘Democrat, Democrat, Democrat.'”
*Another issue – mainly of concern to local
Democrats but important enough to have attracted attention on the editorial page
of the Nashville Tennessean – concerns the current 9th
District congressional trifecta, in which Democratic nominee Steve Cohen
is opposed both by Republican nominee Mark White and by “independent”
Jake Ford, the congressman’s brother, who says that, if elected, he would
caucus with House Democrats.
But in a recent radio
interview Jake Ford echoed his brother’s political ecumenism somewhat. Noting
that he was “running without a party affiliation,” the younger Ford
characterized his race as being “about people politics, not party politics,” and
said, “All too often people want you to get wound up in the issues Democrats
want you to hear about or Republicans want you to hear about. I just want to
represent the people.”
Rep. Ford himself continues to maintain a neutral posture
vis-à-vis Cohen and brother Jake. The congressman’s hesitancy has permitted the
flourishing of persistent rumors that the Ford brothers are operating their
campaigns in concert. Other than the common support of both by proud papa
Harold Ford Sr., there would seem to be little evidence for such an
assumption.
An equally persistent rumor – also unconfirmed and
unlikely- has it that Jake Ford’s continued pursuit of the congressional seat
might be, from the Ford clan’s point of view, conditional and subject to
negotiation.
In any case, Ford’s Democratic critics cite Rep. Ford’s
ambiguous attitude toward the three-way congressional race as yet another
impediment to their acceptance of his own candidacy. A refrain has begun to
recur in the posting of a hard corps of anti-Ford bloggers – most of them in
Ford’s back yard of Memphis and Shelby County but some also posting out of
Nashville and elsewhere.
Why, Democratic skeptics in the blogosphere say, should we
put aside our doubts and support Harold Ford Jr. as the party nominee when he
wont’ do the same for Steve Cohen?
Meanwhile, Ford defenders among longtime Democratic
partisans are increasingly advancing another question: What’s the big deal on
Ford’s credentials? they ask. Worst-case scenario: that a Senator Harold Ford
Jr. would be an old-fashioned Southern Democratic conservative of the sort
people in these parts once took for granted. So?
*The brouhaha over disgraced former Republican
congressman Mark Foley of Florida has prompted 7th District
Democratic congressional candidate Bill Morrison to hazard the
what-did-she-know-and-when-did-she-know-it formula against heavily favored GOP
incumbent Marsha Blackburn. Morrison’s thesis: that assistant majority
whip Blackburn, like House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other members of
the Republican congressional leadership, may have had some advance inkling of
Foley’s proclivities.
That’s probably a stretch, but the fact that Morrison chose
to ask it is some indication of the impact the Foley affair might be having on
Republican fortunes.
Another indication of problems on the GOP ranch is the fact
that 9th district congressional candidate White felt free last week,
during President Bush’s fund-raising stopover here for Corker, to challenge the
president for not responding to White’s suggestion of a joint tour of Memphis’
inner city. “Why
he will not follow me there is beyond me,” said Republican White, who hopes to
take advantage of the Cohen-Ford split but needs to pry loose from traditionally
Democratic African-American votes.