Month: July 2007

It seems that Nikki Tinker, the Alabama import and Pinnacle Airlines attorney who plans a reprise of her 2006 congressional race, has picked up some hard-hitting support.

In a press release about her progress so far, Tinker, who formally filed last month for a rematch with 9th District incumbent Steve Cohen, claims to have raised “over $100,000” in that period of time.

And, rather modestly, she buries one of her most surprising sources of support: “Contributions have come in from
Whitehaven, Orange Mound, Frazier, Hickory Hill, Binghampton, Germantown,
Cordova, Midtown and Downtown….”

Frazier? Joe Frazier, the former heavyweight champ who came here last year for an exhibition with Mayor Willie Herenton? The man who once decisioned Muhammad Ali?

Wow! Clearly, Tinker’s hoping for an early knockout.

Oh, wait…did she mean Frayser? Never mind!

BY
JACKSON BAKER |
JULY 12, 2007

Unless Michael Hooks Jr. holds to his resolve and stands
trial for his role in the Tennessee Waltz saga and somehow overcomes, the FBI
will shortly end up with a perfect record of convictions for the several
defendants who have been indicted in the sting since May 2005. That was the
situation Thursday – after Chattanooga state Senator Ward Crutchfield pleaded
guilty in federal court here to accepting a “gratuity” (i.e., a bribe) and
former Memphis state Senator Kathryn Bowers let it be known she, too, would cop
a guilty plea on Monday.

Looking glum and sounding taciturn but making an effort to
be chipper despite it all, Crutchfield appeared in Judge Daniel Breen’s 11th
floor courtroom at 1:30 p.m. and allowed as how he would “accept responsibility”
and plead guilty to Count 2 of his multi-count indictment – accepting $3,000 on
February 15, 2005 in the presence of FBI undercover agent Joe Carroll (who posed
as “E-Cycle” executive “Joe Carson”) and bagman Charles Love, one of several
Waltz defendants already convicted.

Lead prosecutor Tim DiScenza was unusually restrained and
seemed almost solicitous as he acknowledged to Judge Breen that the government
was satisfied with the partial plea. Nor did he quarrel with the terminology
favored by Crutchfield and his lead attorney, William Farmer of Nashville.
“Gratuity” or “bribe,” by whatever name it was called, it was still a felony,
and the 78-year-old Crutchfield will have to do some time.

The veteran senator had owned up to his age somewhat
grudgingly when Breen gave him the standard catechism administered to all
plea-changers. And his vanity surfaced at least once more when, after owning up
to a question about one of his academic degrees he insisted on detailing all the
others he had acquired in a distinguished career that now, at its nether end,
had turned unexpectedly sour.

Aside from that, and another burst or two of garrulity in
court, Crutchfield was diffidence itself. Upon arriving at the federal building,
he answered reporters’ questions about the case with a single word: “hot” –
presumably a comment on the weather, which was in the mid-90s at the time.

He was just as tight-lipped on his way out of court,
answering questions with shrugs or monosyllables or not at all. When someone
asked him what he intended to tell his wife when he saw her next, back in
Chattanooga, Crutchfield deadpanned, “’Hon, I’m home.’“

Other questions were handled by Farmer on is client’s
behalf. Asked to define “gratuity,” the lawyer answered with a thin smile, “It’s
a tip.” He was less flippant when he fielded a question directed to Crutchfield
concerning the likelihood of his still being in the state Senate when the
legislature reconvenes in January.

“I can say that he won’t,” said Farmer sadly. Meanwhile,
his client is scheduled for sentencing on Wednesday, November 28, the week after
Thanksgiving.

It came off more or less as planned – the “Draft A C”
press-conference-cum-rally held Wednesday morning in a vacated storefront at the
Southeast Memphis “Lamar Crossing” shopping center – in the heart of a
working-class, largely African-American territory that was Willie Herenton
turf all the way the last time a city election was held.

That was 2003, when the incumbent Memphis mayor’s
all-but-nominal opponent was John Willingham, a Cassandra-like figure, then a
county commissioner, whose accurate sense of the questionable FedEx Forum deal
and other possible boondoggles never quite translated into votes for himself.

Willingham, now out of office, is trying again and
attracting even less attention. Other candidates have been hoping to unseat the
four-term mayor – among them maverick city council member Carol Chumney, who led
some early polls and has a grass-roots constituency if not much money; Herman
Morris, the likeable if somewhat introverted former MLGW head, whose campaign
war-chest is much more impressive but who has already had to spend too much of it
just in an effort to get better known; and former FedEx executive Jim Perkins, a
man of ample private means who finally got his toe in the water at a Southeast
Memphis mayoral forum Tuesday night but has not yet made much of a splash.

“They’re all fine folks,” acknowledged restaurateur Tommy
Boggs, who sat at the head table of Wednesday’s draft-Wharton affair, but he,
like the others up there – political consultant Ron Redwing, citizen activist
Lois Stockton, former Shelby County mayor Bill Morris, and ministers La Simba
Gray and Bill Adkins – opined that only A C Wharton could unite the city in a
time of serious public disaffection with local government and with the man,
Willie Herenton, whose looming presence has basically defined the last era of
Memphis political history.

As is well known, various polls of late have indicated that the
incumbent’s hold on voter confidence has slipped considerably, among blacks as
well as whites. The last eight years have seen a gradual downhill slide for
Herenton, said Adkins. “It wasn’t just one thing,” shrugged the man who played a
major role in the dramatic 1991 campaign that made Herenton the city’s first
elected black mayor and began a dramatic shift to African-American dominance of
a relatively balanced version of city government.

But now, Adkins said, something had to give, and if Wharton
needed some public nudging to launch his own campaign for city mayor, they were
all there to provide it.

“We’re taking a risk so he can take a risk,” said Morris,
and Gray, clearly offended at Herenton’s suggestion that he and Adkins might be
looking for personal gain in launching the draft-Wharton movement, announced
that neither he nor the others could be bought. On the contrary, he was ready to
put his money where his mouth was, rising to sign a thousand-dollar check for
the still unlaunched campaign and encouraging others to follow his lead.

All the indications were that the object of all this
encouragement didn’t need much more coaxing. Two of his main aides, Jerry Fanion
and John Freeman, were on hand for the affair, and when asked if Wharton’s
failure to publicly discourage the movement in advance suggested his tacit
approval of it, Adkins shrugged again, repeating, “This is a draft.”

If so, the once-reluctant county mayor seemed about ready
to enlist. He would shortly issue a public statement acknowledging that he had
heard the public outcry (his draft notice, as it were) and pledging that he
would give it his full and dutiful attention.

There was only one mild blip on the draft movement’s screen
Wednesday morning. A latecomer to the press conference, brandishing a reporter’s
pad, said he had always voted for Wharton but had seen little in the two-term
county mayor’s public performance other than the same old propitiation of the
same old establishment and insisted on knowing, “What has he done for the
average person?”

There was an awkward pause and then, before he and the
others rose, signaling that this late-blooming skepticism was as good a reason
as any to end the press conference, Morris said, “He’s been
honest!”

No doubt. But an even more responsive answer might have
been that the smooth and likeable county mayor was above all things reassuring.
And a sense of assurance, the principals at Wednesday’s affair all said in so
many words, was the one thing most conspicuously lacking just now in the public
weal.

Only Memphians with long memories – and that would
certainly include all of those at the racially diverse head table of Wednesday’s
press conference – might have reflected on the irony that when Wharton, then
the county’s Public Defender, was evaluated at a variety of forums, along with
Herenton and several more activist types, as a possible “consensus” black
candidate for mayor in 1991, he was way back in the pack, never a contender.

That was as
good a sign as any that times as well as priorities have changed – and changed
dramatically — in the meantime.