Month: August 2007

Admitted “bag man” Charles Love, who became a key
cooperating witness in the Tennessee Waltz investigation, was sentenced to one
year and a day in prison Thursday.

Love, a member of the Hamilton County (Chattanooga) Board
of Education for nine years, began cooperating with the government before the
investigation became public in 2005 after he was confronted with taking $28,000,
some of which he kept and some of which he gave to elected officials.

The sentence handed down by U.S. district judge Daniel
Breen is well below the sentencing guidelines of 30-37 months for the offenses
of extortion and theft of government funds with which Love was charged.

Love told Breen he regretted his actions.

“I want to state my remorse,” he said. “I want to apologize
to the people of Hamilton County and the state of Tennessee.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim DiScenza told Breen that Love’s
cooperation was helpful to the government and began within two days of his being
told he was a target in the Tennessee Waltz investigation. He recommended that
Love get a reduction from the sentencing guidelines of 50 percent.

Attorney Bryan Hoss, who represented Love, said that Love
has received anonymous death threats for his cooperation with the government. He
told Breen that Love wore a wire 20-25 times during the course of the
investigation at great personal cost. He was prepared to testify against
powerful senator Ward Crutchfield until Crutchfield pleaded guilty in July.

“He (Love) has effectively been run out of the state,” said
Hoss.

Love was caught on tape in secret conversations with FBI
agents posing as E-Cycle executives. On one tape, he said, “Everyone has their
deal.” But Hoss said Love had not taken money illegally prior to Tennessee
Waltz/

“He embellished when he first met with E-Cycle about doing
this before,” Hoss said.

Love will remain free on bond. The prison where he will
serve his time has not been decided, but Breen will recommend a site close to
Chattanooga.

Mayoral candidate Herman Morris’ campaign got a tangible boost Thursday as the two principal co-founders of the now defunct “Draft A C” movement — the Revs. Bill Adkins and La Simba Gray — explained they had now “recovered” and were giving their support to Morris as Memphis’ best hope for the future.

Another veteran of the draft movement, restaurateur Tommy Boggs, was on hand at the candidate’s headquarters for the announcement, while yet a fourth — former county mayor Bill Morris — was said to be on board, though absent at a University of Memphis official function.

“This is a new day for the campaign for mayor of the city of Memphis,” said Morris as he accepted the endorsements of the former “Draft A C” principals, along with several others from prominent African-American ministers.

Adkins, who said after county mayor Wharton’s disavowal of a candidacy last month that he wouldn’t be endorsing anyone else, said he changed his mind after getting three visits from Morris that convinced him of the former MLGW head’s mayoral qualities.

In a press release accompanying the press conference, Adkins coupled Morris with Wharton as potential city/county colleagues: “Just imagine what the dream team of Herman Morris and A C Wharton could do for our city.”

At the press conference, Morris renewed his call for other candidates to follow his example by taking a drug test and demonstrating they were additive-free.

He repeated an assertion he had made last week at a meeting of the Germantown Democratic Club that he was the one candidate drawing equally from both blacks and whites, but he declined to say again, as he had then, that Mayor Willie Herenton and city councilwoman Carol Chumney appeared more to specific racial voting blocs.

It may take some time to evaluate the enduring effects, but
the fact is that the three main contenders in the Memphis mayor’s race all have
found something to brag about in the several days since the candidate field
became complete:

Mayor Willie Herenton finished first in a straw poll held by the Shelby
County Democrats at the Rendezvous Restaurant last Thursday night. And he did so
by typically Herentonian means, without bothering to attend the event.

A few score
Democrats showed up at the event to pay $50 a head for the privilege of voting
in a mayoral straw poll while raising money for the party. The only mayoral
candidate who was there from start to finish was Herman Morris. Carol
Chumney came late and addressed the crowd, as had Morris early. John
Willingham had a spokesperson on hand who talked him up before the
attendees.

Only the mayor
was absent and went unspoken for. But his was the name called out by party
chairman Keith Norman when it came time to announce the winner. Norman
declined to give out any numbers or declare who finished second or third.

What was proved
by the event and by its outcome? That Herenton has a hard core and a network
that serve him well, for all the fact that he’s not campaigning this year in the
conventional sense — no fundraisers, no polls, no inclination to participate in
forums.

The mayor’s
still very much a power, though, among inner-city Democratic cadres and among
the Teamsters, both of which groups turned up in force.

A scientific
poll? Of course not. What it did prove, however, was that the mayor – who
presided over a couple of weekend headquarters openings – is not lacking where
G.O.T.V. (Get-out-the-vote) is the game. And that’s what the game will be during
early voting and on October 4th.

For her
part, councilwoman Chumney turned up the leader in a fresh trial heat by
pollster Berje Yacoubian showing her to be leading a second-place Herenton and a
third-place Herman Morris. The numbers were, respectively, 33 percent for
Chumney to Herenton’s 29 percent to 14 percent for Morris.

Underlining
the surprising showing for Chumney, whom many observers had thought to have
declined from her peak as a leader in early spring polls, was the fact that
Yacoubian had made public statements only a week earlier, telling Fox 13 News,
which also broke the news of his poll, that Herenton was a “good bet” to be
leading the field.

Au contraire, when Yacoubian got around to toting things up. His sampling
of some 300 presumably representative voters showed Chumney to be considered a
better bet than Herenton on issues like crime and education, with Herenton
having a lead only on the matter of economic development.

Among other things, what that meant was that Chumney’s standing had apparently
survived her widely publicized refusal to vote, back in April, for a council
resolution asking for the resignation of Joseph Lee, then still at the helm of
MLGW. The fact that the resolution, offered by colleague Jack Sammons, then
failed by a single vote was thought to have been an embarrassment for Chumney.
So was the fact that her own previously offered resolution, directing Herenton
to accept a much earlier resignation offer from Lee, had failed to draw a
second.

Both circumstances underscored Chumney’s reputation as a go-it-alone maverick
with few if any allies in city government. Yacoubian’s poll results suggest that
voters may find Chumney’s non-observance of the maxim “go along to get along”
more attractive than not – especially in a time of multiple indictments and
other evidence of corruption among local officials.

Though
Morris had reason to be discouraged by all of this, his demeanor, on a
stepped-up round of activity, didn’t show it. He seemed unfeignedly confident as
recently as Monday night, when the former head of both MLGW and the local NAACP
(an alphabet spread that in theory encompassed a good deal of potentially
centrist turf) addressed a meeting of the Germantown Democrats.

Parenthesis: one of the peculiarities of the current political season –
as noticed both by ourselves and by Mediaverse blogger Richard
Thompson – is the number of forums, fundraisers, speaking appearances, and
other events involving candidates in the Memphis city election that have taken
place in the bordering municipality of Germantown.

That has to do both with the fact of overlapping populations (many members of
the Germantown Democratic Club are residents of Cordova and Memphis voters) and
with the circumstance that, with governmental consolidations of various kinds in
the air, people in the near suburbs are taking an unusual interest in how things
go in the Memphis voting.

Consolidation was, in fact, one of the matters that Morris dealt with
forthrightly during Monday night’s meeting. He endorsed it, categorically, and
went so far as to express impatience with half-measures like the current
inter-governmental talks involving an enhanced liaison of Memphis police with
the Sheriff’s Department.

“Consolidate everything!” Morris pronounced, and to that end, he recommended
following the example of Louisville, where city and county voters voted
consolidation in after an extensive period of public discussions. Similarly, he
said, Memphis and Shelby County voters should be paid the “respect” of having
the issue “put in front of us.”

When a club member said she was “tired of” questions about impropriety
surrounding various officials now in office, citing as examples city councilman
Edmund Ford and state Senator Ophelia Ford, Morris barely
hesitated before responding, “I am, too. And I’m tired of people reelecting
them.” Contrasting his own tenure at MLGW to that of the now deposed Lee, Morris
said, “I’m not indicted, and I’m not going to jail.”

In general, Morris cast himself as Mr. Candor, attributing the financial
problems of Memphis Networx, which he championed while leading MLGW, to the
short-sightedness of the profit-focused private investors involved in the
public/private initiative. He freely acknowledged hatching thoughts of a mayoral
run in December 2003, immediately after being forced out of his utility perch by
Herenton. And he flatly declared, “I don’t trust those numbers,” concerning
Herenton’s current economic forecasts.

He suggested that his major opponents drew their strength from white or black
enclaves, respectively, “while I’m 50-50, right in the middle.”

One note being struck resoundingly in private by Morris’ campaign people is the
prospect, in fact, that he will shortly inherit some of the racially balanced
support that was evidenced in the short-lived “Draft A C” campaign to induce a
mayoral candidacy by Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton.

With only two months to go, Morris needs such a boost, and he needs it now.

UPDATE:
Various media were reporting late Tuesday that three members of the “Draft A C”
committee were indeed ready to give Morris public support: the Revs. La
Simba Gray and Bill Adkins, and former county Mayor Bill Morris.

The
fourth name candidate in the Memphis mayor’s race, John Willingham,
meanwhile, resolved to soldier on, despite the fact that few observers (and no
polls do date) have given him much chance. “Look what happened in 2002,” he
said, a reminder of his runaway upset win that year over the late Morris Fair,
then an incumbent Shelby County Commissioner.

Last week’s print version of this column, by the way, erred in suggesting that
Willingham had plans to convert Shelby Farms, now administered by the non-profit
Shelby Farms Conservancy, into an Olympic Village. As was reported correctly
online, it is the Fairgrounds that Willingham has in min

It’s been one whole week since the Memphis mayoral field got set on the ballot (unless, of course, Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges wins his appeal to get back on). Who’s gone up and who’s gone down in the meantime? Jackson Baker takes a look in “Political Beat”.

The most powerful force in the universe is not gravity, earthquakes, or tsunamis. It is American parents bent on getting their children into the school of their choice.

This force — abetted in Greater Memphis by cars and roads, separate city and county school systems, private schools, and the proximity of Mississippi schools — is the reason why the latest federal court desegregation order on Shelby County schools is doomed to fail.

To paraphrase a famous quotation, U.S. district judge Bernice Donald has made her ruling. Now let’s see her make it stick.

At least Donald acknowledged the elephant in the living room: The new Southwind High School between Germantown and Collierville will be, if not this year then next year or the year after that, a virtually all-black high school. As her ruling says, it is expected to have an 88 percent or higher black enrollment on the day it opens this month.

Overall, the Shelby County school system is 34 percent black. There is some nuance and a lot of historical context in Donald’s 62-page order, but the gist of it is that racially identifiable schools are a no-no in the system, and individual schools should more closely mirror the system demographics, plus or minus 15 percent, in both their student body and their faculty.

Courts can rule all they want about public schools, and for a year or two they can dictate the demographics of schools. But parents and politicians are free agents. The people’s court is going to challenge and eventually overrule the federal court. This is especially true in Memphis when a suburban school starts out as a county school and becomes a city school via annexation. In 1980, Shelby County built Kirby High School. It was majority white. Memphis took it over in 2000. Last year, it was 1 percent white. In 2000, Memphis and Shelby County jointly opened Cordova High School, which is now a city school. Its white enrollment declined to 41 percent in 2006-’07, from 60 percent in 2004-’05.

Southwind High School is in the Memphis reserve area. Memphis School Board members approved the site and will eventually take it over. Last year, the Memphis City Council and the Memphis and Shelby County Office of Planning and Development did everything but pull the trigger on the so-called southeast annexation. It failed mainly because council members Tom Marshall and Dedrick Brittenum recused themselves.

Marshall was the architect of the annexation plan. He is still on the council until the end of this year. He is also chairman. He told the Flyer this week he expects the council to take up annexation after the October election. If and when it does, he says this time he will vote for it.

If Memphis annexes Southwind High and selective (i.e., not-gated) nearby neighborhoods — even if it delays the effective date for a few years — then the county school system has to recalculate its racial math. Hundreds of black students and a sprinkling of white students will shift from the county system to the city system.

History suggests that the harder Donald pushes to eliminate racially identifiable schools, the more “churn” she will produce from the people’s court. In 1971, another Memphis federal judge ordered forced busing to desegregate schools. Within three years, nearly 30,000 white students left the system and Memphis had the largest private-school population in the country. Today, more than 95 percent of the 115,000 MCS students attend racially identifiable schools because there are fewer than 9,000 whites in the system.

In her ruling, Donald said the county school district “does not yet merit a passing grade,” and she called the school board’s compliance track record “decidedly mixed.”

In some ways, her historical analysis is generous. She could have pointed out (but did not) that the county board, with no district seats, was all-white until a couple of years ago and that its former superintendent allowed a single real estate developer, Jackie Welch, to pick most of the school sites. In other respects, however, her ruling is naive. It ignores the reality of school choice broadly defined to include magnet schools, separate city and county school systems, private schools, and DeSoto County schools. In the long run, there is nothing that Donald or any federal judge can do to eliminate racially identifiable schools.

The ruling overlooks something else. The Shelby County schools have grown from black flight as well as white flight. In 1987, the system was only 14 percent black compared to 34 percent today. The neighborhoods in the southeast annexation area are primarily middle class. Residents include former Shelby County mayor Jim Rout.

Southwind High School is mentioned only once in the ruling, so it’s impossible to say how much it weighed on Donald’s decision. Appointed by Bill Clinton in 1996, she is the lone black judge on the federal bench in Memphis. Like her judicial colleagues, Donald, a native of DeSoto County and graduate of the University of Memphis, does not grant interviews about pending matters and lets her rulings speak for themselves. What can be said, however, is that Southwind High is a far cry from the dilapidated schools with no air-conditioning and third-hand textbooks of the 1960s and ‘70s — a period the ruling describes in great detail, for whatever reason.

Most parents will probably skip the history, arithmetic, and the 62 pages and get to the bottom line: What does it mean for my house, my neighborhood, or my kid?

Donald’s order calls for a special master — a “neutral expert” in desegregation issues— to be picked within 30 days. The county school board is supposed to achieve full compliance, as determined by Donald and the special master, by 2012. Apparently, Southwind High School will be allowed to open this month as a “racially identifiable”county school that doesn’t meet the county guidelines. After this year, it’s anyone’s guess.

With positive leadership and a focus on excellence instead of race, Southwind High has a chance to be a very good school. Instead, sadly, it has already been called a dumping ground by one neighborhood leader.

Donald writes about “the momentous, irreversible nature of this court’s pending decision.” But it could be momentous in a different way than she thinks.

The latest federal court desegregation order on Shelby County schools is doomed to fail. To paraphrase a famous quotation, U.S. district judge Bernice Donald has made her ruling. Now let’s see her make it stick.

For the story, go to “Political Beat”.