Phase One of the 2007 Memphis municipal election – early
voting – is over, as of Saturday. The final head-count of voters at the
Election Commission and at 14 satellite locations was nearly 75,000 – a huge
number — despite an alarm sounded week before last by incumbent mayor Willie
Herenton that the Diebold machines being employed for the vote were unreliable.
The mayor’s reaction was interpreted by his main
adversaries – councilwoman Carol Chumney and former MLGW head Herman Morris – as
a red herring and as what Morris called a “desperate” act. Whatever the case,
the record volume of responses during this year’s early voting attests to the
widespread public interest in both the mayor’s race and the 13 races for city
council.
And so crucial was the two-week period regarded that some
candidates – notably Reid Hedgepeth, running for the District 9, Position 3
seat; and Cecil Hale, vying for the District 9, Position 1 seat – devoted almost
all their time and energies to long stints of greeting voters at early-voting
sites (Hale taking pains always, both verbally and with signs, to remind
arriving voters that he was “U.S. Army, Retired”).
Even those hopefuls who varied their campaign activities to
include attendance at other events, including candidate forums, made a point of
logging considerable time at several of the early-site locations.
One of the East Memphis locations that was especially
favored was at White Station Church of Christ on Colonial Rd. There so many of
the District 9, District 5, and District 2 candidates gathered on a daily basis
that they often developed relationships transcending their rivalry for this or
that position.
That wasn’t inevitably the case, though. A distinct
coolness governed encounters between Hedgepeth and his supporters (prominent
among whom was his close friend Richard Smith, son of FedEx founder Fred Smith)
on one side and opponent Lester Lit, who had been critical of the political
newcomer — early, often, and explicitly — on the other. (It should be said that the Hedgepeth
crew, which also at various times and various locations included the candidate’s
mother and mother-in-law, were generally patient and gracious to an extreme.)
And, once in a while, cool turned into hot, as it did at
the Bert Ferguson Community Center location in Cordova, where competing District
2 candidates Brian Stephens and Todd Gilreath got into each other’s space one
too many times, leading to a heated verbal exchange between the two.
But mostly all was sweetness and light. Opponents stood
shoulder to shoulder with each other as they handed out literature to voters,
asked about each others’ families, and traded jokes and gossip in the manner of
ad hoc comrades in arms.
Entirely good-natured was the teasing that District 9,
Position 2 candidate Kemp Conrad took from his rivals for his habit of running
after new arrivals to be the first candidate they encountered. And, in the wake
of a now famous Commercial Appeal article outlining various
office-seekers’ financial and legal misfortunes, those who, like District 2
candidate Scott Pearce, took bigger-than-usual hits, got friendly (and maybe
even sincere) commiseration from other candidates.
Rarely, it should be said, was discussion of issues the
dominant leitmotif of exchanges between candidates and their respective
entourages – or, for that matter, in their conversations with prospective
voters.
Overall, as indicated, the atmosphere at White Station and
at other heavily frequented sites begat a kind of apolitical camaraderie among the
various competing hopefuls that one might associate with TV reality shows like
American Idol.
It remains to be seen what that might portend, for
better and for worse, in election years yet to come. But there is no
doubting that early voting is now a permanent part of the election culture in
these parts.
Greg Cravens