A smaller crowd than expected — in more than one important
sense — turned out at Mount Vernon Baptist Church in South Memphis Tuesday
night for a pro-Willie Herenton “unity” rally that lacked the heavily ballyhooed
guest of honor, former congressman Harold Ford Sr.
Though the mayor made an effort to blame the media for the
no-show, the fact is that it was Herenton’s own campaign that put out word of
Ford’s appearance at the rally, and it was Ford himself, no one else, who
decided not to be there.
A few hundred people – not nearly enough to fill up the
church’s medium-sized sanctuary – were on hand for what was clearly intended to
be a reprise of the triumphant Ford-Herenton partnership that, coming together
in that campaign’s last week or two, won the day for the city’s first elected
black mayor in 1991.
There were several late rallies for Herenton in that
historic year — involving such personages as Ford, Martin Luther King III, and
Jesse Jackson — each of them filling every seat in the cavernous churches in which they
were held.
“They can’t control me!”
Tuesday night’s affair could boast a few city officials –
including five members of the current city council – and other local luminaries,
and, aided by a student choir and by stirring remarks from the Revs. James
Netters, Kenneth Whalum Jr., and Gina Stewart, among others, the mayor managed
to churn up a fair amount of enthusiasm and energy.
Through rhetoric that was, by turns, arch, dramatic, and
scathing, the mayor was able to demonstrate that he is a crowd-pleaser of the
sort that neither of his main opponents, councilwoman Carol Chumney or former
MLGW head Herman Morris, can aspire to being.
All the same, he could not deliver on the major personage
that his campaign had promised, and the rally at Mount Vernon was small as such
things go – especially at this stage of a campaign that Herenton insisted
Tuesday night was “already won.”
As at previous campaign appearances when the mayor had
addressed a predominantly African-American crowd, he expressed scorn of a white
power establishment that, he said Tuesday night, had founded the city in 1826
and ruled it until 1991 but now had “the audacity to suggest that I’ve been here
too long.” A further audacity was the selfsame establishment’s attempt to make
him, “the victim,” into a “villain.”
Commented Herenton, his voice dripping with sarcasm: “They
say I ‘don’t listen.” What they mean is they can’t control me!”
‘We’re going to have a rally’.
At another point, the mayor invoked the fact that today’s
African Americans, including himself, were the descendants of slaves who had
been brought to this country “in chains.”
The only explanation for the absence of Ford Sr. came late
in the mayor’s remarks, when he spoke scornfully of the media for even wondering
about the matter, then proceeded to spin a confusing tale of conversations
between himself and the former congressman that dated from the recent dedication
of the Harold Ford Sr. Villas development in Memphis.
The congressman had not attended that ceremony, but, said
the mayor, he and Ford had talked via long-distance telephone when
Ford, from his current home in Florida, expressed his gratitude for the honor of the dedication.
At some point Ford had professed support for his reelection
bid, Herenton said, and suggested to the mayor that he “‘wanted to come to
Memphis to help [me]’.”
Herenton said he assured Ford that his campaign was in good
shape but responded with this thought: “‘We’re going to have a rally. If you
come in, and the African-American community could see Harold Ford St. and Willie
Herenton in one accord, it would be powerful for our people, because they know
we’ve had a split politically. But it would be good for the body politic and for
African Americans to see their leaders come together. And…conversely, it would
be good for the other group to see that we can come together.’ That’s all
the invitation was.”
A shaggy-dog explanation
That was it. That bit of shaggy-dog explanation was all the
crowd and the larger electorate were going to get. No further elaboration as to
the no-show. The fact remained: Herenton had acknowledged that he “invited
Harold Ford here tonight,” and there was no Harold Ford there.
The fact remained also that several of the former
congressman’s intimates, when queried in the last day or two, said Ford had
confided to them his disinclination to get involved in this year’s mayoral
campaign, still less to make a special trip to Memphis to do so.
And the prospect of a Ford-Herenton entente that could have
been a huge coup for the mayor’s reelection campaign – perhaps enough to insure his
victory – had become just another in a series of questionable and exaggerated
claims. One had been Herenton’s shocking – but still unproven — allegation back
in June of a sexual-blackmail plot against him; another was his contention two
weeks ago — also unproven — that early-voting results were being skewed by faulty machines.
Now, with only two days to go before Election Day, and with
various polls suggesting he is anything but certain to win, Willie Herenton
will, for better or for worse, just have to go it alone the rest of the way.