Categories
Editorial Opinion

City and County

Memphis mayor A C Wharton got in some smack talk last Wednesday, in
response to Shelby County commissioner Joe Ford’s critical remarks
earlier in the week about the financial prowess of Wharton’s recent
administration as county mayor.

Ford made the remarks in the course of his then still-unresolved
contest with fellow commissioner J.W. Gibson to become interim county
mayor.

Midway through the nearly 30 ballot-marathon that failed to produce
a winner, both Ford and Gibson bridled at Commissioner Deidre Malone’s
attempt to break a recurring five-five impasse in the voting by
nominating a would-be compromise candidate, current county CAO and
finance director Jim Huntzicker, who occupied that position under
Wharton.

Gibson, the beneficiary of Malone’s votes up to that point, seemed
mildly put out, saying to Malone, “You never cease to amaze me.” But
Ford used stronger language, suggesting that the “former
administration” was guilty of outright fiscal mismanagement that could
result in “disaster,” if its financial practices were to be continued
for the next several months.

When asked about Ford’s criticism, Wharton responded, “He doesn’t
even know enough about the question to have any idea whether what he’s
saying is ill-founded or well-founded.”

Which is a way of saying that the current city mayor and former
county mayor can’t get shed of his former venue, whether he wants to or
not. And, as a well-known exponent of city/county consolidation,
Wharton may not want to.

Reflecting later in the week on the then ongoing stalemate in
selecting an interim county mayor, Wharton had this to say:

“If you want something to talk about, one way to get out of that
dilemma would be for them to say, ‘Well, we really don’t need anybody
to do anything. A C’s been over here. Why don’t we sign an inter-local
agreement? We can sign a contract with the city to run this thing for a
year.’ And, bingo, consolidation!”

Sporting one of those patented Wharton half-grins that suggest a
thought part-whimsical, part-serious, the mayor continued: “Go to the
lawyers. You can sign an inter-local agreement to do anything. And I
wouldn’t charge anything, because, see, under the charter I’m not
supposed to have outside employment.”

Since the ultmate resolution of the interim-mayor situation was due
to be resolved late Tuesday afternoon — some hours after our
deadline — we cannot say whether the new city mayor’s doubtless
whimsical proposal was acted upon or even taken seriously. All we can
say is that it should have been.

At press time, we didn’t know, either, whether the estimable Mike
Carpenter, a county commissioner lately serving as chair of Wharton’s
city transition team, might become a permanent part of that transition.
Rumors have been a-bounding about Carpenter’s shifting venues to hold
the city CAO job or some other job of consequence in City Hall. We have
publicly entertained some of those rumors ourselves — mainly
because we’d like to see it happen.

The ongoing dialogue between city and county governments, along with
the back-and-forth shifts and rumors of shifts of the two governments’
personnel, are continuing signs of the inevitable consolidation, we
think. And this is a consummation that bears serious consideration.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

The War on Facts

Within hours after the House of Representatives approved health-care
reform by a narrow margin, Republicans predicted retribution at the
polls next fall. They promised to make every Democrat regret that
historic vote as the first step toward the reversal of power in
Washington. And as the current debate has proved, they aren’t going to
let honesty become an obstacle.

For a preview of coming attractions, simply turn on Fox News or any
right-wing radio talker, where the falsehoods of the 2010 midterm
campaign are being field-tested today.

You can watch Dick Morris blather about the “death panels” that will
terminate your mother and father while illegal immigrants are provided
lavish care and about how you will be put in jail for failing to
purchase health insurance. You can hear Karl Rove complain that we will
“beggar ourselves” by adding more than $1.4 trillion to the federal
debt. You can listen to Frank Luntz claim that voters disdain reform
because of “the cost to the deficit.”

These gentlemen have little expertise in health or economics but
much experience in distracting, misinforming, and frightening the
public. Aside from talking on television, that is their job. How little
do they know — and how much do they simply fabricate?

It is safe to assume that Morris knows very well there are no death
panels in any of the health-reform bills; that those bills expressly
forbid coverage of illegal immigrants; and that none of them includes
any provision to incarcerate citizens who lack insurance coverage. It
is also reasonable to assume, based solely on the fiscal record of the
Bush administration in which he served, that Rove never worries about
budget deficits, government waste, or gross corruption unless Democrats
are in charge.

As for Luntz, he specializes in political prophecies that are
self-fulfilling. When he says voters are infuriated by the cost of
health-care reform, for instance, that merely indicates he is trying to
make them feel that way. He will succeed — all three will succeed
— only by drawing attention away from actual facts and
figures.

So perhaps voters ought to listen instead to the Congressional
Budget Office, which by contrast has earned a reputation for candor,
accuracy, and nonpartisan truthfulness. After painstaking analysis, the
CBO estimated that the House health-care reform bill, known as the
Affordable Health Care for America Act, would reduce the federal
deficit by about $109 billion during its first 10 years. To repeat: The
bill passed by the House Democrats on the evening of Saturday, November
7th, “would yield a net reduction in federal budget deficits of $109
billion over the 2010-2019 period.” The CBO experts also costed out the
Senate Finance Committee bill and found that it would cut the federal
deficit by more than $80 billion during that first decade.

Those reassuring conclusions derive from other basic facts about
reform that tend to be ignored or concealed. Reform will reduce
wasteful spending by hundreds of billions of dollars annually and will
depend for financing on excise taxes imposed on the wealthiest 1
percent of the population.

Much of the misinformation about the costs of reform comes from the
belief — fostered by conservatives — that the
government-run health plan known as the “public option” would impose a
huge burden on the federal budget. So says Joseph Lieberman, the
independent senator from Connecticut who has threatened to filibuster
the bill.

Section 322 of the Affordable Health Care for America Act says
clearly and concisely that people insured under the public option will
pay premium rates “at a level sufficient to fully finance the costs of
health benefits provided by the public health insurance option; and
administrative costs related to operating the public health insurance
option.” In short, the public option will involve no new federal
expenditure.

Any bill that reaches the president’s desk will leave much to be
desired, especially with respect to cost containment, preventive care,
and new systems of compensation to encourage improved results. But it
should be judged according to real merits and defects — not the
delusions and distortions that now dominate the debate.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

Hello, Goodbye

It’s hard to imagine a greater contrast within a 24-hour window for
University of Memphis athletics.

Friday night at FedExForum, 17,584 fans turned out to greet
32-year-old rookie basketball coach Josh Pastner for the Tigers’
regular-season opener against Jackson State. Then at noon Saturday, an
announced 18,031 fans sat in the Liberty Bowl to say goodbye to
55-year-old football coach Tommy West, whose dismissal after nine years
at the Tiger helm was announced five days earlier.

As tends to happen with greetings and sendoffs, one was positive
(Pastner is undefeated as a head coach), the other not so much (West
remains a victory shy of 50 wins with the Tigers). Sports are
transient, particularly the college variety. Last weekend will stick,
though, for Pastner and West.

“After the game, Mr. R.C. Johnson came and gave me the game ball,”
said Pastner to a contingent of media after the Tigers beat Jackson
State, 82-53. As if the coach needed to enhance his
innocent-as-a-choir-boy image, he actually referred to the U of M
athletic director as “Mr. R.C. Johnson.”

“I took the ball and I told him — and I mean it — this
has nothing to do with me. It’s about the players. The players win the
games. This will never be me. Credit goes to the guys. They stepped up,
gutted it out, and found a way.” He may be new to the gig, but Pastner
has his victory cliches polished and packaged.

What he’s missing, to this point, is that the 2009-10 basketball
season is very much about him. The first legitimate roar in FedExForum
this season came during the pregame video, when a gleaming face above a
white shirt — that would be Pastner’s — appeared behind a
rotating basketball-as-globe as the theme from 2001: A Space
Odysse
y blasted from the arena’s sound system. He will not score a
point this winter, or dish out an assist, or grab a rebound. But don’t
doubt that Josh Pastner is the star of his team. (The news Saturday
that yet another recruiting gem — Atlanta’s Jelan Kendrick
— is on his way to Memphis only cements this region’s devotion to
the Pastner Way.)

The atmosphere was considerably more subdued when West met the
Memphis media one final time Saturday afternoon after his Tigers fell
to UAB, 31-21. (On the list of things West will not miss about his
career as Memphis coach: press conferences in the back of what was once
the visitors’ locker room at the Liberty Bowl.) Unlike his emotional
statement on November 9th, though, West had a firm grip on his comments
and his sense of humor.

“I’ve got strong emotions,” he said. “But I’m not going to go into a
tirade today. If that’s what you’re waiting for, I’m not going to do
it. I took four Xanax before I came in here.

“Nine years is a long time. I’m going to miss being here, I really
will. This is a good place, and there are good people here. This
happens. It’s our business. You hate it for the seniors that you’re
having this kind of year. A sour year. I’m not worried about myself.
But most of those players won’t play again. I’m gonna coach some more,
so it’s not about me. I hate it for them. I’d like to have seen them go
out at home the right way.”

West described the calls he’s received from his peers in Conference
USA and managed a chuckle in recollecting the chats. “Everybody likes
you this year, because they beat you,” he said.

On an idyllic, 70-degree afternoon for football, I counted a
solitary sign in the Liberty Bowl that acknowledged West’s pending
departure. Not exactly poetic, it read “W the Coach.” The letter stood
for “West,” of course. Sadly this year, it can’t stand for “win.”

Categories
We Recommend We Recommend

Hell on Earth

I’m so confused. If the fiery pangs of eternal damnation are —
as French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre suggested — a metaphor for
“other people,” why on earth would the North American Sartre Society
hold a conference bringing people together, thus creating hell? Could
it be a masochistic urge to bathe in a river of reflective
consciousness? Or is the lure of a jug-wine and cheese-cube mixer so
great that even academics who should know better will risk their lives
by revealing to their colleagues that they are nothing but remote
objects with Merlot-soaked egos?

If any of this ridiculous musing interests, entertains, or offends
you, then you can go to hell. And by that I mean the North American
Sartre Society’s biennial conference, which is being hosted by the
University of Memphis’ Marcus W. Orr Center for the Humanities. The
three-day conference, which features moderated discussions on topics
such as “Violent Freedom and Violent Acts,” kicks off Thursday,
November 19th, at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art with Beaujolais
Nouveau, crepes, and a one-night-only performance of No Exit,
Sartre’s best-known play and the source of his most famous quotation,
“Hell is other people.”

No Exit follows three despicable characters into a
surprisingly bland afterlife. Joseph Garcin, an adulterer and coward,
Inès Serrano, a manipulative murder accomplice, and Estelle
Rigault, a lusty gold-digging killer, are locked in a room where they
steadily drive one another insane with their reflections of the past
and projections into the future. Hell is presented as a vast structure
or a series of structures made up of small rooms and winding halls like
a hotel. Or maybe a college campus.

Categories
Music Music Features

“Solo” Flight

Dan Auerbach is halfway through his winter tour, sitting in a diner
in Baltimore, Maryland. He’s got a fever — nothing as extreme as
H1N1 or as ridiculous as the boogie-woogie flu, but an annoying
low-grade illness that’s got him doped up on Advil’s over-the-counter
flu remedy and a host of nasal decongestants.

“Right now, I’m getting to be lazy, which is both a good and bad
thing,” Auerbach croaks by phone from this tour stop. “I’m trying to
feel better, but that means that everybody else has to pull my
weight.”

Everybody else. The words have an interesting ring for the 30-year
old guitarist, who, after eight years with the Black Keys, the duo he
formed with drummer Patrick Carney, is touring with a wealth of
performers, including his backing band, Hacienda, and opening acts
Justin Townes Earle and Jessica Lea Mayfield.

“When I’m on the road, I feel good when I’m surrounded with really
good, honest, genuine people,” Auerbach says. “It’s a lot like being
around family.”

Family is key for the Akron, Ohio-born rocker, who wrote and
recorded Keep It Hid, his first solo album, with the assistance
of his father and uncle.

Auerbach’s dad, Charles, accompanied him on a life-changing road
trip to Junior Kimbrough’s juke joint in Holly Springs, Mississippi, a
decade ago, while his uncle James Quine is a living link between
Auerbach and the late punk guitar legend Robert Quine. In the studio,
Quine served up snarling riffs à la the Stooges’ James
Williamson on the song “Street Walkin’,” while the senior Auerbach
penned the stark heartbreaker “Whispered Words (Pretty Lies).”

On the road, Hacienda — a San Antonio band that Auerbach
describes as “hugely inspired by Stax Records, old soul records, and
old rock-and-roll records, a lot like the Sir Douglas Quintet, a group
they never heard” — provides the brooding accompaniment for
Auerbach’s sound, which soars between folk and blues and 1970s-era hard
rock yet never alights anywhere for long.

“Everybody I’m inspired by is dead, for the most part,” Auerbach
notes, with a dry laugh. “Over the last few years, I feel less akin to
those people and more my own person. It doesn’t make my love for them
any less.”

“Those people” include a wealth of Southern talent, ranging from
Kimbrough and Sam Cooke to Ike Turner, who inspired and participated in
the recording of the Black Keys’ last album, Attack &
Release
, yet died before it was released in early 2008.

“The combination of [producer] Danger Mouse and Ike was so
intriguing,” Auerbach recalls. “Who in the hell would’ve thought we’d
ever work with those two people, especially combined on one project? We
weren’t there for Ike’s sessions, but there were a couple of songs that
he finished electric guitar on and sang on.”

More recently, the Black Keys and co-producer Mark Neill traveled to
Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to make a follow-up to Attack &
Release
at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, where Aretha Franklin
recorded “Respect” and “Chain of Fools” and Percy Sledge cut “When a
Man Loves a Woman.”

The small-town tedium, noted by the Rolling Stones during sessions
for Sticky Fingers and captured in the documentary Gimme
Shelter
, was hardly what Auerbach and Carney expected.

“I have no idea how things got recorded there,” Auerbach says. “For
the 10 days Patrick and I were in Muscle Shoals, we both wanted to
shoot ourselves!” Then he gets serious:

“We went down there in complete seclusion, stayed at the Sam
Phillips Marriott in Florence. We like to get out of town, and we just
wanted to go someplace that had history. Muscle Shoals Sound Studio
really did it for us. We recorded 16 songs in 10 days.”

When he rolls into Memphis for his concert at Minglewood Hall on
Friday night, Auerbach plans to take his entire contingent to
Shangri-La Records and the Stax Museum of American Soul Music, where
he’ll shoehorn in a few more history lessons before it’s time for the
sound check.

“I love Memphis,” says Auerbach, who can discuss the nuances of
obscure blues tunes and Stax songs turned rap samples then nimbly shift
gears to talk about the merits of contemporary acts like Jay Reatard
and Those Darlins.

“The musicians I like [in Memphis] nowadays are so far removed from
everything I was originally inspired by,” he muses. “I dunno what it is
about Memphis. Obviously, it’s a mix of South and North and black and
white. I dunno what it is, but the grass is always greener.”

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Introducing: a rising star in local rap.

On God, The Government, The Game, local rap up-and-comer
Teflon Don is helped out here and there by more established local stars
such as Tom Skeemask and Nasty Nardo. And though Nardo’s swaggering
flow on “Let’s Get It Get It,” in particular, is a welcome addition,
Teflon Don (aka Don Askew Jr.) doesn’t really need the help on this
impressive, promising debut.

Though his music is familiar — built on skittery high-hat
beats, springy synths, and a rumbling low end — Teflon Don
makes it clear from the outset that he’s aiming to be a somewhat
different kind of Memphis rapper.

“You can count on this/I spit experience,” he raps on the opening
“It’s Go’n Be Alright.” “Late at night sometimes when I cry I really
reminisce/Especially about the past/It’s getting real ugly/I wish I was
a kid in bed where my mother tucked me … Right now I see your
struggle/I cannot let it go when I think about my baby brother/Oh yeah,
we love each other/He better not ever hustle.”

Horny club anthems such as “The Way She Move” and “Shorty So Fine”
establish that Teflon Don is no schoolmarm, but this North Memphis
native sees a rising crime rate as a problem, not an opportunity, and
college as a way out, with the military as a last-chance escape plan.
This is what’s called clear-headed realism. “Call yourself a man cause
you started selling dope?” he sniffs on the title track, “Pussy-ass
nigga, I’d rather sell my hood hope.”

On God, The Government, The Game, Teflon Don is pure
Southern, rough-edged musically and vocally but with a head on his
shoulders and a willingness to tap into honest emotions: At his best,
he’s somewhat reminiscent of young David Banner. If he generally avoids
some of his scene’s lyrical potholes, he can’t escape some of the
musical ones.

There are overly repetitive choruses here (“Count My Money”). And
sometimes the music gets draggy without the saving grace of a
compelling groove (“I Represent”). But overall this is a promising
introduction to someone who’s talented enough to push his game much
further. (“God, the Government, the Game,” “Let’s Talk About,” “Going
Through Some Thangs”) — Grade: B

Categories
Music Record Reviews

Things Are Not All right

It’s been a breakout year for local Goner Records, whose
busiest-ever release schedule has raised their national profile and
made them one of the most interesting and productive indie rock (if not
quote “indie rock”) labels around.

The latest Goner release is Things Are Not All Right, the
label’s second from Chicago trio CoCoComa, which is led by
drummer/singer Bill Roe and guitarist/singer Lisa Roe, initially a
simple husband-and-wife duo smartly rounded out by bass and organ from
tag-along Mike Fitzpatrick.

Things Are Not All Right — the album’s 10 songs
clocking in at a rambunctious 26 minutes — is fun, energetic
genre music. It’s unlikely to appeal beyond the garage-rock scene in
the way that the likes of the Reigning Sound and Jay Reatard do, but
it’s sonic catnip for aficionados of the form.

Truthfully, it’s the kind of rough, simple stuff that improves live
in a dark club with sweating, bouncing compatriots, but Things Are
Not All Right
is pretty okay on disc too. And a lot of the time
it’s more than that.

Bill Roe leading off the urgent “It Won’t Be Long” with the promise
“Our love is strong/It will endure” is a righteous, winning moment. The
borderline rockabilly breakdown on the final stretch of “Never Be True”
swings hard. And vocal harmonies are a cut above throughout. (“It Won’t
Be Long,” “Lie to Me,” “Never Be True”) — CH

Grade: B+

Categories
Book Features Books

Island Style

First, he was calling from his home on Deer Island, Maine, to let me
know of his latest book. Then he was headed for the Frankfurt Book Fair
in Germany to publicize that book, and it wasn’t such a great time to
talk. Then he was in transit again — on his way to Havana, where
he has a house too (in addition to homes in New York and on St. Croix).
But on his way to Cuba, I finally had a chance to catch up with Michael
Connors (who grew up in Memphis). He was in Naples — Naples,
Florida — where Connors, author of the new (and beautifully
produced) Caribbean Houses: History, Style, and Architecture
(Rizzoli), was in the middle of a morning walk. He apologized for being
a little out of breath, but he was eager to talk about Caribbean
Houses
, the author’s latest look (after French Island
Elegance
, Caribbean Elegance, and Cuban Elegance) at
the antiques — and architecture — of the islands.

Memphis Flyer: In Caribbean Houses, you not
only consider the decorative arts but also the architecture of
Caribbean colonial culture — a centuries-old mix of cultures.You
take in more than the furnishings to look at these townhouses and
plantation great houses as a whole. That’s a broadening of your
interests, no?

Michael Connors: I couldn’t continue to imitate myself, but
I’ll admit, it was a learning curve. I’m not as “acclimated” to
architecture as I am to the decorative arts. I enjoyed learning what I
didn’t know — the terminology of architecture — but the
decorative arts follow architecture: Romanesque, Renaissance, Baroque,
Classical. I knew the periods.

The hundreds of photographs by a team of photographers in
Caribbean Houses are spectacular. You were on hand for
every shoot?

I had a number of photographers, because my main photographers
weren’t always available. When these houses open up, you can’t wait,
unless you want to take years to make a book. I’m not that way. I don’t
like waiting.

And yes, I’m there for each photograph. I look through the camera. I
know what’s in every frame. I know what I want to talk about in the
text. I know what I want to show my readers. This book tells its story
through the eye, so the photography’s extra important. And so are the
stylists who helped me out. I’m not good with flowers.

How long did it take for you to put together Caribbean
Houses
?

Two years, solid. I sold my antiques gallery in New York in 2007.
I’m dedicating myself strictly to writing now, and I’ve already got
another book, English Island Elegance, ready. It should be
published a year from now.

I’m also contracted to do a book on historic Cuban houses, so I’m
living in Havana now — 21 days at a time, because that’s all the
time the country permits — and I’m really enjoying it. But in
Cuba, when it comes to historic structures, it’s often preservation by
neglect. At some point, though, neglect turns into deterioration.

You ever get back to your hometown, Memphis?

Oh yeah. My webmaster is a fellow in Memphis. I still have friends
in Memphis. And one friend, musician/producer Jim Dickinson — he
unfortunately just died. But every opportunity I get — any excuse
I can find is more like it — I’ll get down to Memphis.

You’re keen to point out in Caribbean Houses
an important fact, a fact too easily overlooked: that if it weren’t
for the laborers and their skills, these significant colonial buildings
and their furnishings wouldn’t have existed.

For centuries, those laborers have been unrecognized — unpaid
but more accurately slave labor. The indigenous Amerindians and African
West Indians were put to task to do the work. It’s time they’re
recognized, and it’s important that this patrimony be recognized as
part of their heritage too, so that they take pride. The colonial era
is as much their patrimony and their material culture as it is
anyone’s.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Apprentice to Power

In 1982, as a young, ambitious Memphis lawyer getting his feet wet
in politics, Jim Kyle managed the upstart but unsuccessful campaign of
fellow Shelby Countian Harold Byrd in a hard-fought Democratic primary
race for Congress in Tennessee’s 7th District. A year later, having won
a special election for a state Senate seat on his second try, Kyle
found himself assigned to a Nashville office suite whose occupants
included veteran legislator Annabelle Clement O’Brien of
Crossville.

O’Brien was the sister of the late legendary governor Frank Goad
Clement and the aunt of Bob Clement, who had defeated Byrd but was
upset by Republican Don Sundquist in a general election campaign that
was doubtless made closer by residual bitterness from the Clement-Byrd
race.

The 32-year-old Kyle was being shown around his new digs by the
sprightly young divorcée who served as secretary for the office
suite. How did Kyle think he would like things, she asked. Fine, he
quipped sardonically, except for having to share an office with a
Clement.

Only later would Kyle discover that the secretary, Sara Pair, was a
Clement on her mother’s side. Indeed, Bob Clement was her cousin, and
state senator O’Brien was her aunt. “She went back there and told
Annabelle what I’d said,” Kyle remembers ruefully. “And Annabelle said,
‘We’ll just kill him with kindness, honey.’ And they did.” Neither Pair
nor the famously gracious O’Brien were ever anything but helpful and
accommodating to Kyle, and not long thereafter their relations with him
would become unexpectedly closer.

That was following a tragic event which all but undid the fledgling
state senator from the Frayser/Raleigh area. Not long after he was
reelected in 1984, Kyle’s wife Donna, who had had a melanoma removed
from her lower back the year before, had been given a clean bill of
health and, in fact, had given birth to the couple’s second daughter,
Mary.

Then, just after the close of the 1985 legislative session, the
Kyles got the ominous news that the cancer had returned, virulently,
and three months later, in July 1985, Donna Kyle, still in her 20s,
died. Senator Kyle was a young widower. To make matters worse, the
stepson he and Donna were raising was claimed by his birth father.

“It’s something I still think about every day — a cloud that
can block the sun,” Kyle says of his first wife’s death.

It was a situation calling for a ray of light, and that light would
come from Pair, who in the course of time would be spending more and
more time with Kyle.

“Only later did I come to see that Annabelle was steering us
together,” Kyle reflects. “I didn’t see it at the time.” In any
case, the couple became an item and were married on November 7, 1987.
(“Always an election day,” the groom says.)

Sara Kyle had confidence, vivacity, and the compassion that would
enable her to bring a successful political and governmental career of
her own to the newly formed family. (Sara would later win elections for
Memphis city judge and the Tennessee Public Service Commissioner and is
now the senior member and chairperson of the Tennessee Regulatory
Authority.) She gave birth to son James Kyle III in 1989 and daughter
Caroline in 1997. “Looking back, we were always having an election or a
new baby, it seems,” Kyle says.

Sara Kyle also would cement a political alliance that Kyle believes
is one of several assets he brings to his current quest to become
governor of Tennessee in next year’s election. As Jim Kyle likes to
tell it, he has bases in Shelby County; in Dickson, the ancestral home
of the Clements; and along the Cumberland, in the area served for so
long by Annabelle.

Kyle does not lack for advantages altogether his own. He is Senate
Democratic leader and is coming off a term as chairman of the Shelby
County legislative delegation. For years, he was a key member of the
influential Senate Finance Committee and, even before taking charge of
the Senate Democrats in 2004, was known to be a confidant of Governor
Phil Bredesen.

He almost got sidetracked at the beginning of his career in the
state Senate, which was ruled then by the deceptively twinkly autocrat
John Wilder, who for the next quarter-century would survive two major
challenges to his authority as Senate speaker and lieutenant governor
and several lesser ones.

Kyle, young and brash, got involved in the two big putsch attempts
— the first occurring in 1985 during Kyle’s first full term. He
and a majority of other Democrats backed Riley Darnell of Clarksville
to supplant Wilder but were flummoxed when Wilder did the unexpected
and put together a bipartisan coalition of Democrats and Republicans to
keep his leadership post.

“I had underestimated the extent to which he wanted to be speaker.
There was nothing that he wouldn’t do, within the law,” Kyle says. “I
learned something about power from that.”

But not enough to keep from joining in again in 1989, when a second
purge attempt occurred behind Milton Hamilton of Union City. Like the
first one, this too failed narrowly — at least partly because
Kyle’s Senate colleague from Memphis, Steve Cohen, perhaps a quicker
learner, switched from the dissidents over to Wilder. It was the first
of several disagreements that would permanently strain the
relationship, once close, of two Democratic stalwarts from Memphis.

The ultimate break between them came when Cohen sided with newly
elected Republican governor Don Sundquist in 1995 and provided the
decisive vote to abolish the Public Service Commission, to which Sara
Kyle had just been elected. Kyle acknowledges that the commission had
its problems, mainly related to alleged favoritism to various public
interests. But he thought his newly elected wife was entitled to take a
crack at resolving them, and it seemed self-evident to him that
Sundquist’s aversion had more to do with his sense that the commission
was a hotbed of ambitious Democrats than with any taint of
impropriety.

Longtime House speaker Jimmy Naifeh then named Sara Kyle to the
successor organization, the Tennessee Regulatory Authority, something
which commands Kyle’s gratitude to this day.

Meanwhile, after the failure of the second coup attempt against
Wilder, Kyle had uncomplainingly taken his place in the doghouse,
thereupon to learn his second major lesson from the venerable speaker.
“He knew what it takes most legislators awhile to learn: The next vote
is the important vote.”

When lawyer Lewis Donelson, a venerable Memphis Republican, won a
court ruling requiring reallocation of state funds to previously
deprived rural school districts, Kyle found himself drafted onto the
Senate education committee and became one of the architects of Governor
Ned McWherter’s Basic Education Plan (BEP).

He also began to win the friendship of Wilder, the man he had twice
tried to depose. “I basically forged the final compromise that passed
the BEP bill, and Wilder was very pleased with me for that,” Kyle
recalls.

Later, after the federal government had temporarily taken over the
state prison system, Kyle was drafted to serve on the ad hoc
Corrections Oversight Committee and served with distinction there.
Another move put him on the Finance Committee, where, he says, “I began
the process of learning the budget.”

So convincing was Kyle’s demonstration of proficiency that he made
himself indispensable to Wilder and earned a place in the Senate’s
inner circle. Ironically enough, when Wilder finally came to the end of
the road in January 2007, it was Kyle, by then ensconced as Senate
Democratic leader, who was his chief defender and chief avenger too, in
the sense that he orchestrated the ostracism of renegade Democrat
Rosalind Kurita of Clarksville, whose vote for Republican Ron Ramsey
had finally cost Wilder his leadership perch.

By 2009, after years of toying with the idea of running for Shelby
County mayor or governor of Tennessee, Kyle felt he was primed and
ready, and there was no doubt in his mind which of the two jobs, as a
longtime man of the legislature, he was most suited for.

Kyle’s immediate concerns are with two opponents: Roy Herron, a
charismatic fellow state senator from Dresden, and Mike McWherter, a
Jackson businessman whose primary (though not only) asset is the
formidable one of owning the same last name as his father, the still
widely admired former governor, Ned Ray McWherter.

There are two other announced Democratic candidates: Nashville
businessman Ward Cammack, a former Republican and a multi-millionaire
from the investment world who is progressively restyling himself as the
race’s “green” candidate, and former legislator Kim McMillan of
Clarksville, who earlier in this decade served as Democratic leader in
the House, the first woman to hold that position.

McWherter’s oratorical style has so far left something to be
desired, though, depending on who one talks to, it may be improving. In
any case, he has been notable at recent all-candidate meetings as much
for his absence as his presence. Kyle suspects that McWherter’s
strategy may be to lay back as long as possible, waiting in the hope
that neither Kyle nor Herron establishes himself as the prevailing
favorite. McWherter would then step forward relatively late next year,
fully bankrolled, as the legitimate Democratic spokesperson.

Meanwhile, Kyle and Herron seem to be involved in something of a
mano-a-mano. As longtime partymates in the Senate, they maintain
friendly surface relations, though their different legislative styles
— Kyle’s methodical and somewhat wonky, Herron’s alternately
theatrical and close to the vest — have sometimes led to
tension.

At a Democratic event last weekend in Kingsport, Kyle’s speech was
sandwiched between that of Cammack and Herron.

The three of them couldn’t have been more different in delivery.
More anecdotal than usual, Cammack still got down to brass tacks about
Tennessee’s need to become a leader in ecologically inventive
industries and to keep its energy expenditures inside the state.

Cammack is realist enough to have responded, when someone mentioned
the conventional wisdom that he didn’t have a chance: “Oh, I knew that
when I got in. That just means I can say exactly what I think.”

Herron’s tack is very quickly to establish rapport with a crowd with
a joke or a tall tale before turning serious. It is a habit that
derives as much from his former occupation as a Methodist minister as
from his current one as a lawyer.

Kyle, too, is a lawyer, a graduate of the University of Memphis Law
School (after Oakhaven High School and Arkansas State University), and
his professional career has been divided into halves — first, as
he puts it, as a litigator who sued people, later as one who defended
them. In between, he learned to do some transactional work as well.

All of this experience has served him well in the legislature, and
traces of all of it can be seen in his basic stump speech. After a
moment of recollection about his working-class, union-member parents,
Kyle said, “Let me talk to you a minute about Tennessee,” whereupon he
gave his audience a profile of the state as one characterized by low
taxes and low wages, with “a great road system and a tremendous
climate.” Why is it, he asked rhetorically, that “one person in 10
doesn’t have a job?” Then he suggested an answer: “What we don’t have
is an educated work force that can do the job that needs to be done. We
need to start preparing citizens for the world economy.”

Kyle noted the sad statistic that Tennessee was “43rd in the nation
in what people call educational attainment.” There are around 36,000
students who have dropped out of college, he said, proposing to take
some of the $300 million of state lottery funds to entice them into
returning to school. “If only 10,000 took us up on it, we wouldn’t be
43rd any longer.” And he made a promise to all students pursuing
secondary education. “If you make progress toward graduation, we will
never, ever raise your tuition.”

He closed with a joke about the extended speaking style of Herron,
who would follow, suggesting that while his rival spoke he would take
time to go out and find a few hundred votes for the straw vote being
held at the event. (That was a double dig at Herron, who has been
focusing on the straw votes being held at various events.)

Beyond the Democratic field itself, there is the issue of how Kyle
might do as his party’s nominee in a state that has been swinging
Republican of late. Both chambers of the legislature now have
Republican majorities, with the GOP securing a majority of one in the
House after the 2008 election.

Kyle’s bailiwick, the Senate, was already in Republican hands but
became further so in 2008, when Republicans gained a 19-14 edge. That
fact might lead one to theorize that Kyle, who once had legitimate
aspirations to be Senate speaker and ergo lieutenant governor, has seen
his legislative ambitions chilled by virtue of the handwriting on the
wall.

Not so, Kyle maintains. Noting the close U.S. Senate race in 2006
between Democrat Harold Ford Jr. and eventual Republican winner Bob
Corker, Kyle says, “It’s hard to believe that [if nominated] I won’t
get all of the votes that Harold Ford got and that I won’t get many of
those that, for good reasons or bad, he lost.”

As Kyle well knows, fellow Memphian Ford’s ambitions came to naught
— but just barely — because of vote deficiencies in two
traditionally Democratic strongholds: rural West Tennessee areas where
either Ford’s African-American identity or his family associations may
have retarded his total or a few liberal enclaves where he may have
suffered some attrition due to his increasingly conservative public
pronouncements and voting record, circa 2006.

Kyle is unlikely to have the same problem. His modest childhood
beginnings on Lamar Avenue in Capleville and his adult trajectory in
Frayser-Raleigh jibe comfortably with the lifestyle of most West
Tennesseans. And, depending on the yardstick, Kyle is arguably the most
congenial extant candidate to the state’s left-of-center blogging
community (several of whom were lukewarm about Ford).

Like most Democrats these days, Kyle eschews the label of “liberal”
and prefers to say, “I’m more moderate than any potential Republican
nominee.” He opines that the term liberal might better describe rival
Herron, though on at least one key issue — the controversial one
of guns in public parks and restaurants that dominated the General
Assembly session of 2009 — Herron’s path coincided precisely with
that of the Republican majority, while party leader Kyle was firmly
with the minority, mainly Democratic, who resisted the easing up on
gun-carry restrictions.

“If the election comes down to guns in parks or guns in restaurants,
I will proudly stand on my position,” Kyle insists. “I hope the
Republicans do go after me on guns. They’re wrong on guns. We have some
of the safest parks in the whole United States of America. … If this
race comes down to a race between me and the Republicans on guns, I
will win that race.”

It all comes down to leadership, Kyle says. “Can you say no to the
NRA? I can.” As Kyle notes, he himself is an inveterate duck-hunter,
who put his son Jim on the path to winning the state trap-shooting
championship. “If they make an issue in 2010 over guns, the Republicans
will be viewed as extremists,” Kyle contends. “Jobs and health care are
what’s on people’s minds.”

Kyle doesn’t spell out all the details, but he proposes to buttress
the state’s health-care system, providing a “reasonable standard of
care,” a workable mean between the cut-to-the-bone ideas of
ideologically minded Republicans and the ever-proliferating bureaucracy
that TennCare became under the doubtless well-intentioned but
overwhelmed Sundquist.

Discreetly he avoids any criticism of the cutbacks on TennCare
imposed by his mentor Bredesen but suggests that he will find the
budgetarily responsible means to expand state health services and
provide “a reasonable standard of care.”

What Kyle intends to focus on as governor is the state’s system of
higher education. He quotes Bredesen as telling him, “You don’t just
run for governor, you run for governor to do something.”

Among other things, Kyle wants to enhance the credentials of the
University of Memphis, making it a “top research institution,” and to
“decouple” what he sees as an overlap between the state’s community
colleges and its four-year institutions.

Looking into a future when, as he hopes, his fellow Tennesseans will
have entrusted him with their hopes and dreams for perhaps the
constitutionally permitted maximum of two terms as governor, Kyle
imagines his legacy in terms of how it will impact his four children in
their own developed adulthoods.

When all is said and done, Kyle likes to imagine his fellow
Tennesseans saying to his progeny, “There goes Jim Kyle. He treated us
fair. Your father is a good man.’ That is the light I have walked
toward.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Broad Appeal

Most neighborhoods don’t want a junkyard in their community. But
Broad Avenue isn’t like most neighborhoods, and the Junkyard Museum
isn’t like most junkyards.

The Junkyard will be an interactive museum using found objects and
architectural salvage to create climbable sculptures. Though the
Junkyard is located temporarily at the old Marine Hospital near the
National Ornamental Metal Museum, founder Lisa Williamson would like
the museum’s permanent home to be on Broad.

“I’ve been looking at Broad for a long time,” she said at a meeting
of the Historic Broad Avenue Business Association last week. “If it
were up to me, I’d put it there in a second. Everybody’s rallied around
me. … I already feel at home there.”

Though many children’s museums try to prepare children for
adulthood, the Junkyard — and museums like it, such as City
Museum in St. Louis — encourage teenagers and adults to be kids
again.

Williamson and the Junkyard board are in talks to lease the
warehouse on which the iconic Broad Avenue watertower rests, but
they’re also open to other spaces in the neighborhood.

John Weeden, the UrbanArt Commission’s executive director, thinks
locating the Junkyard in Binghamton would be brilliant. Lined with
galleries and home to UrbanArt’s offices, Broad is the city’s newest
arts district.

“It could provide an anchor for this area … as well as offer
incredible opportunities to local artists,” Weeden said.

The location is also in the middle of a residential neighborhood and
would be within walking distance of four schools.

Broad Avenue residents and business owners seemed to feel the museum
would be a good fit with the neighborhood, too. Most of the questions
during the presentation focused on suggestions for fund-raising and
ways to make the Broad location a reality.

“We heard Lisa was looking over here, and we jumped at it,” said Pat
Brown of the T. Clifton Art Gallery. “This is just what we need.”

Brown said the Junkyard could be a magnet for bringing new people to
the neighborhood: “This would redefine people’s perceptions of
Broad.”