Month: May 2012

• JB
• Turner and Chumney at press conference

In an effort to jump-start the campaign of Carol Chumney , Democratic nominee for District Attorney General, she and local Democratic chairman Van Turner held a joint press conference Thursday at the party’s new “resource center” on Poplar Avenue. As the chairman noted, it was the first press conference to be held there since the headquarters opened earlier this month.

Turner kicked things off by stating, “We called this press conference to sort of clear up some things that were recently said,” referencing a recent opinion column in the Commercial Appeal by Otis Sanford questioning both’s Chumney level of campaigning and the party’s commitment to her candidacy.

As Sanford had noted, Chumney’s Republican opponent, incumbent D.A. Amy Weirich, has raised a considerable campaign warchest and has been highly active on the stump, whereas Chumney had so far been less visible and has lagged far behind in fundraising.

Turner thereupon issued an unequivocal statement of support for Chumney, extolling her “25 years of legal experience,” such credentials as her having bee editor-in-chief of the University of Memp his Law Review, and her “17 years of public experience” as state legislator and City Council member.

As she herself would do, Turner noted Chumney’s longtime chairmanship of the legislative Children and Family Affairs Committee and said that experience was good preparation for dealing with the shortcomings in the operation of Juvenile Court that were recently publicized in a U.S. Department of Justice report.

Asked to what extent she held General Weirich responsible for Juvenile Court’s problems, including administrative foul-ups and alleged “race-based” procedures, Chumney noted that the DOJ study, requested by Shelby County Commissioner Henri Brooks, was commissioned in 2007 and documented problems “that were still there in 2010 and 2011.” Weirich was an assistant D.A. for years before being named to the top job in early 2011.

In addition to the usefulness of her experience with the Children and Family Affairs Committee, Chumney said she would also profit as D.A. from having enjoyed a good working relationship with current Juvenile Court Judge Curtis Person when both were in the legislature. In the DOJ report Person was credited with having initiated some reforms in the Court’s processes.

Chumney acknowledged that she would probably be unable to match Weirich’s campaqign expenditures butr said, “I have devorted my life to public service. I think that the people who have voted for me in the past will show up again. I am not soliciting special interest money.”

Unspoken to by either Turner or Chumney was the fact that several prominent Democrats, including City Council members Jim Strickland and Shea Flinn, businessman Karl Schledwitz, and lawyer/lobbyist John Farris are declared supporters of Weirich. Strickland and Farris are both former Democratic chairs. Schledwitz said this week he made his commitment to Weirich at a time when she was the only active candidate.

• JB
• Cohen at press conference on Delta fares

9th District Congressman Steve Cohen responded to a growing outcry against high passenger fares for Delta Airlines’ Memphis-originated flights with a press conference at his Overton Park-area residence Thursday, and, like most commentators on the issue, pinpointed competition as the solution.

Cohen told a group of reporters that he had expressed his concerns about the high travel fares in fresh dialogue with Richard Anderson, CEO of Delta, which operates what amounts to a “fortress hub” in Memphis as a consequence of that airline’s merger with Northwest, previously the city’s hub airline.

The congressman said he had also asked his staff to research anti-trust statutes for possible clues to action and was considering holding local hearings on the matter. Scheduling hearings in Washington would be more difficult, said Cohen, a member of the House Transportation Committee and its aviation subcommittee. “

The Republican majority controls hearings in Washington,” he said, and the same majority was unlikely to be friendly to the idea of imposing new regulations on an industry that was deregulated some three decades ago.

“It all comes through competition,” said Cohen, who characterized himself as an early activist ion behalf of a local presence for Southwest Airlines, the well-known budget airline whose flights emanating from Little Rock and Nashville have traditionally been fallback options for cost-conscious Memphis passengers willing to drive to those cities.

But the congressman thought it was unlikely that Southwest would materialize in Memphis in the near future with an operation on the same scale. Southwest is already scheduled to take over the local budget operations of Air Tran, another low-budget airline, but even that “is going to take a while,” Cohen said.

In the meantime, there are options like USAir, whose Memphis-to-Washington connections Cohen said he availed himself of twice recently. “It’s a smaller, cheaper competition that works.”

Among the causes of the high-rate problem here are the fact of deregulation and the recent rise in fuel prices, according to Cohen, who said he thought Delta had miscalculated in imposing a cutback on its Memphis-originated flights, the other issue besides high rates that Memphians have reacted to. “That was a mistake, because this is a low-cost airport,” the congressman said.

Of his own efforts on behalf of Memphis airline customers, Cohen said, “I was on this subject long before Debbie did Memphis or Delta did Atlanta or whatever….I was there.”

That was a clear reference to criticism aimed at the congressman by contributors to the Facebook site “Delta Does Memphis,” operated by Memphis blogger Tom Jones as a means of organizing resistance to Delta’s local pricing policies.

Among the congressman’s critics on the site has been his opponent in the 9th District Democratic primary on August 2, Tomeka Hart, who in a recent post said,”It’s disappointing that we haven’t heard more about this from our current Congressman….” Cohen said someone else connected with the site had tweeted that he had not wanted to get involved in the Delta situation. “That’s a lie,” he said. Asked if the criticism was politically motivated, he said, “Of course, it is.”

Cohen noted that he himself is now a “Friend” on the site and has made several posts in opposition to Delta’s policies. The congressman said intervention by local business leaders would be the most effective message to Delta officials.