Okay, it’s the
fourth quarter, the scoreboard (the one kept by the conventionally wise, anyhow)
shows you behind in your race for District Attorney General against incumbent Bill Gibbons, and you have to do
something – quick. Got it! Why not ask a recent presidential candidate to
make robo-calls for you? Say, John Kerry, the Democrat who carried Shelby County
handily in his race against George W. Bush two years ago. Yeah, that’s it.
That’s the ticket! And that’s what Gail Mathes, the Democratic nominee for
D.A. is doing even as we speak. Calls are going out all over Shelby County to
prospective voters, and the man from Massachusetts – whose wife Theresa was
hosted by Mathes during Kerry’s 2004 race – is evidently happy to do the
talking….
Kerry not only endorses Mathes but at the end of his 30-second call drops
in a plug for Memphis congressman Harold Ford, now running for the U.S. Senate.
(Ford, who served as a national co-chair for Kerry in the 2004 primary season,
may be entitled to some payback, too.) Mathes isn’t resting on her laurels, by
the way. She’ll be playing off the visit here Monday by another former
Democratic presidential candidate, Al Gore. While Gore is signing copies of his
new book, An Inconvenient Truth, at Davis-Kidd on Poplar, Mathes will
simultaneously be holding a meet-and-greet at the store. (For more, including the robo-call itself, go to “Political Beat”.)
