Author: Jackson Baker

Several deals went down Monday at one of the most significant meetings in the history of the Shelby County Board of Commissioners. Let us count the ways:

* Developers, always a major force in commission proceedings, amplified their clout considerably by electing one of their own, homebuilder Tom Moss, to fill a commission vacancy;

* Democrats, consigned up until now to the minority position in a 7-6 partisan mix, appeared by virtue of Moss’ election to have permanently broken up the commission’s dominant Republican bloc;

* Commissioner Shep Wilbun, who has been angling for a clerkship for years now, finally landed his appointment — to the juvenile court clerkship vacated by the now-retired Bob Martin;

* Commissioner Clair VanderSchaaf, who provided the key votes to elect both Moss and Wilbun to their respective new positions, has earned what apparently is a pledge from Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout to see to VanderSchaaf’s defeat for reelection in 2002;

* Commissioner Buck Wellford, a strong candidate to become the next U.S. attorney in Tennessee’s Western District, left little doubt that he intends to sound the alarm about potential special-interest involvement in commission affairs.

Whew! And, as they say, that ain’t all: There are spin-offs from each of these developments as well.

The Moss Affair

Moss, a political unknown who defeated GOP favorite David Lillard for the commission seat (made vacant by the resignation of State Senator-elect Mark Norris) is sure to be opposed by a strong Republican candidate in the next regular commission election of 2002.

Although he described himself at Monday’s meeting as a “moderate Republican,” most Shelby County Republicans regard Moss as politically suspect. Literally, his first act, after taking his seat Monday, was to vote with five black Democrats on the Commission to elect Democrat Wilbun (who abstained in the voting for the clerkship).

Businessman/pol Joe Cooper, who during Monday’s proceedings sat in the back of the commission auditorium with mega-developer William R. “Rusty” Hyneman, a close associate, boasted, “Rusty and I put the deal together,” but denied that anything untoward was involved and said one major consequence of the new commission lineup would be that Democrats would have greater power, with Moss functioning as a swing voter.

Hyneman’s involvement in the outcome was sure to provoke controversy, especially in that Moss’ ability to represent the commission’s District 4 is predicated on his brand-new residence in a house he has just leased from Douglas Beatty, who is serving as a trustee for the property, which is actually owned by Hyneman.

The arrangement is a reminder of a similar transaction whereby city Councilman Rickey Peete last year acquired a house from Hyneman by means of a complicated process involving the developer’s making over a quit-claim deed to the councilman. Disclosure of that arrangement, which freed Peete from the need to qualify for a conventional loan, came at a time when Peete voted with a council majority to suspend existing restrictions on development in Cordova.

Wellford and other Republicans acknowledge that a shift in the commission’s partisan lineup is one likely outcome of Moss’ election, but Wellford for one makes no bones about what he sees as the more significant result — a quantum leap in the power of developers.

Questioning Moss Monday before the commission voted, Wellford — a sponsor of several environmentalist ordinances, including a recent one restricting developers’ ability to clear forest land — made an effort to trace the connection from Hyneman to Beatty to Moss and voiced his suspicions that a deal had been cut between developers and the commission’s black Democrats to accomplish their respective purposes. “I have no doubt about it,” he said.

Like other Republicans, Wellford said there was reason to doubt the bona fides of Moss’ new residence. Asked by the commissioner whether he had actually lived in the house, on Macon Road, Moss answered in part, “I stayed there last night.”

VanderSchaaf’s Role

Just as Moss has become a marked man to the Republican hierarchy and to the administration of Mayor Rout — which had solidly backed Lillard for the commission vacancy and Deputy Juvenile Court Clerk Steve Stamson for the clerk’s position won by Wilbun — so has Commissioner VanderSchaaf.

VanderSchaaf, himself a major developer, said he voted for Moss over fellow Republican Lillard “because I’ve known Tom longer and better.” He said he had been candid with Lillard about his intentions, and he fueled the partisan controversy by saying that the new, less partisan lineup on the commission could make it possible “for us to take our heads out of the sand” on matters like potential tax increases, “where we tried to hold the line for six years.”

VanderSchaaf said, however, that he thought Moss would eventually become a reliable part of the Republican majority on the commission. In the vote for juvenile court clerk, VanderSchaaf also played a pivotal role. On the commission’s first three ballots, which deadlocked at six votes for Wilbun and six for Stamson, VanderSchaaf had stood with fellow Republican Stamson, Martin’s longtime aide.

“But I had told Steve in advance I might have to break the deadlock,” said VanderSchaaf, and ultimately, on the fourth ballot, he did just that, voting with the Democrats to give Wilbun the position. The general feeling among the commission’s Repubicans was that VanderSchaaf’s vote for Wilbun was preordained and that his first votes for Stamson on the first three ballots were, in the words of one Republican, “so much window-dressing.”

“I have a good idea of what to expect,” VanderSchaaf said of the prospect that he will have organized Republican opposition for his reelection effort in 2002. And he indicated that he was resigned to the fact, widely discussed in political circles, that Rout would personally target him for defeat. “There are certain things I’ll just have to accept,” he said.

Wilbun’s Reward

Commissioner Wilbun has made no secret during the last several years of his wish to acquire one of the county’s well-paying clerkships. He has expressed interest in several vacanies — most recently that of the position of register, made vacant when incumbent Guy Bates died last summer.

Wilbun attempted to get the Democratic nomination for register for November’s special election and became incensed, charging “collusion” when he lost out to John Freeman in a three-way race conducted by the Shelby County Democratic executive committee. He later made peace with the party hierarchy.

As a prelude to his register bid, Wilbun had hoped to get a leg up on the job by being named to the position by his fellow commissioners but was foiled when the body’s seven Republicans presented him with a united front in favor of waiting for the special election.

After the turbulent commission meeting on Monday, which culminated with Wilbun’s being named juvenile court clerk, Wellford charged that Wilbun had approached him back then with an offer to support Wellford, then chairman, for a second term in return for his vote, along with those of the commission’s black Democrats, to name Wilbun acting county register. (As of press time, Wilbun was not available for comment on the charge.)

In any case, the commissioner — backed by Moss and his five fellow Democrats and, ultimately, by VanderSchaaf — now has his county job. He indicated through an intermediary afterward that he was open to the idea of keeping Stamson on as chief deputy, and Stamson — whose father died only last week and who was making an obvious effort to remain stoic about the turn of events — said that he, too, was open to the prospect.

Like Stamson, attorney Lillard — a Republican member of the Shelby County Election Commission and a onetime candidate for county Republican chairman — was philosophical in being denied the office he sought.

But, he said, he thought “there was a lot of dishonesty involved in the process,” and he compared the course of events in Memphis to those of a city like New Orleans, where private interests and governmental processes are often known to intersect. “If we are to be a truly first-class city, we have to have a politics that has the appearance and fact of honesty and aboveboardness,” Lillard said.

Unless someone intervenes with a suit that seeks an earlier special election, Moss’ commission seat and Wilbun’s juvenile court clerk’s position (which will be filled by the commission next year after a prior public notice at the body’s January 8th meeting) will be subject to a vote in the regular general election of 2002.

Future Prospects

Several of Monday’s disappointed principals may fare better later — and fairly soon. Lillard’s name has been floated on a short list of Republican lawyers (GOP national committeman John Ryder and Hardy Mays, former chief of staff to Governor Don Sundquist, are two others) for appointment to the federal district judgeship made vacant earlier this year by the death of Jerome Turner.

And Wellford is perhaps the leading prospect to succeed U.S. Attorney Veronica Coleman, who was appointed under Democratic auspices in 1993 and will be leaving office early next year. Wellford was Shelby County campaign manager for the several races of U.S. Senator Fred Thompson, the state’s ranking Republican federal official.

* At some point in the proofreading and printing process of last week’s Flyer, an extra “n” slipped into the name of Anie Kent, one of three Memphis electors for George W. Bush and a well-known local activist. “Annie” she ain’t.

* Division 9 Criminal Court Judge J.C. McLin on Monday dismissed a felony charge against Faith McClinton, one of several Shelby County voters charged with concealing past felony convictions on their voter applications.

McLin said he thought McClinton had not been properly apprised by the district attorney’s office of the implications of a guilty plea and the acceptance on her record of a second felony. McLin also advised McClinton that she could apply for the restoration of her voting rights.

“All cameras are on the one with the ball, and I’m about to score a touchdown on them!”

That was Jesse Jackson‘s gleeful explanation Thursday for the attacks directed his way by various commentators and by partisans of the now victorious Bush-Cheney campaign.

“They keep worrying, ‘Jesse Jackson’s gonna riot! Jesse Jackson’s gonna riot'” the veteran activist said, mimicking his critics’ imagined mantra to the delight of a turnaway crowd in the auditorium of the Civil Rights Museum.

Jackson’s noon-hour appearance was under the auspices of an ad hoc movement called The Fairness and Democracy Viligance, and he left little doubt that, on what could be a zig-zag path way to his ultimate end zone, he intended picking up some first downs.

For one thing, he wants to be one of the agents forcing exposure of the actual presidential-vote situation in Florida. “We need to know the history. We need to set it straight,” Jackson said, and to that end he called for an investigation of the matter by a presidential commission, to be named and activated during the last weeks of the current Clinton-Gore administration.

Jackson also promised that he will lead a series of “massive, non-violent voter registration drives” in the seven days beginning January 15th, a period which incorporatess both a commemorative birthday week for the late Dr. Martin Luther King and the scheduled presidential inauguration of George W. Bush.

Repeating previous charges that as many as 50,000 votes had been suppressed in Florida, either by leaving them uncounted or by turning away minority voters, Jackson asked his listeners to imagine “the humiliation of having your vote thrown out by the thousands.”

Jackson praised Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, who withdrew from the race after the U.S. Supreme Court ended manual recounts in Florida, as one who stood for “pay equity. . ., public education. . ., workers’ rights. . ., and women’s right to self-determination.” To extended applause, he said, “Tennessee should be proud of its native son.”

Referring only indirectly to a telephone conversation he had late the previous evening with Gore’s now victorious rival Bush, Jackson said the Republican candidate did “not yet have a grasp, but I think he wants to reach out.” Jackson said Bush’s Wednesday night acceptance address was “very democratic” but that Bush “can not run American the way his campaign was run in Florida.”

Beyond “the keyhole,” said Jackson, one could detect the influence on Bush of such un-Democratic (and, by implication, undemocratic) types as Tom Delay, the GOP House of Representatives whip, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, and Senators Jesse Helms and Strom Thurmond.

“To be successful,” Jackson said, the new president would have to reach out beyond such men “across the lines of party, religion, region, and race.”

While noting that “black America’s interests are in America’s interests,” Jackson said, “The biggest divide in America is not between blacks and whites but between haves and have-nots.”

Once again, Jackson compared the controversy over alleged voter intimidation and vote suppression to the battle for voters’ rights that he, Dr. King, and others had participated in at Selma, Alabama in 1965. “This is an issue that isn’t going to go away,” he promised.

One of the regrettable aspects of the protracted post-election showdown between Democrats and Republicans over the identity of our next president has been the utter predictability of the partisan antagonists’ rhetoric, which reflects almost word for word what is available nonstop on the TV cable shows.

An antidote of sorts to all this was an open letter e-mailed by Shelby County Republican Joseph Keene to assorted partymates. At the present fractured (and fragmented) moment, it is worth quoting at some length:

“…Here in Shelby County, Germantown is a nice city, but its voters won’t carry our party to victory in county elections. Outreach into the city is not an option for us any longer.

“We saw what happened on election day and the day after — Al Gore beat [George W.] Bush in the popular vote. Bush is the legitimate winner of the presidency because of the electoral college, but we can’t depend on this glitch in the electoral college forever, can we?

“I get tired of seeing some of my fellow Bush supporters bring up this USA Today map showing a sea of red and claiming that Bush won most of the country. Perhaps Bush won in area, but not in votes. Last I checked, it’s ‘one man, one vote,’ not ‘one square mile, one vote.’ My fellow Bush supporters bring up the fact that Bush won 78 percent of all counties in the United States.

“So what? It’s not ‘one county, one vote,’ either. I think it’s great that some rancher in Wyoming who owns hundreds of acres of land would vote Republican. But in a piece of land equivalent to the size of a western ranch, several thousands of Democrat-leaning voters live in the wealthy Lincoln Park area of Chicago.

“We won the Presidential election fairly and Constitutionally, even though we achieved less than the popular vote nationally. We have a lot of things to be proud of, especially here in Al Gore’s alleged home state of Tennessee. We sent the nation a message that Al Gore is NOT one of us.

“I’m proud of Tom Leatherwood’s victory in the Shelby County Register’s race, but would he have won had there not been a Commercial Appeal-endorsed Otis Jackson on the ballot splitting Democrat votes from John Freeman? I doubt it, since most of Jackson’s support came fron heavily Democrat precincts. I’m proud that [U.S. Senator] Bill Frist handily carried the county, but he would have had more trouble here if he had a credible opponent. Bush lost Shelby County by 49,000 votes.

“What can we do to broaden our party? Plenty. First of all, DeSoto County (MS) isn’t becoming the most Republican county in Mississippi for no reason. Republicans are moving from Shelby County, Tennessee, to take advantage of lower tax burdens. And the emigration to DeSoto is substantial, according to an article I read in the local fishwrap.

“This means that our Republican leaders in this county must act and govern like Republicans to keep Republicans here. Instead, we’ve seen nothing but more taxes, especially the property tax. When that property tax goes up, folks, DeSoto looks like a better place to live.

“Secondly, the local GOP (especially in Shelby County) must be more proactive in bringing new voters into the party. We need to be visible at city events, especially. We have no midtown or downtown presence at all, and I didn’t recall a Bush office in either location, whereas the Gore forces held one in midtown and one in east Memphis.

“At the Cooper-Young Festival, I remember seeing a Democrat booth, a Green Party booth, but not a Republican one. At the Taste of Midtown event, I remember seeing the exact same thing. A recent NAACP event was held shortly before the election, and while the GOP representatives were invited, none showed up (and predictably, talk show host Mike Fleming and other conservatives got on the air to complain that it was a partisan event, when it was the GOP that caused it to be a partisan event by their absence).

“We can’t sit back and smugly expect that ‘the voters will wake up and support us’ because ‘the truth is on OUR side’ or count on this mythical ‘silent majority.’ That’s lazy and complacent thinking. We have to make our case to the undecided and Democrat constituencies. And given the political climate, we have to make our case in 30-second sound bites.

“When Al Gore got up in front of an African-American audience, he criticized Bush’s plan to appoint ‘strict Constitutional constructionists’ to the federal bench by implying that such a jurist would also interpret the section about black Americans only counting as 3/5 of a person. In an ad campaign worthy of Nazi propagandist Josef Goebbels, an anti-Bush ad implied that he was somehow responsible for the dragging murder of James Byrd. It all boggles the mind because Bush isn’t a racist by any stretch of the imagination, and I know the GOP here in Shelby County Tennessee isn’t either.

“But did we make that case to the African-American voters who are already used to GOP neglect? We have a great philosophy about government — less government, more freedom, more opportunity, better education. Why can’t we market it? Why can’t we come up with the sound bites? Why can’t we make it seem as though we care more about the community than our tax returns? “Part of it is that we allow the Democrats to define us, when we should really be more aggressive with the sound bites, define the Democrats first, and define the debate terms. Bush did a great job of that after his convention, but got knocked off course about the time of the ‘RATS’ ad.

“Yes, we won the Presidency fair and square. We have a lot to be proud of here in Tennessee. But the fact is that nationally we lost the popular vote, even though we won in terms of square miles and number of counties and other measures that simply don’t mean squat. If we are going to ever become a majority party, we have to reach out to minority voters and other demographic groups we lost, properly market our vision, and perpetually keep the Democrats on the defensive.

“I say we should start that here at home. That’s my gripe. I am discouraged that Republican party leaders at all levels don’t seem to do enough to broaden the party. Does anyone else share this concern? Or are we happy with the GOP being the suburban party?”

Erstwhile gubernatorial canddidate John Jay Hooker went into U. S. District Court in Nashville over the weekend and threw a temporary monkey wrench into the machinery that was to declare that Gov. George W. Bush carried Tennessee in the November presidential election. A long-shot appeal could possibly place that wrench back in the machinery later.

About sunset Friday, after the courts had closed for the week, gadfly Democrat Hooker filed a suit in the overnight depository challenging the constitutionality of the presidential election in Tennessee. Judge Robert Echols called an emergency hearing on Hooker’s suit at about sunset Monday (Nov. 27).

The judge, after a thorough hearing on the matter, said he considered this a serious suit which raises serious questions. However, Echols said he felt he must deny Hooker’s motion to enjoin Tennessee Attorney General Riley Darnell from certifying Bush as the winner in Tennessee. Hooker said the judge indicated to him that he was ruling from the bench so Hooker could immediately begin his appeal to the Sixth U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.

Hooker’s move delayed by at least a day the certification of Tennessee’s 11 electoral votes for president. Unless Hooker prevails in his suit, those 11 votes go to George W. Bush, who received 1,057,586 votes to 978,189 for Vice President Al Gore in the Nov. 7 general election.

A supporter of Gore, Hooker asserts in his suit that the U. S. Constitution gives the various state legislatures, and only the state legislatures, the right to appoint presidential electors. Alleging that any certification of popularly-elected electors is null and void, Hooker asserts that a legislature cannot delegate to the people its responsibility to appoint the electors.

Although Bush carried the state in the popular vote, he would likely lose if the matter were left to the Tennessee General Assembly. Democrats control both houses in the Tennessee Legislature.

Hooker is hoping that his suit will be joined to the other presidential election suits now pending before the U. S. Supreme Court. If that were to happen, the election dispute could take on an entirely new dimension.

Across the nation, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, Democrats and Republicans control 17 legislatures each, and 15 legislatures are split with one party controlling the house and the other the senate. Nebraska has unicameral, non-partisan legislature.

The U. S. Constitution, in Article II, Section 1, reads: “Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of senators and representatives to which the State may be entitled in Congress. . .” Hooker argues in his suit that since the early 1800s the state legislatures, in violation of the Constitution, took it upon themselves to delegate this appointment to the people.

Hooker asserts in his suit that the Legislatures did this “in direct violation of the plain language of the Federal Constitution, above cited, which circumstance has been ignored by both the State and Federal Courts, including the Supreme Court of the United States for all these years.”

In recent years, Hooker has filed and lost a number of federal and state lawsuits attacking campaign financing and the retention election of judges on the Tennessee Supreme Court. Hooker has twice won the Democratic nomination for governor in Tennessee and lost each time in the general election. This past August in the Democratic primary for U. S. Senate, Hooker lost a close election to college professor Jeff Clark, who in turn lost in the general election to incumbent U. S. Senator Bill Frist.

A little known aspect of the post-election votecount battle in Florida has been the presence of Tennesseans on the front lines there.

Some of those people we see on those cable-TV long shots checking the votes or observing the process may, in fact, be home-staters, even home-towners. Both parties have seen cadres into the Sunshine State.

Among the interlopers was Memphis Democratic activist Calvin Anderson. A day or two after election day, Anderson received a call from Johnny Hays, the Gore-Lieberman finance chairman and a longtime Tennessee acquaintance of Anderson’s who wanted the Memphian to round up some other Tennesseans to go to Florida to participate in the continuing post-election campaign down there.

NASHVILLE – “Mahzel!” Meaning it’s in the hands of the fates. “Or, as we say, God,” added Rabbi Israel Deren of Stamford, Connecticut, slumping on a couch in the lobby of the downtown Sheraton Hotel in the wee hours of Wednesday morning, as uncertain as any of the rest of us about what had happened in the 2000 presidential race– which, not so coincidentally, was undeniably on the cusp of a new, and to judge by the evidence at hand , extraordinary millennium.

Rabbi Deren was in town as a friend and spiritual counselor to the family of Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, whom he expected to be spending time with later that morning. What would he say? Among other things, he would almost certainly include that once and future staple “Mahzel tov!” The Hebrew word “tov” means “good,” more or less, and the two words together are often interpreted as expressing a sentiment rather common and ordinary: “Good luck.” In reality, they signify more than that– something like: May the Almighty lead you safely through this wilderness of doubt and uncertainty. In the case at hand, anyhow.

For wilderness it was, although the uncertainty hadn’t been apparent right away. Another Lieberman friend, Memphis’ Pace Cooper, the Connecticut senator’s cousin-in-law, was at the Vanderbilt Loew’s Plaza Hotel early Tuesday evening, attending a party for his illustrious near-relation when all the networks, hardly minutes after the East Coast precincts had closed down, declared on the basis of their projections that Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore and Lieberman were the winners of Florida’s 25 electoral votes. And, as Florida went (all the pundits had been telling us for weeks) so would go the election. (Right. Cometh the storyteller’s clichŽ: ÔLittle did they know. . . .’)

The war whoops had gone up right away. And Lieberman, his now-famous toothy grin (a warmer version of Jimmy Carter‘s) extended all the way out, shouted, “Give us Florida and we’ll take care of the rest of it!” In short order the networks gave Gore and Lieberman Michigan, Illinois . . .then Pennsylvania.

It looked like a Democratic rout. That was then. Now is now, with time and space warps, deconstructions, and various other post-modernist phenomena having come in between.

Not only do we not know who the next president of the United States is, we have no idea for certain of when we will know the identity of that worthy. For all we know, since the same rain is still coming down that began falling on Nashville and much of the rest of the country at about 2 a.m.– when the outcome had become decidedly, er, cloudy– we are in for 40 days and 40 nights of uncertainty.

Even after 99.9 percent of the nation’s voters had spoken for the record, the gremlins in the nation’s political machinery, which had begun doing their damage even before the Western states had finished voting, had made the 2000 presidential election moot.

What happened in Florida merely symbolized what was going on in the nation at large. First, the state’s electoral votes were taken out of the Gore column (“Computer error,” we were told); then we heard about a horrendously misleading ballot that had led an indeterminate number of senior Floridians to vote for Pat Buchanan (of all people!) when they thought they were voting for Gore. Then the absentee still needed to be counted; the military vote was yet to be heard from. Etc., etc. And the final margin for Bush, which had caused him at one point to be declared the winner, was small enough Ð even if genuine Ð to fall within a recount provision mandated by the state of Florida.

So here we are, waiting for those Florida votes to be counted. A three-member panel–including Bush’s brother, Florida governor Jeb Bush and Gore state campaign chairman Bob Butterworth – will oversee a recounting that goes even as you read these words and will continue, it seems possible, for days afterward. (Bulletin: Gov. Bush has removed himself from the supervisory body.)

Not only is the presidential election in doubt. So is the venerable institution of the electoral college, sure to be called into question (early expectations that Gore might lead in the electoral college and trail in the popular vote were stood on their head; substitute the word “Bush”); and so is the nature of third-party politics in a picture irrevocably clouded by the presence on key states’ ballots of the Green Party’s Ralph Nader. One more argument against the venerable electoral college, which ensures that only the two major parties, which depend on broadly based coalitions, can predominate in a nationalelection, while the Naders of the world (or the Perots of yore) are doomed to the role of spoiler.

(Brother Ralph, whose left-of-center appeal presumably drew off potential Gore voters in several crucial states, including Florida, might be well advised to stay away from organized bodies of Democrats. A Nader sign-bearer on the rim of Nashville’s War Memorial Plaza was harassed in mid-morning, while more vehement picketers, calling for the reign of the Ten Commandments or the ruin of plutocrats, were left pretty much alone.)

Oh, there are some things that we can count on as definite– nationally, that the victory of Hillary Clinton in New York’s Senate race ensures the continuance of the Age of Clinton (if Gore goes out of the picture, the president’s wife is sure to be a presidential candidate in 2004; that the Senate and the House are virtually balanced between the Republicans and the somewhat renascent Democrats; that a dead man (Missouri Governor and Senate candidate Mel Carnahan) can win an election in Missouri; that, regardless of the final vote tally, there ain’t gonna be no $1.3 trillion tax cut nor any extensive revamping of Social Security or Medicare.

Locally and statewide, some sure things occurred as predicted,: the easy victory of U.S Senator Bill Frist over Democratic challenger Jeff Clark; the return to office of all the state’s incumbent Members of Congress; the easy win of state Senator Jim Kyle (District 28, Frayser-Raleigh) over perennial candidate Rod DeBerry; the equally expected triumph of the GOP’s

Paul Stanley over Democrat Shea Flinn in the heavily Republican state House District 96 (East Memphis, Germantown, Cordova).

Somewhat surprising results: the utter wipeout of the state Republican Party’s heavily financed assault on eight incumbent Democratic Senate seats ( besides Kyle’s victory, there was Lt. Gov. John Wilder‘s romp over Savannah Mayor Bob Shutt); the defeat of two-term Memphis School Board incumbent Bill Todd by hard-working Wanda Halbert , one of a five-member field of challengers in the At-Large race; the rejection of incumbent Edward Vaughan in a district board race (the simultaneous turning-out of Frayser/Raleigh’s controversial Jim Brown was expected); the strong (33 percent) showing by doughty Democrat Flinn in a district that is Republican to the core.

One local race actually paralleled the national results: the defeat of Democratic nominee John Freeman by Republican Tom Leatherwood in the race for county register. Just as their national counterparts were– but to a more substantial degree– local Democrats were divided; a sizeable faction went to independent Otis Jackson, enough so that Leatherwood was able to squeeze through to victory. The background of that factionalism was two-fold; anti-Ford Democrats resented the nominee’s ties to the long dominant party clan, while partisans of former University of Memphis basketball coach Larry Finch remained unplacated after their man’s defeat by Freeman in a local party conclave (Jackson was, perhaps not coincidentally, a former U of M cage star.)

Another certainty confirmed by this election: As a political bloc, Tennessee now seems irrevocably anchored to the Republican cause. The state– which already possesses a Republican governor, two GOP senators, and a majority of the Tennessee congressional delegation – went for Bush in this election by almost 80,000 votes. Surely a feather in the cap of 7th District congressonal wannabe David Kustoff, the Memphis lawyer who ran the Texas governor’s statewide campaign. And a potential obstacle to the ambitions of state Democratic chairman Doug Horne, who wants to run for governor in 2002 but confided to a friend during the evening that the loss of Tennessee to the Bush column might “reflect” on him.

A West Tennessee mayor who was rubbernecking in Nashville had commented bitterly during the period between Bush’s apparent victory and the invoking of Florida’s recount provision that Gore had brought the statewide debacle on himself by failing to maintain contact with state party cadres. Maybe so, maybe no. (If anything is clear about the vice president and Democratic standard-bearer, it is that he has, and no doubt will forever have, a deficit in what is often called “people skills.”) But Gore probably should not be blamed for a result which is so clearly part of a long-term statewide tendency. Even the legislature of Tennessee, still under the nominal control of the Democrats but stiff-neckedly resistent to the current Republican governor’s call for tax reform , is conservative enough to pass for Republican by the standards of almost any other state.

Another sign of the gap between the parochial concerns of Tennessee Democrats and those of their partymates elsewhere: Troy Colbert, director of the Democrats’ state Senate campaign committee, was asked for his reaction in the interval when Bush appeared a sure winner nationally. “We didn’t lose a single Senate seat. I feel great!”he answered.

In Shelby County, where Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton and former U.S. Representative Harold Ford Sr. made a point of suspending their legendary rivalry to work in apparently unfeigned harmony on behalf of the national ticket, Gore-Lieberman prevailed by some 50,000 votes over the Republican ticket of Bush and Dick Cheney. That was the same margin that carried Shelby for Bill Clinton and Gore in 1996 and a a majority identical to that which won Tennessee that year for the Democratic ticket. (Clearly, the Middle Tennessee bailiwick of the state Democratic Party– last bastion of the old post-Civil War “Solid South”– is not what it once was.)

The Shelby County Democrats’ concerted activity was successful and sustained enough to have accounted at last partly for the School Board victory of Halbert, technically an independent but one who campaigned side-by-side with the party’s nominees. And it would have doomed Leatherwood countywide had not the aforementioned schism between Democratic voters undermined Freeman’schances.

As Democrats look ahead to their next major contests with Republicans, in 2002, they are likely to do so with some measure of true optimism.

On Wednesday afternoon, Gore– understandably fatigued-looking but clearly composed and even hopeful – appeared before the media hordes lingering in Nashville to make a brief statement. After thanking the 50 million Americans who had voted for himself and running mate Lieberman and congratulating Americans for turning out in such significant numbers to vote, the vice president said, “We now need to resolve this election in a way . . . .consistent with our Constitution and our laws.”. The recount and other issues “must be resolved expeditiously” but, he noted pointedly, with all due deliberation and “without any rush to judgment,”

With obvious satisfaction, the vice president noted that he had prevailed in the popular vote but called for Americans to respect the electoral-college results as the key to who would be the next president.

As it happened, any number of schemes were being floated calling for the abolition of the electoral college or the tampering with it or the renunciation of its verdict by Bush, who remained the putative ultimate winner.

It would take a while for Americans, deprived of sleep and an immediate resolution, to decide how they felt about the arcane system by which they had chosen a president– or, more properly speaking, had so far failed to choose one But for all the problems with the nation’s political system which were highlighted by this freak millennial election, all one had to do was look around at the teeming tribes of foreign journalists gathered in Nashville to see traces of admiration in their faces for so fair and uncompromising a process– still the envy of the world.

Meanwhile, the recount.

Meanwhile, mahzel tov.

Hilary J.D. MacKenzie is the Washington bureau chief of the Southam News, a news service for Canadian and British newspapers. Her mission to Memphis this past weekend was simple: make a decision about where to be on Tuesday — election night and the final act of the 2000 presidential race.

With 11 electoral votes and the political bragging rights to Tennessee, Vice President Al Gore‘s home state, at stake, the winsome, thoughtful MacKenzie, a Jane Wyman lookalike, wanted to give Gore one last look.

For the last several months she had been following the presidential campaigns of both Democrat Gore and Republican George W. Bush. She had already made hotel and reservations for both Tennessee’s capital city of Nashville, where Democrat Gore maintains headquarters, and Austin, Texas, where Republican rival George W. Bush has his.

MacKenzie would have some help covering election night, but she preferred to be in the city of the winner herself– which meant that she had to make up her mind which way to go — West or East. Gore’s two weekend events in Memphis — a Friday night rally in Court Square and a Saturday morning prayer breakfast at The Peabody would, in effect, decide the issue.

Friday night: Though some would appreciate outdoors evening rally and the dedication of the thousand or so souls who attended it in an intermittent rain, MacKenzie and others would judge it in retrospect to be a “disaster” or, at the very least, a disappointment.

Strange in a way: Any public occasion which has Al Green doing “Let’s Stay Together” (an almost overtly symbolic song which rocked and, swear to God!, temporarily stopped the rain) ought not be discounted overmuch.

It was an impressive fact, too, that staying together for this occasion — as for events over the last several weeks — were U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr.; his father, former congressman Harold Ford Sr.; Mayor Willie Herenton; Assessor Rita Clark; Shelby County Commissioner Shep Wilbun; state House Speaker Lois DeBerry; register candidate John Freeman; and a number of other potentially disparate types.

Clark, who has proved herself one of Shelby County’s most accomplished politicians, came up with one of the evening’s best lines. “You pray for George Bush,” she urged. “You vote for Al Gore!”

And Gore, when he came out, preceded by wife Tipper and daughter Kristin played a fair game of politiccs, too, adding the phrase “. . .like Willie Herenton” to a reprise of his convention line, “I know I won’t always be the most exciting politician. . . .” and boosting the mayor’s chief rival, young Ford, by intoning the date “2008!” meaningfully.

But when it was all over, almost nobody could remember much else of what Gore had said beyond his standard talking points (“prescription-drug benefits for seniors,” “Social Security-plus, not Social Security-minus,” unjust HMOs, the iniquity of a big tax cut for the “wealthiest one percent,” etc., etc.)

And the crowd, in retrospect, was seen as being too small, rain or no rain.

As a homecoming to the place where, as Gore noted, he and Tipper had summered for a Memphis State session in the dismal watershed year of 1968, it may indeed have been more dampened than fiery.

Saturday morning: All this while, the news of opponent Bush’s 1976 DUI arrest had been given a chance to play, and the next morning, as a sizeable crowd gathered in the Peabody’s Memphis Ballroom for the prayer breakfast, such backers as Shelby County Democratic chairman David Cocke and former U.S. Senator and Ambassador Jim Sasser were hopefully talking up the possibility of further November surprises, more skeletons.

This was a true prayer breakfast, and as the crowd waited for Al and Tipper to appear, Rev. Bill Adkins, the host, and a series of other African-American ministers prayed for victory — or perhaps it was for deliverance — with intensity, proclaiming, in the words of one, that “the vice president must win here,” and in the words of another, reminding the crowd (and the Lord) that Gore had been “called upon to save the Clinton ticket in 1992.”

When the candidate himself came on, he begin with a false start, mistaking Aurelia Kyles, wife of Rev. Billy Kyles, for the wife of Mayor Herenton. But this mistake was indulged with good humor on all sides, and Gore was encouraged by the warmth of his reception.

Indeed, he quickly segued into one of his stump gimmicks of the last few days, whereby he said, “I’m getting warmer” and stripped himself of suit coat.

Soon, this was matched by the phrase, “I believe that we are getting warmer” and followed up with, “I believe that America has a rendezvous with redemption.”

Gore sprinkled some of his usual talking points into the occasion (although “a woman’s right to choose,” among several others, made no appearance at this breakfast, so well attended by black fundamentalists).

But he himself was into what sounded vaguely like preaching, the real kind, and did not obscure his message by the shouting he sometimes affected to simulate a passion that might not actually have been there.

Gore didn’t seem to be faking it this time when he told this group, “I am taught that good overcomes evil” and asked for its help in overcoming the last obstacles to victory in this campaign.

“I have a feeling,” he said, prophesying victory. “I feel it coming.”

This was a group, he said, which surely had not cared that he might of an occasion have sighed overmuch (and, to laughter, he demonstrated the breathy sound that millions of Americans had heard –and been disturbed by — during the televised first debate with Bush. “You have known what is in my heart,” he declared with confidence.

Gore exhorted the crowd to go with him into “the valley of the dry bones,” where the Lord Himself breathed life into that which had been thought dead. “I need your help to breathe life into this campaign. I need to you to lift me up. And Tuesday night I’ll say, ‘Thank you, Memphis!'”

There was real emotion in this (as there had been when Gore preached a secular homage to the principle of the Good Samaritan at Mason Temple a year earlier), but there was a kind of pathos, too, one that the closing, arms-linked mass rendition of “We Shall Overcome” could not altogether efface.

Having lunch in the Peabody later in the morning, Hilary J.D. MacKenzie mused on the “presumptuous” pattern she had discerned of “Number Twos” in America trying to become “Number Ones,” and how it didn’t usually work out. Yet she had been moved by the solidarity of the prayer breakfast, (if not by the Court Square rally of Friday night), and she thought out loud about staying over another night in Memphis while she decided whether she was Nashville- or Austin-bound.

She was still undecided when she went up to her room to write an evening dispatch. When, later on, she read her account over the phone to a newly made Memphis friend, even she was surprised at how fatalistic the events she described had been made to seem.

An hour later, Hilary MacKenzie said her farewells. She had a 9 o’clock flight to Austin.

If Al Gore were to end up, as promised, saying “Thank you, Memphis,” from his Nashville election headquarters on Tuesday night, she would have to catch it remotely, on television, the way the rest of the nation would.

With Tennessee’s 11 electoral votes known to be up for grabs and all the main players in state for comparison purposes this week, one consequence has been to reinforce the impression TV viewers formed some while back about the smoother styles of the vice-presidential candidates vis-a-vis their ticket heads.

Democrat Joe Lieberman and Republican Dick Cheney both came, saw, and conquered.

Lieberman, however, suffered from a disadvantage. His best go, like Cheney’s only one, was in Memphis, where the Democrat’s remarks were confined to a smallish, throughly screened big-spender audience in private, while Cheney’s were let go in full view of a high school assembly and the gathered media.

First, Lieberman: some weeks ago various influential Memphis Democrats, including some activists in the city’s Jewish community, hatched the idea of a fundraiser for the Democratic ticket that would galvanize assorted Memphians who had not yet invested much attention in this year’s campaign.

Many of those were Jewish, and some of the early planners consequently characterized the event in embryo as a “big Jewish fundraiser.” But they intended it to be only one component of an ensemble event that would include a public entertainment on the riverside Mud Island site and might involve Vice President Al Gore as well.

Both the Democratic National Committee and the Tennessee Democratic Victory 2000 committee were lobbied hard for a combination event on the date of October 24th.

A Closed Event

When push came to shove, however, and the direness of the vice president’s home-state positon became obvious (he started trailing in several key polls,for example), a decision was made to go to Nashville instead Ñ leaving the Memphis area only the fundraiser.

That ended up not sitting well with Memphis Democrats who feel they’ve been short-shrifted by the ticket, despite the fact that, over and over again, they’ve proved their willingness to go to the ends of Tennessee and elsewhere to support Gore’s cause.

In any event, Lieberman made his appearance Wednesday night at the East Memphis home of Bernice Cooper, widow of the late Irby Cooper, who died in July. Cooper owned a fleet of hotels (including the East Memphis Hilton and, at one time, Nashville’s Hermitage), and was a well-known philaanthropic figure and a consistently supportive one in Democratic ranks.

His son Pace Cooper is picking up more or less where his father left off, and was able to turn out some blue-ribbon political figures (e.g., both Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton and former U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Sr., his political rival) and donors for the occasion.

In one sense, the event was a clear success– raising an estimated $600,000 in far less time than it took to raise a claimed $4.3 million in Nashville over two days this week– but it took place in a vacuum.

Lieberman was, as usual with an audience, both genial and elegant, and he employed his essentially conservative mien to draw contrasts with the rebate-minded Republicans he and Gore are now having to compete with.

Democrats and Solvency

Boasting the current balanced budget and high prosperity, Lieberman told his 70-odd auditors, “It would have been hard for a Democrat to say 15 years ago, but after the last eight years we’ve earned the right to say we are the party of economic growth and fiscal responsibility.”

And he promised: “We’re going to continue the growth by balancing the budget, paying down the debt, by living within our means. And then by making choices that have consequences about how we’re going to spend what’s left of the surplus.”

Lieberman minced no words about why he was in Tennessee. “It’s been a remarkably close race, and it probably will be right down to the end. but I feel we have got momentum on our side as we head into the last two weeks.” Pointedly, he added,

“The kind of money you’ve raised here tonight will keep us on the air in one of the big states for a week. It will allow us to get out the vote in states where that could be a determinant factor.”

Lieberman concluded his remarks with an evaluation of the Memphis event that was especially meaningful to the Jewish members of his audience, “This is the last Gore-Lieberman fundraiser of the campaign,” he said, comparing it to a siyum (pronounced ‘see-yum’), the ceremony that, for a Talmudic student, marks the completion of a stage of study.

There will be one more big fundraiser in the campaign, an official of the D.N.C. explained later, however. This one, in Washington , will involve gay and Lesbian donors and will feature President Bill Clinton.

Bush’s Better Half?

The visit of Republican vice-presidential candidate Dick Cheney to Germantown High School in suburban Shelby County was an easy, good-natured outing for the former Defense Department official, who served George Bush the elder during his presidency and now could be a crucial element in the success of George Bush the younger.

The GHS visit followed a breakfast meeting with 30 local Republican cadres, and the sunny mood generated there followed him to the podium in the high school gymnasium.

Two daughters accompanied Cheney to Memphis– Mary, whose gay lifestyle may have given her markedly tolerant father crossover appeal rather than a cross to bear, and Liz, who introduced Cheney after recalling his probably apochryphal advice to her: “Liz, don’t screw this up!”

Speaking in front of a wall mount which sequenced the words “Bipartisanship,” “Honor and Integrity,” and “Results” over and over, Cheney began by noting that he had done next to no campaigning in his own home state of Wyoming. About the result there, he said, “I am confident.” The very fact that the current week had seen Gore– less than two weeks out from the election– having to exert himself in his native Tennessee was meaningful, said Cheney. ” We’re going to carry Tennessee on November 7th.”

By the Numbers

Much of Cheney’s talk was devoted to numbers. Gore’s spending proposals would exceed the expected surplus by some $900 billion, he said. The much-vaunted job reduction claimed by Gore from “reinventing” government had come almost exclusively– some 85 percent– from the nation’s overly depleted military ranks. 25 people involved with the 1996 Clinton-Gore fundraising effort had been indicted . In his 1998 Texas relection effort, Governor George W. Bush had won 27 percent of the African-American vote and 50 percent of the Hispanic vote.

And so forth and so on. In a curious way, Cheney’s numbers game created a bond with his audience. And in the Q and A that followed his brief remarks he disposed of the one or two unfriendly questioners deftly and without malice.

To a student who made unflattering statements about the Reagan administration, Cheney said, affably enough, “Well, I have a somewhat different view of President Reagan than you do. . .”, and proceeded into a carefully stated apologia .

(Cheney managed his defense of the Great Communicator, perpetrator of Iran-Contra, while simultaneously chastising the Clinton-Gore administration for what he said was winking at the sale of Russian arms to Iran.)

For all his measured obedience to his team’s talking points, however, Cheney avoided anything like the hard line. In his conclusion, he made the obligatory request for his auditors’ votes but said, “If you decide to go the other way, that’s all right.” He noted that his own father had been a lifelong Democrat who reluctantly consented to vote Republican after his son became one of the GOP’s stars but insisted on givng his political allegiance a formal review every two years.

So there you had it, two vice-presidential candidates, equally winning, each a vicar for his ticket, the one soaking up bucks in private for use in other states, the other building bridges in public for the sake of winning the state he was in.

Time would tell which was the superior strategy.