Author: Memphis Flyer

We at the Flyer get many queries about our endorsement policy from various candidates and their supporters. Our answer is always the same — and it reflects a policy that was established when the Flyer was founded in 1989: We don’t endorse candidates.

Dedicated longtime readers may recall that we have slightly hedged on that resolve a time or two, but we have inevitably returned to it as the solid anchor that keeps us moored in the overriding mission of serving the public, not instructing it in its decisions.

Any such resolve should be reviewed from time to time, and we reviewed it again this year before deciding to leave it in place. It isn’t a matter of being above the battle (our critics are ever-ready to accuse us of having favorites, and maybe, at some level, we do — though there is more variance in our editorial councils than many would imagine). Nor is it a matter of our being squeamish about choosing. We don’t pull many punches when we address policy matters on our editorial page, and if we were to start picking and choosing among political candidates, we feel sure we could step up and take some pretty straight pops.

But here’s the rub: Hardly ever do we encounter an “it” candidate who totally expresses the dotted “i” and the crossed “t” of our desires. Nor one who has fully plumbed the public needs of the moment and has come up with perfect solutions. Nor one who sums up the best aspects of a political party or movement while remaining free and unencumbered of its less worthy aspects.

Every now and then, somebody comes close, but A) if we’ve done our job of coverage properly, we’ve supplied the matrix from which conscientious readers can discern for themselves who such paragons might be; and B) if we haven’t, then our motives would be suspect anyhow.

But our real reason for holding back on endorsements is simply out of respect for our readers’ need to make their own reasoned judgments or to pursue their intuition or maybe even to honor their own whims. And there’s the simple fact that truth, such as it is, is likely to be found piecemeal — a part of it in one candidate, another in a second candidate, and yet another key ingredient in a third. We discovered this all over again this year in the course of interviewing candidates for major office at length (a process that continues) and sharing the results of those conversations by means of videos posted online.

Some candidates impress us with what they say, others with what they do. And our capacity for dismay works both ways, too. We don’t mind serving as gatekeepers for the public, but we see our main function in doing so to be that of assuring that the gate continues to swing wide and open.

It surely has not gone unnoticed that all of the candidates now running for governor of Tennessee are willing to consider punitive or preventive actions against illegal immigrants of the sort lately made famous, or notorious, by recent state legislation in Arizona. Or so each of the four — Republicans Bill Haslam, Zach Wamp, and Ron Ramsey, and Democrat Mike McWherter — indicated in a recent statewide forum televised live.

All four have also been critical of the federal government for filing suit against Arizona’s new law, which is scheduled to go into effect at the end of this month and would allow state, county, and local law enforcement officers to inquire into the immigration status of anyone stopped on suspicion of any infraction — whether major crimes or minor traffic violations — and to detain anyone who doesn’t have proof of American citizenship or legal residence. The Justice Department regards the Arizona statute as unconstitutional on grounds that it usurps federal oversight of immigration.

To understand the iron hand that this law provides, imagine the last time you coasted to a slow roll, instead of a full stop, at a deserted city intersection and got nailed for it by a policeman. That’s intimidating enough. Now go on to imagine that you are the head of a Mexican household, either directly imported here for the value of your labor by an American employer or merely migrated here on your own in search of gainful employment. If indeed you are Mexican, or merely look Hispanic, you are subject to immediate racial profiling, protected under Arizona law, with potentially dire consequences for you and your family.

True enough, the law is the law, and if you’re residing in this country without legal authority, there should be some penalty to pay. Never mind that no one was especially worried about the presence of illegal immigrants a few years back when they were visibly at work building most of the homes that were going up under the impetus of a construction boom. It now turns out, of course, that the boom was artificially hyped into being by speculators and big banks that contrived to make real fortunes out of complicated financial schemes and phantom money.

The migrant workers were cogs, as necessary to the maintenance of this dubious machinery as the over-stretched homebuyers who were coaxed into mortgages they could ill afford and which were rapidly turned over, broker to broker, for profitable resale.

We were prompted to think about all this not only by the recent gubernatorial debate but by testimony presented here on Monday to U.S. representative Steve Cohen’s judiciary subcommittee, which is looking into the problem of home foreclosures. As the testimony made clear, the home-building bubble was not invented, nor was it made to burst, by the laborers who built the houses or the marks who purchased them.

Nor was an intractable unemployment problem — the proximate cause of the current immigration hysteria — created by such individuals, victims themselves, and we most definitely are not going to solve the problem by scapegoating them and not punishing the real malefactors.

There had been gubernatorial cattle calls before in the 2009-10 political season, but the one conducted Monday night at Belmont University in Nashville and carried on the state’s major NBC affiliates had an air of “last call” about it. And it served to remind us of just how diverse — and how limited — our choices for a state chief executive are.

There were three Republicans and one Democrat in the mix — a reversal of what might have been the expected ratio, say, 20 years ago. The one remaining Democrat, Jackson businessman Mike McWherter, is almost by definition a legacy candidate — the son of the next-to-last Democratic governor, Ned Ray McWherter of Dresden, and the endorsee of the current Democrat in the governor’s mansion, Phil Bredesen — whom McWherter spent most of Monday night citing by name as his role model.

To say that McWherter performed cautiously in the debate is an understatement. He had the air of a candidate who knew he would still be running for governor into the fall and was saving his ammunition — and his candor — for a one-on-one against whichever of the three GOP candidates turned out to make the cut. Meanwhile, like the rest of us watching, he was checking them out.

When the point came, about midway in the hour-long debate, that each of the candidates was allowed to address a pointed question to one of the others, their choices were revealing. McWherter chose to question Knoxville mayor Bill Haslam, the presumed frontrunner, and his inquiry, directed to the issue of Pilot Oil scion Haslam’s refusal to release his income tax returns, was bluntly stated: “What are you hiding?” (Haslam replied, essentially, that only politicians, for political purposes, wanted to know the answer to that question. A disingenuous and dubious guess, we would think.)

Next to pick a partner was Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey of Blountville, who boldly stated that what he wants out of government can be expressed in one word: “nothing.” (Cynics are within their rights to wonder if that’s also what he has to offer as potential head of government.) In any case, Ramsey picked on Chattanooga congressman Zach Wamp, his rival for the affections of Republican ultraconservatives. Why did Wamp vote for a TARP (bank bailout) package? he demanded. The congressman answered, apparently honestly, that he had only voted for one such bill and that was because he had been convinced that his constituents’ financial security (i.e., their bank accounts) would dissolve into nothing if he didn’t.

Wamp, wanting to be seen as Haslam’s chief chaser, insisted that the Knoxville mayor come clean about his business experience with Saks Direct from 1999 to 2003, a chapter missing from Haslam’s campaign resume. Rather blithely, Haslam said it had all been a huge success.

Finally, Haslam, assuming the role of presumptive nominee, asked Democrat McWherter if he intended to raise taxes to pay for freshly legislated federal mandates. McWherter said … well, it was hard to tell what he said.

As good a place as any to remind you that we at the Flyer have conducted interviews with two of these candidates (Haslam and Wamp), with the results available in video form at memphisflyer.com. Ramsey and McWherter may also get their turn — the former hopefully before the primary date of August 5th.

In these fractious times, especially where government is concerned, it isn’t every day that you find examples of bona fide good-faith bargaining. The art has largely vanished at national levels, where the two political parties barricade themselves against each other and throw unyielding invective back and forth. And it isn’t exactly omnipresent at the level of state government, either — as witness the month-long impasse between Governor Phil Bredesen and the legislature’s majority Republicans over the issue of the coming fiscal year’s budget.

Stalemate of that sort seemed entirely possible, too, when members of the Shelby County Commission sat down last Friday to complete work on this year’s county budget. There were several areas of disagreement — all along partisan lines. Republicans wanted both a lowering of the tax rate and a decrease in county personnel. Democrats on the commission resisted both, and interim county mayor Joe Ford not only wanted to get his planned budget, with no tax rate and no layoffs, through the commission, he was also adamant about adding in some improvements on two sections of Holmes Road that had been once rejected by the commission but that he felt committed to.

Lo and behold, instead of deadlocking, the commissioners worked it out. The Democrats (who generally were a vote ahead of the Republicans on specific issues) would not yield on the tax rate, citing cautionary advice from county financial officer Mike Swift. And the Republicans insisted on pruning down personnel costs, as well as paying down as much county debt as possible. In the end, everybody gave. The Democrats, trusting to figures from Republican Mike Carpenter showing that the county had averaged 167 retirees per year, agreed to eliminate funding for 75 jobs. If the number of retirees should come up short — totaling only 50, say — then the reductions would also be contained at that level. By agreement, no public-safety positions would be eliminated. Such savings as would be accomplished by this downsizing would go toward debt service.

Meanwhile, the budget contained a 2-percent increase for county employees, $10 million additional funding for the Med and $5 million for the county Health Department, and Ford would get his Holmes Road projects, as well.

There was even more to the deal, but the point was, it was a deal. And one, moreover, that seemed to satisfy everybody. Even some of the commission’s legendary hard cases (who can be found among members of both parties) signed off on it.

Kudos are merited all around — especially to Democrat Steve Mulroy and Republican Carpenter, the two main architects of the arrangement. Ultimately, the county budget proved to be something of an ideal instrument (Ford will no doubt feel entitled to run on it), but the commission’s conservatives (not all of whom are to be counted among the Republicans) have earned some bragging rights as well.

The entire affair demonstrated all over again the value of give-and-take, and it proved that all that’s needed for an agreement — any agreement — to occur is a simple willingness on all sides to reach one.

When Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey of Blountville took time out from difficult budget negotiations on Capitol Hill to fly to Memphis last week for a one-hour visit — during which he spoke to a Republican women’s group in Collierville and after which he flew immediately back to Nashville — he was paying homage to the importance of Shelby County in the 2010 race for Tennessee governor.

Presumably, Ramsey took the trouble to come here largely because his two Republican rivals in the gubernatorial race — Chattanooga congressman Zach Wamp and Knoxville mayor Bill Haslam — had also come. The GOP candidates spoke from the same dais and then went their separate ways, resuming what has become a fair amount of intramural sniping among the three of them.

Whatever the state of their regard for each other, the three Republicans and Jackson businessman Mike McWherter, the remaining Democratic candidate for governor, have naught but praise for Memphis and Shelby County. They all recognize that the county provides anywhere from a sixth to a fifth of the statewide vote, in either primary, as well as in the general election later on.

For all his deference to Shelby County last week, Ramsey still has some catching up to do, as does McWherter. Neither has yet named a basic component of his campaign after Memphis, as both Wamp (“Memphis Matters”) and Haslam (“Memphis Plan”) have.

There’s still time, and, given the urgency of several local issues, notably educational restructuring and financial support for the Med, we would advise: The more specific the better. And thanks for coming.

Harold Buehler

This space has seen numerous posthumous eulogies over the 20-odd years of the Flyer‘s existence, and we choose to take note of developer Harold Buehler’s sudden and unexpected death not necessarily to insert him into any panoply of greats and near-greats. Rather famously, Buehler had both admirers and detractors, and both were in full cry over the past year during a prolonged controversy over his mode of infill development in the inner city.

Either you think Buehler served a social need, by putting new residential structures where vacant lots had been, or you take a dubious view of the rental houses he constructed in those places. He was called savior or slumlord, depending on one’s vantage point.

But overlooked in all the controversy was the fact that Buehler spent his lifetime in the nexus between black and white, and his commitment to joining the two halves of our community was made evident not only by where he did his work but by the details of his previous career as a coach and educator in the African-American community. He was the founder of a North Memphis track club that generated world-class athletes like Olympic gold medalist Rochelle Stevens. And, surely, the fact of two interracial marriages in Buehler’s immediate family, including a past one of his own, symbolized the man’s commitment to racial harmony.

We sympathize with his widow, Jo Ellen Buehler, and with the rest of his immediate and extended family for their loss.

Just as a blind squirrel will find the occasional acorn, so will the current NRA-indentured Tennessee legislature occasionally do the right thing — as when both the state Senate and the state House passed a much-needed bed tax to
provide break-even funding for the Med and avert — if barely — the specter of its closing.

What makes the 3.5 percent fee on the net revenue of the state’s hospitals appropriate is that it somewhat corrects the present imbalance, whereby federal dollars generated by indigent care at the Med in effect underwrite medical care at institutions, including private ones, elsewhere in Tennessee. By attracting additional federal money on a two-to-one basis, the state tax is expected to generate enough income to offset threatened cuts in TennCare funding across the board.

So far, so good, but it fails to correct the well-documented situation whereby, in the last fiscal cycle, only $34 million of the $84 million generated by Med activity was routed back to the Memphis hospital. In other words, while the new tax will help keep the Med at subsistence level and out of bankruptcy, it does not affect the existing disproportion in the way state government allocates the Medicaid dollars it gets from the feds. In a sad irony, the Med will continue to subsidize indigent care across the state, even at private institutions solvent enough to absorb such costs, as the Med itself teeters on the brink of financial collapse.

Back in February, the Shelby County Commission voted to send a letter to all active gubernatorial candidates asking them to sign a pledge that whatever federal dollars are generated by indigent care at the Med should be distributed to the Med on a one-to-one basis. So far, no candidates have complied, despite an ongoing funding crisis at the local institution that has never abated.

Commenting on the situation at Monday’s meeting of the County Commission, Commissioner Mike Ritz opined: “I think what we have here is a situation where there are a lot of interests across the state that frankly are just happy seeing the Med right where it is — kind of starving, not closed, hardly open, in a facility that’s about three or four times the size it needs.”

Ritz further argued: “If we just had the money, for a while, to amortize the bonds on a new smaller hospital, the Med would be able to compete, to have a nice facility that would be earthquake-proof and would serve the community for another 30 to 40 years.”

Whereupon the commission, in a show of nonpartisan unity, agreed that candidates for governor should be given one more opportunity to sign the fair-funding pledge. Given the political realities of those aforesaid “interests across the state” that like things just fine the way they are, the gubernatorial candidates may continue to waffle on the issue or to decline outright to sign the pledge, as one of them, Knoxville mayor Bill Haslam, was candid enough to do last week.

If they continue to hold back, that information should be, as Commissioner John Pellicciotti suggested on Monday, widely publicized at public meetings across the county.

Let the chips fall where they may.