NASHVILLE — Later on, it would get said that factors other than the pure intimidation factor of the mob caused the pending budget deal to break down in the state Senate Thursday night, before a vote could be taken on an income tax-cum-referendum package that would fund present state priorities and lay the way for future ones.

So many variants got told by this or that key legislator that it’s hard to determine which straw might have broken the camel’s back. Depending on who was doing the explaining, it was either Lebanon Democrat Bob Rochelle’s insistence than an income tax be in effect for at least a year before a statewide vote on it could be taken, or the House Democrats’ insistence on the same thing, or Republican Senator David Fowler’s refusal to yield on having a referendum (alternately, a Constitutional Convention) come first, or the GOP Senate Caucus’ negative reaction to the deal brought them by Fowler, Oak Ridge Senator Randy McNally, and Collierville Senator Mark Norris, or something to do with TennCare, or — what you will.

Or maybe it wasn’t a straw at all, but the bludgeoning force of the huge and madding crowd that swarmed into and around the state Capitol Thursday evening as the legislators were, in theory, scheduled to debate the income tax issue, or, alternately, vote on it.

Fowler was one of those who, hither and thither in the confusion of Thursday night, would suggest conventional parliamentary snafus as the key to the breakdown, but he expressed himself otherwise in the immediate aftermath of the failure, as Senator Jim Kyle of Memphis, co-chairman of the House-Senate conference committee charged with finding a budget solution and the engine of such progress as could be made, was pressed by Lt. Governor John Wilder to cut his losses and rush through a resolution in favor of a no-new-taxes stopgap budget that would spend Tennessee’s entire portion of tobacco-settlement money in one year and still leave the state short of essential services.

Said Fowler on the floor to his colleagues (and, of course, to the world at large) even as the final vote was about to be taken: “The activities of the talk-radio people and Senator [Marsha] Blackburn have killed the right of the people to vote. I think the mob effectively killed their opportunity to vote on this issue.” (Collierville’s Mark Norris would say that Blackburn’s actions, in e-mailing her Paul-Revere-like alarms to the denizens of the populist right, had been the legal equivalent of “yelling fire in a crowded theater.”)

Fowler said, “We discussed the possibility of a means by which people could have a say on the tax structure with their votes. Those people outside are protesting not knowing we were trying to give them a vote.”

The “people outside” were at this point chanting “No Means No!” over and over and literally hammering at the heavy oak doors which — closed and manned by highway patrolmen and city police, who were called in to augment the normal contingent of legislative door guards — were all that stood between them and the prospect of some unprecedented (for Tennessee) form of direct intervention.

Apologists for the demonstrators, a breed who turned out not to be so scarce, would of course see it all as pure participatory democracy, and, indeed, for all the raucousness and shouting and booing and shoving and door-pounding and (later) window-breaking, most of the protesters kept a decorum of sorts.

A case in point: well after the vote was taken and the parliamentary issue was settled in both the Senate and the House, which voted subsequently the no-new-tax budget, this journalist and veteran Tennessean Capitol Hill reporter Duren Cheek eschewed the safety of the interior tunnel which, in the labyrinthian Capitol-Legislative Plaza complex, leads back to the Plaza’s press offices and, at a somewhat further remove, to the general vicinity where my car was parked. The unusual reason for this: Duren has a vision quirk whereby he simply sees better out of doors, night or day.

The crowd began to bait us almost as soon as we showed up outside, demanding to know if we were legislators as we threaded our way through them down the Capitol steps. I suppressed the urge to say something waggish like, ‘What? Don’t you recognize Bob Rochelle?’ This crowd had, after all, been brought to the emotional edge or it wouldn’t be where it was, doing what it was.

V. Then came a potentially chilling moment. Of a sudden, Duren, a portly man well into his middle years, went down on the hard concrete of the first landing, and five or six men from the crowd rushed to where he lay, lunging toward him.

In one of the alternative, multiple universes that the late French fiction writer Alain Robbe-Grillet might have concocted from such an image, the outcome could have been sinister. The reality was, in fact, quite benign. Cheek (visually impaired, remember?) had just tripped and fallen, that was all, and the crowd members who reached for him did so as good Samaritans. They helped him to his feet, firmly but gently.

Earlier, Senator Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) had played comic toreador with the crowd. At the height of its anger, he had entered the Senate chamber brandishing a large-size Planters can with the word ÒNutsÓ in bold and held it high before the crowd, which howled in derision.

The experience of the venerable Ben Atchley of Knoxville was not so happy. The fact that the Republican Senate Leader has been an consistent opponent of the income tax had stood him in no stead at all as he tried to make his way through the crowd. There was no mistaking the suited and bespectacled Atchley for anything but a legislator, and he had gotten shoved several times as he made his way through the crowds to get to the Senate chamber.

”I don’t mind expression, but that’s mob rule,Ó Atchley, a mild man normally given to understatement, would say later.

And elsewhere the crowd activity was even less gallant. After all, had these put-upon citizens of the (barely) middle class not heard, over and over again on talk radio, that an income tax would grab up fully 50 percent of their available funds? (And never mind that Senator Rochelle and others had released studies showing, for most Tennesseans, an income tax with corresponding reductions in the sales tax would result in a lesser tax burden overall.

At some point, a few people in the crowd had begun throwing rocks and other ad hoc missiles, targeting the first-floor office of Governor Sundquist, who — with Senate Speaker Pro Tem Rochelle and House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh — constituted what to the members of this crowd was an unholy trio bent on taxing them into personal insolvency.

“Thieves” was a word frequently heard from callers to the incendiary talk shows presided over by Messrs. Valentine and Gill — which worthies continued to broadcast from the periphery of the Capitol grounds Thursday night, at least one of them suggesting to his auditors such questionable mischief as a nocturnal visit to the Lebanon residence of Senator Rochelle.

At some point in the evening, State Rep. John Mark Windle (D-Livingston) was in the Capitol building walking back to his office when he was confronted by a rush of demonstrators. Thinking to find sanctuary, he stepped into the governorÕs first floor suite and sat down on a couch in one of the inner offices. Then, as he would recall: ÒA rock came through the window about half the size of a football and landed at my feet.. . .They were banging their firsts on the windows and hollering. It was bizarre.”

While all of this was going on, the normal inhabitant of the governor’s office, Don Sundquist, was away making a speech at an economic development conference. Several times he was called away to the telephone to get an up-to-date report on the mayhem going on over at the Capitol, and when a tobacco lobbyist in attendance at the governor’s speech made ready to go over, out of curiosity, Sundquist bade him stay, advising that it wasn’t safe.

VI. The governor would eventually issue a statement: “I appreciate the right of all Americans to free speech and peaceful protest. I do not, however, approve of those who advocate violence and I regret that occurred at the Capitol.

“State employees, legislators and law enforcement officers should be able to do their jobs in a safe, reasonable way. I am particularly critical of some radio talk show hosts and at least one legislator who encouraged disruptive behavior and destructive acts. I hope the budget debate will continue, but in a calm, reasonable way. My top priority has [been], and continues to be, the welfare of Tennessee’s children.”

If some of that sounded self-serving, it was a fact that Sundquist had, way back in February, proposed a widely admired education initiative. In the stopgap budget that got passed, not only was the plan itself utterly gutted, but short-term spending for the existing requirements of public education was threatened (not even to mention the long-term prospects, since the $560 tobacco windfall, once used up to fill out this year’s bare-bones budget, would not be available for the year after.

State employees, who had lobbied hard for a cost-of-living pay raise, would get a modest increase of 2.5 percent pay raise. (Noting that the raise was being paid for during the next year with the one-time tobacco money, Norris said the pay raise might amount to so much “severance pay.”)

TennCare would be held solvent for at least another year (after that, the wolf would be back at the door), and the Department of Transportation’s road building funds — untouchable pork, even in these dire times — would be preserved. But, all in all, a full $340 million had been cut from Sundquist’s budget recommendations, and it wasn’t over with. The governor would be required to find ways of paring at least another $100 million over the course of the coming year.

The immediate word from Sundquist was that the budget was “a likely candidate” for a veto, and, in preparation for such an eventuality, both houses passed resolutions obliging them to return on August 6th for an override or other action in case of a veto or to come back in January, if no veto occurred.

There were also rumors that the governor, should he let this budget pass for the moment, would call the legislature back in special session sometime this fall. Sundquist had already called two special sessions to plead for tax reform, and there was Nothing Doing both times.

Even so, and the very real merits of the case aside, a gubernatorial aide conceded that Sundquist, who was being mocked as irrelevant in some circles and whose name, if it was used at all, had fallen to the bottom of news accounts of the budget impasse, might have to do something hard-nosed just to keep his hand in.

Whatever it portended for the future, few of the legislators — exhausted and, in come cases, shell-shocked — had the heart for any more protracted battles.

Late Thursday night, a group of them were licking their wounds at the bar of the nearby Sheraton, a traditional oasis for members of the General Assembly, and Murfreesboro’s Larry Trail, who had stood down a protester earlier in the evening, was musing out loud.

“I just don’t like the way it looked, the way it made us look,” he said of videotaped footage of the evening, which had been shown and reshown on TV in Nashville and elsewhere and was even then undergoing another replay in the big TV set overhanging the Sheraton’s bar area.

“It made us look like we were afraid, that they made us back down,” he said, and then looked at the floor, as if contemplating a future that might turn out even to be even bleaker than the mortifying present tense just experienced.

Jim Henry of Kingston in East Tennessee, who back in the ’70s and ’80s was a mover and shaker in the relatively sacrosanct Tennessee legislature of that time, was in Memphis Saturday to promote himself as a centrist Republican alternative to U.S. Rep. Van Hilleary, the Gingrich-style conservative who, many think, is close to having a lock on the Republican nomination for governor next year.

Henry — who is cast in the square-jawed, white-haired mold of several other 2002 hopefuls (gubernatorial wannabe Randy Nichols, the Knox County D.A., for example, or State Rep. Lincoln Davis, a Democratic aspirant for Hilleary’s 4th District congressional seat) — talked about a number of things to the members of the monthly Dutch Treat Luncheon at the Audubon Cafe.

Among them were taxes (he’s for reform and isn’t ready either to endorse or to rule out any version of it, including the income tax), TennCare (he’s for reforming it, too, but endorses the state-run insurance program as a financial and medical boon for Tennessee’s citizens), and fiscal policy in general (he came out for prioritizing state needs, raising enough revenue to pay for them, and then eliminating any excess money — presumably by tax cuts Ñ before government though up a way to spend it).

But the one thing that seemed to preoccupy Henry, both in his public remarks and in private conversation afterward, was the debacle in Nashville last Thursday night, which saw a state Capitol literally attacked by protesters as the lawmakers inside forsook a last-ditch good-faith effort to produce a long-term budget and instead hastily adopted a bare-bones no-new-taxes version which leaves many needs unspoken for and which may be vetoed by Governor Don Sundquist.

Not only epithets but rocks were thrown Thursday night by the throngs that turned out at the command of radio talk show hosts Phil Valentine and Steve Gill. Windows were broken out in Governor Sundquist’s first-floor office, and legislators were verbally abused and even manhandled.

Informed that Republican Senate Leader Ben Atchley, no supporter of the income-tax legislation that the crowd had turned out to protest, had been shoved two or three times as he made his way into the Senate chamber, Henry seemed especially troubled.

“That’s dangerous for someone like Ben. He’s had several bypass operations. We can’t be having that,” the GOP hopeful said, shaking his head and furrowing his brow. “I don’t know how we’re going to do it, but we’ve got to find a way that will let us deal with important questions and, at the same time, return civility to state government!”

II. Neither of those goals seems anything but remote after Thursday night. It had become fashionable in the preceding six months to ridicule, even condemn, the leadership of the current General Assembly for failing to agree on a budget that would allow the state to meet its current needs and make a few modest improvements.

State Senator John Ford of Memphis, whose legislative achievements are often overlooked because of his sometimes outlandish private behavior, earned the admiration of many observers late in the session as he both tried to break the revenue impasse with a flat-tax version of the income tax and excoriated the leadership of his own party and his own Senate for not dealing with reality.

They needed to resign and step down if they wouldn’t lead, he said. And, as the Senate bogged down Thursday and seemed likely to timidly accept some version of the bare-bones budget Ñ some $800 million short of estimated needs ÑÊthat they had more or less forced the House to adopt because of their own inaction, Ford had had enough.

He stalked out of the Chamber and strode down the long tunneled hallway leading from the Capitol back to his office, anouncing, “I’m leaving. They’re not going to do anything worth staying around for.”

And the flamboyant senator, famous for his fast driving, was, soon enough, hastening down I-40 back to Memphis.

But meanwhile, something of a miracle occurred. A group of senators from both sides of the aisle, determined to save something of their chamber’s reputation and to get a budget measure passed that would not force the state to gut vital programs (education and health services prominent among them), stirred themselves Thursday afternoon to putting together a workable formula.

Senator Bob Rochelle of Lebanon, the Democrat who is the Senate’s (nay the legislature’s) leading exponent of an income tax, and Republican Sen. David Fowler of Signal Mountain, a conservative’s conservative, began working on a compromise that would include Fowler’s insistence on allowing a statewide vote before an income tax could be legitimized.

True tax reform, as Governor Sundquist had long since recognized, if but reluctantly, could probably not be achieved through any other means. A sales-tax increase had proved unpassable because almost everybody had come to realize that Tennessee’s sales tax was already too high relative to its neighbor states, was based on an outmoded economy, and increasingly was incapable of accommodating the state’s future revenue needs.

For months, various hodgepodge formulas involving other measures — services taxes, sales-tax extensions, “sin” taxes on alcohol and tobacco, car-tag increases, etc., etc. Ñ had been shopped around and failed.

That left only the income tax, and, thanks largely to the tireless helmsmanship of Sen. Jim Kyle, the Memphian who was co-chairman and motive force of the joint House-Senate committee charged with finding a solution, Rochelle, Fowler, and others got close to an agreement.

The House had already signaled its willingness to accept an income tax. All the Senate had to do was find a formula. At one point, with 14 votes in the bag for some version of an income tax (of the 17 needed in the 33-member body), Rochelle came off his insistence on a graduated version (Republicans traditionally favor the flat-tax principle) and agreed on a statewide referendum that would either validate or sunset the tax one year after its institution.

Fowler, Sen. Randy McNally of Oak Ridge, and Collierville’s Mark Norris — who doubled as negotiators and as the three swing Republican voters who could make the proposal work — then accepted the proposition, according to Kyle, and headed back to their caucus at Rochelle’s insistence to get its approval.

III. It was at that point that Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who represents the elite Nashville suburb of Franklin and who functions as the poster girl for all populist right-wing causes, sat at her legislative desk and began batting out emails on her taxpayer-provided laptop, informing all members of her

ideological network — including, crucially, Valentine and Gill — that the pointy-headed scoundrels were at it again. They were about to pass an income tax.

The broadcasters — competitors on the radio but ideological allies — soon took to the airwaves and, as they done repeatedly every time in the last two or three years that the legislature came close to passing such legislation, called on their audiences to respond. In years before, the response had been caravans of horn-honkers surrounding the Capitol. Now the protest would take a more direct form — mass invasion of the Capitol grounds and its hallways.

The throngs began to gather even as the three Republican negotiators were pitchig the deal to their caucus. On a Senate telephone line, meanwhile, Lt. Governor John Wilder, who had been savaged by Ford for his back-and-forthing on the income tax, was trying to find the Memphis senator.

He eventually reached the voice mail on the motoring Ford’s busy cell phone, saying into the receiver, “John, this is John Wilder. You’ve got to be back here at 6:30 for us to vote. This is important. You’ve got to get back here.” Under the circumstances, it was an Offer That Could Not Be Refused from the still powerful Senate presiding officer.

On his way up an escalator to the Senate chamber for the contemplated vote, Murfreesboro Democrat Larry Trail was accosted by three tee-shirted youths who seemed to have come out of nowhere and looked out of place in the building (though, to be sure, they had the citizen’s right to be there).

One of the young men warned Trail, formerly an income tax opponent, not to waver on the issue. “If you do,” he said, “I will make sure you lose in the next election. I will work to make sure you are defeated,” he said, his tone and demeanor more belligerent even than the words themselves.

“It’s behavior like yours that makes me want to change my mind,” the husky Trail responded in his best down-home Middle Tennessee drawl. ÒI donÕt take kindly to threats.Ó With that, he turned his back and began walking briskly up the escalator steps. The scheduled vote was now only minutes away.

Behind Trail, as he entered the hallway leading to the Capitol elevator that would take him to the second floor to the Senate chamber, the three young men seemed almost to multiply. A trickle of ordinary citizens, some casually clad, others in suits, appeared instantly to have become a flood — almost as if the Capitol building were some stricken Titanic which had suddenly sprung a fatal leak.

Tennessee’s elected senators and representatives (the House, too, had been summoned by its leader, Speaker Jimmy Naifeh, to stand ready for action) made their way as best they could to their chambers.

Instead of facing only the imperatives of an historic vote, though, they would soon be dealing with an unprecedented reaction from a fast-growing crowd which the conservative Republicans Fowler and Atchley would be the first to describe by another name: mob.

Tennesssee’s elected lawmakers would find themselves literally under siege.

(To Be Continued)

Although there are still three active candidates for the Democratic nomination for Shelby County mayor — state representative Carol Chumney, state senator Jim Kyle, and Bartlett banker Harold Byrd — and Byrd’s momentum, especially, is gathering, yet a fourth significant public figure is thinking strongly of making a mayoral race as a Democrat.

This is Russell Gwatney, owner of several automobile dealerships and a recent chamber of commerce chairman who focused on evangelizing for educational needs.

Gwatney, whose previous foray into politics was an unsuccessful race as an independent candidate for the county commission in 1994, is reading from the same primer as other Democratic countywide candidates who see the county’s demographics, notably a technical black majority, favoring them in 2002 but who understand that swing voters have developed the habit in recent years of voting Republican in Shelby County races.

With some exceptions, such as county assessor Rita Clark‘s two winning campaigns in 1996 and 2000, Democrats haven’t fared well in such races. But Clark’s success with suburban swing voters has encouraged Democrats to believe they can win with candidates who have sufficient middle-of-the-road appeal.

Hence, the high hopes invested in the likes of Byrd, whose indisputable Democratic identity — from his service a generation ago in the state legislature and from two 7th District congressional races, in 1982 and 1994 — is fortified by across-the-board business relationships and by his long identification as a booster and fund-raiser for the University of Memphis and other community causes.

Most party cadres see Byrd beginning to take the play away from Chumney, whose candidacy has to fly in the face of stereotypes, and Kyle, whose legislative efforts have saddled him with some difficult issues. But Byrd has a major liability, too — notably his recent alienation from a Democratic faction, mostly made up of longtime Ford-organization cadres, who thought he undermined the chances of party nominee John Freeman in last year’s special election for register.

Byrd’s critics point to a $1,000 financial donation he gave independent candidate Otis Jackson, a former U of M basketballer, in a three-cornered race involving Freeman and the eventual winner, Republican nominee Tom Leatherwood, and suggest that Byrd organized even more support for Jackson after Freeman upset Byrd’s choice, former U of M basketball coach Larry Finch, in a nomination session of the Democratic executive committee.

Byrd, who was a co-chairman of the 2000 Gore-Lieberman campaign in 2000, says all he did was give the donation to Jackson, a personal friend, after which he kept his distance from the local race. Since then, Byrd has made a point of helping Freeman defray his campaign debt, and, though known to be the personal choice for county mayor of Sidney Chism, Memphis mayor Willie Herenton‘s chief political aide, the Bartlett banker has kept his lines of communication open to the Ford family and its allies.

“You still mad at me?” Byrd asked longtime Freeman friend and veteran Fordite David Upton at a recent party gathering. “Well, a little,” said Upton, “but you’re doing some of the right things now, no question.”

Meanwhile, there’s Gwatney, whose history of noninvolvement with intra-party disputes somewhat balances his minimal past participation in party affairs. “I want to see how Harold does” is the businessman’s frank statement about his short-term strategy. If Gwatney sees Byrd faltering to any major degree, he has made it clear that he will enter the race.

Gwatney’s problem is that Byrd already draws on much of his would-be constituency, and Byrd’s chances of nailing down a base in both the business community and among mainstream Democrats will be greatly enhanced if a $1,000-a-head fund-raiser, scheduled for June 28th at Central Station, a day before the county Democrats’ annual Kennedy Dinner, is a huge success.

The Hooper Factor

Like the mayor’s race, the one for sheriff also has a dark horse — or possibly two –waiting in the wings.

Henry Hooper, now a State Farm insurance agent but once both a Sheriff’s Department employee and a Secret Service agent, has indicated that he intended to run for sheriff as an independent. Now, there is some thought in Democratic ranks to persuade him to run as a Democrat.

Hooper, who was Mayor Willie Herenton‘s first choice to be police director back in 1992 before former congressman Harold Ford Sr. exerted his influence on behalf of Melvin Burgess, is an imposing figure who as an independent could draw votes away from Randy Wade, the likely Democratic nominee.

Recently Hooper’s stock took a bounce when he became the subject of an admiring, ostensibly nonpolitical, feature article in The Commercial Appeal.

Hooper is close to former Shelby County mayor Bill Morris, who has begun to actively plead his cause.

The situation has prompted a few Democrats to suggest to Chism that he might rethink his preferences and throw his authority — and, by implication, that of Mayor Herenton — behind Hooper in a Democratic primary. So far that scenario is considered unlikely.

As an alternative, some Democrats are recommending that Wade A) persuade former U.S. marshal Buck Wood to agree to serve as his chief deputy and B) announce the fact as part of his campaign.

The idea behind that proposal is two-fold — to enhance Wade’s potential in the general election and to keep Wood, who also has talked up a race for sheriff, from complicating that race any further.

Other observers see a scenario whereby both Wood and Hooper become independent candidates, creating a four-way race in which Democrat Wade and independent Hooper, both African Americans, vie with two white candidates: independent Wood and the Republican nominee (current Chief Deputy Don Wright or department administrators Bobby Simmons or Mike Jewell).

The Thompson Puzzle

Speculation about the 2002 electoral intentions of U.S. senator Fred Thompson was compounded this week with brand-new commentary in the national media and with the naming of a new chief of staff for the senator — lobbyist and former law partner Howard Liebengood.

Some wondered if Liebengood, who was assistant minority counsel to Thompson on the Senate Watergate committee in the early ’70s and who was the chief lobbyist for the Philip Morris Companies in recent years, means a focus on the administrative — as against electoral — aspects of Thompson’s office.

Others wondered if it meant Thompson was gearing up for a major campaign — either for reelection or, as The New York Times speculated this week, for governor.

Most observers saw the Times article, by B. Drummond Ayres Jr., to be something out of a time warp, since Thompson conspicuously swore off a gubernatorial bid back in February.

But, says Ayres: “To hear some of the rumor-mongers talk in Tennessee, Senator Fred Thompson is fed up with Washington and may return to run for governor, especially now that Senate Republicans are back in the minority.”

The idea that Thompson will be a Senate candidate again is indeed subject to increased doubt around the state; yet the notion that he would, at this stage, return to the gubernatorial wars is regarded as far-fetched.

(But watch this space.)

A Beleaguered Pair

Two Memphis members of the state House of Representatives — Bartlett Republican Tre Hargett and Memphis Democrat Henri Brooks — have become the focus of increased attention in the last week, in ways not altogether to their liking.

Hargett — who, with Nashville Democrat Sherry Jones, chaired a special committee appointed by House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh (D-Covington) that was charged with making specific recommendations for budget reductions — has taken some flak in the process.

Though the representative noted that his lengthy list of possible cuts were not recommendations as such but merely a compilation of the suggestions made by members of his committee, some observers were aggrieved by them.

After a testy conversation in Legislative Plaza with Tennessee State Employees Association director Linda McCarty, Hargett found it necessary to dispatch an all-points e-mail denying that he and State rep. Paul Stanley (R-Germantown) were recommending a reduction in the state’s contributions to medical insurance for state employees, though a recommendation to that effect had been on the committee’s list of possibilities.

“I am extremely disappointed that someone would take the committee comment and distort it so horribly in an attempt to use you and your colleagues by misrepresenting the actual details of what is happening in the Tennessee General Assembly,” Hargett’s e-mail said.

Brooks has become the focus of a continuing controversy over her public refusal to rise with other members when the pledge of allegiance is recited at the beginning of legislative sessions.

When she failed to do so one day last week House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh made a pointed request that she remain outside the chamber until after the daily pledge was finished. She declined and complained that the conversation had been one of “a master talking to a slave.”

Brooks, an African American, gave as her stated reason for not standing during the pledge the fact that she regards the American flag as representing “those colonies that formerly enslaved our ancestors,” contending, “For me to pledge allegiance would be a slap in the face and a dishonor to them.”

Her actions and statements drew an unusual response from one Jim Boyd of Hendersonville, a self-proclaimed “Patriot Party” candidate for governor, who stated his intention of burning an effigy of Brooks outside the state Capitol this week. Boyd declared that Brooks was guilty of “treason.”

How so? he was asked. “I know treason when I see it,” he declared.

Box Score

The Memorandum of Agreement enabling the building of a new arena and the shifting of the NBA’s Vancouver Grizzlies to Memphis may be voted on at a special meeting of the Shelby County Commission next Tuesday after members heard a preliminary presentation of the MOA from Shelby County mayor Jim Rout and others Monday.

If so, the plan is likely to pass — with potential swing voters Clair Vander Schaaf and Tom Moss having indicated they will vote yes if some tweaking is performed — particularly a loosening of the agreement’s provisions, under a “competition” clause, that the team’s proprietors would have first dibs to hold major money-making events at the new arena.

A sure no vote will come from Commissioner Walter Bailey who achieved a commission first Monday when he played for his colleagues and the overflow audience a recording from his voice-mail of a Memphis woman who opposed the arena.

Chairman James Ford, an arena supporter, denounced Bailey’s action as “inappropriate” and “a stunt,” but Mayor Rout lightened up the mood later by offering to share some of his own voice-mail favoring the arena. One call, he confided, had come from “an 82-year-old lady” — his mother. — JB

The 2002 Tennessee gubernatorial race is shaping up as a dead heat, according to the Mason-Dixon polling organization — which, however, has so far only polled instances matching either of two Democratic candidates — ex-Nashville mayor Phil Bredesen, who is already announced, and Nashville congressman Bob Clement, whose candidacy is now a moot issue — vs. the likely Republican nominee, Rep. Van Hilleary of Tennessee’s 4th District.

Clement’s long-rumored announcement Tuesday afternoon that he would not be a candidate confirmed reports that the congressman had been able to recover from the announcement last month of Bredesen, who sewed up common sources of money and support.

Two other Democrats — former state party chairman Doug Horne of Knoxville and former state senator Andy Womack of Murfreesboro — were not included in the poll, although their candidacies seem all but certain.

A gubernatorial rundown:

The “Try-Harder” Candidate

Womack, a visitor to Memphis last week, plans to make his official announcement of candidacy for the 2002 Democratic gubernatorial nomination this week in Nashville.

The State Farm insurance agent and 12-year legislative veteran, who retired from the General Assembly just last year, can calculate the odds. He not only knows what the line is, he knows what his line is.

“I’ve just got to work at it a little harder,” he said Friday morning at a stop at The Peabody, making only a modest variation in the vintage phrase which Avis Car Rental used in its efforts to catch up with industry leader Hertz.

In Womack’s case, the presumed leaders are named Bredesen, Horne. An obvious underdog, Womack is nevertheless prepared to compete all the way to next year’s primary election date against his two well-heeled opponents.

Some of Womack’s backers insist their man can raise $2 million for a governor’s race — a sum that would seem both to tax the former legislator’s capacity and to be only a pittance compared to what multimillionaires Bredesen and Horne can come up with.

No matter.

“I’m prepared to wear out a lot of shoe leather,” Womack says. “I never have run in an election in which I wasn’t outspent.”

As the 55-year-old Womack discourses on such past experiences as being a platoon sergeant in Vietnam, when he not only faced enemy fire but worked closely with civilians in numerous friendly villages, it is clear he has confidence in both his leadership ability and his affinity for the grass roots.

“I’m not going to have the big lick contributors, but I’ll have lots of ordinary people, and that’s who I’m running for,” he says. “I think Tennesseans are tired of the same old names. They want to shift gears a little bit.”

Which is Womack’s way of acknowledging that he isn’t exactly a household name. He is well known to followers of the legislature, of course, having served for six years as chairman of the Senate Education Committee and having sponsored the 1992 Educational Improvement Act which effected the reforms called for by former Governor Ned McWherter.

Womack thinks it’s time for more focused attention on education, both at the K-12 and higher-ed levels, which is one reason why he’s running. He also thinks that, as someone familiar with the practices of the insurance industry, he is well equipped to pursue the overhaul which he thinks TennCare needs.

He professes concern that, in these two areas, and in that of taxation as well, state government has for too long followed a “laissez faire” logic.

“I think my experience in the legislature gives me a pretty good grounding in how to fix that,” he says. Unlike many in state government, he does not shy away from the prospect of making unpopular choices. On taxes, for example, he says, “We can’t afford to take anything off the table.” That means looking at both the sales tax and the income tax, each of which has evoked strong opposition.

“Mainly, though, what we’ve got to do is establish what we’re going to do in government, then determine how we’re going to pay for it,” says Womack, who has a good many specific proposals in mind — involving changes in TennCare’s underwriting basis, for example, or instituting “dual-institution” credit for high-schoolers taking college-level courses.

How much campaign money does the Try-Harder candidate have on hand right now?

Womack grins. “My mother told me never to tell how much money I make.”

At some point in the future, when he’ll have to ‘fess up in the form of financial disclosure statements, we’ll know, of course, and that will be some gauge of how serious Andy Womack’s chances are.

There’s no doubt, in the meantime, that his intentions are quite serious indeed.

Bredesen Touches All Bases

As reports first began to percolate that Clement, his presumed chief Democratic rival for the governorship, would announce his non-participation in the 2002 race, Bredesen came, saw, and conquered at a Democratic Party fund-raiser here last Tuesday night.

The fund-raiser, at the East Memphis home of former Shelby County Democratic chairman John Farris, was kept scrupulously neutral in the intra-party sense by both Farris and state Democratic chairman Bill Farmer, who also attended, but virtually everyone on hand privately professed support for Bredesen’s gubernatorial bid. Included were Farris himself, Memphis mayor Willie Herenton, and former Shelby County mayor Bill Morris.

The accessions of Herenton and Morris to Bredesen’s cause were especially interesting in that the Memphis mayor went through the entire 1994 gubernatorial campaign without endorsing Bredesen, then the Democratic standard-bearer, and Morris was the then Nashville mayor’s chief primary opponent that year.

Not only that, it is generally believed that political activists friendly to Bredesen made sure that Morris became the subject of investigative focus that year, resulting in his brief indictment on charges of improper use of county prisoners at his campaign events.

Although Morris was able to clear himself and to resume campaigning, his campaign suffered a loss of momentum which could not be recouped. Reminded of those circumstances Tuesday night, Morris said, “I’m not thinking of the past. I’m looking to the future.”

Herenton’s decision to back Bredesen not only contrasted with his reluctance to support his then mayoral counterpart in 1994, it was further evidence that he finds himself increasingly able to make common cause with his erstwhile political rival, former congressman Harold Ford Sr., who, in his turn, would meet with Bredesen last week and promise to support him as he had in 1994.

(Eight years ago the then congressman found Bredesen a handy medium through which to inflict some payback on Morris, who — Ford thought — had, early on, frozen him out of the Clinton-Gore campaign of 1992 and had shown a reluctance to give financial aid to the legal fund which helped Ford, ultimately with success, to acquit himself of federal charges of conspiracy and bank fraud.)

The Farris fund-raiser was only the latest Bredesen visit to Memphis over the past several weeks. Much of the previous weekend had been spent here as well — the candidate schmoozing with Herenton and other local dignitaries of the political and business worlds.

Bredesen had also touched bases, not only with former congressman Ford and his son and successor, U.S. rep. Harold Ford Jr., but with members of the family political organization. Former county party chair David Cocke, a longtime Ford ally, recalled Monday that he had received a friendly telephone call prior to Bredesen’s visit here last week, asking for Cocke’s support.

“He was making the same call to lots of other people, too,” Cocke said. “Nobody else was that active.”

Clement’s Departure

In the immediate wake of the Mason-Dixon poll, which showed him edging Hilleary by 38 to 37 percent — Rep. Clement managed a statement that sounded upbeat.

“I am encouraged by such positive numbers, in both favorability and support, particularly since my name has not been on a statewide ballot in 23 years,” Clement said. “These numbers are consistent with the very positive response I have received from Tennesseans from all regions and all walks of life during the past few months.”

But on Tuesday, just after noon, the Nashville congressman released a statement which said in part: “Since there appears to be no shortage of quality Democratic candidates for governor, I have decided that an expensive and divisive primary is not in the best interest of the Tennessee Democratic Party. I wish the best for all Democratic candidates for governor … I will be returning the money I raised for the Bob Clement for Governor Committee and will continue to focus my time and energy on serving the people of the 5th Congressional District and Tennessee.”

For the record, the Mason-Dixon poll had Bredesen doing marginally better than Clement against Hilleary — winning by 40 percent to 37 percent. And the poll’s match-up of the two Democrats, along with former Tennessee education commissioner and Board of Regents chairman Charles Smith, came out: Bredesen, 33 percent; Clement, 28 percent; Smith, 3 percent; and the rest undecided.

· Horne, meanwhile, made it clear that only Clement’s involvement in a gubernatorial race would keep him out. With the Nashville congressman now a dropout, Horne is sure to enter himself, as he insisted last week.

That set up the prospect of an inevitable Battle of Millionaires — an intensely fought one between Bredesen, a former health-care executive, and Horne, whose various interests run from publishing to trucking, but one kept free of rancor.

Farris noted last week that it was important for Bredesen (and presumably for Horne also) to raise significant grass-roots money for the race. “People don’t want to get the idea that anyone is trying to buy the office,” he said.

· Bartlett alderman Mike Jewell, who is head of the sheriff’s department prisoner-transfer unit, formally declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination for sheriff last Thursday night at the Bartlett Performing Arts Center on Appling Road.

Blaming the current administration for an unclear agenda and an undesirable “image” (though declining to criticize personalities by name or to cite specifics), Jewell pledged to restore public confidence if elected. ·

Breaking Out Of the Box

As the deliberations of the Tennessee General Assembly turned into what members hope is the home stretch, each of the legislature’s two chambers late last week appointed a 15-member committee. The two groups together constitute a joint conference committee and will attempt to resolve a budget impasse which, unless resolved, would threaten the state with a $1 billion deficit by next year.

Several Memphians are prominent in the effort.

State senator Jim Kyle (D-Frayser, Raleigh) was named chairman of the Senate contingent, which also includes Sen. John Ford (D-South Memphis).

The House group includes both Rep. Joe Kent (R-Southeast Memphis) and Speaker Pro Tem Lois DeBerry (D-South Central Memphis). · — JB

Andy Womack, the former state senator from Murfreesboro, plans to make his official announcement of candidacy for the 2002 Democratic gubernatorial nomination next week in Nashville.

And Womack, a State Farm insurance agent and a 12-year legislative veteran who retired from the General Assembly just last year, can calculate the odds. He not only knows what the line is, he knows what his line is.

“I’ve just got to work at it a little harder,” he said Friday morning at a stop at The Peabody in Memphis, making only a modest variation in the vintage phrase which Avis Car Rental used in its efforts to catch up with industry leader Hertz.

In Womack’s case, the presumed leaders are named Bredesen, Horne, and Clement, although U.S. Rep. Bob Clement may, if current rumors are to be believed, be on his way out of the governor’s race.

Not Womack, however. An obvious underdog, he is nevertheless prepared to compete all the way to next year’s primary election date against the well-heeled likes of ex-Nashville Mayor Phil Bredesen and former state Democratic chairman Doug Horne of Knoxville, who is certain to be a candidate if Clement opts out.

Some of Womack’s backers insist their man can raise $2 million for a governor’s race — a sum that would seem both to tax the former legislator’s capacity and to be only a pittance compared to what multi-millionaires Bredesen and Horne can come up with.

No matter.

“I’m prepared to wear out a lot of shoe leather,” Womack says. “I never have run in an election in which I wasn’t outspent.”

As the 55-year-old Womack discourses on such past experiences as being a platoon sergeant in Vietnam, when he not only faced enemy fire but worked closely with civilians in numerous friendly villages, it is clear he has confidence in both his leadership ability and his affinity for the grass roots.

“I’m not going to have the big lick contributors, but I’ll have lots of ordinary people, and that’s who I’m running for,” he says. “I think Tennesseans are tired of the same old names. They want to shift gears a little bit.”

Which is Womack’s way of acknowledging that he isn’t exactly a household name. He is well known to followers of the legislature, of course, having served for six years as chairman of the Senate Education Committee and having sponsored the 1992 Educational Improvement Act which effected the reforms called for by former Governor Ned McWherter.

Womack thinks it’s time for more focused attention on education, both at the K-12 and higher-ed levels, which is one reason why he’s running. He also thinks that, as someone familiar with the practices of the insurance industry, he is well equipped to pursue the overhaul which he thinks TennCare needs.

He professes concern that, in these two areas, and in that of taxation as well, state government has for too long followed a “laissez faire” logic.

“I think my experience in the legislature gives me a pretty good grounding in how to fix that,” he says. Unlike many in state government, he does not shy away from the prospect of making unpopular choices. On taxes, for example, he says, “We can’t afford to take anything off the table.” That means looking at both the sales tax and the income tax, each of which has evoked strong opposition.

“Mainly, though, what we’ve got to do is establish what we’re going to do in government, then determine how we’re going to pay for it,” says Womack, who thas a good many specific specific proposals in mind Ñ involving changes in TennCare’s underwriting basis, for example, or instituting “dual-institution” credit for high-schoolers taking college-level courses.

How much campaign money does the Try-Harder candidate have on hand right now?

Womack grins. “My mother told me never to tell how much money I make.”

At some point in the future, when he’ll have to ‘fess up in the form of financial disclosure statements, we’ll know, of course, and that will be some gauge of how serious Andy Womack’s chances are.

There’s no doubt, in the meantime, that his intentions are quite serious indeed.

Careful observers of the whereabouts these days of 7th District U.S. representative Ed Bryant and Memphis lawyer David Kustoff will note that both men are hitting the after-dinner circuit with an unusual regularity — unusual, that is, for political hopefuls whose paths to political promotion are presumably blocked.

That block was supposed to have occurred a few months back when U.S. senator Fred Thompson decided to resist the pleadings of his Republican brethren in Tennessee to run for governor next year — in a race that most observers think would have been a shoo-in against whatever Democrat.

The senator’s decision, like a sudden stop in traffic, caused others to slam on their brakes: Bryant, who was looking to run in the 2002 GOP primary to fill what would have been a vacant Senate seat; Kustoff, who had been prepping hard for a run at Bryant’s seat, which in turn would have been up for grabs; and several others — Memphis city councilman Brent Taylor, former Shelby County Republican chairman Phil Langsdon, and state rep. Larry Scroggs among them — interested in the congressional seat.

So why are Bryant and Kustoff showing up, either as featured speakers or as prominent guests, at Republican dinner after Republican dinner all over Tennessee (most recently at Clarksville last weekend)?

“There’s a good chance that Thompson won’t run for the Senate even though he’s given up on the governorship,” said Kustoff matter-of-factly Friday as he stopped by the tent of Governor Don Sundquist on the riverside midway of the Memphis in May barbecue festival.

Which would mean that the Senate seat would come vacant, after all. And Kustoff, who has been raising money and making contacts relentlessly since last year’s presidential campaign, when he ran the Bush effort in Tennessee, doesn’t plan to be hanging around copping a snooze.

Neither does Councilman Taylor, who has raised a stout war-chest through innumerable fund-raisers and has made a point of cultivating Republican clubs (even to the point of making his own “grants” to them) all over West Tennessee.

Langsdon has also kept his hand in. The only casualty in the original field — if you can call him that — is Scroggs, who has not so much dropped as refocused his attention on the governor’s race, where the Germantown legislator is a long-shot alternative to 4th District congressman Van Hilleary.

“Lots of Different Things “

And what is the evidence that Thompson might exit from his Senate re-election bid as he did from the governor’s race? He was quoted last week in the authoritative national Web site The Hotline (www.nationaljournal.com/pubs/hotline) as saying, “I still haven’t decided … I’m still weighing lots of different things, lots of different things.”

His Republican sidekick from Tennessee, Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee chairman Bill Frist, swears Thompson will run. But that could be wishful thinking. Thompson, noted The Hotline, has let his fund-raising fall off in recent months (although his last financial-disclosure report still showed more than half a million dollars on hand).

The Memphis Democrat who is as sought-after among state Democrats as Thompson is among Republicans, 9th District congressman Harold Ford Jr., has said he doesn’t expect Thompson to run again and promises to “consider” a race for an open Senate seat.

Ford’s near-neighbor, 8th District Democratic U.S. rep. John Tanner of Union City, a leader of the conservative congressional “blue dogs” who earlier this year opted out of a governor’s race, is another possibility. Either would be considered a godsend by Tennessee Democrats, winless in a statewide political race since Al Gore won a second Senate term more than a decade ago.

There is a feeling among partisans of both major parties that 2002 could be a Democratic year, although Bryant’s low-key style could serve him well against either of the two star Democrats.

· Rep. Ford continues to be regarded as a major player by the Beltway media and by other prominent national politicians. A sign of that is the planned joint town meeting of Ford and U.S. senator John McCain, set for mid-June at a Memphis venue not yet chosen at press time.

The joint appearance, which might also include U.S. rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), is designed to promote support for the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance reform bill, which has passed the Senate but is being held up on its way to House of Representatives consideration by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.).

Nothing if not a realist, Rep. Ford — who two years ago thought long and hard about a challenge to Sen. Frist in 2000 — has set aside for the moment his sometime feud with Frist over patients’ rights legislation.

The senator — whose approach to such legislation has always been viewed by the congressman as insufficiently solicitous toward patients and too protective of HMOs — is the chief sponsor of a new patients’ rights bill that has the imprimatur of President Bush.

· At least one of Ford’s kinsmen is of the opinion that the congressman might consider a change of party if he wants to move ahead in politics.

Lewie Ford, a retired Los Angeles businessman and the Memphis congressman’s uncle, was in town for last week’s barbecue festival and discoursed on Rep. Ford’s future while relaxing in the congressman’s tent down on the river.

“I’m a Republican myself, and I can tell you, there’d be nothing stopping him if he decided to change over,” said the California uncle, who went on to acknowledge that the prospect for that happening was fairly remote.

“I don’t ever talk politics with him or with any of my brothers,” shrugged Lewie Ford, who is older brother to both state senator John Ford and former congressman Harold Ford Sr. “We don’t agree, and I doubt there’d ever be any changing of minds. So why bother?”

· Gov. Sundquist indicated he may try to be a factor in next year’s politics, despite his lame-duck status (after two terms, he cannot succeed himself, and he has indicated he will retire from active politics after 2002) and his current unpopularity with some of his partymates over the issue of tax reform.

He made it clear that he was less than enthusiastic about the gubernatorial candidacy of U.S. rep. Van Hilleary (R-4th District), who has taken stands directly counter to the governor on such issues as TennCare (Hilleary would limit it) and tax reform (the Middle Tennessee congressman is energetic in his opposition to a state income tax of the sort Sundquist has twice proposed).

“I’m not really crazy about it,” Sundquist conceded on the subject of some of the rhetoric issuing from Hilleary, and he seemed eager to heal whatever rupture might have occurred between himself and state rep. Larry Scroggs (R-Germantown), a one-time protege who had distanced himself somewhat from the governor on the tax issue.

“I could support him,” said Sundquist of Scroggs, who advocates some of the same austerity measures proposed by Sundquist’s chief critics but does so in a non-abrasive, thoughtful style and keeps his lines of communication open, even to key legislative Democrats.

“There are some wild ones, some really irresponsible ones, in there,” said Sundquist of the legislature’s archconservatives, some of whom opposed his reading plan and other education initiatives in debate last week on the grounds that they represented an intrusion into family values.

The governor’s education plan passed the House, though, and will be signed into law, although, as Sundquist pointed out, “We can’t effect it until we have funding for it.”

Having seen various tax-reform proposals, his own and others’, rejected by now, Sundquist won’t hazard a guess as to whether anything substantially will get passed by the current General Assembly, but he does say, “It’s got a better chance of happening now and next year, when there’s a general election.”

· Both Memphis in May festival weekends so far have been good occasions for next year’s candidates to get in some free advertising. Sheriff’s candidate Bobby Simmons had the process down to an art for the barbecue festival, gathering a large crowd of supporters down on the riverfront each morning, all of them wearing T-shirts boosting his candidacy, and sending pairs of them around the grounds at carefully timed intervals.

Arena Developments

The “NBA Now” organization, which is trying to organize support for building a new NBA-worthy arena to house the Grizzlies, currently of Vancouver, organized a pilgrimage to Nashville last Wednesday, getting some 150 people into three buses to make the trip.

Success of a sort crowned their effort, in the sense that all members of the Shelby County legislative delegation signed on to get floor consideration for enabling legislation, including a bill allowing Shelby County to levy and collect an ad hoc rental-car tax to help defray the costs of arena construction.

“Not everybody said they would support the arena,” conceded NBA Now spokesperson Tim Willis, “but they all want it to come to a vote, and that’s a real plus.”

Supporters and opponents of the proposed new publicly funded arena say that the climate of opinion in Nashville is more favorable to the arena concept now that members of the proposed ownership group have publicly accepted the idea of adding private money to the kitty for arena construction.

· Meanwhile, the Shelby County Libertarian Party, in a press release stating that “this arena charade is a conduit for taking citizens’ unfair taxes and passing them to the politically connected,” will host a forum on the subject at 7 p.m. next Wednesday at Pancho’s Restaurant in the Cloverleaf Shopping Center at Summer and White Station.

The billed speakers are Duncan Ragsdale, a leader of the anti-arena movement, Heidi Shafer, who is circulating petitions to hold a referendum on the matter of arena funding, and Shelby County Commissioner Tommy Hart, who is officially undecided on the arena issue but has professed skepticism about aspects of the arena proposal.

· One member of the commission who made an unexpected endorsement of the arena project was Marilyn Loeffel, whose letter of support to the Shelby County legislative delegation was read aloud by state senator Steve Cohen on his Library Channel program, “Legislative Report,” this week.

Cohen, successful earlier in the session in getting his lottery-referendum proposal passed, is currently active on behalf of animal rights and electoral-reform bills. The senator, who turns 52 this Thursday, told his television audience, “I’m growing old with you.” ·

Bredesen, Agriculture Secretary Drop In

At press time, two mid-week visitors were slated for Memphis, each raising political consciousness but in a different direction. Ex-Nashville mayor and current gubernatorial candidate Phil Bredesen was to be a last-minute add-on at a Democratic Party fund-raiser Tuesday at the East Memphis home of John and Amy Farris, and U.S. agriculture secretary Ann M. Veneman was scheduled to hold a “town meeting” at Agricenter International at 6 p.m. Wednesday, with a free barbecue dinner to be served up to attendees. • — JB

Amid rampant reports that his chief Democratic rival for the governorship, U.S. Rep. Bob Clement (D-Nashville) would, sometime this week, announce his non-participation in the 2002 race, ex-Nashville mayor Phil Bredesen came, saw, and conquered at a Democratic Party fundraiser here Tuesday night.

The fundraiser, at the East Memphis home of former Shelby County Democratic chairman John Farris, was kept scrupulously neutral in the intra-party sense by both Farris and state Democratic chairman Bill Farmer, who also attended, but virtually everyone on hand privately professed support for Bredesen’s gubernatorial bid.

Included were Farris himself, Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, and former Shelby County Mayor Bill Morris.

The accessions of Herenton and Morris to Bredesen’s cause were especially interesting in that the Memphis mayor went through the entire 1994 gubernatorial campaign without endorsing Bredesen, then the Democratic standard-bearer, and Morris was the then Nashville mayor’s chief primary opponent that year.

The Farris fundraiser was only the latest Bredesen visit to Memphis over the past several weeks. Much of the weekend was spent here as well Ñ the candidate shmoozing with Herenton and other local dignitaries of the political and business worlds. He didn’t touch base with members of the Ford political organization but was scheduled for a sitdown with former congressman Harold Ford Sr. this week.

Bredesen said he had not heard directly from Clement during the past week, during which there was growing word-of-mouth concerning the congressman’s imminent departure from the gubernatorial race.

An equally strong rumor, reinforced at the fundraiser by friends of former state party chairman Doug Horne of Knoxville, was that Horne intended to run if Clement declined to. That set up the prospect of an inevitable Battle of Millionaires Ñ an intensely fought one between Bredesen, a former health care executive, and Horne, whose various interests run from publishing to truckng, but one kept free of rancor.

Farris said it was important for Bredesen (and presumably for Horne also) to raise significant grass-roots money for the race. “People don’t want to get the idea that anyone is trying to buy the office,” he said.