Category: Politics Beat Blog

Willie Herenton will formally announce his candidacy for a fourth term as mayor of Memphis at a rally next Tuesday night, April 3rd, at the Adam’s Mark Hotel.

The mayor made the revelation at a fundraiser Tuesday night at the East Memphis home of supporter Gene Gibson. “I intend this as a pre-emptive move,” Herenton told a crowd of some 50 people about his decision to announce now, two years before the election.

“I’m going to build my war-chest and re-tool my organization, starting now,” the mayor vowed.

As reasons for his decision to run again in 2003, Herenton cited the still undeveloped riverfront and a need to see through to conclusion various other projects, including final arrangements for accommodating a National

Basketball League team.

On that score, the mayor, a backer of the drive to bring an NBA franchise to Memphis, expressed disagreement with a suggestion made earlier Tuesday by State Senator Jim Kyle that proponents of any forthcoming general obligation bond issue for completion of arena construction should call a referendum on the matter.

“That’s how Nashville did it when they were building the arena for the Titans,” Kyle, a likely candidate next year for Shelby County Mayor, said by telephone from Nashville, “and it unified the community as only a public vote of confidence can. My first rule of politics is ‘Run to the fire,’ and I’m encouraging the backers of a new arena to do just that.”

While not disavowing a bond issue, Herenton indicated he was disinclined to pursue a referendum strategy and said he was considering a variety of other local financing alternatives, including a local restaurant tax.

Shelby County Democrats, who couldn’t scare up a candidate for county mayor in 1998, apparently are going to have a fright wig of a contest for 2002. At least two prominent state legislators are now involved in serious commitments to a Democratic primary race for mayor, and a third may not be far behind.

State Representative Carol Chumney, who has hankered for a higher office for some time, held a meeting of supporters Saturday evening at Garibaldi’s restaurant in the University of Memphis area and has already filed the required papers with the state Election Registry to form an exploratory committee. And state Senator Jim Kyle — who, as the Flyer has reported, is actively seeking the nomination and several weeks ago hired a staff — insisted Sunday that he would not be deterred by Chumney’s entry.

“I think it bodes well for us as a party to have a spirited contest for county mayor,” Kyle said, in words similar to those used by Chumney, who also said a contested primary would benefit Democrats.

Meanwhile, a third legislator, state Senator Steve Cohen, noted that his name has received some mention as a possible candidate and would not rule out seeking the office of county mayor himself.

As all three Democratic legislators pointed out, the political strength of incumbent Shelby County mayor Jim Rout, a Republican, has waned considerably since his uncontested re-election to a second term three years ago. Well-publicized problems with the county jail and with a burgeoning financial deficit are at least partly responsible for that.

Chumney, who said she intended to have another meeting with supporters “in about three weeks,” pointed to three bills she has introduced — dealing with mental health, jail conditions, and debt policy — as evidence of her commitment to county issues. “I don’t fool around,” Chumney said about her commitment to the race.

Potential opponent Kyle professed some bemusement at the idea of Chumney’s having formed an exploratory committee. “It’s not legal for us [legislators] to raise money while we’re still in session,” he pointed out, referring to laws passed in the 1990s restricting state lawmakers’ ability to hold fund-raisers during a session of the General Assembly.

Although she characterized the fact as a coincidence unrelated to her race, Chumney noted that a longtime ally, state Representative Mike Kernell, has introduced legislation in the current session that would permit modest in-session fund-raising efforts by legislators in their home districts. Kernell was in the group that met with Chumney at Garibaldi’s.

Chumney also acknowledged that she had also given some thought to running in 2002 for sheriff — a position that at least one of her Shelby County legislative colleagues had been talking her up for in Nashville last week. But she said she had settled on a county mayor’s race instead.

Kyle, who has something of a head start organizationally, in that he has hired two aides — Jeff Sullivan and Bob Kellett — to assist him in researching both county and state issues, has kept open the campaign headquarters he used in his Senate reelection race last year. Kyle said he would be preoccupied during the session with his legislative duties, which include his supervision of patients’ rights legislation.

Though he has not formalized his 2002 plans to the extent that Chumney and Kyle have and shied away from any commitment to a race, Cohen indicated that he was still considering running for county mayor. And he, too, said that the reawakening of interest among several potential candidates was a good sign for the Democratic Party.

Several observers, meanwhile, have pointed out the obvious — that it is a given that a strong black candidate will probably emerge to contest for the nomination, too. And the name of Bartlett banker Harold Byrd still gets frequent mention among Democrats, especially suburban ones.

• State Senator Steve Cohen (D-Memphis), a sometime maverick who has nonetheless evinced an ability to create ties with members of the political opposition, has done it again — this time with President George W. Bush.

And in the present case the tie that binds is quite literal. While attending a meeting of the National Conference of State Legislators in Washington last week, Cohen exchanged conversation with the president about the need for a state sales-tax deduction on federal income-tax forms, at the end of which Bush said, “I like your tie.” Cohen then offered to give the tie he was wearing — a light-green one with a floral pattern — to the president.

Subsequently, he arranged to have the tie — or a duplicate — sent to Bush at the White House. Cohen, a member of the conference’s executive committee, attended NCSL’s annual “Leader to Leader” meeting along with state Rep. Matt Kisber (D-Jackson), co-chair of an NCSL task force on a “uniform voluntary sales tax agreement.”

In addition to their scheduled tasks at the conference, both Cohen and Kisber had been asked by Lt. Governor John Wilder (D-Somerville) to do missionary work on behalf of the sales-tax deduction, which was permitted prior to 1986 for states, like Tennessee, which have no income tax. Kisber was a featured speaker on the subject at the conference.

Wilder, who likes to say “Uncle Sam taxes taxes,” is a fervent evangelist on the subject of restoring the deduction and has talked up legislation that would remove the state sales tax altogether and replace it with a 6 percent flat income tax. The “6-0” plan, in fact, may get a vote during the current session of the General Assembly.

Both U.S. Rep. Bob Clement (D-Nashville) and U.S. Senator Fred Thompson (R-Tennessee) have introduced legislation supporting the idea of allowing a sales tax deduction on the income tax.

Is Percy the Man?

Next month Shelby County’s Democrats will have their biennial caucuses, followed by a formal convention, to select a new executive committee and a new chairman. Usually the identity of the latter can be surmised, or at least narrowed down to two or three names, by this point of the cycle. Not so this year.

Not up until now. But, in fact, the mystery of the Democratic chairmanship, circa 2002, may have moved far toward resolution last week, when a conversation at the bar of the Sheraton Hotel in Nashville (formerly the Hyatt Regency and the Crowne Plaza and site of many a consummation over the years, political and otherwise) ended with lawyer Percy Harvey, a member of the blue-chip firm of Stokes, Bartholomew, Evans, and Petrie, telling a group of visiting Memphians that he was interested in the chairmanship.

Since Harvey, an elegant man whose lifetime began in the rough-and-tumble world focusing on the South Memphis intersection of Trigg and Lauderdale, gets along easily with all the various factions of a highly diverse and factionalized party, and since he has already served as vice chair of the Shelby County Democrats at least twice, and since he says he’s willing to serve, he may, ipso facto, be drafted ahead of all other comers.

Other names — those of activist Mal Hooker and longtime party stalwart Gale Jones Carson, for example — have been mentioned, but Harvey is far better known than relative newcomer Hooker, and he has been toiling in the party vineyards even longer than Carson, and he is at home with the Democrats’ Ford and Herenton factions as well as with the party’s residual Midtown and suburban whites.

Moreover, Harvey is connected to several ends of the social and governmental establishment by virtue of his main calling these days — legislative lobbyist for a wide range of clients that include the Memphis school board, Shelby County government, and assorted components of the county’s and the state’s health care establishment.

It ain’t over yet, but until someone better comes along (if, indeed, there is one such), Percy Harvey may be just what the Shelby County Democrats, always on the edge of disintegration as an organized unit, need to get themselves focused on the electoral challenges of a new millennium. (Overshadowed by the Republicans of late, they haven’t been the county’s dominant party since a decade or so back in the old millennium.) Had not a certain recent presidential contender already appropriated the slogan “I’m a uniter, not a divider,” Harvey could arguably lay claim to it. And he may have the opportunity to do just that at East High School, where the local Democrats gather next month for their reorganization. — JB

Shelby County Democrats, who couldn’t scare up a candidate for county mayor in 1998, apparently are going to have a frightwig of a contest for 2002. At least two prominent state legislators are now involved in serious commitments to a Democratic primary race for mayor, and a third may not be far behind.

State Representative Carol Chumney, who has hankered for a higher office for some time, held a meeting of supporters Saturday evening at Garibaldi’s restaurant in the University of Memphis area and has already filed the required papers with the state Election Registry to form an exploratory committee. And State Senator Jim Kyle — who, as the Flyer has reported, is actively seeking the nomination and hired a staff for the purpose several weeks ago — insisted Sunday that he would not be deterred by Chumney’s entry.

“I think it bodes well for us as a party to have a spirited contest for county mayor,” Kyle said, in words similar to those used by Chumney, who also said a contested primary would benefit county Democrats.

Meanwhile, a third legislator, State Senator Steve Cohen, noted that his name has received some mention as a possible candidate and would not rule out seeking the office of county mayor himself.

As all three Democratic legislators pointed out, the political strength of incumbent

Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout, a Republican, has waned considerably since his uncontested reelection to a second term three years ago. Well-publicized problems with the county jail and with a burgeoning financial deficit are at least partly responsible for that.

Chumney,who said she intended to have another meeting with supporters “in about three weeks,” pointed to three bills she has introduced — dealing with mental health, jail conditions, and debt policy — as evidence of her commitment to county issues. “I don’t fool around,” Chumney said about her commitment to the race.

Potential opponent Kyle professed some bemusement at the idea of Chumney’s having formed an exploratory committee. “It’s not legal for us [legislators] to raise money while we’re still in session,” he pointed out, referring to laws passed in the ‘90s restricting state lawmakers’ ability to hold fundraisers during a session of the General Assembly.

Although she characterized the fact as a concidence unrelated to her race, Chumney noted that a longtime ally, State Representative Mike Kernell, has introduced legislation in the current session that would permit modest in-session fundraising efforts by legislators in their home districts. Kernell was in the group that met with Chumney at Garibaldi’s.

Chumney also acknowledged that she had also given some thought to running in 2002 for sheriff — a position that at least one of her Shelby County legislative colleagues had been talking her up for in in Nashville last week. But she said she had settled on a county mayor’s race instead.

Kyle, who has something of a head start organizationally, in that he has hired two aides — Jeff Sullivan and Bob Kellett –to assist him in researching both county and state issues — and he has kept open the campaign headquarters he used in his Senate reelection race last year, said he would be preoccupied during the session with his legislative duties, which include his supervision of patients’ rights legislation.

Though he has not formalized his 2002 plans to the extent that Chumney and Kyle have and shied away from any commitment to a race, Cohen indicated that he was still considering running for county mayor. And he, too, said that the reawakening of interest among several potential candidates was a good sign for the Democratic Party.

Several observers, meanwhile, have pointed out the obvious — that, while no specific names have yet surfaced, it is a given that a strong black candidate will probably emerge to contest for the nomination, too.

(NASHVILLE) — Some of the most quoted lines from poetry are those from Yeats’ “Second Coming,” which go: “The best lack all conviction/ While the worst are full of passionate intensity.” Forget, for the time being, “best” and “worst”; the jury is going to be out for a while as to which side is which in the great school-consolidation struggle, which showed up virtually out of nowhere last week.

Other than this distancing from a value judgment which we’re going to permit ourselves, the Yeats lines work just fine if reconstructed to read: “The city board lacks all conviction/ While the county board is full of passionate intensity.”

For, as Shelby County Schools board chairman David Pickler made plain Tuesday at the annual “Day on the Hill” of the Tennessee Schools Board Association (TSBA) in the state capital, once the state legislature let the consolidation cat out of the bag — in the form of House Bill 273 — the county board lost no time in uniting to go to war against the bill, which would limit all Tennessee counties to a single,unified school board and would, in effect, mandate school consolidation.

With impressive unanimity, the county board members put themselves on record as opposing the bill. And, Pickler maintains, stopped it in its tracks. “If Shelby County hadn’t raised hell about this bill, it stood a good chance of going through. I think that chance is over with now, though,” he says.

By “Shelby County,” it turns out, he means the non-Memphis parts of the county; further, it turns out it means the county school board. Taking it a step further, it could mean Chairman Pickler himself, who took the lead in organizing opposition to HB 273 — although his board colleagues were shoulder to shoulder with him from the very start.

By contrast, the city school board has waffled, big-time. President Barbara Prescott and board member Michael Hooks at first made bold to sponsor a resolution to support consolidation. Though the bill itself was not referenced, the timing of the effort certainly had the effect of underwriting the bill. In short order, city schools superintendent Johnnie B. Watson said Aye to the bill, and so did Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton.

A “Study” Is Called For

And then the city school board started to cave. Those members who favored consolidation in principle — most probably a majority, though the lack of a formal vote made moot the issue of a head count — began to back away from HB 273.

Prescott and Hooks withdrew their resolution, and Superintendent Watson agreed to a suggestion that the board “study” the idea of consolidation. That vote will come Monday night, and since it lacks utterly any controversy (not to mention any of the aforesaid conviction), it is sure to pass, probably without a Nay vote.

Watson tried his hardest not to, but he gave an ever-so-slight nod of the head when he was asked if a “study” of the school consolidation issue wasn’t the same thing as an obituary for a legislative measure whose life or death will be decided, most probably, within a matter of days.

That’s usually what a “study” amounts to when any authoritative body opts to do one, and studies of this particular issue date back some three decades (see City Reporter, page 6).

Prescott, Hooks, and other board members believed to favor city-county school consolidation tried to make clear their continued interest in the subject at a TSBA breakfast Tuesday morning at the Sheraton Hotel at Legislative Plaza. “It isn’t that we don’t favor consolidation. It’s just that this particular bill isn’t necessarily the way to go about it,” Prescott said. She, Hooks, and board member Lora Jobe talked up a strategy whereby the city board would vote to surrender its charter — thereby automatically falling under the purview of the county board.

The charter-surrender idea, of course, is a variant of one floated by Herenton back in the mid-1990s when — somewhat intrepidly and prematurely — he first raised the issue of consolidation. Herenton’s balloon drew verbal shotgun blasts of the sort that have greeted the latest consolidation talk.

A point of interest in that vintage proposal was Herenton’s insistence that he wanted to try to achieve governmental consolidation of city and county with minimal impact on the two existing school systems. Indeed, then and for years to come he would footnote any remarks he made about consolidation with the qualifier that the city and county schools should have common funding but independent governance.

The mayor’s attempts to reassure suburban opponents on the score of school-system independence didn’t convince opponents of consolidation, who suspected them of being a smoke screen. And Herenton’s relatively easy abandonment of the qualifier last week, when he wholeheartedly endorsed the current school-consolidation measure, prompted many a chorus of “told-you-so” out in the skeptical suburbs.

Herenton’s subsequent declaration that matters of race and class were involved in the opposition to HB 273 contributed to the hardening of opposition on the county board and in outer Shelby County at large.

Moreover, the TSBA itself — composed of all state boards, large and small, city and county, east, middle, and west — was able to adopt a formal resolution of opposition to the school consolidation bill without visible or audible opposition Tuesday.

Not a “Chinaman’s Chance”

That doesn’t mean that all districts see eye-to-eye on this or any other issue, of course. Prescott and Hooks both made a point of stressing their opposition to another bill supported formally by the TSBA — one which would allow for the proliferation of special school districts. The measure — favored by the Shelby County board — would amount to a resumption of the “toy town” struggle of 1997, Hooks said.

That battle stemmed from a bill, sneaked through that year’s General Assembly without attracting attention, that would have allowed virtually any unincorporated suburb in Tennessee, regardless of size, to become an independent “city.” After what Herenton described as a “life-and-death” struggle between urban and suburban forces, the state Supreme Court decided the issue in Memphis’ and other cities’ favor by declaring the bill unconstitutional.

As matters stand, the current city-county school consolidation bill has little or no chance. City board member Carl Johnson, who professes himself skeptical about the virtues of consolidation, referred to HB 273’s unexpected emergence into the light of day as a “fluke.” (It had come out of the House Education K-12 subcommittee with a 7-5 vote.) And Pickler noted with satisfaction that House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh of Covington, a nominal supporter of the bill, was now talking of the opportunity for “dialogue” which HB 273 presented.

“When a bill’s backer starts talking like that, that tells you something about its chances. I don’t think it’s got a Chinaman’s chance of getting out of full [House Education] committee,” said Pickler. Even so, he said, “technically the bill is still alive, so we’re going to keep fighting it until it’s laid to rest.”

Under the circumstances, that laying to rest may come sooner rather than later. To switch from Yeats to Shakespeare, the proponents of school consolidation may have let “the native hue of [their] resolution sickly o’er with the pale cast of thought … and lose the name of action.”

Cohen’s Day Out On the Hill

One of the guest speakers at Tuesday’s breakfast of the Tennessee School Boards Association (TSBA) in Nashville was state Senator Steve Cohen, the Midtown Memphis Democrat who had, as he told the assembled board members, just “graduated.”

Cohen referred to the final passage two weeks ago of his perennial resolution to permit a statewide vote on a Tennessee lottery. When it passed the House easily (after making it through the Senate previously without a vote to spare), the bill — like the November 2002 referendum which it authorizes — had survived a long struggle.

“It took 17 years,” Cohen observed to the TSBA members. “It felt like going all the way from kindergarten through college.”

Cohen’s lottery triumph is not the only success he’s having these days. He may be on something of a roll. A current bill of his to ban cell-phone use by teenage drivers is given good chances of passage, as is a measure allowing bearers of gun permits to wear their weapons into places where package liquor is sold. — JB

Despite concerns expressed by clients and University of Memphis staff members, Dean John Pepin of the University of Memphis Fogelman College of Business and Economics insists that the Fogelman Executive Conference Center (FECC) must be outsourced, along with the soon-to-open Wilson School of Hospitality and Resort Management and the FedEx Emerging Technology Complex.

The FECC, which is used by such companies as St. Jude ChildrenÕs Research Hospital, FedEx, International Paper, and the Shelby County Board of Education as a conferencing and corporate training facility, was established 14 years ago as a nonprofit educational outreach to the community.

Pepin says that the Fogelman College of Business and Economics is hard pressed to cover any FECC deficits, caused in part by university-required contracts for housekeeping and food services and by recent renovations to the 51 hotel rooms in the FECC. As a solution, the FECC staff and operations may be outsourced to a management company.

Several longtime clients have expressed their concerns about the changeover. CREDO’s Debbie Burnette, speculates that the costs will increase while the quality of service declines.

One training director of a major Memphis organization, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, says, “I do not see a for-profit organization managing with the same quality, customer service, and focus on the training and education community of Memphis as is presently done. Therefore I hope that the decision will not be made to sell off a very valuable community asset. That is more than the building. It is the focused service that makes the difference.”

The FECC, which currently is booked ahead as far as 2003, had more than $2 million in revenue last year and regularly receives glowing evaluation reports of the services and staff. Current employees have not been guaranteed a position upon outsourcing and will no longer receive university benefits, such as free enrollment in classes.

Employees of the FECC have asked that the decision be postponed until Shirley Raines, the new U of M president, takes office in May and has a chance to review the situation.

Three companies have submitted bids to manage the facilities. Among them is Wilson Management, spearheaded by Kemmons Wilson, founder of the Holiday Inn Corporation, whose donation built the Wilson School of Hospitality and Resort Management.

It is generally accepted these days that women, as a specific voting bloc, have a significant influence on political events — often determining the outcomes of elections, as in 1992 and 1996, when their disproportionate preference for Bill Clinton over his Republican and independent rivals arguably accounted for the ex-president’s victory in those years.

And in recent years women have increasingly run for — and won — political office. Both in the national Congress and in the Tennessee legislature, they play prominent roles, and when it came time recently for members of the Shelby County Commission to fill a vacancy in their ranks, there was such momentum to add a woman to the Commission that a relative newcomer and virtual unknown, Bridget Chisholm, was elected to the traditional African-American seat.

A number of recent and pending events underscore the growing prominence of women in local society and government.

Several Seek the State’s Top Job

Two women, Davidson County Sheriff Gayle Ray and state Representative Marsha Blackburn, have recently made a point of floating their candidacies for the office of governor.

And in the wake of U.S. Senator Fred Thompson‘s announcement last week that he would not seek the office, the prospective candidate list is sufficiently fluid that both Ray, a Nashville Democrat, and Blackburn, a Republican from suburban Brentwood, may have a real opportunity to impact the race.

Paula Casey, a longtime Memphis women’s activist and a partisan of yet a third prospective female candidate for governor, expressed satisfaction at the gubernatorial ambitions of Ray and Blackburn. “I’m glad to see women’s names finally being mentioned in this state for an executive position. Both have excellent credentials,” Casey said. But she felt compelled to add, “However, neither major party is known for supporting women. I’ll just be the most surprised person in the country if these women get support from either party’s infrastructure.”

(Casey’s own choice is another Nashvillian, Tennessee Association of Business education director Sharon Bell, a Republican who made an unsuccessful race in 1994 against veteran Democratic state Senator Doug Henry.)

Holden Leaves NARAS to Protest Rap Music

A Germantown woman prominent in Republican affairs, Cherrie Holden, has decided to publicly resign from the 32-member Board of Governors of the local chapter of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

Holden, who is also a member of the state Board of Education from Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District and was a state coordinator of the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign, has for the last year been one of five officers in the local NARAS chapter, holding the position of secretary-treasurer. She is business manager for High Stacks Records, which specializes in gospel recordings but recently did a retro album featuring the music of former Stax artists.

Her resignation is not meant primarily as a statement directed at the local chapter or even at NARAS at large, Holden says. She intends it as a protest against what she sees as alarming tendencies in the popular music industry — notably its acceptance of that nitty-gritty street variety known as rap.

Holden’s letter of resignation from the Board of Governors goes as follows:

“Our chapter has grown so much in the past several years and our industry has greatly changed. Along with these changes has come a very different focus for our organization. We have moved from a representative organization to a membership organization. The recognition of our art has also changed. No longer is there honor in rewarding the music industry’s finest for bringing the world music as a form of art. We find our industry now rewarding and lifting up the avocation of hate and violence through anger-filled lyrics of spoken-word obscenities known as Rap. We applaud beautiful young teenagers dressed up to allure, singing words that imply explicit knowledge well beyond their years. These are the role models that influence the youth of our nation.

“Thomas Carlyle once said, ‘Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine.’ I believe, as did Carlyle, the unique gifts we are given by God are to be used to offer this world refreshment from the daily struggles we face. So strongly do I believe that we have lost our focus that I feel I must resign from the organization that is lauding these things of which I wholeheartedly disagree. Once I believed that my service on this board could perhaps slow down or even reverse this disturbing trend by filling one position to hold an anti-vote. I was wrong and perhaps thought too highly of my personal ability to influence in this matter. I encouraged several of you serving now to join me in this effort. My apologies to you for leaving though I do encourage you to listen to your convictions.

“I hope that one day soon our country will understand the significance of rewarding that which is pure and wholesome and uplifting. I love you all and appreciate the opportunity to have worked with you.”

Holden said she had been somewhat aggrieved when the Memphis rap group Three 6 Mafia won a Premier Player award from the local NARAS chapter. “They’re angry and hate-filled,” she said. “We should not glorify that stuff. I’ve mainly been on the board to represent the local gospel community and spotlight them. If that [rap] is what the people want, I can’t approve it. I guess I’ll just make room for somebody that agrees with the philosophy of the organization.”

Holden said she had a telephone conversation Tuesday with local NARAS director Jon Hornyak, who called her from Los Angeles, site of this week’s Grammy Awards celebration. “He understands my position,” Holden said. “He said his position was one of free speech, that he didn’t want to exclude any genre of music. I can understand that, too.”

“Women of Achievement” Are Honored

Several prominent local women will be honored at 6 p.m. Sunday, March 11th, at the 17th Annual Women of Achievement dinner at Marriott East on Thousand Oaks Boulevard.

Awards at the dinner, timed for Women’s History Month, will be presented to the following: Dr. Janann Sherman (Vision); Anne W. Shafer (Courage); Cordell Jackson (Initiative); Lois A. Freeman (Steadfastness); Debbie Norton, Jalena Bowling, and Denny Glad (Determination); Jodie Gaines Johnson (Heroism); and the late Marion Keisker (Heritage).

Lincoln and His Legacies

In last week’s column and in the Flyer editorial, the term “Lincoln’s Birthday” appeared several times as a descriptor of this year’s annual banquet of the Shelby County Republican Party.

The actual name of the affair, chief event on the local GOP’s annual calendar, is the Lincoln Day Dinner, of course, and this columnist, who has attended many a Lincoln Day Dinner over the years, so described it. It came out the other way because of a proofreading error.

Like every other careful newsgathering organization, the Flyer has copy editors who check copy for misspellings, typos, and deviations from the paper’s accepted style. In a “Politics” column of some two weeks back, a proofreader’s alertness was able to substitute the right name (“RU486”) for a wrong spelling of the now available (and controversial) abortion pill.

Every once in a while an intervention is not so lucky. As all local Republicans know, Lincoln Day is a formal occasion at which they celebrate “Honest Abe” as one of the founding eminences of their party, not a celebration of the Great Emancipator’s birthday. In fact, some years Lincoln Day is not even held in February.

One of the rituals of the Lincoln Day Dinner is that each year two prominent local Republicans, a man and a woman, dress as Abe and Mary Lincoln. This year’s “Lincolns” were former Shelby County Commissioner Ed Williams and his wife Sue.

Williams is now the official county historian and can probably tell anyone who is interested the details of each and every local Lincoln Day Dinner. In fact, he’ll do it at the drop of a top hat. — JB

Although there was no particular reason for it to be so, the word had got
out in advance of last Saturday’s keynote speech by U.S. Senator Fred
Thompson at the Shelby County Republicans’ Lincoln Day Dinner that he
might ‘fess up as to his plans for 2002.

A good deal of suspense has been invested in the question of how
Thompson will resolve his options, which are: 1) to stay where he is and run
for reelection to the Senate; 2) to cut loose from the Senate and run for
governor; 3) to return to Hollywood (where he filmed 18 movies) as the
successor to Motion Picture Association president Jack Valenti; 4) none
of the above.

Even the last option is considered possible (though unlikely),
since Thompson has always had an air of listening to those proverbial inner
drums and traveling at his own pace to his own destination. He is, quite
literally, not to be rushed — as his nervous would-be handlers in the 1994
Senate race, which he started slow and finished fast, found out, and as all
those who urged him in vain to run for president after 1996 also
discovered.

In any case, Thompson’s much-ballyhooed visit to Memphis on
Saturday attracted not only the usual thousand-or-so Lincoln Day banqueteers
but a largish corps of GOP politicians whose own plans for 2002 depend on
his.

Among them were U.S. Representatives Ed Bryant and Van
Hilleary, of Tennessee’s 7th and 4th congressional districts,
respectively; State Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Franklin); Memphis
lawyer David Kustoff; Memphis city councilman Brent Taylor;
State Rep. Larry Scroggs (R-Germantown); and Dr. Philip
Langsdon, a Germantown/Memphis plastic surgeon who was Shelby County GOP
chairman for two terms in the 1990s.

Until recently, Bryant and Hilleary were virtually
interchangeable as potential successors to Thompson or, alternatively, as
rival claimants to the governorship should Big Fred decide to stay put in the
Senate. A few weeks back, however, Bryant hazarded the intriguing ploy of
opting out of the governor’s race, come what may, and either running for the
Senate, if that race opened up, or running for re-election to the House.

The latter prospect quite naturally dismays the last several
persons on the aforementioned list. Messrs. Kustoff, Taylor, Scroggs, and
Langsdon all aspire to Bryant’s congressional seat and would like nothing
better than to see their congressman move up and out.

It was with that in mind that Bryant, one of the preliminary
speakers at Saturday night’s banquet, tucked his tongue in cheek and said from
the dais, “When it was time for me to come up here, I looked around and saw
David Kustoff and Brent Taylor and Larry Scroggs and Phil Langsdon out there,
and I was almost afraid to get up and leave my seat!”

He might have added the name of Blackburn, who was there with her
personal guru and adviser Raymond Baker. Blackburn was asked: Why had
she come? “For America,” she said. (She actually said that.) Another
Middle Tennessee pol in attendance put it otherwise: “She thinks that in
congressional redistricting, she’ll get put in the 7th, and she’s ready to go,
too, if Bryant tries to go up.”

Blackburn, it will be remembered, took a run at Bart Gordon’s 6th
District congressional seat in 1992 before doing a stint as head of the
state’s film commission and then running successfully for the state Senate in
1998. But he still has congressional ambitions, it seems clear.

But Blackburn and company will have to wait just a bit longer to
see where their destinies lie. As he indicated Saturday, Fred Thompson is not
ready to tip his hand. “I’ve got a few months to decide,” he opined before his
speech, which consisted mainly of Republican boilerplate and contained nary a
hint as to his political intentions.

If Thompson does eventually decide to run for the governorship,
he will almost certainly have the Republican nomination for the asking, and
Rep. Hilleary will be up against it. He continues to indicate that he remains
in the running for the Senate, and chief aide Jim Burnette, a former
state GOP chairman, promises that a race between Hilleary and Bryant would be
“one of the most polite races in history.”

But there are some who have concluded — on what evidence, it’s
hard to say — that an unspoken arrangement exists between Bryant and
Thompson, whereby the latter will indeed go on to run for governor, leaving
the way open for Bryant to succeed him.

In that scenario, or even in a less conspiratorial one that has
Thompson in a gubernatorial race, Bryant’s potentially win-win ploy is invoked
— one of appearing to have deferred graciously to Hilleary for one office
while relegating the other to himself.

In the event, of course, Hilleary — who recently took some
Tennesseans on a tour which included the Senate cloakroom and experimentally
sat in a lounge chair there which he declared “fits my fanny” — is prepared
to contest the senatorial issue with Bryant, and it remains to be seen just
how polite that turns out to be.

Okay, it was expected that Tom Moss, who was appointed Shelby County Commissioner last fall, would try to get himself assimilated as a member in good standing of the commission’s seven-member GOP majority.

After all, nominal Republican Moss had defeated mainstream Republican David Lillard and was named to his post basically by a Democratic-dominated coalition (the same one that at the selfsame meeting boosted lodge brother Shep Wilbun into the vacant Juvenile Court clerkship), and Moss, along with veteran Republican Clair VanderSchaaf (who voted with the Democrats both times), was supposed to be dog meat for righteously vengeful Republicans to gnaw on at reelection time in 2002.

So builder Moss, whose ascension to the commission may have been more a developers’ coup than anything expressly political, has tried to accommodate himself to his fellow Republicans.

But things have become almost surreal: There was Moss after Monday’s commission meeting complaining, “I don’t think we’re a solid enough bloc. I don’t think we’re exacting enough in return for what we give up.” We? Why, the Republican majority, of course!

“For example, we should have demanded a quid pro quo from the Democrats when Brigget [Chisholm] came on,” Moss continued, referring to the young African-American woman, thitherto a political unknown like himself, who was elected to the commission two weeks later to replace Wilbun (Moss’s seat was the one formerly held by the GOP’s Mark Norris, who left for the state senate.)

In other words, Tom Moss — who achieved office under the cloud of Democratic sponsorship — has now become the most zealous of GOP partisans: No more deals with the Democrats unless something of solid value to the Republican coaliation comes from it!

It’s really quite remarkable, this turnaround saga of Moss the hardnose.Though there are those who maintain that Chisholm is in the same developers’ camp as Moss, she herself boasts State Senator John Ford and U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. as her chief supporters.

And in a key vote Monday on a Southeast Shelby County development resisted by its projected residential neighbors, she voted one way (against), Moss voted another (for), and VanderSchaaf voted yet a third way, proposing an amendment that would have split the difference.

(The project deadlocked at six-and-six and thereby died, although it can — and probably will — be brought up again for reconsideration.)

But the interesting fact about the vote was that none of the three supposed New Bloc members were together on the deal.

It may be easier than one would have thought for Tom Moss to take on protective coloration he’ll need for next year’s election season. At last Saturday’s annual Shelby County Republican Lincoln Day banquet at the Adam’s Mark, Moss was observed having a chummy conversation with Chris Norris, the ex-commissioner’s wife and a bedrock Republican in her own right.

That was followed by an even chummier conversation with county GOP chairman Alan Crone, who was overheard to be asking the new commissioner out to lunch.

After Moss’s appointment, Commissioner Michael Hooks was recommending a wait-and-see attitude to his fellow Democrats. He reminded them that they had played a large role four years ago in the appointment to the body of Morris Fair, but, said Hooks, “he voted with us once or twice, and then he turned into just another Republican.”

Whether that’s totally accurate or not, it describes a conversion process that Tom Moss, in his turn, may have already begun.

“It’s interesting that, just as we take the turn into the 21st Century, in the Tennessee legislature we’ve finally caught up with the 20th.”

That was State Senator Steve Cohen on the comfortable predicament he is now in, with the state Senate having finally bought the lottery-referendum resolution he’s been vending in one form or another for 16 years, and with the state House poised to give an almost certain Yes next week.

The self-same House wasted no time Thursday in setting up for action. The body suspended its rules to read the lottery resolution for the first time Thursday, putting the decisive third reading and the final vote — when the measure needs a two-thirds majority for passage — on the calendar for next Wednesday.

Speaker Jimmy Naifeh said, “From a preliminary count it looks like there should be sufficient votes for the lottery resolution to pass the House.”

Chris Newton (R-Cleveland) said he is confident the House will have the 66 votes. “We want more than that,Ó he said. ÒWe want a resounding voice from the peopleÕs House. Then we can go on with the other issues without this lingering over everything else.”

Lottery opponents, meanwhile, have all but given up the ghost. “The momentum is with them right now. I don’t think there is any doubt that the votes are there,” said Rep. Bobby Wood (R-Harrison).

Gov. Don Sundquist has said he will sign the lottery resolution as soon as it passed and gets to his desk. Upon the expected House approval next week and the governor’s signature, there would be set in course a statewide vote on the lottery to be held at the same time as the November 2002 governor’s race.

A majority of people voting in the governor’s race would be required to approve the measure, which, in simplest terms, amends the constitution, removing the ban on holding lotteries. The resolution specifies that revenue from the lottery would go toward educational purposes.

The proceeds, which could run as much as $200 million annually, would go first to college scholarships for Tennessee youths to attend Tennessee schools. Any money left over would be used for school construction and early childhood learning programs.

Senate Was Big Hurdle

The big obstacle, of course, was overcome on Wednesday, when the Senate approved the referendum by the bare-minimum vote of 22-11 — getting the requisite two-thirds needed to get the referendum on the November 2002 ballot.

Wednesday’s Senate vote saw the lottery withstand some furious last-minute lobbing against it by both gambling forces based in Tunica, Mississippi, and conservative religious groups — an indication of what to expect when the statewide vote occurs next year.

But Cohen was content just now to bask in the present. “This is a victory for the people of Tennessee. I guess time is on my side,” said the euphoric senator after the Senate vote.

The lottery resolution was passed by a majority vote of both houses last year, and this year needed a two-thirds vote in the Senate and House.

Ironically enough, given the number of years it has taken for the lottery resolution to get to this point, actual debate Wednesday lasted only about an hour. Opponents focused on the dangers of gambling and warned that the resolution, if approved, cou ld lead to a return of corrupt bingo games of the sort that were banned after the Rocky Top scandals a decade ago.

Sen. Douglas Henry (D-Nashville) said the lottery would be “injurious to the people.” He said for the state to use lottery proceeds for education, “We would have to prostitute the state of Tennessee. We would have to drag our skirts in the dirt. . . .[W]e would have to say to children . . .’When you get old enough, you should buy a ticket. It will get you a fortune for nothing overnight.'”

And Sen. Roy Herron (D-Dresden) suggested during debate that an Attorney General’s opinion lef it unclear whether the Cohen resolution would permit casinos.

Cohen and his supporters warned against fear tactics and stressed that Tennesseans were mature enough to make a decision on the measure. “I ask 21 others to join me and cast the most important vote of your life to give the people of Tennessee the right to vote to help our schools and help our children.,” Cohen said before the Sernate vote.

And Sen. Ward Crutchfield (D-Chattanooga) asked, “In the final analysis, if your constituents are smart enough to elect you, why aren’t they smart enough to vote for this?”

Result Preordained?

In the wake of his triumph, Cohen said that he had resisted the temptation to roll the bill until next week, as a sometimes wavering supporter, Sen. Doug Jackson (D-Dickson), had suggested. “I knew that Lincoln Davis [D-Pall Mall] would be gone on Thursday, and I didn’t want to let things hang over the weekend,” said Cohen, noting that he had asked that the rules be suspended to permit both a second and third reading this week.

Cohen said the 22 Yes votes were exactly the ones he expected, and so were the 11 No votes. “Really, the vote total was decided in last year’s electons, and really on filing deadline. I knew that [new Shelby County Republican senator] Mark Norris would vote for it, and I knew that either [Democratic winner] Larry Trailor [Republican loser] Howard Wall in their [Murfreesboro-area] race would be for it. So it was set back then, with those two seats.”

Cohen professed disappointment in the resistance to his resolution by Senator Herron. who was one of the leaders of the opposition to the bill but, Cohen said, had consistently supported a virtually identifical measure while a member of the House several years ago.

In the end, the lottery may have benefitted from the intense debate caused by Gov. Sundquist’s call over the last two years for a state income tax. Opponents insisted that any new tax required a vote by the people, and they fell to looking for an alternative. Both circumstances helped the lottery proposal .

As State Senator Marsha Blackburn of Williamson County, perhaps the most arch of the Senate’s arch conservatives and a bitter foe of the income tax, said in Memphis this weekend, where she attended the annual Shelby County Republican Lincoln Day dinner: “In American you let the people vote. That works for the income tax, and it works for the lottery.”

Cohen could count on several such Republican votes to go with those from his Democratic base.