Category: Politics Beat Blog

It is way premature to be reckoning on it, but there is some circumstantial evidence indicating that outgoing Vice President Al Gore, who has lost not one but two presidential bids in the last month (of the United States and of Harvard University, his Alma Mater), could be thinking of running for yet another executive position – that of governor of Tennessee.

Various Gore intimates, Democratic functionaries, and commentators have talked up the prospect (the Washington Post‘s David Broder made it the subject of some out-loud musing on NBC’s Meet the Press week before last).

The chief indication that something may be afoot is that one of Gore’s main men is letting himself be talked up for chairman of the Tennessee Democratic Party. This would be Johnny Hayes, ex- of Gallatin, who has served Gore’s electoral ambitions for years, most recently as a top presidential-campaign fundraiser.

Hayes, a stocky, good-natured former insurance man, is a T.C.B. type who was with Gore in his first congressional campaign in 1976 and has been with him ever since, taking time out to serve as TVA board member before going full-time with the Gore presidential campaign in early 1999.

“I don’t know if Al himself is urging Johnny, but I don’t have any doubt that some of his people are,” opines Bill Owen of Knoxville, a member of the Democrats’ state executive committee and a national committeeman as well.

Though he makes an exception for the well-liked Hayes, who has always kept fairly close liaison with Democrats in Tennessee, Owens is one of several state party people who were seriously underwhelmed by Gore’s national campaign entourage.

Another is executive committee member David Upton of Memphis, who with Owens attempted to pass a committee resolution last year forcing the Tennessee Democratic Victory 2000 committee (a.k.a. the “Coordinated Campaign Committee”) to clear its state expenditures (and confer on strategy) with the state party.

“They ran a terrible campaign in Tennessee,” Upton says of the Gore campaign surrogates. “They let the presidential candidate down, and they let down all the local candidates and organizations they were supposed to be ‘coordinating’ tactics with.”

While as complimentary toward Hayes as Owens, Upton isn’t prepared to concede that Hayes is the inevitable chairman, pointing out that other strong contenders are still out there – notably Lebanon trial lawyer Bill Farmer, who is declared, and Memphis attorney John Farris, who is still thinking about it. Two other possible candidates are Middle Tennessee State professor Jeff Clark, who just lost a U.S. Senate race, and legislative employee David Bone.

Owens won’t buy into that. “I don’t want to call him [Hayes] the ‘gorilla,’ but he’s the 800-pounder in the race. If he wants it, he probably gets it.”

And if Al Gore wants him to want it, Hayes will dutifully develop the desire. He is a loyalist like Knoxville businessman Doug Horne, the virtual political unknown whom Gore backed for the chairmanship in 1998 and who will step down, yielding to a successor at a state committee meeting later this month.

Horne intends to run for governor – unless, as he has put it, a “serious contender” announces by the end of May. Speculation as to who that might be has so far focused on two congressmen, Bob Clement of Nashville and John Tanner of Union City.

After December 12th, the night of Gore’s concession speech, speculation began to move in another direction.

(More to come.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Moss Affair

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VanderSchaaf’s Role

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

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

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

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

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

Wilbun’s Reward

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Future Prospects

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Broward County officials said 6,686 ballots were not counted because the computer did not recognize any selection in the presidential race. In some cases, Democratic Party officials said, voters may have selected a candidate without dislodging a tiny paper rectangle called a chad, which can block holes and make the choice unreadable by tabulation machines that flash a light through ballot holes.”

— from MSNBC, 11/11/00

In case you haven’t noticed, this is starting to get real ugly. As Sunday dawned over the hand-counters in two Florida counties — and brought with it tales of bickering within election commissions, new evidence of uncounted and/or miscounted ballots in additional counties, and evidence of significant errors within the individual precincts being hand-counted — the not-so-pretty picture before us for this second “Election Day Week 2000” is coming into focus.

As more than one commentator has observed, we are indeed on the verge of a complete system meltdown in Florida, and on the verge of a national political crisis whose magnitude should be a source of grave concern for us all. As we drift now, there is no good outcome in sight.

If the Bush partisans have their way — as a result of their remarkable declaration-of-war decision Saturday to petition for a court injunction to stop all manual recounting — the Texas governor will take this nation’s highest office under the most impossible of circumstances, having stifled vote recounts in the state where his brother is governor, after finishing second in the national popular vote. If, on the other hand, the Gore forces prevail in Florida — when all the counting and recounting is completed — the Republicans seem prepared to put forward another series of legal challenges to the vote totals in other states, and to render a Gore Administration as illegitimate as the one they might claim as their own.

Although this may come as a shock to both camps, there are people in this country — at this stage, perhaps even a majority — who care less about who wins the Presidency than they do about how we can, as a nation, get out of this mess with a few shreds of national dignity and some sense of justice having been served. For that group, of which I’m happy to claim full membership, the sensible path forward is becoming increasingly clear. We need to have another national election. Now.

Try to put the dead-heat in Florida in perspective. Just how close is the current 300-vote “margin” between the candidates? Well, fill up the Pyramid for next Friday night’s opening U of M basketball game against Temple. Then poll each and every attendee as to their presidential preference, and tally up the ballots. If the +19,000-seat Pyramid were a microcosm of Florida, George Bush would be the victor by a slim margin. How slim? One vote. At this stage there is one full-house-at-the-Pyramid’s basketball fan’s vote in the difference. Just think about that for a minute.

As you do, surely you will come to understand just how absurd it is to “force-feed” an election result in Florida upon the American people. Folks, much as the Founding Fathers would be disappointed, there is no result in Florida; it is a statistical dead heat. For the Texas governor to claim victory is preposterous; for the Vice-President’s partisans to hold out for “victory” is equally silly. Florida is now and forever shall be a draw, a split down the middle where the margin of error inherent in any system of counting will always exceed the actual margin between the candidates. The sooner we all recognize that fact, the better off we’ll all be — and the quicker we’ll be able to move on to finding a real solution of our political dilemma.

Here’s what we should do. I do admit, my proposal calls for considerable amounts of statesmanship from both Republicans and Democrats, who are having a nearly impossible time right now being civil, let alone civic. That’s why I’d call upon former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford to be the co-chairmen of an ad hoc Committee for Political Responsibility that would be charged with implementing the following:

* In light of the fact that it is now statistically impossible to declare a winner in the Sunshine State, both parties would agree to a “draw” in Florida, with the state’s 25 electors split accordingly. (Yes, I know 25 doesn’t divide by two, but bear with me on this; as you’ll see, the identity of these electors is largely irrelevant.)

* When the Electoral College meets to vote officially for president on December 18th, Presidents Carter and Ford meet with them, along with representatives of both parties, who instruct their respective slates of electors to vote for a postponement of that vote until Tuesday January 2nd. Unprecedented? Sure, but after last week, what else is new?

* On Tuesday, December 19th, an election run-off between Governor Bush and Vice-President Gore is held, nationwide, using (one would hope we’ve learned something from this counting debacle) standardized ballot procedures that are uniform throughout the fifty states. Sorry, Ralph; this is a simple two-candidate ballot. Call it a run-off, if you will. Call it a frog. Just get it done.

* The winner of each state’s votes in this run-off election gets the votes of the Electoral College representatives of that state, regardless of those electors’ political affiliation, a procedure that has previously been agreed upon by both parties, and confirmed by Presidents Carter and Ford.

* When the Electoral College reconvenes on January 2nd, it selects the next president of the United States, in accordance with the state-by-state popular vote. Sure, our new president has to hustle, picking a cabinet, etc., before his January 20th inauguration. But after all he will have been through by then, that process should be a piece of cake.

Strange? Certainly. Unprecedented? Of course. Legal? Maybe just barely, but I think so. And, of course, as I’ve said, the whole scheme presumes a level of concern for the overriding national interest that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats have been terribly good about manifesting the past few days. Presidents Carter and Ford will have to do some real arm-twisting.

This may be our best and only chance to come out of this mess in one piece. Any other outcome risks dividing the country in a way not seen in modern times. Moreover, the formation of a Carter/Ford Committee for Political Responsibility has the advantage of being apolitical at a time when the political atmosphere is so badly poisoned that nothing productive can come from letting things proceed according to existing law.

Besides having the advantage of being fair to both sides, this proposal also recognizes (to paraphrase Winston Churchill) that the extraordinary circumstances we find ourselves in demand extraordinary solutions. To simply throw up our hands and let “nature” take its course is irrational, irresponsible, and quite possibly a critical first step towards the destruction of our democracy.

[Kenneth Neill is the founder and publisher/CEO of The Memphis Flyer.]

(You can write Kenneth Neill at MEMFLYKEN2@aol.com)

NASHVILLE — Al Gore must hate being right.

Surely the vice president did not realize that he was predicting the future when, on
his last visit to Nashville prior to election night, he joked that should George W. Bush win the
presidency Americans would awaken to a bleak, rainy day.

The early hours of November 8th , in both Nashville and Austin, were just that.

For the first time since the campaign’s start, both Democrats and Republicans found
themselves in the same boat – tired, cold, wet, huddling together and anxiously clinging to Bernard Shaw’s every word on CNN, cheering and groaning, hoping against hope that the night would just end.

Perhaps it was a sign that at around midnight the election, which had seemed to favor the vice president earlier in the evening, began to take a turn for the worst. Rain polluted the skies that had been so clear and brought with it a cold front that starkly contrasted with the early evening’s perfect, warm, weather. If supporters had looked with keen and critical eyes, perhaps they would have seen that Gore’s prophecy was beginning to come true – or at the very least, that the vice president’s luck was washing away.

Shortly after 1:00 a.m. central time the announcement came that Bush had won Florida and thus the election. Dejected and despondent, the crowd began to clear. People by the hundreds filtered to the parking lots and hotels surrounding Nashville’s Legislative Plaza.
But the die-hard democrats remained, cuddling under umbrellas and tucking their cold arms inside short sleeved shirts, waiting to hear Gore’s concession speech and refusing to
acknowledge aloud that America would have it’s second George Bush in the Oval Office.

These same democrats that hours earlier had crowded not only on Legislative Plaza but in
the neighboring bars and at private parties, all cheering the announcement of each democrat-won electoral vote with a vigor typically reserved for the Super Bowl, now trudged through downtown Nashville, dreading the moment that reality would set in.

Perhaps the signs had been there all along. Perhaps the democratic faithful had been warned by some of the other things that went wrong. Regardless, as the evening progressed, Gore’s luck began to dwindle and bit by bit everyone’s spirits began to fall, eventually drowning and dropping into the bog of let downs and false hopes, the political and emotional roller coaster, that characterized Election Night 2000.

Collectively, the signs were there. Too many things were going wrong. From the obvious disappointments to the random annoyances, tides were turning against the Gore camp. All present knew things were bad when Florida was first being chalked up as a Gore win only to later be snatched back. But there were other, seemingly insignificant problems, too.
The brand new walkie-talkie system purchased by the Metro Nashville Police Department with this event in mind malfunctioned and all of the extra officers brought in from across the city had to work in silence.

Many supporters left the plaza because the public address system was not loud enough nor the giant television screens visible enough for all present to stay abreast of the returns. The 2,000 members of the media on hand, arrived from all over the globe, grew angry when they learned that press would be quarantined to a pen off to the far right of the stage with an obscured view of the evenings festivities and absolutely prohibited from entering the main public area. (This created an interesting dilemma: assigned to gather the “human element” of the event but restricted from access to the citizens present, many reporters took to interviewing each other in the lobby bar of the Sheraton Hotel across the street from the plaza.

The opinions of journalists from Tennessee organizations were held in especially high regard by members of the European and Japanese press.)

However, at 2:30 a.m. the remaining Democrats caught a glimmer of the silver lining on the storm cloud that had parked itself over the War Memorial Building. As everyone awaited Gore’s concession speech, news of his first call to the Texas governor had already been heralded, reports came in that the fat lady had not yet sung. Florida had been taken from Bush and placed once again in the “too close to call” column – all was not lost. People began to reappear, members of the press left their barstools and once again reclaimed space in the media risers, the hearing impaired interpreter waited on-stage, not knowing whose speech she would interpret.

The crowd erupted in chants of “recount,” thrusting posters in the air and hugging each other in expressions of jubilation and hope. The evening takes on a minute-by-minute tone. At 2:45 a.m. it is reported that Gore has made a second call to Governor Bush, this time taking back his concession. Anyone officially associated with the Democratic party, either on a national or state level, is mobbed by reporters, all shoving microphones and tape recorders in the officials faces looking for comments.

At 3:00 a.m. Florida is said to be undecided and the announcement is made that regardless of the outcome there will be a vote recount in that state because the votes are so close. Everyone hangs on everyone else’s every word, afraid to move for fear of missing something. All present are soaked to the bone, shivering and physically miserably but too wound up to seek shelter from the rain and cold.

At 3:10 a.m. it is announced that one hundred percent of the Florida precincts have been reported and that Bush now leads by only 1,210 votes – an audible gasp sweeps the crowd, followed by a gaggle of murmurs, everyone is astonished. Bob Butterworth, the attorney general of Florida, makes the announcement that Florida is officially undecided.
There are 5,000 votes left in, reportedly from Dade and Broward counties, it looks as if these 5,000 votes will decide our next president.

Bill Daley, the mayor of Chicago and Gore’s campaign manager takes the stage, saying with eerie resonance, “Our campaign continues.” People in Nashville, seeing that Gore will not take the stage to deliver a speech on that night, leave the plaza, some going home, some crowding around television sets in hotel lobbies. Everyone is exhausted but afraid to go to sleep.

At 3:30 a.m. there is another announcement from Butterworth, this time saying,
“We do not even know how close the vote is.

At 3:40 a.m.CNN posts it’s most up to date poll. In Florida Bush holds 2,902,733 votes; Gore holds 2,902,509 votes. It is reported that only 220 votes separate the two. The word “momentous,” “legendary,” “historical,” and “unbelievable” are bandied about like ping
pong balls.

In its tally of the total popular vote, CNN reports that Gore leads, taking
47,123,818 votes to Bush’s 47,063,088 votes. One can since that in bedrooms and living rooms across Nashville and elsewhere, democrats are cheering.

At 4:10 a.m. all the networks report that nothing will change until mid-morning.
People began tucking themselves in, the blue glare of a television tuned to CNN fills bedrooms across the nation as we all sleep no knowing who our next president will.

Daylight on November 8th illuminates a gray, rainy, day in Nashville as Bush is still favored the winner. Gore may not have thought himself a fortuneteller, but his position as
Seer in Chief seems secure.

AUSTIN – I’m out of the closet. I can’t report objectively anymore. I was a

Gore girl, albeit by default, and even here, in the middle of this state fair-like brouhaha in the Texas capitol, I have yet to catch Bush fever.

More and more votes are pouring in for the Texas governor. States are falling all over the electoral map. The television pundits are declaring

George W. Bush a winner.

Eardrum rattling techno music angrily competes for my ear drums with aspirited mariachi band. I am sitting on a curb, my butt half on a pile of cables that allows reporters to file their stories and, according to

Southwestern Bell flacks, could “wrap around the state capital building 200 times!”

Well, of course they could. It costs $270 to plug in my laptop to file this story, not including the $12-a-minute phone line connection. Take your connection and shove it, Telephone Man. It1s cold and rainy and grey. Bring on the blues, Jimmy Vaughn. Play on, sir, no matter how much you’re banking for this gig. I’m tired of writing down how much it costs to get a coffee inside the event tent ($4.50).

Images form on a Bush/Cheney jumbotron screen directly in front of me. There are probably more than a thousand people turned toward the screen.

They are packed shoulder to shoulder, in poof-balled winter hats and scarves, pawing steaming cups of whatever will keep their faces from freezing in the unusually frigid night. Ah, the communal American experience — watching on big television what is being televised on smaller televisions.

The theme to Rocky is loud enough to vibrate teeth. It’s background

soundtrack for the governor of Texas on videotape, kissing babies from New York state to the Golden Gate. He’s reading– oops, showing pictures—to school kids in North Dakota, shaking hands with an elderly man in a diner, talking to undecided Floridians, pecking at corn on the cob in Iowa. And then, the weirdness.

“That’s one small step for Bush, one gi-unt leap for Ameracuns!” booms the voiceover. The sound of a space rocket firing up thunders from the Jumbotron’s speakers. “This is Cap’n Bush. Git ridda fur the ride of yur lahf! We will be pros-pers and go forth with ger-rate expectations! We have ger-rate expectations!”

The crowd cheers, taking in this gimmicky SNL-like skit. Following the Starship muzac was a zippadee-doodah Texas cheerleading techno version of “Who Let the Dogs Out?” People snapped pictures of the Jumbotron. Others laughed and gnawed on their sausage-on-a-stick or funnel cakes. Two elderly women wearing matching nylon jogging suits, Reebok tennis shoes, and glittering “Bush 2000” glasses, embraced and then took pictures of each other taking pictures. A supernova flash of light erupted near the high bleachers reserved for broadcast journalists. A Texas A & M student who had volunteered, along with hundreds of his buddies, to work security bragged to me that they had assembled the pyramid-like structure. I hoped they hadn’t modeled it after the college’s infamous log bonfire.

A note about security numbers:

Number of checkpoints around the state capitol, according to Austin police: 73 .

Number of times I had to turn on my laptop at checkpoints to perform an “electronics monitor” 7

Patdowns: 2

Times asked to show picture ID, media credentials, plus other form of ID: 4

Number of minutes it took me to convince a security guard that my bottle opener keychain is not a Ninja weapon: 2 minutes

Number of jokes it’s smart to tell about having a bomb: zero

Body cavity searches: None, but it might have been too cold for that.

The security hold-ups and Russian bread-line waits did not slow down the Bush supporters. They had one objective — to get close to the capitol building, swathed for some unknown reason in a heinous green light, where Bush was scheduled to make a speech sometime, well, tonight.

Most of the reporters– and there seemed to be at least two for every citizen– appeared stoned from fatigue, particularly one I spoke to who hadn’t been home in a year. She’d been traveling with Gore and was telling me in a crazy, quadruple-espresso tone that playing checkers with the Veep was the highlight of her journey. You laugh, but it would inspire any young journalist, wouldn’t it? I was reminded of the night before, which I had spent with several prominent national pundits, getting sloggered and pulling the rip-cords on our mouths.

I mentioned to them that I was staying with a student at University of Texas and that she was considering not voting at all, that she was disgusted with the two party candidates padding their pockets with corporate bribes.

To her, the defining slivers of distinction were entrenched in social issues, particularly the conventional wisdom that a Gore ticket would better safeguard legalized abortion, affirmative action, and the environment. Those who did vote this election — as Gore and Bush apparently have given us a cliffhanger for the ages — might feel for the first time Wednesday morning that their vote did indeed count.

Earlier, boos had erupted from the crowd — which ballooned to nearly 25,000– when the networks prematurely announced that Gore had captured Florida. But the networks back off of that call and it becomes apparent as the night wears on that the final results are anything but final. Florida remains “too close to call” into the wee hours, and into the next day. Irony of ironies, the Sunshine State becomes the focus of the nation, a prom date tease for Dubya from his brother Jeb. Could one governor/brother deliver for another? On this night the answer never came.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile, the recount.

Meanwhile, mahzel tov.