On the afternoon of Wednesday, April 19th, while his aunt Ophelia Ford‘s 2005 election as a state senator was being voided by a Senate vote across the street in the state Capitol, Harold Ford Jr. was participating in a four-way debate among U.S. Senate candidates at the Hermitage Hotel in Nashville.
Though outwardly Ford was carrying forth with his usual
crispness and panache, inwardly he was seething. And, at one point, while
Republican candidate Bob Corker was speaking, the 9th District
congressman leaned over and began to whisper to another GOP candidate, Van
Hilleary. Leave my family alone, was the gist of his message – a
response to then recent remarks attributed to Hilleary that were critical of the
Fords en masse.
Not long afterward, Hilleary, in an apparent effort to be
propitiary, made a show of reaching over to fill Ford’s water glass, and the
forum proceeded along more or less predictable lines.
But when it came time for the candidates to do their
summing up, Ford did his, and, then, while Hilleary had begun his own closing
remarks, the Memphis congressman stood up conspicuously and began to make his
departure, making a point of working the room and carrying on audible
conversations all the while Hilleary was speaking.
Nobody present had ever seen anything like it. And Hilleary
made a note to himself about Ford: Thin-skinned. And filed it away
mentally, for future use in the event of a Ford-Hilleary fall campaign.
Hilleary, the former U.S. Representative from Tennessee’s 4th
District, is known in certain political quarters as a provocateur –
largely on the strength of some hard-hitting (below the belt, some said)
mail-outs he sent out against Republican primary opponent Jim Henry in
the 2002 gubernatorial campaign.
But, whatever his intent might be down the line against
Ford, and however intensely he is campaigning against current Republican rival
Corker, Hilleary recently made a conscious decision to make nice with the third
Republican in the Senate race, former 7th District congressman Ed
Bryant.
Last week Hilleary sent a “Dear Ed” letter to fellow
conservative Bryant suggesting that the two of them cool their sometimes
aggressive rhetoric toward each other and cooperate in a concerted campaign
against Corker, who is widely considered to be the moderate in the GOP
three-way.
After expressing admiration for Bryant for “your
commitment to the conservative cause and your steadfast character,” Hilleary’s
letter made a practical campaign suggestion: “Let’s come together for the good
of the cause – running hard on our own merits and ‘focusing our fire’ only on
the candidate who does not share our mutual conservative philosophy, Bob
Corker.”
Bryant would reply in kind. In
the course of reciprocating Hilleary’s compliments (“your willingness to stand
for what is right,” etc.), Bryant signaled his intent to comply, more or less,
with Hilleary’s request. – though not without a disingenuously disguised shot at
Hilleary himself.
Said Bryant: “I understand,
appreciate, and share your concern for the need of conservatives to remain
united in our effort to defeat Bob Corker, particularly after Bob’s already
signaled his intention to attack you for what his campaign manager described as
your ‘strong ties to Jack Abramoff‘ [Bryant’s italics].”
Beyond the high-sounding
statements of solidarity is some nitty-gritty political reasoning, of course.
Somewhat in defiance of the conventional wisdom that Hilleary and Bryant might
split the conservative Republican vote in such a way as to facilitate a Corker
primary win, the thinking in Hilleary’s camp has gravitated to an opposite
conclusion.
“We need Ed to stay in,” a
source close to Hilleary said this week in elaborating on Hilleary’s own recent
statement in Memphis, “There’s more than enough conservative vote to go around.”
The thinking is that Hilleary is
more than capable of holding his own in middle and east Tennessee, where most
polls have shown him leading the two other Republicans handily. The danger, from
Hilleary’s point of view, is that Corker might become a fallback choice among
West Tennessee Republicans – particularly those in Shelby County, a Bryant
stronghold – should Bryant diminish his efforts or begin to falter.
That fear is based on the
reality of the well-heeled Corker’s heavy doses of television advertising,
coupled with the knowledge that some of Bryant’s support in west Tennessee is of
the favorite-son variety. Many in the local GOP establishment are also friendly
to the well-connected Corker a former Chattanooga mayor who served in the
administration of former Governor Don Sundquist.
.
Though Hilleary leads among
Republican candidates statewide in most current polls, he is realistic about the
effects of Corker’s ads and expects the Chattanoogan’s poll numbers to rise.
Hence the decision to reach out
to Bryant for a common-cause effort.
Jackson Baker
Ophelia Ford (left) and her attorney David Cocke meet the press Tuesday after federal judge Bernice Donald’s ruling enjoining the County Commission from appointing a state Senate successor to Ford. (See Editorials, May 16-23.)
Three’s a Crowd: When city judge Jayne
Chandler got into the race for Juvenile Court judge right at the filing
deadline last month, friends of state Senator Curtis Person, an
administrator at the Court and another candidate for the judgeship, didn’t
exactly uncork the champagne, but they probably laida by an extra bottle or two.
Chandler, whose win in 1995 over incumbent city judge
Nancy Sorak was something of a surprise, said then and says now that she
expects to come in under the radar for another upset victory this year.
It would be an upset, of course, for the simple reason that
Chandler’s entry made it three well-known African-American women in a field of
candidates that included Person and a lesser-known white male candidate,
William Winchester.
The fact that Chandler, her fellow city judge Earnestine
Hunt Dorse, and former U.S. Attorney Veronica Coleman are all either
avowed Democrats or draw significant support from Democratic ranks underscores
even further the matter of their overlapping constituencies.
Hence the possible need for some extra bubbly on Person’s
part. It’s a rule of thumb in politics that basic demographics can only spread
so far.
There has been some grumbling from the Dorse camp that
Chandler has a personal grudge against Dorse and entered the race as a spoiler.
Nonsense, says Chandler. “This is something I’ve wanted to
do for a long time.” She pointed out that she had almost run for Juvenile Court
judge in 1998 but deferred at the time to Dorse, who ran a close a second that
year to Judge Kenneth Turner.
In any case, Chandler professes optimism, as do both
Coleman, who opened up her headquarters on Poplar Avenue last week, and Dorse,
who stayed busy with a series of campaign appearances. Winchester, too, had an
East Memphis meet-and-greet, but so far remains something of an unknown.
(Winchester has one thing, though, that Chandler benefited
from in 1995 – a last name which happens to coincide with that of a famous local
family; that’s one way of getting around the name-ID problem!)
Meanwhile, various Democrats have been doing the math, and
there’s a move on in party ranks on behalf of a formal endorsement of one of the
candidates. “We’re thinking about it seriously,” local party chairman Matt
Kuhn said last week.
Kuhn acknowledges that the present situation might favor
Person, a longtime eminence in Republican ranks, and promises an early
resolution of the endorsement matter as soon as he and the Shelby County
Democratic Committee can convene to consider it.
Jackson Baker
Ophelia Ford (left) and her attorney David Cocke meet the press Tuesday after federal judge Bernice Donald’s ruling enjoining the County Commission from appointing a state Senate successor to Ford. (See Editorials, May 16-23.)
A propos an item last week, Democratic activist
David Upton protests that his involvement in the shadow campaign of
term-limited county commissioner Walter Bailey, a longtime friend, was
minimal, largely confined to an early-on academic discussion of the issue with
Bailey and son Jay Bailey, another friend.
And Upton notes (correctly) that he had offered comments
for the record that were flattering to both eventual Democratic primary winner
J.W. Gibson and a third Democratic candidate Darrick Harris.
“Most of my time was spent on the Mulroy campaign,” says
Upton, who claims credit for the involvement of former Democratic congressman
Harold Ford Sr. and state Senator Steve Cohen as endorsees on behalf
of Democratic primary winner Steve Mulroy, who faces Republican Jane
Pierotti in August for the District 5 county commission seat.
