Though the public at large
has been largely unaware of their impact, two spokesmen for Shelby County
jailers, Jeffrey Woodard and Warren Cole, played a major role in
the resolution of the ongoing prison-privatization controversy – reached, at
least temporarily, last week when both Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton
and Sheriff Mark Luttrell distanced themselves from the proposal.
Visitors to the Shelby
County Commission’s bi-weekly public meetings had, over the last two years,
become used to the presence of Woodard and Cole, who would come to the
commission dock at the end of each meeting with strenuous and (usually) reasoned
protests against the pending proposal to privatize the administration of both
the county’s Corrections Center and the downtown county jail.
So familiar had the two
become that when Woodard appeared on cue at a recent meeting, Commission
chairman Tom Moss referred to him jokingly as “the 14th
commissioner.” And when neither Woodard nor Cole were in the audience at last
week’s committee hearing of the privatization issue, featuring testimony by both
county financial officer Jim Huntzicker and sheriff’s aide Harvey
Kennedy, commissioners agreed both to notify the two jailers’ advocates of
the discussion and to postpone any recommendation on the issue until Monday’s
meeting.
In the interval between
the two meetings, Luttrell doomed the privatization proposal by taking a
definitive stand against it — to the consternation of commission proponent
Bruce Thompson, who saw election-year politics as the sheriff’s motivation.
That was on top of Huntzicker’s conclusion, announced at last week’s committee
hearing, that a changeover to a private system would not be cost-effective – at
least for the Corrections Center.
Politics may well have
played a part in the resolution of the issue, but so did the unrelenting
opposition of Woodard and Cole, who kept the commission’s attention focused on
the issue and on potential jailers’ grievances. More than that, however, the two
became versed in a variety of other issues before the commission – ranging from
school construction to budgetary problems in general – and began addressing
those matters as well.
The influence of the pair
grew correspondingly – among commissioners in both parties and on both sides of
the privatization issue. In announcing her reluctance to approve add-on charges
submitted Monday by a private company that provides medical services to inmates,
Republican commissioner Marilyn Loeffel cited research on the matter done by
Woodard and Cole.
Though the company’s
services will continue for the time being and the charges will be paid, the
company was put on notice by the commission that the future of its contract is
in doubt.
If so, that’s another one
that can be chalked up to the 14th and 15th commissioners.
The annual round
of politically tinged Christmas parties – er, make that “holiday gatherings” –
crested Monday night with a party hosted by 9th District U.S. Rep.
Harold Ford Jr. at Felicia Suzanne’s restaurant on Monroe.
Ford’s event followed a
series of other seasonal gatherings by prominent politicians, and it coincided
with a fresh burst of national media publicity – this time from The New
Republic, which, in its latest edition, touted Ford’s Senate prospects and
simultaneously wrote off the presidential ambitions of retiring Senate Majority
Leader Bill Frist, the Republican whose seat Ford hopes to win next
year.
Rep. Ford has run into one
fund-raising snafu of late and one fund-raising bonanza. On balance, he’s come
out ahead.
The setback came late last
month when a major fund-raising event scheduled for San Francisco had to be
canceled because of the discovery by Mayor Gavin Newsom, a co-sponsor, of Ford’s
vote last year for a constitutional amendment restricting marriage to
heterosexuals.
Ford’s vote was a red flag
to gay activists in San Francisco and a potential embarrassment to Newsom
because of constituent concerns by the mayor, who personally conducted a number
of gay marriages last year before court rulings foreclosed that option.
Last week, however, the
Memphis congressman had some high-profile help on the other coast. Former
president Bill Clinton was the headliner in a fund-raising event for Ford
in New York, raising $300,000 for Ford’s Senate campaign.
Ford’s penchant for
out-of-state fund-raisers became a campaign issue last week when one of three
Republican contenders for the Senate, former Chattanooga mayor Bob Corker,
attacked the congressman for obtaining what Corker said was too high a
percentage of his campaign funds from non-Tennessee sources.
(Coincidentally or not,
Corker leads all contenders in funds on hand, including Ford, fellow Democrat
Rosalind Kurita, a state senator from Clarksville; and two other Republicans,
former congressmen Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary.)
Ford also made one other
piece of significant news of his own – as distinguished from news made by other
family members, including aunt Ophelia Ford, whose election to state
Senate District 29 to succeed uncle John Ford is now under serious
contest by her former Republican opponent, Terry Roland. (The
congressman’s father and predecessor, Harold Ford Sr., now a resident of
Florida, also was heard from last week, via a still perplexing charge that
Republicans, not Democrats, might somehow be at fault in the discovery of
fraudulent voting in a District 29 precinct.)
The congressman’s other
major contribution to the political news week was the revelation, unaccompanied
by explanation, that he had switched campaign consultants, from Global Strategy
Group’s Harrison Hickman and Penczner Media to Pete Brodnitz and Jim Margolis of
Benenson Strategy Group
In a sideshow of sorts to Ford’s New York event, one of the congressman’s
would-be successors for the 9th District seat, one Tyson Pratcher,
got some serendipitous ink in the New York Post, which noted his
attendance at the Ford fundraiser in a separate headline, reading “Young and
Restless.”
The Post story
noted that Pratcher is now a deputy state director for New York Senator
Hillary Clinton, the former president’s spouse and currently a presidential
aspirant in her own right. Pratcher, a native of Memphis, will apparently take
leave of his duties with Senator Clinton to campaign for the congressional
seat.
Pratcher’s boost in a Big
Apple news outlet mirrors the launch some months back of the campaign of one of
his competitors, former Ford aide Nikki Tinker, whose congressional
campaign began to all intents and purposes with a item boosting her in the
Washington, D.C., insider publication The Hill.
Meanwhile, lawyer Ed Stanton formally announced his candidacy
for the 9th District seat, joining previously declared entries Ron
Redwing and Ralph White. Other candidates are expected to materialize
after the New Year.
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