POLITICS: Who’s on First?

A few score
Democrats showed up at the event to pay $50 a head for the privilege of voting
in a mayoral straw poll while raising money for the party. The only mayoral
candidate who was there from start to finish was Herman Morris. Carol
Chumney came late and addressed the crowd, as had Morris early. John
Willingham had a spokesperson on hand who talked him up before the
attendees.

Only the mayor
was absent and went unspoken for. But his was the name called out by party
chairman Keith Norman when it came time to announce the winner. Norman
declined to give out any numbers or declare who finished second or third.

What was proved
by the event and by its outcome? That Herenton has a hard core and a network
that serve him well, for all the fact that he’s not campaigning this year in the
conventional sense — no fundraisers, no polls, no inclination to participate in
forums.

The mayor’s
still very much a power, though, among inner-city Democratic cadres and among
the Teamsters, both of which groups turned up in force.

A scientific
poll? Of course not. What it did prove, however, was that the mayor – who
presided over a couple of weekend headquarters openings – is not lacking where
G.O.T.V. (Get-out-the-vote) is the game. And that’s what the game will be during
early voting and on October 4th.

Underlining
the surprising showing for Chumney, whom many observers had thought to have
declined from her peak as a leader in early spring polls, was the fact that
Yacoubian had made public statements only a week earlier, telling Fox 13 News,
which also broke the news of his poll, that Herenton was a “good bet” to be
leading the field.

Au contraire, when Yacoubian got around to toting things up. His sampling
of some 300 presumably representative voters showed Chumney to be considered a
better bet than Herenton on issues like crime and education, with Herenton
having a lead only on the matter of economic development.

Among other things, what that meant was that Chumney’s standing had apparently
survived her widely publicized refusal to vote, back in April, for a council
resolution asking for the resignation of Joseph Lee, then still at the helm of
MLGW. The fact that the resolution, offered by colleague Jack Sammons, then
failed by a single vote was thought to have been an embarrassment for Chumney.
So was the fact that her own previously offered resolution, directing Herenton
to accept a much earlier resignation offer from Lee, had failed to draw a
second.

Both circumstances underscored Chumney’s reputation as a go-it-alone maverick
with few if any allies in city government. Yacoubian’s poll results suggest that
voters may find Chumney’s non-observance of the maxim “go along to get along”
more attractive than not – especially in a time of multiple indictments and
other evidence of corruption among local officials.

Parenthesis: one of the peculiarities of the current political season –
as noticed both by ourselves and by Mediaverse blogger Richard
Thompson – is the number of forums, fundraisers, speaking appearances, and
other events involving candidates in the Memphis city election that have taken
place in the bordering municipality of Germantown.

That has to do both with the fact of overlapping populations (many members of
the Germantown Democratic Club are residents of Cordova and Memphis voters) and
with the circumstance that, with governmental consolidations of various kinds in
the air, people in the near suburbs are taking an unusual interest in how things
go in the Memphis voting.

Consolidation was, in fact, one of the matters that Morris dealt with
forthrightly during Monday night’s meeting. He endorsed it, categorically, and
went so far as to express impatience with half-measures like the current
inter-governmental talks involving an enhanced liaison of Memphis police with
the Sheriff’s Department.

“Consolidate everything!” Morris pronounced, and to that end, he recommended
following the example of Louisville, where city and county voters voted
consolidation in after an extensive period of public discussions. Similarly, he
said, Memphis and Shelby County voters should be paid the “respect” of having
the issue “put in front of us.”

When a club member said she was “tired of” questions about impropriety
surrounding various officials now in office, citing as examples city councilman
Edmund Ford and state Senator Ophelia Ford, Morris barely
hesitated before responding, “I am, too. And I’m tired of people reelecting
them.” Contrasting his own tenure at MLGW to that of the now deposed Lee, Morris
said, “I’m not indicted, and I’m not going to jail.”

In general, Morris cast himself as Mr. Candor, attributing the financial
problems of Memphis Networx, which he championed while leading MLGW, to the
short-sightedness of the profit-focused private investors involved in the
public/private initiative. He freely acknowledged hatching thoughts of a mayoral
run in December 2003, immediately after being forced out of his utility perch by
Herenton. And he flatly declared, “I don’t trust those numbers,” concerning
Herenton’s current economic forecasts.

He suggested that his major opponents drew their strength from white or black
enclaves, respectively, “while I’m 50-50, right in the middle.”

One note being struck resoundingly in private by Morris’ campaign people is the
prospect, in fact, that he will shortly inherit some of the racially balanced
support that was evidenced in the short-lived “Draft A C” campaign to induce a
mayoral candidacy by Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton.

With only two months to go, Morris needs such a boost, and he needs it now.

UPDATE:
Various media were reporting late Tuesday that three members of the “Draft A C”
committee were indeed ready to give Morris public support: the Revs. La
Simba Gray and Bill Adkins, and former county Mayor Bill Morris.

Last week’s print version of this column, by the way, erred in suggesting that
Willingham had plans to convert Shelby Farms, now administered by the non-profit
Shelby Farms Conservancy, into an Olympic Village. As was reported correctly
online, it is the Fairgrounds that Willingham has in min