Tag: 9th District

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: Down to Black and White

Maybe you saw the sub-headline in last Saturday’s Commercial Appeal “analysis” of the 9th District congressional race: “Ford wins primary but Cohen offers hope of white representation in 9th District race.”

Oh, you didn’t see that one? My mistake. The line actually read, “Cohen wins primary but Ford offers hope of black representation in 9th District race.” That’s better, right?

I am so very tired of the race card, no matter who deals it. It seems the Rev. William Larsha and some other African-American leaders are upset that Steve Cohen won the Democratic nomination for the 9th District, a district Larsha believes was created by “decent white people so African Americans and white people could send an African American to Congress.”

That statement is so misguided in so many ways that I don’t know where to begin to criticize it. But I’ll start with the basic civics lesson: Congressional districts in the United States are set up so that the citizens may choose the person they consider the most qualified to represent them — black, white, pink, or purple. In the 9th District for the last 30 years or so, that has meant sending someone to Congress named Ford.

This year, Cohen won the Democratic nomination over a well-qualified field of mostly African-American candidates. He won 80 percent of the white vote and about 18 percent of the black vote — a higher percentage of the black vote, by the way, than any candidate except Nikki Tinker.

But Larsha, the Rev. LaSimba Gray, and others have decreed that Cohen is the wrong color. They say African Americans in the 9th District should support the candidacy of Jake Ford, who’s running as an independent. They have every right to this opinion. And if the majority of voters think Jake Ford is better qualified to represent their interests, then they should vote for him. But the fact is, Jake Ford has no record of public service, no record of employment except in his father’s lobbying firm, and a GED education. Most tellingly, Jake Ford has refused all requests for interviews from the media.

All we know about Jake Ford is that he is black and his name is Ford. That may be enough for Larsha and Gray, but it’s not enough for me, and I don’t think it will be enough for most of the other sentient voters in the 9th District.

Bruce VanWyngarden, Editor

brucev@MemphisFlyer.com

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Politics Politics Feature

Jaking It

Ninth District congressional nominee Steve Cohen, who has grappled with a variety of health and family issues since his victory in the August 3rd Democratic primary, has some political ones as well.

Cohen happened to bump into his party’s U.S. Senate nominee, Harold Ford Jr., at a Midtown hostelry last week. And, oh yes, during the three minutes or so that the two men of the hour had for a brief but cordial (or, in diplomatic parlance, “correct”) conversation, the question of the hour came up.

The longtime state senator from Midtown had the opportunity to ask the outgoing 9th District congressman directly: Will you endorse me?

Ford’s answer: “I can support you, but I won’t endorse you.” (If that sounds ever so much like John Kerry‘s famous equivocation about an Iraq spending measure, “I voted for it before I voted against it,” you have to remember that Ford was an early supporter — a national co-chairman, in fact — of the Massachusetts senator’s late presidential campaign.)

The congressman then went on to explain what Cohen and everybody else already knew: He had a brother in the race, whom he apparently wouldn’t be endorsing either.

Days before, during his post-primary statewide bus tour, the barnstorming Ford had been quoted in the Nashville Tennessean as saying he was a Democrat who supported Democrats — and, as Ford explained, both Cohen and Jake Ford, the congressman’s brother, who is in the congressional race as an independent, were Democrats.

That was that, and to Cohen, as to the Tennessean earlier, Ford coupled his reservation about the congressional race with a profession of loyalty — or “love,” as Ford put it to Cohen — for Connecticut U.S. senator Joe Lieberman, who, having lost his primary race to party insurgent Ned Lamont, is now running as an independent as he continues to seek reelection.

In statewide political circles, Representative Ford’s position on the two races has generally been regarded as a dilemma. It is, of course, equally possible to construe each of those races as providing the congressman cover for dealing (or not dealing) with the other.

Meanwhile, speculation as to the import of all this has become a cottage industry among political observers. Some emphasize the value of the congressman’s coattails to his brother Jake. Others suggest that continued irresolution on Representative Ford’s part could snag his coattails in such a way as to damage Democratic unity and the prospects for his own victory.

As of now, the congressman is running well — with his campaign trumpeting a new poll showing him with a two-point lead over Republican senatorial nominee Bob Corker.

• The aforesaid Jake Ford, whose congressional campaign remained merely conceptual until the Democratic primary was finished, now looks more and more like the real thing. He was seen last week loading a pickup truck with yard signs. The signs — accented in black, white, and blue and featuring the candidate’s name along with an image of the U.S. Capitol — shortly began sprouting in South and Southeast Memphis.

There is also now a “Jake Ford for Congress” Web site — bare bones for now but featuring several category heads that will presumably be filled in later.

The last week has also seen the first stirrings of an organized effort on Jake Ford’s behalf among a few traditional Democrats in the African-American community.

One such is William Larsha, a sometime local columnist and veteran member of the Shelby County Democratic executive committee, who this week published two brief essays on the blog of Thaddeus Matthews arguing that Jake Ford should be supported by blacks in order to preserve an African-American congressional seat for Tennessee.

The influence within the party of Larsha, approaching 80 and with no particular affiliation with any of the Democrats’ local factions, is marginal. But in the absence so far of major black defections to independent Ford, he becomes the equivalent of the proverbial flag that’s run up a pole to see who might salute it.

And what of Republican congressional candidate Mark White? Some see him as profiting from a prospective Cohen-Ford split; others foresee defections from his camp to that of Cohen.

Trying Times: Wearing a gray pin-striped suit, a businesslike striped tie, and — ultimately — a look of anguish, Michael Hooks Sr.,

Michael Hooks Sr.

whose resignation as Shelby County commissioner had taken effect at 12:01 a.m., formally pleaded guilty Monday in federal court to accepting $24,000 in bribes during the course of the FBI’s Tennessee Waltz sting.

“An error in judgment affects a lifetime,” a visibly contrite Hooks said to reporters afterward. “I have nobody to blame but me. I don’t blame the sting operation, I don’t blame the set-up, I blame Commissioner Hooks. And for that, I will pay for it the rest of my life.”

Hours later, state senator Kathryn Bowers, another Tennessee Waltz indictee, postponed her own day of reckoning by seeking and receiving a delay until September 5th for a “final report” in which she will state her plea. Her attorney, William Massey, later suggested, somewhat meaningfully, that a trial might not be necessary.

Presiding in the cases of both Hooks and Bowers is U.S. district judge John D. Breen, who earlier had approved a plea agreement between Hooks and the U.S. Attorney’s Office and set December 6th as a sentencing date.

In his brief statement to reporters, Hooks went on to say that he took “sole responsibility” for actions, committed in 2004 and 2005, that resulted in his taking a total of $24,000 in FBI cash from individuals working under cover and posing as representatives of a fictitious computer-disposal firm known as E-Cycle Management. “I knew better and should have done better,” Hooks said. He said his family had been affected by the scandal, and he was ready to accept “any judgment that’s handed down.”

Announcing the terms of Hooks’ plea agreement in court, assistant U.S. attorney Tim DiScenza briefly recounted the series of incidents, all documented by audio- and videotaped evidence, in which Hooks had asked for and accepted cash to help repair a personal “deficit” of $38,000. Asked by Judge Breen if DiScenza’s narration had been accurate, Hooks replied, “Basically.”

Attorney Steve Farese appeared on Hooks’ behalf, along with lawyer Marc Garber from Atlanta. Farese told reporters later that the government’s allegations, followed by an indictment of Hooks as part of the Tennessee Waltz sting, had “killed [Hooks’] soul.” He said that he and Garber had carefully screened the evidence and later reviewed it with Hooks. “I sat down for three straight days with Michael, and after I let him see transcripts and let him see recordings, he knew at that time that a trial was simply out of the question,” Farese said.

Neither Hooks nor his two lawyers gave any indication as to whether Hooks might become a principal in subsequent trials of others indicted in the Tennessee Waltz. One of these is his son, Michael Hooks Jr., charged with similar actions while a member of the Memphis school board.

In the afternoon hearing for Bowers, attorney Massey successfully sought a continuance for his client on grounds that, with the completion of discovery (the final receipt of relevant evidence, including audio- and videotapes from the government), Bowers’ team needed time to digest everything.

Asked by reporters if Bowers might consider a plea other than Not Guilty, Massey said, “We’re always reevaluating our position, in light of everyone else, in light of the discovery we’ve had.”

Though she seemed chipper, especially in comparison with the clearly depressed Hooks, Bowers acknowledged to reporters that “this overall ordeal has really taken a serious toll on my health.”

Question: If Bowers — on the basis of the kind of well-documented evidence that convicted former state senator Roscoe Dixon — also ends up having to cop a plea, can former state senator John Ford, considered the biggest fish snared in the FBI’s net, possibly avoid doing the same?

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Cover Feature News

No Cheap Shots?

Last Friday, in her post-election coverage, Commercial Appeal reporter Halimah Abdullah reported that state senator Steve Cohen had earlier “held a press conference at his home to discuss what he termed a distortion of his record on sex crimes and other issues.”

This marked the second time in a week Abdullah had alluded to Cohen’s defending his “record on sex crimes,” without bothering to explain the actual charges or to report the senator’s position on this dark-sounding topic. Abdullah didn’t say whether or not she was talking about Cohen’s personal, criminal, or legislative record — leaving much to the reader’s imagination.

Cohen had held a press conference on Friday, July 28th, to address what he termed “a distortion” of his legislative record by Emily’s List, the pro-choice, women’s organization that endorsed and supported Nikki Tinker. Cohen touched on a number of issues, like the lottery and education (his principal focus), but Abdullah wrote that he defended his “record on sex crimes.”

At no time during the press conference did Cohen or anyone else say anything about his “record on sex crimes.”

The “sex crime” reference that was in the Emily’s List mailer supporting Tinker was presumably referring to a vote Cohen made — following a Senate debate on business-hours curfews — against singling out one type of legal business (including sex paraphernalia shops) for curfews. Right or wrong, it was a civil-liberties position and consistent with the senator’s record.

But the daily paper’s coverage twice conflated what amounts to a zoning issue with sex crimes. The second mention of “sex crimes” even occurred after editor Chris Peck was alerted to the problem.

In an August 6th editorial, Peck wrote: “When a reporter does manage to push a tough question or topic toward a candidate, more than a few politicians of both parties resort to attacking the journalist for his or her bias, ethnicity, or political bent.” He concluded his column by saying, “Journalists are as tired as many other voters of the superficial and deadening aspects of politics these days. …We need your help, as voters and citizens, to change the way it works.”

Although Peck didn’t name names, it’s fair to assume he may have been referencing the Flyer‘s criticism of Abdullah. Until Peck’s column ran, however, Abdullah’s gender (female) and ethnicity (African American/Muslim) had not been part of the issue.

Since racial-identity politics and flagrant anti-Semitism were publicly evident in the 9th District race, I asked Peck if he felt his reporter’s race, faith, or ethnicity affected her ability to comment fairly on a white Jewish candidate.

“No cheap shots,” Peck cautioned in an e-mail response. Indeed, no cheap shots. That would be wrong, as former president Richard Nixon once famously said.

But can there be a cheaper shot than linking a politician’s name to something as vile sounding as “sex crimes”? Or minimizing (as Abdullah did) the anti-Semitic attacks aimed at Cohen by Julian Bolton and by pollsters allegedly acting on behalf of candidate Ed Stanton throughout the campaign?

In her reporting, Abdullah presented Cohen as a disputatious lightning rod for controversy. Whether or not he responded to opponents’ attacks (Cohen mostly didn’t), he was treated as a party to “quarrels” in much the way a hit-and-run accident might be described as an “argument” between a motorist and a pedestrian. Meanwhile, overtly racist and anti-Semitic comments from Bolton went unchallenged.

On Thursday, August 4th, Abdullah wrote, “In recent weeks, the quest for the Hill became a tense battleground filled with accusations of race and religion-baiting, record distortion, and mudslinging.” The word “accusations,” of course, implies deniability.

On Monday, July 31st, the CA ran a front-page story by Abdullah focusing on ongoing conflicts in the 9th District race. Cohen and Stanton, it said, had a “disagreement” over whether or not pro-Stanton push-polls asked if voters preferred Christians or Jews. Bolton’s claim that Cohen would try to “raise money to send to Israel” was described simply as “Bolton’s assertion.”

Although the facts would suggest it was Cohen who was under siege, Abdullah found another victim. She wrote that Cohen had a “quarrel” with financial frontrunner Tinker, and that Tinker had subsequently become the “target of attacks.”

Who exactly was attacking Tinker and how were they attacking? The reporter never said.

“Nobody [in the Tinker campaign] said we were under attack,” Tinker spokesperson Josh Phillips told the Flyer. When asked if he felt that the campaign was or had been under attack, Phillips said, “That’s not what we’re focusing on, and there’s been no discussion of attacks.”

Tinker was the only candidate not directly quoted in the July 31st story.

Using comments by Rhodes College professor Mark Pohlmann, Abdullah wrote that the attacks on Tinker stemmed from the candidate’s $500,000 fund-raising drive. Notably, the story failed to mention that the glossy anti-Cohen mailer sent out by Emily’s List featured Tinker’s photo and her official campaign logo.

“Cohen moved a chess piece forward during a Friday morning press conference at his home to discuss what he termed a distortion of his record on sex crimes [our italics] and other issues,” Abdullah wrote.

But Cohen wasn’t pushing anything forward. After weeks of enduring racially divisive attack ads that misrepresented his record on everything from education and prayer to the use of medical marijuana, he apparently decided enough was enough.

Prior to the election, the Flyer‘s senior political analyst Jackson Baker specifically asked a spokesperson for the Tinker campaign if they wanted to put distance between themselves and the anti-Cohen propaganda bearing their candidate’s name and face. They declined to do so.

Phillips held to that position with me.

“From the beginning, Nikki has said she would run her own, issues-based campaign,” he said, adding, “We’re not going to comment on what other groups do.” Did it bother Tinker’s campaign that the hit piece on Cohen bore Tinker’s image and campaign logo? According to Phillips, it’s not against the law, so no.

Abdullah’s July 31st story raised even more eyebrows among Cohen supporters when it was discovered that both Abdullah and Tinker attended the University of Alabama and were members of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority.

That revelation alone is circumstantial, of course. So, for that matter, is Tinker’s August 2005 announcement that she was counting on the aid of her friends, colleagues, and sorority sisters. And there’s this from The Hill, a newspaper for and about the U.S. Congress: “Tinker has spent her time sizing up support within Memphis’ business community, churches, and plaintiff’s bar. Like most other first-time candidates, she is reaching out to her sorority sisters and friends.”

Abdullah hasn’t responded to interview requests. Peck acknowledged that Tinker and Abdullah are, in fact, members of the same sorority. “Our reporter, Halimah Abdullah, isn’t a classmate or friend of Nikki Tinker,” Peck said. “They joined the same sorority, but didn’t know each other at the University of Alabama and, in fact, graduated five to six years apart.”

According to the University of Alabama, Abdullah came to UA in 1994 by way of a minority journalism workshop. Tinker, after her 1994 graduation, remained at Alabama for law school until 1998.

So is all this coincidence? The CA says so. Were cheap shots taken? Maybe. Maybe not. Was there off-the-mark reporting? Most definitely.

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Cover Feature News

The Usual (and Unusual) Suspects

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Pardon my French, but that hoary Gallic cliché has to be trotted out one more time: “The more things change, the more they remain the same.”

After all the advance agony about new Diebold machines and anticipation in some quarters of massive electoral turnover, nothing much happened in last week’s Shelby County election to distinguish it from previous elections.

Even the county’s recent habit of sluggish turnout recurred — at least on Election Day itself, when the total vote, for the first time ever, lagged behind the two prior weeks of early voting.

But there were signs of changes to come. In what could turn out to be this election’s sleeper element, a brand-new Charter Commission was elected, charged with the task of offering a redesign of Memphis city government. (See John Branston’s story, p. 23).

And something new was signified by two big winners in Thursday’s voting: Ninth District congressional candidate Steve Cohen, victorious in the Democratic primary, and Steve Mulroy, winner of the pivotal District 5 position on the Shelby County Commission. Cohen will be heavily favored in the coming November general election against Republican Mark White and independent Jake Ford — though no fewer than three political scientists were quoted in a post-election AP article as cautioning that Ford (whose last contest was against a “bad guy” in the wrestling ring at the Mid-South Coliseum) had to be taken seriously.

Mulroy has won his position outright, and his relatively easy victory over Republican nominee Jane Pierotti reverses the current 7-6 partisan breakdown in the Democrats’ favor. An activist whose energy and scope was displayed over the last year in such causes as the effort to save Libertyland and voting-machine reform, Mulroy had become a fixture of the local scene even before his involvement in the commission race.

When an impressed observer commented to Mulroy on election night about his win, “You know, Steve, a year ago I had never heard of you,” the clearly ebullient lawyer said modestly, “A year ago I hadn’t even heard of me!”

Jackson Baker

Left to right: Bobby Lanier with County Mayor A C Wharton; Sheriff Mark Luttrell at Sidney Chism’s picnic; Senator Steve Cohen and District 5 County Commission winner, Steve Mulroy, celebrating at Palm Court on election night.

To no one’s great surprise, incumbent Democratic county mayor A C Wharton easily won reelection, as did Sheriff Mark Luttrell and District Attorney General Bill Gibbons, both Republicans.

Several countywide positions were won narrowly by Republican incumbents on the basis of the final precincts counted, dashing the hopes of several Democrats who led for much of the night. Judicial elections saw most incumbents and other pre-election favorites triumphant — though incumbent judges Michelle Alexander-Best and Donn Southern were defeated by Karen Massey and Karen Webster, respectively.

Prosecutor Lee Coffee won a hotly contested multi-candidate race in Criminal Court, Division 7, another prosecutor, Jim Lammey, won an open seat in Division 5, and Deborah Henderson eked out a narrow win over Regina Morrison Newman for a General Sessions, Division 4, judgeship.

As expected, retiring state senator Curtis Person was elected Juvenile Court judge over four opponents — three of whom were black female Democrats with overlapping constituencies. (The campaign-long mutual recriminations between Veronica Coleman and Earnestine Hunt Dorse — and between each of them and Jayne Chandler — accelerated a bit after election day.)

Jackson Baker

Bill Gibbons

Winners in legislative races, besides the favored incumbents, were Steve McManus in the Republican primary for District 96 (vacated by Paul Stanley, winner of the GOP state Senate primary in District 31); Ron Lollar in the GOP primary for House District 99; and a rematched Ophelia Ford and Terry Roland, Democrat and Republican, respectively, for the state Senate District 29 seat that was declared void after last year’s suspect special election.

Educator Bill Morrison won the Democratic primary in the 7th Congressional District, earning the right to face GOP incumbent Marsha Blackburn in November. (Though he is a long-odds underdog, Morrison indicated his seriousness by launching a whirlwind tour of West Tennessee counties the morning after the election.)

Jackson Baker

Victorious judges Gwen Rooks, Carolyn Blackett, and Tony Johnson at a fund-raiser with Memphis mayor Willie Herenton.

Statewide, Governor Phil Bredesen and state Senator Jim Bryson of Franklin handily won the Democratic and Republican gubernatorial primaries, respectively. Easy wins were also had in the U.S. Senate primaries for Democrat Harold Ford Jr. and Republican Bob Corker.

The Senate race is almost certain to loom large on the barometer of national politics this fall. But in the short run, nothing competed for dramatic impact with Cohen’s victory in the 9th District Democratic primary over a long list of contenders, including newcomers Nikki Tinker and Ed Stanton, lawyer Joe Ford Jr., and outgoing Shelby County commisioner Julian Bolton.

During the campaign, Cohen came under strenuous attack — especially from Tinker surrogates and from Bolton, the latter of whom made explicit a simmering concern in some quarters that Cohen was too white and too Jewish to represent the predominantly black 9th District. (See Chris Davis’ story, p. 24)

Cohen, who was backed by several prominent African Americans, overcame such sentiments — capturing almost a third of the total vote in the 15-strong primary field (in the process capturing, one report suggested, as much as 15 percent of the district’s black vote). And, 10 years after his first try for Congress, he was poised on the edge of a long-coveted status on the national stage. The contrast to 1996 couldn’t have been more obvious. The Steve Cohen who mounted a platform at Palm Court in Overton Square last Thursday night was smiling. He was surrounded by celebrants, not commiserants. And instead of the bitterness that had quickly settled over him when the racial dimensions of his defeat became obvious 10 years ago, this Cohen was suffused with the calm of knowing that he had picked up significant support in all quarters of the 9th District constituency.

Cohen, a public official for almost three of his five-odd decades, won’t formally ascend to the pinnacle of his ambitions until after the November election. Technically, the fat lady hasn’t sung yet. But you could tell she was tuning up from the hum of jubilation that surrounded Cohen as he began to speak to his throng of supporters.

Cohen began on a sedate note. “I’ve had victories, and I’ve had defeats,” he said, even seeming to tear up a little as he recalled that other August in 1996, when he had been on the wrong end of a 2-to-1 shellacking by Harold Ford Jr., the congressman’s son who would become a congressman in his own right and then a national figure.

Jackson Baker

Phil Bredesen with two Memphis supporters.

But Cohen found the silver lining: That defeat, he said, had made it possible for Ford, a “great, charismatic congressman” to serve “with pride and distinction” in the House and to be on the brink of his own glorious opportunity. Together, Cohen said, he and Ford could now do significant things for the people of Memphis and Tennessee.

And, Cohen said, serving another decade in the state Senate had allowed him to bring to fruition his dream of a state lottery — the crowning achievement of his 26 years there. A lusty cheer rang out from the crowd at this artful — and evidently sincere — squaring of a personal cycle.

Other Democrats had failed to win, Cohen said, in acknowledgement that most of his party’s nominees for countywide offices were in difficult straits. But they, too, he promised, would have a chance at some future redemption.

One of those defeated Democrats, lawyer Gail Mathes, who had waged a spirited campaign against victorious Republican incumbent Gibbons for District Attorney General, would shortly arrive to congratulate and embrace the victorious Cohen. Despite flooding Democratic households with robo-calls from 2004 Democratic presidential contender John Kerry and, on the last day of the campaign, former president Bill Clinton, Mathes’ campaign had come up well short, and Mathes seemed calmly resigned to the outcome. And philosophical.

“This race may have encouraged him [Gibbons] to be more active on the job,” Mathes told the Flyer‘s Bianca Phillips at a post-election gathering for Democratic candidates at the University of Memphis Holiday Inn. That fact, she said, may have made her losing effort worthwhile. “We would not be in the [crime] situation we’re in if he had worked as hard for his entire term as he has in the last seven months.”

Understandably, Gibbons didn’t see things that way. On the basis of early-voting returns alone — which showed him leading Mathes by 20 percentage points, the incumbent D.A. made an early victory speech to cheering supporters at the Fox and Hound Restaurant on Sanderlin, telling them, “I regard this as an endorsement by the people for our decision to confront violent crime.”

He acknowledged privately that crime statistics had gone up in the last two years but said the election outcome indicated his good-faith efforts were properly understood and appreciated. Calling himself “a uniter, not a divider,” Gibbons, who was supported by several key Democrats during his campaign, said he had enjoyed across-the-board support.

Other disappointed Democrats, notably Juvenile Court clerk candidate Shep Wilbun, were not quite so sanguine about their defeats. Late returns made Wilbun the apparent loser — by the margin of a few hundred votes — to incumbent Republican Steve Stamson, who had narrowly taken the clerkship from Wilbun four years ago.

An aggrieved Wilbun, who has blamed his 2002 loss on what he regards as trumped-up (and later dismissed) charges of misconduct that were brought against him during that campaign, now suspected dirty pool again and reportedly stormed down to the Election Commission office in an effort at protest.

Who could blame him? Counting a one-vote loss on the local Democratic executive committee in 2000 that kept him from being the party nominee for county register, it was Wilbun’s third near-miss of the young millennium.

Three other Democrats — Otis Jackson, running for Shelby County clerk against Republican Debbie Stamson; Sondra Becton, making her second consecutive race against former boss Chris Thomas in the Probate Court clerk’s race; and Vernon Johnson, challenging incumbent Republican Criminal Court clerk Bill Key — had similar hair-breadth losses after being on the cusp of apparent victories. (The two Stamsons are a husband-and-wife team.)

Other GOP winners were incumbent Trustee Bob Patterson over Democrat Rebecca Clark, incumbent Circuit Court clerk Jimmy Moore over Roderic Ford, and incumbent Register Tom Leatherwood over Democrat Coleman Thompson.

The most convincing win was that of county mayor Wharton over Republican challenger John Willingham, an outgoing Shelby County commissioner who has levied a number of complaints — some plausible and enduring — against the Shelby County government establishment in recent years.

But Willingham, who was among the first to decry the terms of the now suspect city/county contract to build the FedExForum as an arena for the NBA’s Grizzlies, could not convert any of his crusades into electoral success. The popular Wharton obliterated him by a margin of almost 3-to-1.

Informed early Thursday night of the first totals showing such a gulf, Willingham shrugged and said merely, “This is bad.” It remains to be seen whether he will go on to challenge voting procedures, as he did when he lost another lopsided race against Memphis mayor Willie Herenton in 2003.

Some clue may be had from the fact that late Thursday night Willingham supporter Warren Cole made an appearance at the Election Commission and told the Flyer‘s Greg Akers that he had “suspicions” about the accuracy of the early-voting results and about the election-day totals as well.

After the discovery on Thursday that an election-eve scare concerning a purportedly stolen ballot box had been based on a misunderstanding, concern in most political quarters had settled on the remarkable fact that election-day totals had lagged well behind those of a two-week early-voting period.

The long lines and lengthy delays of early voting had been well publicized, perhaps to the point that many voters who had waited until August 3rd, when a massive turnout had been predicted, had been discouraged and did not bother to vote. Whatever its cause, Thursday’s lighter-than-expected turnout may have resulted in totals skewed to elderly and suburban voters, who presumably had enjoyed a larger window of opportunity during early voting than had the city’s working-class population.

Harold Ford Jr.

In any event, the long-predicted swing of voter dominance to the county’s Democrats — predicted in every election since 1990 — has yet to occur, despite what would seem to be an ever-increasing demographic advantage based on the growing preponderance of African Americans in Shelby County.

The black voting base of Shelby County is expected, however, to emerge as a major factor in voting this November — particularly on behalf of Harold Ford’s Senate bid against Corker, the former Chattanooga mayor who won a convincing victory over two primary foes, former congressmen Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary.

Though Corker’s campaign rhetoric reflected obeisance to the same fiscal and social conservatism that animated Bryant and Hilleary, he is widely perceived as having a more moderate profile, and this fact, coupled with Ford’s own propensity these days for moderate-to-conservative rhetoric, could mean that demographic factors will count for more than usual in a statewide election.

They will increasingly account for more than usual in countywide elections, too, as the victorious Gibbons, in a swing by county Republican headquarters late in the evening, made clear.

The Flyer‘s Shea O’Rourke was on hand when the D.A. had this to say to the GOP faithful gathered there: “I want to talk to you as my fellow Republicans, and I think the message is clear from this. [GOP chairman]Bill Giannini and I have talked about this a lot — we are a Democratic county now. I think all of us realize that. And in order to survive as a political party in this county, we have got to be willing to reach out to other right-thinking Democrats and bring them along with us.”

Moments later, a victorious Sheriff Mark Luttrell said something similar: “I think one of the things as Republicans that we have to do is to really reach out, because if we don’t reach out, I think we’re going to be marginalized even more. And when I say ‘reach out,’ I’m not talking about compromising anything. I’m talking about getting out there and convincing people that the message that we have is the right message.”

At that, a woman in the audience yelled out “Amen!” And the hearty applause that came next indicated that — to the Republicans on hand, at least — the sentiments expressed by Gibbons and Luttrell would be a key part of that message.

Greg Akers, Shea O’Rourke and Bianca Phillips also contributed to this story.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Senate 2006: It’s Crunch Time!

The Contenders in the Stretch

One of the strangest U.S. Senate races in the annals of Tennessee is coming down to the wire on August 3rd, in a three-way Republican primary that will determine who will end up challenging Democrat Harold Ford Jr. Conveniently for the Memphis congressman, Ford’s primary opponent, state senator Rosalind Kurita of Clarksville, dropped out just before the withdrawal deadline in April.

Meanwhile, Memphian Ford, who has represented the 9th Congressional District since 1996, continues to reap campaign contributions and unprecedented national media attention as he watches the Republican stretch drive, one in which former Chattanooga mayor Bob Corker seems to be pulling away from two ex-congressmen — Ed Bryant, formerly of Tennessee’s 7th District, and Van Hilleary, who represented the 4th District.

Consistent with their former bailiwicks, Bryant is strongest in West Tennessee, though he also claims strength in Knoxville and in the Tri-Cities area of the state’s northeastern corner, while Hilleary seems to have greater strength in Middle and East Tennessee. Both, however, have watched more or less helplessly as the well-heeled Corker has put on a media blitz that their relatively cash-poor campaigns have not been able to match.

Unlike his GOP opponents, Corker can seemingly afford to manifest himself on the airwaves anytime and anywhere. During one recent week, Bryant, whose campaign featured a restrictive immigration policy early on, tried to capitalize on the then red-hot issue by going to the Texas border and arranging a conference call with the statewide media. Corker, however, had beaten him to it. For a solid week, a well-produced TV commercial played in every Tennessee media market, showing the Chattanoogan articulating his immigration views with a fenced-in section of the Texas-Mexico boundary serving as his backdrop. Bryant, by contrast, was at the mercy of whatever free media might come his way.

But at least Bryant was making the effort. By mid-May, just as Corker’s advertising barrage was getting under way, Hilleary, the onetime leader in the Republican race, had largely stopped campaigning in West Tennessee. In a public “Dear Ed” letter, he extended the olive branch to opponent Bryant and proposed that the two mount a joint stop-Corker movement: “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.”

Simultaneously, Hilleary’s campaign people were letting it be known that they were counting on Bryant to hold off Corker in West Tennessee, where, they admitted candidly, they were at a serious disadvantage, both financially and organizationally. Some of Bryant’s chief backers acknowledged that their man had similar problems in the eastern part of the state, where they hoped Hilleary could provide something of a buffer.

“All the latest polls show me with a two-to-one advantage,” Corker said during a stopover in Memphis last week. “That’s a big difference from 60 days ago,” he said with a wink, acknowledging that he had been just as far behind the others back then. Tellingly, in a brief rally with his supporters at his East Memphis headquarters, Corker had not deigned even to mention his two GOP rivals.

“We haven‘t reached the pond–scum level yet.”

It had been otherwise with Bryant only days before, when he confided his thoughts to the faithful at the opening of his Poplar Avenue headquarters. Corker’s rise in the polls, stemming from a series of TV spots that had been impossible to miss for anyone who watched even a little television, was the launching point for what Bryant said to say:

“We knew that $4 or $5 million could buy a lot of name recognition, which it has. It’s inevitable that he has taken a bump in this race,” he began. And then Bryant offered reassuring words to his troops. Suggesting that opponent Hilleary might be on his last legs: “Our benchmark poll showed that Van’s support was very soft, and, basically, Bob has rented Bob’s support. Our support is hard, and it’s going nowhere.”

Bryant went on: “It’s amazing that Bob has spent that kind of money and doesn’t have this race wrapped up!”

Bryant deviated from the subject of Corker to talk about his own TV commercial, just then about to make its debut. The ad, when it appears, will emphasize Bryant’s past as an instructor at West Point and his years as U.S. attorney in Tennessee’s Western District. Referring to Bryant as “a conservative leader we can trust,” the ad’s anonymous voice-over concludes with an extraordinary claim: “Ed Bryant will secure our borders. And win the war on terror.”

Bryant’s people murmured their approval that he’s actually begun to compete with Corker on TV, and a burst of excited applause ensued.

Then it was back to the subject of Corker, whose sudden burst in the polls may be the immediate pretext for Bryant’s focus. But the fact is, Bryant’s campaign has never deviated from its preoccupation with the ex-Chattanooga mayor who made a fortune by constructing affordable housing for people with modest incomes, then waged and lost a Senate campaign in 1994 before serving as finance commissioner in the first term of former Republican governor Don Sundquist.

Corker’s mayoralty came next, and, though he and various others regard it as having been successful, Bryant and, to a lesser extent, Hilleary have done their best to undermine that view. In Bryant’s case, not a day has gone by for months — literally — without an attack on Corker’s bona fides as a conservative or even as a reputable executive. Many days see several such attacks, but one in particular goes out without fail, day after day after day, to the state media and to Bryant’s network of supporters and prospective voters.

This is the “Daily Fraud Watch” e-mail, which, as of Monday, had been distributed for 145 consecutive days, virtually unchanged since the day when it first circulated — referring to several unnamed individuals who served in Chattanooga’s city government when Corker was mayor and have since been charged with a variety of derelictions, including some indictable offenses, and come under fire from Corker’s mayoral successor. (No evidence has ever been adduced in the e-mails that would link Corker to any of these former employees.)

Bryant, as one observant blogger noted months ago after seeing him for the first time at a forum, looks distinguished and, well, senatorial, especially now that his still-boyish good looks have begun to gray over. His personal integrity is unquestioned, and he is, as all who know him can attest, the very incarnation of the term “nice guy.” (Indeed, as one of the House “managers” of the Clinton impeachment in 1998, he drew the assignment of interrogating Monica Lewinsky and, in the judgment of almost everybody, went so easy on her that she dominated their dialogue.)

Now, as he takes stock of his campaign before this group of diehard supporters in his headquarters, nice guy Bryant seems aware that some accounting of his campaign tactics is called for.

He jokes about his first Senate race, about “that horrible negative campaign we had with Lamar Alexander in ’02, when I attacked him for being plaid and [said] I was solid.” And he reminds his listeners about the famous — or, some would say, notorious — “six-pack race” in the Republican Senate primary of 1994.

That race was ultimately won by Bill Frist, an independently wealthy first-time candidate who rose to become Senate majority leader and is now a potential candidate for president. It is this seat, which Frist is vacating, that this year’s hopefuls are now seeking.

There was real trash in that 1994 Senate race, Bryant noted, recapping some of the more flagrant epithets, concerning “draft dodgers” and “cat killers” and “desperate little men” and “pond scum.”

Bryant paused. “We haven’t reached the pond-scum level yet.” He then went on to raise questions about Corker’s candor regarding personal finances. “We’re going to be talking some more about his failure to give out his tax returns, whether he’s donated to organizations like NARAL [National Abortion Rights Action League] … I don’t know.”

And he repeated allegations — previously raised, he said, by Democrat Ford — that one of Corker’s construction companies had illegally employed alien workers for “a taxpayer-funded project” on Mud Island. Other employers may have done something similar, Bryant said, but Corker was “the only one out there who’s running for the United Sates Senate.”

“You seem like a great fellow.”

If Corker’s ears were burning, he didn’t show it when he hit Memphis a few days later for his own headquarters visit with supporters, followed by some carefully orchestrated door-to-door campaigning.

“I’m running a different kind of race from my opponents,” he maintained on the drive to a nearby White Station neighborhood. He had made a point of refraining from invective, Corker insisted — though, in fact, he had hurled several different kinds at Ford, accusing the congressman of frequent and questionable trips paid for by the taxpayers and by private interests.

“To some degree, the negativity of both of the other campaigns has hurt them,” Corker said. “I think it’s been a poor strategy. The way you run a race is the way you serve.”

And yes, for the record, the former mayor was asked about the alleged fraud which occurred, as the Bryant e-mails put it, on his watch. “It’s absurd, ridiculous,” Corker said. “I’m proud of my record as mayor. I was the first to put in a performance audit.”

He boasted of his “highly organized, very disciplined” campaign. “We’ve knocked on 45,000 doors. We have the most broad-based effort in history, with postcards going out to potential supporters throughout the state.” Since January 2005, when the still new-looking SUV he was riding in had been bought, “we’ve put 100,000 miles on it,” Corker said, adding proudly, “It’s only been out of commission once.”

Corker himself would seem to be in good commission. A small man in his 50s, he is an early-morning jogger, doing three to five miles every day. “It’s the only way to stay sane,” he said. It’s also the only way to go door-to-door the way he does, running the distance from wherever he happens to be to the homestead where one of his young aides has preceded him to find somebody at home.

There is nothing random about the way Corker and his team work door-to-door. This neighborhood, for example, a posh one, had been pre-screened as possessing a certain number of households where registered Republicans likely to vote reside. These are the doors Corker comes to, running up the walk or across the yard and materializing on the resident’s stoop. It could be taken as a stunt, unquestionably, but it makes a statement.

Given the advance preparation, the chances are good that the candidate will be greeted cordially. At most doors he will get, at the very least, some friendly conversation, and, quite often, he will be invited to leave one of his yard signs, which he puts in the ground himself.

Meanwhile, his young aides — some running alongside him, others walking behind at a distance, still others keeping up with him by car — are, as Corker explains, “counting the doors,” adding to that 45,000 total. “That number is going to rise geometrically,” he promised. Most, of course, will be knocked on, not by Bob Corker himself, but by one of his volunteers.

“We actually go faster without him,” said one aide. And it’s easy to see why. Since almost everybody who opens the door has been pre-selected as a politically active Republican, it would be strange indeed if they did not avail themselves of the opportunity to log some chatting time with the candidate.

On this day, there are an uncanny number of people who hail from East Tennessee or know people who do and have a connection to someone who knows Bob Corker.

Not that there aren’t unknown factors. At the door of a retired rabbi, Corker chatted at some length concerning his recent trip to Israel, telling the rabbi, a white-bearded kindly-looking man with a yarmulke, how moved he had been in Jerusalem to visit the Wailing Wall.

Corker and the rabbi seemed to mesh gears perfectly as they discussed issues relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, even concurring that the victory of the militant organization Hamas in recent Palestinian elections might turn out to have positive results. “Now they will have to learn to govern,” the rabbi said, and Corker nodded in agreement.

Out of nowhere the rabbi threw Corker a curve. “Now, Bob,” he asked, “what about that Statue of Liberty with a cross?”

Corker was clearly baffled by this reference to the new and controversial statue, which had been erected at the Church of the World Overcomers in southeast Memphis. And even after it was explained to him, he — no doubt wisely — left the talking to the rabbi, who went on to say, “When you have a community that thinks America is one religion, that’s wrong! The Statue of Liberty holds the Star of David and other religions as well.”

Finally, the rabbi pronounced what came across as a benediction. “I’m impressed with you, Bob. You seem like a great fellow.”

After an hour of this, or dashing up to doorways in 90-degree weather and carrying on extended conversation with homeowners, Corker’s shirt was soaked through with sweat.

Corker was asked: What percentage of the people he has met today knew who he was?

“All of them,” he said confidently. His advertising barrage has done its work.

“A candidate trying to be what he is.”

The two other Senate contenders, Hilleary and Ford, have logged somewhat less time in Memphis and Shelby County of late but for opposite reasons. Ford, who is presumably well known locally, is devoting most of his time, when not in Congress, to firming up his identity elsewhere in Tennessee.

As for Hilleary, reality has dictated his relative scarcity of late in these parts: “We can’t afford to run everywhere” had been the candid assessment of one of the former congressman’s top aides back in May. To be sure, Hilleary still does his best to make the usual courtesy stops expected of a statewide Republican contender, showing up here for events like the annual Lincoln Day Dinner in February and the GOP’s “Tennessee Homecoming” event that was held in May.

At the latter event, though, a straw vote poll confirmed what everybody already knew — that, insofar as there was a favorite son among local Republicans, it was Bryant and by a wide majority. That fact, coupled with Corker’s recent upsurge, has caused Hilleary to concentrate on votes east of the Tennessee River, though he can still boast a strong pocket of supporters in Tipton County, just north of Shelby.

All in all, though, Hilleary seemed clearly not to be flying as high as he was as recently as April, when he touched down in Memphis on his formal “kickoff” fly-around. At that stop, he had referred to the Senate race as a “a very important job interview for a very important job,” and he offered a set of credentials that included his service as navigator on 24 transport missions during the first Gulf War in 1991.

“We need fighters here,” he said, “who will fight against tax increases and for taxpayers, who will fight against those in Hollywood who would tend to corrupt our culture. We don’t need a Democrat like Harold Ford, who would cozy up to the Hollywood culture. Nor do we need Republicans who arrogantly raise our taxes and have forgotten that it’s not their money; it’s the public’s money.”

It was the kind of message that Hilleary, a resident of Murfreesboro, was long used to pitching to the small towns and rural communities of the 4th District, unique among the state’s nine congressional districts in that it snakes around all of the major media markets. Hilleary had represented the district for eight years before vacating his seat in 2002 to make a race for governor. It was that race that gave him the statewide name recognition that, as he boasted back in April, had allowed him to enter the Senate race as the acknowledged front-runner. It was also the race, however, that revealed some of his vulnerabilities, as he surrendered just enough traditionally Republican votes to Democrat Phil Bredesen to allow Bredesen the victory.

Hilleary was, perhaps justifiably, jealous of what he regarded as his own hard-earned reputation as a conservative and wary of others’ pretenses. “You see Hillary Clinton trying to run as far to the right as possible. You see Harold Ford trying as hard as he can to get over to the middle. You see Bob Corker trying to get to the Republican right. It’d be nice, just one time, to see a candidate who’s trying to be what he is.”

“I’m not a Democrat … running up to Washington yelling, ‘Democrat, Democrat, Democrat.'”

Meanwhile, Harold Ford was alternating between his congressional duties in Washington and building those bridges in Middle and East Tennessee.

He was also turning up with some regularity as in interviewee or subject in this or that corner of the national media. A box in Newsweek one week, a front-page profile in The New York Times the next, and, virtually on a weekly basis, a sit-down on Don Imus’ morning show on MSNBC, where the host has long since abandoned any pretense of neutrality, calling for the election of Ford to the Senate “if there is a God in Heaven.”

The story line regarding Ford might vary slightly from venue to venue, but what it all comes down to, over and over again, is something like this: Can a bright young African-American congressman overcome racial bias and his family history to win a pivotal border state for the Democrats in November? Whoever ends up as Ford’s Republican opponent would do well to realize the implications of this:

First of all, questions posed in that manner tend to contain an affirmative, self-fulfilling answer within them. Secondly, such a story line means that discussion of the general-election Senate race is likely to focus on Ford and, in a striking sense, to be about Ford in a way that might render his opponent as little more than his foil.

Largely overlooked, both in national coverage and in the attention paid Ford’s candidacy by the Nashville-based state media, has been the animus toward Ford on the part of a corps of hard-core Yellow Dog Democrats throughout the nation at large and plentiful enough in Ford’s own back yard. At more than one meeting of the Germantown Democratic Club over the past year or two, Ford was taken to task for his increasingly conservative rhetoric and for his continued, if somewhat qualified, support of the military mission in Iraq.

And to a network of local liberal bloggers, Ford had long since become something of a bête noire for his votes on Iraq, for his approval of a congressionally ordained review of the Terri Schiavo matter, for legislation against flag-burning, for his vote on behalf of a severely restrictive bankruptcy law, and for his vote this year to make permanent the tax cuts which most of his fellow Democrats regard as sops to the wealthy.

(Ironically, of course, the official and unofficial organs of the Republican Party continue to churn out press releases attacking Ford as a “liberal.”)

Disaffection with Ford’s campaigning style has belatedly begun to seep into the consciousness of some Democrats elsewhere as well, even as most party cadres seem uplifted by his increased viability. Henry Walker, a lawyer and sometime pundit whose views count for something in Nashville, referred to Ford’s nickname for the three Republican contenders when he told The Tennessean this week, “I’m disappointed in the kind of campaign he’s running, when he’s trying to run to the right of the ‘Three Stooges.'”

Ford himself seems not to be bothered by such criticism. Buoyed by demonstrations of his fund-raising prowess, which in the last quarter showed him forging ahead of money-man Corker, and by polls which increasingly show him to be at least competitive in a race with any of the three Republicans, the congressman felt confident enough to proclaim to a crowd of local supporters in April, “I’m not a Democrat … running up to Washington yelling, ‘Democrat, Democrat, Democrat.'”

It was a distance from party orthodoxy that he must have felt he could afford, given that the day before, Ford’s only party rival for the nomination, Kurita, had withdrawn her bid, due to lack of attention and financial support from traditional Democratic sources.

Ford clearly assumes that most Democrats, even the Yellow Dogs, will reach the same conclusion as did lawyer Jeff Bloomfield, a Germantown Democrat who, contemplating a possible Ford-Corker general election showdown, said last week, “The question is, would I rather elect a conservative Democrat who would vote with the Democrats on most issues when Congress is reorganized next year, or would I rather elect a moderate Republican who will vote with his party? I’ll go with Ford.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Three from the GOP

CREDIT: JB

Mark White is one of those steadfast, reliable, and deserving types it’s easy to bond with and without whom American politics probably couldn’t function. After doing yeoman work in others’ campaigns and as chair of various Republican Party events, White is making his second try for public office.

He lost to one of the party’s rising stars, Brian Kelsey, in a multi-candidate primary for state representative two years ago, but instead of hunkering down and trimming his sails, he decided to go for bigger game this year and is probably the favorite in the August 3rd Republican primary field. As a vice-chair of the Shelby County Republican Party, White certainly will have the lion’s share of support from GOP regulars and the party’s established donors.

The owner of a business that arranges parties and other events, White is also chairman of the local chapter of the National Federation of Independent Businesses, where his event-planning skills come in handy.

White’s current campaign is arguably both hampered and helped by his modest, low-key personality — which, in any case, should wear well if he found himself in office. His chances of getting there are better than they might ordinarily be in this historically Democratic district because of the independent candidacy of Jake Ford. Provided he gets by the rest of the Republican field, White has some reason to hope that a three-way race could divide along political lines rather than racial ones.

One obstacle to White’s primary chances is Tom Guleff, an engaging and thoroughly original personality who has spent the last several weeks running a campaign almost exclusively by e-mail — and gag e-mails at that, most of them satirizing the return to Memphis of one possible Democratic opponent, Joe Ford Jr. The e-mails purport to offer the California entertainment lawyer guided tours of the (presumably unfamiliar) 9th Congressional District. Some e-mails have also poked fun at Jake Ford.

Guleff’s maverick wit has been expended in more general directions as well. Back when various politicians were rushing off to the Mexican border to stage photo ops and other public professions of concern regarding the hot-button immigration issue, Guleff dashed off an e-mail from the Mississippi border, where he purported to be studying first-hand the out-migration from Shelby County due to local crime problems and educational deficiencies.

There is method to his madness, in other words — and some hint of a serious personality behind it all. A West Point graduate whose resume lists a Bronze Star won during service in the first Gulf War, Guleff founded a company that produces sports-training videos and works also as a consultant in employee development. Emphasizing simple themes of family values, individual liberty, and limited government, Guleff has eschewed fund-raising per se and depends on cyberspace (besides his e-mails, he has a Web site, complete with a blog) and personal appearances to get his message across.

For obvious reasons, he’s a long shot, but Guleff has made a lot of people sit up and take notice.

At most of the public forums for 9th District congressional candidates, one candidate has stood out for not standing out. This is Derrick Bennett, former chief accountant for Shelby County government and current comptroller for Crichton College. A Gulf War veteran like Guleff, Bennett is a member of Bellevue Baptist Church, a currently Cordova-based congregation which, much more so than most predominantly white churches, is known for its political consciousness and involvement.

That tilt — which is the conservative side of most issues, social and economic — owes much to the active involvement in political controversies of its late, legendary pastor, Dr. Adrian Rogers. Rogers, a former president of the Southern Baptist Convention, was a pivotal figure in his denomination’s purging of social moderates from positions of influence, and his political allegiances were best indicated by the eulogistic ceremony he convened at the church after the death of former President Ronald Reagan.

That’s the political matrix for Bennett; the chief difference between him and most other public exponents of it is his race. He’s an African American, and his amiable, conciliatory presence, which makes him a good test case for the GOP’s “outreach” efforts, allowed him to fit in smoothly with the socially conservative ambience of the several forums sponsored by the Black Ministerial Association. Nor have his positions, favoring education and mentoring approaches to problems, been out of sync with the rhetoric of the contest. But he remains a long shot.

The next installment will conclude our series of 9th District candidate profiles.

JB

Rep. Blackburn with District Attorney General Bill Gibbons

7th District Fireworks

Although the busy, highly contested race for the open 9th District congressional seat has attracted most attention locally, another race — that for Tennessee’s 7th District, which runs from suburban Memphis to suburban Nashville — could generate some heat. Indeed, it already has.

Incumbent Republican Marsha Blackburn of Brentwood, unopposed in her primary, is heavily favored. A ranking member of the Republican House leadership in only her second term, Blackburn anchors herself in her party’s most conservative wing and is probably, in the cliché phrase that indicates political weight these days, the 800-pound gorilla in state Republican circles. That’s a metaphor of some irony, though, considering that the relatively petite Blackburn, who possesses a model’s good looks and a flowing blond coif to match, just won a national political Web site’s online contest to decide “the hottest woman in U.S. politics.”

There is no doubting that the three Republicans now fighting it out for their party’s U.S. Senate nomination — Bob Corker, Ed Bryant, and Van Hilleary — were relieved that Blackburn opted to stay in her House seat this time around. The last time she took part in a multi-candidate Republican primary — in 2002, when she won her current seat — she pulled in an absolute majority over a field that included several redoubtable candidates. Even those who consider her politics far right acknowledge her industry, as officeholder and as campaigner.

Blackburn was talking a little politics during an appearance Sunday at the annual Fourth of July picnic at the St. Peter complex at Poplar and McLean, a traditional venue for politicians and one that fairly swarmed with hopefuls in this heavy-ballot election year. Having just returned from her fourth trip to Iraq, Blackburn said she remains optimistic about the military and political outcome there and said gradual reductions in the American troop force are likely and “have been in the plan all along.”

Her response was somewhat less sunny, though, when told of remarks made Saturday by one of her prospective Democratic opponents, Bill Morrison of Bartlett, who teaches social studies at Southwind Middle School. Addressing a group of Germantown Democrats at the Pickering Community Center, Morrison excited his listeners with some old-fashioned verbal pyrotechnics, among other things slamming the incumbent as a secret enemy of Social Security.

But what really caught Blackburn up short on Sunday was Morrison’s claim that, when the two met at a recent event in Middle Tennessee, Blackburn had leaned in close and said, “I’m going to bury you!” To which, in his account, he replied, “Just be sure to get out of my office in November.” That made good theater for the Democrats at Pickering, most of whom are of the Yellow Dog variety, tired of what they consider lackluster “me too” campaigns by party candidates. But Blackburn pronounced it pure fiction.

“That’s absurd!” she said. “He introduced himself, and all I said back was ‘Nice to meet you.'”

Whatever the case, the next meeting the two have is likely to be somewhat strained.

To be able to take on Blackburn, however, Morrison will first have to beat a primary opponent, Randy Morris of Waynesboro, who appeared, along with Morrison, at a forum last week in Cordova. And whoever becomes the Democratic nominee will start way behind both financially and in the polls. And cosmetically, too, of course. But the stocky, balding Morrison, who limps as the result of a motor-vehicle accident he barely survived, promises to try to make things as ugly as he can for the incumbent.

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Politics Politics Feature

Elder Statesmen

The marvel of our political system is that we get the quality of public servant that we do, given that anyone who wishes to rise in the system has to wait for the right year, the right opponent (which, in practice, means an open seat or one held by the rare embattled incumbent), and an opportunity that coincides with one’s own professional or personal timetable.

An illness, a new baby, a change of employment — all these things have kept people from advancing in politics. It isn’t like law or business, say, whereby one can start small and progress by orderly, planned stages to a lucrative partnership or a chain dealership or whatever. All careers involve the element of luck, but politics uniquely depends on all the planets being aligned properly at just the right moment.

It is, in fact, a riverboat gamble. And that’s our way of continuing a series of mini-profiles of candidates for the open 9th District congressional seat. This week we look at the two candidates, both Democrats, with the lengthiest political resumes.

Julian Bolton is that rare case of a political talent whose pathway to advancement may finally have come unblocked by adversity — in his case by the 1994 term-limits referendum that, affirmed by the state Supreme Court only this year, effectively closed out his reelection prospects on the Shelby County Commission.

Bolton came up in the Ford organization when, as a young professor of drama at LeMoyne-Owen College, he was drafted in 1982 to run against Shelby County commissioner Minerva Johnican. A once-influential politician and an African-American woman capable of crossing partisan lines, Johnican had run afoul of 9th District congressman Harold Ford Sr., then the closest thing to a boss that Shelby County had seen since the days of E.H. Crump. In a photo finish, Bolton won, and he began a lengthy commission tenure that had its erratic moments but showcased his considerable forensic skills.

Along the way, Bolton picked up a law degree and, briefly, was the local representative of the Johnny Cochran law firm. Once regarded as something of a showboat on the commission, he served an effective year as chairman in 1995-96, during which several black-white issues per se predominated. In the last year or two, Bolton has managed to combine the roles of fiscal watchdog and champion of social services and took the lead in challenging both urban sprawl and the county’s PILOT (payment-in-lieu-of-taxes) programs.

Though he was one of the litigants in the effort to overthrow term limits, Bolton announced long before its resolution that he wouldn’t run for reelection even if the suit succeeded. He was a relatively late entry in the congressional race — a fact which has hampered both his fund-raising and his development of a campaign structure.

As Aubrey Howard, his current finance chairman, notes, Bolton is both an established presence and a veteran campaigner. But he has his work cut out for him in this year’s crowded field.

Steve Cohen is, simply put, the elephant in the room. The farthest thing from a racist one could imagine, Cohen, who has sponsored civil rights legislation and won humanitarian awards, will nevertheless gain from his being the only well-known white in an overwhelmingly African-American field. A political realist, he is aware that, in the 9th District as elsewhere in Shelby County, demographic voting is the rule rather than the exception, and, for starters, he can probably count on a 20 to 30 percent share of the Democratic primary vote.

That fact is hardly his only advantage, however. In the course of a lengthy political career that began with his election, while still in his 20s, to the 1977 state Constitutional Convention (which elected him its vice president), Cohen has proved a steadfast champion of a variety of causes. He served on the County Commission and (briefly) as a General Sessions judge. Elected to the state Senate in 1982, Cohen in fairly short order claimed a prominent place in the statewide political firmament, despite an almost irrepressible penchant for controversy. His feuds with other public figures are legendary, but as former Senator Robert Rochelle of Lebanon (perhaps Cohen’s foremost adversary over the years) once acknowledged, “You may not agree with him, but at least he does espouse the same principles from point to point.”

Cohen’s best-known accomplishment is the creation of the state lottery, the result of 16 years of unstinting effort, and, as the senator never fails to remind his audiences in this campaign season, a boon to the college-scholarship hopes of many a 9th District student. Cohen has also worked to enact key animal-rights and arts legislation and facilitated the development of The Med and the city’s downtown tourist district. He is a poster boy for women’s-rights issues, and, contrary to his image in some circles as a flaming liberal, the former police legal adviser has taken consistently conservative positions on death-penalty and gun issues.

In 1996, Cohen failed in his first bid for the 9th District seat. (The winner, Harold Ford Jr., was no slouch, in addition to his institutional and demographic advantages.) If he should succeed this time, it is scarcely imaginable that Cohen (a ready man with a quip, sometimes to his own detriment) will be your usual diffident back-bencher. Many of his supporters (and some of his adversaries) view him as a good bet to become an instant national figure.

Next week: The rundown of candidates vying for the open 9th District congressional seat continues. Yes, Ron Redwing, Joseph Kyles, Marvell Mitchell et al., your spotlight moment is coming. You, too, GOP candidates.

Elsewhere on the Political Front:

One of the extravagant claims made by Tennessee Waltz figure Barry Myers on the surveillance recordings played last week during the trial of former state Senator Roscoe Dixon was Myers’ assertion that he had been the major force in electing A C Wharton as Shelby County mayor in 2002.

The boast was made to FBI undercover agent “L.C. McNeil,” who was masquerading as an executive of the bogus electronics firm E-Cycle Management and whom Myers, later indicted as a go-between in the extortion sting, clearly saw as someone worth impressing.

Among those somewhat stupefied by Myers’ contention was Wharton himself, who was A) widely regarded as unbeatable once he’d thrown his hat into the ring; and B) assisted in his campaign by the likes of Bobby Lanier, David Cocke, and Harold Ford Sr., all somewhat better known than Myers in political circles.

Said former Shelby County public defender Wharton at last week’s campaign appearance here at the Rendezvous by Governor Phil Bredesen: “That reminds me of some of the clients I used to have, who would take credit for everything from Santa Claus to the Easter Bunny if you listened to them.”

The trial of Dixon, which resulted last week in his conviction on five counts of conspiracy, bribery, and extortion, was avoided by many local political figures, including several mentioned in testimony, but presiding judge Jon McCalla‘s courtroom was something of a cynosure for others, who dropped in periodically. Among the last to do so was City Council member TaJuan Stout-Mitchell, who sat with Dixon’s wife Gloria Dobbins, holding her hand as they awaited the verdict.

Upon receiving his guilty verdict, and just before he left the courtroom, an impassive Dixon gave a brief hug to both his wife and Mitchell, telling each, “It’ll be all right.”

Sentencing is scheduled for September 8th.

Don’t look now, but a storm may be brewing in statewide GOP ranks come next month. U.S. senator Bill Frist, a home-state presidential aspirant, is reported to be furious that the Williamson County Republican Party is dickering with a Frist rival, Massachusetts senator Mitt Romney, to appear at a fund-raising dinner in the county, a bedroom suburb of Nashville.