Tag: Carol Chumney

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Karen Camper’s Race

Karen Camper as a freshman legislator in 2008 (Photo: Jackson Baker)

Depending on how one interprets the recent announcement by Michelle McKissack as to her political intentions, there are either one or two women in the running for Memphis mayor. There are still those who regard McKissack, the school board chair and former TV anchor, as having been equivocal or hypothetical in her formal announcement. Did she say she was running or merely indicate she was thinking about it?

There was no such ambiguity about Karen Camper’s intentions. The minority leader, declaring her candidacy from a position next to her grandmother’s front porch in South Memphis, proclaimed herself “ready” and reinforced the immediacy of her candidacy with some striking words: “From the front porch, we can see the conditions of our streets. We can see whether it is littered with potholes. We can hear the engines of cars roaring out of control. We can hear street racing. We can hear gunshots.”

She declared, “Memphis needs a mayor that’s willing to meet with you on your front porch.”

In so dramatizing her effort, positioning herself as having sprung right from the grassroots of inner city Memphis, Camper was ingeniously minimizing one of the potential shortcomings of her position — that her basic governmental experience, however renowned, has taken place at something of a remove from home.

Camper’s race can usefully be compared to that of a previous mayoral aspirant, Carol Chumney, who sought the office in 2007, against then incumbent Mayor Willie Herenton and MLGW CEO Herman Morris.

Like Camper, Chumney, now a Civil Court judge, had served for many years in the Tennessee state House. She did not become her party’s leader, as has Camper, but Chumney was an influential legislator, particularly in the field of children’s services, which she turned into a major public concern, and she held several leadership positions in the Democratic hierarchy, which in those days actually controlled the House.

Chumney had credentials, but they were, like those of Camper today, amassed primarily in an environment, Capitol Hill in Nashville, that was physically distant from the constituency of greater Memphis and not nearly as familiar to its voters as the governmental arenas for those public officials who had served closer to home.

Had Chumney chanced a mayoral race on the basis of her legislative qualifications, she would likely have had far greater difficulty than she did in the 2007 race, where she was a major contender from beginning to end. Indeed, she had made a Democratic primary race for Shelby County mayor in 2002, while still a legislator, and had run respectably, but well behind, against eventual winner AC Wharton, then the county’s public defender.

In 2003, though, Chumney had said goodbye to the General Assembly and run for a seat on the Memphis City Council against fellow hopefuls George Flinn and Jim Strickland. She won that race and wasted no time in broadening her acquaintance with the city’s voters and theirs with her.

In the four years leading up to the 2007 mayor’s race, Chumney was the most visible member of the council, posing challenge after challenge not only to the more questionable actions of Mayor Willie Herenton but to the good-ol’-boy presumptions of a council where pork was ladled about by members like so many reciprocated scratchings of each other’s back.

In so doing, Chumney ruffled some feathers in city hall, but she got the attention of the voters, enough so that she finished a close second to Herenton in the three-cornered mayor’s race, leading to speculation that she might have won in a one-on-one.

Karen Camper doesn’t have the advantage that Chumney had of recent and close-up tangles with the powers-that-be, but, to judge by her unusual mode of announcement, she has good grassroots instincts. And, of all the contestants, she may be most familiar with the ongoing threats to home rule posed by today’s state government. Which may be more of an issue than it may seem.

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Carol Chumney Remembers

For some years, Carol Chumney, the former state legislator, City Council member, and, perhaps most memorably, city mayoral candidate, has been reminding all and sundry that she was compiling a book that would, in the parlance, tell all.

Talk of that sort is common among members of the public class, but the awkward fact is that this is not New York or Washington. Memphis is a smaller market.

This is not even Nashville, with its key location at the nexus of state government and its ready point of reference to state figures who go on to make national reputations.

These have been facts of life that have rendered publishing ambitions of the sort advanced by Chumney for conversation rather than completion. (Exceptions acknowledged for memoirs and studies relating to the undeniable and profound importance of Memphis as a roots locale of the several streams of popular music that have changed the world.)

Yet there are stories of the public sphere here, Chumney’s being a case in point, that need a larger telling, and the new age of social-media opportunities is making it possible to give them proper scope.

Chumney has done it! — telling her tale in a self-published 608-page volume available from Amazon in hardback ($31.95), paperback, and an instantly accessible Kindle edition. Entitled The Arena: One Woman’s Story, it reviews with admirable specificity her own life and times (with equal emphasis on both of those terms). Chumney believes, with considerable included evidence, that she has stood for genuine advances in democracy and in the transparency of public business and in the responsibility of public figures to further such advances.

She also sees herself as the exponent of the long imminent, but still incompletely achieved, shattering of the “glass ceiling” that, until our own semi-woke times, has prevented women from achieving their full potential in public life. She does her share of taking and telling names in this narrative — involving the whole roll call of important contemporaries. A great deal of her focus is on her races for office, including the one for Memphis mayor in 2007 in which she came within 7 points of unseating longtime mayoral incumbent Willie Herenton, and might have done so had there not been a third candidate in the race, lawyer and NAACP eminence Herman Morris.

Nor does she overlook the warp and woof of public policy, which she examines at great length — ranging from her genuinely groundbreaking efforts in child-care reform as a legislator to abuses and oversights in city government that she made her focus on as a municipal figure. Much, of course, is ex parte, but all of it is revealing. Chumney soldiers on, currently on the issue of voting reform.

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Gun Sales and Paper Ballots Are On the Agenda This Week

Given the number of shootings in Memphis and Shelby County, issues of firearms are never very far from public consciousness. One matter of more than usual relevance to the subject was scheduled for consideration by the Shelby County Commission this week.

This is the matter of gun shows in the county. At intervals during the year, large exhibitions of weapons for sale are staged at Agricenter International in East Memphis — and are ballyhooed in advance on billboards.

As gun fanciers and area motorists must surely know by now, the next such gun show, a two-day affair, will be held at the Agricenter on December 14th and 15th. Current gun laws allow the sale of weapons on such occasions without the invoking of backgound checks or other regulations in effect at other venues selling weapons.

The existence of gun shows, therefore, is regarded by many as constituting a loophole in laws to control the sales of firearms.

Shelbycountytn.gov

Tami Sawyer

If Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer has her way, the Agricenter (aka the ShowPlace Arena) will soon cease to be a site that can be used for gun shows.

She is offering a resolution for discussion at Wednesday’s meeting of the body’s law enforcement committee requesting “that the administration decline the use of property owned and operated by Shelby County Government for purposes of hosting gun shows, effective January 1, 2020, with the exception of any contract already in place at the adoption of this resolution.”

Sawyer’s resolution notes that “from January 1, 2016 through November 1, 2019, a total of 4,449 weapons offenses (misdemeanor and felony) were reported in Memphis,” and the U.S. attorney for the Western District said that “in the first three quarters of 2018, Memphis and unincorporated parts of Shelby County reported 3,659 gun crimes.”

The attorney noted further that “the U.S. Attorney’s Office has established a multi-agency task force sting, Operation Bluff City Blues, to reduce gun crime and restore public safety in Memphis and Shelby County.”

By prior action of the commission, Shelby County owns an “operation and management” contract over use of the Agricenter and will do so until June 30, 2024, and therefore has the right and opportunity to control the building’s use.

Since “gun shows are the antithesis of promoting public safety and community peace and harmony,” and “promoters of gun shows have available to them adequate private facilities with which they could contract to conduct these activities, and, upon the example of the City of Knoxville, which has enacted similar legislation opposing the use of public arena space for gun shows,” Sawyer’s resolution seeks that “gun shows be banned on property owned and operated by Shelby County Government, effective January 1, 2020, with the exception of any contract already in place at the adoption of this resolution.”

Preliminary debate on the resolution is scheduled for this Wednesday, with further discussion and a vote on the measure expected on Monday, December 9th.

• The latest in a series of legal efforts to force a revamping of Shelby County’s voting procedures was brought before the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati this week, with an expedited hearing on whether a group of local plaintiffs have standing to file suit in the matter.

At stake in the suit is the issue of whether electronic voting per se can be relied on or whether Shelby County should return to conducting its elections by hand-marked paper ballots.

On behalf of themselves and other Shelby County voters, Carol Chumney, Mike Kernell, and Joe Weinberg were scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday, with Chumney presenting oral arguments.

This week’s hearing is a follow-up to previous legal efforts, including one that was rebuffed in October 2018 by U.S. District Judge Thomas Parker, who turned down a request for a temporary restraining order against the use of the county’s current voting machines for that year’s November elections. 

Judge Parker declared that “the mechanism of elections is inherently a state and local function and federal courts should be cautious” and ruled that the plaintiffs lacked legal standing to sue regarding the matter.

The plaintiffs appealed and were ultimately granted this week’s hearing. Their suit alleges the touchscreen voting machines used by Shelby County are outdated, insecure, and unable to produce a voter-verifiable paper trail, and that a variety of other security mechanisms are necessary to prevent possible distortion of election results.  

Weinberg, a long-familiar presence in local efforts to amend the county’s voting procedures, said the plaintiffs are seeking something beyond the possible introduction of “paper-trail” technology to append to the present Diebold voting machines or to any other computerized machines that might be acquired.

In a speech to the Kiwanis Club of Memphis in September, county Election Administrator Linda Phillips declared that Shelby County should be able to hold elections with paper-trail capabilities by August 2020. Phillips said the county is in the process of acquiring equipment that would make possible a process combining electronic scanning with paper trail records.

Plaintiff Weinberg said this week, however, that only a reversion to the use of hand-marked paper ballots would reliably limit potential abuse. “Basically, anything digital can be hacked, including ballot-marking devices or the scanner you might use with paper ballots.”

Phillips had said in September that there would be disadvantages to a return to voting by paper ballot alone.The chief problem, she said, would be the high rate of voter error. As an example, she said that “4 to 5 percent” of absentee ballots, which are executed on paper, contain some kind of error. She added, “How many elections can you recall in which the margin of victory was 5 percent or less?”

The failure of attempts to persuade local and state election officials to make voluntary changes made necessary the suit against the County and State Election Commissions, Weinberg said.

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Election Year 2015 is Upon Us

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Even as time was running out on the elections of 2014, with early voting ending this week in the election process that ends Tuesday, November 4th, the stirrings of Election Year 2015 were at hand. 

Among those in attendance at a Monday morning rally for Democratic candidates at the IBEW building on Madison were Kenneth Whalum and his wife Sheila. And while neither was quite ready to commit to a candidacy for Memphis mayor by the New Olivet Baptist Church pastor and former school board member, both seemed to relish the thought of a follow-up race to the Rev. Whalum’s surprisingly close second-place finish to Deidre Malone in last May’s Democratic primary for Shelby County mayor.

“Maybe it’s time for another tour of India,” joked the reverend, who had been absent on that East Asian sub-continent for a prolonged period just before election day but who finished strong, a fact indicating either that 1) absence made the hearts of voters grow fonder; or that 2) a more vigorous late effort on Shelby County soil might have put him over.

Either scenario, coupled with the fact that his appeal of a 2012 school board race narrowly lost to Kevin Woods had been finally disallowed by the courts, clearly left the irrepressible Whalum available for combat.

Who else is thinking about it? The proper question might be: Who isn’t?

Also present at the IBEW rally was former Shelby County Commission Chairman James Harvey, who is already committed to a race for Memphis mayor to the point of passing out calling cards advertising the fact.

“Changing parties again?” a passer-by jested to Harvey, a nominal Democrat who, in the past year or so on the commission, often made common cause with the body’s Republicans.

“I need ’em now!” responded Harvey, good-naturedly, about his attendance with other Democrats at the IBEW rally, which featured Gordon Ball, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senator, at the climax of his statewide “No Show Lamar” bus tour; District 30 state Senate candidate Sara Kyle; and District 96 state House of Representatives candidate Dwayne Thompson.

Not so sunny was another attendee, Memphis City Councilman Myron Lowery, who, when asked if he was considering another mayoral race (he ran unsuccessfully in the special election of 2009 while serving as interim city mayor) answered calmly, “No,” but became non-committal, to the point of truculence, at the follow-up question, “So, are you closing the door?”

Lowery has confided to acquaintances, however, that he is indeed once again measuring the prospect of a mayoral race, while simultaneously contemplating a race by his son, management consultant Mickell Lowery, for his council seat should he choose to vacate it.

Another council member, Harold Collins, has formed an exploratory committee and is contemplating a mayoral race based largely on the theme that the current administration of Mayor A C Wharton is acting insufficiently in a number of spheres, including those of dealing with employee benefits and coping with recent outbreaks of mob violence.

Another councilman considered likely to make a bid for mayor is current council Chairman Jim Strickland, who has built up a decently sized following over the years by dint of his highly public crusades for budgetary reform. He, too, has often been critical of the incumbent mayor.

In accordance with assurances, public and private, he has made over the past year, Wharton himself is still considered to be a candidate for reelection, though there are those who speculate he may have second thoughts, given his advancing years and the increasing gravity of fiscal and social problems confronting the city.

The mayor’s supporters tend to pooh-pooh such speculation and suggest that only Wharton is capable of achieving across-the-boards support from the city’s various demographic components.

Others known or thought to be considering a mayoral race are former state legislator and ex-councilmember Carol Chumney (who has run twice previously); current county Commissioner Steve Basar; and Memphis Police Association President Mike Williams.

The list of potential mayoral candidates is a roster that may grow larger quickly.

• In introducing Ball at the IBEW rally, state Democratic Chairman Roy Herron contended that incumbent Republican Senator Lamar Alexander‘s poll numbers were “going down and down and down and Gordon Ball’s are going up and up and up, and those lines are going to intersect.”

In his own remarks, Ball charged that “my opponent has spent millions of dollars trying to smear and discredit us” and cited that as evidence of how seriously Alexander was taking the threat to his reelection.

The Democratic nominee spent considerable time addressing the recent publicity about a suit brought against him by one Barry Kraselsky, an Alabama resident who recently purchased a Florida condo from Ball and is accusing Ball and his wife, Happy, of having “duped” him by removing items from the property.

Ball said he was being sued for $5,300, even though he had posted an escrow account of $5,000, which was available to Kraselsky, whom he said was a “charlatan” and a major Republican donor. “We’re going to take care of him after November 4th.”

In remarks to reporters after his formal speech, Ball, who opposes the proposed Common Core educational standards, contended that Alexander, who has mainly been opaque on the subject, was a supporter of Common Core, which is opposed by many classroom teachers. Ball noted that Alexander had bragged on well-known teachers’ advocate Diane Ravitch, who is now a Common Core opponent, in Lamar Alexander’s Little Plaid Book, which the senator published years ago.

“He doesn’t mention her anymore,” said Ball. “He and [state Education Commissioner] Kevin Huffman and [educational reformer and Common Core supporter] Michelle Rhee are in this together.”

Also taking part in the IBEW rally were Whalum and Ashley Coffield, CEO of Memphis Planned Parenthood, who passed out to all the candidates T-shirts opposing Constitutional Amendment 1 on the November 4th ballot. Amendment 1 would in effect nullify a 2000 decision by the state Supreme Court that granted more protection to abortion rights than have the federal courts, as well as empower the General Assembly to legislate on a variety of potential new restrictions to abortion.

• The Shelby County Commission, which was unable on Monday to come to a decision on proposed changes in County Mayor Mark Luttrell‘s amended health-care plan for county employees (see this week’s Editorial) also was somewhat riven on another – more explicitly political – issue.

This was a suit filed by seven commissioners in Chancery Court against current Chairman Justin Ford challenging his right to arbitrarily keep items off the body’s agenda.

The plaintiffs are the commission’s six Democrats and one Republican, former vice Chairman Steve Basar, who previously voted with the Democrats to stall the committee appointments by Ford, who was elected in this fall’s first organizational session by a combination of his own vote with that of the commission’s five Republicans. As the GOP’s Heidi Shafer explained at the time, the outnumbered Republicans had a choice between Ford, who has fairly consistently voted their way in previous years, and Bailey, who rarely has.

Basar was aggrieved by having been denied votes for the chairmanship, which he believed himself to be in line for, by most of his Republican colleagues.

Subsequent attempts to place items on the commission agenda proposing rules changes that would threaten Ford’s authority have been arbitrarily removed by the chairman.

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The Heat’s Still On in Shelby County Politics

As August turned to September, the political junkies among us found that very little had changed in their world. 

The heat of campaigning was over, to be succeeded by a late summer heat wave. Political advertising was conspicuously less frequent on radio and TV (which didn’t mean, of course, that deceit and misrepresentation were absent from the usual programming and commercials still available on the airwaves). In any case, more politics was just ahead.

Among the decisions still to be made were the four constitutional amendments that will appear on the November 4th statewide ballot. And the adherents and opponents of those amendments were already getting busy. More of that anon.

Meanwhile, the winners of the Shelby County general election were sworn in and girding for contests of other kinds. One of the most obvious of those was the matter of who would be chairman of the new Shelby County Commission. In particular, two of the five holdovers on a commission freshly elected from 13 single-member districts were girding for a fresh battle.

The two are Terry Roland, the Millington firebrand who, toward the end of his just-concluded first term, began trying to reinvent himself as an elder statesman of sorts; and Steve Basar, another second-termer whose constituency is based in East Memphis and the Poplar corridor. 

Both are Republicans and are counting on the resumption of the gentlemen’s agreement that has, more often than not since the advent of political primary elections in the early 1990s, called for the rotating of the commission chairmanship between Republicans and Democrats. 

The formula has been flouted in recent times — notably in 2011, when most of the commission’s Republicans joined with the political opposition to give Democrat Sidney Chism a second term, more or less to spite then-vice chair Mike Carpenter, a fellow Republican whose bipartisan ways had caused them to regard him as a “RINO” (Republican in name only).    

And there has been some isolated muttering among the Democratic newbies on the commission about banding together to elect one of their own as chairman for the 2014-15 term, but such an action would surely roil the waters, and there is no consensus among them for a candidate, in any case.

As vice chair, Basar would seem to have the advantage, especially since, unlike Carpenter, he has managed, despite a moderate, open-minded demeanor, to stay reasonably close to the GOP party line on major issues. Roland, however, is openly campaigning for the chairmanship, and it remains to be seen if he can put aside the politically divisive aspects of a persona which saw him, for most of the previous four years, functioning as the Democratic majority’s chief adversary.

For what it’s worth, during the commission’s swearing-in ceremony at the Cannon Center last Thursday, Roland sat on one end of the stage, next to four other Republican members, while Basar sat on the opposite end, next to several Democrats.

The new version of the commission will meet for the first time next Monday to resolve the chairmanship issue, among other matters, and what they decide will go far toward setting a tone for the new term.

• Meanwhile, there are already some political stirrings city-side, where the Memphis municipal election of 2015 is just a hop, skip, and jump away.

A year or so ago, before the vexing benefits issue and other budgetary conundra hit the fan so spectacularly, incumbent Mayor A C Wharton let it be known, at first through surrogates and finally via his own statement, that he would indeed be a candidate for reelection. Whether that remains the case, however, may depend on how easily and quickly the thorny issues that currently dominate the city-government agenda can be resolved, if at all.

The current Memphis City Council includes at least two mayoral wannabes — Jim Strickland, whose ambitions are long standing, and Harold Collins. There may, indeed, be others. It would be strange if council veteran Myron Lowery, who served  a brief but credible term as interim mayor in 2009 and who was defeated by Wharton in the special election held later that year, isn’t thinking of running.

In any case, Strickland can be counted on as a sure thing if Wharton ceases to be a candidate. Ditto with Collins, the subject of a persistent rumor that he already has been assured that the seat is likely to be open.

If Strickland should vacate his seat to run for mayor, a would-be successor is former Shelby County Commissioner Mike Ritz, who espoused the cause of the newly Memphis-based Shelby County Schools system during his term as commission chair in 2012-13 and who has moved his residence from Germantown into the city proper.

• Definitive word finally came down last week as to how the party nominations for state Senate District 30, to succeed Chancellor-elect Jim Kyle, must be conducted. Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper delivered an opinion that would:

1) Require nominations to be made by the two major parties’ local governing bodies — the Shelby County Democratic Executive Committee and the Shelby County Republican Steering Committee;

2) Limit the number of eligible voters to those committee members who represent precincts that lie within Senate District 30.

In the case of Democrats, who elect most of their executive committee members by House District, this effectively franchises all members representing House Districts that contain such precincts. 

Republicans also elect many of their steering committee members from House Districts, but a majority of their committee members are at-large and will also be enabled to vote.

3) Require House members seeking the Senate nomination to withdraw from the November ballot before attempting to win their party’s nomination for the Senate.

This requirement placed a clear burden upon rumored candidates like Democratic state Representatives Antonio Parkinson and G.A. Hardaway, inasmuch as the withdrawal of either from the November ballot would necessitate a write-in campaign to fill the ballot void for their party’s House race.

All candidacies, whether by party nomination or by independents, must be certified by a date 45 days from the date of the November 4th election. That would seem to make September 20th the effective deadline for application to the Election Commission.

Shelby County Democratic Party Chairman Bryan Carson promptly set up a meeting of the party executive committee for 7 p.m. next Monday night at the IBEW meeting hall on Madison. Inasmuch as District 30 is heavily Democratic, this meeting is likely to resolve not only who the party nominee is but who the next senator will be.

Among the known candidates are former state Senator Beverly Marrero, former Tennessee Regulatory Authority member Sara Kyle (wife of the outgoing senator), and Parkinson, who confirmed his continuing interest this week. Hardaway would seem to have decided against seeking the seat, and among other Democrats whose names have figured in speculation is that of Carol Chumney, a former state representative, city councilmember, and mayoral candidate.

At least one prominent Republican has expressed interest in the Senate seat. That would be physician/businessman George Flinn, a former county commissioner and frequent candidate for other offices — most recently the U.S. Senate, which he unsuccessfully sought in the recent Republican senatorial primary, losing out to incumbent Lamar Alexander and the primary runner-up, state Representative Joe Carr of Lascassas.

Flinn informed attendees of last week’s meeting of the East Shelby Republican Club of his interest. The Shelby County Republican Steering Committee is likely to consider the matter Thursday.

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Ready to Rumble

CREDIT: JB

JB

Judge Joe Brown makes his pitch at IBEW.

I’ll say this for Shelby County’s Democrats: If in the county elections of 2014 they should go down to another defeat like that of 2010, when the rival Republicans, representing a minority of the county’s voters, swept all the contested races, it won’t be for any lack of intensity.

There was more than enough of that to go around last Thursday night, when a lengthy list of candidates — declared, undeclared, likely, and unlikely — had a chance to address the local Democratic Party’s executive committee at the IBEW Union Hall on Madison Avenue.

In a way, Thursday night’s decidedly hurly-burly affair was a kind of segue from a previous party event.

Last month, when the Democrats had what appeared to be a successful Kennedy Day fund-raiser at the Bridges building downtown, a once and maybe future party politician rose up to interrupt what had been, up until then, serial recitations of the usual boilerplate and talking points and sounded a late note that was both jarring and curiously rousing.

It was Carol Chumney, a former state representative and Memphis Council member who felt that, in her last race two years ago for district attorney general, she had been deprived of the kind of party solidarity that might have given her a chance to win against incumbent Republican Amy Weirich.

“Let’s stick together!” she demanded of her assembled party mates. But she didn’t restrict herself to mere exhortations. She went so far as to call out one of the party’s main men, 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, who not only was in attendance but had played a major role at the fund-raising dinner, arranging the appearance of its keynoter, U.S. Representative Barbara Lee, a House colleague of Cohen’s from California.

Cohen had introduced Lee, who responded to his flattering characterization of her with some kind words of her own, citing Cohen for his “tremendous leadership in Congress” and going on to say: “We know that he is a true champion for economic and social justice. And we know, all of us, we know in the House that we can count on Steve to be with us on behalf of what is just and what is fair and what is right and on behalf of his constituents. … I can’t think of a more loyal or stronger or smarter ally than Steve.”

That was not how Chumney saw it. To her, Cohen was most remarkable for “Republi-Democrat” sentiments, by virtue of his having declined to endorse her candidacy against Weirich. “I think that very few people would say I was not qualified to be district attorney, but somehow one of our congressmen seemed to think that. He said he ‘birthed’ me, Congresswoman Lee!”

In deciding two years ago not to endorse her in the race for D.A., Cohen had indeed claimed, in what may have been an awkward attempt at a conciliatory grace note, to have midwifed Chumney’s entry into public office. (Anybody who covered Chumney’s successful 1990 race for state representative can attest to his daily omnipresence on her behalf in a crowded and contentious field.)

Between 1990 and 2012, clearly, the relationship had changed. And, in the immediate aftermath of Chumney’s remarks, another Democrat, state Representative G.A. Hardaway — whose 2012 primary opponent, fellow state Representative Mike Kernell, a longtime Cohen ally, had won the congressman’s endorsement — offered some payback of his own, referring in an email broadside to “treacherous political deeds” by Cohen and imputing to the congressman, routinely regarded as the most liberal Democrat in Tennessee, a previously unsuspected hand-in-glove relationship with Republicans.

Though most of that sound and fury had been, strictly speaking, more personal than political, the theme of party solidarity at all costs and outrage over potential apostasies carried over into last week’s executive committee meeting.

Speaker after speaker trumpeted the theme, and several, like Coleman Thompson, once again a candidate for Shelby County register, an office that eluded him in 2010, stoked the lingering belief that the party’s electoral wipe-out by the Republicans in 2010 had not been an honest result. “We caught them stealing,” he insisted.

Nowhere was this alleged GOP perfidy more prominent than in a lengthy and impassioned philippic against local Republican-dom delivered by Judge Joe Brown, whose title derives both from his former service as a bona fide elected criminal court judge and his long run as a reality show judge adjudicating domestic disputes on television.

It was the latter experience more than the former that had whetted his talent for tough talk, and Brown dished out lots of it, naming names and speaking of “secret accounts,” “differential vote counts,” stolen elections, “extortion,” sneaking privatization of public business, even a conspiracy to undermine traffic safety on the A.W. Willis bridge. Brown’s charges prompted voices in his audience to cry out, “Teach!”

Brown’s bottom line, reinforced by the fact that his TV show has been discontinued: He has “not quite made up [his] mind” about running for D.A., to end what he had characterized as a reign of error and terror.

Chumney, who had widely been rumored to be eyeing another race for D.A. herself, but who had as of yet given no public indication of it, was on hand again, with a retooled version of her Kennedy Day speech, again calling for Democrats to be “united for the team” and this time citing city council members Jim Strickland and Shea Flinn as Democrats who had abandoned her in 2012 and supported her Republican opponent.

Cohen, who had made a point to greet Chumney cordially, was there to address the committee and was all high road, noting that he had become a ranking member (meaning lead Democrat) on the Constitution and Civil Justice subcommittee of the House Judiciary, recounting his efforts on behalf of voting rights and immigration legislation, and making a special appeal to President Obama to ameliorate unfair sentencing procedures for drug offenses.

The congressman was applauded, but so was the next speaker, attorney Ricky Wilkins, his announced opponent in this year’s Democratic primary. Wilkins boasted of his South Memphis background and his 20 years of effort on behalf of improving public housing in Memphis, promising to bring the same degree of “compassion, energy, and fire” to Congress that he’d evinced in his law career, and making a point of pledging his loyalty in advance to this year’s Democratic nominees.

There were other speakers — Adrienne Pakis-Gillon, for example, on the need to oppose anti-abortion legislation in Nashville, and Councilman Lee Harris on putting an end to the lockout of employees at Kellogg. But it was the evidence of intense intra-party rivalries in this year’s primaries, coupled with the near-paradoxical demand for party unity (party chairman Bryan Carson announced that disloyalty would “not be tolerated”), which animated the evening and bespoke the revved-up nature of local Democratic ambitions this year.

Nowhere was this more obvious than in the party’s hopes of recapturing the office of Shelby County mayor from Republican incumbent Mark Luttrell.

The Democrats’ committee meeting had begun with statements from four mayoral hopefuls, all with established names and ambitions.

Shelby County Commission Chairman James Harvey offered “leadership at another level” and promised “stability.” Former commissioner and previous mayoral candidate Deidre Malone — making, as she proudly noted, her second try — rejoiced that “we have a Democratic primary.”  

County Commissioner Steve Mulroy touted his “core set of principles” and said, “I’m a real Democrat, and I can win.” And well-known minister and former school board member Kenneth Whalum Jr. brandished some stirring populist oratory, boasted his role in defeating the last sales- tax referendum, and asked the audience to help him decide whether or not to run.

Whatever happens in the May 6th countywide primaries (for which next week’s February 20th filing deadline is imminent) or on August 7th, date of the county general election as well as state and federal primaries, or on November 4th, election day for state and federal offices, last week’s Democratic meeting provided ample energy and abundant foreshadowing.

Discord and harmony, rowdiness and composure, affection and displeasure, logic and libido — all were present in equal and co-existent measure. The only given in the mix was that Shelby County Democrats aren’t likely to sit this one out.

CORRECTION: A previous version of this column had indicated that Deidre Malone had made two previous runs for county mayor. She has only made one to date; her current race is her second effort.

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POLITICS: New Mayor, New Council?

CREDIT: jb

Naming “crime, cronyism, and corruption” as major issues in
this year’s mayoral election, candidate Carol Chumney addressed the
Germantown Democratic Club Monday night, pledging if elected to “get a good
team” in order to bring renewed efficiency to Memphis city government.

Subsequently, city council member Chumney fielded at least
two questions from the membership (which includes several Memphis voters who
live in Cordova) about her reported difficulties with the mayor’s office and
fellow council members.

One member asked: What about her “relation building” and
“leadership style”? Would these be obstacles?

Chumney responded that she had developed good relations
with fellow legislators while a state House member for 13 years and said, “City
government has been a little different because there’s been quite frankly some
corruption. Many times I would be the only one who would stand up and say
anything. Some folks are going to get mad at you. I’m a strong leader, I will
tell you that.”

When another member followed that up by asking if the city
council would back her proposals if she were elected mayor, Chumney said, “We’re
going to elect a new city council.” Noting the virtual turnover of membership in
the county commission in last year’s elections, she expressed confidence that
city voters would follow suit. “It’s going to happen here. They’re going to vote
and vote in a new team.”

Pledging to renew cooperation between city and county
law-enforcement teams, Chumney said, “It’s disrespectful to expect the police to
go two years without a pay raise while asking them to risk their lives for us.”

She repeated her objections to Riverfront Development
Corporation proposals, including the recently approved Beale St. Landing
project, and called both for the city’s retention of The Coliseum and for
“something classy” in the downtown Pyramid.

Chumney said she’d heard “disturbing rumors” about the past
management of Memphis Networx and reported plans for its pending sale and
promised “to get to the bottom of it.” She said the council’s authority over a
prospective sale was uncertain but said she was seeking authoritative word on
that from the state Attorney General’s office.

  • Germantown is becoming an important campaign venue for
    candidates running for office in adjacent Memphis. A week or so earlier members
    of the Republican Women of Purpose organization heard a presentation at the
    Germantown Public Library from Brian Stephens, city council candidate in
    District 2, the East Memphis-suburban seat being vacated by incumbent Brent
    Taylor

    Stephens has been active in an effort to strengthen laws
    regulating sexually oriented businesses (S.O.B.’s in the accepted jargon) and
    specifically to make sure that veteran topless-club entrepreneur Steve Cooper
    does not convert a supposed “Italian restaurant” now under construction in
    Cordova into an S.O.B.

    He discussed those efforts but offered other opinions as
    well, some of them surprising – a statement that “consolidation is coming,
    whether we like it or not,” for example – and some not, like his conviction (a
    la Taylor) that tax increases are not necessary for the city to maintain and
    improve basic services.

    In general, Stephens, who seems to have a head start on
    other potential District 2 aspirants, made an effort to sound accommodationist
    rather than confrontational, stressing a need for council members to transcend
    racial and urban-vs.-suburban divisions and expressing confidence in the ability
    of currently employed school personnel to solve the system’s problems.

  • Also
    establishing an apparent early lead over potential rivals is current school
    board member Stephanie Gatewood, running for the District 1 council seat
    being vacated by incumbent E.C. Jones. Gatewood’s fundraiser at the Fresh
    Slices restaurant on Overton Park last Thursday night drew a respectable crowd,
    and her membership in Bellevue Baptist Church on the suburban side of District 1
    provides an anchor in addition to an expected degree of support from the
    district’s African-American population.

  • One night
    earlier, Wednesday night, had been a hot one for local politics, with three
    more-than-usually significant events, and there were any number of dedicated
    and/or well-heeled visitors to all three:

    –Residents of the posh
    Galloway Drive area where U of M basketball coach John Calipari resides
    are surely used to long queues of late-model vehicles stretching every which way
    in the neighborhood, especially in election season when Calipari’s home is
    frequently the site of fundraisers for this or that candidate.

    But Wednesday night’s event, a $250-a-head fundraiser for District 5 city
    council candidate Jim Strickland, was surely a record-setter –
    out-rivaling not only Calipari’s prior events but most other such gatherings in
    Memphis history, including those for senatorial and gubernatorial candidates. A
    politically diverse crowd estimated at 300 to 500 people showed up, netting
    Strickland more than $60,000 for the night and bringing his total “cash on hand”
    to $100,000.

    –Meanwhile, mayoral candidate Herman Morris attracted
    several hundred attendees to the formal opening of his sprawling, high-tech
    campaign headquarters on Union Avenue – the same HQ that, week before last,
    suffered a burglary – of computers containing sensitive information, for one
    thing – a fact that some Morris supporters find suspicious in light of various
    other instances of hanky-panky currently being alleged in the mayoral race.

    — Yet a a third major political gathering took place Wednesday night, as Shelby
    County Mayor A C Wharton was the beneficiary of a big-ticket fundraiser
    at The Racquet Club. Proceeds of that one have been estimated in the $50,000
    range – a tidy sum for what the county mayor alleges (and alleged again
    Wednesday night) is intended only as a kind of convenience fund, meant for
    charitable donations and various other protocol circumstances expected of
    someone in his position.

    Right. Meanwhile, Wharton declined to address the most widely speculated-upon
    subject in Memphis politics: Will he or won’t he enter the city mayor’s race? As
    everybody knows, and as the county mayor has informally acknowledged, he is the
    subject these days of non-stop blandishments in that regard, and there’s very
    little doubt that these have accelerated since a dramatic recent press
    conference by Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton alleging “the 2007 Political
    Conspiracy.”

    While some of
    Mayor Wharton’s intimates at the Wednesday night affair were keeping to the line
    that the chances of his running for city mayor were minimal to non-existent,
    their answers to inquiries about the matter were delivered after what we’ll call
    meaningfully inflected pauses. The door may be shut for now, but it clearly
    isn’t padlocked.

    jb

    Chumney in Germantown

  • NASHVILLE
    — The name of McWherter, prominent in Tennessee politics for most of the latter
    20th century, will apparently resurface in fairly short order, as Jackson lawyer
    and businessman Mike McWherter, son of two-term former governor Ned
    McWherter    , is making clear his plans to challenge U.S. Senator Lamar
    Alexander    ‘s reelection bid next year.

    Apparently only one thing could derail Democrat McWherter — a renewed Senate
    candidacy by former Memphis congressman Harold Ford Jr., who last year
    narrowly — lost a Senate race to the current Republican incumbent, Bob
    Corker    . “I don’t think I would compete against Harold. But I don’t think he
    will run,” McWherter said in an interview with The Flyer at Saturday’s
    annual Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner in Nashville.

    The 52-year-old activist sees Alexander as a slavish follower of President
    George W. Bush.

    “With one or two exceptions, he’s done everything the president has wanted him
    to do. He’s toed the party line,” said McWherter, who has recently paid courtesy
    calls on ranking Democrats, both in Tennessee and in Washington, D.C., informing
    them of his interest in running next year and soliciting their support.

  • Keynote speaker
    at the Democrats’ dinner in Nashville was presidential hopeful Bill
    Richardson    , whose situation somewhat paralleled that of former Massachusetts
    governor Mitt Romney, who earlier this month had been the featured
    speaker at the state Republicans’ Statesmen’s Dinner, also in Nashville.

    On that occasion, Romney – who had been invited before the entrance of former
    Tennessee senator Fred Thompson became likely – was a de facto lame-duck
    keynoter, and, mindful of the attendees’ expected loyalty to favorite-son
    Thompson, cracked wanly, “I know
    there’s been some speculation by folks about a certain former senator from
    Tennessee getting into the presidential race, and I know everybody’s waiting,
    wondering. But I take great comfort from the fact than no one in this room, not
    a single person, is going to be voting for — Al Gore.”

    That bit of verbal bait-and-switch got the expected laugh, and so did a joke
    Saturday night by New Mexico governor Richardson, who uttered some ritual praise
    of native Tennessean and former presidential candidate Gore and then, when the
    crowd warmly applauded the former vice president, jested, “Let’s not overdo it.
    I don’t want him in this race!”

    jb

    • Categories
    Cover Feature News

    Working 9-to-9

    CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

    It’s 12:20 on a Thursday afternoon as mayoral candidate Carol Chumney sits down to a lunch of fried chicken with all the fixin’s at a Mrs. Winner’s in Frayser. The city councilwoman positions herself near the edge of her seat as she daintily picks meat from the bone. She knows she won’t be allowed to sit for long.

    Sure enough, five minutes into her meal, a member of the Frayser Exchange Club calls her to the podium. With food left on her plate, she calmly rises, appearing not the least bit upset by the interruption.

    “I’m running for mayor because I love this city,” she begins.

    A believable statement, considering the hectic schedule Chumney’s adopted in order to run for the office she covets. Before her noon speaking engagement in Frayser, in which she detailed what she’d do to fight crime and blight if elected, Chumney had already done a day’s work.

    “I had a live interview with Channel 13 this morning, and then I went down to court to enter an order in a case that I have [with my law firm]. Then I went back to the headquarters and made phone calls [for fund-raising],” Chumney says.

    After the Frayser Exchange Club luncheon, Chumney heads back to court for a settlement conference regarding one of her cases.

    When she’s not campaigning or performing City Council duties as chair of the MLGW and budget committees, Chumney heads a law firm that specializes in just about everything — family law, divorce, worker’s compensation, automobile accidents, wrongful death, criminal law, sexual harassment, you name it.

    From 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. (sometimes later), Chumney works tirelessly, juggling her duties. It sounds exhausting, but she considers herself an old pro. Chumney’s been practicing law since 1986, served 13 years in the state House of Representatives, and has been a City Council member since 2003.

    “One thing I did do differently for this campaign is that I stopped taking new law cases in March,” Chumney says. “So now I’m just working with the cases I had before then.”

    As the only serious female mayoral candidate Memphis has seen in years, Chumney should theoretically be feeling some pressure to prove her legitimacy. Just before she arrives at an early-voting site in South Memphis Thursday night, three Willie Herenton supporters (the only ones present) approached the 20 or so Chumney fans and tried to start a war of words.

    “It’s a man’s world! It’s a man’s world!” yelled one man, sporting a Herenton T-shirt bearing his “Shake Them Haterz Off” slogan.

    But Chumney says she rarely gives the gender factor a thought.

    “Truthfully, I really don’t think about it that much, because I’ve been one of the few women in the legislature many times,” Chumney says. “I think [gender] barriers are being broken down in America.”

    Gender barriers may be falling, but much ado has been made lately over what female presidential candidate Hillary Clinton chooses to wear at campaign events. Female candidates, of course, do have more choices when it comes to clothing: Are pants too masculine? Is cleavage really an issue?

    Chumney, who tends to stick to conservative suit jackets with matching skirts and complementing blouses, doesn’t concern herself with fashion quandaries.

    “I just stick to what I’ve been wearing as a professional woman. I don’t spend that much time on it,” Chumney says. “Most of my time I spend thinking about policy, platform, raising money, getting my message out.”

    Chumney says she hopes to curb the city’s crime problem through better management of the Police Department. She wants to “clean up” Memphis Light, Gas, and Water and focus neighborhood revitalization in places other than downtown.

    How well that message is resonating — or not resonating — will be revealed on October 4th, but until then, Chumney plans to hit the campaign trail harder than ever.

    And she doesn’t plan on letting the stress get to her:

    “It’s been a lot of fun. And when we’re having fun, it’s easier to attract people to your campaign. The social aspect is very important.”

    Categories
    Politics Politics Feature

    POLITICS: In the Spotlight

    CREDIT: jb

    There come times when you wonder why everyone isn’t a
    political junkie. Last year’s nail-biting U.S. Senate race between winner Bob
    Corker     and (narrow) loser Harold Ford Jr. – climaxing with the now
    famous Battle of Wilson Air, when the GOP’s Corker deftly out dueled Democrat
    Ford at the latter’s ambush of a Corker press conference — was one such time.

    Another, believe it or not, is this year’s Memphis mayoral
    race, which — despite the opting out of one potential lead actor, Shelby
    County Mayor A C Wharton, and the refusal of another, incumbent Memphis
    mayor Willie Herenton, to play ensemble – has had its dramatic, as well
    as its comedic, moments.

    Much of the entertainment value has come, as expected, from
    the scramble involving the three major contenders to Herenton – city
    councilwoman Carol Chumney, former MLGW head Herman Morris, and
    former Shelby County Commissioner John Willingham. We’ll get to that core
    drama in a moment.

    But besides this main plot, which some have called by the
    shorthand initials A.B.H. (for “Anybody-but-Herenton”), there’s running
    mini-drama involving the several supporting players in the 14-member mayoral
    field. We can call that one A.G.H. – for “Ain’t Gonna Happen.”

    For, if there is real doubt as to whether Willingham, whom
    the polls have shown to be hovering in the low single digits, is delusional in
    his hopes of winning, it’s a dead-level cinch that these others are. None of
    them even blip the radar screen.

    Which is not to say that they haven’t made their
    contribution to the dialogue. Nor that they haven’t made for compelling theater
    on those rare occasions when they’ve been admitted to a forum involving the Big
    Three (as for the Big Unit himself, the incumbent mayor, fahgitaboutit!, he’s
    made it clear he’s not about to show in tandem with the others).

    Consider this piece of wisdom from Laura Davis Aaron,
    delivered at the League of Women Voters’ omnium gatherum affair at the
    Main Library on Poplar on Sunday:

    Knowing what she was about to unleash, Aaron first issued
    this full-disclosure caveat to the attending audience (fairly numerous, all
    things considered): “I want you close your eyes for a minute. I wanted to be a
    lawyer once, but they ran out of the courtroom.” Non sequitur or not, we got the
    drift of that. Then came the moment she was preparing us for:

    “God gave me a plan and a vison: “Dr. Aaron, you must put
    senior citizens in The Pyramid!'” (Pause.) “And I said: ‘To do what?'”

    Once again the voice of the Almighty: “‘Take what they’ve
    got in their homes to the Pyramid. and you’re gonna have them run a flea
    market     in that Pyramid!'”

    And that, mind you, was only the first of two instances of
    divine intervention at Sunday’s forum. Aaron was followed minutes later by
    fellow candidate Dewayne A. Jones, who proclaimed more modestly, “God
    makes the leader. I am your David,” and promised at some point to bring
    forth his own “vision of empowerment.” He may even have had it ready on Sunday,
    but wisely decided to hold it in reserve after Aaron’s bombshell.

    There were contributions of a more secular sort from the
    candidate chorus on Sunday. Roosevelt Jamison, in particular, proved
    himself something of a phrasemaker. At one point, the youthful-appearing
    Jamison, a Desert Storm vet, said disarmingly to the crowd, “I know I don’t
    look     old, but I am old.”

    And he certainly got his fellow also-rans on his side when
    he complained that “the media isn’t playing with a full deck” – meaning that he
    and the other unsung names on the mayoral ballot weren’t getting their proper
    share of attention.

    The line from Jamison that got the whole audience going,
    though, was this zinger, in response to the issue of gang activity and what to
    do about it: “”We need to stop the gangs on top!” — a clear reference to
    the rascals in charge of the governmental and business status quo.

    Jamison was not done. He went on to insist, “Our government
    has corrupted us in our city,” designating as particular problems “welfare” and
    “babies having babies.” He got murmurs of approval from the conservatives in the
    audience when he said, “We need mens [sic] to stand up to be mens. Stop leaving
    everything to our women!”

    Then there was Randy Cagle, who embraced past
    traditions as well, calling, among other things, for a return to corporal
    punishment in the schools. As he pointed out, “I got busted a lot of times at
    school, but I’m not dead.”

    Businessman Cagle, who has made every forum so far to which
    all mayoral candidates have been invited, obviously relished the attention.
    Often Cagle was gently corralled by a hint from LWV moderator Danielle
    Schonbaum     that he was about to exceed his allotted time limit.

    On one such occasion, he said the obvious: “I could go on
    forever. I love it.”

    As candid and direct as that remark of Cagle’s was in its
    own right, it had the ancillary virtue of prompting a rare understatement from
    the famously voluble Willingham. “I’m like Cagle,” said the former commissioner.
    “I can talk to you for three hours.”

    Three hours was not quite what Willingham and fellow
    top-tier candidates Morris and Chumney enjoyed during Monday night’s prime-time
    broadcast forum on News Channel 3, WREG-TV, but the three of them managed a
    compelling hour.

    Observers’ opinions differed afterward as to who came out
    ahead in a format that culminated with direct exchanges between the candidates
    themselves.

    But there were several discoveries to be had by the
    viewers, who learned, among other things, that Chumney has been endorsed by the
    AFL-CIO (she mentioned the fact four, maybe five times) and that Willingham, who
    would seem to be about as white as white can be (ditto for his supporters),
    considers himself the exponent, first and foremost, of “my base in the black
    community,” which he helpfully enumerated as being in the vicinity of 13,000
    voters.

    Cynics may dispute it all they want, but the former
    commissioner made it clear several times in his opening statement and thereafter
    that he thinks of himself as the candidate of black Memphians. Willingham also
    made the claim that his commission race of 2002, which resulted in an upset
    victory over then incumbent Morris Fair, had been but a trial run for the
    two mayoral races he’s run since (three, counting one for county mayor last
    year).

    He had run back then, Willingham confided, “to get my name
    out.”

    Whatever.

    More to the point, he certainly got his name out Monday
    night, sparring with the other two candidates (and occasionally, lightly, with
    moderators Claudia Barr and Richard Ransom) and discoursing on
    several of his pet schemes, two of which – converting the Fairgrounds into a
    mini-Olympic village for international competitions and reserving desk jobs in
    the Memphis Police Department for returning vets of the Iraq war – were
    distinctly original.

    In WREG’s own post-debate viewer poll, Willingham was, in
    fact, running a strong second to Chumney.

    As for the councilwoman, she had boasted on air – as she
    has every right to – that such scientific polls as have been taken all position
    her at the lead of the mayoral pack or tied for it. That was the basis for her
    no-thank-you answer to commentator Norm Brewer‘s first question, asking
    all the candidates if they shouldn’t back out, making room for a single
    consensus contender to take on Herenton, who remains a not-quite-prohibitive
    favorite.

    (No one else volunteered for self-sacrifice, either.)

    Though occasionally lapsing into some repetitive-sounding
    spin, Chumney certainly managed to seize her share of the spotlight and to get
    out large chunks of her crime plan (also available on her Web site) and other
    proposals.

    Morris, too, had his moments, staking out his claim to be a
    racial uniter and unflappably fending off his opponents’ attacks on his record
    at MLGW (Chumney on the alleged V.I.P. list he’d kept while head of the utility
    and Willingham on what he – but not Morris, still a true believer – saw as the
    folly of investing in Memphis Networx).

    With some logic, Morris could claim afterwards that the
    others’ persistent questioning of him meant that they must have regarded him as
    “the frontrunner.” He wishes.

    The bottom line is that all three candidates handled
    themselves well and did themselves no damage, as each continued to vie for the
    right to be regarded as the main contender to Herenton.

    To Be Continued, you may be sure.

    Categories
    Politics Politics Feature

    Mayoral Shuffling

    Memphis mayoral candidates continued to campaign, as is their wont, over the weekend:

    Incumbent mayor Willie Herenton, who is eschewing formal debates with his opponents, spoke briefly to a rally at a Frayser mall Saturday but mainly spent his time there autographing campaign T-shirts and demonstrating his prowess at the “Cupid Shuffle” as a sound system blared out some music.

    Opponent Carol Chumney held a well-attended opening at her Poplar Avenue headquarters on Sunday, once again chiding Herenton for being willing to spar with Joe Frazier while ducking debate, but she seemed to broaden her attack to include rival Herman Morris as well as Herenton: “My opponents love to walk you through their humble beginnings, but their actions both in political office and as executives demonstrate that they have long forgotten where they came from.”

    Morris held at least one major fund-raiser over the weekend, while John Willingham presided over a headquarters open house that spread over Sunday and Monday.

    Present at Mt. Olive C.M.E. Church for an all-candidates forum Sunday were Chumney, Morris, and Willingham, but not Herenton. A wide representation of other mayoral candidates also attended, including Laura Davis Aaron — who cited as two reasons for running the fact that “Mayor Herenton reads my mail” and that she needs a job — and Dewayne A. Jones Sr., who shouted so loudly as to temporarily short out his microphone.

    • With Congress in recess, 9th District congressman Steve Cohen is much in evidence locally. Among other things, Cohen presided (along with Tennessee senator Lamar Alexander) over a ceremony formally changing the name of the Federal Building to the Clifford Davis/Odell Horton Federal Building, in honor of the late U.S. district judge Odell Horton.

    Cohen also proposed to President Bush that he appoint former deputy attorney general James Comey to succeed the disgraced and now resigned Alberto Gonzales as U.S. attorney general. (Comey, along with the bedridden John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, had resisted as unconstitutional a Bush wiretapping plan aggressively pushed by Gonzales, then White House counsel.)

    Cohen addressed a Chamber of Commerce-sponsored banquet as the first of its Frontline Politics speakers this year and took part in a panel on crime sponsored by the Public Issues Forum. The congressman’s remarks at the Frontline dinner at the Ridgeway Center Hilton struck a new note, in that Cohen, a longtime critic of the Iraq war, acknowledged for the first time that residual U.S. troops might need to remain in the war-torn country for some time to come.

    Cohen also scheduled a meeting, tentatively set for Tuesday of this week, with members of the Memphis Black Ministerial Association, one of whose leaders, the Rev. LaSimba Gray, has led an assault on Cohen’s support for a congressional Hate Crimes Bill.

    There are several anomalies associated with the ministers’ protest — among them, that Cohen’s predecessor, former congressman Harold Ford Jr., had consistently supported such legislation without drawing criticism from the association.

    Pointing out further inconsistencies this week was an association member, the Rev. Ralph White, who originally expressed solidarity with the protest but later satisfied himself it was based on misconceptions. Said White: “I’ve read the bill, and I’m satisfied that it does not restrain a minister from expressing opposition to homosexual conduct or anything else that might be offensive to his conscience or Christian doctrine. The language of the bill specifically guarantees such freedom of speech.”

    Turning the attack back on its maker, White said, “What LaSimba Gray has to answer to is whether he is consciously trying to aid the congressional campaign of Nikki Tinker. Nobody seems to be wondering what her attitude toward the Hate Crimes Bill is.”

    Actually, many people have so wondered, but a Washington, D.C., spokesman for the elusive Tinker, a 2006 Cohen opponent who has already filed to run a reprise of last year’s congressional race, has publicly said she will, at least temporarily, distance herself from discussion of such issues — as she did at an equivalent period of last year’s race. White, who also sought the 9th District seat last year, is holding open his options for another run of his own.

    • Senator Alexander, just back from an extended fact-finding trip to Iraq in tandem with Tennessee Senate colleague Bob Corker, seems, like Cohen, to have moderated his stand on Iraq somewhat. Alexander continues to push for a bipartisan resolution, co-authorized with Colorado Democrat Ken Salazar, based on the findings of the Iraq Study Group and calling for an end to U.S. combat operations.

    But the senator indicated in Memphis last week that he had been impressed by progress made by the ongoing U.S. troop “surge” in Anbar Province and other points and, pending a scheduled report to Congress next month by General David Petraeus, was keeping an open mind on continued troop commitments in Iraq.

    • A casualty of County Commission voting Monday was Susan Adler Thorp, a former Commercial Appeal columnist and consultant who had been serving as public relations adviser to Juvenile Court judge Curtis Person but whose position ended up being unfunded. Somewhat later, a commission majority would authorize equivalent sums for a new “outreach” position, yet to be filled.

    • The 2007 recipient of the Tigrett Award, funded by FedEx founder Fred Smith in honor of the late John Tigrett, will be former U.S. senator Howard Baker, it was announced last week. The award will be presented by the West Tennessee Healthcare Foundation at a gala later this year.

    • Next week: a systematic look at this year’s City Council races.

    Him Again

    Richard Fields was back on the attack, battling his foes by means of publicly circulated letters.

    To be sure, one of the epistles was written not by Fields but by Lambert McDaniel, an imprisoned ex-club owner, to Gwen Smith, the point person in Mayor Willie Herenton‘s accusations concerning a lurid blackmail plot against him orchestrated by lawyer Fields and other alleged “snakes.” In the letter, McDaniel, who was incarcerated on a drug charge, refers to Smith by pet names and advises her to stay in touch with “the Mexicans” — presumably drug connections.
    What relevance the letter has to Herenton’s charges against Fields — who, according to the mayor, urged Smith to seduce and entrap the mayor — is uncertain. Clearly, it does milady’s reputation, already sullied, no good. But, by association, it wouldn’t seem to entitle Fields — or Nick Clark, his acknowledged confederate in the purported topless-club investigation — to any merit badges, either.

    Fields is a textbook illustration of the adjective “unabashed,” however. Confirming reports that the lawyer’s own poison pen had been unsheathed for yet another epistolary crusade, Shelby County commissioner Sidney Chism denounced Fields in the commission’s public session Monday, during a debate on whether to assign Head Start children to the non-profit Porter-Leath Children’s Center.

    In one of Fields’ widely circulated broadsides, Chism, a child-care provider himself, was taken to task for his initial opposition to the Porter-Leath arrangement and was told, among other things, he should be “ashamed” of himself.

    Chism’s response was scornful. Citing a variety of allegations against Fields that have been insistently put forth by blogger Thaddeus Matthews, Chism challenged Fields’ bona fides, saying that, if all that was said about Fields was true, “he shouldn’t be anywhere around children, anyhow.”

    Whatever the accuracy of the charges and counter-charges swirling about Fields, there was little doubt about one thing: With an election happening, the odds were better than even that there will be, in some guise or another, a Richard Fields ballot this year, as there was in each of the last two local election cycles. If so, would this be good or bad for Fields’ endorsees? This, too, remains to be seen.