Tag: Chumney

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Opinion

Why Herenton Will Win

Mayor Herenton filed his reelection papers Tuesday. He could still drop out, and more candidates can get in the race until July 19th. But assuming that he doesn’t and even if they do, here’s why I think he will win.

Winner Take All. Even if the polls are right and at least two-thirds of the voters don’t like him, Herenton only needs one more vote than the second-place finisher. Mathematically, he could win with 32 percent of the vote, like Steve Cohen did last year in the congressional Democratic primary. A Herenton hater who lives outside the city or stays home on Election Day doesn’t hurt him. The more challengers he has, the better he does. I don’t see a 2007 version of the 1991 convention that chose Herenton as the consensus black candidate. Polls that show Herenton losing in a head-to-head race with so-and-so are misleading because he probably won’t be running against one person.

The Numbers. Democrats from Harold Ford to Bill Clinton to Herenton win elections in Memphis by rolling up huge margins in scores of black precincts. Clinton actually won every vote in some precincts in 1996. If Herenton gets 80 or 90 percent of the vote in several precincts, he can beat a challenger whose best showing is 50 or 60 percent. Where are Herman Morris or Carol Chumney going to win 80 percent?

The Record and the Rhetoric. The mayor’s recent rhetoric about racial solidarity was a nice try, but his record doesn’t live down to it. He’s been a supporter of optional schools, downtown development, and occasional Republican political candidates. He has appointed way too many white division directors and police directors. As a black racist, he simply doesn’t cut it. Absent a consensus candidate and public repudiation by key business leaders, he’ll hold his own in East Memphis.

Snakes. As Herenton knew they would, members of the media took the bait and are acting like Nick Clark and Richard Fields are the ones running for mayor, not the four-term incumbent. Clark and Fields are not running for anything. Fields is an attorney. Clark is a businessman and member of the MLGW board. They don’t work for the city of Memphis. They don’t make a single appointment to a public board or government job. They can’t award a single no-bid contract. But Herenton, who has done all those things hundreds of times for 16 years, called them snakes and the chase was on. The mayor’s hint that unnamed snakes are still out there was so much more useful than confronting them head-on — as Fields, whatever you may think of him, did with Herenton in a three-hour meeting in March when he suggested he look for another line of work. How old-fashioned! The way to slur someone these days, as everyone knows, is anonymously.

Machine Politics. Taking a page from Boss Crump’s book, Herenton has appointed or assisted scores of friends and even some former rivals to city jobs. People like former school board member Sara Lewis, former City Council members Janet Hooks and Tajuan Stout Mitchell, and former mayoral spokeswoman Gale Jones Carson know how to campaign and win elections. Ordinary incumbency is an advantage, but 16 years of control over power, access, contracts, and jobs is an overwhelming advantage.

The City Charter reads: “No full-time employee shall engage in political activity, directly concerned with city government or any candidate for political office thereunder.”

That means no political phone calls, e-mails, letters, or strategy meetings on city time. But the ban is a paper tiger, more toothless than an ethics ordinance. “Uncovering” politics in a government office would be like finding mud in the Mississippi River.

Money. The mayor has more than $500,000 in his campaign fund even if he did only raise $1,650 in the first reporting period this year. By August, if he makes a few phone calls, he should have more than all his challengers put together. Chumney, at last report, had under $30,000. But Herenton managed to turn even that to his advantage by accusing the media of giving her free publicity.

Crime and MLGW. There is no simple solution to crime, and the latest numbers are running Herenton’s way. What do you propose to do differently if you’re Herman Morris or Carol Chumney or even, say, FBI special agent My Harrison? On MLGW and Memphis Networx, Morris was running the show for seven years, and there is plenty of blame to go around.

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Politics Politics Feature

New Mayor, New Council?

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Naming “crime, cronyism, and corruption” as major issues in this year’s mayoral election, candidate Carol Chumney addressed the Germantown Democratic Club at the Pickering Center 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 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 in a new team.”

Pledging to renew cooperation between city and county law-enforcement agencies, 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 the Riverfront Development Corporation’s 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 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, à 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 fund-raiser at Fresh Slices on Overton Park Avenue 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.

• Last Wednesday night was 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 fund-raisers for this or that candidate.

But Wednesday night’s event, a $250-a-head fund-raiser for District 5 City Council candidate Jim Strickland, was surely a record-setter — outdoing 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 netted Strickland more than $60,000 for the night and brought 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 — 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 third major political gathering took place Wednesday night, as Shelby County mayor A C Wharton was the beneficiary of a big-ticket fund-raiser at the Racquet Club. Proceeds from 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 the county mayor has informally acknowledged, he is the subject these days of nonstop blandishments in that regard, and there’s very little doubt that these have accelerated since a 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 nonexistent, 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.

Jackson Baker

Carol Chumney

NASHVILLE — The name 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

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Politics Politics Feature

Worx for Some, Not for Others

As the MLGW board ‘fessed up this week and announced the pending sale to a Colorado holding company of its Networx assets, at a financial loss to Memphis taxpayers, at least two leading mayoral candidates stood to suffer a potential political loss on top of that.

They were incumbent mayor Willie Herenton, by all accounts a prime mover in the board’s decision to invest $29 million in the broadband fiber-optics enterprise back in 1999, and Herman Morris, MGLW’s president at the time.

And talk about bad timing! Addressing a meeting of the conservative-oriented Dutch Treat Luncheon on March 10th, candidate Morris made a point of defending the venture, saying, “I believed and believe it to be a very good concept.”

The former utility head went on to contend that Networx was intended to give the city “a competitive posture to attract industry as a part of our infrastructure” and to encourage “growth in the high-tech sector.”

Predicted Morris: “I still believe it will pay dividends.”

Two other candidates came off somewhat better. Addressing the same Dutch Treat Luncheon group a month earlier, on February 10th, former county commissioner John Willingham listed Networx as one of the flops of the current administration and criticized it as relying on fiber optics “in the age of, what, wireless?”

And City Council member Carol Chumney, who said she attempted to downscale some add-on funding for Networx that the council briefly considered a year or two back and who criticized the venture at her campaign opening in February, announced that the council’s MLGW committee, which she heads, will hold a hearing on the Networx matter next Tuesday.

Mayoral candidate Chumney finally let the other shoe drop Tuesday when she filed her candidacy petition at the Election Commission.

Meanwhile, as if determined to prove that he has a common touch, Morris made the rounds last week — literally. One of his stops was at Thursday night’s weekly session of “Drinking Liberally” at Dish in Cooper-Young.

In that casual setting, Morris dispensed some of his usual platform planks on crime, economic development, and education but also addressed some more unusual queries. Someone, mindful of an imbroglio experienced by presidential hopeful Bill Richardson on Meet the Press, asked Morris if he was a Yankee or a Red Sox fan.

After thinking on it, Morris answered “Yankees” but then added, “I’m not really a baseball fan, though.” Why not? “Because of the 7th-inning stretch. That always wakes me up.”

On Saturday, Morris addressed a meeting of the Shelby County Democratic Women, where, among other things, he boasted Memphis’ “natural attributes” over those of Atlanta and criticized a law-enforcement strategy whereby “drive-by police are chasing drive-by criminals.”

• Confirming intentions that had been known for months, Pinnacle Airlines attorney Nikki Tinker, runner-up to U.S. representative Steve Cohen in last year’s 9th District Democratic primary, has filed federal papers to run against Cohen again next year. But both Tinker and Cohen could have company in the primary: Freshman state representative G.A. Hardaway is also said to be considering a race.

As for Tinker’s challenge — represented by The Hill, an insiders’ political newsletter in Washington, D.C., as having black vs. white connotations — Cohen had this to say to the paper: “I don’t see it as being close at all. … I’m afraid Ms. Tinker is not aware of how far we’ve come in race relations.”

Tinker, who made a late and well-funded challenge to Cohen in 2006, paid for largely by corporate donations and support from the Emily’s List PAC, filed Friday with the Federal Election Commission but reported no financial contributions for the first quarter of the current cycle.

Cohen won 31 percent of the 15-candidate primary vote in 2006 and won a majority of the district’s African-American vote in a three-way general election contest with independent Jake Ford (also rumored to be thinking about another run) and Republican Mark White.

In his term so far, Cohen has taken special pains with legislation on behalf of black voters, most recently sponsoring a House resolution putting the body on record as apologizing for slavery. Earlier this year, he held a joint town meeting in the district with the legendary African-American congressman from Detroit, John Conyers, Cohen’s chairman on the House Judiciary Committee.

Hardaway, whose candidacy would constitute another three-way race for Cohen, would neither confirm nor deny plans for a congressional run in 2008.

• Barack Obama, the Democratic senator from Illinois who wants to be president, came to Tennessee last week in pursuit of that aim.

After meeting in Nashville with Governor Phil Bredesen, state house speaker Jimmy Naifeh, and members of the legislative black caucus, and just before heading off to a couple of private fund-raisers elsewhere in the state’s capital city, Obama put it this way:

“I think Tennessee has smart Democrats who are able to fashion a kind of agenda that attracts independents and Republicans. So I want to get some good advice and maybe some good supporters while I’m here.”

Both Bredesen and Naifeh were complimentary about Obama but noncommittal on the issue of supporting him against other Democratic contenders.

• State Politics: The General Assembly finally got around to what looked like a climactic decision last week, in which state revenues, already in surplus, were to be newly fattened, thanks mainly to the 42-cent tobacco tax passed the week before in defiance of what had seemed to be adverse odds.

There was some interesting behind-the-scenes stuff going on.

The bill’s one-vote margin in the state Senate had been due to an unusual de facto collaboration between two state senators, Jim Kyle of Memphis and Rosalind Kurita of Clarksville, political arch-adversaries who both got what they wanted when push came to shove.

Kyle is the state Senate’s Democratic leader — still mortally offended by fellow Democrat Kurita’s pivotal vote in January to unseat venerable Senate speaker John Wilder and install the first Republican lieutenant governor in the state’s history, Ron Ramsey. He and Kurita do not speak, unless it is unavoidably in the line of duty.

Yet they collaborated in the passage of the tobacco tax, the pièce de résistance in Bredesen’s education package but with sums earmarked also for agricultural enhancement grants and state trauma centers. The vote was 17-16, a party-line affair in which former Republican, now independent, Micheal Williams of Maynardville voted as expected with the Democrats.

Most of the expected $230 million in annual revenues will finance Bredesen’s upgrade of the state’s Basic Education Plan. The trauma-center allocations will come from the two-cents’ worth (literally) that Kurita, a nurse by profession, insisted on tacking on as the price of her vote for a bill that was originally the rival to her own version of a tobacco tax, which would have mostly been devoted not to education but to health-care issues.

Holding the Line: Fearing sabotage in the Senate, where two Democrats were absent last week when the House got ready to vote, Democrats in that body heeded warnings from Speaker Jimmy Naifeh of Covington and majority leader Gary Odom of Nashville about accepting Republican amendments which would have sent it back to the other chamber for reconsiderations.

The GOP amendments contained some attractive embellishments to the bill — ranging from reallocations of state lottery funds to needy school districts to riders that would lower or temporarily eliminate the sales tax on groceries. One amendment would have added another penny’s worth of tax for Iraq war veterans. Another would have added money to counter sexual predators, but Democrats like Mike Turner of Nashville, who later called the Republican members “assholes,” held the line.

Ultimately, the un-amended tax prevailed with a majority of 59 or 60 votes of the 99-member House, depending on whether or not Republican Jim Coley of Bartlett, an educator, A) voted accidentally or on purpose against the bill; and B) was successful or unsuccessful in changing his “no” vote to “aye” immediately afterward.

Coley was insistent that he had pushed the wrong button and equally adamant that he had succeeded in having his vote reversed by the House clerk. Speaker Naifeh, clearly skeptical on the first count and seemingly determined, as he had promised earlier, to afford nay-saying Republicans no cover, was equally emphatic that the right vote total was 59, not 60, and that Coley’s no vote remained unchanged.

Coley got some backup from Representative Mike Kernell, one of two Shelby County Democrats (the other was Larry Turner) who voted against the tobacco-tax bill on grounds of its regressivity. Kernell said he would have voted for the tax had the proceeds been rerouted back to health care, where, he said, it would have been “tripled” by match-ups with federal grants.

“Coley had told me he was going to vote yes, and he mistook a ‘call-for-the-question’ vote for the vote on the bill itself,” Kernell said in defense of his colleague.

A Regressive Tax? Meanwhile, Kernell took time out afterward to make an extended defense of his own attitude (and, by implication, Turner’s, who called the tobacco tax “yet another regressive sales tax and one whose proceeds are non-renewable”).

“I wouldn’t have voted for the bill even if my vote had been the one necessary for its passage,” said Kernell, who seemed to be echoing Kurita’s concerns that health-care issues should take precedence over Bredesen’s plans for updating the state’s Basic Education Plan.

From that point of view, Kernell found much that was agreeable in a speech Monday night by Representative Beth Harwell, a Davidson County Republican, in favor of her amendment to use the tobacco-tax proceeds to reduce or eliminate the sales tax on groceries. “It was a great speech,” said Kernell, who acknowledged, however, that any amended bill returned to the Senate for action would probably have expired there.

• Even as state senator Kurita gets her sea legs under her, the man whom she, in effect, deposed, Senator Wilder of Somerville, seemed somewhat more out to sea than was his wont during his 36 years as lieutenant governor and Senate speaker.

Octogenarian Wilder seems physically recovered from the fall he took at his Fayette County home early in the session. And he makes a point of participating in discussions, both in committee and on the floor of the Senate itself.

But the longtime legislative lion just isn’t plugged in the way he once was. A demonstration of that occurred on Monday during a session of the Senate Finance Ways and Means Committee, one that was devoted to the question of how surplus state funds could be used to augment the state’s “rainy day” or reserve fund.

Much of that conversation was between committee chairman Randy McNally (R-Oak Ridge) and the two Senate party leaders who were intimately acquainted with the mechanics of the deal, Jim Kyle of Memphis and Republican Mark Norris of Collierville. During the back-and-forth, Wilder, seemingly taking in the fact and magnitude of the funds available this year, ventured to ask: “Do we need the tobacco tax?”

There was an awkward pause, after which the former speaker himself ventured, “I don’t really need to ask that?”

There may have been a rhetorical point to Wilder’s question — one that, for that matter, any number of lay citizens might find themselves wondering — but in the context of the committee’s end-of-session wrap-up, it came off as a bit less than plugged in.

A little later, after a series of further such basic inquiries, Wilder turned to Chairman McNally and said, “Do I need to stop asking questions?”

“No, sir” was the deferential response from McNally, who continued addressing Wilder by the ceremonial title of “governor.”

Wilder has indicated that he intends to run again for his state Senate seat in 2008 and would be favored to win if he did so. But the predominant sentiment of his colleagues is that he would be hard-pressed to get the Democratic caucus’ nomination for lieutenant governor, much less that of the Senate as a whole.

• Without much fanfare, Governor Bredesen last week signed into law the “Rosa Parks Act,” whose chief Senate sponsor was Kyle. The law, named in honor of the late heroine of the 1956 Montgomery bus boycott, allows civil rights activists to have criminal charges related to their activism expunged from their records.

“It’s important because it recognizes that people did risk incarceration for social change and that they ultimately prevailed,” Kyle said at the time he sponsored the bill. “They should not have the stigma of that incarceration or be put in the same class as other folks who simply just committed crimes.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Still in the Game

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

It would seem that mayoral candidate Herman Morris, whom some have sought to write off, remains a force to be reckoned with.

A generous crowd of attendees turned out for the former MLGW head at a Racquet Club fund-raiser May 24th, where Morris showed off his gracious wife Brenda and his two academically excelling sons. He may have over-promised somewhat, though — calling himself the only potential mayor “with a real first lady.” John Willingham, for one, has a potential “real first lady,” and so, presumably, do many of the 14 or so others in the race.

Even so, Morris has served notice that he’s in the mayor’s race for the long haul, with at least a chance to be regarded down the line as the major alternative to incumbent Mayor Willie Herenton. (That presupposes a foldo from City Council maverick Carol Chumney, though — and that’s not guaranteed to happen.)

Morris’ chief liability would seem to be that he isn’t entirely comfortable while greeting individuals or crowds. As his handlers say, though, there’s time — four months plus — for Morris to grow into the role.

The fund-raiser was the second of two timely events scheduled for challenger Morris last week. The first was a Tuesday night appearance with Willingham in a unique two-candidate mayoral forum sponsored by the East Shelby Republican Club.

The crowd at Pickering Community Center in Germantown (strange place that, for a Memphis mayoral forum!) seemed somewhat predisposed to Willingham, a longtime club member himself. The former commissioner, who is given to verbal prolixity the way Britney Spears is given to nights out, profited from the one-minute-per-answer rule imposed by moderator Stan Peppenhorn.

Another reason for his relatively strong showing was that Willingham, no fool despite his sometime air of eccentricity, knew the subject matters asked about in greater detail — whether they concerned governmental subjects at large or Willingham hobby-horses like the FedExForum “Garage Gate” scandal which he did as much as anyone to uncover.

Morris came off as able and responsive, though his answers were generally delivered in over-broad outline, even in the case of a brief discourse on the utility he once headed.

Sometimes that penchant worked to his advantage, as when he began an answer to a question about prospective new taxes by saying, “We don’t need any.” (Really that’s all his audience wanted to hear, and any explanation as to why that was the case was so much icing on the cake.) Similarly, Morris deftly dispensed with a question about term limits with the line: “Good idea. Three terms too late!”

Quips, Ideas, and Red Flags: The most intriguing new idea came from Willingham, who indicated that it might be “worth it” to look into public financing of an on-campus football stadium for the University of Memphis if the school and the state of Tennessee could provide as much as two-thirds of the funding. Morris seemed more open to a Fairgrounds site at some point down the line.

All in all, though, Morris may have done what he needed to for the long haul of a race that, after all, ends in October. His very reason for being there was to indicate to the attending Republicans that he was amenable to their concerns — a point reinforced as well by the presence of his co-campaign manager, party veteran John Ryder. (The other co-chair is former officeholder Minerva Johnican, a longtime Democrat.)

And though Shelby County Republican chairman Bill Giannini has publicly said there was “no chance” that Morris would get an endorsement from the local GOP, the chairman has also asserted that there was “no chance,” either, that Willingham could get elected — a belief widely held in political circles, even among members of Willingham’s own circle.

An End-Game Strategy: Under the circumstances, Morris needs only to hold on long enough — meanwhile building up name identification, credibility, funding, and support — to become identifiable in the public mind as the logical alternative to incumbent Mayor Herenton, who polls suggest is plumbing the depths of unpopularity right now.

Presupposing that there is no bounceback for Herenton (which cannot be ruled out), Morris’ hopes depend largely on a stall developing in the campaign of Chumney, who was the leader in early mayoral polls but whose go-it-alone reputation may at some point cost her.

In any case, the Willingham-Morris mano a mano — ridiculed in some quarters for not being more inclusive — served its purpose as a friendly intramural sparring match, put on for the edification of Republicans looking for a candidate to get behind. One note of caution for both men: One influential Republican commented afterward that Chumney, who has a following among grass-roots sorts alienated from politics as usual, might get as many GOP votes as “both these guys put together.”

STATE POLITICS

“Tired Blood”: Another legislative week begins with the ever-surprising saga of state senator Ophelia Ford unresolved, and, as things now stand, unlikely to be.

After weeks in which her chronic absenteeism from the ongoing legislative session in Nashville and a mystery illness were the main facts discussed about her, Ford made up for lost time in the last couple of weeks with some conspicuous acts of commission.

There was her odd performance week before last in a subcommittee hearing on the Department of Children’s Services’ handling of investigations into child deaths. Ford, member of a family known for its funeral home business as well as for its total immersion in politics, may have mistakenly chastised the DCS for negligence in the matter of death certificates (not a departmental concern), but it was her manner, seemingly both confused and overbearing, that gave rise to doubts about her sobriety.

When the senator was hospitalized the next day after falling off a bar stool in her Nashville hotel, those doubts were magnified, especially when brother Joe Ford, chairman of the Shelby County Commission, talked of a likely alcohol problem and proposed to journey to the state capital personally in order to get his sister into rehab.

Nor was that all. Next a Nashville cabbie complained of being manhandled by an “intoxicated” Ford, though the driver has declined so far to press charges.

For all that, Senator Ford’s situation seemed to have stabilized as this week got under way. Denying an alcohol problem, she issued a statement attributing her recent problems to clinical “anemia,” which she also described by the popular name “tired blood.” She also insisted that she intended to continue serving in her office, at least until the election year 2010, and meanwhile Commissioner Ford apparently dropped his rehab plans.

One factor in staving off a more drastic resolution is the fact that Ford’s vote could be crucial in determining the outcome of several key issues as the legislature winds down this week and next. Senate Democrats were of no mind to sacrifice one of their own, and Senate Republicans were not pressing the issue.

Kurita resolution advances: Having passed the first major obstacle by getting a favorable vote on her proposal to elect Tennessee’s constitutional officers in her own chamber last week, state Senate Speaker Pro Tem Rosalind Kurita hopes to gain approval by the House this week.

If successful, she would then need to get two-thirds approval in both bodies next year in order to put the proposal, in the form of a constitutional amendment, on the statewide general election ballot in November 2010. The offices affected would be lieutenant governor, attorney general, treasurer, comptroller, and secretary of state.

While visiting Memphis the week before last, Governor Phil Bredesen took a stand against the proposal, contending that in all instances (save, possibly, the office of lieutenant governor) the proposed change would put the affected officials under too much direct pressure from “special interests.”

In any case, Kurita’s success so far was a counter of sorts to the fact that key Senate Democrats still resent her vote in January in favor of Republican Ron Ramsey as Senate Speaker and lieutenant governor.

Down to the Wire: Voters in state House District 89, centered on upper Midtown, go to the polls this Thursday to determine the winner of two special primary elections.

Democrats choose between Kevin Gallagher and Jeanne Richardson, each of whom — to judge by endorsements and turnouts at their events — would seem to command a decent-sized share of the party base.

Two relatively unknown Republicans — Wayne McGinnis and Dave Wicker Jr. — vie for their party’s nomination.

The two winners will compete in a special general election on July 17th. — JB

Categories
Opinion

On Polls and Votes

Two things that are often not what they seem to be: close votes in the Memphis City Council and polls showing the standing of Memphis mayoral candidates five months before the election.

Last Friday, a committee of the council voted 3-2 to withdraw funding for the $29 million Beale Street Landing project. But that doesn’t mean the proposed riverboat landing and architectural monument at Beale Street and Riverside Drive is dead. The full council will have opportunities to replace the funding, perhaps as early as this week.

One of the three votes against Beale Street Landing was cast by Carol Chumney, who also happens to be leading Mayor Willie Herenton and challengers Herman Morris and John Willingham in the election polls.

Neither the committee vote nor the polls matter very much, but here are four reasons why I think Chumney will continue to make news this summer.

First, she is independent to a fault, which suits her fine, even if her colleagues see it as counterproductive and grandstanding. Her supporters see a diligent council member who is demonstrably not better off financially for having been a public servant.

Second, she favors upending the status quo. She is a radical in a way that has nothing to do with feminism or war or national issues and everything to do with local issues and priorities.

Third, when she takes a position, you may not agree with it but you know what it is. Her refusal to join in the censure resolution of Joseph Lee because it was irrelevant was unpopular but turned out to be correct.

And, fourth, unlike her fellow council members and the Memphis business establishment that supports Herenton with its money but not its mouth, she accepts the fact that this year you are either with the incumbent or you are against him. You’re in as a mayoral candidate or you’re out. And she’s in.

Does this mean that Chumney would be an electable and effective mayor or that she is even an effective council member? Not necessarily, although my personal view is “no” on the first count and “yes” on the second.

But it does mean that Chumney, by being Chumney, brings clarity to issues and helps put them in clearer perspective?

Beale Street Landing, for instance, is a signature Herenton project. The Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC) is a Herenton creation staffed by former Herenton division directors and their spouses and supported by a board of Herenton appointees. Herenton and the RDC say the landing would bring more local and out-of-town visitors to Tom Lee Park and downtown. Chumney calls it a “boondoggle” in the tradition of Mud Island and The Pyramid.

Both Chumney and her colleague Scott McCormick, one of the two committee members who supported Beale Street Landing, correctly see that the funding vote is really a referendum on both the project and the RDC. Without a big project — the Front Street Promenade, the land bridge, relocating the University of Memphis law school, Beale Street Landing — the RDC is the “Riverfront Maintenance Corporation.” You don’t need three former division directors and a full-time PR person to do that.

Beale Street Landing and the RDC will probably survive because the City Council is also hooked on big projects. They make headlines and photo opportunities. They get federal funds. They create jobs and goodies and opportunities to repay favors to campaign contributors and fellow council members. This is the stuff of politics and, sad to say, the news business. On New Year’s Day, Herenton proposed a new stadium and a new program to fight blight. Heard much about blight since then?

Many of the votes that make headlines at the City Council never amount to anything — think Lee’s non-censure and the investigation of MLGW, the non-removal of Edmund Ford and Rickey Peete, the non-reuse of the Fairgrounds and The Pyramid, the non-annexation of 2006, and the 2007 efficiency study that will wind up on the shelf. So much of what goes on at the council is just for show.

Herenton knows that, just as he knows that a telephone poll putting his support at 20 percent or less reflects “free” votes that don’t really count. The vote that counts will be in the October election.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Bad News for the Mayor

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

If there is a given in the developing Memphis mayoral campaign, it is that incumbent mayor Willie Herenton is weaker than anyone — friend, foe, or neutral — had previously imagined and that his weakness extends across the political spectrum.

That was the message of two new independent polls whose existence was first reported on MemphisFlyer.com last week. Though complete facts and figures were not available at press time, the two surveys reportedly not only show Herenton in significant decline with the electorate — both white and black — but reveal that City Council member Carol Chumney‘s two-years’ worth of high-profile challenges to the mayor have elevated her to first place among the candidates now in the field.

Multiple sources confirm that one of the polls, performed by veteran pollster/strategist John Bakke on commission from businessman Karl Schledwitz, demonstrated Chumney to be in first place as of now and — to answer something that political junkies have wondered about incessantly — is doing well among the city’s black voters in addition to its disenchanted whites. Former MLGW head Herman Morris, still working on his name recognition among voters at large, lags behind (though he, too, reportedly polls higher than Herenton), and erstwhile Shelby County commissioner John Willingham is further back still. Another poll, reportedly taken by lawyer Richard Fields, is said to contain similar findings.

One of Morris’ mainstays, lawyer John Ryder, was philosophical about the results. “This will obviously buoy Carol, but it won’t hold up over the long haul. Meanwhile, Willie will have to be pleased.” Ryder maintained that Morris was the mayor’s chief threat in the long term, and that what he saw as Chumney’s short-term strength might actually be of some benefit to Herenton.

Morris himself noted that his entrance into the race had been later than Chumney’s by several months and expressed confidence that future polls would show a significant rise on his part.

News of the poll generated a good deal of speculation about a possible entry in the mayor’s race by Shelby County mayor A C Wharton, who has been relentlessly encouraged to make a race — by members of the city’s business establishment, in particular. A number of observers conjecture that Wharton, who said earlier this month that he would not run against Herenton, will rethink that position.

“He’ll definitely run if Herenton drops out, and there’s a 30 percent chance that he’ll run even if Herenton stays in,” opined one. For his part, the county mayor told the Flyer last week that he’d had conversations on the subject but that he wouldn’t “kiss and tell” concerning the contents.

Whatever impetus had developed for a Wharton run was seriously blunted, however, by news late last week that the county mayor’s son, A C Wharton III, had been arrested in Knoxville on charges of statutory rape. No one imagines that the incident would damage Mayor Wharton’s popularity or electability. The concern is that the gravity of this private family matter would erode whatever appetite he had for running.

Justin Fox Burks

Carol Chumney

One of the known findings of the Bakke poll was that 51 percent of those polled had a negative reaction to Mayor Herenton. At the other extreme, A C Wharton’s negatives were said to be only 3 percent. Another surprise finding was that a significantly larger percentage of African-American voters described themselves as “conservative” than those who considered themselves “liberal.”

• State Senate speaker pro tem Rosalind Kurita (D-Clarksville) is launched on a serious P.R. effort to still the waters that were roiled among Democrats by her decisive vote in January for Republican Ron Ramsey (Blountville) as Senate Speaker and lieutenant governor.

Ever since then, Kurita’s action — which deposed long-time Speaker John Wilder (D-Somerville) and allowed her own elevation to the Senate post she now holds — has cast her as an outcast among influential state Democrats. One of the most prominent, Senate Democratic leader Jim Kyle of Memphis, wrote an open letter to statewide Democrats denouncing her for alleged defects in “trust, confidence, and moral character.”

Kurita, who before the vote was widely regarded as a likely Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2008, has lately made a point of granting interviews explaining her vote on the speakership as a principled one in favor of majority control. (Until the switch last month of GOP senator Micheal Williams of Maynardville to “independent” status, Republicans held a one-vote majority in the Senate.)

This past weekend, while in Memphis to take part in Tennessee History Day activities, she met with members of Memphis’ liberal blogging community at the East Memphis home of lawyer/activist Jocelyn Wurzburg. The invitation-only affair, arranged by local activist Paula Casey, was billed as “off the record,” but the emerging consensus from the attending bloggers indicates they were only slightly mollified by Kurita’s explanations for her vote. However civilly it is expressed, “No Sale” is still their predominant reaction.

• Shelby County Democrats have a new leader as of Saturday. Elected party chairman by the newly chosen Democratic executive committee was the Rev. Keith Norman. The vote, at Airways Middle School, was 48 to 18 for Norman over lawyer Jay Bailey.

Though the results were no surprise, the margin of Norman’s win was larger than expected, and his support clearly spanned across all of the pre-existing party factions.

Bailey’s cause had been hampered by what many saw as a too-little-too-late response to a mailing sent by lawyer Richard Fields to all voting delegates outlining a series of past disciplinary actions assessed or initiated against Bailey’s work as an attorney.

Fields himself was elected to the new executive committee, returning him to a body he was forced to resign from a year ago for working in harness with the state Republican Party’s lawyers to void the special election of state senator Ophelia Ford, since reelected.

According to blogger Thaddeus Matthews, a sworn Fields adversary, another new committee member, radio talk-show host Jennings Bernard, will attempt to have Fields unseated for activity since then that benefitted Republican candidates.

The new committee will have its first meeting this Thursday night at the IBEW Union Hall on Madison.

• Yes, Virginia, there’s another special election coming in Shelby County. This one, at Governor Bredesen‘s direction on Monday, is for the seat in state House District 89 (centered on Midtown). The seat became vacant with the election last month of then Rep. Beverly Marrero to fill a vacancy in state Senate District 30.

Democratic and Republican primaries will be held on Thursday, May 31st, with the general election following on Tuesday, July 17th. Kevin Gallagher and Jeannie Richardson are known Democratic candidates; so far, no Republican candidate has announced.

At press time, the Shelby County Election Commission had not announced a filing deadline.• City Council member Brent Taylor has formally announced a decision that has been privately known for some time: Taylor, who was first elected in 1995 to represent District 2 (Cordova) and was the council’s best-known and most consistent conservative, will not seek a fourth term.

A ready man with a hard-edged quip, Taylor was the subject of headlines back in 2004 when an irate Mayor Herenton, in the course of a heated meeting, asked him outside.

That argument, over personnel matters, blew over. But until Taylor began preparing his exit over the last year, he could be depended on as a headline-maker and as an exponent of minimalist government.

Taylor’s announcement ensures a likely free-for-all for his seat — one of several open ones in this year’s city election. Petitions for city positions may be picked up at the Election Commisson beginning Friday, April 20th. Filing deadline will be Thursday, July 19th, and withdrawal deadline a week later, Thursday, July 26th.

• Friends and family paid homage to the late Larry Williams at a well-attended Saturday service at the P&H Café on Madison, a site favored by Williams, well-known as a writer and columnist for The Commercial Appeal and beloved as a political satirist on TV and in local Gridiron shows.

Williams, who frequently teamed up with the late Terry Keeter in public performances, was also a key member of the campaign team of 9th District congressman Steve Cohen during Cohen’s first congressional run in 1996.

For further details on these and other political stories — including a report on political guru James Carville‘s appearance in Memphis last week — see “Political Beat” at www.memphisflyer.com.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Campus Stadium Gains

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

In weekend remarks, mayoral candidate Herman Morris said “other priorities should take precedence” over Mayor Willie Herenton‘s proposal for a new football stadium as part of a redeveloped Fairgrounds. But Morris gave his approval to the concept of the state and the University of Memphis pooling their resources and “building an on-campus stadium that would put this university on a par with some of the others in the country.”

Morris thereby joined mayoral candidate Carol Chumney in the ranks of those supporting a proposal for an on-campus stadium advanced by university booster Harold Byrd and others. As of now, however, both Morris and Chumney oppose use of city funds to fulfill such a project.

Former Memphis Light, Gas & Water chief Morris also defended his involvement in the utility’s $25 million investment in Memphis Networx, a fiber-optics development which he said provided infrastructure that improved the city’s “competitive posture to attract industry.”

Though he has previously been critical of mayoral pressures on behalf of specific brokers, Morris similarly endorsed the $1.5 billion bond issue that funded pre-payment of MLGW’s acquisition of services from the Tennessee Valley Authority. He maintained that the pre-payment deal would eventually pay dividends “somewhere in the nature of $250 million.”

  • The latest balloon being floated in local political circles (and on WREG-TV, News Channel 3, Monday night) concerns a possible bid for city mayor by current Shelby County mayor A C Wharton. The reasoning is that local business leaders, many of whom are disenchanted with Herenton, may decide that neither Morris nor Chumney are the right candidates to displace the incumbent and that Wharton is the only candidate who could.

    Wharton, however, said Tuesday that he was “fully occupied” with his present duties and would never run in opposition to Herenton. He might, he said, reconsider a race if the incumbent for any reason decided not to run.

  • Former Tennessee senator and actor Fred Thompson, who has spent his time since leaving the U.S. Senate in 2002 as a principal on NBC’s Law and Order, may be a candidate for president in 2008. “I’m giving some thought to it. I’m going to leave the door open,” Thompson told host Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, thereby confirming a spate of recent rumors on various blogs.

    Republican Thompson, a 1964 graduate of the University of Memphis, acknowledged that his friend and mentor Howard Baker, another former Tennessee senator, had seriously promoted such a candidacy on the grounds that no acceptable conservative was so far in the running.

    Quoting Adlai Stevenson, a Democratic candidate in 1952 and 1956, Thompson said the paradoxical task of a candidate was to “do what’s necessary to become president and still deserve to be president.”

    In answer to Wallace’s questions, Thompson said he was pro-life, “tolerant” of gays but opposed to gay marriage, anti-gun-control but supportive of campaign finance legislation, and flexible on immigration law. He also said President George Bush‘s surge policy in Iraq should be given a chance to work and called for a pardon of vice-presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby, convicted last week of several counts of lying to a federal grand jury in the matter of “outing” CIA agent Valerie Plame.

    Jackson Baker

    Newsmakers Flinn and Kurita on the Senate floor last week

    Thompson opined that he would safely be able to wait as late as summer before deciding on the matter of a presidential run.

    Nashville blogger Adam Kleinheider suggested strongly last week that state senator Rosalind Kurita, a Clarksville Democrat, had made a deal in advance with current Republican Speaker Ron Ramsey to acquire her current position as Senate Speaker Pro Tem.

    Kleinheider asked rhetorically if this fact was not indicated by Kurita’s support for longtime Speaker Wilder, rather than party opponent Joe Haynes, in a Democratic caucus straw vote before the Senate showdown between Wilder and Ramsey. Kurita’s vote for Ramsey was the decisive one as he narrowly ousted Wilder.

    Interviewed in Nashville last week about Kleinheider’s speculation, shared by many on and off Capitol Hill, Kurita said: “That’s a nonsensical question. I voted for Ron Ramsey because I thought he would do the best job for the people of Tennessee. The basic tenet of a democracy is that the majority rules. It’s not about putting together 17 votes to pretend we [the Democrats] are in charge.”

    The import of her answer would seem to be that the principle of majority vote superseded that of Wilder’s suitability to lead — or Haynes’, for that matter.

    Kurita declined even to discuss the option of voting for Haynes, the Democrats’ caucus chairman, rather than Wilder in the party caucus. “That’s a ridiculous question; that’s hindsight. It doesn’t have any bearing on how we do good for the people of Tennessee.”

    Concerning blogger Kleinheider’s suggestion concerning a deal, Kurita said, “He must be projecting the way he operates. It’s not the way I operate.”

    While presiding in the Senate last Thursday, Kurita’s floor duty required her to have brief pro forma interchanges on Thursday with both Wilder, now an ordinary senator in the body he led for 36 years, and Senate Democratic leader Jim Kyle, who has made no secret of his discontent with Kurita for her vote on Ramsey’s behalf and who recently dispatched a critical letter to statewide Democrats challenging her bona fides.

    She recognized Wilder to note the presence of visitors from Fayette County in the balcony and acknowledged Kyle for the purpose of his making a motion. (Note: Former Lt. Gov. Wilder suffered a fall later Thursday at his Fayette County home and was treated at The Med over the weekend before being released.)

    Asked about Kyle’s letter, Kurita shrugged and said, “Well, you know, Senator Kyle’s a smart guy, and he’s a good senator, but I think anybody who knows him knows that when he’s angry, he will lash out at people. And that’s what he did. And hopefully in time he won’t feel that he has to lash out.”

    As for Wilder, who (to put it mildly) had also been unhappy with her, Kurita said somewhat ambiguously, “There’s no difference in the number of times we communicate now from a year ago.”

    Kurita had some kind words for the former Speaker’s method of presiding over the floor: “He tried his very best to be fair to everyone in terms of letting everyone speak.” Voters in state Senate District 30 and state House District 92 went to the polls on Tuesday to decide on successors to 9th District congressman Steve Cohen for the Senate seat and county commissioner Henri Brooks in the House. (See Political Beat for results and analysis of those special-election races.)

  • Although considerable doubt existed as to exactly when they were required to leave office (estimates varied from Tuesday evening at 7 p.m. to certification of election results by the Election Commission, and the state Attorney General’s Office was being asked to rule on the matter), both interim state senator Shea Flinn and interim state representative Eddie Neal were obliged to move on.

    Flinn, especially, made an impact during his several weeks of service, managing congenial relations with legislators in both parties and both legislative chambers while introducing enough pieces of controversial legislation to delight the progressive Democrats who were the core of predecessor Cohen’s constituency.

    “Really, that was my main motivation, to conduct myself as the voters who elected Steve would have expected,” said Democrat Flinn, who consulted with Cohen to that end.

    Among other things, he sponsored bills to legalize: casino gambling (this would require a constitutional amendment); wine sales in grocery stores; sales of package liquor on Sunday; voting by mail; and optional state license plates advocating equal rights for gays. Flinn also has been instrumental in crafting a compromise on medical tort reform.

    The youthful lawyer is the son of Shelby County commissioner George Flinn, a Republican, but was the subject of a brief boomlet for Democratic chairman in Shelby County before disavowing interest in the job.

    He also was talked up by fellow Democratic legislators (notably Senate Democratic leader Jim Kyle and House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh) to serve as interim House member in Beverly Marrero‘s seat, should she win her Senate race. Though he has considered that idea, he is leaning against it.

    The one option he has expressed most interest in? Service as a member of the county Election Commission, to succeed Greg Duckett, the body’s chairman, who is leaving to become a member of the state Election Commission. (Longtime Duckett friend Calvin Anderson decided to step down.)

    • Categories
    Opinion

    Majority Rules

    As the mayoral race heats up, the 1991 law that abolished runoffs in Memphis mayoral and at-large City Council elections is ripe for reconsideration.

    Simply put, Memphis is clearly a majority-black city (63 percent in the 2005 census update). When the minority becomes the majority, is there still a need for election laws imposed by the federal courts “to eradicate minority-vote dilution”?

    The question looms as Mayor Willie Herenton seeks to stay in office for a fifth consecutive four-year term. With the filing deadline for the October election still more than four months away, he already faces three challengers: Carol Chumney, Herman Morris, and John Willingham. Ironically, the elimination of the majority-vote requirement that helped Herenton win the office in 1991 could now give hope to challengers who might have a harder time defeating the mayor one-on-one.

    “There is a school of thought that says we could have a mayor elected with 34 to 37 percent of the vote,” says Greg Duckett, chairman of the Shelby County Election Commission. The figures are not far-fetched. In the 2006 9th Congressional District Democratic primary, Steve Cohen led the 15-candidate field with 31 percent. Cohen is white, and his leading challengers were black, as is the majority of the district.

    With a runoff, the top two finishers face off, giving voters an either-or proposition and encouraging alliances among candidates who finish out of the running or drop out before the election. Herenton himself has twice been elected with less than 50 percent of the vote. In 1991, he got just over 49 percent, and in 1999, he got 46 percent.

    A brief history lesson is in order: When the Memphis City Charter was overhauled in 1966, the authors, most of them white, decided on a City Council with seven district seats and six at-large seats. In an at-large council election or a mayoral election, the charter stated that if the leading vote-getter fell short of a majority, then there would be a runoff between the top two candidates.

    The demographics of Memphis were very different in 1966. As recounted by Rhodes College political scientists Marcus Pohlmann and Michael Kirby in their book Racial Politics at the Crossroads, black civil rights leader Vasco Smith said “we don’t stand a ghost of a chance in this town when it comes to running at-large” because white voters heavily outnumbered black voters and voted as a bloc.

    During the 1970s and 1980s, at-large seats and the runoff provision helped whites maintain their grip on the City Council and the mayor’s office. In 1982, for example, black city councilman J.O. Patterson Jr. led the mayoral field with 40.7 percent to 29.8 percent for white runner-up Dick Hackett. But in the runoff, Hackett defeated Patterson 54 percent to 46 percent.

    The world changed in 1991. The United States Department of Justice filed suit under the provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act against the election process in Memphis. It was in 1965 that President Lyndon Johnson pushed the Voting Rights Act through Congress after civil rights marchers were thrashed by police in Selma, Alabama.

    Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act bans voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. The act has been amended five times, most recently in 1992. In a key amendment, the act has been interpreted as banning practices that have a discriminatory result as well a discriminatory purpose. The Justice Department or private citizens can sue under Section 2. In a landmark ruling in U.S. v. City of Memphis, the late U.S. district judge Jerome Turner ordered a plan “which will eradicate the minority vote dilution.” The result was the end of runoff elections in mayoral and other citywide races.

    In the closest election in Memphis mayoral history, Herenton defeated Hackett six weeks after Turner’s ruling by 142 votes out of 247,973 votes cast. Each of them got 49.4 percent of the vote, with white crank candidate Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges getting the rest.

    In the 1990 census, the black-white population ratio in Memphis was 55-45. In 2000, the black-white ratio was 61-34. Some people have tried to estimate the percentage of eligible voters who are black or white, but Duckett says that is guesswork because voters don’t have to declare and there are a large number of “others.”

    In 1995, the City Council amended the charter by ordinance, and the council now consists of seven regular districts and two super districts with three members each. But the change “appeared to have no effect or intended effect on the existing law concerning mayoral elections,” says city attorney Sara Hall. “Nobody has done anything that would overtly change what Judge Turner ordered us to do. The question now is should we.”

    While not advocating or discouraging such action, Duckett agreed there are “sufficient facts” to challenge the runoff law. There is a precedent. In 1988, Dr. Talib-Karim Muhammad filed a class-action suit in Memphis challenging at-large elections. The lawsuit was incorporated in the Justice Department’s action.

    Another change since 1991 is the higher incidence of crossover voting as opposed to racial bloc voting. Herenton and Cohen and a handful of other Memphis politicians have enjoyed a significant measure of crossover votes.

    Could a white Memphian sue under Section 2? While telling the Flyer she does not know the particulars in Memphis, Justice Department spokeswoman Cynthia Magnuson noted a recent case in Mississippi, United States v. Ike Brown and Noxubee County. This is the first case filed by the Justice Department in which it alleges that whites are being subjected to voting discrimination on the basis of race.

    The issue of runoffs in the mayoral race and citywide races should be raised and decided sooner rather than later so voters and candidates know the score — and the scoring system.

    Categories
    Politics Politics Feature

    Two More for Mayoralty

    CREDIT: Jackson Baker

    All right, pundits. Get your slide-rules out, and calculate who takes votes from whom. Mayor Willie Herenton and Councilwoman Carol Chumney won’t be alone in this year’s mayor’s race. It appears they are certain to be joined by former Shelby County commissioner John Willingham and former MLGW head Herman Morris.

    Willingham, who has been a candidate in both of the last two mayoral contests (one for city mayor in 2003 and another for county mayor last year), recently held an organizational meeting at Pete & Sam’s Restaurant on Park and made it clear to a decent-sized crowd of attendees that he’d be running.

    Reportedly, Willingham is forming an exploratory committee. One of his main men, incidentally, is Leon Gray, the former radio talk-show host for the local Air America affiliate.

    Morris will be making his first race and, to judge by table talk at last weekend’s Shelby County Republican Lincoln Day Dinner at the University of Memphis-area Holiday Inn, he stands a very good chance of getting the local GOP’s endorsement. (Morris, Willingham, and Chumney were conspicuous among the attendees at the dinner, as was District 5 City Council candidate Jim Strickland. All save Willingham have Democratic personal histories.)

    Before taking the MLGW job, attorney Morris had headed up the local NAACP chapter. His multiplicity of insider connections ensures that he will not lack for financing. The question remains: Can he put together a sufficiently large coalition of establishmentarians and voters disillusioned with Herenton (both blacks and whites) to be anything more than a spoiler?

    Ancillary question: From whom will Morris take more votes? Herenton or Chumney?

    As for Willingham, even some of his closest friends are dubious that the third time could be the charm for him. In both of his prior mayoral races he was a distant second (to Herenton and A C Wharton, respectively), though he sought to challenge the vote count in both instances.

    The former commissioner and Renaissance man of sorts (he’s been a barbecue maven, an engineer, and a Nixon administration aide, among other things) is quite literally irrepressible, though, and remains determined to vent several issues having to do with revamping local government and exposing alleged corruption.

    Willingham professes not to believe that he and Chumney are competing for the same vote, although the councilwoman, too, has developed something of a following among voters who want to turn the page and start all over.

    For that matter, Morris also has potential appeal of the throw-the-rascals-out sort. One task confronting the well-connected lawyer is to prove, à la Kipling, that he can “walk with kings and keep the common touch.” He has certainly walked with kings, but the former star collegiate athlete remains an unknown quantity in terms of street cred and how-to on the hustings.

    Who Knew the Secret? Ramsey Confides: One of the reigning celebrities at the GOP’s Lincoln Day celebration Saturday night was newly installed state Senate speaker Ron Ramsey of Blountville, who ousted octogenarian John Wilder, the longtime, nominally Democratic speaker, last month.

    Lieutenant Governor Ramsey regaled the crowd with humor (referring to his election as the first Republican Senate speaker since Reconstruction, he cracked: “One hundred forty years! Just think of it, 140 years! John Wilder was just a young man!”) and a choice revelation:

    Although the key vote for Ramsey by Rosalind Kurita (D-Clarksville) was a surprise to most people until the moment it happened, Ramsey revealed the five people who knew about it and saw it coming: himself, his wife Cindy, Kurita, his chief of staff Matt King, and state senator Mark Norris of Collierville, who succeeded Ramsey as the Senate’s majority leader.

    Kyle vs. Kurita: Kurita, by the way, was the subject of a scathing letter sent out this week to elected Democratic officials throughout the state by state senator Jim Kyle of Memphis, the Senate Democratic leader. Writing in his individual capacity on campaign letterhead, Kyle denounced Kurita for an action he saw as undercutting Democratic prospects in the state and beseeched fellow Democrats to “hold her accountable for her actions.”

    Before her vote to unseat Wilder, Kurita had been elected by the Senate Democratic caucus to serve as head of the party’s candidate-recruitment efforts.

    (The full text of Kyle’s letter is available here.)

    Back to Basics: The major speeches at the annual Lincoln Day banquet — from Ramsey, 7th District congresswoman Marsha Blackburn (who took aim at “the media”), and former Oklahoma congressman J.C. Watts, the keynoter — reflected, if anything, a hardening of existing GOP positions on social issues like gay rights and abortion and a qualified — but not absolute — support for President Bush‘s Iraq policy.

    Watts, an African American and potential vice-presidential candidate who is sometimes touted as his party’s answer to Democratic senator Barack Obama, did, however, include a conspicuous appeal for “diversity” in a speech that electrified the crowd.

    Coming Out Smoking: Governor Phil Bredesen‘s proposal in his Monday-night State of the State address to finance educational improvements by tripling the state’s cigarette tax (to 60 cents a pack) is his first major revenue-enhancement initiative and could turn out to be a controversy on the order of his scraps with former state senator (now congressman) Steve Cohen on lottery issues.

    A C’s Mixed Bag: Shelby County mayor A C Wharton, speaking to the downtown Rotary Club on Tuesday, expressed a guarded preference for the idea of elected additional judges in Juvenile Court. Wharton declined, however, to commit himself on two other issues: a preferred location for a proposed Toyota plant (nearby Marion, Arkansas, versus Chattanooga) and the question, after a recent court decision affecting Knox County, of whether several constitutional Shelby County offices should be elected or appointed.

    (See memphisflyer.com for more on these stories.)