Tag: Cohen

Clayborn, Mason, Sterick, Airport Earmarked for Fed Funds

Post author By Flyer Staff
Post date July 18, 2025

Clayborn Temple, Mason Temple, the Sterick Building, and the airport could each receive more than $1 million in federal funding this year, U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) announced Thursday.

Cohen said more than $18.8 million have been appropriated for several Memphis-area projects recently, though, the money would need Congressional approval before it flows.

The budget earmarks came from approval in the the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development (THUD), Commerce Justice, Science and Related Agencies (CJS), and in the Homeland Security subcommittees.

“Memphis and the 9th District are doing particularly well in this year’s appropriations process,” Cohen said in a statement. “I am pleased to see my requests for the restoration of historic buildings approved, and the investments in police and public safety will help protect our community.

“This is early in the process and these projects must still pass on the House floor and in the Senate before being signed into law, but I am encouraged with the progress so far.”

Clayborn Temple

Clayborn Temple burned to the ground in April. Investigators ruled the fire an act of arson. In late May, officials said they identified a person of interest in the case. As of yet, however, no arrest has been made.

Clayborn leaders promised to rebuild. The Community Foundation of Greater Memphis launched the “Reimagine Clayborn Fund” in May. The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, Mellon Foundation, and Ford Foundation committed a total of $1.5 million to the fund that month.

Cohen announced Thursday the federal government could grant the project more than $3.1 million.

Mason Temple

Less is known about the restoration project for the historic Mason Temple. However, the church south of Crump could get $1.2 million from Congress for ”restoration, rehabilitation, and technology system upgrade to the historic site.”

In a letter to the Appropriations Committee, Cohen said, ”It is an appropriate use of taxpayer money because maintaining the historical landmark, which draws thousands of tourists to the Memphis Downtown area each year, will help to increase economic development.”

The church is where Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his famous “Mountaintop” speech the night before he was assassinated.

The Sterick Building

In 2023, Stuart Harris, principal of Constellation Properties, announced that his team closed on the purchase of Downtown’s historic Sterick Building.

The 340,000-square-foot, 29-story skyscraper was built in 1929, and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. However, the building has stood vacant since 1986. Previously, the idea of a purchase had been complicated, owing to a ground lease that had considered the building separate from the land it sits on. But the new agreement resolves that issue, allowing for future plans of a full redevelopment to begin taking shape.

Cohen said the feds could contribute $1.2 million to the project. The building, he said, ”was one of the tallest buildings in the South before being abandoned and becoming one of Memphis’ largest blighted structures.”

Memphis International Airport (MEM)

MEM’s $700 million modernization and seismic project could get a $4.2 million boost from Congress, should the earmarks remain. The funding was requested by Cohen and U.S. Rep. David Kustoff (R-Memphis).

Here are some more Memphis projects that could get federal funds in this year’s budget:

Covenant Gardens Senior Apartments: $1 million

The funding would be used to build 103 units of affordable housing for lower-income seniors.

Monroe Plaza and extended pedestrian infrastructure improvements: $850,000

The funding would be used to convert an underutilized street into a new Downtown plaza.

Electrical Infrastructure Upgrades at Montgomery Plaza: $850,000

The funding for the Memphis Housing Authority will be used to upgrade the existing electrical infrastructure.

University of Memphis Park Avenue Campus Upgrades: $850,000

Funds would be used to replace the water and sewer lines, repave and restripe for long term use and pedestrian and vehicle safety on the Park Avenue Campus.

Memphis Community Engagement Youth Facility Renovation and Vulnerable Family Housing Project: $850,000

Funds will be used to renovate community facilities serving at-risk youth and provide additional housing for vulnerable families experiencing homelessness. The city will work in collaboration with The Boys and Girls Club of Greater Memphis and Hospitality Hub.

Memphis Homeless Veterans Homes Renovation Project: $250,000

The funding will be used for renovations to support homeless veterans’ housing. The city will work in collaboration with Alpha Omega Veterans.

Reimagining Southwest Tennessee Community College Renovations Project: $250,000

The funding will be used to renovate and modernize key facilities on the campus.

Memphis Police Department Equipment Upgrades Project: $1 million

The funding would be used to make critical software improvements to keep the Memphis Police Department aligned with best practices in public safety, utilizing predictive policing and data-driven operations.

Enhancing Shelby County District Attorney’s Victims/Witness Unit and Data Collection Services: $1 million

The funding would be used to enhance the victim/witness services program and support digital forensics to recover, analyze and preserve electronic data.

Community Project Funding for City of Memphis Youth Violence Prevention Initiative: $1 million

The funding would be used to expand to a second location in South Memphis and increase services to youth and families to disrupt the pipeline to prison. The city plans to work with the community organizations Heal 901 and Pure Academy.

Shelby County Emergency Operations Center: $1 million

The funding would be used to construct a new emergency operations center that will serve all seven municipalities of Shelby County.

Tags Clayborn Temple, Cohen, Mason Temple, Memphis, Memphis International Airport, Sterick Building

News The Fly-By

MEMernet: “Big **** Deal,” Cohen and iPhone, and the Zoo

Post author By Flyer Staff
Post date July 17, 2024

Memphis on the internet.

“Big **** Deal”

“We just secured $393+ MILLION through the [Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act] to fully replace the I-55 bridge connecting America through #Memphis,” Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) posted late last week. “As @POTUS would say, it’s a ‘Big **** Deal’! And it sure is — it’s likely the largest single investment the federal government has ever made in Memphis.”

Cohen and iPhone

In a new political ad, Corey Strong looked back to 2007 when the iPhone was introduced and Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) was first elected to Congress, noting that Cohen had been around “longer than the iPhone.”

“What have we seen?” Strong asks. “Do we have the infrastructure we need to succeed? Have we seen the growth that neighboring areas have seen? No.”

The Zoo

Juicy J’s new album Memphis Zoo (released last week) features amazing cover art (right). Sharks swim in a glass Pyramid aquarium. A grizzly bear plays basketball. A masked-up giraffe holds a ring of keys, promising escape.

Tags Cohen, Corey Strong, I-55 bridge, Juicy J, MEMernet, Memphis Zoo, Steve Cohen

Cover Feature News

It’s On!

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date October 21, 2020

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

For Democrats, especially, the memories of four years ago are still very much alive — not just the nerve-crunching countdown of election night but the hopeful dawning of January 21st, just after Donald Trump‘s inauguration, when, on an unseasonably warm day, multi-gendered masses of Memphians gathered for the Women’s March Downtown — not a protest of the new regime so much as an affirmation that a reckoning would come, that the historical moment could be reversed.

It was the first act, enacted simultaneously in virtually every other American city, of what would come to be known as the Resistance, not just by those involved in it but by Trump, the intended target and unexpected winner of the presidency, who, clearly, could boast his own crowds, with a wholly different set of hopes and fears.

Jackson Baker

Roadside stand, 2020-style

The unprecedented rush of early voters to the polls this year, which began, locally, on Wednesday, October 14th, undoubtedly derives from both sources. Records will almost surely be broken by the end of early voting on Friday of next week, October 29th. A big vote is also likely for Election Day itself — Tuesday, November 3rd — and the real unknown quantity, undoubtedly huge and perhaps decisive, is expected to come in a flood of mail-in ballots, a volume made possible in Tennessee only through the tireless legal efforts of local activists.

As was the case under the wholly different circumstances of 2016, the Democratic candidate — in this case former Vice President Joe Biden — is favored by the polls. Nationwide, that is. Here in Tennessee, where the Republican Party still dominates the electorate, it’s considered to be in the bag for Republican Trump.

The U.S. Senate Race

Nowhere has the generational sea-change been more obvious than in races for the state’s major offices. In 2018, Republicans won decisive victories for governor and U.S. senator over name Democratic candidates after competitive Republican primaries in which the winners — Governor Bill Lee and Senator Marsha Blackburn — were actually decided.

The action was similar this year when GOP senatorial candidates Bill Hagerty and Manni Sethi vied in a bitterly fought Republican primary, with Hagerty, the hand-picked candidate of President Trump, emerging triumphant.

Hagerty, a former state industrial development commissioner and Ambassador to Japan, no doubt expected, like most other observers, that his Democratic challenger would be Nashville lawyer James Mackler, a former Iraq war pilot who had basically been running for two years. But Mackler would finish second in the year’s biggest upset, as unsung Memphis environmentalist Marquita Bradshaw pulled off a win in the Democratic primary.

Jackson Baker

Republican Senate candidate Bill Hagerty with supporters in Millington

Starting the general election with approximately $22,000 in funding, compared to Hagerty’s $12 million, the plucky Bradshaw has advanced her receipts to the level of just under $1 million — still far short of Hagerty’s current $14 million.

The two Senate candidates had been scheduled for a statewide debate on the Nexstar television network, but mostly unexplained circumstances caused a cancellation.

Other Senate candidates on the ballot as independents are: Aaron James, Yomi “Fapas” Faparusi Sr., Jeffrey Alan Grunau, Ronnie Henley, G. Dean Hill, Steven J. Hooper, Elizabeth McLeod, Kacey Morgan, and Eric William Stansberry.

Jackson Baker

Republican U.S. Representative David Kustoff at the podium

U.S. House Races

Incumbent Congressmen David Kustoff and Steve Cohen are also up for re-election. Eighth District Representative Kustoff, a Republican, is opposed by Democratic nominee Erika Stotts Pearson and by independents Jon Dillard and James Hart. Ninth District incumbent Cohen, a Democrat, is opposed by Republican nominee Charlotte Bergmann and by independents Dennis Clark and Bobby Lyons. Both incumbents are expected to win handily.

Jackson Baker

at TV taping

Legislative Races

In Shelby County itself, there are several competitive legislative races, and, as is the case with the presidency, most of them involve comeback hopes on the part of Democrats, who over the last several decades have seen their ancestral control, in every place but the inner city, yield to a new breed of buttoned-down Republicans. The competitive races are those along the line where city and suburb meet in a zone of shifting populations.

Jackson Baker

Dems on display

State House District 96, which is focused on Cordova, a sprawling mix of blue- and white-collar ethnicities, reverted to the Democrats four years ago. Democratic State Representative Dwayne Thompson faces a challenge there from Republican regular Patricia Possel, well-known for her efforts in the de-annexation movement.

In House District 83, a somewhat more glam neighboring district to the immediate south, incorporating hunks of East Memphis and Germantown, a largely managerial class of voters will decide between incumbent GOP Representative Mark White, who heads the House education committee, and Jerri Green, a promising new Democratic face who hopes to punish White for his pro-voucher efforts in an area whose public schools are a major source of local pride.

Jackson Baker

House candidate Gabby Salinas

District 87, the third part of this triadic battle zone, lies to the north, stretching from parts of East Memphis through Bartlett to the Gray’s Creek/Eads area. The District 87 seat is open. Incumbent Republican state Representative Jim Coley, a teacher, is retiring. The contestants are the GOP’s John Gillespie, a Republican activist and grant coordinator at Trezevant Episcopal Home, and Gabby Salinas, a scientific researcher and former cancer patient at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital whose backstory of immigration from Bolivia and survival has gained her abundant publicity and inspirational cachet over the years. Salinas came very close to upsetting GOP mainstay Brian Kelsey in a state Senate race two years ago, and her message of Medicaid expansion and her ample finances give her good chances again.

Jackson Baker

State Rep. John DeBerry speaks to GOP group

State District 90 is where a fourth legislative race has attracted serious interest this year, and the main issue is party loyalty itself. For the last 26 years, minister/businessman John DeBerry has represented the highly diverse district, which connects Frayser and South Memphis with sections of Midtown and Chickasaw Gardens.

An African American (and uncle of the aforesaid Senate candidate Bradshaw), DeBerry has consistently opposed abortion and supported school vouchers, and his stand on those two issues was, along with his affiliation with the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), enough to provoke the state Democratic executive committee to remove him from the Democratic ballot this year.

On the strength of his name recognition and with somewhat more than tacit encouragement from the local Republican establishment, DeBerry is campaigning for re-election as an independent. He is opposed by Democratic nominee Torrey Harris, a member of the LGBTQ community who works in human resources and has the declared support of numerous progressive sources to go with the party label.

The other legislative races are either unopposed or pro forma cases. Incumbent Democrat Barbara Cooper is opposed by Republican Rob White in District 86, and Republican incumbent Kevin Vaughan has a Democratic opponent in Lynette Williams. Democrat Julie Byrd Ashworth challenges GOP incumbent Paul Rose in District 32.

Municipal Races

Various local municipalities have elections on November 3rd, as well:

In Bartlett, incumbent Alderwoman Paula Sedgwick in Position 6 is opposed by Kevin Quinn. Brad Ratliff, and Portia Tate are on the ballot for School Board, Position 1.

In Germantown, here are several Alderman races: Sherrie Hicks vs. Terri Johnson for Position 3; John Paul Miles, Roderick Motley, and Brian Ueleke for Position 4; and Jon McCreery and Brandon Musso for Position 5. There is one Germantown School Board race: Brian Curry and Scott Williams for Position 3.

In Lakeland, Jim Atkinson, Scott Carmichael, and Wesley Alan Wright are vying for the two open city commissioner positions.

In Millington, the position of Alderman for Position 7 is sought by Mike Caruthers and Tom Stephens; school board races are between Marlon Evans and Greg Ritter for Position 1, and Mark Coulter and Deanna Speight for Position 3.

In Collierville, Harold Curtis Booker, Thomas J. Swan, and John Worley are competing for Alderman Position 1. Position 3 is sought by William Boone, William Connor Lambert, Missy Marshall, Rick Rout, Scott Rozanski, and Robert Smith. Position 5 is contested by Gregory Frazier and John E. Stamps. For Collierville School Board, Position 3, the contestants are Madan Birla, Paul Childers, Rachelle Maier, and Kristina Kelly White.

REMINDER: The deadline to request a ballot by mail is Tuesday, October 27th, and the completed ballot must be received by Tuesday, November 3rd, by close of polls. However, voters who are at least 60 years old, people with underlying health conditions including conditions arguing for a susceptibility to COVID-19, and those caring for others susceptible to the illness can apply for an absentee ballot.

Tags Biden, Bradshaw, Cohen, Hagerty, Jerri Green, Kustoff, Memphis Election Guide 2020, Salinas, Trump

News News Blog

CannaBeat: Cohen Pushes ‘Landmark’ Cannabis Legislation

Post author By Toby Sells
Post date November 21, 2019

When the House Judiciary Committee approved a “landmark” and “historic” cannabis reform bill yesterday, Memphis was there pushing it right along.

The committee approved the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act. The legislation would decriminalize cannabis at the federal level, reassess and expunge past cannabis convictions, and fund a series of programs to help those unduly affected by the War on Drugs.

Memphis Rep. Steve Cohen, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee and a longtime cannabis advocate, voted to advance the MORE Act to the House floor. The committee vote was 24 to 10.

Ninth District congressman Steve Cohen

“These failed and racist policies disproportionately affected communities of color,” Cohen said in a statement after the vote. “The effects extend well beyond arrest and prosecution.

“This bill’s expungement provisions help those convicted of non-violent marijuana offenses fully reintegrate into society and pursue their potential. Without a criminal record, they will be better able to find good jobs, access housing, and vote. I’m proud to advance this measure to the House floor and look forward to voting for it there.”
[pullquote-1] In January, Cohen introduced the Compassionate Access, Research Expansion and Respect States (CARERS) Act. It will allow access to medical marijuana for patients in states where marijuana is legal without fear of federal prosecution.

He also introduced the Fresh Start Act which would expunge criminal records for non-violent offenders with seven years of good behavior.

Watch Cohen’s committee remarks on the MORE Act below:

CannaBeat: Cohen Pushes ‘Landmark’ Cannabis Legislation

Tags CannaBeat, cannabis, Cohen, MORE Act

Politics Politics Feature

POLITICS: Looking Back

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date February 1, 2009

CREDIT: jb

Remembering
Ernest Withers

One of the great serendipities I’ve experienced as a
journalist was the decision by former Memphis Magazine
editor Tim Sampson back in 1993, on the 25th anniversary of
the death in Memphis of Dr. Martin Luther King, to use as the centerpiece
of an anniversary issue an archival piece of mine, along with pictures by the
great photographer Ernest Withers.

Uncannily often, Withers’ photographs directly illustrated
specific scenes of my narrative, which had been written originally on the day
after the assassination and concerned the events of that traumatic day. It was a
little like being partnered with Michelangelo, and I was more than grateful.

The publication of that issue led to an invitation from
Beale Street impresario John Elkington for Withers and me to collaborate
on a book having to do with the history of Beale Street, and the two of us
subsequently spent a good deal of time going through the treasure trove that was
Withers’ photographic inventory.

For various reasons, most of them having to do with
funding, the book as envisioned never came to pass (though years later Elkington
published a similar volume), but the experience led to an enduring friendship.

One day, when I was having car trouble, Ernest gave me a
ride home, from downtown to Parkway Village, the still predominantly white area
where I was living at the time, just beginning a demographic changeover. At the
time it appeared as though it might become a success of bi-racial living, and we
talked for some time about that prospect.

That very evening, Ernest was a panelist on the old WKNO
show, Informed Sources, and, instead of focusing on the subject at hand,
whatever it was, chose to discourse at length on the sociology of Parkway
Village. Watching at home, I was delighted – though the host and other
panelists, intent on discussing another subject, one of those pro-forma
public-affairs things, may not have been.

They should have been. This was the man, remember, who
documented the glory and the grief of our city and our land as both passed from
one age into another, which was required to be its diametrical opposite, no
less. Ernest saw what was happening in Parkway Village as a possible trope for
that, and whatever he had to say about it needed to be listened to.

Sadly, of course, the neighborhood in question was not able
to maintain the blissfully integrated status that Ernest Withers, an eternally
hopeful one despite his ever-realistic eye, imagined for it.

As various eulogists have noted, last week and this,
Withers not only chronicled the civil rights era but the local African-American
sportscape and the teeming music scene emanating from, an influenced by black
Memphians.

He was also, as we noted editorially last week, a family
man, and it had to be enormously difficult for him that, in the course of a
single calendar year while he was in his 70s (he was 85 at the time of his
death), he buried three of his own children.

Among my souvenirs is a photograph I arranged to have taken
of Ernest Withers with my youngest son Justin and my daughter-in-law
Ellen, both residents of Atlanta, on an occasion when they were visiting
Memphis a few years back. Happy as they were with the memento, the younger
Bakers expressed something of a reservation.

What they’d really wanted, explained Ellen, a museum
curator who was even then, in fact, planning for a forthcoming Withers exhibit
in Atlanta, was a picture of the two of them taken by the master.

Silly of me not to have realized that. To be in a picture
by Ernest Withers was to become part of history – a favor he bestowed on legions
of struggling ordinary folk as well on the high and mighty of our time.

Remembering Kenneth Whalum Sr.

There was a time, before Mayor Willie Herenton became the
acknowledged alternative within the black community to the Ford family’s
dominance, that councilman Kenneth Whalum was a recognized third force to reckon
with.

The Rudy Williams Band led Ernest Withers’ funeral procession down Beale on Saturday.

Rev. Whalum was both the influential pastor of Olivet
Baptist Church in the sprawling mid-city community of Orange Mound and the
former personnel director of the U.S. Postal Service, locally. In effect, he had a foot planted
firmly in each of the two spheres that make up the Memphis political community.

That fact made him a natural for the city council during
the period of the late ’80s and early ’90s when the era of white dominance was
passing and that of African-American control was dawning.

During the 1991 council election, Whalum, along with Myron
Lowery, achieved milestones as important in their way as was Herenton’s mayoral
victory, taking out long-serving at-large white incumbents Oscar Edmunds and
Andy Alissandratos, respectively.

Whalum was uniquely able to serve both as a sounding board
for black aspirations and a bridge between races and factions on the council. He
was a moderate by nature, though sometimes his preacherly passions got the best
of him and he sounded otherwise. Something like that happened during a couple of
incendiary sermons he preached during the interregnum between the pivotal
mayor’s race of 1991 and Herenton’s taking the oath in January 1992 as Memphis’
first elected black mayor.

Word of that got to me, and I was able to acquire a
recording of one of the incriminating sermons. I had no choice but to report on
it, and – what to say? – it made a bit of a sensation at the time, no doubt
limiting Whalum’s immediate political horizons somewhat.

It certainly limited the contacts I would have, again in
the short term, with a political figure that I had previously had a good
confidential relationship with. Whalum’s sense of essential even-handedness
eventually prevailed, however, and we ultimately got back on an even keel.

To my mind, in any case, Whalum’s outspokenness never
obscured his essential fair-mindedness, and his occasional prickliness was more
than offset by his genuine – and sometimes robust – good humor.

There are many ways of judging someone’s impact on society,
and one might certainly be the prominence of one’s offspring. In Rev. Whalum’s
case they included the highly-regarded jazz saxophonist Kirk Whalum and the
councilman-minister’s namesake son Kenneth Whalum Jr., a school board member and
an innovative pastor himself — so innovative in his wide-open 21st-century
style as to cause a generational schism involving Olivet church members. That
would result in two distinct churches, one led by the senior Whalum, one by
Whalum Jr.

Kenneth Whalum Sr. had been something of a forgotten man in
local politics since leaving the council at the end of 1995 (he would also run
losing races for both city and county mayor). But he got his hand back in
briefly during last year’s 9th District congressional race, making a
point of endorsing Democratic nominee Steve Cohen, who ultimately prevailed.

Appropriately, Rep. Cohen took the lead, along with Senator
Lamar Alexander, on behalf of a congressional resolution re-designating the
South 3rd Street Post Office in honor of Whalum, closing a cycle of
sorts and forever attaching the name of Kenneth T. Whalum Sr. to one of the
city’s landmarks.

Political Notes:

Kenneth Whalum Sr.

–Congressman Cohen was the target recently of what many local Memphians report on
as a “push” poll taken by random telephone calls to residents of the 9th
District. Purportedly the poll contained numerous statements casting Cohen in a
negative light before asking recipients who they might prefer in a 2008 race
between him and repeat challenger Nikki Tinker.

(At least one person called recalled that the name of
Cohen’s congressional predecessor, Harold Ford Jr., now head of the
Democratic Leadership Council, figured in a triad of potential candidates being
asked about.)

–Early voting is now underway in the four city council
runoffs that will be determined on November 8th.

Those involve Stephanie Gatewood vs. Bill
Morrison in District 1; Brian Stephens vs. Bill Boyd in
District 2; Harold Collins vs. Ike Griffith in District 3; and
Edmund Ford Jr. and James O. Catchings in District 6.

Tags book, civil rights, Cohen, Ernest Withers, Ford, Herenton, History, photography, Politics, race, Whalum

Politics Politics Feature

Congressman Steve Cohen Grills McNulty

Post author By Flyer Staff
Post date June 21, 2007

Political uber-blog “Talking Points Memo” ran a clip today of 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen grilling Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty.

The set-up: “In April, a group of anonymous Justice Department employees wrote to the House and Senate judiciary committees and accused Paul McNulty’s chief of staff Michael Elston, of leading an effort to eliminate applicants to the Justice Department who were Democrats.

“And what did McNulty have to say when asked whether his right-hand man was working to politicize the hiring process at the Department? He doesn’t know.

“Faint comfort.”

Check out Cohen’s performance here.

Tags Cohen, Democrats, political, Politics

Politics Politics Feature

Federal Case

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date April 12, 2007

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Senator Lamar Alexander made two things clear during a stop in Memphis last Thursday: 1) that he’s running for reelection to the U.S. Senate seat he won back in 2002; 2) that he’s determined to do so from the political center, with minimal concessions to the orthodoxies of the Bush administration.

Both in remarks made to a sizable crowd of well-wishers at the Oaksedge Center in East Memphis and in the course of an interview afterward, Republican Alexander issued what sounded at times like a virtual declaration of political independence.

On Iraq, for example: “We need to get out of the combat business and into the support business,” the first-term senator and former governor said. Alexander said, “We’ve got to get the Iraq Study Group report off the shelf and use it for something other than a bookend.” The report, by a blue-chip bipartisan panel, advocated staged withdrawal from active combat operations in Iraq.

Of the current flap over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales: “The administration is guilty of excessive partisanship. And the Democrats are guilty of excessive partisanship in response.”

On Bush’s recess appointment of Sam Fox as ambassador to Belgium, bypassing Senate confirmation: “The president has the right to do that sort of thing, but it’s inadvisable. Maybe if they [the executive branch] want to take some of our powers, we should take some of theirs.”

In his remarks to the crowd, Alexander pointedly reminded them of his experience as governor of Tennessee, when, he said, bipartisanship was the rule — beginning in 1978 when Democratic governor Ned McWherter helped get a newly elected Alexander sworn in early. That was to forestall potentially illegal pardons of state prisoners by his Democratic predecessor, Ray Blanton.

“I want to be one of the grownups who can work across party lines in the Senate to get things accomplished for people’s benefit,” said Alexander, noting that he and Connecticut Democrat Joe Lieberman have been presiding this year over a weekly bipartisan breakfast in Washington.

“We need to spend more time like this, working together on what really counts, and less time on petty, kindergarten games,” Alexander said. “I believe the most recent election was as much about the conduct of business in Washington as it was about the conduct of the war in Iraq.”

Recalling McWherter’s 1978 statement, “We are Tennesseans first,” Alexander said. “I’d like to hear a few more people in Washington say ‘We are Americans first.'”

Asked about the presidential prospects of his former Senate colleague from Tennessee, Fred Thompson, Alexander smiled and said, “The less he does, the more the buzz.” Thompson, who now stars in TV’s Law & Order, has acknowledged an interest in running but has so far taken no steps to do so. As Alexander, himself a two-time presidential candidate, noted, a significant draft effort is now under way, however. “I heard from my former Iowa campaign director who was interested in Fred.”

• Memphis’ 9th District congressman, Democrat Steve Cohen, availed himself of the current congressional recess to make a round of appearances in his home district.

At one such stop, last week’s Martin Luther King memorial awards dinner at the Convention Center, a Cohen invitee, Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) extolled her Memphis colleague as “a real congressman … a real progressive” and made a point of calling him “brother” from the dais of the event. For a white man serving a predominantly black district, the remark by Waters, a highly respected African-American member, can only be helpful at reelection time next year.

Cohen was back at the Convention Center on Tuesday of this week as the featured speaker of the downtown Rotary Club. Like Alexander, Cohen, who voted with the congressional majority for a bill establishing a timeline for American withdrawal, viewed with alarm the prospect of continuing combat in Iraq. “We won the war. We’re in an occupation. We can’t win an occupation. We’re not on the scoreboard,” he told the Rotarians.

The congressman, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, also took note of the continuing local furor concerning what appears to many to have been much too light a sentence for Dale V. Mardis, who pleaded guilty in Criminal Court last week to the murder of code-enforcement officer Mickey Wright. (See Editorial, p. 18). In a plea-bargain arrangement, Mardis got 15 years for a crime that included dismembering Wright’s body, burning it with diesel fuel, and disposing of it across the state line in Mississippi.

“Mr. Mardis deserves more time,” said Cohen, who expressed the hope that federal prosecutors would initiate their own look at the crime to find other grounds, perhaps denial of Wright’s civil rights, on which to try Mardis. He said he had already begun working on federal legislation of his own that would criminalize the act of transporting a body across state lines to dispose of it.

• Longtime civic activist Mary Wilder was elected unanimously by the Shelby County Commission Monday as interim state representative from House District 89.

Wilder, 57, manager of a home-repair program for MIFA and a longtime member of the Vollintine-Evergreen Community Association, has been frequently mentioned over the years as a potential candidate for public office. Most recently, she was a candidate for the city Charter Commission last year. Though she will evidently serve for the duration of the current legislation session, Wilder will not seek the permanent seat, which was vacated recently when District 89 representative Beverly Marrero was elected to the state Senate.

Democratic and Republican primaries for District 89 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.

Filing deadline for that election will be Thursday, April 19th; withdrawal deadline with be Monday, April 23rd.

• Five veterans of the political world are apparently the finalists for the Shelby County Democratic delegation to choose from as new county election commissioners.

Shep Wilbun, former Juvenile Court clerk and a veteran of the Memphis City Council and the Shelby County Commission, is one of the five names to emerge from a meeting of the delegation in Memphis last week.

Others are current election commissioner O.C. Pleasant, who served several years as chairman of the body; Myra Stiles, a former longtime commissioner; Joe Young, a political veteran who, among other things, was for some years a field rep for former state Democratic chairman Jane Eskind; and Norma Lester, who is the current secretary of the Shelby County Democratic Party. The group of five was winnowed down from some 15 original applicants for the three positions available for Democrats.

One dissenting member of the delegation, however, said the list was not of finalists per se, contending, “It’s vaguer than that. It’s had to say exactly what the list represents.”

The original deadline for the Democrats to select the party’s three commissioners was April 1st; there was no word on when a final selection will occur. Republicans will return their two current members, Nancye Hines and Rich Holden.

• So what else is new? As reported last week, the Shelby County Democrats have a new chairman, for one thing. And last Thursday night chairman Keith Norman presided over his first formal meeting of the new party committee.

That’s when déjà vu set in: Committee member Jennings Bernard offered a resolution to expel newly elected lawyer Richard Fields from the committee on several grounds, including Fields’ public intervention in last year’s general election on behalf of Republican candidates for various offices. Fields was pressured into resigning from the committee in early 2006 for his legal work on behalf of Republican Terry Roland‘s challenge of the legitimacy of Democrat Ophelia Ford’s election to the state Senate. Norman set next month’s committee meeting as an occasion for voting on the resolution.

Tags Alexander, Cohen, partisan, political, Review, Tennessee Senate

Politics Politics Feature

Cohen + Conyers = Coup

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date March 1, 2007

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

If the turnout and response at Steve Cohen‘s “town meeting” with Michigan congressman John Conyers last Thursday night at the National Civil Rights Museum was any indication of the 9th District congressman’s future fortunes, Cohen might as well start looking into long-term living arrangements in the District of Columbia.

Conyers isn’t your ordinary visiting congressman, for starters. The longtime representative from Detroit is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, on which freshman Cohen sits. Not only that, he was on Judiciary in 1974 when the committee voted articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon, hastening that errant president’s departure from office. And not only that, as Conyers reminded this reporter afterwards, he wrote the first articles of impeachment against Nixon.

In short, the man is a congressional legend, and Conyers’ very presence here was a tribute to Cohen’s standing this early in his congressional tenure. Beyond that, Conyers made a point of extending his explicit blessing to Cohen, and since the noted Michigander takes a back seat to no one on economics and civil rights issues, it was a convincing plug for Cohen to the African Americans in the audience (who were numerous and enthusiastic and who conferred frequent praise on both congressmen).

The congressmen fielded an abundance of questions and concurred on such matters as impeachment of President Bush (justifiable but not practical with other priorities facing the nation), health care (a scandal and a scam as proposed by Bush), Iraq (should be ended now by cutting off funds), Iran (containable without potentially reckless military adventurism by Bush), civil liberties (severely menaced at present), getting out the vote (election procedures need amending and rights need to be safeguarded), and much more.

Conyers and Cohen dilated, when asked, on everything from inadequate traffic lights at Third and Holmes to the continuing shameful conditions in New Orleans after Katrina. They spoke without hesitation and with no roundabout dodges. People were still lined up to ask questions when Cohen aide Willie Henry was forced to call time, advising the crowd (which filled up both the museum’s auditorium and an overflow room with a TV monitor) that written questions could be submitted with assurances they would be answered later, presumably by mail.

The crowd, mixed with equal parts Everyman and Who’s Who types, seemed satisfied. So did the two congressmen. Cohen, whose verbal nimbleness was on a par with that of his illustrious guest, will no doubt make a habit of these affairs. He would be well advised to.

Or so thought such attendees as maverick blogger Thaddeus Matthews, who boldly proclaimed afterward: “This is the first time in decades this district has gotten straight answers.”

A generous sampling of those “straight answers” can be found under the head “Cohen, Conyers Click Together at Town Meeting” in “Political Beat” at MemphisFlyer.com. Here are two brief samples:

Conyers on Katrina: “[It’s] one of the greatest scandals of this administration. There’s some $9 million missing … . There’s nothing to come back to in New Orleans. Government negligence has been more harmful than the natural disaster.”

Cohen on Iraq: “This is Bush’s war. It’s like Rosemary’s baby. It’s named … My hands are not tainted by a vote for this war, and I don’t intend to get my hands tainted.”

More Cohen: Consistent with predictions by some (read: this columnist) that Cohen would equal or excel the celebrity quotient of his 9th District predecessor, Harold Ford Jr., the hyperactive congressman was due to appear this Thursday night as the featured guest on The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert. Steve to Steve, as it were.

And, as it happens, the Memphis congressman was the only major local official to lend his office to active pursuit of a Toyota plant for nearby Marion, Arkansas. Mayors Willie Herenton and A C Wharton offered little encouragement beyond lip service, if that — seemingly in deference to efforts by Governor Phil Bredesen and other state officials to attract the plant to Chattanooga.

In the event, Toyota announced Tuesday morning that the plant would be built in Tupelo, Mississippi, instead — inconveniently distant from the Memphis labor market and off the Tennessee tax rolls, as well.

• As Shelby County Democrats head into this month’s reorganization meetings — a preliminary caucus on Saturday, followed by a convention on March 31st — there is no clear favorite for party chairman, with lawyer Jay Bailey still the only fully declared candidate.

Others reportedly considering a bid are Jody Patterson, Desi Franklin, and Shelby County commissioner Henri Brooks. A brief draft boomlet on the part of several activists for interim state senator Shea Flinn collapsed last week when Flinn expressed no interest.

A key to the process may be county commissioner Sidney Chism, leader of one of the party’s three major factions, who said last week he would not support Bailey but has not specified his own preference.

Meanwhile, county Republicans made little fuss in reelecting their own chairman, Bill Giannini, at a convention over the weekend.

Tags Cohen, John Conyers, political

Politics Politics Feature

Déjà Vu: Conyers in the 9th

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date February 22, 2007

Roughly a decade ago, during the first term of then 9th District congressman Harold Ford Jr., the redoubtable African-American congressman from Detroit, John Conyers, came to town and announced to a sizable crowd that young Ford could well be a future president of the United States.

That was very likely the first such pronouncement from a well-known national figure — all the more compelling in that Conyers had a well-defined reputation as a serious legislator dating all the way back to his service on the House Judiciary Committee in 1974. That was the committee that voted articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon and paved the way for that president’s exit from office.

Here it is 33 years later, and, following last year’s Democratic sweep, Conyers is the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and, politically, he and Ford have traveled in opposite directions.

When, in late 2002, the ambitious Memphian made an unsuccessful challenge to Nancy Pelosi (now Speaker of the House) for the leadership of House Democrats, Conyers publicly chastised the congressman, who had just voted to give President Bush authorization for military action in Iraq, saying, “I don’t think anybody is going to become the next minority leader of the Democrats that wants to go along with Bush on the war.”

Ford’s continued support for the war may have even been a marginal factor in his narrow loss of a U.S. Senate race last year. The man who succeeded Ford as congressman for the 9th District, Democrat Steve Cohen, made no bones about his opposition to Bush’s war policy during his race last year, and he continues to be vocal in congressional debate on the subject.

Cohen, a longtime Conyers admirer who, post-election, was granted his desire to serve on Judiciary, will bring his committee chairman to town with him for a town meeting on Thursday. The two congressmen will appear together at the National Civil Rights Museum beginning at 6:30 p.m.

Will Conyers complete a cycle of sorts by billing Cohen as a possible future president? Unlikely, but we’ll be there just in case.

Junior on the Move

Democratic Michigan congressman John Conyers

Meanwhile, the man Cohen succeeded in office, the aforesaid Harold Ford Jr., seems to be proceeding full speed ahead. The New York investment firm Merrill Lynch last week announced Ford’s coming aboard as a vice president.

Together with his election last month as head of the right-center Democratic Leadership Council and his appointment as an ad hoc professor at Vanderbilt University, Ford would seem to have a fully fleshed-out profile for whatever political purposes might come, either statewide or national.

During a meeting last week with a group of local political adepts called “The Politicos,” Memphis businessman Karl Schledwitz made a compelling argument that the circumstances would be ripe for Ford to make another bid for the U.S. Senate in 2008 against Republican incumbent Lamar Alexander.

One fact, for better or for worse: After taking the DLC post, Ford has undergone renewed attacks in the progressive blogosphere for his conservative — some say reactionary — positions on both domestic and foreign-policy issues.

Carpenter Under Siege?

There is no question that first-term Shelby County commissioner Mike Carpenter has riled hard-core Republicans with his decision to join with commission Democrats in voting, consistently and decisively, for a second Juvenile Court judge.

Adding insult to injury, as these GOP cadres see it, Carpenter has become increasingly critical of Judge Curtis Person, elected last year after decades as a GOP icon in the state Senate and several years, too, as an administrator in Juvenile Court.

Ironically, Carpenter was heavily backed in his race last year by the Republican establishment. He was then regarded as an acceptable alternative to predecessor John Willingham, a maverick GOP type who often bucked party discipline. Faced with Carpenter’s well-funded challenge, Willingham read the tea leaves and ultimately opted out of his reelection race in favor of a largely symbolic long-odds race for county mayor.

Now it’s Carpenter, a onetime state GOP political director, who’s seen by some as the maverick and a potential thorn in the side of Republican orthodoxy.

And word comes that Probate Court clerk Chris Thomas, among others, is meditating on a challenge to Carpenter three years hence. Thomas, known as a hard-right Republican, is one of several local elected officials who, though ensconced in positions that look to outsiders like safe and satisfying sinecures, are clearly lusting for more active political roles.

That’s especially the case when Republicans like Thomas, having to run countywide, seem to keep pulling rabbits out of hats during their reelection campaigns, thereby defying changing demographics that more and more should favor Democrats.

Sooner or later, at one of these four-year intervals (that’s eight years in the case of judges) the rabbits won’t be there in the right quantity. As it was, several narrowly defeated Democratic candidates mounted credible legal challenges to the outcome of last year’s vote.

A commission race in solidly Republican District 1 is another matter entirely, but it remains to be seen whether Carpenter’s vulnerability is short- or long-term and to what degree it exists at all. (Thomas, for that matter, is not every mainstream Republican’s cup of tea.)

And, weekend before last, at the monthly conservative-oriented Dutch Treat Luncheon, one well-known local Republican passed along speculation that Carpenter’s stance on Juvenile Court reform might be part of a trade-off involving Democratic votes in the future for a controversial proposal to privatize county penal facilities.

The truth content of such a suggestion is less interesting than the fact that it’s implicitly exculpatory of Carpenter in an ideological sense. The fact is, the commission’s Democrats had the votes for a second Juvenile Court judge without him, and, one hears, trade-offs do take place once in a while on the commission and other legislative bodies.

Under the circumstances, there are worse things than having a reputation as a player, whether justified or not — and certainly worse things than being considered independent-minded.

Tags Cohen, John Conyers, Local, Politics

Politics Politics Feature

A Matter of Timelines

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date November 23, 2006

Jim Kyle is watching the calendar. The state Senate’s Democratic leader wants his Memphis colleague, state senator and 9th District congressman-elect Steve Cohen, to go ahead and resign his District 30 seat — “hopefully before the end of the month” — so that whoever ends up being appointed Cohen’s successor will have a chance to start raising money for reelection.

Cohen, whose relations with Kyle over the years have ranged from chilly to formally correct, disagrees. “I think anybody who’s seriously interested in running for senator ought to start raising money now. There’s plenty of time,” Cohen insists.

The deadline that Kyle is looking at is January 9th, the start of next year’s session of the Tennessee General Assembly. After that date, state law prohibits sitting legislators from doing any fund-raising until the end of the session — traditionally, at some point between late April and mid-summer.

Kyle figures the Shelby County Commission, which has a 7-6 Democratic majority, will — and should — appoint a viable Democrat who will be a candidate for reelection in a special election next year. But if Cohen delays his resignation — until sometime in mid-December, say — Kyle fears the commission won’t be able to start and complete the appointment process in time for the new senator to do any fund-raising before the start of the legislative session.

His reasoning is that, once a vacancy exists (and not until it does), the commission must use one meeting for advertising a vacancy, allow time for applications, and then devote time at the next commission meeting, two weeks later, for a vote on an interim successor to Cohen. The commission has two meetings set for December — on the 4th and 18th.

Kyle’s concern: If Cohen delays his resignation until late in December, as he has indicated he might, the interim senator will have to wait on raising any campaign money for several months, while, presumably, a prospective opponent from the other party can use the time to hold any number of perfectly legal fund-raising events.

Cohen — pleading leftover legislative duties, among other considerations — is unmoved, noting the precedent set in 2004 by then state senator Lincoln Davis, who had been elected to Congress from the state’s 4th District.

Disagreement between the two Shelby County Democrats has not been uncommon over the years. They have frequently taken issue with each other both in private and in public — and over both private and public matters. A case involving both at once was Cohen’s 1995 vote supportive of then Governor Don Sundquist‘s successful move to eliminate the state Public Service Commission — one of whose freshly elected members was Sara Kyle, the senator’s wife. (She later was appointed to the substitute Tennessee Regulatory Authority.)

Kyle’s tongue-in-cheek statement of support for Cohen during the latter’s successful run for Congress this year reflects the ambivalent nature of their relationship: “Nobody in the state Senate will be happier than me to see Senator Cohen in the U.S. House of Representatives.”

Meanwhile, Cohen has so far declined to indicate a preference among the potential Democratic candidates to succeed him. At least two — Kevin Gallagher, Cohen’s congressional campaign manager, and David Upton, his longtime political ally — are personally close.

Kyle, who met with several county commissioners on Monday, limits his preference to several general criteria — among them, that whoever is chosen by the commission should support Democratic senator John Wilder of Somerville for reelection as Senate presiding officer/lieutenant governor and be able to run a capable race for reelection.

Other Senate hopeful names in the hopper: former city attorney Robert Spence and state representative Beverly Marrero (another Cohen friend) among Democrats; and businessman Kemp Conrad and lawyer D. Jack Smith among Republicans.

• Cohen spent last week in Washington undergoing freshman orientation along with 49 other newcomers to the U.S. House, including 41 Democrats. On his weekend return at Memphis International Airport, the congressman-elect clarified two matters previously reported elsewhere.

He said he had never indicated that he intended to seek outright membership, as a white, in the Congressional Black Caucus and that he had decided to shelve any plans to push a national lottery. “I’d end up competing with myself,” said the 12-term state senator who is credited with creating the state lottery in Tennessee.

Tags Cohen, Jim Kyle

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