Tag: Debate

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Politics Politics Feature

Forum Fever

Forums are all the rage these days as Labor Day approaches — after which the crowded 2007 pre-election calendar starts to overflow big-time.

Among the events to watch are two forthcoming candidate debates co-sponsored by the Flyer and the Memphis Rotary Club. On September 4th, candidates for the hotly contested District 9, Position 2 seat will square off, and one week later the major mayoral candidates will have at it. Both events are at noon at the Cook Convention Center.

Having thus done my duty by our own events, I must next tip the hat to the Coalition for a Better Memphis, which actually succeeded in getting all four major mayoral hopefuls — including the debate-leery Mayor Willie Herenton — on the same stage, though only one after the other, answering the same series of across-the-board questions.

The event last Thursday, at the Bridge Builders site downtown, wasn’t therefore a debate — as moderators Roby Williams and Bobbi Gillis stressed — but it may have been the next best thing.

Standing in front of a climbing wall in a cavernous, well-filled room, the four hopefuls appeared in sequence before the same audience and answered the same questions from Williams and Gillis, while members of the coalition set about grading the answers according to a four-level scale.

Based on what the candidates said, how they said it, and what others said about it later on, these are some broad conclusions:

John Willingham, who was first up, clearly meant to demonstrate that he was no crank but a serious man with serious proposals. The former Shelby County commissioner was a beneficiary, as he always is from time-restrictive formats, of the two-minute-per-answer limits on the nine questions asked.

Kept thereby from waxing prolix, Willingham was still able to offer a host of specific proposals. Some of them, e.g., drastically curtailing a mayor’s contractual authority and the number of his patronage positions, seemed good fits for the current debate on charter changes. Others, like his concept of turning the Fairgrounds into an Olympic training village that could generate 2,000 jobs and $2 billion in annual revenues, were of the sort that Willingham fans would consider visionary and non-fans might regard as fanciful.

Even under the time and format constraints, Willingham put forth too many proposals and statistics to be easily summarized. All that was consistent with the suggestion that the mayor’s job was to be both an executive and an idea man. Conversation among attendees afterward indicated that those who tend to see him as a crank will continue to do so; those who regard him as farsighted and misunderstood, likewise. A point of general agreement concerned his limited base and the small likelihood of his being elected.

Herman Morris was the second candidate to appear. He spoke briskly and without hesitation, letting general statements substitute for extended elaboration.

Contrasting his up-from-poverty background with his quality education (Rhodes College, Vanderbilt law school), Morris characterized himself as an able executive with a proven track record, especially at MLGW, which he headed for seven years. He also noted such involvements as his former chairmanship of the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce, experience on industry-seeking missions, and 20 years’ membership on a state lawyers’ ethics panel, two years as chairman.

In answer to a question about achieving diversity in government, Morris, an African American who emphasizes his potential appeal to both races, gave an answer that might resonate better with whites than with blacks.

The standard for city employment, he said, should be “not just diversity, but … merit, experience, talent, skills, history, track record of success,” as it was at MLGW under his administration, he said. That was a head-scratcher, unless, as a Republican well-wisher opined, it was one means of distancing himself from recent publicity regarding his well-received remarks at gay/lesbian forums.

Verdict: Morris, markedly less stiff than when he first announced, held his place in line. He’s viable if he can somehow generate better across-the-board traction than he’s managed so far. Among other things, he repeated his challenge for other candidates to follow his lead in taking a drug test. For all the trying, that one has not yet so much as blipped on the public radar screen.

He may have a way to go before convincing a majority that he is something “new and different and better.”

Willie Herenton was the third candidate to appear. Unsurprisingly, the mayor wanted to talk specifics — or at least those stats and achievements that suggested his first four terms had been a success.

Herenton eschewed the “hating on me” rhetoric of an earlier speech to the Whitehaven Kiwanis Club. Appearing stately and dignified, he warned against “novices,” boasted of his “40 years in public service,” recapped his career as a school principal, school superintendent, and mayor, and repeated his series of rhetorical challenges to the Chamber of Commerce concerning which mayor had presided over the city’s best economic growth, per capital income, etc. “Of course, I already know the answer to that,” he said.

Herenton declared, “We have virtually eliminated decayed public housing as we have known it in the past.” He also boasted a blameless personal record on ethics matters and claimed to have achieved the most diverse city workforce in Memphis history. Other professed achievements were more familiar — like downtown redevelopment in general and, in particular, the FedExForum and the NBA franchise that came with it.

So far, so good, except that such accomplishments are no longer regarded as unalloyed benefits and are the subject these days of a critical second sight.

All in all, the mayor may not have provided a fresh prospectus or a convincing rebuttal to his opponents’ insistence that it’s “time for a change.”

Carol Chumney was the final speaker, and her reception was every bit as revealing as anything explicit she said at the event. Council member Chumney’s persona as a persistent scold of the administration and of government and politics as usual continues to serve as both medium and message.

Unlike the other candidates, the former state legislator made few concrete proposals, couching her statements almost solely in terms of the shortcomings she perceives in the current city administration or in terms of general goals. Her very first sentence said it: “I’m running to bring about safe streets, safe schools, and safe neighborhoods and to clean this city up once and for all.”

Though her Web site contains specific proposals, Chumney on the stump rarely deals in such specific terms. Her remedies at the forum were more broadly stated: e.g., “more accountability … a mayor more capable of inspiring the city … stronger on children and youth … neighborhood watch programs … stronger code enforcement … partnerships with all kinds of people,” and so forth.

As during the nearly four years of her service on the council, Chumney proved most compelling when she presented herself as the avenger, as the dedicated scourge of everything that is wrong with city government. “You know, we have a lot of moonlighting going on at City Hall. People don’t talk about that,” she said at one point. And ears perked up.

Overall, to judge by word-of-mouth afterward, Willingham’s presentation was discounted more than it might have been if his prospects were deemed brighter; Morris held his own; Herenton came off well (if somewhat out of answers on the freshness front); and Chumney, questions about her financial wherewithal notwithstanding, is still getting the benefit of the doubt.

• Among the several other groups sponsoring candidate forums are Mid-South Democrats in Action (MSDIA) and One Hundred Black Men, who collaborated in an event last week at the University of Memphis Law School featuring candidates for the three council positions in Super-District 8.

Turnout by the candidates was good — as, in the opinion of most observers, was the content of candidate responses. The major absentees for the forum were Position 1 incumbent Joe Brown and Position 2 challenger Janis Fullilove (who was apparently conducting a simultaneous campaign event).

• Two District 9 races are attracting much attention. That for Position 2 is widely regarded as a showdown between lawyer/broadcast executive Shea Flinn and businessman Kemp Conrad — a Democrat and a Republican, respectively, though both have support across partisan lines. Newcomer Frank Langston also has good support. “Memphis Watchdog” blogger Joe Saino will have an impact, as may Joseph Baier.

Contenders for Position 3 include another well-connected newcomer, Reid Hedgepeth, businessman Lester Lit, lawyer/activist Desi Franklin, neighborhood activist and former interim legislator Mary Wilder, and Democratic activist Boris Combest. The first three named have most of the sign action so far.

A detailed version of these items is available in “Political Beat” at www.memphisflyer.com.

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Editorial Opinion

Foul Play

The 9th District Congressional debate sponsored Monday night by the Downtown Merchants Association was marked, as The Commercial Appeal‘s Halimah Abdullah put it, with “plenty of gusts from unexpected directions.” So what else is new? This political season, especially here in Tennessee, the level of negative campaigning has gone over-the-top “nukular,” as George W. Bush likes to say.

We find that a depressing development. But those who run for public office these days know full well that this is how the game is now played, however unfortunate the rule changes are. If a political candidate cannot stand the heat of opponents lambasting their past behaviors and present foibles, he or she needs to consider getting into another line of work.

But a line is crossed when this demonstrable incivility extends itself to reporters trying to do their jobs in as fair and equable fashion as possible. Just such a line was crossed Monday night, when, in the aftermath of this particular debate, Flyer political editor Jackson Baker was verbally accosted by 9th District Independent candidate Jake Ford. The particulars of this event are referred to elsewhere in this issue.

However distasteful his debate remarks about his two opponents may have appeared to those opponents and to many members of the audience, Jake Ford was well within his rights to hurl verbal abuse in their direction within the debate context. When he later decided to extend that approach to a reporter — from whatever news organization — simply trying to do his job properly, he was completely out of line. Period.

Ford owes Baker a public apology, immediately, if not sooner.

The Kroc Center

City attorney Sara Hall is right to say the city should get fair-market value for land at the Mid-South Fairgrounds if a deal is struck with backers of the Kroc Center.

The $48-million recreation complex and social center would be a welcome addition to the underused fairgrounds property. Money from the family of McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc, along with local private-funding sources, would pay for the center, which was discussed this week at the Memphis City Council.

But there’s a principle here that shouldn’t give way to expedience in a rush to make a deal: The Salvation Army, which is the recipient of the Kroc grant, is a church. If the city wants to sell city property to this or any other church, it should receive market value. Some Memphians may be tempted to say that the property should be given away for a nominal amount because the end justifies the means. Hall is right on the law and right on principle to object.

The Salvation Army and other Memphis churches can be important partners with the city. But we’re not ready to turn over public responsibilities or public property to churches without full disclosure and market pricing. Other Christian churches and colleges have their eyes on public land, and Hall has drawn the line properly.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Much Ado

So Jake Ford did show for the 9th District congressional debate sponsored by the Downtown Neighborhood Association (DNA) and the South Main Association (SMA) — despite his several threats not to.

Underscore that word, “threats,” for it is all but inseparable from this candidate’s very presence. (Editor’s note: See “Fly on the Wall,” for a brief account of the incident that provoked this column.)

The fact is, a political candidate has, for no good reason whatsoever, chosen to try to employ me as a foil for his own purposes, to have made me a story and to have hauled me onto center stage against my will. In the process, he has also bullied one of the most good-hearted, civic-spirited presences around — Joan Robinson of the DNA.

Since this became enough of a story to have attracted a battery of TV reporters to my home and to the site of a long-planned 9th District congressional debate involving both me (as a moderator) and the aforesaid Jake Ford as a candidate, and since it becomes increasingly clear that the context is candidate Ford’s political strategy, then readers are entitled to know the background of the story. The “back story,” as it were.

That began with a phone call I placed to Jake Ford on the same day (September 6th) that mayors Willie Herenton and A C Wharton endorsed Ford-rival congressional candidate Steve Cohen, the Democrats’ nominee, in a public ceremony. I had seen independent candidate Ford make a brief response — his first public exposure of the campaign season — on the evening news that night (WMC-TV, to be exact).

Herenton had blasted Jake Ford directly (“No one can convince me that Jake Ford has a modicum of qualifications for this position. All he brings to the table is the Ford name. … He has simply no qualifications to serve.”) and assailed the Ford family for seeking, as he put it, “a monopoly on all elected positions in this state and this county.”

Under the circumstances, Jake Ford was restrained and, I thought, impressive. As I said in my column online the next day, Ford had appeared to be “a slim, well-groomed, and reasonably well-spoken — if less prepossessing — version of his older brother, U.S. Representative Harold Ford Jr.”

I continued: “Jake Ford’s posture on the occasion, unprovocative and respectful toward the two mayors (whom he declared himself a “supporter” of) did much to mitigate a profile — high-school dropout and hothead — that had been widely propagated in quarters as diverse as local establishment circles and the highly non-establishment blog of African-American maverick Thaddeus Matthews (whose name for the candidate is ‘Joke Ford’).”

Either because he is incapable of making such distinctions or because it fits a calculated purpose, Jake has proved careless in distinguishing between things I have said with my own voice and things said by other people whom I have quoted. This is germane. But to proceed:

I had called Jake, using a cell number given me by his uncle, Shelby County commissioner Joe Ford, a widely liked and respected public servant who had, much to his nephew’s advantage, offered the first-time candidate support and advice.

I told Jake much the same as what would appear in my column the next day, that he had handled himself well, demonstrating gifts of his own worth publicizing. I told him I envisioned writing a cover story about him to that end and suggested we get together for a full interview process.

He responded equably, appreciatively, and with the exquisite manners that he and all members of the Ford family possess in their arsenal and offered to let me speak to my old friend, former Congressman Harold Ford Sr., whom I could hear in the background, drumming up support for son Jake on the telephone.

As it happened, the former congressman never got off the other line. So Jake and I chatted for a while and then said goodbye, with the understanding that we would have another conversation to set up an interview.

On the way into work the next morning, I gave Jake a call on my cell phone. To my astonishment, he began trying to berate me for a line in the online version of the column I have quoted from above. Because of an html-coding error, a phrase about other Ford-family races (“including Ophelia Ford’s in state Senate District 29”) appeared as “including Ophelia Ford’sin state Senate District 29”). Jake kept insisting that was an intentional slur and seemed unwilling to accept my explanation that it was an obvious typo and that I would make sure it got corrected as soon as I got to the office.

Even more astonishingly, he took exception to the description of himself as “slim,” fairly shouting out, “Jackson, I’m the same weight that I’ve always been since you’ve known me!”

He also blustered: “You’re not going to do a cartoon cover on me, are you?” That had to be a reference to a cover illustration that had accompanied a much earlier article on his brother, Representative Ford, and I pointed out to Jake that it is rare for writers to usurp the functions of the editor and art director and that in the case at hand, I hadn’t even seen the cover until all other readers had, for better or for worse.

The long and the short of it was that Jake kept shouting and interrupting and overriding what I had to say. When I had a moment, I explained to him, as politely as possible, that I was going to hang up, that we’d have to try another day for a conversation, when conditions and temperaments were more permitting of it, and then disconnected.

In the next days, I kept to my normally quite busy schedule, which included attendance at a rally for Representative Ford’s U.S. Senate campaign at his Park Place headquarters. There I briefly encountered Jake Ford and shook his hand. When various bloggers, operating on faulty hearsay information, subsequently began to write about a wholly fictitious collusion between Harold Ford Jr. and Jake Ford on that occasion, I made a point of debunking it. (However Jake Ford felt about that, I have reason to believe that Representative Ford, who has not intervened in the congressional race, was grateful for the correction.)

I went on to write positively about Jake Ford’s appearance on a local radio show. When I was unable to attend a Medical Society forum featuring the candidates, asked colleague Chris Davis to go instead. I then posted Davis’ largely favorable review of Ford’s performance in the “Political Beat” section of the Flyer Web site.

Fade to a mid-September downtown meeting of principals involved in the then-forthcoming debate of 9th District candidates sponsored by the Downtown Neighborhood Association and the South Main Association. Joan Robinson of the DNA had observed me in the role of moderator for several forums and debates in the previous year, and, on the strength of that, had asked me to serve again in that role. I happily complied.

One of the principals at the meeting was Isaac Ford, Jake’s brother. At one point, while he was searching for a pen, he realized, “Oh, Jake’s got it!” Whereupon I hazarded an admittedly ill-advised quip, “Uh oh, you mean Jake Ford’s out there with a pointed instrument?”

Everybody laughed, including Isaac, who then, however, began to brood, even when I apologized for the remark and made a point at aiming similar quips at other principals.

The long and the short of that: After the meeting broke up, Isaac and Jake (who had also attended) returned to Joan’s office, and the two of them began berating her and demanding a second moderator. The long and the short of that: She quoted chapter and verse to them of my largely positive columns about Jake and expressed absolute confidence in my objectivity and fairness. When I was informed about the situation, I honestly owned up to being insulted that my integrity was being questioned.

But in the long run, in the interests of comity and letting the forum proceed, both Joan and I relented and were fortunate enough to prevail on News Channel 3 anchor Richard Ransom to serve as co-moderator. Their tempers having apparently cooled, both Isaac and Jake, when we saw each other at an intervening congressional debate on WREG-TV, actually apologized for having made the second-moderator demand. But there we were.

As the world (the local world, anyhow) knows, Jake Ford last week became the subject of reports about multiple arrests during his late teens and early twenties while living in D.C., in the household of his then-congressman father (whose consulting business is also Jake Ford’s sole employer these days).

As the world doesn’t know, I had access to that information but decided against pursuing it, not wanting to be what the trade calls a headhunter and preferring to write about politics and not scandal. Once The Commercial Appeal published its story, however, and Jake held a press conference to give his version, it became a political story, and I did write about it.

I never said so until now, but I had a distinct memory of an occasion, many years ago, when then-Congressman Harold Ford Sr. came up with broken or badly bruised ribs. I realized from the published date of Jake Ford’s arrest for assault against his father that it dated from that same exact time frame.

All of which added to my feeling of awkwardness when Jake Ford, apparently reacting to my matter-of-fact ex post facto story, began — citing me as the reason — trying to back out of the DNA/SMA debate this week. He eventually showed up, however, and comported himself during the debate with reasonable polish and aplomb except for inexplicable intervals of making reckless charges against opponent Cohen. (Nobody, Jake, ever said, “Poor people don’t deserve to go to college” on the floor of the Senate — not Steve Cohen or any other politician.)

Unless I’m mistaken, my colleague Davis will have provided something of a chronology of the near-assault against me that followed the debate. I’ll pay no more attention to it and go back to covering, as objectively as I can, the events of the election and the political world.

I deeply regret that I am compelled, for purposes of providing a complete background record, to use the valuable space allotted to me this week to this subject — it has crowded out an abundance of other news, including that of Representative Ford’s soaring Senate race and the surprising showing now being made by 7th District Democratic congressional candidate Bill Morrison, freshly endorsed by the Nashville Tennessean and rising in the polls.

I promise that both will receive their due next week. And Jake Ford no more than his.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

Losing it

Is Jake Ford, the controversial independent candidate for Tennessee’s 9th Congressional seat, losing his cool? That appeared to be the case before, during, and especially after Monday night’s debate, when Ford made a scene that seemed designed specifically to humiliate the Flyer’s political editor Jackson Baker.

Baker, originally the debate’s sole moderator, had agreed to co-moderate with local news anchor Richard Ransom after the Ford campaign complained about the format.

Throughout the debate, Ford was hostile. After it ended, the assembled crowd descended on the bar for hot dogs and wine. Local bloggers discussed Ford’s unfortunate public announcement that “If Cohen was a black woman, he would have been arrested like Kathryn Bowers.” Baker stood nearby, trying to make nice with Ford after he had taken issue with the Flyer‘s reputable political reporting. Like so many in the crowd, Baker was also enjoying a delicious weenie, and as the noted writer spoke, a nearly microscopic bit of hot dog escaped his lips and landed on Ford’s jacket. It was the sort of social faux pas Miss Manners has long suggested we ignore, but manners be damned.

“This man spit on me,” Ford announced loudly, twisting up his face in terrible disgust. “This man spit on me. Does anybody have a napkin?” As Baker politely attempted to defuse the situation, Ford turned on him with a swift battery of questions: “Didn’t anybody ever tell you to chew with your mouth closed? Didn’t your mama ever teach you how to eat?” It was a loud, brattish display that captured the attention of several observers who milled around the two protagonists.

Ford backed away from the crowd calling toward the nearby bloggers and Baker. “Are you going to call me a fucktard?” he asked, referencing a recent article by Baker dispelling nasty, blog-generated rumors about Ford’s campaign. “Because,” he concluded, “I don’t know what that means.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Tightening Up

The difference between GOP senatorial nominee Bob Corker and his Republican primary opponents, Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary, was in the quality and frequency of his advertising vis-à-vis theirs. For a solid month, Corker, a self-made multi-millionaire with healthy backing from his party’s establishment, was able to introduce himself to the state’s TV viewers as an accomplished mayor, an adroit businessman, and a friendly, somewhat countrified fellow with an extra-nice mom.

Poor Bryant and Hilleary, both running unimaginative and negative campaigns, might not have been able to compete even with equivalent financing, but the fact is, they didn’t have enough campaign money to counter the television onslaught, and they fell steadily behind. Ironically, their last chance came in the last two weeks of the campaign when, for reasons yet to be explained, Corker (who was well ahead in the polls at the time) took to attacking his opponents with advertising that was not only negative but demonstrably misleading.

Bryant and Hilleary counter-attacked, pointing out that neutral observers expressly belied the content of Corker’s attacks and considered them unfair. They lost anyhow, but with another month and another million apiece, the two hapless ex-congressmen might have been able to make up some ground.

The experience is relevant to what has happened to Corker in his current campaign against Democrat Harold Ford Jr.

For several weeks, as the general-election effort against Ford got under way, the former Chattanooga mayor ran TV commercials virtually nonstop — but not the sort he had used to establish himself as a likable, trustworthy figure in the primary. Rather, he filled the airwaves with negative attack ads, like his last ones against Bryant and Hillary.

It was almost as though he had established a groove — a rut, rather — and couldn’t get out of it. Worse, Corker himself didn’t figure in any of them except as a late-appearing figure whose voice-over, in accordance with Federal Election Commission regulations, “approved” the ads. Worse yet, the ads were as misleading as those against Bryant and Hilleary had been. Worst of all, his new opponent, Ford, had the money to compete with him on the airwaves.

Ford was in the attack mode, too, and his own ads were no model of fairness or accuracy, either. But he was in them, an undeniably telegenic and persuasive presence, and that set him apart from his opponent. Corker’s early lead evaporated, and Ford caught up and began to race ahead.

But wait! In the last week or two, there was Corker with his doting cutie-pie mom again, and here comes another commercial featuring the Bobster himself, talking regular-folks-common-sense talk about those blowhards in government and how a straight-arrow businessman like himself could straighten out all the stuff they’ve got wrong.

This reversion to best-foot-forward politics is the apparent result of a shakeup in the Corker campaign. Tom Ingram, a veteran operative who has been serving as Senator Lamar Alexander‘s chief of staff, is the new campaign manager, taking over from Ben Mitchell, and the new ad strategy is first fruit of that change.

Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, the bleeding in the Corker campaign seems to have been stanched, and now he and Ford are now trading leads in this or that poll.

Undeniably, Ford has momentum — the result of his star quality and campaigning skills as well as what could turn out to be a national buyers’ remorse reaction to the Bush administration.

But, though the fact seems to have escaped most observers in the national media, Ford has critics within his own party — most of them on the left, to be sure, and not nearly as numerous as his detractors imagine but, arguably, influential beyond their numbers and, inarguably, out of love with their party’s nominal standard-bearer.

The reason? What they see as Ford’s apostasy from Democratic Party precepts. This includes his votes with the Republicans on such thematic/social issues as the flag-burning and marriage amendments and Congress’ mandated medical review in the Terri Schiavo case, economic issues like the bankruptcy bill and extension of the Bush tax cuts, and a plethora of national-policy concerns, such as Ford’s continuing support of the Iraq war effort and his go-along votes on a number of national-security issues.

Two of the latter occurred within the last week, as the Memphis congressman cast yea votes on two administration-backed bills — one extending broad authority to the president to define torture as it applies to captured enemy aliens, the other granting the chief executive the power, in effect, to decree warrantless surveillance. On the former bill, Ford was one of 34 House Democrats to vote as he did, on the latter one of 18.

Especially given apparent popular disenchantment with the Iraq war and with President Bush’s conduct of both it and the war on terror generally, Ford’s actions reignited the always-simmering discontent among his hard-core Democratic critics, who consider Republican attack ads on Ford as too “liberal” to be somewhere between an unintentional irony and a bad joke.

Not to talk too far out of school, but several indisputably Republican and/or conservative sources acknowledge privately the possibility that Ford’s increasingly conservative rhetoric may be more than election-year posturing.

Said one GOP loyalist and erstwhile Bryant supporter: “Harold Ford Jr. may be as conservative as it is possible for an African-American Democrat to be.”

Tellingly, Ford’s campaign paraphernalia does not feature the word “Democrat,” and, in a campaign that has focused unusual attention on the longtime Republican preserve of East Tennessee, seems almost to have proscribed use of the word on the stump. Even in hometown Memphis, he told a headquarters crowd back in April, “I’m not a Democrat running up to Washington yelling ‘Democrat, Democrat, Democrat.'”

Another issue — mainly of concern to local Democrats but important enough to have attracted attention on the editorial page of the Nashville Tennessean — concerns the current 9th District congressional trifecta, in which Democratic nominee Steve Cohen is opposed both by Republican nominee Mark White and by “independent” Jake Ford, the congressman’s brother who says that, if elected, he would caucus with House Democrats.

But in a recent radio interview Jake Ford echoed his brother’s political ecumenism somewhat. Noting that he was “running without a party affiliation,” the younger Ford characterized his race as being “about people politics, not party politics,” and he added, “All too often people want you to get wound up in the issues Democrats want you to hear about or Republicans want you to hear about. I just want to represent the people.”

Representative Ford himself continues to maintain a neutral posture vis-à-vis Cohen and brother Jake. The congressman’s hesitancy has permitted the flourishing of persistent rumors that the Ford brothers are operating their campaigns in concert. Other than the common support of both by proud papa Harold Ford Sr., there would seem to be little evidence for such an assumption.

An equally persistent rumor — also unconfirmed and unlikely — has it that Jake Ford’s continued pursuit of the congressional seat might be, from the Ford clan’s point of view, conditional and subject to negotiation.

In any case, Ford’s Democratic critics cite Representative Ford’s ambiguous attitude toward the three-way congressional race as yet another impediment to their acceptance of his own candidacy. A refrain has begun to recur in the posting of a hard corps of anti-Ford bloggers — most of them in Shelby County but some also posting out of Nashville and elsewhere.

Why, Democratic skeptics in the blogosphere say, should we put aside our doubts and support Harold Ford Jr. as the party nominee when he won’t do the same for Cohen?

Ford defenders among longtime Democratic partisans are increasingly advancing another question: What’s the big deal on Ford’s credentials? they ask. Worst-case scenario: that a Senator Harold Ford Jr. would be an old-fashioned Southern Democratic conservative of the sort people in these parts once took for granted. So?

Meanwhile, Republican White, apparently deciding to take a step away from GOP orthodoxy, chided the president for not responding to White’s suggestion of a joint tour of inner-city Memphis during President Bush’s fund-raising stopover here for Corker last week. “Why he will not follow me there is beyond me,” said White, who is making a point of pitching for traditionally Democratic African-American votes.