Tag: Election

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Editorial Opinion

Hedging the Bet

Granted, the August 3rd election ballot confronting Shelby Countians is large, long, and complex, and it remains to be seen whether the new Diebold voting machines being employed for the first time won’t present further difficulties on top of all that. Even so, it would be an inattentive voter indeed who failed to develop a sense of déjà vu while working through the ballot.

No fewer than four candidates appear on the ballot in two different races. To start with what on the surface appears most bizarre, John Farmer is running simultaneously for the 8th District congressional seat and the District 89 (Midtown) seat in the state House of Representatives. Correct us if we’re wrong, but those two districts don’t even seem to overlap geographically. Yes, the residency requirements for the two offices are sufficiently ambiguous as to permit this dual race in the short run, and we suppose that even Farmer, a stout enough soul, would be forthright enough to acknowledge that he has little hope of capturing either seat from the incumbents who hold them.

Then there’s Joe Towns, the longtime state representative from District 84 (South Memphis), who was running both for reelection and for the 9th District congressional seat. God only knows why he did the latter, since his lackluster pursuit of that race made his chances only academic, and thus he dropped out. He will probably win his state House race.

And there’s Larry Henson, a serious activist for various causes who has offered himself both for the same District 89 state House seat being sought by Farmer and for the Charter Commission. Henson’s chances of prevailing in the Democratic primary against state representative Beverly Marrero are as remote and hypothetical as those of Republican Farmer in the general election. So his only realistic expectation is that he can win the Charter Commission race.

The fourth instance of a candidate involved in a dual run is more troubling. This is state representative Henri Brooks, who has a good chance of prevailing in both her race for the District 2, Position 2, County Commission seat and her reelection race in House District 92. There is apparently nothing that would prevent Brooks from holding both seats, although to do so would be awkward, and Brooks has indicated she would be willing to surrender the House seat in the event of a dual victory.

One problem: The candidates opposing Brooks — Novella Smith Arnold for the commission seat and Michael Saine and Elbert “Skip” Rich Jr. in the House race — have demonstrated themselves to be worthy of holding the seats in question. Since there is no automatic second-place succession in the event of a winner’s withdrawal, Brooks’ decision to hedge her bets is unfair to her opponents. Worse, it probably means another in the recent series of special elections to be paid for by the taxpayers of Shelby County, and that’s worse than unfair. It’s an unnecessary and expensive imposition on the public. Legislation may be in order to prevent such cases as this from happening again.

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Cover Feature News

Senate 2006: It’s Crunch Time!

The Contenders in the Stretch

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

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

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

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

But at least Bryant was making the effort. By mid-May, just as Corker’s advertising barrage was getting under way, Hilleary, the onetime leader in the Republican race, had largely stopped campaigning in West Tennessee. In a public “Dear Ed” letter, he extended the olive branch to opponent Bryant and proposed that the two mount a joint stop-Corker movement: “Let’s come together for the good of the cause — running hard on our own merits and ‘focusing our fire’ only on the candidate who does not share our mutual conservative philosophy, Bob Corker.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You seem like a great fellow.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A candidate trying to be what he is.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Three from the GOP

CREDIT: JB

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

JB

Rep. Blackburn with District Attorney General Bill Gibbons

7th District Fireworks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Elder Statesmen

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Elsewhere on the Political Front:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sentencing is scheduled for September 8th.

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

Categories
Editorial Opinion

On Democratic Purity

As the eagerly attentive denizens of the planet’s seven continents surely know by now, the Shelby County Democrats were able Monday night to enforce a ban against Republican officeholders at their annual Kennedy Day Dinner. There were, both literally and figuratively, no elephants in the room.

There were, however, some conspicuous elephants outside the room, and Governor Phil Bredesen, titular head of Tennessee Democrats,

alluded to them in an aside to his keynote address. These were the disabled Tennesseans and their sympathizers who picketed the event from positions on the Central Avenue sidewalk outside the Holiday Inn where the dinner took place. In his speech, Bredesen gave these protesters against his TennCare cuts backhanded praise for exercising their constitutionally protected freedom of speech, just as — or so he informed his Democratic audience — he had given them a few minutes of his time before entering the hotel.

The governor’s solicitude for the demonstrators was given appropriate applause. But Bredesen might have merited greater praise had he dealt with the TennCare issue in some other way than by repeating his well-worn mantra that, to maintain the state’s solvency, he had no other choice than to make the draconian series of cuts that left many of the seriously disabled protesters uninsurable.

We seem to recall that state senators Steve Cohen and Rosalind Kurita, both Democrats, had proposed increasing the state cigarette tax so that the resulting revenue might have seriously mitigated the scope of the TennCare reductions. The governor, up for reelection this year and an economy-minded administrator under any circumstances, chose not to support such a measure. More crucially, perhaps, Bredesen took an adamant stand against new taxes of any kind — especially that bugaboo of the state’s recent past, an income tax — and boasted of Tennessee as a “low-tax state.”

It’s true that Tennessee’s rate of per-capita taxation is phenomenally low compared to the national average and to that of the great majority of states. The corollary is that Tennessee is a low-services state as well, and that’s nothing much to brag about.

It should be noted that Bredesen spent much of his speech insisting that his fellow state Democrats marshal their energies this year toward the goal of electing 9th Distict congressman Harold Ford Jr. to the U.S. Senate — the same Harold Ford Jr. who just voted, against the Democratic majority in Congress and along with House Republicans, to make permanent President Bush’s giveaway tax cuts for the wealthy.

It is all well and good for the Democratic Party to safeguard the sanctity of its guest list on formal party occasions. We just wish the party — and its spokespersons — would be just as resolute in upholding Democratic traditions and policies that, once upon a time, benefited the most needy and deserving in our midst.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Litmus Test

Except for a generous number of judges and judicial candidates one also sees at Republican events these days, and for the several MOR Democrats (like businessman Karl Schledwitz) active in the campaigns of district attorney general Bill Gibbons and Sheriff Mark Luttrell, there was no taint of Republicanism at the Kennedy Day Dinner held Monday night by a newly cleansed Democratic Party.

Even so, there was still a large enough crowd to nearly fill the third-floor ballroom of the University of Memphis-area Holiday Inn to hear Governor Phil Bredesen‘s keynote address. Ironically, the famously centrist governor would proselytize for a commitment to the U.S. Senate campaign of Congressman Harold Ford Jr., not exactly a stickler for Democratic orthodoxy himself.

As another irony, Memphis mayor Willie Herenton — whose loyalty to party causes and candidates has been, to put it mildly, uneven — was also on hand, at least at the beginning. But Gibbons and Luttrell were kept away, and that certainly represented a victory for the Democratic Party nominees — every countywide candidate save Mayor A C Wharton and the mysteriously invisible Circuit Court clerk nominee Roderic Ford — who had protested the possibility of the two Republican officeholders’ showing up as paying guests.

The group of nominees held two press conferences over the weekend to prevent that indignity and had gone so far as to issue an ultimatum to Shelby County Democratic chairman Matt Kuhn demanding that he disinvite Gibbons and Luttrell. That the letter bearing this demand was hand-delivered to Kuhn’s address after its 5 p.m. Saturday deadline had already expired was an unfortunate piece of bad timing.

Perhaps understandably, the normally laid-back Kuhn was perturbed by that circumstance, as well as by a statement made Sunday by Gibbons’ general-election opponent, Gail Mathes, the Democratic nominee for district attorney general. Mathes, who was serving as spokesperson for the group of nominees, said of Kuhn, “He did not return calls until the very last minute, when he may have called Mr. Gibbons — only Mr. Gibbons, and not necessarily the other incumbents, and he may have talked Mr. Gibbons into not coming.”

Kuhn would later characterize the implication that he ignored calls from Democratic nominees as a “boldfaced lie.” He said the only calls he had not returned were from Democratic activist David Upton, who played a major role in organizing the nominees’ protest, and that he had specifically and immediately returned a telephone call from Shep Wilbun, the party’s nominee for Juvenile Court clerk.

Kuhn said he had twice last week discussed with fellow Democrats the issue of a Republican presence at the dinner. This was after rumblings had started among Democrats in the blogosphere. The matter came up on Wednesday night at a planning session for the dinner and again on Thursday night at a meeting of the party’s steering committee. By then, Kuhn had evolved a policy, which the committee gave its unanimous backing to.

In essence, the party would not obstruct the attendance at the event of Gibbons and Luttrell, who had purchased tickets online and not by anybody’s invitation.

Kuhn and the committee members agreed that the two GOP officials would not be recognized from the dais or be allowed to do any electioneering. Kuhn called Luttrell and Gibbons on Friday, briefing them on the ground rules. Neither objected.

But the party nominees did, and the brouhahas of the weekend ensued. Luttrell bowed out, and an intermediary prevailed on Gibbons to do the same. (Gibbons issued a formal statement to that effect on Monday, pointedly appending to it a lengthy list of his Democratic supporters.)

When it came time for Kuhn to address Monday night’s gathering, he conveyed a tone of battle fatigue — understandable for one who, in scarcely 10 months at the helm, has had to deal with continued factionalism and case after case relating to the issue of party fidelity vs. inclusiveness.

“Are you a Republican?” he began brazenly. “If you are, as a last resort, we may ask our sergeant-at-arms … to come around … to ask about a litmus test and see if you’re a bona fide Democrat, to give you the secret handshake and hear the password.”

As the crowd began to stir with nervous energy — some of it delighted, some of it clearly not — Kuhn delivered the clincher: “That secret password is ‘minority.'” A brief and, as they say, pregnant pause ensued, punctuated with an audible gasp or two. Kuhn proceeded to detail the fact of a current Republican majority on the County Commission and segued into a castigation of the local GOP for having led the way into partisan and “divisive” local elections more than a decade ago.

The young chairman then launched into a conventional call to arms on behalf of the party’s candidates this year, and the rest of the evening proceeded along more or less traditional lines, culminating with Bredesen’s speech. But, just as Kuhn’s critics within the party had made their point, so, finally, had he made his.

The GOP “Homecoming”

The Shelby County Republicans had just put on a formal dinner of their own only two nights earlier at the Al Chymia Shrine Temple on Shelby Oaks Drive, where Republican chairman Bill Giannini had an easier time of it.

The Saturday-night event, called “A Tennessee Homecoming,” featured patriotic songs by former Miss America Kellye Cash, a skit from impressionist Paul Shanklin, remarks from former county mayor Jim Rout and former governor Winfield Dunn, and — the pièce de résistance — an appearance by actress Dixie Carter. Carter entertained the crowd with a speech that focused on Republican “values” and detailed her lifelong loyalty to the Republican Party.

State senator Jim Bryson of Franklin, the state GOP’s favored candidate for governor this year, also dropped in. A home truth was spoken, perhaps inadvertently, when Dunn spoke of his, and the party’s, gratitude to Bryson — who forfeited his chance for reelection to the state Senate — for making the governor’s race.

Said Dunn: “Surely, we’re not going to let that guy in Nashville, in the Capitol building, who’s a pretty nice guy, as everyone would acknowledge, have a free ride into the governorship for four more years. And we looked hard for a candidate.” That was an oblique way, perhaps, of saying “sacrificial lamb.”

Also on hand were the three Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate — former Chattanooga mayor Bob Corker and former congressmen Van Hilleary and Ed Bryant. The latter two, who huddled together before the event, may have been appearing in the same place for the first time since they recently agreed to avoid attacks on each other and to make common cause against the perceived “moderate” Corker.

“I’m flattered,” said Corker Saturday night.

To no one’s surprise, a straw poll at the dinner went overwhelmingly in favor of Bryant, who, as a longtime congressman from the 7th District, is something of a favorite son in Shelby County.

Last Thursday night a crowd of some 300 at the University of Memphis Law School auditorium saw the largest turnout yet of declared Democratic candidates for the open 9th District congressional seat — 12 candidates and a surrogate — at a forum sponsored by the Shelby County Democratic Party and participating Democratic clubs.

A review of that event, which generated some sparks and may have shaken up the perceived pecking order somewhat, will appear online at MemphisFlyer.com and in next week’s Flyer, along with a retrospective on the congressional campaign to date.

Categories
Opinion

Because It’s There

Many friends, neighbors, and strangers have asked me recently why I’m running for the Memphis Charter Commission. Actually, that’s a lie, but if you’re getting into politics you have to start somewhere.

The truth is, like 32 other people, one reason I’m running for the charter commission is because it’s there.

It’s there, in case you weren’t paying attention, because organizers obtained more than 10,485 signatures on petitions in 2004. Contrary to popular belief and some newspaper stories, there was no public referendum. The charter commission was created by petition signatures of 2.5 percent of the registered voters in Memphis — the first and only time that has been done.

At any rate, the charterists said they gathered thousands more signatures than they needed. I don’t doubt it. We live in a time of unprecedented ability to identify and organize communities of football fans, ping-pong players, or fed-up citizens thanks to the Internet. Gathering valid signatures still involves knocking on doors and standing on street corners because electronic signatures don’t count, at least not yet. But spreading the word and building the base are easier than they were in 1966 or 1996.

We also live in a time of unprecedented apathy when it comes to voting in local elections. In 1991, 248,093 people voted in the Memphis election for mayor and City Council. In 2003, only 104,852 people voted in the city election.

The city charter doesn’t say anything about petitioning for a charter review commission. The guidance comes from the Tennessee Constitution, which says a charter commission can be created by petition of at least 10 percent of those voting in the most recent general municipal election. In 2004, that meant 10,485 signatures.

By coincidence or design, charter commission organizers got cranking when the magic number was the lowest it had been in modern history. If petition organizers had had their way, charter commission members would have been chosen in December 2004 in conjunction with a District 7 Memphis school-board runoff election that drew a turnout of less than 5 percent.

The turnout, of course, might have been higher with charter commission candidates on the ballot. But the question was moot. The election commission reopened the qualifying process and bumped the election back nearly two years to August 3rd.

Meanwhile, another petition drive was brewing to recall Mayor Willie Herenton. The charter says a recall election requires petition signatures of at least 10 percent of the voters in the last mayoral election. (In a municipal election, some voters don’t vote for mayor, so the numbers are slightly different.) But before the petition drive started, city attorney Sara Hall said the state constitution trumps the city charter as to recall requirements. The constitutional standard is 15 percent of the registered voters in the city, which translates to something like 64,000 signatures. For whatever reasons (the section was written in 1953), the constitution imposes a higher standard for removing someone from elected office than it does for a charter or amendment.

The August election figures to draw a big turnout because the ballot is jammed with candidates for Congress, governor, state legislature, county offices, and judgeships. Oddly enough, the trigger for the charter commission election is the Memphis City Council seat vacated by Janet Hooks, the lone city office on the ballot.

The election of charter commission members may still be confusing. For one thing, voters haven’t done it before. Candidates run by district but are elected at large — in other words, you can vote for seven of them. What the commission will do or even discuss — term limits, pensions, the balance of powers, MLGW, whatever — won’t be known until the members are chosen. Any recommendations must pass legal muster and be approved by voters in a future election.

For a highly readable history of the charter and how it came to be, go to the library and get David M. Tucker’s book, Memphis Since Crump: Bossism, Blacks, and Civic Reformers 1954-1968.

My name is John Branston and I approved this message and didn’t even have to pay for it. And if you see me pounding in signs outside the election commission, please hit me with a hammer.