Tag: Election

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News News Feature

Obstacles on the Road

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

“We got started on a rough, rough road,” acknowledged county Election Commission chairman Greg Duckett at a post-election meeting last week. Duckett and his colleagues were there to take stock of the fallout from the August 3rd election and the prospects for countywide voting on November 7th.

That was some days after an interview with the Flyer (see article below) in which Duckett and Election Commission executive director James Johnson expressed relative optimism about this year’s election process, relegating the various issues that have come up to the realm of politics as usual. That was before last week’s meeting. Upon further review …

There is the matter of the official precinct-totals lists, which commission members, along with everybody else, have acknowledged are virtually unreadable.

There is the matter of impounded machines, voting cards, and other paraphernalia that cannot be reprogrammed or made ready for the next round of election activity in October — when early voting in November’s general election begins — until legal challenges from defeated candidates in the just-concluded August election are disposed of.

There is the matter of judicial oversight for the candidate appeals that, as of early this week and with the clock ticking, had not yet been arranged.

There is the matter of election software that didn’t work as advertised. There is the matter of early-voting ballots that gave voters ballot choices that were wrong for the districts they lived in. There is the matter of an out-sourced contract for handling and transportation of election machines that commissioners have started to think is needlessly expensive and inefficiently managed. And there is the matter of late-reporting boxes that changed winners to losers and which proved to have been “in-house” along with the county’s other boxes but were unaccounted for until the final few minutes of the counting process.

Considering that much of the last year’s local political news concerned a special state Senate election that had to be voided because, among other things, dead people were discovered to have voted, there is little wonder that skepticism about the voting process reigns among much of the electorate.

Besides the four losing Democratic endorsees who have formally appealed the results of the August 3rd countywide election results, there are activists who see larger, more endemic problems with the election process and are on the case, it would seem, to stay.

There are the likes of Dr. Yahweh (formerly Sweet Willie Wine) and Warren Cole, whose unresolved complaints about the new voting machines were the last item on the agenda of the outgoing Shelby County Commission and will undoubtedly be brought up again in September during the first meeting of a newly elected commission.

And there is John Harvey, the sheriff’s deputy-cum-computer maven, whose researches into irregularities were instrumental in bringing about the voiding of last year’s District 29 state Senate contest between Ophelia Ford, the presumed winner, and Terry Roland.

On his “Voting in Memphis” blog, Harvey noted the concluding item of the official post-election audit report: “We were unable to compare the increases in the protective counter per the certificate of the results to the public count per machine for the following wards and precincts due to the end of day numbers not being recorded on the certificate of results.”

There follows a list of 45 precincts across Memphis and Shelby County. What the auditors seem to be saying, in almost impenetrable language, is that errors cannot be ruled out in the vote tabulations in those 45 precincts.

The Diebold Issue

As for those conspiracy theorists who continue to suspect the Diebold Corporation’s voting machines, Duckett and the other commissioners provide at least a partial degree of support — voting unanimously to consider possible litigation against Diebold. That lawsuit would be based on the fact that Diebold oversold the commission on the effectiveness of both its hardware and its software.

“I don’t think Diebold or any of us realized the magnitude of this ballot,” was how Democrat Duckett expressed the general discontent early in last week’s meeting. An hour and a half later, after specifics of the company’s failings had received an airing, the conversation became somewhat less indulgent.

Notably, the PC cards provided by Diebold had to be reprogrammed for each voter instead of automatically meshing with the commission’s data-base of registered Shelby County voters.

“When Diebold was selling us this program, they said it would be seamless, and then when it came time for election, they said, ‘Whoops, it’s not seamless,'” according to the scornful assessment of Republican commissioner Rich Holden.

One consequence of the glitch was that during the two weeks of early voting, when voters were not restricted to their home precincts, an unspecified number of voters found themselves confronted with ballot choices that belonged to a district other than their own.

Faced with the prospect of such problems recurring during early voting for the November 7th election, Johnson tentatively arranged with the Accenture Corporation to provide a software solution that would integrate the commission’s database with individual voter cards in a one-step process.

Problem is, Accenture wants $28,000 to do the deed, and commission members felt that Diebold should be liable for that expense. With time a factor, the commission unanimously voted to authorize a go-ahead for Accenture, coupled with both a request that Diebold pay for the process and a threat to sue if they don’t.

Resolving the Appeals

The defective software provided by Diebold may be at the root of the appeals filed by four losing candidates: Juvenile Court candidate Shep Wilbun, Probate Court clerk candidate Sondra Becton, Shelby County clerk candidate Otis Jackson, and Criminal Court clerk candidate Vernon Johnson.

Or a still unexplained oversight problem could be the issue. The Election Commission consensus was that the final boxes read were checked in and accounted for but, for reasons not yet explained, not uploaded into the system when initially received.

It could merely have been, as Duckett suggested, a question of the order in which election personnel at the precinct level did things — whether the tapes were dated before or after they were prepared for transport, the matter of drive time to the commission headquarters, the length of check-in lines once they were delivered, and so forth.

Complicating the issue of resolving the appeals further is the fact that, as commission attorney Monice Hagler Tate explained, Chancellor Walter Evans, who issued a temporary restraining order against disturbing the election materials (both hardware and software), had recused himself from the case, leaving it to the state Supreme Court to appoint a judge.

With the hearing on Evans’ order set for this week, Hagler said, assistant county attorney Danny Presley had advised that the hearing would likely have to be continued.

Looking Ahead to November

So long as Evans’ restraining order is in effect and the election appeals remain unresolved, the Diebold machines and the voter cards used in August are tied up and cannot be made ready to use in the November election. On the software count alone, that could mean the emergency requisition of as many as 1,000 of the computerized voter cards.

As for the difficulty of extracting useful precinct figures, this, too, is a bone being picked with Diebold, which should, Holden suggested, be able to facilitate aligning voting results so they can be reported precinct-by-precinct in real time, at least unofficially.

As of now, this would be “hard to do on the Web site,” said James Johnson. Even the rough totals released on CD by the commission require a complicated and laborious manual parsing — “impractical” for reporting purposes, as Duckett conceded.

At one point in last week’s meeting, Duckett reviewed one of the several problems connected with the election process and said, “Houston, we have a problem.” Change “Houston” to “Memphis and Shelby County,” and many would agree.

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Opinion Viewpoint

GOP Troubles

The Democrats are determined to make the election of 2006 a referendum on Bush and the war in Iraq. And, as of now, that is how history will likely record it. But beneath the surface of the national election, a different plebiscite is being held within the conservative movement on the ideology George Bush imposed on Ronald Reagan’s party.

What are the elements of Bushite neoconservatism?

First, an interventionist foreign policy, using U.S. power to impose democracy and “end tyranny on this earth.” Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon are the laboratories and proving grounds.

Second, “big-government conservatism,” as seen in the deficits, the dearth of vetoes, soaring social spending in wartime, the bulking up of the Department of Education and “faith-based initiatives.”

Third, an immigration policy featuring amnesty and a “path to citizenship” for 12 million illegal aliens, pardons for all businesses that hired illegals, and outsourcing of immigration policy to corporate America to go abroad and hire workers for jobs here.

Fourth, a trade policy rooted in the belief that it does not matter where goods are produced or whether Americans produce them. What matters is unimpeded global commerce, where the consumer is king and gets all the goods he wants at the cheapest possible price.

On these four mega-questions, Republicans are as divided as they were in the days of Rockefeller and Goldwater. Wherever “conservatives” stand — whether Old Right or neocon, supply-sider or deficit hawk, “America first” or global democrat, big government or small government — the returns of Bush’s policies are largely in and the outcome is unlikely to change. And this is why Bush and the GOP are in trouble, and neoconservatism is in the dock.

The altarpiece of the Bush foreign policy is Iraq. American dead are at 2,600, the wounded at 18,000. Three hundred billion dollars has been plunged into the war. Yet, Iraq is a bloodier, more dangerous place now than it has been since the fall of Baghdad. IED attacks on U.S. troops are at record levels — three-and-a-half years after Baghdad fell.

The Bush democracy campaign has brought stunning electoral gains for the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Hamas in Palestine, Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq. Our ally in Afghanistan Hamid Kharzai is today little more than mayor of Kabul, as the Taliban roam the southeast and coalition casualties reach the highest levels since liberation five years ago. North Korea and Iran remain defiant on their nuclear programs. Vladimir Putin is befriending every regime at odds with Bush, from Tehran to Damascus to Caracas.

Unless we grade foreign policy on the nobility of the intent, it is not credible to call Bush’s foreign policy a sucess. The Lebanon debacle, once U.S. complicity is exposed, is unlikely to win anyone a Nobel.

Bush’s trade policy has left us with annual deficits of $800 billion with the world and $200 billion with Beijing. Once the greatest creditor nation in history, we are now the greatest debtor. U.S. manufacturing has been hollowed out with thousands of plants closed and 3 million industrial jobs vanishing since Bush took office.

As for Bush immigration policy, the nation is in virtual rebellion. Six million aliens have been caught at the Mexican border since he took office. One in 12 had a criminal record. In April and May, millions of Hispanics marched through U.S. cities demanding amnesty and all rights of citizenship for aliens who are breaking the law by even being here. Bush and the Senate are in paralysis, appeasing the lawbreakers by offering amnesties and by opposing House demands that the president seal the border.

While the economy has been running well since 2003, the real wages of working Americans have not kept pace with the portfolios of the clients of Lawrence Kudlow. Industrial states, like Ohio, could be killing fields of the GOP in November.

To the neocon guru Irving Kristol, “The historical task and political purpose of neoconservatism would seem to be … to convert the Republican Party and American conservatism in general into a new kind of conservative politics suitable to governing a modern democracy.”

With some of us, the tutoring never took, but the neocons surely did convert George W.

How’s your boy doing, Irving?

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Jaking It

Ninth District congressional nominee Steve Cohen, who has grappled with a variety of health and family issues since his victory in the August 3rd Democratic primary, has some political ones as well.

Cohen happened to bump into his party’s U.S. Senate nominee, Harold Ford Jr., at a Midtown hostelry last week. And, oh yes, during the three minutes or so that the two men of the hour had for a brief but cordial (or, in diplomatic parlance, “correct”) conversation, the question of the hour came up.

The longtime state senator from Midtown had the opportunity to ask the outgoing 9th District congressman directly: Will you endorse me?

Ford’s answer: “I can support you, but I won’t endorse you.” (If that sounds ever so much like John Kerry‘s famous equivocation about an Iraq spending measure, “I voted for it before I voted against it,” you have to remember that Ford was an early supporter — a national co-chairman, in fact — of the Massachusetts senator’s late presidential campaign.)

The congressman then went on to explain what Cohen and everybody else already knew: He had a brother in the race, whom he apparently wouldn’t be endorsing either.

Days before, during his post-primary statewide bus tour, the barnstorming Ford had been quoted in the Nashville Tennessean as saying he was a Democrat who supported Democrats — and, as Ford explained, both Cohen and Jake Ford, the congressman’s brother, who is in the congressional race as an independent, were Democrats.

That was that, and to Cohen, as to the Tennessean earlier, Ford coupled his reservation about the congressional race with a profession of loyalty — or “love,” as Ford put it to Cohen — for Connecticut U.S. senator Joe Lieberman, who, having lost his primary race to party insurgent Ned Lamont, is now running as an independent as he continues to seek reelection.

In statewide political circles, Representative Ford’s position on the two races has generally been regarded as a dilemma. It is, of course, equally possible to construe each of those races as providing the congressman cover for dealing (or not dealing) with the other.

Meanwhile, speculation as to the import of all this has become a cottage industry among political observers. Some emphasize the value of the congressman’s coattails to his brother Jake. Others suggest that continued irresolution on Representative Ford’s part could snag his coattails in such a way as to damage Democratic unity and the prospects for his own victory.

As of now, the congressman is running well — with his campaign trumpeting a new poll showing him with a two-point lead over Republican senatorial nominee Bob Corker.

• The aforesaid Jake Ford, whose congressional campaign remained merely conceptual until the Democratic primary was finished, now looks more and more like the real thing. He was seen last week loading a pickup truck with yard signs. The signs — accented in black, white, and blue and featuring the candidate’s name along with an image of the U.S. Capitol — shortly began sprouting in South and Southeast Memphis.

There is also now a “Jake Ford for Congress” Web site — bare bones for now but featuring several category heads that will presumably be filled in later.

The last week has also seen the first stirrings of an organized effort on Jake Ford’s behalf among a few traditional Democrats in the African-American community.

One such is William Larsha, a sometime local columnist and veteran member of the Shelby County Democratic executive committee, who this week published two brief essays on the blog of Thaddeus Matthews arguing that Jake Ford should be supported by blacks in order to preserve an African-American congressional seat for Tennessee.

The influence within the party of Larsha, approaching 80 and with no particular affiliation with any of the Democrats’ local factions, is marginal. But in the absence so far of major black defections to independent Ford, he becomes the equivalent of the proverbial flag that’s run up a pole to see who might salute it.

And what of Republican congressional candidate Mark White? Some see him as profiting from a prospective Cohen-Ford split; others foresee defections from his camp to that of Cohen.

Trying Times: Wearing a gray pin-striped suit, a businesslike striped tie, and — ultimately — a look of anguish, Michael Hooks Sr.,

Michael Hooks Sr.

whose resignation as Shelby County commissioner had taken effect at 12:01 a.m., formally pleaded guilty Monday in federal court to accepting $24,000 in bribes during the course of the FBI’s Tennessee Waltz sting.

“An error in judgment affects a lifetime,” a visibly contrite Hooks said to reporters afterward. “I have nobody to blame but me. I don’t blame the sting operation, I don’t blame the set-up, I blame Commissioner Hooks. And for that, I will pay for it the rest of my life.”

Hours later, state senator Kathryn Bowers, another Tennessee Waltz indictee, postponed her own day of reckoning by seeking and receiving a delay until September 5th for a “final report” in which she will state her plea. Her attorney, William Massey, later suggested, somewhat meaningfully, that a trial might not be necessary.

Presiding in the cases of both Hooks and Bowers is U.S. district judge John D. Breen, who earlier had approved a plea agreement between Hooks and the U.S. Attorney’s Office and set December 6th as a sentencing date.

In his brief statement to reporters, Hooks went on to say that he took “sole responsibility” for actions, committed in 2004 and 2005, that resulted in his taking a total of $24,000 in FBI cash from individuals working under cover and posing as representatives of a fictitious computer-disposal firm known as E-Cycle Management. “I knew better and should have done better,” Hooks said. He said his family had been affected by the scandal, and he was ready to accept “any judgment that’s handed down.”

Announcing the terms of Hooks’ plea agreement in court, assistant U.S. attorney Tim DiScenza briefly recounted the series of incidents, all documented by audio- and videotaped evidence, in which Hooks had asked for and accepted cash to help repair a personal “deficit” of $38,000. Asked by Judge Breen if DiScenza’s narration had been accurate, Hooks replied, “Basically.”

Attorney Steve Farese appeared on Hooks’ behalf, along with lawyer Marc Garber from Atlanta. Farese told reporters later that the government’s allegations, followed by an indictment of Hooks as part of the Tennessee Waltz sting, had “killed [Hooks’] soul.” He said that he and Garber had carefully screened the evidence and later reviewed it with Hooks. “I sat down for three straight days with Michael, and after I let him see transcripts and let him see recordings, he knew at that time that a trial was simply out of the question,” Farese said.

Neither Hooks nor his two lawyers gave any indication as to whether Hooks might become a principal in subsequent trials of others indicted in the Tennessee Waltz. One of these is his son, Michael Hooks Jr., charged with similar actions while a member of the Memphis school board.

In the afternoon hearing for Bowers, attorney Massey successfully sought a continuance for his client on grounds that, with the completion of discovery (the final receipt of relevant evidence, including audio- and videotapes from the government), Bowers’ team needed time to digest everything.

Asked by reporters if Bowers might consider a plea other than Not Guilty, Massey said, “We’re always reevaluating our position, in light of everyone else, in light of the discovery we’ve had.”

Though she seemed chipper, especially in comparison with the clearly depressed Hooks, Bowers acknowledged to reporters that “this overall ordeal has really taken a serious toll on my health.”

Question: If Bowers — on the basis of the kind of well-documented evidence that convicted former state senator Roscoe Dixon — also ends up having to cop a plea, can former state senator John Ford, considered the biggest fish snared in the FBI’s net, possibly avoid doing the same?

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Cover Feature News

Next Up for the Charter Commission

Running for the Memphis Charter Commission, as I did, was like running for jury duty. If you wanted it too much you probably shouldn’t have it.

Expectations should be low for the unpaid Charter Commission, and that would be so no matter who won last week’s election of seven members, who were running by City Council district but chosen at-large. George Brown, a former judge and school-board member, figures to provide leadership and a steady hand. Based on his public comments and answers to questionnaires, Brown takes a narrow view of the commission’s powers. Another leader figures to be city councilman Myron Lowery, the leading overall vote-getter.

The other five members have little or no political experience or working knowledge of city government or the charter. They tend to have activist agendas. Janis Fullilove favors more collaboration between city and county school boards and law enforcement agencies.

Sylvia Cox favors elimination of city-council super districts and requiring council members to hold at least four community forums annually.

Sharon Webb is for combining the school boards and mayors and says, “the City Council should never come before the people divided. They should vote by consensus and not by majority rule.”

Any charter recommendations must be approved by voters in another election, probably some time in 2007. They can be presented as separate items. Rhodes College political-science professor Steve Wirls says that having more than two proposals on a ballot tends to overwhelm voters.

But the Charter Commission will ultimately decide what and how much to recommend. City councilman Tom Marshall says he will suggest a budget of $100,000 for the commission.

The push for term limits, such as it was, may have lost a little of its steam. Six of seven commissioners are black, and the 1994 Shelby County adoption of term limits was driven by white Republicans. Mayor Willie Herenton and most of the black members of the City Council oppose them, although if Herenton follows through on his promise to run for a fifth term, that could reignite the issue. In their questionnaire responses, Lowery, Willie Brooks, and Webb indicated some level of interest in term limits.

The way the Charter Commission and its membership came to be is probably more instructive and historically significant than anything it proposes. The idea was hatched by John Malmo and John Lunt in 2004. They got at least 10,600 signatures of Memphis voters — a very low threshold because of the low turnout in the 2003 mayoral election — and hoped to wrap up the whole process by the end of that year.

Had they been able to ramrod through the election of members in a 2004 school-board runoff election, they might have elected some or all of the members of the Concerned Citizens group that wound up getting blanked instead — Malmo included.

“We knew we would live or die as a ticket,” Malmo said last week.

They died, big time. So did Memphis Tomorrow and its political offspring, Coalition for a Better Memphis. Their voter guide at least gave voters some indication of where candidates were coming from, but only about 350 people visited the Web site, and it’s doubtful that many of them read all the questionnaires. The candidate with the highest rating, Dean Deyo, got less than 6,000 votes, finishing dead last in Position Two.

But in an election in which voters knew little if anything about most candidates, the best strategy was to be endorsed by one or more of the groups claiming to represent the Democratic Party in some incarnation and passing out ballots at the polls which showed the chosen candidates’ names and faces.

John Branston, a Flyer senior editor, was a candidate in the Position 5 race won by former Circuit Court judge Brown.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Need to Know

Who won the elections last Thursday? Well, we know — sort of. Or think we do. But so many of them, in late-breaking county-wide races, especially, were disposed of by razor-thin margins that we — and the candidates who ran in them — would surely like to know what the precinct-by-precinct totals were. And, as of press time Tuesday, those totals were not forthcoming. This was five days after voting, mind you — and five days before the time period for filing appeals will expire.

Now, we like happy endings, and hopefully those precinct vote totals will have long since been made public by the time you read this — especially since state election coordinator Brook Thompson advises candidates to consider having their appeals on file by Friday, “to be on the safe side,” as he puts it — even though the weekend carries with it an additional grace period of one day.

Monday is it. No further reckoning past that point.

Under those circumstances, the earlier the better. Candidates, voters, and news media in Davidson County (Nashville) had full access to precinct totals almost as soon as balloting had ceased — well before this past weekend, in any case. Was it because the Davidson County Election Commission opted for new ESS machines this year, while the Shelby County Election Commission, given a choice between ESS and Diebold, chose machines manufactured by the latter, instead?

Probably not. That sounds too pat, even for the most suspicious conspiracy theorists among us. (Diebold results have been challenged in several states, and a former executive of that company was once quoted as saying he would use any means at his disposal to get candidate George W. Bush elected president.)

What then was the problem locally? James Johnson, executive director of the Election Commission, said on Monday that his office was “ahead of the game” on getting the precinct totals ready, and that local auditors from Watkins Uberall were already on the case verifying them. They would be ready by Tuesday morning. Fine, dandy. Except they weren’t.

We don’t want to be judgmental. All five members of our Election Commission — three Democrats, two Republicans; three men, two women — are conscientious, dedicated individuals. As are Johnson and his staff. And all were faced with a brand-new ball game, with the longest and most complicated ballot in Shelby County history and using new, unfamiliar machines to boot.

All we urge is that next time — meaning this November, when conditions should be far easier — we should do better. The public and the candidates deserve to know everything they can, as soon as they can.

Categories
Cover Feature News

The Big One

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Early voting for the August 3rd Shelby County election ballot has been brisk, and the news has been good for some candidates — for example, state senator Steve Cohen, whose 9th District congressional candidacy is surely profiting from a disproportionate turnout of white Democrats at Poplar Corridor and East Memphis sites (See also Politics, p. 15). The same figures may not be so comforting to other candidates — like Division 5 General Sessions judge Betty Thomas, a vigorous campaigner who, as a first-time judicial candidate, won her seat on the bench eight years ago in a multi-candidate field. She now finds herself matched one-on-one against newcomer Evan Nahmias, who could well draw heavily from the same precincts.

Many a presumed sure-thing outcome could be imperiled if the demographics of that early-voting trend continue to and through Election Day, which will still be the occasion for most of the voting. Rarely has so much advance fear and trembling attended an election as is the case with the mammoth August 3rd ballot, with its well-over-100 races to decide no matter where one lives in Shelby County. Everybody, it seems, has heard the horror stories about misadventures, delays, and errors connected with the new Diebold machines that are being employed for the first time (see “Vote Early and Often,” p. 25). Such problems, along with long lines at the polls, could well be a disincentive for working-class voters who don’t have the available time to vote at odd hours or endure lengthy delays.

Other factors that could affect the voting include two big races of transcendent interest. One is the 9th District congressional race where presumed leader Cohen faces a field of 14 other Democrats, four or five considered capable of catching up or coming close with a final spurt. The other is the Republican U.S. Senate primary, in which both local longtime favorite Ed Bryant, a former 7th District congressman, and newly ascendant Bob Corker, the deep-pocketed former mayor of Chattanooga, will be working at revving up their strength in Shelby County. (A third candidate, former 4th District congressman Van Hilleary, was largely confining his efforts to Middle and East Tennessee.)

Local Republicans had been at least as grateful as was Democrat Harold Ford Jr. in April for the last-minute withdrawal of Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Rosalind Kurita, a state senator from Clarksville. The departing 9th District congressman thereby became this party’s de facto nominee and could husband his resources for the fall instead of working overtime to boost primary turnout.

That fact meant that Republicans, who have predominated among local countywide officeholders since the advent of partisan elections in the mid-’90s, had a fighting chance to hold on to their gains against what has been proclaimed for two full decades as an inevitable demographic tide favoring Democrats. To be sure, a steady out-migration of the white (and black) middle class had, at least in theory, diluted the Republican share of the total Shelby County vote. But the GOP has so far managed to prevail, at least in countywide elections, by superior turnout on Election Day.

It won’t be so this year, insists veteran Democratic activist David Upton, who points to a contrary trend that has seen black inner-city turnout rise somewhat disproportionately in city-wide and presidential elections.

Jackson Baker

Happily locked in a Wharton sandwich recently was judicial candidate Janet Lansky Shipman, endorsed by the county mayor and his wife, lawyer Ruby Wharton

“[D]isgraceful and shameful disgraces … ”

Turnout is only one factor to reckon with. A number of races seem unusually responsive to the nature of the coattails that this or that candidate happens to be attached to. This is especially the case with the ostensibly nonpartisan judicial races.

As an example, former prosecutor and current county personnel director Janet Lansky Shipman, one of four unusually qualified candidates in the race for the open Division 7 Criminal Court seat, was boosted by an unusual twofer. Hers was the only radio ad of the political season that could legitimately summon up the spirit of the King, Elvis Presley himself, who had famously purchased his threads at the Lansky family’s Beale St. clothing store. And she also claimed support from the mayor — Shelby County chief executive A C Wharton, who pointedly endorsed her late in the campaign.

Not bad, although rival Lee Coffee, an assistant district attorney, also has a number of high-profile endorsements, and the two other candidates, attorney Larry H. Nance and federal public defender Doris Holt, also are well regarded.

This year’s judicial races were unusually dependent on other people’s say-so, with two bar associations, two political parties, innumerable ad hoc groups, and several private individuals offering up a confusing mélange of slates and endorsement tickets.

In previous years, judicial contests, conducted according to official canons that would have put the Marquis of Queensberry to sleep, had been staid, formal, and not terribly revealing. But this year’s have been characterized by an unprecedented degree of invective, involving not only quarreling blocs of backers but intramural animosities within political organizations and occasional name-calling between the competing candidates. The most glaring instance of the latter came early on when Deep Throat-era prosecutor Larry Parrish decided that his political comeback effort required a full-scale verbal assault on his opponent, Division 8 Circuit Court judge D’Army Bailey, a former Berkeley radical turned establishmentarian.

Parrish contrived to append to a routine legal pleading a direct attack on Bailey, an occasional actor in movies (including The People v. Larry Flynt, a biopic about the publisher of Hustler magazine). “As part of my campaign,” Parrish suggested in a confusing (and perhaps confused) passage of his affidavit, a link was made from Bailey to the pimp/hustler problem manifested in another Memphis-made movie (apparently last year’s Hustle & Flow, which the thespian/judge had in fact not appeared in). Said Parrish: “I will reiterate how disappointed I was in being told that in May 2006 Judge Bailey appeared in public (at a Memphis In May event) wearing a T-shirt on which the word ‘Mafia’ was printed and garbed in flashy jewelry typical of Memphis pimps, giving dignity and legitimacy to two of the more disgraceful and shameful disgraces this city must bear.”

Yes, this really happened. Bailey’s only recorded response at the time was to say, “This guy is going to make the lawyers love me.” And, sure enough, the incumbent, who had always taken his lumps in annual Bar Association ratings, easily outdid Parrish in this year’s published evaluation of candidates by members of the Memphis bar.

But nonfederal judges in Shelby County are elected, and it clearly would take more than approbation by lawyers, official or otherwise, to put a candidate over in this year’s highly politicized atmosphere (For a commentary on judges and politics in the context of the election process, see retired Judge Robert Lanier‘s Viewpoint column, “Judging the Justices,” p. 17). Politics being politics, personal characteristics count for something. One of the most closely watched races is that for Chancellor, Part 2, which matches incumbent Arnold Goldin, well-regarded across partisan lines, against newcomer Carlee McCullough, currently a contract-compliance officer for the city of Memphis. Both contenders possess more than their share of charm, but Goldin is more heavily credentialed.

Gale Jones Carson, head of this year’s Democratic countywide coordinated campaign, discounts the importance of credentials, noting that many of the judges now officiating in Shelby County lacked a lengthy resume but have performed well once on the bench. It’s the ultimate learn-by-doing job, she maintains.

Credentials were certainly not the only issue back in June, when a lawyer-dominated screening committee proposed a slate of judicial endorsees to the Shelby County Democratic Party’s executive committee. That meeting descended into chaos as epithets were exchanged and several of the screening committee’s recommendations were undone.

In many cases, race was suspected as a motive. Committee members and onlookers at the rowdy Democratic endorsement meeting resorted frequently to accusations of that sort — and that debate continued in the public prints, or at least in the blog portion of it, where the debate continues to rage.

Jackson Baker

Judicial-race rivals Deborah Henderson (left) and Regina Morrison Newman (right) flank Charter Commission candidate Sharon Webb.

Blog Warfare, Internal Threats, and a Showdown or Two

An intriguing footnote to that Democratic meeting: One of the interested bystanders was lawyer Richard Fields, who was overheard observing to longstanding party man (and fellow lawyer) David Cocke: “Y’all ought to get rid of Del Gill.” Gill is the professionally obstreperous party gadfly whose sting usually ends up being turned on himself. At that moment, he was interrupting proceedings every 30 seconds with this or that motion or complaint. When Cocke merely shrugged and said, “He keeps getting elected!” Fields persisted. “Y’all ought to kick him off the committee.” What made that exchange both interesting and ironic was that Fields, a maverick in his own right, had been the only committee member kicked off in recent memory — for having been one of Republican Terry Roland‘s litigators in legal actions opposing Democrat Ophelia Ford‘s election last year in a special state Senate race.

In any case, Fields was not through with the matter. He promptly circulated copies of a letter to members of the Memphis bar containing his own judicial endorsements — as well as embarrassing information about the professional and personal affairs of candidates he disapproved of. (This exhibit, too, may be perused atMemphisFlyer.com.) Fields’ letter galvanized blogger Thaddeus Matthews into turning the tables on several of Fields’ picks, outing some of their own previously closeted skeletons. Nor did Fields himself escape retribution, as Matthews’ blog went on to charge the lawyer himself with grievous private misdeeds. (In this Google-happy age, readers interested in the further details of this and related controversies will have no trouble locating them on the Internet.)

Republicans, meanwhile, experienced their own internal frets. One of them concerned the activities of one Angelo Cobrasci (see “Right of Right,” p. 21), who has displaced longtime party maverick Jerry Cobb as the chief irritant to the local GOP establishment. But whereas Cobb has long been considered a nitpicker, Cobrasci was suspected of wanting to turn a blowtorch on the party’s thin-skinned sensibilities. Not only was he a campaign manager for the independent gubernatorial candidacy of Minuteman leader Carl “Two Feathers” Whitaker (whose earlier effort to run as a Republican had been cold-shouldered by the party brass), but Cobrasci, as impresario of the Shelby County Coalition of Conservative Republicans, saw fit to put out his own sample ballot of endorsement choices in competition with the official Republican one.

Although there are big-ticket races for governor, senator, and Congress on the ballot, an unusual amount of attention has been focused on the District 5 race for the Shelby County Commission. That race, for the seat being vacated by Republican Bruce Thompson, features Democrat Steve Mulroy versus Republican Jane Pierotti, and it is regarded as decisive in the matter of which party controls the commission. (Republicans have predominated over Democrats by a 7-6 majority for the last several terms.) A victory for Mulroy would reverse that ratio.

In a year’s time, Mulroy, a law professor at the University of Memphis, has become widely known for his involvement in the cause of voting-machine reform, in local attempts to salvage the Libertyland amusement park, and on behalf of Ophelia Ford in her attempt to hang on to the District 29 state Senate seat. Pierotti has the advantage of a notable last name (hers by virtue of a since-dissolved marriage), and she is known as a successful business consultant. Turnout will clearly loom large in the outcome in a district which voted 63 percent for Democrat presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004.

Jackson Baker

Henri Brooks is wearing more than one candidate hat this year.

One other commission race of interest is that for Position 2, in District 2, between Democrat Henri Brooks and Republican Novella Smith Arnold. This race was reviewed in last week’s Politics column, which (mea culpa) omitted the salient fact that Brooks is simultaneously running for reelection to her District 92 seat in the state House of Representatives (See Editorial, p. 16). Though clearly an underdog, Arnold is well known as a longtime social activist and former broadcaster and has some degree of support among Democrats. Her chances were further boosted over the last week by endorsements ranging from The Commercial Appeal to the Stonewall Democrats, a gay/lesbian activist group.

Other Important Races

Governor — In theory, both parties have gubernatorial primaries on the ballot, but for the Democrats that’s really just a figure of speech. And the Republican race, too, is largely pro forma.

The GOP party brass didn’t get down on their knees and plead with first-term state senator Jim Bryson of Franklin to forgo his reelection race and run for governor without making sure he would have such support as can be mustered up. (Lawyer Mark Albertini somehow didn’t grasp this. Chattanoogan Albertini, who was arrested at a Knoxville intersection last weekend for campaigning while intoxicated, has been the most active of six other Republicans who are at least nominal opponents for Bryson.)

Jackson Baker

GOP gubernatorial candidate Jim Bryson greets a small band of the faithful

But one had to wonder about Bryson’s establishment support when he came to town on a fly-around a couple of weeks ago and the only press that was at the Wilson Air terminal to greet him was … moi. And the only reason I was there was because someone from the state Democratic Party in Nashville called me up with an advance retort to Bryson. Nobody acting on Bryson’s behalf ever got around to notifying the Memphis media he was going to be here.

Governor Phil Bredesen, on the other hand, is always well advanced and attended to by Democrats when he comes to town, and not just because he’s an incumbent. The last Zogby poll showed him up over Bryson, 58 percent to 22 percent. For the record, the old warhorse John Jay Hooker is one of three nominal primary opponents for the governor.

Estimated financial resources on hand show $4.5 million for Bredesen, $500,000 for Bryson, and zilch for anybody else.

U.S. Senate — Hooker has his (somewhat frayed) hat in the Democratic Senate primary, too, along with four others. But only one of those four, Memphis congressman Ford, is really in the race. For all practical purposes, Ford has the nomination in hand.

There are enough Republican candidates to make a foursome at bridge, but the unknown Tate Harrison will just have to be the dummy. Active hands are held by former Chattanooga mayor Bob Corker and former congressmen Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary. The well-heeled Corker probably has most of the trumps. (See recent Flyer story, “Senate 2006: It’s Crunch Time!” in “Political Beat” at MemphisFlyer.com.)

Shelby County Mayor — The simple facts of the matter are that Democrat A C Wharton is the closest thing to an invincible candidate in Shelby County government, and though mayoral opponent John Willingham, the Republican nominee, can make a substantial case for mismanagement and duplicity by a generation of “good ole boys,” the simple arithmetic of politics (as well as a charm quotient that is unexcelled by anybody else running locally) weighs heavily in favor of Wharton, who has been dexterous in distancing himself from Willingham’s bill of particulars.

Sheriff — Incumbent Mark Luttrell is a smooth customer and a genius at public relations. The former chief of county corrections, who seems to attend every available political venue, makes a convincing case that he has rendered both the county jail and the corrections center more efficient at less cost and has removed the jail from federal supervision. He is also quick enough on his feet to have disengaged himself from the contentious issue of privatization.

Surprisingly smooth in his own right, Democrat Reginald French makes a plausible criticism that Luttrell is concerned more with “locking them up” than with crime-prevention per se or with intervention programs. It remains a fact that Luttrell has very serious crossover support from influential Democrats and that French has some baggage he hasn’t quite disposed of — notably a tire-slashing incident several years ago. Deputy John Harvey, who has uncovered beaucoup voting abuses, is running as a write-in and could make waves.

District Attorney General — Even more so than Luttrell, incumbent Republican Bill Gibbons has across-the-board support that includes several prominent Democrats. Gail Mathes, the Democratic nominee, is making a spirited challenge, however — one based on what she sees as ineffective law enforcement behind a public-relations facade.

Juvenile Court Clerk — One of the most watched races features a rematch between Republican incumbent Steve Stamson and Democratic challenger Shep Wilbun, a former clerk who was defeated by Stamson four years ago.

Stamson is well liked and respected, and his claims of running an efficient, less costly operation ring true, but Wilbun acquired a martyr’s mantle, especially in the African-American community, after a 2002 election-year prosecution for “official misconduct” was dropped, presumably for lack of evidence. Stamson has to hope that a recent burst of Tennessee Waltz publicity about malfeasance by some of Wilbun’s former employees will curb some of the Democrat’s momentum.

Shelby County Clerk — Republican Debbie Stamson, wife of the aforementioned Steve Stamson and a longtime deputy administrator under outgoing clerk Jayne Creson, has Creson’s blessing and a presumed edge over gracious Democrat Otis Jackson, who has promised, if elected, to consider re-employing Stamson.

Circuit Court Clerk — Another Republican with an apparent leg up is incumbent clerk Jimmy Moore, who has the support of the Democratic Ford clan (county commissioner Joe Ford Sr. is his campaign chairman!) against one Roderic Ford (no relation), who is widely regarded as little more than a stand-in for maverick Democrat Del Gill‘s personal ambitions.

[image-5 ]

Criminal Court Clerk — The issue between GOP incumbent Bill Key and Democratic challenger Vernon Johnson Sr. will be resolved by turnout numbers, pure and simple.

Probate Court Clerk — Turnout will also be a key factor in this race between longtime antagonists (who have had issues both in the courts and at the ballot box). Republican incumbent Chris Thomas‘ incumbency will be weighed against Sondra Becton‘s lengthy former experience as an assistant in the office.

Register — This nondescript (if, like other clerkships, well-paying) job will most likely come down to turnout, though incumbent Republican Tom Leatherwood, who is opposed by Democrat Coleman Thompson, boasts that he has reduced overhead in an office that is, in any case, run on the basis of fees collected, not out of the county’s general fund.

Juvenile Court Judge — This race has been a dogfight between four of the five candidates. City judge Jayne Chandler has been largely a no-show (though she did pick up the endorsement of TV judge Joe Brown, a former Criminal Court judge). The favorite is outgoing Republican state senator Curtis Person, who has served for some years as a chief aide to retiring Judge Kenneth Turner. Person, whose friendships range across party lines, is backed by Turner and has the local GOP’s endorsement, as well. His chief competition may come from Democratic endorsee Veronica Coleman, the former U.S. attorney who has crossover potential herself, although another city judge, Earnestine Hunt Dorse, aided by the capable campaign efforts of her husband, longtime activist Fred Dorse, has significant support, too — especially in the black community. Not to be overlooked either is lawyer William Winchester, who, along with African-Americans Coleman and Dorse, has levied reasoned complaints about several issues that all these candidates perceive as incompletely addressed by the court, like its recent tendency to remand more and more juvenile cases to one of the county’s criminal courts.

Jackson Baker

Juvenile Court judicial candidate Earnestine Hunt Dorse (left) with friends

(Note: For more complete information on these and other races on the August 3rd ballot — including those for the Charter Commission — consult “Political Beat” at

MemphisFlyer.com, where updates will appear until Election Day.)

Categories
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.

Categories
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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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.