Tag: Election

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Politics Politics Feature

American Gladiators: More Notes on the Iowa Caucus Round

DES MOINES — It will be said – all-purpose scofflaw
Christopher Hitchens had already said it on the eve of the caucuses – that the
results in Iowa could not be trusted because they were not the usual kind of
one-man, one-vote suffrage and because the various candidates’ camps had offered
inducements to supporters. Free rides to the caucus sites, modest souvenir
goodies, things like that.

Hitchens should have spent Thursday night in Cedar Falls,
the northeast Iowa sister city to Waterloo, where Leigh Bailey Kroeger
(disclaimer: my niece) presided over Democrats caucusing at Ward 3, Precinct 2.
“It was like a freight train,” she said of the teeming turnout for Barack Obama.
They were the lion’s share of the record 258 caucusers that showed up, and it
was obvious nobody baited the Illinois senator’s adherents to come, and that
nothing could have kept them from coming (though even the weather, clear
and only modestly cold by mid-winter Iowa standards, put up little resistance).

Democratic caucuses in Iowa are famous for the
horse-trading that goes on mid-way when lower-rung candidates fail to get the
necessary 15 percent share of the turnout to remain “viable” and their
supporters are free to join one of the other candidates’ camps.
Normally, there’s a lot of pleading and cajoling. Not so Thursday night. The
Obama people made it clear they didn’t need to get down on bended knee, and the
designated representatives of Hillary Clinton and John Edwards, for their part,
just couldn’t make the sale.

“It was more like an American Gladiator contest than the
usual caucus give-and -take,” said Kroeger.

Hence, there was much less changing sides than usual,
although Kroeger herself, a Biden supporter, organized a modest switch-over to
Hillary Clinton. “She was trailing way behind Edwards, and I like all three of
the top three, so I thought it would be appropriate to keep them as close
together as possible.”

In the end, all that did was give Clinton two delegates to
go with Edwards’ two. Obama had a comfortably disproportionate five.

Talk about a “coalition of the willing!” Obama’s,
incidentally, while youth-oriented to some degree, was made up almost entirely
of white-bread middle-class Iowans – a rebuke in advance to any notion that his
candidacy depends on – or is even appreciably predicated on – a black, urban
constituency.

Most of the pundits and the established media seem to grasp
that – though they haven’t escaped their census-takers’ mentality nearly so well
in the case of Republican winner Mike Huckabee. Only Pat Buchanan, of the
talking heads on TV Thursday night, seemed to understand the obvious – that much
of Huckabee’s vote came measurably from his message of economic populism, aimed
at the country’s worker bees and those familiar, as he once said, with “the grub
of the earth on their hands.”

New Hampshire has its share of those as well, its different urban-Eastern
demographics and its straight-out primary system notwithstanding, and Huckabee
has at least a fair chance of holding up his end there, too, against rivals Mitt
Romney, John McCain, and Fred Thompson. Rudy Giuliani is still AWOL, and anti-war
libertarian Ron Paul is a wild card. As for Obama the freight train – the trick
for Clinton and Edwards is just to stay close enough to keep the game in play –
lest the game simplify itself too quickly to American Gladiator. Singular.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Smashing Victories by “Unorthodox” Candidates Obama and Huckabee

CREDIT: jb

DES MOINES, IA –“They’re all a bunch of goops,” said the
check-out lady at QuikTrip [sic], the Interstate 80 truck stop that doubles as a
passing-good deli. Meaning politicians. And someone suggested to her that this
was exactly why Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee had just won
their party’s caucuses in Iowa so handily.

Neither is the same old goop. A mixed-marriage
son of Kenya and Kansas on the one hand. A Baptist preacher with a yen for
populist economics on the other. Each articulate to a preternatural degree.
Each appealing, both overtly and by their very beings, to the political
crossover vote. Each defeating his main opponent by the margin of 9 percent.

Each an example of the improbable proving
inevitable, in victor Obama’s phrase.

“We are one nation. We are one people. And our
time for change has come,” the Democratic victor said, in a speech that touched
so many bases and was said so well that it put to shame his 2004 convention
speech – the one that put the then new senator from Illinois on the map.

Yes, Obama won the “youth” vote
— .57 percent of the under-30’s – and Huckabee got the evangelicals – 45
percent of a base that, in Iowa, amounted to 60 percent of caucus-goers overall.
But both are – how to say it? – bigger than that. And each made a point of
talking up inclusiveness as the foundation of their Iowa victories and of the
election to come and the political era that comes after it.

To be sure, Hillary Clinton has
too deep a war chest and too deep a bench, organizationally, to bow out. One
remembers longtime Clinton retainer James Carville’s cry when the Monica
Lewinsky scandal threatened to overwhelm Bill Clinton’s presidency: “This is wah!”
he shouted out in full South Loos-iana Cajunese. Whereupon he – and the Clintons – fetched up the ordnance to win
that war.

Hillary will try again. But,
beyond the fact that she’s up against a man who could be a generational
phenomenon, she has also to contend with the second-place finisher in the
Democratic race, former senator John Edwards, who has so unabashedly talked about “corporate greed” and promised
what Republicans like to call “class war.”

“On to New Hampshire,” vowed
Edwards to a turnaway crowd at the Renaissance-Savery Hotel in downtown Des
Moines. And what that meant was spelled out afterward by the candidate’s chief
economic-policy advisor, Leo Hindery: “We beat the Clinton machine. And we’ll
beat it again,” he said. No mention of Obama.

And Huckabee had left no doubt in
the last few days of campaigning, nor in his speech to his throng Thursday
night, that his pending triumph over former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney
was a victory of ordinary folks over the elite, of truth over dissembling, and
of will over money. He never tired of pointing out that Romney out-spent him
“20-to-one,” and it was obviously his former fellow governor – and onetime
moderate turned conservative exemplar — that he meant when he used words like
“phony” and “pretender” on the stump.

Speaking of exemplars, the
apparent third-place finisher among Republicans, former Tennessee senator Fred
Thompson, materialized as something of a conservative firebrand Thursday
morning in a barn-burning speech to a packed room at a West Des Moines hotel.
For a change this campaign year, he was focused, intense, and capable of a sense
of humor (he was seen so frequently in the movies, he said, because “they
need[ed] somebody who was big and worked cheap”).

Both Thompson and his longtime
friend John McCain, the given-up-for-dead onetime frontrunner who has surged
again, finished in a virtual dead heat for third place in Iowa, and each has
thereby won a ticket to New Hampshire. McCain, a possible winner there, has
gotten most of the attention, but Thompson is a legitimate substitute either for
Huckabee, should he falter, or for McCain, if the Republican establishment
proves unreceptive to the maverick hero again, as it did in 2000.

“You have done what the cynics said we couldn’t
do. You have done what New Hampshire can do in five days,” said Obama Thursday
night, looking ahead. As for Huckabee, he’ll hope to score well in New
Hampshire, but it’s more likely that he’ll be looking at South Carolina later in
January, to finish off Romney – and whomever else is still out there, including
McCain, with whom he, too, like Thompson, still has a mutual-admiration-society
relationship.

One way in which pundits are still
underestimating Huckabee is in concentrating so totally on his evangelical
persuasion and skimming over, or ignoring altogether, his populism. “Republicans
have economic concerns,” Huckabee stressed Thursday night, and he didn’t mean
the high-bracket tax-cut crowd. He talked instead about working families
struggling to pay for gasoline at the pump.

As Obama said, “People are looking for someone
who is willing to say the unorthodox – and [for] authenticity.” Or, as a
still-game Edwards put it, “One thing is clear from the results tonight. The
status quo lost and change won.”

Indeed so. And there is more to come.

(Flyer political editor Jackson Baker will be
reporting regularly from Iowa and New Hampshire for the next few days.)

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

MAD AS HELL: Will Our Long National Nightmare End?

Let the crystal ball drop in Times Square. It’s time to
ring in 2008, the year when the seeds of change are finally in the air. Hang
up your Bush-Out-of-Office Countdown calendars and let the optimism swell! Oh
sure, it’s not a new dawn, a new day, or a new life just yet — we’ve got to
put up with The Decider’s war and destruction for another year, but just
visualizing his farewell smirk as Air Force One, headed for Crawford, waits on
the tarmac makes me want to guzzle the bubbly in anticipation of ringing out
the surrealistic experience of living in America during the reign of Dubya.

Although only seven years, it seems a lifetime has passed
since the Bush coronation of 2001. A foreboding, hard rain fell on that cold,
dark January day. Hundreds, maybe thousands, came to protest, but were
cordoned off, never to be seen. The nation was witnessing the consummate
inside job performed by masterful minions and lackeys of a crafty and corrupt
political family. President Poppy Bush had appointed the Supreme Court
justices to do the selecting. Governor Brother Jebby had made sure the votes
in Florida were certified without being totally counted. And media consultant
cousin Johnny (Ellis), who was responsible for projecting state results for
FOX News on election night, had made sure, after challenging the other
networks to follow suit, that FOX was the first to call Florida a win for his
cuz. The fix was in and the American people had been denied a true and
legitimate leader.

On that fateful Inaugural day, a place called “Murrika”
was born — a landscape where cowboy dictators on a mission from God ride
roughshod over the Constitution on their way to The Apocalypse. Murrika
(alternatively, Ah-Murrika) — a land where might is right and
peacemakers inherit not the earth, but a world of war and poverty. The new
Murrican millennium actually had it origins in Orwell’s 1984, where war
is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.

The last seven years of governance have been more
despotic than democratic. Bush, who promised to be a compassionate uniter, has
presided over one of the meanest, most contemptible, and divisive
administrations in history. Among scores of hilariously idiotic massacres of
the English language now known as Bushisms, the President accused Americans of
“misunderestimating” him.

True enough, in 2001 most could not have estimated the
level of arrogance, hypocrisy, and bullheaded certitude that would become the
hallmark of his persona. Certainly, we could not have imagined a President who
would repeatedly display nothing more than utter contempt for the will of the
people. It would have been a challenge to envision the magnitude of miserable
failings both foreign and domestic, which would lead to the ruinous
consequences of an endless war, record numbers dead at home and abroad, a
weakened Constitution, a faltering economy with a devalued currency and
massive, unprecedented debt, and a very ugly reputation as the world’s bully.

But a year from now, an election will have taken place
and the Murrikan alternate universe will be fading away. Although it will be a
monumental task to restore peace and prosperity, there will be no more Shock
and Awe, Axis of Evil, and Gathering Threats. There will be no more Evil
Doers, Cake Walks and Slam Dunks. No more Missions Accomplished, Big
Times and Turdblossoms. And finally — finally! — no more War on Turr and
Nucular presence in the world! America will once again become the nation, not
the homeland. At last, the shameful and embarrassing “I’ll Pretend to Tell
the Truth While You Pretend to Believe Me” regime of George W. Bush will end.

In the immortal words of President Gerald R. Ford, at the
close of another calamitous Republican Presidency, “My fellow Americans, our
long national nightmare is over.” Give or take another 365 days, we can
celebrate the same. Join a campaign, make a difference, and have a Happy New
Year!

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

Here’s the thing about our friend Tim Sampson, who fills this space most weeks: He knows what he’s talking about. He reads all about the politicians, forms detailed opinions, then writes his columns secure in the knowledge that he is well informed. You’d think that’s a good thing, but the problem is so many of the rest of us are completely uninformed and therefore don’t fully understand what he’s talking about. Although I have figured out that he stays pretty pissed off.

Yes, I am one of the deliberately unaware. There may have been a time when the whole politics thing seemed groovy to me and I kept up to date, but those days ended sometime around President Clinton’s Hummer-Gate. All of those old white guys getting squeamish while trying to make political hay made me find other ways to keep entertained. I’ve been very busy deciphering the instructions to my new cappuccino-maker. Hours of my life have been filled laboring to teach my cats tricks. This is important work, people.

Still, I try to read Tim’s column because he’s an old friend. In fact, the dissolute misanthrope was once my boss. (Wrap your head around what that was like.) Now, I open the Flyer and wade my way through his screed, often baffled at who the players are and what their agenda may be. Tim knows his local politics, and there, I’ve got nothing. There are a whole lot of Fords, and they seem to get folks awfully riled up, but I don’t like getting riled up. We’ve had the same mayor for a really long time, and whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing isn’t for me to say.

On the national front, as far as I can determine, the Republicans are apparently going to run Fred Thompson, Rudolph Giuliani, or the Mormon guy who doesn’t want to always be referred to as the Mormon guy. I understand his wishes on this, but the only name I have for him is the Mormon guy. I will give him this: He has majestic hair. If we elected presidents solely on their sartorial splendor, he’d already be measuring for drapes. Or one of his wives would be. (It’s a joke, son.)

Giuliani seems pretty cool to me. What I love is that at one point while he was mayor of New York City, he was living in the mayor’s residence with both his soon-to-be ex-wife and his mistress. That’s not bad for a squirrelly guy with a bad comb-over.

I’ve met Fred Thompson, and he was very actorly. When you meet someone who is actorly, you know it. They’re very well spoken, have a practiced conspiratorial wink, and know how to wear makeup. Unfortunately, I can’t shake the fact that I know lot of actors and they’re, um, not that smart. They can memorize words really, really well, but you don’t want one doing your taxes.

On the Democrat side, they seem destined to run Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, or Barack Obama. There’s also that crazy little elf, Dennis Kucinich, but this country will never elect a President Dennis. Damn it.

John Edwards seems like a genuinely nice guy, but it’s hard to get past the whole fighting for the poor while having a house the size of an airport thing. Obama is a very charismatic guy. The few times I’ve seen him on TV, he’s come across as totally prepared to be president. You know who also seems totally prepared to be president? Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. Yeah, that’s not going to happen either.

Hillary. If you noticed that I saved her for last, it’s mainly because I’m afraid of her. We can quibble about whether her eight years of icily smiling at her husband while she was first lady qualifies as “experience” or whether it even makes sense that she’s a senator from a state she had never lived in before, but the truth is, most every American is scared of the woman. I don’t mean that we fear that she’ll do something crazy as president. I mean we’re afraid that if she got angry at one of us, she would personally kick our ass.

Between now and whenever we’re supposed to vote — which I think is probably sometime next fall — I’ll do some actual research. Or I’ll just keep reading Tim’s column. And do the exact opposite of whatever that lunatic advises. Like I said, I know the guy.

Dennis Phillippi is a Memphis writer, comedian, and radio host.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Who Is This Huckabee Mug Anyhow, and Why Is He Stealing Fred Thompson’s Thunder?

Earlier in the year local Republicans, like their
counterparts elsewhere in Tennessee, were jumping ship from other presidential
campaigns to make known their allegiance to former Senator Fred Thompson. That
was back when Law and Order star Thompson, presumably on the strength of
his Nielsen ratings, was considered the answer to GOP prayers.

The lanky, rawboned actor/lawyer/lobbyist, a native of
Lawrenceburg in Middle Tennessee and a University of Memphis graduate, had ample
cachet. A protégé of former Senator Howard Baker, who in 1973 had made him
minority counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee, Thompson had by 2007 been
in the public eye for a full generation.

His acting career in the movies as well as on TV, plus
eight years in the Senate, had made him a familiar figure enough to be a
formidable trump card. But when he got turned up on the table – or, more to the
point, when he began standing side by side with his GOP rivals on the debate
stage – something seemed to be missing.

Maybe it was age (some thought Thompson looked unexpectedly
thin and ravaged), maybe it was conviction (what was his role supposed to be?
moderate? arch-conservative? Bushite? critic?), or maybe it was the candidate’s
well-known laissez-faire attitude toward exertion. Whatever the case, The
Thompson boom went from bang to whimper in record time.

It is not just that his finances are hurting or that the
national media is beginning to write him off or that his numbers have dwindled
to single digits in Iowa, whose caucuses are coming up within a month’s time.

The real problem is a rival area candidate who has been
auditioning well on the road. That’s Mike Huckabee, the former governor of
Arkansas and, as has been pointed out ad infinitum, a native of Hope, home town
of two-term former Democratic president Bill Clinton, another up-from-nowhere
sort.

By now, Huckabee has actually taken the lead among
Republicans in Iowa. His dramatic arrow up parallels Thompson’s going down. And,
whereas Thompson had never quite defined his character in the ongoing campaign
drama, the folksy but articulate Huckabee has his down pat: He’s an unabashed
pro-life social conservative but an economic populist who raised taxes for
social programs as governor and who regularly denounces “Wall Street” in the
manner of a latter-day FDR.

As such, Huckabee performs the improbable feat of yoking
together two points of view that have been politically sundered for well over a
generation. In some ways, he’s a throwback to the old Southern Democratic model.
He’s a former Baptist preacher who can also play a mean bass guitar on “Free
Bird” – a feat he performed alongside current Shelby GOP chairman Bill
Giannini’s lead guitar at the local Republican “Master Meal” last year.

Huckabee’s plain-spoken oratory was also a huge hit at that event, and there’s
no doubt that the seeds for a mass following have been planted in these parts.

Tracy Dewitt of the northeast Shelby Republican Club is a
dedicated supporter, as is Paul Shanklin, the local businessman and successful
impressionist who does all those politician’s voice for Rush Limbaugh. The
Arkansan’s national campaign manager, moreover, is Chip Saltzman, an ex-Memphian
and a graduate of Christian Brothers University.

When the East Shelby Republican Club, one of the GOP’s
local bedrocks, had an informal straw vote poll at its regular monthly meeting
last week, Fred Thompson still had the residual strength to come out well ahead.
Huckabee was down among such relative also-rans as New York’s Rudy Giuliani and
Massachusett’s Mitt Romney.

But that, as club president Bill Wood acknowledges, was
then. Now is something else. “That was before Huckabee got a front-page article
in USA Today and all this other recognition.” If the same straw vote were
held today? “Oh he’d go up like a bullet. There were already a lot of people
here who liked him. Now they’re starting to see how he’s doing in the rest of
the nation.”

Indeed, it is probable that, if Huckabee should hold his present numbers and win
Iowa, you couldn’t build a big enough bandwagon to accommodate his supporters
locally.

One caveat: Thompson could still come back. There are many
political observers who remember his lackadaisical start in 1994 against
Democratic Senate opponent Jim Cooper, whom he trailed at one point by 20 points
in the polls – the same number he would eventually win by against Cooper.

But for the time being, the man from Hope has center stage.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Looking Ahead

“The tide is turning.” That’s Jim Kyle‘s confident declaration about the forthcoming election season in state government. Kyle, the Memphis Democrat who leads his party in the Tennessee state Senate, cites a number of precedents for his belief that 2008 will be a triumphant year for long-suffering state Democrats, who have been seeing their legislative numbers recede for a decade or two.

“Democrats just took over the Virginia state Senate, for one thing. And we’ve got more Democrats running in Republican districts, even in East Tennessee, than we ever had before,” Kyle said Tuesday — the very day that his opposite number, GOP Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey, was due in Shelby County for a meeting of the East Shelby Republican Club.

Ramsey, a Blountville Republican, came with Mark Norris, a Shelby Countian who is currently serving as the Senate Republican leader and who, Kyle and most other observers believe, wants to succeed Ramsey as Speaker and lieutenant governor should the GOP regain the tenuous majority it held for most of this year’s session and should Ramsey go on to run for governor in 2010, as all the selfsame observers expect.

“Oh, he’s running. No doubt about it,” said Kyle of his GOP counterpart’s gubernatorial hopes — though Ramsey’s immediate concerns are likely to be the same as Kyle’s: to gain a majority for his party in next year’s statewide legislative races. (For what it’s worth, the Democratic majority in the state House — 53 to 46, at the moment — is unlikely to be overturned, though the Republicans will surely try.)

As things stand now, the two major parties are tied in the Senate at 16-16. There is one “independent,” former Republican Micheal Williams of Maynardville, who was a reliable ally of (and vote for) John Wilder, the venerable Democrat who was deposed as Speaker early this year when Democrat Rosalind Kurita of Clarksville cast a surprise (and decisive) vote for Ramsey during Senate reorganization for the 2007-’08 term.

Kurita thereupon became Senate Speaker pro Tem, displacing Williams, who simmered quietly for a while then announced in mid-session last spring that he was leaving the GOP. Though he didn’t join the Democrats as such, he aligned with them for procedural purposes, giving Kyle’s party a technical majority by the thinnest possible margin.

When Chattanooga’s Ward Crutchfield, a longtime Democratic pillar in the Senate, was forced to resign after copping a guilty plea as a defendant in the Tennessee Waltz scandal, the Republicans nominated Oscar Brock, son of former U.S. senator Bill Brock, to vie for Crutchfield’s seat.

But Brock was beaten by Democrat Andy Berke in this month’s special election and with a percentage of the vote, 63 percent, that Kyle contends is 10 points in excess of the normal Democratic edge in the District 10 seat.

“That’s one more reason why I think the tide is moving our way,” Kyle said.

Of course, the Republicans are not sitting idly by without mounting a strategy of their own to gain control of the state Senate. They, too, evidently intend to compete seat by seat, district by district, as Kyle says the Democrats will, and one obvious GOP target is octogenarian Wilder of Somerville, who has so far given no indication whether he will seek reelection to his District 26 seat.

“Nobody knows. He’ll just have to decide how much he wants to be in the Senate for four more years,” said Kyle, who carefully skirted the issue of whether Wilder, who served as Speaker for 36 years until the narrow January vote that cast him out, might have ambitions of regaining the position. As Kyle noted, several other Democrats — not least, himself — might decide they want to be Speaker when the time comes.

Republican state representative Dolores Grisham, also of Somerville, has signaled her desire to compete for Wilder’s seat, and she expects to be strongly funded for the effort. “I don’t have any worries about John Wilder’s seat in a race against Dolores Grisham,” Kyle said drily.

In any case, the state Senate will be technically, and actually, up for grabs next year, and the two parties will both be making serious efforts. That fact may preclude Kyle’s making waves by recruiting a primary opponent for Kurita, whom he still has not forgiven for her vote on Ramsey’s behalf.

“We don’t,” the Democrats’ Senate leader said simply when asked how he and Kurita were getting along. That’s one thing that probably won’t change in 2008.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Dem, GOP Leaders Differ on Wilder, Kurita, and Who Wins State Senate in 2008

On Tuesday, the two major party leaders of the currently
deadlocked Tennessee state Senate made competing claims about whether Democrats
or Republicans would control the chamber after the 2008 statewide elections.
Upon the defection from Republican ranks last spring of Republican Micheal
Williams of Maynardville, who supports the Democrats in procedural matters,
the count became 16 Democrats, 16 Republicans, and one independent, Williams.

“The tide is turning,” said Democratic leader Jim Kyle
of Memphis in a telephone chat from Nashville on Tuesday – meaning that the attrition factor which had worn away at
his party’s dominance of the Senate for a decade or so had been reversed. As
evidence of a pervasive Democratic trend, Kyle pointed to the recent capture of
the Virginia state Senate by Democrats and to the resounding special-election
victory in Tennessee’s District 10 of Democrat Andy Berke over Republican
Oscar Brock.

The latter victory was all the sweeter, said Kyle, because
it came in the wake of the potentially debilitating resignation from the seat of
longtime Chattanooga Democrat Ward Crutchfield, who had pleaded guilty to
an extortion charge in the Tennessee Waltz scandal.

“We’re going to run in every district, and we’ll win,” Kyle
said.

“He’s dreaming,” said Republican Senate Speaker and
lieutenant governor Ron Ramsey of Kyle’s claims. Ramsey, in town to address the
East Shelby Republican Club, said in fact that Kyle’s departure from reality had
begun with the “nightmare” of his own unexpected victory for the speakership on
January 9th of this year.

Ramsey’s win in January had been thanks to a surprise vote
for him by Democrat Rosalind Kurita of Clarksville, who departed party
ranks and thereby ousted longtime Speaker/Lt. Gov. John Wilder of
Somerville, the octogenarian who had served as Senate leader for 36 years until
this year.

After the “on again, off again” transfer of party power of
the 2007 legislative session, the GOP would regain control of the Senate in
2008, Ramsey said confidently.

The two leaders also had varying viewpoints on whether
Wilder would attempt reelection – and another try at the speakership — next
year. “He’ll have to decide how badly he wants to serve in the Senate for four
more years,” was the cautiously stated estimate of Kyle, who almost certainly
will be a candidate for the speakership himself.

Ramsey was less uncertain. “If he’s living, he’s running,”
the GOP leader said bluntly of Wilder. If Wilder does run, he will likely be
opposed by Republican state Representative Dolores Gresham, also of
Somerville, who has announced her candidacy and is actively sounding out
support.

Ramsey and Wilder also had differing attitudes toward
Kurita. The Republican, who had, as virtually his first act as Speaker,
appointed Kurita Senate Speaker pro Tem (ousting Williams in the process), spoke
fondly and familiarly of “Rosalind,” while Kyle, when asked earlier in the day
how he and Kurita were getting along, said simply, “We don’t.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Mike McWherter No Go for Senate, Will , er, “Spend More Time” With Family

CREDIT: jb

West Tennessee businessman Mike McWherter,only recently the toast of Tennessee Democrats as their likely U.S. candidate against Lamar Alexander next year, is toast in the other sense of the term now. The former governor’s son won’t run.

Here is McWherter’s statement upon opting out:

“Over the past few months, I’ve been honored to receive overwhelming support by Tennesseans from all walks of life encouraging me to run for U.S. Senate. It’s clear that people want change in Washington, D.C., and I’ve spent considerable time, especially over the past two months, exploring the possibility of running. However, after careful consideration, I’ve decided the timing just isn’t right for me or my family.

“The reality is: the demands of raising millions of dollars in short order and running an intense 12-month campaign simply are not in the best interests of my family right now. With two kids in high school, I had the choice of being able to savor every day of their remaining years at home, or missing a good part of that time on the campaign trail and in Washington. I’m choosing to focus on them.

“While I’ve ruled out running for the US Senate, I continue to be interested in public service and want to do whatever I can to help move our state and country in a positive direction. That includes lending my support to whoever the eventual Democratic nominee should be. Given the dramatic change that’s occurring in our country, and the exodus that’s occurring in the Senate, it’s clear that the time is right for a candidate who has the time and resources to take on Senator Alexander and help usher in change to Washington.

“Finally, to everyone who expressed their support during my exploratory efforts: Thank you very much. I’m fortunate to have had the support of my father, wife and children, as well as Democrat and Republican friends from across the state. I look forward to talking with them in the future as we all work to keep improving our state and nation.”

McWherter’s campaign had been expected to capitalize on the name of his father, Ned McWherter, the former two-term governor.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

The Final Four Council Winners: Morrison, Boyd, Collins, Ford

CREDIT: jb (w/Ron Williams)

The fat lady of legend has sung her song. The 2007 Memphis
city election is over – a fact that’s music to the ears of newly elected council
members Bill Morrison in District 1, Bill Boyd in District 2,
Harold Collins in District 3, and Edmund Ford Jr., in District 6.

The three latter races were relatively close, with Boyd
beating Brian Stephens by 54 percent to 46 percent; Collins defeating
Ike Griffith by the same percentage, and Ford prevailing over James
Catchings by 53 percent to 47 percent.

The only real blowout occurred in District 1 with the
unexpectedly lopsided victory of Morrison, one of the spunkiest, sunniest, and
most determined new faces of recent political history, who beat school board member
Stephanie Gatewood, no slouch herself, by a margin of almost two to one.

Morrison had help from a talented and seasoned corps of
Democratic activists, many of whom were also active in Stephens’ District 2
candidacy. Aside from former assessor Boyd’s longtime political history, what
may have made the difference for him was the fact of last-minute robo-calls from
former political eminences Bill Morris and Dick Hackett.

Griffith, who has neighborhood cachet in District 3, ran
Collins close, but the latter’s support from established political figures,
including mayors Willie Herenton and A C Wharton, was enough to
give Collins his first leg up as an active candidate in his own right.

Similarly, Ford’s victory, entitling him to succeed his
father, retiring councilman Edmund Ford Sr. in District 6, owed much to
legacy considerations related to his extended family’s prominence in local
politics.

The well-liked Boyd, who is in his 60s, is the anomaly in
the new council, which is overwhelmingly youth-oriented.

With all 122 affected precincts reported, unofficial totals
in the four races were:

DISTRICT 1
(31 Precincts )

  • Morrison
    – 1479 Votes
  • Gatewood – 816 Votes

DISTRICT 2(31 Precinct)


  • Boyd- 2337 Votes
  • Stephens- 1958 Votes

DISTRICT 3(26 Precincts)


  • Collins- 865 Votes
  • Griffith- 741 Votes

DISTRICT 6(34
Precincts)

  • Ford
    – 1751 Votes

Catchings – 1556 Votes

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Clinton-Thompson Race Would be Close in Tennessee, Survey Says

CREDIT: FreakingNews.com

Tennesseans tend to pick Republican favorite son Fred Thompson when asked which 2008 presidential hopeful they support, but in hypothetical head-to-head contests, Democrat Hillary Clinton runs very close behind him and ties national Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani, a new poll by Middle Tennessee State University shows.

Thirty-two percent of Tennessee adults choose Thompson when asked whom they most favor in the 2008 election. Clinton attracts 25 percent, while Giuliani and Illinois Democratic Sen. Barak Obama draw 9 percent each. Nine percent name Republican Arizona Senator John McCain, and the rest choose someone else.

In a hypothetical head-to-head contest, though, Thompson garners 50 percent to Clinton’s 42 percent, with 4 percent choosing neither and the rest unsure. Considering the poll’s error margin (plus or minus four percentage points), Thompson’s lead over Clinton is small, and the two could even be tied.

Pitted against Obama, Thompson wins more handily, drawing 55 percent compared to Obama’s 34 percent, with 7 percent choosing neither and the rest unsure. In a hypothetical race between Clinton and Giuliani, meanwhile, the two tie, drawing 43 percent each with 11 percent saying they’d vote for neither and the rest not sure.

“In sum, a Thompson-Obama contest would be the best-case scenario for Tennessee’s Republicans under present conditions,” said MTSU poll director Ken Blake.