Tag: Ford

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Editorial Opinion

Serving Two Masters

The current Tennessee Senate campaign presents journalists with a conundrum. While Congressman Harold Ford Jr. is the Democratic nominee for the seat being vacated by Bill Frist, his day job requires that he continue serving the best interests of the citizens of the Ninth Tennessee District in the House of Representatives. As a result, we cannot ignore his performance in that capacity, even while we devote much more ink to coverage of his campaign for higher office.

Last week Congressman Ford cast votes in the House of Representatives on two controversial national-security bills. The first involved the president’s detainee legislation. It eliminates the right of habeas corpus for those brought before military tribunals. And it allows the president to imprison indefinitely anyone and everyone he thinks is an “unlawful combatant.”

Ford’s good friend, Senator Barack Obama, described himself as “ashamed” by the contents of this Military Commissions Act, pushed comfortably through both houses of the Republican-controlled Congress last Wednesday. Evidently, Congressman Ford has a higher shame threshold; he was one of just 34 House Democrats voting to restore to President Bush the sweeping executive powers that had been stripped from him by Supreme Court rulings earlier this year.

Later in the week, the House considered passage of the bizarrely titled Electronic Surveillance Modernization Act, a heinous piece of legislation also designed to subvert recent Supreme Court decisions, in this case those requiring the president to get special-court approval before wiretapping American civilians. This time, only 18 out of 201 Democrats broke ranks with the party leadership. But Harold Ford Jr. again was among the dissidents.

Congressman Ford’s votes on these two measures should be a matter of concern for all his Ninth District constituents. We would suggest that any poll of public opinion in this heavily Democratic district would record overwhelming opposition to these bald extensions of presidential power by the Bush administration. So why did Mr. Ford vote the way he did?

Of course, one would had to have spent the last six months living on Mars to ask that question without first planting one’s tongue firmly in cheek. In the last month of a bitter Senate campaign, our congressman obviously is appealing to a broader audience than the one he currently represents, an audience more sympathetic, perhaps, to the Bush administration’s “war on terror” prescriptions.

But until January, Harold Ford Jr. still represents his Ninth District constituents, citizens who deserve the courtesy of an explanation of his actions on the House floor. We are troubled by the fact that nowhere on his two political Web sites (his official House site and his Senate campaign site) does the congressman provide such an explanation. Even more troubling is the fact that his Web sites make no reference whatsoever to the fact that these events actually happened and that he returned to Washington last week to vote with the Bush administration, not against it, on both of these national-security measures.

We would welcome the congressman’s explanation of these two votes and would be happy to provide space in this newspaper for him to do so. No doubt he has much bigger fish to fry these days and may find explaining these votes to the people whose own votes sent him to Congress for five consecutive terms something of a distraction. Nevertheless, inquiring minds want to know.

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Politics Politics Feature

Tightening Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Politics Politics Feature

Brother Act

Say this about Harold Ford Sr.: The former 9th District congressman hasn’t lost his appetite for political combat. He made that clear last week when he accepted co-billing with his son Harold Ford Jr. at a Friday-morning rally at the Park Place headquarters of the current congressman, now a candidate for the U.S. Senate.

A “reception” for the two Harold Fords, it was called, and it drew a goodly crowd. With some time to kill, the senior Ford shared some thinking about his son’s campaign as he awaited the arrival of Representative Ford’s campaign bus. (Yes, if earlier that morning you were watching hometown idol Justin Timberlake on ABC-TV’s Good Morning America, that was the selfsame bus that just happened to have pulled up behind the stage, flashing its Ford For Senate logo before the eyes of the nation.)

Nor has the old warrior lost his sense of strategy. It was clearly a mistake, the former congressman said, for his son’s Senate rival, Republican nominee Bob Corker, to have invited President Bush to Memphis for a fund-raiser next week — the second such occasion in Tennessee, following a public embrace between the two the week before last in Nashville.

“That’s the trouble with those millionaires. They don’t want to spend any money, especially none of their own,” Ford Sr. — a seven-figure type himself these days as a well-paid Florida-based consultant — said of the former Chattanooga mayor, an entrepreneur whose considerable fortune has derived from low-income housing projects.

As the elder Ford explained it, Corker’s misplaced frugality was making him over-dependent on a president with sagging polls and presumably frayed coattails. As a piece of analysis, it made sense. It was certainly true that his son’s campaign seemed to be spending more money than his rival’s just now — mainly on a recurring and well-crafted series of TV ads that made the most of the younger Ford’s mediagenic looks and reassuring stage presence.

Those commercials — the most recent one made in a church! — featured the same right-of-center rap (pro-Patriot Act, pro-curbs on immigration, etc.) that has driven the left wing of the congressman’s party bananas. One effect of this approach has seemingly been to prevent Corker, fearful of being out-flanked on his right, from coming to the political center as newly minted party nominees usually do.

The audience for Representative Ford’s typically rousing and generalized remarks at the Friday-morning rally included a generous collection of Democrats — senior citizens, business types, Midtown Democrats, suburban types, etc.

Subsequent to the event, the impression got out in some quarters that it had been an affair for College Democrats (it wasn’t — though they, like other Democrats, had been invited and responded) in which, according to a widely circulated e-mail from a University of Memphis student: “Apparently, after Junior was done speaking, his fucktard brother got a chance to speak to the volunteer base that we acquired for Junior.”

Hearsay of this sort begat further hearsay, and soon an honest blogger or two had picked up on a gathering outrage among supporters of 9th District Democratic nominee Steve Cohen that the “fucktard brother” (i.e., independent congressional candidate Jake Ford) had benefited from what had now, in some tellings, become a “handoff” at the rally from Representative Ford.

Actually, nothing of the sort occurred. Jake Ford had been no more than one member of the large and milling crowd. He had no role in the proceedings, which ended after his congressman brother left to go join the Rev. Ben Hooks for the dedication of a Whitehaven Job Corps center in Hooks’ honor.

If Jake Ford “worked the crowd” afterward (as a revised version of the ever-shifting story had it), then so did anybody else who had been in the throng. It was just a case of a large gathering breaking off into isolated conversational clumps as people made their way out the door.

That so much was later made of a non-event merely served to underscore the existence of a very real schism in local Democratic ranks — one that was bound to be exacerbated by Jake Ford’s own claim in a radio interview this week.

Asked by a caller on a show hosted by Jennings Bernard why Representative Ford had not publicly endorsed him, Jake Ford maintained that his brother had in fact done so and, to further that contention, availed himself of the same rumors that were already in play concerning last week’s Friday-morning rally.

“Quite simply, he [Representative Ford] endorses me every day,” said Jake Ford. “I endorse him every day.” As for why his brother hadn’t “officially come out,” Ford said, “I think most people should realize he does endorse me. I was just with him on Friday at his campaign headquarters for a rally. Make no mistake about it, he’s my brother, and I love the guy. It’s just two different races. He’s running for the Senate and I’m running for Congress.”

The bottom line was that now people were prepared to believe what they wanted to believe. When Jake Ford’s radio remarks are carefully parsed, they don’t authenticate the fact of an “endorsement” that, ultimately, could only come from Representative Ford himself. But they certainly put Ford Jr. in the position of having to speak to the issue himself, something he ultimately will be under great — perhaps unavoidable — pressure to do.

Understandably, proponents of state senator Cohen are vexed at Representative Ford for the statements of neutrality he has made so far concerning the race to succeed him. They, too, tend to regard the congressman’s posture as indicative of de facto support for brother Jake.

In the long run, some believe, that feeling could grow in Democratic circles, even at the statewide level, and cost Representative Ford enough votes at the margin to threaten his chances in the Senate race. Right now, with Corker running like a dry creek and losing momentum in all the polls to Ford, it may not seem so to the congressman.

And his ex-congressman father has made no secret of his intention to pull out all the stops for both of his sons.

Meanwhile, Cohen continues to be regarded as the front-runner. He, after all, is his party’s nominee, made what has to be regarded as a substantial primary showing in black precincts (17 percent overall), is regarded by many Democrats, especially liberal ones, as a longtime champion of their causes, and even has boosters in Republican circles.

That last fact, based on some isolated conservative positions (e.g., on gun control and the death penalty) as well as a general admiration for his legislative service and tenacity, is cause for some concern in the camp of Republican nominee Mark White, who has devoted much attention in his own campaign to social issues like abortion and gay marriage. It is areas like those where he perceives Cohen to have possible weaknesses.

In an address to the College Democrats at the University of Memphis Monday night, Cohen maintained that “both of my opponents” hoped to undermine him in such areas. He defended his opposition to constitutional amendments against gay marriage — jesting, however, that he was firmly opposed to “intergalactic” marriage.

Cohen told the College Democrats that Jake Ford in his radio appearance had implied Cohen was a homosexual, a racist, and “a crook.” In all fairness, the first two allegations derived more from innuendoes and more from callers than from anything Ford said. But candidate Ford did seem to be doing his best to nudge home the last charge.

“I think he’s stepped over the line a couple of times, and we still cannot get the attorney general to be responsive to some of the allegations that we have become aware of pertaining to some dealings that he has had himself,” Ford said on Bernard’s show without elaborating further.

The very fact that he said something like that was taken by many Cohen supporters as ample confirmation that Jake Ford was intimately bound up with the appearance of a new Web site called CrookedCohen.org, which makes the very unspecified allegations alluded to by Ford. Blogger Derek Haire (rivercitymud.com) painstakingly traced that site and Jake Ford’s own campaign site back to the same IP address.

No sign, by the way, of Ophelia Ford, unseen on the campaign trail during this entire season but still, for demographic and party reasons, the favorite in the District 29 state Senate race over the relentlessly campaigning Republican Terry Roland.

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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.

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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
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.”