Tag: Herenton

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Polls: The Dark Side

The next time a pollster calls you, just say no.

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say to a pollster can and will be used against you and the democratic process.

Polling organizations have a right to call us. I confess I read the polls and find them interesting fodder for discussion. But I do not trust them, and my usual response when called by a stranger on behalf of a pollster is “none of your business” or something like that. The late Chicago columnist Mike Royko had an even better idea: Lie to them.

Several polls were taken by different organizations prior to last week’s Memphis mayoral election, which was won by Willie Herenton with 42 percent of the vote.

One early poll showed Carol Chumney leading, with lots of “undecideds” and virtually no white support for the mayor. That poll, of course, was designed to convince Herenton to bow out and to get Shelby County mayor A C Wharton to enter the race. Fat chance.

Another poll showed Herman Morris gaining ground but still losing. His handlers were all over that, claiming their man had momentum, as if that is the most important thing in an election.

Yet another poll showed Herenton winning by a whisker. The excitement was almost unbearable! Don’t touch that dial! Stay tuned!

The most outrageous poll, taken by Steve Ethridge and published by The Commercial Appeal just before the election, showed Morris running close with Chumney and within striking distance of Herenton. This played neatly into the CA‘s editorial endorsement of Morris and the Morris yard signs that said “only” Morris could win. As it turned out, Morris could “only” win if the only other candidate was Prince Mongo. Chumney squeaked past Morris by 22,000 votes. And Herenton shocked the world at 495 Union Avenue by getting twice as many votes as Morris.

The CA and Ethridge should be ashamed and disgraced but not because they, in effect, threw the election to Herenton by low-balling Chumney and unrealistically boosting Morris, as some have suggested. They should be ashamed because they used the CA‘s stature as the city’s only daily newspaper to sell a highly dubious piece of partisan polling as big news, knowing full well it would be seized upon by the Morris camp.

Some anti-Herenton voters no doubt felt that they would be “wasting” their vote if they cast it for Morris or Chumney. Pollsters have a name for a poll with an intended outcome: “push” poll.

Some polls are more honest than others, but as far as I’m concerned, the benefit of the doubt goes against all of them. I know far too many people who’ve been involved in campaigns over the years, and winning may not be everything to them but it sure beats coming in second. What all the pollsters and their fans fail to grasp is that, in Memphis at least, voting and responding to a poll are not the same thing.

If a candidate runs a serious campaign and that candidate’s previous accomplishments and present positions on the issues make him or her seem like a worthy public servant, then that candidate absolutely deserves your vote, and polls be damned.

Voters, fortunately, can be pretty discerning. John Willingham, who said he had 10,000 black supporters, got only 1,118 votes in all. You can bet the Shelby County Republican Party, which endorsed him and put out sample ballots supporting him, is doing some hard thinking, if it is actually possible for them to think.

The most accurate predictor, on the other hand, turned out to be Herenton, who said the race was between him and Chumney and he would win it. It was, and he did.

I know, columnists and reporters also call people on the phone and try to get them to open up about all kinds of things. Some of us write opinion columns, like this one. But that’s different from a poll masquerading as news.

This opinion column is worth exactly what you paid for it. In that respect, it has one thing in common with a poll.

Categories
News The Fly-By

The Cheat Sheet

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

British star Kate Beckinsale, perhaps best known for her sexy roles in several vampire movies, is coming to Memphis in a few days to film a journalism thriller about an outed CIA agent. We hear that, among other locations, the movie will use The Commercial Appeal newsroom as a set. Yes, we are now officially jealous of the CA.

It is October, but you’d never know it by going outdoors, where plus-90-degree temperatures in our area are breaking records that have stood in place for more than 50 years. At this rate, the most popular Halloween costume will be the Human Torch.

Memphis City Schools is forced to throw away an undisclosed amount of frozen cafeteria food after they fail to store it properly. When the district was building its Central Nutrition Center a few years ago, it said the central kitchen would make the food safer, more palatable, and cheaper. Guess not in this case.

A gunman at a Germantown convenience store hands the clerk a 32-ounce cup and orders her to fill it with coins. Where did he think he was — Tunica?

So it’s Mayor Herenton for four more years. In his victory speech, among other comments, he said, “There are some mean people in Memphis. They some haters. I mean they some haters in Memphis.” This man holds a Ph.D. — in education, no less — so why does he talk like this?

In one week, two different Olive Branch police dogs have nabbed two different robbery suspects — with their teeth. Talk about taking a bite out of crime.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Analysis: The Memphis Mayoral Election, Precinct by Precinct

Mayor Willie Herenton had a strong political base, taking 75 percent or more of the vote in scores of black precincts, plus getting thousands of white votes.

Carol Chumney was a bona fide challenger, winning 70 percent or more of the vote in some white precincts.

And Herman Morris was a spoiler with no political base who had just two precincts that could truly be called a stronghold, where he won more than 60 percent of the vote.

That’s what the unofficial precinct-by-precinct returns show for last week’s mayoral election. The results were released by the Shelby County Election Commission Tuesday.

An analysis by the Flyer shows that Herenton won in a time-tested fashion. He established a base and held it, rolling up thousands of votes and 75-percent majorities in predominantly black precincts. And that was enough to win, although overall Herenton got just 42 percent of the vote.

Call it The Rule of 75. In Memphis, a successful mayoral candidate must be popular enough to get 75 percent or more in several precincts

Simply put, neither Chumney nor Morris were able to do that. In general, they split the anti-Herenton vote, although Chumney had much more of a base than Morris. Chumney finished with 35 percent and Morris with 21 percent. Neither challenger could put together those key 75-percent margins needed to run even with Herenton.

At Trinity Methodist Church in Midtown, for example, Morris (who lives two blocks away) got 49 percent, Chumney 44 percent, and Herenton 6 percent of the more than 1700 votes cast.

In 11 precincts where at least 300 votes were cast, Herenton actually got more than 80 percent in of the vote (Gaston Community Center, Lauderdale Elementary, Southside High, Riverview Junior High, Pine Hill Community Center, Annesdale Cherokee Baptist Church, Westwood High, Lakeview Elementary, Raineshaven Elementary, New Nonconnah M.B. Church, and Double Tree Elementary).

Call those “home runs.” He got at least 70 percent of the vote in scores of other precincts, which offset the precincts where he got less than 10 percent.

Chumney won two precincts with more than 80 percent (Wells Station Elementary and Kingsbury Elementary). But those two home runs were better than Morris could muster. He played small-ball and picked up 65 percent of the vote in his best precinct (Christian Brothers High School) where at least 300 votes were cast.

Voters are not racially identified, but an educated guess can be made by targeting precincts where the voting population is either almost all white or all black. An examination of such precincts indicates that Herenton got thousands of white votes despite polls showing him with virtually no white support.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Post-Election, Herenton Settles Accounts With Pollsters, Ford, Morris Et Al.

CREDIT: jb

“The press had it all wrong. So did the pollsters. I said all along it was
mathematically impossible for either Chumney or Morris to beat me.”

That was Mayor Willie Herenton on Monday afternoon, holding court in his outer
office and still basking in a fifth-term victory that was all the sweeter
because it exceeded expectations. Everybody else’s expectations, that is. “I
knew I won early voting,” Herenton said.

And he had another theory about the mayoral voting that ended with him on top
with 70,177 votes, some 13,000 more than his closest competitor, Councilwoman
Carol Chumney. The mayor thought that too much analysis had been wasted on the
battle for white votes between Chumney and the third-place finisher, former Memphis
Light, Gas & Water head Herman Morris. Pundits and reporters alike had neglected
to factor him into that contest-within-a-contest, Herenton insisted.

Yes, on election night Herenton had inveighed against “haters” in a euphemistic
way reminiscent of former congressman Harold Ford Sr.’s condemnation of “East
Memphis devils” from his own post-election platform in 1994.

To be sure, whites had been virtually absent from Herenton’s victory celebration
at the Cook Convention Center, and no one was likely to forget the mayor’s
frequent campaign references to conspiratorial “snakes” and past trickery by the
white power-establishment, nor his persistent declarations that the 2007 mayoral
contest was about “race and power.”

Yet he was now willing to insist that he had been a serious contender for the
white vote all along. Nay, more — that his success with white voters is what
made the difference in this year’s race.

“I’ve been analyzing the returns,” the mayor said, “and I don’t think I got
70,000 African-American votes. I think 10,000 whites voted for me.”

If that was true, and had the lion’s share of those 10,000 votes gone instead
for Chumney, she might indeed have won — an argument that might fuel a
conspiracy theory about managed polls that the runner-up’s camp seems to be
taking seriously.)

Herenton himself has an eye for conspiracy. He sees the aborted visit by Ford
Sr. to a climactic Herenton rally — one that ended in a widely publicized
no-show by the former congressman — in that light. Having missed the rally, Ford
might at least have made a public endorsement of his candidacy. “But he couldn’t
even do that!” Herenton said.

Noting that longtime adversary Ford had made an early-voting trip into Memphis
on the eve of that rally, the mayor said, “I’m convinced he came down here just
to cast a vote against me!” And he promised: “I’ll have some things to say about
him [Ford] later on.”


THE DRUG TEST ISSUE

Another
sore point with Herenton was Morris’ frequent challenges for the mayor and the
rest of the field to join him in taking a drug test. The mayor vanished into his
inner office temporarily and returned with several pages showing the results of
a test, taken for insurance purposes back in June that demonstrated negative
findings in such categories as HIV, cocaine, alcohol, and tobacco.

He asked me to withhold specific figures, and I will. But it was clear — on this
medical accounting, at least — that the mayor had earned a clean bill of health,
in every sense of the term. As he said, he looked to be in terrific shape for a
67-year-old man. Even his blood pressure, as he pointed out, was within range.
“See?” he said, smiling. “You people in the press can’t even give me high blood
pressure!”

The mayor made a special point concerning when the report had been done. “Look
at the date: June 26th! That was before [Morris] started that nonsense about
drug tests. Some people advised me to show these results, but I had no intention
of dignifying him with a response, as if I owed him an answer on something like
that!

“Nothing goes in my body stronger than aspirin. Oh, I’ve admitted I like a red
wine — a Merlot. But that’s it,” he concluded.


ON FIXING THE CITY

By now,
Herenton had been joined by former city CAO and current MLGW overseer and Plough
Foundation head Rick Masson, who, like his ex-boss, seemed to be floating on the
kind of post-election high that needs no drug to activate.

Masson said nothing, but his facial expression alternated between the watchful
attentiveness required of any good subordinate and the kind of smirk that ought
to be outlawed by the Geneva Convention.

Herenton turned to the issue of his election night remarks, the bitterness of
which had been unmistakable. “I’m okay now. I got that out of my system,” he
said.

He recalled being at the airport recently when a white man came over —
strutting, to hear the mayor tell it:

“He said [Herenton imitating a peremptory voice]: ‘Mayor! When are you going to
start trying to fix our city?’

“I looked back at him and said, ‘And when are you going to start helping me?’ He
didn’t have anything to say to that.”

The mayor’s message seemed to be that he’s ready to listen whenever his critics
want to start talking — so long as it’s a real dialogue.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Herenton: A Winner Again — But Still in Need of Unity

CREDIT: Preston Lauterbach


BY
JACKSON BAKER |
OCT 6, 2007

Willie Herenton, Memphis’
African-American mayor, easily won reelection to an unprecedented fifth term
Thursday in a city election whose outcome was strangely anti-climactic given
advance hoopla from recent polls that seemed to promise a tight three-way
race.

Sorely tested for the first
time for the first time since his first mayoral race in 1991, the ex-Golden
Glover, who was undefeated in the ring as a youth, maintained his
unblemished record as a political campaigner, as well.

With all precincts in,
Herenton had 70,177 votes, or 42 percent of the total. He was followed by city
councilwoman Carol Chumney, with 57,180 votes, or 35 percent, and former
Memphis Light Gas & Water head Herman Morris, who garnered 35, 158 votes, or
21 percent.

In the end, Herenton – whose
vote came almost exclusively from the city’s black voters – seemed to have
made the case that the race was between himself and Chumney, a white who had
played scourge and gadfly to his administration for the last four years.

A rush to the polls of some
75,000 voters, a record, in the two-week early-voting period was oddly
counter-pointed by a smaller-than-expected turnout on Election Day.
Ultimately, the same demographic inner-city base that prevailed for Herenton
in his historic 1991 win over an entrenched white incumbent, Dick Hackett, was
at his disposal again. Demographic trends have since accelerated, and an
estimated 65 percent of Thursday’s voters in a city now firmly majority-black
were African-American.

A Head Start in the Early Vote

Late in the campaign, as polls showed her within a
percentage point or two of Herenton, a confident Chumney had proclaimed,
“We’re winning early voting, with fifty percent of the vote,” That turned out
to be well short of the mark (Herenton netted an estimated 41 percent of early
votes). Chumney’s expectations were as unrealistic in their way as the
consistent claims of former Shelby County Commissioner John Willingham, the
most prominent of the also-rans in a 14-strong field, that he had a dual base
among Republicans and black Memphians that would propel him to
victory.

Willingham, a white, a maverick, and a conservative,
proved to have no base at all, finishing with less than 1 percent of the vote.
His possession of an endorsement from the Shelby County Republican Party
gained him virtually nothing, as Chumney, who served 13 years in the
legislature as a Democratic state representative, captured most Republican
votes in a city where the terms “Republican” and “white” have a significant
overlap.

It seemed clear that the latter of those two
descriptors played a profound role in the outcome of this election, as it had
in Herenton’s first race in 1991. Third-place finisher Morris, the
mustachioed, reserved former head of Memphis Light Gas & Water, the city
utility, spent most of his time competing with Chumney for white voters and,
though African-American himself and, for that matter, a stalwart of the NAACP
and a veteran of the civil rights struggle, fared no better among black voters
than she did. His failure to gain traction in the inner city was owing to
several factors – ranging from his decidedly bourgeois image to an apparent
reluctance among black voters to let themselves be divided.

The Ford No-Show

An interesting sidelight to the campaign was an all-out
publicity campaign by the Herenton campaign last weekend promising
reconciliation between the mayor and his longtime inner-city adversary, former
congressman Harold Ford Sr., now a well-paid consultant living in Florida.
Ford, said a variety of well-circulated handbills, had joined “Team Herenton
’07” and would appear with Herenton at a giant rally at the mayor’s South
Memphis church. That would have been a reprise of the ad hoc collaboration
between the two rivals that most observers credit for Herenton’s bare 162-vote
margin of victory in 1991.

In the event, Ford was a no-show at the Tuesday night
rally, and the eleventh-hour embarrassment for the mayor was doubled by the
former congressman’s disinclination, when contacted by the media, even to make
a public statement endorsing Herenton. The whole affair lent an air of
desperation to the Herenton campaign effort but turned out to be no big deal.
If anything, it reinforced the general impression of precipitant decline for
the once legendary Ford-family political organization – beset by convictions,
indictments, and other tarnish and with its current star, Harold Ford Jr.,
having decamped for Nashville and the Democratic Leadership Council.

David Cocke, a former Democratic Party chairman and a
longtime ally of the Ford political clan, supported Chumney but foresaw the
Herenton victory, putting it this way late in the campaign: “Most people do
not vote on the basis of ideas or issues. They vote from the standpoint of a
common cultural experience.” And from that standpoint Willie Herenton, a
onetime Golden Gloves boxing champion who contemptuously dismissed the visibly
mature Morris as a “boy” trying to do a man’s job, had first dibs on the
street cred.

Still, the former schools superintendent is also a
seasoned executive who in his four terms to date had brought about extensive
downtown redevelopment and earned a good working relationship with the Memphis
business establishment – one, however, that had begun to fray around the edges
in the last year or so due to a rising crime rate (only last week FBI
statistics showed the city to be Number One in that regard in the nation) and
fluctuating economic indicators.

At some point in 2008, either on the August general
ballot for two countywide offices or on the November ballot for state and
federal offices, the Charter Commission impaneled by Memphis voters last year
will almost certainly include a provision limiting the mayor and members of
the city council to two four-year terms each. A similar provision in a county
referendum more than a decade ago prevailed by a whopping 84 percent majority,
and results of that sort can be anticipated from next year’s city
vote.

But in the meantime Willie Herenton, who had earned the
unofficial title “Mayor for Life” from friends and foes alike until doubt
crept into that consensus toward the end of his latest term, will be
grandfathered in. He may indeed end up serving indefinitely or may, as many
expect, quit his new term midway, making way for his longtime friend and
sometime campaign manager, Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton, also an African
American. Wharton’s easygoing presence and appeal across both racial and
political lines made him the subject of a widely based draft movement in the
weeks leading up to last July’s withdrawal deadline.

The two mayors had dinner together on the eve of that
deadline, after which Wharton, who had made a show of considering a run,
withdrew from consideration – diffidently but conclusively. That outcome has
given rise to persistent rumors of a deal between the two chief executives, in
which an early exit by Herenton would permit not only Wharton’s succession in
a special election but some sort of stratagem to create a de facto
consolidation between city and county governments. Herenton had served notice
in this campaign year that he intended one last major push for his long-held
goal of consolidation if reelected.

Consolidation Still on His Plate?

When then Nashville mayor Bill Purcell addressed the
Memphis Rotary Club this past summer, he provided some backup for his Memphis
counterpart, who had introduced him, telling the assembled business and civic
leaders that Metropolitan government had been “the smartest thing that
Nashville ever did” and that, if Memphians wanted a government that was too
big, too expensive, and too political, they should keep things just the way
they are. Acknowledging the rivalry between the two Tennessee metropolises,
Purcell quipped that the status quo suited him just fine.

In his victory speech Thursday night, Herenton was
ambivalent on the matter of unity. Even while savoring his victory and
counting his blessings, he expressed what appeared to be sincere hurt over his
unpopularity among white voters – a source of tut-tutting to some Herenton
detractors, a redeeming sign of vulnerability to others. “I’m going to be nice
tonight,” Herenton he had said early on, “but there are some mean,
mean-spirited people in Memphis. These are the haters. I know how to shake
them off,”

Maybe so, maybe no. In any case, he made a pass at
being conciliatory. Looking ahead to restoring relations with the business
community and stemming white resentment (and population flow outward), and
perhaps also reflecting on a newly elected city council which will have a
majority of new members, the mayor said, “Memphis has some major decisions to
make. We have to decide if we want to be one city…or if we want to be a
divided city.”

Thursday’s election results reinforced a sense of
division. “This city is still highly racially polarized,” said John Ryder, a
longtime Memphis Republican figure who co-chaired the campaign of third-place
finisher Morris. “The man in the middle got squeezed,” Ryder said. He was
referring to his candidate, but his remark clearly had more general
application.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

End Notes

First, the good news: The Memphis municipal election of 2007 involved some of the more interesting cross-cultural campaigning, in both the racial and the political senses, that we can remember in recent political history. In particular, white candidates made more

overt appeals to black voters than has been customary of late. A high point (if that is the right term) was the extravagant public claim of also-ran candidate John Willingham, a white Republican, that he was the candidate of black Memphians and had no fewer than 13,000 African-American votes locked up early on.

In this case, the very claim — not the reality of it — was the message.

Now, the bad news: The Memphis municipal election of 2007 involved some of the more flagrant appeals to racial divisiveness that we can remember in recent political history. In particular, Mayor Willie Herenton, who knows better, made several calculated appeals to racial solidarity based on the dubious assumption that there are, on the white side of town, any number of ongoing plots against black political power.

In this case too, the claim itself is the message.

Much money has been spent by the various campaigns on TV and print advertising, yard signs, and other appeals to voters. This, too, has a high side and a low side — inasmuch as the truth content of such communications has been ambivalent at best. (Poor Rickey Peete. Besides a bad conscience and the likelihood of prison time, the tarnished councilman has to live with the fact that his name is now proverbial — having been coupled, rightly or wrongly and sometimes with a bare minimum of justification, with this or that candidate in attack ads.)

Then there are the polls — sometimes commissioned in the interests of specific candidates and sometimes not — and under suspicion of being so even when such is patently not the case. The Flyer itself has neither paid for nor commissioned any polls — though we were the first media outlet to release a key poll by Berje Yacoubian late in the mayoral campaign. This fully annotated sampling was promptly doubted by partisans of the major candidate who did less well than his two opponents.

And, sure enough, another poll came along in another news outlet showing a wholly different configuration. For the record, yet a third major poll, commissioned by a TV station, was released this week, and it conformed quite closely in its results to the poll that ran in the Flyer.

Who’s right? Early readers of this space will still be wondering — as are we — though many will be looking at it ex post facto and will already know how things came out.

In any case, we rest easy with the fact that, in several of the City Council races, talented and able candidates were abundant, and we presume that voters had enough information at their disposal to be able to sift the real from the shoddy and to make the proper decisions.

We can only hope that such a presumption is not itself presumptuous.

Categories
Opinion

The Morning After

“My fellow Memphians:

“In the aftermath of my historic victory, I look forward to the challenges (insurmountable though they are) of being your mayor (even though most of you didn’t vote for me and some of you can’t stand me).

“As a compassionate and forgiving leader, my first order of business is burying the hatchet (in my opponents’ heads, ha-ha!) and extending the hand (knife) of friendship (vengeance) to my worthy (pitiful) opponents. In the heat of a political campaign, we sometimes (repeatedly) say things we don’t really mean (but they sure get out the vote). If my words have offended anyone (King Willie, Boy, Carol the Cranky), I sincerely apologize for suggesting my opponents were unfit for this high office (on drugs, corrupt, a traitor to his race, a social misfit).

“In the coming weeks and months, we must put our differences aside (never in a million years) and work together for the common good (once I figure out what that is).

“The city of Memphis is known throughout the country and the world for its unique attributes (bankruptcy capital, foreclosure capital, tops in violent crime). Indeed, these days one can hardly read a newspaper or watch a television report without learning something new and exciting about our fair city (that makes you cringe). There is nothing like a mayoral campaign to stir the fresh breezes (invective) of open debate (minus the incumbent) and healthy discussion (anonymous slander and spin) that will cleanse (pollute) our great city.

“Now the honeymoon is over (it never began). It is time to roll up our sleeves and get to work (find a good real estate agent).

“Allow me to outline some of the challenges we face. After I am sworn in as your mayor in January, I plan to hit the ground running (to my suite at FedExForum).

“Our city’s economy is strong (perilous) and our municipal bond rating is admirably high (thanks to the highest property taxes in the state). There will always be doomsayers, but if home foreclosures stay within manageable levels (don’t become as common as political yard signs), then we can expect (hope for) stable revenues in 2008. Our city is growing (thanks to annexation), and, if the (lame-duck) City Council acts, our population will exceed 700,000 after the residents of southeast Shelby County and students at Southwind High School become proud Memphians (kicking and screaming).

“As I said during the campaign, I will restore integrity and a high standard of service to Memphis Light Gas & Water (as soon as I figure out who to appoint as CEO and the board of directors in the wake of the Joseph Lee debacle). With new leadership (pray for warm weather), our citizens can take pride in getting monthly utility bills that are accurate and cost-efficient (even higher than last winter) despite the uncertainties of the markets for oil ($80 a barrel headed to $100), natural gas (a crapshoot), and power from TVA, which has promised to hold its increase to single digits (9 percent).

“I will work tirelessly with the members of the Memphis City Council, which has had considerable turnover (it’s about time) and an infusion of fresh faces eager to improve our city (make a name for themselves) and lay aside racial divisions (until the first tough vote).

“If we have learned anything in the last four years, it is the futility (inevitability) of racially divisive comments and the importance of working together (to screw our enemies and solidify our base).

“Nothing is more important than the education of our children, including the 115,000 students in the Memphis City Schools (poor things). As I said during the campaign, as your mayor I will do everything I can to improve public education (which is almost nothing) and will work closely with the superintendent (as soon as a new one is chosen by the school board). Rest assured that your tax dollars that support public education will be closely monitored (increased in order to pay for $450 million in long-term facilities upgrades).

“What exciting (scary) times these are! I can’t wait to get to work (on a stiff drink).”

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: Voting For the Least Worst

So who are you voting for for Memphis mayor? It’s the issue everyone’s talking about. Of course, by the time you read this, it may be a moot point, but I think it’s important to speak and write honestly about the topic. And what I’ve seen and heard and read during this election cycle troubles me.

The thing that’s struck me about most of the conversations I’ve had and the e-mails I’ve received is that almost everyone is voting from fear. The fear expressed by some, for instance, that four more years of Mayor Herenton’s increasing weirdness and erratic behavior — to wit: the press conference this summer claiming unnamed “snakes” were plotting to get him, or the one he staged with the city attorney two weeks ago about crooked or defective voting machines, etc. — will doom us to divisiveness and stagnation.

Conversely, comments I’ve heard and read from some African Americans indicate they are voting for Herenton because they are afraid that if a white candidate (Carol Chumney) wins — or a candidate they perceive as “not black enough” (Herman Morris) — they could be “throwing away” all the gains they’ve earned from having a black mayor for 16 years.

Then there’s the “anybody but Herenton” crowd. These folks aren’t worried about skin color, they just don’t want Willie anymore. They’re trying to decide between Chumney and Morris, based solely on which of them has the best chance to beat Herenton. They’re constantly poll-watching, analyzing the percentages, waiting for the latest data, afraid they will pick the “wrong” candidate.

I know that each of the three major contenders for Memphis mayor has their true-believers, folks who aren’t voting from fear or gauging the odds of one candidate against another. But I think a great many of the city’s voters are voting to make sure something doesn’t happen, rather than choosing a candidate they truly beleive in.

It’s ironic and more than a little sad — given that this is the Flyer’s annual “Best of Memphis” issue — that so many of us are voting not for who we think is best for the job, but to avoid the worst.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Willie or Won’t He?: Ford Sr. Mulls Over a Reprise of 1991


Two full days after the campaign of Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton announced his presence at a Tuesday night rally for Herenton, and on the very morning that the evening rally – at Mount Vernon Baptist Church – is scheduled, former congressman Harold Ford Sr. was keeping a mysterious silence about the matter.

As of early Tuesday morning, attempts to reach Ford had been unavailing, nor could intimates of the once legendary political broker, even some who had spoken to him by telephone on Monday, shed much light on the matter. It even remained uncertain as to whether Ford – who was in town last week to cast an early vote – had lingered in Memphis or had meanwhile returned to his current residence in Florida.

One thing was certain. Widespread public curiosity about the joint appearance of the two often warring political titans, plans for which were first reported in the Flyer on Sunday, virtually guaranteed a massive turnout for the affair, set to begin at 6 p.m. The Commercial Appeal weighed in on the matter in its Tuesday editions – a sure indication that things had reached a boiling point.

Along with anticipation of the Herenton-Ford team-up, however, came abundant skepticism – not only in statements from the rival campaigns of Herman Morris and Carol Chumney but in conversations among members of the city’s political cognoscenti. After all, the rivalry between Ford and Herenton – and between their extended political families – has been a root fact of life in Memphis for almost 15 years.

Relations between the two men, already tense, became volatile in 1994 when they exchanged epithets and almost came to blows over what the first-term mayor regarded as a show of disrespect from Ford. The issue was then congressman Ford’s insistence, in a manner that the mayor regarded as impertinent, that Herenton establish a summer jobs program for indigent youth.

The real problem, however, had been simmering almost from the moment that Herenton was elected as the city’s first elected black mayor in 1991 – thanks largely to last-minute help from Ford. Suspicion and distrust between the two had already existed, and, once the historic victory had been achieved through their momentary solidarity, Herenton and Ford lapsed into the position of permanent rivals for power – almost in the Western-gunslinger sense that the town wasn’t big enough for both of them.

Clashes were frequent between the two camps over the years (one of the newly elected Harold Ford Jr.’s first acts upon succeeding his father in Congress in 1997 was to renew the quarrel over summer jobs). In 1999 the former congressman’s brother Joe Ford, then a city councilman, unsuccessfully challenged Herenton at the polls.

And last year saw a renewed outbreak of hostility when the mayor endorsed Steve Cohen, the ultimately successful Democratic nominee for Congress, and disparaged not only independent congressional candidate Jake Ford, the former congressman’s son, but the Ford clan itself as a “power-mad” family. That galvanized Ford Sr., who was already active in the Senatorial campaign of son Harold Ford Jr. into steadfast efforts on behalf of his other son.

Is it possible that, only a year after that latest outbreak, all those wounds have healed and Harold Ford Sr. and Willie Herenton will have come full cycle in common cause? Or is it the fact, as some suspect, that the advertised rapprochement is as questionable as two other matters spoken to by the mayor in this election year – an alleged sexual-blackmail plot against him (still not verified) and his assertion that flaws in the city’s voting machines had contaminated the results of early voting?

The answer to both questions would surely be revealed on Tuesday night.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Old Foe Harold Ford Sr. Comes to Herenton’s Aid Again

Never let it
be said that the twain don’t meet. They are about to – for the second time in a
generation. Mayor Willie Herenton, involved in what he acknowledges is a
difficult reelection race, has called for support once more from an old political
foe, former 9th District congressman Harold Ford Sr., who bridged their
personal distance to help Herenton become Memphis’ first elected black mayor in
1991.

Though the
Get-Out-the-Vote assistance of Ford, a significant political broker, was widely
regarded at the time as essential to Herenton’s victory, the mayor repeatedly
disparaged that interpretation in subsequent years. For a decade and a half, he
and Ford, who had never enjoyed cordial relations, lapsed into a state of
intense rivalry and an ongoing war of words, one which Herenton escalated as
recently as the congressional campaign of 2006 — when the ex-congressman’s son
Jake was a candidate — to include all “the Fords,” whom Herenton described as
power-mad.

At the time the mayor was supporting Democratic nominee Steve Cohen, the ultimate winner, against Jake Ford, who was running as an independent. The senior Ford, now living in Florida and working as a well-paid political consultant, spent considerable time in in Memphis working on behalf of both son Jake and another son, Harold Ford Jr., his successor in Congress, who was then running for the U.S. Senate.

Relations between Herenton and the Ford family had rarely been so strained.

But an email circulated by the Herenton campaign Sunday spelled out a different and sunnier scenario, containing this
paragraph from the mayor: “I am proud to announce another member of TEAM HERENTON
07.
Our former U.S. Congressman, Harold Ford Sr., has not only endorsed my candidacy
for re-election, but he began campaigning with us today in churches throughout
Memphis. He will continue campaigning with us through Election Day, Thursday,
October 4.”

The release
went on to offer free tickets to a joint rally: “Join us on Tuesday,
October 2nd,
at my church home, Mount
Vernon Baptist Church
at
6 p.m.
as Memphis prepares to face a huge voter turnout on October 4th.”

The
announcement of this unusual alliance occurred less than a week before
Thursday’s mayoral election, at a time when recent polls have indicated that the mayor’s
two chief opponents, councilwoman Carol Chumney and former MLGW head Herman
Morris, are both within striking distance of him.