Tag: Herenton

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Politics Politics Feature

Who’s On First?

It may take some time to evaluate the enduring effects, but the fact is that the three main contenders in the Memphis mayor’s race all have found something to brag about in the several days since the candidate field became complete:

• Mayor Willie Herenton finished first in a straw poll held by the Shelby County Democrats at the Rendezvous Restaurant last Thursday night. And he did so by typically Herentonian means, without bothering to attend the event.

A few score Democrats showed up at the event to pay $50 a head for the privilege of voting in a mayoral straw poll while raising money for the party. The only mayoral candidate who was there from start to finish was Herman Morris. Carol Chumney came late and addressed the crowd, as had Morris earlier. John Willingham had a spokesperson on hand who talked him up before the attendees.

Only the mayor was absent and went unspoken for. But his was the name called out by party chairman Keith Norman when it came time to announce the winner. Norman declined to give out any numbers or declare who finished second or third.

What was proved by the event and by its outcome? That Herenton has a hard core of supporters and a network that serves him well, for all the fact that he’s not campaigning this year in the conventional sense: no fund-raisers, no polls, no inclination to participate in forums.

A scientific poll? Of course not. What it did prove, however, was that the mayor — who presided over a couple of weekend headquarters openings — is not lacking where G.O.T.V. (get-out-the-vote) is the game. And that’s what the game will be during early voting and on October 4th.

• For her part, Councilwoman Chumney turned up the leader in a fresh trial heat by pollster Berje Yacoubian showing her to be leading a second-place Herenton and a third-place Herman Morris. The numbers were 33 percent for Chumney to Herenton’s 29 percent to 14 percent for Morris.

Underlining the surprising showing for Chumney, whom many observers had thought to have declined from her peak as a leader in early spring polls, was the fact that Yacoubian had made public statements only a week earlier, telling Fox 13 News, which also broke the news of his poll, that Herenton was a “good bet” to be leading the field.

Au contraire, when Yacoubian got around to toting things up. His sampling of some 300 presumably representative voters showed Chumney to be considered a better bet than Herenton on issues like crime and education, with Herenton having a lead only on the matter of economic development.

Among other things, what that meant was that Chumney’s standing had apparently survived her widely publicized refusal to vote, back in April, for a council resolution asking for the resignation of Joseph Lee, then still at the helm of MLGW. The fact that the resolution, offered by colleague Jack Sammons, then failed by a single vote was thought to have been an embarrassment for Chumney. So was the fact that her own previously offered resolution, directing Herenton to accept a much earlier resignation offer from Lee, had failed to draw a second.

Both circumstances underscored Chumney’s reputation as a go-it-alone maverick with few if any allies in city government. Yacoubian’s poll results suggest that voters may find Chumney’s non-observance of the maxim “go along to get along” more attractive than not.

• Though Morris had reason to be discouraged by all of this, his demeanor, on a stepped-up round of activity, didn’t show it. He seemed unfeignedly confident as recently as Monday night, when the former head of both MLGW and the local NAACP (an alphabet spread that, in theory, encompassed a good deal of potentially centrist turf) addressed a meeting of the Germantown Democrats.

Parenthesis: One of the peculiarities of the current political season — as noticed both by ourselves and by Mediaverse blogger Richard Thompson — is the number of forums, fund-raisers, speaking appearances, and other events involving candidates in the Memphis city election that have taken place in the bordering municipality of Germantown.

That has to do both with the fact of overlapping populations (many members of the Germantown Democratic Club are residents of Cordova and Memphis voters) and with the circumstance that, with governmental consolidations of various kinds in the air, people in the near suburbs are taking an unusual interest in how things go in Memphis voting.

Consolidation was, in fact, one of the matters that Morris dealt with forthrightly during Monday night’s meeting. He endorsed it, categorically, and went so far as to express impatience with half-measures like the current intergovernmental talks involving an enhanced liaison of Memphis police with the county sheriff’s department.

“Consolidate everything!” Morris pronounced, and to that end, he recommended following the example of Louisville, where city and county voters voted consolidation in after an extensive period of public discussions. Similarly, he said, Memphis and Shelby County voters should be paid the “respect” of having the issue “put in front of us.”

When a club member said she was “tired” of questions about impropriety surrounding various officials now in office, Morris barely hesitated before responding, “I am, too. And I’m tired of people reelecting them.”

In general, Morris cast himself as Mr. Candor, attributing the financial problems of Memphis Networx, which he championed while leading MLGW, to the short-sightedness of the profit-focused private investors involved in the public/private initiative. He freely acknowledged hatching thoughts of a mayoral run in December 2003, immediately after being forced out of his utility perch by Herenton. And he flatly declared, “I don’t trust those numbers,” concerning Herenton’s current economic forecasts.

He suggested that his major opponents drew their strength from white or black enclaves, respectively, “while I’m 50-50, right in the middle.”

One note being struck resoundingly in private by Morris’ campaign people is the prospect, in fact, that he will shortly inherit some of the racially balanced support that was evidenced in the short-lived “Draft A C” campaign to induce a mayoral candidacy by Shelby County mayor A C Wharton.

With only two months to go, Morris needs a boost — more than he’ll get from the drug test which he successfully passed last week after challenging all the contenders to take one as well.

• The fourth name candidate in the Memphis mayor’s race, John Willingham, meanwhile, resolved to soldier on, despite the fact that few observers (and no polls to date) have given him much chance. “Look what happened in 2002,” he said, a reminder of his runaway upset win that year over the late Morris Fair, then an incumbent Shelby County commissioner. Last week’s cover story, by the way, erred in suggesting that Willingham had plans to convert Shelby Farms, now administered by the nonprofit Shelby Farms Conservancy, into an Olympic Village. It is the Fairgrounds that Willingham has in mind for his proposal. More of that anon.

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Editorial Opinion

Rush the Judgment

Ordinarily we favor patient deliberation in the pursuit of justice — particularly when, as in the case of the current special investigation into charges of a blackmail plot against Memphis mayor Willie Herenton, there are political implications involved. But since there is a mayor’s race on, and especially since this year’s city election is shaping up to be as epochal in its way as the one in 1991 which first elected

Herenton, we incline to the view that we as citizens are entitled to the equivalent of a speedy trial. Once so distant in our mind’s eye, the filing deadline for mayoral candidates and other city candidates — July 19th — is now almost upon us.

Given the gravity of our political situation — a City Council decimated by charges of corruption, a growing schism between the community’s economic leadership and the mayor’s office, a sense of civic confusion symbolized by the entangled Networx and MLGW dilemmas — this is one case in which due process could morph into “long overdue.”

There are two questions in particular that special prosecutor Joe Baugh should quickly get to the bottom of: 1) Was there a “blackmail” plot or any other criminal enterprise of the sort charged by Herenton in his bizarre press conference of some weeks back? 2) Has there been a legitimate ongoing investigation by law enforcement authorities into improper relationships between city officials and topless clubs or similar enterprises?

It seems clear now that answering those two questions would not constitute the be-all or end-all of everything we need to know politically or, for that matter, the completion of an investigation into possible corruption and illegalities. But having some sort of reliable focus on those two issues is crucial to our ability to shape our own destiny this election year.

We understand the unlikelihood that Baugh can provide those basic preliminary answers in the next two weeks. Depending on what he might say, accusations of haste or political slanting or whatever might well come from this or that quarter and become embedded in the dynamics of the campaign. It is far more probable that the special prosecutor could speak with completeness and authority at some later point before the October 4th general election itself, and that, too, would be worth something.

But we think some earlier resolution, before July 19th, is worth the risk. It should be possible, at least in partial or general terms, to provide some guidance to the community on the two indicated issues. Putting it bluntly: There is reason to believe that the mayoral field is still incomplete, and there is a definite “need to know” on the part of major candidates still meditating on whether their candidacies would be matters of genuine urgency for Memphis itself and for the city’s greater metropolitan area.

Let us say too: What we have learned in the last couple of weeks about private interventions into the public weal has been disquieting. We don’t doubt, for example, that Nick Clark is motivated by religious conviction in his concern about topless clubs. But there are aspects to his own freebooting investigation that smack of vigilantism and commercial self-interest. What we need, as quickly as possible, are public answers to public questions from a duly constituted public source.

Categories
Opinion

Why Herenton Will Win

Mayor Herenton filed his reelection papers Tuesday. He could still drop out, and more candidates can get in the race until July 19th. But assuming that he doesn’t and even if they do, here’s why I think he will win.

Winner Take All. Even if the polls are right and at least two-thirds of the voters don’t like him, Herenton only needs one more vote than the second-place finisher. Mathematically, he could win with 32 percent of the vote, like Steve Cohen did last year in the congressional Democratic primary. A Herenton hater who lives outside the city or stays home on Election Day doesn’t hurt him. The more challengers he has, the better he does. I don’t see a 2007 version of the 1991 convention that chose Herenton as the consensus black candidate. Polls that show Herenton losing in a head-to-head race with so-and-so are misleading because he probably won’t be running against one person.

The Numbers. Democrats from Harold Ford to Bill Clinton to Herenton win elections in Memphis by rolling up huge margins in scores of black precincts. Clinton actually won every vote in some precincts in 1996. If Herenton gets 80 or 90 percent of the vote in several precincts, he can beat a challenger whose best showing is 50 or 60 percent. Where are Herman Morris or Carol Chumney going to win 80 percent?

The Record and the Rhetoric. The mayor’s recent rhetoric about racial solidarity was a nice try, but his record doesn’t live down to it. He’s been a supporter of optional schools, downtown development, and occasional Republican political candidates. He has appointed way too many white division directors and police directors. As a black racist, he simply doesn’t cut it. Absent a consensus candidate and public repudiation by key business leaders, he’ll hold his own in East Memphis.

Snakes. As Herenton knew they would, members of the media took the bait and are acting like Nick Clark and Richard Fields are the ones running for mayor, not the four-term incumbent. Clark and Fields are not running for anything. Fields is an attorney. Clark is a businessman and member of the MLGW board. They don’t work for the city of Memphis. They don’t make a single appointment to a public board or government job. They can’t award a single no-bid contract. But Herenton, who has done all those things hundreds of times for 16 years, called them snakes and the chase was on. The mayor’s hint that unnamed snakes are still out there was so much more useful than confronting them head-on — as Fields, whatever you may think of him, did with Herenton in a three-hour meeting in March when he suggested he look for another line of work. How old-fashioned! The way to slur someone these days, as everyone knows, is anonymously.

Machine Politics. Taking a page from Boss Crump’s book, Herenton has appointed or assisted scores of friends and even some former rivals to city jobs. People like former school board member Sara Lewis, former City Council members Janet Hooks and Tajuan Stout Mitchell, and former mayoral spokeswoman Gale Jones Carson know how to campaign and win elections. Ordinary incumbency is an advantage, but 16 years of control over power, access, contracts, and jobs is an overwhelming advantage.

The City Charter reads: “No full-time employee shall engage in political activity, directly concerned with city government or any candidate for political office thereunder.”

That means no political phone calls, e-mails, letters, or strategy meetings on city time. But the ban is a paper tiger, more toothless than an ethics ordinance. “Uncovering” politics in a government office would be like finding mud in the Mississippi River.

Money. The mayor has more than $500,000 in his campaign fund even if he did only raise $1,650 in the first reporting period this year. By August, if he makes a few phone calls, he should have more than all his challengers put together. Chumney, at last report, had under $30,000. But Herenton managed to turn even that to his advantage by accusing the media of giving her free publicity.

Crime and MLGW. There is no simple solution to crime, and the latest numbers are running Herenton’s way. What do you propose to do differently if you’re Herman Morris or Carol Chumney or even, say, FBI special agent My Harrison? On MLGW and Memphis Networx, Morris was running the show for seven years, and there is plenty of blame to go around.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Doing Just Fine?

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Budget season is just about over, but the Memphis City Council is currently reviewing where it can save money and where it can make money.

In April, the mayor presented broad recommendations from a $700,000 efficiency study conducted by Deloitte Consulting. Among the study’s recommendations were closing several library branches, hiring more civilians to work at the police department, and reorganizing the fire department. Last week, the City Council’s public safety committee heard from several division directors on the report’s specifics and what — if any — recommendations they felt could work.

But the committee also heard a presentation by the city attorney’s office on how increasing fines and fees could actually make the city more money.

“I see a good number of opportunities for the city to raise the amount of revenue it collects,” city attorney Elbert Jefferson said.

In a report from the Revenue, Credits, and Collections Committee — originally chaired by former city attorney Sara Hall — recommendations included increasing animal service fees and increasing use and occupancy fees, among others.

Though the council directed the administration to look at fines and fees several years ago, the report noted that many of the codes and ordinances were passed before 1970 — and many of the fees hadn’t changed since then.

“Given an increase of 333 percent in the Consumer Price Index between 1970 and 2000, a $20 fine in 1970 would equate to a $6 fine in 2000. Alternatively, an inflation-adjusted fine of $20 in 1970 would be $66 in 2000,” read the report. “Clearly, for those fines, fees, and licenses that have not been updated since enactment or approval, their impact has been dramatically eroded by the general rise in prices for urban consumers of all goods.”

The study cites the metro alarm fee as one opportunity. The initial alarm registration fee is $30. The renewal fee, however, is just $5.

“When I write a $5 check for my alarm fees, I know that it costs more than $5 to process that check,” Councilman Jack Sammons said.

Jefferson said that the fees should be restructured to cover both the direct departmental costs — such as salaries or supplies — as well as indirect costs associated with human resources or the legal department.

“Given the stability and predictability of most division and department budget requirements, setting fees, etc., in anticipation of requirements prevents budget shortfalls and minimizes the impact of unanticipated events,” read the study.

So, could some of the city’s departments become self-sufficient? It’s an interesting idea. When Mayor Willie Herenton presented the initial efficiency-study recommendations, he said the report lent credibility to the city’s operations, but he seemed slightly dismissive of its findings.

“I don’t know any government in the country that can purport to be excellent in every operation. … I think all governments work on a daily basis to make themselves better,” he said. “Consultants can come in and do studies, but we’re the ones who have to run this city.”

For instance, out of the city’s $500 million operation budget, the consultants found roughly $18 million in savings, most of it from the fire services division.

“[Fire services] director [Richard] Arwood would tell you if we implement these recommendations, we would have a dramatically different fire service division. We have known for some time there were opportunities to reduce cost, but that wasn’t what we wanted to do,” Herenton said.

I guess it’s only natural to sound a little defensive when someone comes in and tries to tell you how to run your city. But Herenton’s right. Increased efficiency isn’t always best.

No matter how many lessons government tries to learn from big business, there is one key difference: With the government, the bottom line isn’t, well, the bottom line. Government has a different end game, one which includes public safety, education, and law enforcement.

But the efficiency study shouldn’t be dismissed. Consultants might not be the ones who “run this city,” but if the fines and fees show anything, it is that some things run on autopilot. If a fee can stay the same for three decades (if not four; it is 2007, after all), it’s not a bad idea to take a closer look.

The council’s public safety committee is expected to hear efficiency-study recommendations for parks and libraries July 10th. The committee was supposed to discuss the two areas at its last meeting, but it ran out of time.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Snake, Rat, or Martyr?

Whatever the final resolution of Memphis’ current political soap opera — dubbed “The 2007 Political Conspiracy” by chief protagonist Mayor Willie Herenton — there would seem to be little doubt as to the fate of one principal, lawyer Richard Fields. One way or another, Fields will take a fall; indeed, he has already suffered one.

Designated as the chief villain of what Herenton alleges is a blackmail plot against him — a “snake,” in Herenton’s term — Fields is now in an untenable situation. Even if, as many believe, he ends up being exonerated of the mayor’s specific charges (orchestrating an elaborate sex sting against Herenton), Fields will have inevitably plummeted to earth from a once-lofty position, his wax wings burnt and melted like some presumptuous Icarus come too close to the sun.

In the classical sense, Fields is an object lesson in hubris — a Greek term denoting prideful and ultimately ruinous overreaching. Well-regarded for years as a dedicated civil rights attorney, Fields seems to have made a decision some years back to establish himself as a power broker second to none in the city’s history.

That phase of his life may have begun as far back as the school-superintendent years of Willie Herenton (see “City Beat,” p. 12) and crystallized in 1991 when Fields was one of the few whites who actively supported Herenton in his successful bid to become the city’s first elected black mayor.

For some time thereafter, Fields remained close to the mayor, but he quarreled seriously with other mayoral intimates, like former city attorney Robert Spence, who would later accuse Fields of wanting to dictate city contracts. And, after an off-and-on period of close collaboration, Fields — or Herenton — decided in the last year or two, for whatever reason, to open up some real distance in the relationship.

That fissure seems to have coincided with turbulence in Fields’ private life — including the latest of four divorces, all from African-American women. (Fields himself is Caucasian, and his enemies — notably blogger Thaddeus Matthews — have broadly insinuated an almost Freudian hostility on his part to black men, especially those holding public office.)

In the meantime, Fields had made a somewhat feckless Democratic primary race against then state senator John Ford in 2002, finishing well out of the money (in every sense of that term). The experience, along with his long proximity to the city’s powerful and often imperious mayor, seems to have pushed him in the direction of kingmaking.

Largely on the strength of his ties to Herenton, Fields got himself elected to the Shelby County Democratic executive committee in 2005, in a party convention dominated by Herenton ally Sidney Chism and reformist leader Desi Franklin. (If Fields’ relations with Chism, since elected to the County Commission, are now necessarily strained, he apparently remains close to Franklin, a possible City Council candidate this year.)

Then came Fields’ pro bono involvement, alongside the legal team of the state Republican Party, in an effort to void the state Senate victory of Democrat Ophelia Ford over the GOP’s Terry Roland. Though the effort was ultimately successful, Fields had meanwhile been forced off the local Democratic committee amid accusations of a political conflict of interest.

Undaunted, Fields got his hand back in the political process almost immediately, with widely circulated broadsides enumerating the purported liabilities of certain judicial candidates in the 2006 August general election and calling for their defeat, while touting the prospects of others. His efforts seemed to some an attempt to replicate the influence of the old “Ford ballots,” voter guides put out at election time by former congressman Harold Ford Sr.

Since many of the candidates opposed by Fields were black and since his ballot choices, by design or otherwise, received most attention in largely white precincts of Midtown and East Memphis, he was accused — perhaps ironically, given his personal history — of a racial bias.

Whether for that reason or some other, Fields amended at least two early judicial choices, substituting African-American candidates for white candidates he had promised to support. To some, that took the gloss of his supposed high-mindedness.

Fields was back at it again for the fall elections last year, with newly distributed ballot choices in partisan races, taking sides with a number of Republican candidates against their Democratic opponents. That brought new outcries, especially among fellow Democrats, some of whom tried anew earlier this year to expel Fields, newly elected to a new version of the Democratic committee. That attempt was ruled out of order by the party’s new chairman, Keith Norman.

During the runup to the party’s reorganization, Fields had made public statements about “vetting” Norman that suggested to some he had handpicked the new chairman — a fact that prompted a clearly offended Norman to make a public disavowal of that scenario.

Fields continued in his new career as would-be power broker, sending out letters attacking old foe Spence in the latter’s Democratic Party primary contest against ultimate winner Beverly Marrero in yet another special-election contest, this one also for a state Senate seat.

Meanwhile, Fields was increasingly given to temperamental outbursts — some marginally understandable, as when he became unruly in Criminal Court judge Rita Stotts‘ courtroom last year and had to be removed by her bailiff during a legal process in which he apparently thought his son had been unfairly targeted.

There were instances of alleged assault — one against lawyer Jay Bailey; another against radio talk-show host Jennings Bernard, who filed a formal complaint. There were hostile reactions by Fields to routine, even friendly media attention, which culminated in an attempt by the erstwhile civil-libertarian and First Amendment supporter to have the media banned from public meetings of the Democratic committee.

Though this action would patently have violated the state’s Sunshine Law, Fields’ motion was formally vetted by Norman before being dismissed out of hand. (After last week’s events, Norman demanded and got Fields’ resignation, his second in two years, from the executive committee.)

That brings the Fields saga to the present and the ongoing legal/political saga pitting the mayor, his allies, and double (perhaps triple) agent Gwen Smith, who alleges that Fields hired her to entrap Herenton sexually, against Fields and other alleged adversaries of the mayor, some of whom may have had no other involvement in things than to favor Herenton’s taking leave of his office.

It is hard to imagine that an FBI agent would, as Herenton charged, take part in an illegal conspiracy designed to defeat his reelection. What seems more likely is that a sting may have been getting under way, perhaps urged on by Fields, centering on the relations of the mayor and beer-board chairman Reginald French, a Herenton ally, with topless clubs seeking liquor licenses.

Just what is what in this affair may be determined — and in short order — by the special prosecutor requested by District Attorney General Bill Gibbons. And whatever the legal and political consequences to others, the options available to Richard Fields in the end game seem rather starkly circumscribed.

In this age of the real Tennessee Waltz and the fictionalized Sopranos, they range from possible criminal charges on one end to political “rat” on the other. Even if Fields proves to have had the purest of motives, he seems above all to have been an overreacher.

Categories
Opinion

Flashback to 1991

In the immortal words of Mary Winkler after she whacked her husband, our “ugly got out” last week.

The bizarre events involving Mayor Willie Herenton, attorney Richard Fields, and his client-turned-accuser Gwen Smith promise an ugly year of retro politics driven by religion, race, revenge, and fear.

Doubtless there are plenty of snakes of all kinds in Memphis, but the city’s biggest problem are the old bulls who still run the show. The relationship between Herenton and Fields goes back to 1969, when, as principal and teacher, they joined a school boycott called “Black Mondays” to get black representatives on the school board.

Fields supported Herenton and the NAACP when the school board tried to appoint a white superintendent in 1978. When Herenton was elected mayor in 1991 by just 142 votes, Fields was one of only two prominent white citizens to publicly support him. In federal court that year, he helped strike down the runoff provision in mayoral elections, enabling Herenton to win with 49.4 percent of the vote. He represented Herenton in his divorce and in well-publicized lawsuits filed by a teacher and a police officer.

“I know how to keep confidences,” Fields said in a Flyer interview last week.

An activist at heart, he also knows how to take matters into his own hands. He tried to influence county and judicial elections last year by recommending some candidates and criticizing others with information gleaned from public records. He got in the middle of a state Senate election involving attorney Robert Spence earlier this year. And in March, he took a mayoral poll, and when it showed strong signs of Herenton fatigue, he took it to the top floor of City Hall.

“That’s been my role,” Fields said. “I get to disagree with him. That’s the kind of relationship we have.”

Or had, anyway. Fields says they met cordially that afternoon for three-and-a-half hours, talking about old times and the mayor’s legacy as well as the poll and the people surrounding Herenton, particularly Reginald French, an unsuccessful candidate for sheriff last year and head of the beer board. Fields suggested Herenton not run again. “I was trying to help him go out gracefully without any mess,” Fields said.

Herenton gave a much different account. At a news conference, he mocked Fields and said his sincerity and concern for his legacy were bogus. Then he called him a snake.

Fields said he was “distressed” by that, and, moreover, he is tired of activism.

“I would really like to get out of the business of being the person on the front lines,” he said. “I wish some young black lawyers would come forward. But there’s a lot of resentment out there because of the judges’ survey that I did.”

He denied having a sexual relationship with Gwen Smith, who was jailed in Nashville last week for violating probation, or giving her any files or indictments that are not public record. He said businessman and Joseph Lee accuser Nick Clark is “my client,” but he isn’t working for any mayoral candidate, announced or otherwise.

Not that anyone is knocking on his door. Rough-cut, outspoken, and married and divorced four times, Fields is one-of-a-kind. Five years ago, when they were still on good terms, Herenton said, “A lot of my friends don’t understand my friendship with Richard because he irritates the hell out of them.”

The mayoral campaign of 2007 will be the most interesting and bitter one since 1991. On New Year’s Day, Herenton cast himself in biblical terms of being “on the wall” like Nehemiah at Jerusalem. He quoted Scripture at his press conference last week and drew a chorus of “amens” from police officers and supporters in attendance.

Addressing black Memphians specifically, he warned of efforts to divide them and said, “This time, divide-and-conquer ain’t going to work.”

Ominously, he said, “There are those in this community who would like to see me removed by any means,” and, without naming anyone, “They might resort to what happened to Dr. [Martin Luther] King in Memphis.”

A bit stunned by that one, I asked the mayor’s friend and former campaign chairman Charles Carpenter, who was there, if he heard what I heard. At first, he said there had been death threats against the mayor, but when I said I thought that should be reported, he said he wasn’t sure. Standing nearby, police director Larry Godwin said he was unaware of any such threats.

By appealing for racial solidarity, Herenton has little to lose. He already cast black challenger Herman Morris as a “boy” in league with whites from the geriatric set. He has more than $500,000 in his campaign account but has raised only $1,650 this year, and much of what he raised last fall came from supporters in Detroit and Atlanta. In 1999 and 2003, he raised more than $300,000 each year.

And he is right that the polls showing him on the skids are biased and misleading. As the four-term incumbent, he can rally old warriors including attorneys Carpenter and Ricky Wilkins, former MLGW presidents Joseph Lee and Rev. James Netters, and political hands French, Sara Lewis, Deidre Malone (the Shelby County commissioner who orchestrated the Gwen Smith media festival), Sidney Chism, Gale Jones Carson, Stephanie Dowell, Pete Aviotti, Rick Masson, and TaJuan Stout Mitchell. Even some of the now-maligned “wealthy business leaders” may get over it and join Team Herenton once they see how the field shapes up and which way the wind is blowing.

Herenton’s demand for a federal investigation of “an ongoing civil/criminal conspiracy designed to entrap African-American leaders in the city of Memphis” was a politically shrewd reminder that the scorecard so far in Operation Tennessee Waltz and Main Street Sweeper shows six black elected officials in Memphis and no whites. The unpopular Republican attorney general Alberto Gonzales, who is barely hanging on to his job, probably won’t do a thing. And if any federal indictments come out of the investigation of Ralph Lunati’s strip clubs, they can be spun as the work of snakes if they touch anyone close to the mayor.

Divide-and-conquer may not work, but that is assuredly the strategy. The latest one to employ it is Herenton.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

Pooting Green

It was a good day for golf in Memphis: A crisp, clear day with perfect visibility and virtually no wind. The birds were singing, the crowd was polite, and the fairways were perfectly manicured. A certain pro golfer, famous for his heavy drinking, scene-stealing antics, and club-throwing volatility, stepped up to the green, but not to putt. He just wanted to watch his opponent a little more closely. The larger-than-life golfer watched as his opponent lined up his putt and prepared to drop the white ball into the hole. But just as the putter was about to connect, the man watching him let out a thunderous, impossibly juicy round of flatulence that sounded like someone ripping three yards of calico. The fartiste was given a steep fine for unsportsmanlike conduct. By this point, all readers not intimately familiar with Memphis golf lore are probably assuming that the gaseous golfer in question was none other than our own John Daly. Wrong.

During the 1958 Memphis Golf Invitational, the pooter was the legendary Tommy Bolt. The putter remains unknown.

See, folks. Big John’s not bad. He’s just carrying on a long-forgotten tradition. And making up for all that time it was lost.

Ssssssss!

It’s probably lame to mention the mayor’s most recent remarks concerning certain scaly reptiles known to hide in tall weeds. They’ve been in every newspaper and blog and on every TV news program. By all rights they have no place among the esoterica of Fly on the Wall. And yet it’s just too tempting to say something like, “Get these motherf&@*&$g snakes off his motherf&@*&$g honor,” or to recall the immortal words of W.C. Fields, who wisely noted, “You should always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite. And furthermore, always carry a snake.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Worx for Some, Not for Others

As the MLGW board ‘fessed up this week and announced the pending sale to a Colorado holding company of its Networx assets, at a financial loss to Memphis taxpayers, at least two leading mayoral candidates stood to suffer a potential political loss on top of that.

They were incumbent mayor Willie Herenton, by all accounts a prime mover in the board’s decision to invest $29 million in the broadband fiber-optics enterprise back in 1999, and Herman Morris, MGLW’s president at the time.

And talk about bad timing! Addressing a meeting of the conservative-oriented Dutch Treat Luncheon on March 10th, candidate Morris made a point of defending the venture, saying, “I believed and believe it to be a very good concept.”

The former utility head went on to contend that Networx was intended to give the city “a competitive posture to attract industry as a part of our infrastructure” and to encourage “growth in the high-tech sector.”

Predicted Morris: “I still believe it will pay dividends.”

Two other candidates came off somewhat better. Addressing the same Dutch Treat Luncheon group a month earlier, on February 10th, former county commissioner John Willingham listed Networx as one of the flops of the current administration and criticized it as relying on fiber optics “in the age of, what, wireless?”

And City Council member Carol Chumney, who said she attempted to downscale some add-on funding for Networx that the council briefly considered a year or two back and who criticized the venture at her campaign opening in February, announced that the council’s MLGW committee, which she heads, will hold a hearing on the Networx matter next Tuesday.

Mayoral candidate Chumney finally let the other shoe drop Tuesday when she filed her candidacy petition at the Election Commission.

Meanwhile, as if determined to prove that he has a common touch, Morris made the rounds last week — literally. One of his stops was at Thursday night’s weekly session of “Drinking Liberally” at Dish in Cooper-Young.

In that casual setting, Morris dispensed some of his usual platform planks on crime, economic development, and education but also addressed some more unusual queries. Someone, mindful of an imbroglio experienced by presidential hopeful Bill Richardson on Meet the Press, asked Morris if he was a Yankee or a Red Sox fan.

After thinking on it, Morris answered “Yankees” but then added, “I’m not really a baseball fan, though.” Why not? “Because of the 7th-inning stretch. That always wakes me up.”

On Saturday, Morris addressed a meeting of the Shelby County Democratic Women, where, among other things, he boasted Memphis’ “natural attributes” over those of Atlanta and criticized a law-enforcement strategy whereby “drive-by police are chasing drive-by criminals.”

• Confirming intentions that had been known for months, Pinnacle Airlines attorney Nikki Tinker, runner-up to U.S. representative Steve Cohen in last year’s 9th District Democratic primary, has filed federal papers to run against Cohen again next year. But both Tinker and Cohen could have company in the primary: Freshman state representative G.A. Hardaway is also said to be considering a race.

As for Tinker’s challenge — represented by The Hill, an insiders’ political newsletter in Washington, D.C., as having black vs. white connotations — Cohen had this to say to the paper: “I don’t see it as being close at all. … I’m afraid Ms. Tinker is not aware of how far we’ve come in race relations.”

Tinker, who made a late and well-funded challenge to Cohen in 2006, paid for largely by corporate donations and support from the Emily’s List PAC, filed Friday with the Federal Election Commission but reported no financial contributions for the first quarter of the current cycle.

Cohen won 31 percent of the 15-candidate primary vote in 2006 and won a majority of the district’s African-American vote in a three-way general election contest with independent Jake Ford (also rumored to be thinking about another run) and Republican Mark White.

In his term so far, Cohen has taken special pains with legislation on behalf of black voters, most recently sponsoring a House resolution putting the body on record as apologizing for slavery. Earlier this year, he held a joint town meeting in the district with the legendary African-American congressman from Detroit, John Conyers, Cohen’s chairman on the House Judiciary Committee.

Hardaway, whose candidacy would constitute another three-way race for Cohen, would neither confirm nor deny plans for a congressional run in 2008.

• Barack Obama, the Democratic senator from Illinois who wants to be president, came to Tennessee last week in pursuit of that aim.

After meeting in Nashville with Governor Phil Bredesen, state house speaker Jimmy Naifeh, and members of the legislative black caucus, and just before heading off to a couple of private fund-raisers elsewhere in the state’s capital city, Obama put it this way:

“I think Tennessee has smart Democrats who are able to fashion a kind of agenda that attracts independents and Republicans. So I want to get some good advice and maybe some good supporters while I’m here.”

Both Bredesen and Naifeh were complimentary about Obama but noncommittal on the issue of supporting him against other Democratic contenders.

• State Politics: The General Assembly finally got around to what looked like a climactic decision last week, in which state revenues, already in surplus, were to be newly fattened, thanks mainly to the 42-cent tobacco tax passed the week before in defiance of what had seemed to be adverse odds.

There was some interesting behind-the-scenes stuff going on.

The bill’s one-vote margin in the state Senate had been due to an unusual de facto collaboration between two state senators, Jim Kyle of Memphis and Rosalind Kurita of Clarksville, political arch-adversaries who both got what they wanted when push came to shove.

Kyle is the state Senate’s Democratic leader — still mortally offended by fellow Democrat Kurita’s pivotal vote in January to unseat venerable Senate speaker John Wilder and install the first Republican lieutenant governor in the state’s history, Ron Ramsey. He and Kurita do not speak, unless it is unavoidably in the line of duty.

Yet they collaborated in the passage of the tobacco tax, the pièce de résistance in Bredesen’s education package but with sums earmarked also for agricultural enhancement grants and state trauma centers. The vote was 17-16, a party-line affair in which former Republican, now independent, Micheal Williams of Maynardville voted as expected with the Democrats.

Most of the expected $230 million in annual revenues will finance Bredesen’s upgrade of the state’s Basic Education Plan. The trauma-center allocations will come from the two-cents’ worth (literally) that Kurita, a nurse by profession, insisted on tacking on as the price of her vote for a bill that was originally the rival to her own version of a tobacco tax, which would have mostly been devoted not to education but to health-care issues.

Holding the Line: Fearing sabotage in the Senate, where two Democrats were absent last week when the House got ready to vote, Democrats in that body heeded warnings from Speaker Jimmy Naifeh of Covington and majority leader Gary Odom of Nashville about accepting Republican amendments which would have sent it back to the other chamber for reconsiderations.

The GOP amendments contained some attractive embellishments to the bill — ranging from reallocations of state lottery funds to needy school districts to riders that would lower or temporarily eliminate the sales tax on groceries. One amendment would have added another penny’s worth of tax for Iraq war veterans. Another would have added money to counter sexual predators, but Democrats like Mike Turner of Nashville, who later called the Republican members “assholes,” held the line.

Ultimately, the un-amended tax prevailed with a majority of 59 or 60 votes of the 99-member House, depending on whether or not Republican Jim Coley of Bartlett, an educator, A) voted accidentally or on purpose against the bill; and B) was successful or unsuccessful in changing his “no” vote to “aye” immediately afterward.

Coley was insistent that he had pushed the wrong button and equally adamant that he had succeeded in having his vote reversed by the House clerk. Speaker Naifeh, clearly skeptical on the first count and seemingly determined, as he had promised earlier, to afford nay-saying Republicans no cover, was equally emphatic that the right vote total was 59, not 60, and that Coley’s no vote remained unchanged.

Coley got some backup from Representative Mike Kernell, one of two Shelby County Democrats (the other was Larry Turner) who voted against the tobacco-tax bill on grounds of its regressivity. Kernell said he would have voted for the tax had the proceeds been rerouted back to health care, where, he said, it would have been “tripled” by match-ups with federal grants.

“Coley had told me he was going to vote yes, and he mistook a ‘call-for-the-question’ vote for the vote on the bill itself,” Kernell said in defense of his colleague.

A Regressive Tax? Meanwhile, Kernell took time out afterward to make an extended defense of his own attitude (and, by implication, Turner’s, who called the tobacco tax “yet another regressive sales tax and one whose proceeds are non-renewable”).

“I wouldn’t have voted for the bill even if my vote had been the one necessary for its passage,” said Kernell, who seemed to be echoing Kurita’s concerns that health-care issues should take precedence over Bredesen’s plans for updating the state’s Basic Education Plan.

From that point of view, Kernell found much that was agreeable in a speech Monday night by Representative Beth Harwell, a Davidson County Republican, in favor of her amendment to use the tobacco-tax proceeds to reduce or eliminate the sales tax on groceries. “It was a great speech,” said Kernell, who acknowledged, however, that any amended bill returned to the Senate for action would probably have expired there.

• Even as state senator Kurita gets her sea legs under her, the man whom she, in effect, deposed, Senator Wilder of Somerville, seemed somewhat more out to sea than was his wont during his 36 years as lieutenant governor and Senate speaker.

Octogenarian Wilder seems physically recovered from the fall he took at his Fayette County home early in the session. And he makes a point of participating in discussions, both in committee and on the floor of the Senate itself.

But the longtime legislative lion just isn’t plugged in the way he once was. A demonstration of that occurred on Monday during a session of the Senate Finance Ways and Means Committee, one that was devoted to the question of how surplus state funds could be used to augment the state’s “rainy day” or reserve fund.

Much of that conversation was between committee chairman Randy McNally (R-Oak Ridge) and the two Senate party leaders who were intimately acquainted with the mechanics of the deal, Jim Kyle of Memphis and Republican Mark Norris of Collierville. During the back-and-forth, Wilder, seemingly taking in the fact and magnitude of the funds available this year, ventured to ask: “Do we need the tobacco tax?”

There was an awkward pause, after which the former speaker himself ventured, “I don’t really need to ask that?”

There may have been a rhetorical point to Wilder’s question — one that, for that matter, any number of lay citizens might find themselves wondering — but in the context of the committee’s end-of-session wrap-up, it came off as a bit less than plugged in.

A little later, after a series of further such basic inquiries, Wilder turned to Chairman McNally and said, “Do I need to stop asking questions?”

“No, sir” was the deferential response from McNally, who continued addressing Wilder by the ceremonial title of “governor.”

Wilder has indicated that he intends to run again for his state Senate seat in 2008 and would be favored to win if he did so. But the predominant sentiment of his colleagues is that he would be hard-pressed to get the Democratic caucus’ nomination for lieutenant governor, much less that of the Senate as a whole.

• Without much fanfare, Governor Bredesen last week signed into law the “Rosa Parks Act,” whose chief Senate sponsor was Kyle. The law, named in honor of the late heroine of the 1956 Montgomery bus boycott, allows civil rights activists to have criminal charges related to their activism expunged from their records.

“It’s important because it recognizes that people did risk incarceration for social change and that they ultimately prevailed,” Kyle said at the time he sponsored the bill. “They should not have the stigma of that incarceration or be put in the same class as other folks who simply just committed crimes.”

Categories
Opinion

On Polls and Votes

Two things that are often not what they seem to be: close votes in the Memphis City Council and polls showing the standing of Memphis mayoral candidates five months before the election.

Last Friday, a committee of the council voted 3-2 to withdraw funding for the $29 million Beale Street Landing project. But that doesn’t mean the proposed riverboat landing and architectural monument at Beale Street and Riverside Drive is dead. The full council will have opportunities to replace the funding, perhaps as early as this week.

One of the three votes against Beale Street Landing was cast by Carol Chumney, who also happens to be leading Mayor Willie Herenton and challengers Herman Morris and John Willingham in the election polls.

Neither the committee vote nor the polls matter very much, but here are four reasons why I think Chumney will continue to make news this summer.

First, she is independent to a fault, which suits her fine, even if her colleagues see it as counterproductive and grandstanding. Her supporters see a diligent council member who is demonstrably not better off financially for having been a public servant.

Second, she favors upending the status quo. She is a radical in a way that has nothing to do with feminism or war or national issues and everything to do with local issues and priorities.

Third, when she takes a position, you may not agree with it but you know what it is. Her refusal to join in the censure resolution of Joseph Lee because it was irrelevant was unpopular but turned out to be correct.

And, fourth, unlike her fellow council members and the Memphis business establishment that supports Herenton with its money but not its mouth, she accepts the fact that this year you are either with the incumbent or you are against him. You’re in as a mayoral candidate or you’re out. And she’s in.

Does this mean that Chumney would be an electable and effective mayor or that she is even an effective council member? Not necessarily, although my personal view is “no” on the first count and “yes” on the second.

But it does mean that Chumney, by being Chumney, brings clarity to issues and helps put them in clearer perspective?

Beale Street Landing, for instance, is a signature Herenton project. The Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC) is a Herenton creation staffed by former Herenton division directors and their spouses and supported by a board of Herenton appointees. Herenton and the RDC say the landing would bring more local and out-of-town visitors to Tom Lee Park and downtown. Chumney calls it a “boondoggle” in the tradition of Mud Island and The Pyramid.

Both Chumney and her colleague Scott McCormick, one of the two committee members who supported Beale Street Landing, correctly see that the funding vote is really a referendum on both the project and the RDC. Without a big project — the Front Street Promenade, the land bridge, relocating the University of Memphis law school, Beale Street Landing — the RDC is the “Riverfront Maintenance Corporation.” You don’t need three former division directors and a full-time PR person to do that.

Beale Street Landing and the RDC will probably survive because the City Council is also hooked on big projects. They make headlines and photo opportunities. They get federal funds. They create jobs and goodies and opportunities to repay favors to campaign contributors and fellow council members. This is the stuff of politics and, sad to say, the news business. On New Year’s Day, Herenton proposed a new stadium and a new program to fight blight. Heard much about blight since then?

Many of the votes that make headlines at the City Council never amount to anything — think Lee’s non-censure and the investigation of MLGW, the non-removal of Edmund Ford and Rickey Peete, the non-reuse of the Fairgrounds and The Pyramid, the non-annexation of 2006, and the 2007 efficiency study that will wind up on the shelf. So much of what goes on at the council is just for show.

Herenton knows that, just as he knows that a telephone poll putting his support at 20 percent or less reflects “free” votes that don’t really count. The vote that counts will be in the October election.

Categories
News The Fly-By

For Thought

CREDIT: Michael Drager | dreamstime.com

I’ve recently started working on my five-year plan. I think it’s all the business and planning forums I attend. I’m always hearing “if you don’t know where you want to go, how can you ever get there?” (I also hear a lot about “low-hanging fruit” and benchmarks, but I digress.)

My five-year plan covers everything: housing, transportation, spawn, salary, lifestyle. And in many ways, it has to. If you have children, that affects what kind of transportation you use. And where and how you live certainly depends on how much money you make.

I mention this because in the last week or so, it just seems that the more things change in the city, the more they stay the same.

The city administration formally presented the results of a $700,000 efficiency study to the City Council last week, but even though it found $19 million in potential savings, Mayor Willie Herenton didn’t seem interested in implementing them. About 80 percent of the savings came from the fire department.

“We have known for some time that there are opportunities to reduce costs, but that wasn’t what we wanted to do,” said Herenton. “The consultants can come in and study, but we’re the ones who have to run this.”

Outdoor retailer Bass Pro initially said it was interested in the Pyramid late December 2005, but it still hasn’t made a commitment. An article in last week’s Commercial Appeal quoted city CFO Robert Lipscomb saying people needed to have patience. Maybe this is what we get for dealing with a retailer that caters to fishermen, a group of people known for both their patience and their tall tales.

Also this week, Save Libertyland announced that they had been given the Zippin Pippin. The activist group is interested in donating the roller coaster back to the city, if the city will preserve it and keep it on the Fairgrounds property. If the city agrees, the only difference from a few years ago would be the Mid-South Fair made $2,500 off of it and now the ride doesn’t have any cars.

Is this progress?

What if I told you that in five years from now, the Fords will still have a family member on a majority of the local legislative bodies? Or that Herenton was still mayor? Or that the Pyramid was still sitting vacant?

Would that be acceptable?

In Curitiba, Brazil, now a world-renowned city for its solutions to sprawl, poverty, limited public funding, and other urban problems, planners started working on the city 40 years ago. Now it’s been a “showpiece of urban planning,” — more than 40 other cities have developed transportation systems based upon Curitiba’s rapid bus system and leaders from all over the world have visited the city to learn how it transformed itself.

But the smallest step was perhaps the most important: Planners met weekly, even daily, not to work on the plan but to remind and refresh themselves of the goals they were working toward.

I’m not sure how proactively the Memphis region is thinking about the future. There are areas of foresight, of course. The chamber is looking at Brooks Road and the concept of the aerotropolis. Germantown has a plan for itself called Germantown 2020. Within the entire county, the office of planning and development has a comprehensive planning section that is charged with providing direction for future growth by developing policies and strategies.

In the long-term, the most critical factor for the community’s future is perhaps transportation. The decisions that are made about roads and highways eventually affect where housing and retail are located and at what densities. And those decisions are made very far in advance.

The Memphis Urban Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) is currently working on Destination 2030, a plan for the Memphis area’s transportation needs for the next 25 years. But if the MPO is talking about what Memphis will need for the next quarter-century, the rest of the region needs to be thinking about that, too.

Look at the future Highway 385 — it’s going to extend Memphis’ reach past the Shelby County line and into Fayette County. Pretty soon, citizens might start debating the merits of the Shelby County school system versus the Fayette County school system.

But in the short-term, I think the most critical factor is what the public wants. Maybe it’s more trashcans on downtown streets. I’d like to see that, as well as eye-catching recycling bins set up in government buildings, public schools, and the airport. Maybe it’s The Pyramid torn down.

The bottom line is this: Either we think about what we want for our city or we’re just along for the ride.