Tag: Herenton

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Game On!

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

In the course of his rounds on Monday, Memphis mayor Willie Herenton was preparing to leave City Hall for an engagement across town when it was discovered that the Toyota van in which he is normally transported from place to place had a flat tire. So His Honor had to cancel out. Figures.

It hasn’t been a good week for the mayor, nor a good month, nor, for that matter, a good year. Herenton began 2007 at the Convention Center with one of those traditional fustian ventures with which the city’s four-term mayor, for better or for worse, honors attendees at his annual New Year’s Day prayer breakfast.

The mayor, an alpha male if there ever was one, annually contrives to bestow upon the gathered media and masses something dramatic, the latest installment of the Big Picture — be it a declaration of war against his City Council or an affirmation of his chosenness by God or merely another vow to pursue the elusive goal of city/county consolidation.

This year was different. This year, Herenton unveiled a proposal that merely mystified his audience. He proposed to raze the Mid-South Coliseum, the Liberty Bowl, and what remained of the Libertyland grounds to pursue an extensive redevelopment of the Fairgrounds and its environs around a brand-new “state of the art” football stadium. Estimated price tag? $200 million, to be financed by a bond issue.

Skeptics immediately pointed out the “been there/done that” aspect of building a stadium at the Fairgrounds and the fact that the NFL, for which such a thing might serve as bait, had bypassed Memphis for Nashville years ago. One of the chief boosters of the University of Memphis, banker Harold Byrd, argued convincingly that the university, the chief acknowledged beneficiary, would gain more from an on-campus stadium.

Even the disbelievers assumed that there was method to the madness, however, and that behind the mayor’s proposal had to be some group of far-sighted social engineers or maybe just a cabal of self-interested developers looking to profit from what would be a socially useful scheme. In the fullness of time, it was thought, the “invisible hand” of these sponsors and the nature of their plans might be made clear.

But no plans have emerged, nor has any group of identifiable prime movers. Truth be told, once the mayor’s proposal was up the flagpole, nobody saluted it.

Quite as much as the city’s on-again/off-again credit rating and its sputtering economy, its ever-frightening crime statistics (to give the mayor his due, he has also proposed buffing up the police force), and the aura of corruption and favoritis that hover over city government, the unsatisfying vagueness of Herenton’s stadium proposal may have galvanized what would seem unmistakably to be a concerted reaction against him.

Two weeks ago, the Flyer published the general findings of two independent polls which showed that the incumbent’s approval rating had slipped badly among both blacks and whites and that Herenton was running behind maverick City Council member Carol Chumney.

Perhaps that was on the strength of Chumney’s consistent opposition to the governmental status quo and perhaps it was merely because her name recognition and public profile are (so far) greater than those of ex-MLGW CEO Herman Morris and former Shelby County commissioner John Willingham, two other opponents of record.

In the aftermath of the general public shock, The Commercial Appeal commissioned and published its own poll, which corroborates the earlier findings.

Beyond doubt, Mayor Willie Herenton, once regarded as “mayor for life,” now faces real challenges to his reign.

“I honestly think the mayor is a great leader, as able now as he ever was and totally deserving of reelection” was the almost wistful appraisal this week of Jon Thompson, an entrepreneur who served in Herenton’s first term as head of the now-dormant Wonders series. “But in the course of time there’s a fatigue that settles in, and that’s what happening to him, I think.”

That bottom line is encountered frequently among members of the city’s financial elite, not all of whom are as loyal or appreciative in their views as is Thompson.

It is no secret, in fact, that there is an ongoing effort among a number of established movers and shakers, many of them contributors to the mayor’s hefty campaign war chest (estimated to be as high as $600,000) to draft as a successor to Herenton his longtime friend and former campaign chairman, Shelby County mayor A C Wharton.

In those same early polls that demonstrated Herenton’s vulnerability, the easygoing Wharton fared demonstrably better than his Memphis counterpart. A survey commissioned by well-connected businessman Karl Schledwitz and performed by established pollster/strategist John Bakke reportedly showed Wharton’s “negatives” to be only 8 percent, as compared to Herenton’s whopping 51 percent.

Wharton has publicly acknowledged that he is the object of continued pursuit from well-placed advocates for his candidacy (telling the Flyer, however, that he wouldn’t “kiss and tell”) and has said pointedly that he would not run against Herenton. At the same time, he has made clear his interest in running if the Memphis mayor should, for any reason, not be a candidate.

One member of the local political establishment who has actively proselytized for a Wharton candidacy, whether or not Herenton remains in the field, says that the county mayor promised him a definitive answer “in 30 days.” Asked this week when that conversation took place, the would-be Wharton supporter reflected and realized to his surprise that the 30-day time period was ripe for expiration.

Even as pressure is mounting on Wharton to declare his availability, so too is Herenton being given broad hints to consider withdrawing. The progression of unflattering polls, together with an increasingly rampant public speculation about his vulnerability, makes for increased pressure — but also for increased resistance.

Echoing the general feeling among those who know the mayor well, Thompson said, “I can’t imagine his giving in to public pressure.” Says another friend: “He’s too stiff-necked. The more people insist, the more he’ll resist.”

Then there’s Sidney Chism, former Teamster leader, former Democratic Party chairman, a power broker in his own right, and historically the mayor’s chief ally out in the rough and tumble of practical politics. Said Chism this week: “Wait ’til I get through. Everybody’s got a plan until they get hit.”

What Chism’s threat means in practice might vary from opponent to opponent. But there’s no question that Herenton, the towering former Golden Gloves boxing champion who once boasted, “I never got beat, once I got my growth,” has not once gone down for the count since he entered public life.

Not as a rising school administrator in the late 1970s who forced a reluctant school board to name him the first black superintendent of Memphis City Schools and, hit by both a sexual and an administrative scandal, survived more than one purge attempt before leaving the job on his own terms; not as the contender who outlasted several other African-American worthies (including one A C Wharton, then the Shelby County public defender) to become a consensus candidate for mayor in 1991; not as the underdog who, as down in the polls then as he is now, overtook highly favored incumbent mayor Dick Hackett to become — by the slim margin of 142 votes — the first elected black mayor in Memphis history.

And there was 1999, when Herenton, running for a third term, was challenged by a well-credentialed multi-candidate field that included then city councilman Joe Ford. Now chairman of the Shelby County Commission, Ford was a well-liked representative of Memphis’ proudest and most politically powerful clan — one which then numbered in its ranks a congressman, a state senator, a county commissioner, and — most importantly — former U.S. representative Harold Ford Sr., whose command of inner-city loyalties was considered incontestable and whose political organization and patented election-day sample ballots were the means by which candidate after candidate got elected.

It had become axiomatic, an urban legend of sorts, that Herenton himself would have been beaten by Hackett on his first mayoral try in 1991 but for the last-minute all-out intercession on his behalf by the senior Ford, who, so went the story, put aside his natural feelings of rivalry to make political and social history.

As the inevitable tension between himself and the Fords asserted itself over the years, Herenton was determined to disprove that piece of conventional wisdom. He wanted it known that he could win altogether by himself, indeed had won the prize on his own. Having Joe Ford as an opponent gave him an opportunity. The mayor would turn the young councilman into a straw man.

And so it came to pass. In the very first forum involving the two of them, Herenton waited until Joe Ford started floundering on an answer to someone’s question and then called out to the candidate’s older brother in the audience: “Harold, you got to do a better job of getting this boy ready!”

“Boy”? Herenton had already used that unnerving signifier, especially insulting in the macho-conscious black community, to dismiss another opponent, then county commissioner Shep Wilbun. Candidate Ford seemed flustered at the insult and never quite recovered his aplomb in that race. Both he and Wilbun went down hard, along with the rest of a fairly star-studded field whom the mayor, in his election post-mortem with the Flyer, would dismiss as “clowns.”

Just as during his pugilistic youth, the mayor seems to relish the opportunity for mano-a-mano combat.

A case in point was Herenton’s statement last month in an interview on the historic black radio station WDIA. Asked about opponent Herman Morris, who had just announced his candidacy for mayor, Herenton responded thusly: “I want the world to know, there’s a man up in here in City Hall. If they’re looking for a boy, they identified one in Herman Morris, but he ain’t going to enter this gate.”

Once again, “boy”, the telltale epithet. And “gate”? The archaic, quasi-epic sound of that word was counterpointed ironically by its frequent use these days as a suffix to scandal.

The mayor has been equally blunt in dealing with the challenge from Chumney, whose first-place finish in this month’s raft of polls has energized her campaign and buoyed her hopes.

Back in February 2005, the first-term councilwoman was busy building a profile as an outspoken people’s champion, unafraid of tangling with the mayor or her council mates or anybody else in government. That her adversaries considered her an opportunist did not detract from the fact that she was amassing a following and seemed bent on running for city mayor this year.

At the close of a well-attended affair at The Pyramid that month, in which Herenton had presented his latest plan for city/county school consolidation, Chumney began a long discourse of her own, the point of which seemed to be that the mayor’s plan resembled consolidation proposals she had made during her earlier unsuccessful race for county mayor in 2002.

She had reached the point of reprising her decision not to solicit campaign money from developers when Herenton cut in: “Miss Chumney, I don’t think we need this shit,” muting the last word only a little, and continued on, “I don’t feel comfortable going through and hearing all this political dialogue and stuff.”

After Herenton’s remark prompted a walk-out in protest from councilman Brent Taylor, normally a Chumney antagonist, the mayor continued: “I don’t need to hear about her political campaign where she lost,” and, looking straight at Chumney, added, “You’re gonna lose the next one too.”

So far the third well-known candidate in the mayor’s race, Willingham, has escaped such direct fire from Herenton. But this is due as much to the former commissioner’s relatively dim prospects as measured by the polls as it is to any gallantry or forbearance on the mayor’s part.

But has Herenton, whose political style, like his pugilistic one, has been equal parts brawler and artful dancer, finally begun to wear down in the late rounds? Have the blows finally begun to take their toll? The evidence of the polls reinforces what so many had anecdotally sensed beforehand.

Aside from where they stand right now, what are the prospects of this year’s crop of aspirants?

Greg Cravens

Carol Chumney: Can she really own a double-digit lead over the mayor, as suggested by the CA‘s survey? If so, her standing is testament to the value of single-mindedness. Somewhat to the scorn of her detractors and to the admiration of her mainly grass-roots backers, lawyer Chumney seems at times to have no life other than her public one.

Upon taking office in 2004, Chumney began a steady round of “town meetings” and “coffees with Carol.” Modestly attended in the beginning, these have attracted larger crowds in tandem with her rise in public consciousness as a steady critic of the governmental buddy system, of budgetary excess, and of a variety of boondoggles. (She was instrumental, for example, in publicizing the notorious — and now repealed — city pension plan that allowed full retirement benefits after only 12 years of service.)

Her decision to take on both the mayor and the council, coupled with her go-it-alone style, led directly to an ostracism akin to that which she endured through most of her 13-year service as a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives from Midtown. But her determination did earn her a brief stint in the Democratic leadership in Nashville, and she would ultimately carve out a reputation there as a child-care reformer, heading up a special children’s services committee.

The mere prospect of Chumney being elected mayor has ensured that the usual suspects among zoning lobbyists have attended her fund-raisers. Still, she is cash-poor compared to Herenton and has less visible support among likely big-ticket donors than does rival Morris. Add on the fact that her very independence scares defenders of the status quo, who see her as reckless. Her strengths are also her weaknesses.

Herman Morris: Well-spoken and armed with professional accomplishments as a lawyer and as head of MLGW (where he was forced out by Herenton in 2003), Morris was something of a draftee candidate in his own right. He has been taken up by such exemplars of the Republican Party establishment as political veteran John Ryder, but his chorus of admirers extends also to the ranks of Democratic activists and to the likes of Russell Sugarmon, the venerable, respected civil rights pioneer who retired last year as a General Sessions judge and now heads Morris’ campaign.

Despite his stewardship at MLGW and an earlier prominence as lawyer for and chairman of the local NAACP, Morris’ public profile has been remarkably low. Insofar as the general public has noted him at all, it was for his MLGW service — a tenure which came back to haunt Morris when, just as Joseph Lee, a Herenton appointee, began taking heat for over-indulging the utility bills of Councilman Edmund Ford and other highly placed deadbeats, the mayor’s backers leaked evidence that Morris had kept a courtesy list of his own.

Still, Morris seems to be running within a hair’s breadth of Herenton, and his seemingly apolitical style can be misleading. As he noted recently, he is a veteran of most of the early political campaigns of the city’s African-American pathfinders — those of Sugarmon, A.W. Willis, Otis Higgs, and others.

John Willingham: No one gives the former commissioner much of a chance, and the polls, which show him trailing well behind the others, seem to agree.

However, he is now acquiring some overdue recognition for some genuine muckraking accomplishments: More than any other public figure, for example, Willingham did his best to call attention to what are generally recognized now as the weaknesses, and worse, of the city/county deal with the Memphis Grizzlies.

Long before the scandal erupted concerning misallocation of federal and state funds to build a for-profit parking garage for the Grizzlies’ management at FedExForum, Willingham was noting discrepancies between what public contracts called for and what was being built. His past career as an engineer was a help in that regard. Willingham, who has also been a barbecue maven and once served as an official in the Nixon administration, is something of a Renaissance man, in fact.

“Crimes have been committed,” Willingham avers, and he intends to prove the fact during his mayoral campaign. Even if his own campaign efforts should come to naught, he is in a position to do the incumbent mayor some harm. And, before his chances are discounted absolutely, it needs to be remembered that until the very end of his victorious 2002 commission race against Morris Fair, a generally esteemed incumbent, Willingham was largely disregarded there, too.

A C Wharton et al.: There is a general feeling, settling into a consensus, that the mayoral field is still incomplete. The same consensus holds that Wharton, the choice of most of those yearning for an alternative to Herenton, would be a slam-dunk winner if he chose to enter the race.

Meanwhile, there are reports of others advertising their credentials — unknown quantities as well as known ones. Only next week will it even be possible for candidates, those already in the field and those yet to be identified, to pull qualifying petitions from the Election Commission.

But there is no doubt about one thing. Willie Herenton, the erstwhile “mayor for life,” will be fighting for his political life — if indeed he remains in the mayor’s race at all.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Bad News for the Mayor

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

If there is a given in the developing Memphis mayoral campaign, it is that incumbent mayor Willie Herenton is weaker than anyone — friend, foe, or neutral — had previously imagined and that his weakness extends across the political spectrum.

That was the message of two new independent polls whose existence was first reported on MemphisFlyer.com last week. Though complete facts and figures were not available at press time, the two surveys reportedly not only show Herenton in significant decline with the electorate — both white and black — but reveal that City Council member Carol Chumney‘s two-years’ worth of high-profile challenges to the mayor have elevated her to first place among the candidates now in the field.

Multiple sources confirm that one of the polls, performed by veteran pollster/strategist John Bakke on commission from businessman Karl Schledwitz, demonstrated Chumney to be in first place as of now and — to answer something that political junkies have wondered about incessantly — is doing well among the city’s black voters in addition to its disenchanted whites. Former MLGW head Herman Morris, still working on his name recognition among voters at large, lags behind (though he, too, reportedly polls higher than Herenton), and erstwhile Shelby County commissioner John Willingham is further back still. Another poll, reportedly taken by lawyer Richard Fields, is said to contain similar findings.

One of Morris’ mainstays, lawyer John Ryder, was philosophical about the results. “This will obviously buoy Carol, but it won’t hold up over the long haul. Meanwhile, Willie will have to be pleased.” Ryder maintained that Morris was the mayor’s chief threat in the long term, and that what he saw as Chumney’s short-term strength might actually be of some benefit to Herenton.

Morris himself noted that his entrance into the race had been later than Chumney’s by several months and expressed confidence that future polls would show a significant rise on his part.

News of the poll generated a good deal of speculation about a possible entry in the mayor’s race by Shelby County mayor A C Wharton, who has been relentlessly encouraged to make a race — by members of the city’s business establishment, in particular. A number of observers conjecture that Wharton, who said earlier this month that he would not run against Herenton, will rethink that position.

“He’ll definitely run if Herenton drops out, and there’s a 30 percent chance that he’ll run even if Herenton stays in,” opined one. For his part, the county mayor told the Flyer last week that he’d had conversations on the subject but that he wouldn’t “kiss and tell” concerning the contents.

Whatever impetus had developed for a Wharton run was seriously blunted, however, by news late last week that the county mayor’s son, A C Wharton III, had been arrested in Knoxville on charges of statutory rape. No one imagines that the incident would damage Mayor Wharton’s popularity or electability. The concern is that the gravity of this private family matter would erode whatever appetite he had for running.

Justin Fox Burks

Carol Chumney

One of the known findings of the Bakke poll was that 51 percent of those polled had a negative reaction to Mayor Herenton. At the other extreme, A C Wharton’s negatives were said to be only 3 percent. Another surprise finding was that a significantly larger percentage of African-American voters described themselves as “conservative” than those who considered themselves “liberal.”

• State Senate speaker pro tem Rosalind Kurita (D-Clarksville) is launched on a serious P.R. effort to still the waters that were roiled among Democrats by her decisive vote in January for Republican Ron Ramsey (Blountville) as Senate Speaker and lieutenant governor.

Ever since then, Kurita’s action — which deposed long-time Speaker John Wilder (D-Somerville) and allowed her own elevation to the Senate post she now holds — has cast her as an outcast among influential state Democrats. One of the most prominent, Senate Democratic leader Jim Kyle of Memphis, wrote an open letter to statewide Democrats denouncing her for alleged defects in “trust, confidence, and moral character.”

Kurita, who before the vote was widely regarded as a likely Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2008, has lately made a point of granting interviews explaining her vote on the speakership as a principled one in favor of majority control. (Until the switch last month of GOP senator Micheal Williams of Maynardville to “independent” status, Republicans held a one-vote majority in the Senate.)

This past weekend, while in Memphis to take part in Tennessee History Day activities, she met with members of Memphis’ liberal blogging community at the East Memphis home of lawyer/activist Jocelyn Wurzburg. The invitation-only affair, arranged by local activist Paula Casey, was billed as “off the record,” but the emerging consensus from the attending bloggers indicates they were only slightly mollified by Kurita’s explanations for her vote. However civilly it is expressed, “No Sale” is still their predominant reaction.

• Shelby County Democrats have a new leader as of Saturday. Elected party chairman by the newly chosen Democratic executive committee was the Rev. Keith Norman. The vote, at Airways Middle School, was 48 to 18 for Norman over lawyer Jay Bailey.

Though the results were no surprise, the margin of Norman’s win was larger than expected, and his support clearly spanned across all of the pre-existing party factions.

Bailey’s cause had been hampered by what many saw as a too-little-too-late response to a mailing sent by lawyer Richard Fields to all voting delegates outlining a series of past disciplinary actions assessed or initiated against Bailey’s work as an attorney.

Fields himself was elected to the new executive committee, returning him to a body he was forced to resign from a year ago for working in harness with the state Republican Party’s lawyers to void the special election of state senator Ophelia Ford, since reelected.

According to blogger Thaddeus Matthews, a sworn Fields adversary, another new committee member, radio talk-show host Jennings Bernard, will attempt to have Fields unseated for activity since then that benefitted Republican candidates.

The new committee will have its first meeting this Thursday night at the IBEW Union Hall on Madison.

• Yes, Virginia, there’s another special election coming in Shelby County. This one, at Governor Bredesen‘s direction on Monday, is for the seat in state House District 89 (centered on Midtown). The seat became vacant with the election last month of then Rep. Beverly Marrero to fill a vacancy in state Senate District 30.

Democratic and Republican primaries will be held on Thursday, May 31st, with the general election following on Tuesday, July 17th. Kevin Gallagher and Jeannie Richardson are known Democratic candidates; so far, no Republican candidate has announced.

At press time, the Shelby County Election Commission had not announced a filing deadline.• City Council member Brent Taylor has formally announced a decision that has been privately known for some time: Taylor, who was first elected in 1995 to represent District 2 (Cordova) and was the council’s best-known and most consistent conservative, will not seek a fourth term.

A ready man with a hard-edged quip, Taylor was the subject of headlines back in 2004 when an irate Mayor Herenton, in the course of a heated meeting, asked him outside.

That argument, over personnel matters, blew over. But until Taylor began preparing his exit over the last year, he could be depended on as a headline-maker and as an exponent of minimalist government.

Taylor’s announcement ensures a likely free-for-all for his seat — one of several open ones in this year’s city election. Petitions for city positions may be picked up at the Election Commisson beginning Friday, April 20th. Filing deadline will be Thursday, July 19th, and withdrawal deadline a week later, Thursday, July 26th.

• Friends and family paid homage to the late Larry Williams at a well-attended Saturday service at the P&H Café on Madison, a site favored by Williams, well-known as a writer and columnist for The Commercial Appeal and beloved as a political satirist on TV and in local Gridiron shows.

Williams, who frequently teamed up with the late Terry Keeter in public performances, was also a key member of the campaign team of 9th District congressman Steve Cohen during Cohen’s first congressional run in 1996.

For further details on these and other political stories — including a report on political guru James Carville‘s appearance in Memphis last week — see “Political Beat” at www.memphisflyer.com.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Campus Stadium Gains

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

In weekend remarks, mayoral candidate Herman Morris said “other priorities should take precedence” over Mayor Willie Herenton‘s proposal for a new football stadium as part of a redeveloped Fairgrounds. But Morris gave his approval to the concept of the state and the University of Memphis pooling their resources and “building an on-campus stadium that would put this university on a par with some of the others in the country.”

Morris thereby joined mayoral candidate Carol Chumney in the ranks of those supporting a proposal for an on-campus stadium advanced by university booster Harold Byrd and others. As of now, however, both Morris and Chumney oppose use of city funds to fulfill such a project.

Former Memphis Light, Gas & Water chief Morris also defended his involvement in the utility’s $25 million investment in Memphis Networx, a fiber-optics development which he said provided infrastructure that improved the city’s “competitive posture to attract industry.”

Though he has previously been critical of mayoral pressures on behalf of specific brokers, Morris similarly endorsed the $1.5 billion bond issue that funded pre-payment of MLGW’s acquisition of services from the Tennessee Valley Authority. He maintained that the pre-payment deal would eventually pay dividends “somewhere in the nature of $250 million.”

  • The latest balloon being floated in local political circles (and on WREG-TV, News Channel 3, Monday night) concerns a possible bid for city mayor by current Shelby County mayor A C Wharton. The reasoning is that local business leaders, many of whom are disenchanted with Herenton, may decide that neither Morris nor Chumney are the right candidates to displace the incumbent and that Wharton is the only candidate who could.

    Wharton, however, said Tuesday that he was “fully occupied” with his present duties and would never run in opposition to Herenton. He might, he said, reconsider a race if the incumbent for any reason decided not to run.

  • Former Tennessee senator and actor Fred Thompson, who has spent his time since leaving the U.S. Senate in 2002 as a principal on NBC’s Law and Order, may be a candidate for president in 2008. “I’m giving some thought to it. I’m going to leave the door open,” Thompson told host Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, thereby confirming a spate of recent rumors on various blogs.

    Republican Thompson, a 1964 graduate of the University of Memphis, acknowledged that his friend and mentor Howard Baker, another former Tennessee senator, had seriously promoted such a candidacy on the grounds that no acceptable conservative was so far in the running.

    Quoting Adlai Stevenson, a Democratic candidate in 1952 and 1956, Thompson said the paradoxical task of a candidate was to “do what’s necessary to become president and still deserve to be president.”

    In answer to Wallace’s questions, Thompson said he was pro-life, “tolerant” of gays but opposed to gay marriage, anti-gun-control but supportive of campaign finance legislation, and flexible on immigration law. He also said President George Bush‘s surge policy in Iraq should be given a chance to work and called for a pardon of vice-presidential aide Lewis “Scooter” Libby, convicted last week of several counts of lying to a federal grand jury in the matter of “outing” CIA agent Valerie Plame.

    Jackson Baker

    Newsmakers Flinn and Kurita on the Senate floor last week

    Thompson opined that he would safely be able to wait as late as summer before deciding on the matter of a presidential run.

    Nashville blogger Adam Kleinheider suggested strongly last week that state senator Rosalind Kurita, a Clarksville Democrat, had made a deal in advance with current Republican Speaker Ron Ramsey to acquire her current position as Senate Speaker Pro Tem.

    Kleinheider asked rhetorically if this fact was not indicated by Kurita’s support for longtime Speaker Wilder, rather than party opponent Joe Haynes, in a Democratic caucus straw vote before the Senate showdown between Wilder and Ramsey. Kurita’s vote for Ramsey was the decisive one as he narrowly ousted Wilder.

    Interviewed in Nashville last week about Kleinheider’s speculation, shared by many on and off Capitol Hill, Kurita said: “That’s a nonsensical question. I voted for Ron Ramsey because I thought he would do the best job for the people of Tennessee. The basic tenet of a democracy is that the majority rules. It’s not about putting together 17 votes to pretend we [the Democrats] are in charge.”

    The import of her answer would seem to be that the principle of majority vote superseded that of Wilder’s suitability to lead — or Haynes’, for that matter.

    Kurita declined even to discuss the option of voting for Haynes, the Democrats’ caucus chairman, rather than Wilder in the party caucus. “That’s a ridiculous question; that’s hindsight. It doesn’t have any bearing on how we do good for the people of Tennessee.”

    Concerning blogger Kleinheider’s suggestion concerning a deal, Kurita said, “He must be projecting the way he operates. It’s not the way I operate.”

    While presiding in the Senate last Thursday, Kurita’s floor duty required her to have brief pro forma interchanges on Thursday with both Wilder, now an ordinary senator in the body he led for 36 years, and Senate Democratic leader Jim Kyle, who has made no secret of his discontent with Kurita for her vote on Ramsey’s behalf and who recently dispatched a critical letter to statewide Democrats challenging her bona fides.

    She recognized Wilder to note the presence of visitors from Fayette County in the balcony and acknowledged Kyle for the purpose of his making a motion. (Note: Former Lt. Gov. Wilder suffered a fall later Thursday at his Fayette County home and was treated at The Med over the weekend before being released.)

    Asked about Kyle’s letter, Kurita shrugged and said, “Well, you know, Senator Kyle’s a smart guy, and he’s a good senator, but I think anybody who knows him knows that when he’s angry, he will lash out at people. And that’s what he did. And hopefully in time he won’t feel that he has to lash out.”

    As for Wilder, who (to put it mildly) had also been unhappy with her, Kurita said somewhat ambiguously, “There’s no difference in the number of times we communicate now from a year ago.”

    Kurita had some kind words for the former Speaker’s method of presiding over the floor: “He tried his very best to be fair to everyone in terms of letting everyone speak.” Voters in state Senate District 30 and state House District 92 went to the polls on Tuesday to decide on successors to 9th District congressman Steve Cohen for the Senate seat and county commissioner Henri Brooks in the House. (See Political Beat for results and analysis of those special-election races.)

  • Although considerable doubt existed as to exactly when they were required to leave office (estimates varied from Tuesday evening at 7 p.m. to certification of election results by the Election Commission, and the state Attorney General’s Office was being asked to rule on the matter), both interim state senator Shea Flinn and interim state representative Eddie Neal were obliged to move on.

    Flinn, especially, made an impact during his several weeks of service, managing congenial relations with legislators in both parties and both legislative chambers while introducing enough pieces of controversial legislation to delight the progressive Democrats who were the core of predecessor Cohen’s constituency.

    “Really, that was my main motivation, to conduct myself as the voters who elected Steve would have expected,” said Democrat Flinn, who consulted with Cohen to that end.

    Among other things, he sponsored bills to legalize: casino gambling (this would require a constitutional amendment); wine sales in grocery stores; sales of package liquor on Sunday; voting by mail; and optional state license plates advocating equal rights for gays. Flinn also has been instrumental in crafting a compromise on medical tort reform.

    The youthful lawyer is the son of Shelby County commissioner George Flinn, a Republican, but was the subject of a brief boomlet for Democratic chairman in Shelby County before disavowing interest in the job.

    He also was talked up by fellow Democratic legislators (notably Senate Democratic leader Jim Kyle and House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh) to serve as interim House member in Beverly Marrero‘s seat, should she win her Senate race. Though he has considered that idea, he is leaning against it.

    The one option he has expressed most interest in? Service as a member of the county Election Commission, to succeed Greg Duckett, the body’s chairman, who is leaving to become a member of the state Election Commission. (Longtime Duckett friend Calvin Anderson decided to step down.)

    • Categories
    Opinion

    Majority Rules

    As the mayoral race heats up, the 1991 law that abolished runoffs in Memphis mayoral and at-large City Council elections is ripe for reconsideration.

    Simply put, Memphis is clearly a majority-black city (63 percent in the 2005 census update). When the minority becomes the majority, is there still a need for election laws imposed by the federal courts “to eradicate minority-vote dilution”?

    The question looms as Mayor Willie Herenton seeks to stay in office for a fifth consecutive four-year term. With the filing deadline for the October election still more than four months away, he already faces three challengers: Carol Chumney, Herman Morris, and John Willingham. Ironically, the elimination of the majority-vote requirement that helped Herenton win the office in 1991 could now give hope to challengers who might have a harder time defeating the mayor one-on-one.

    “There is a school of thought that says we could have a mayor elected with 34 to 37 percent of the vote,” says Greg Duckett, chairman of the Shelby County Election Commission. The figures are not far-fetched. In the 2006 9th Congressional District Democratic primary, Steve Cohen led the 15-candidate field with 31 percent. Cohen is white, and his leading challengers were black, as is the majority of the district.

    With a runoff, the top two finishers face off, giving voters an either-or proposition and encouraging alliances among candidates who finish out of the running or drop out before the election. Herenton himself has twice been elected with less than 50 percent of the vote. In 1991, he got just over 49 percent, and in 1999, he got 46 percent.

    A brief history lesson is in order: When the Memphis City Charter was overhauled in 1966, the authors, most of them white, decided on a City Council with seven district seats and six at-large seats. In an at-large council election or a mayoral election, the charter stated that if the leading vote-getter fell short of a majority, then there would be a runoff between the top two candidates.

    The demographics of Memphis were very different in 1966. As recounted by Rhodes College political scientists Marcus Pohlmann and Michael Kirby in their book Racial Politics at the Crossroads, black civil rights leader Vasco Smith said “we don’t stand a ghost of a chance in this town when it comes to running at-large” because white voters heavily outnumbered black voters and voted as a bloc.

    During the 1970s and 1980s, at-large seats and the runoff provision helped whites maintain their grip on the City Council and the mayor’s office. In 1982, for example, black city councilman J.O. Patterson Jr. led the mayoral field with 40.7 percent to 29.8 percent for white runner-up Dick Hackett. But in the runoff, Hackett defeated Patterson 54 percent to 46 percent.

    The world changed in 1991. The United States Department of Justice filed suit under the provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act against the election process in Memphis. It was in 1965 that President Lyndon Johnson pushed the Voting Rights Act through Congress after civil rights marchers were thrashed by police in Selma, Alabama.

    Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act bans voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. The act has been amended five times, most recently in 1992. In a key amendment, the act has been interpreted as banning practices that have a discriminatory result as well a discriminatory purpose. The Justice Department or private citizens can sue under Section 2. In a landmark ruling in U.S. v. City of Memphis, the late U.S. district judge Jerome Turner ordered a plan “which will eradicate the minority vote dilution.” The result was the end of runoff elections in mayoral and other citywide races.

    In the closest election in Memphis mayoral history, Herenton defeated Hackett six weeks after Turner’s ruling by 142 votes out of 247,973 votes cast. Each of them got 49.4 percent of the vote, with white crank candidate Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges getting the rest.

    In the 1990 census, the black-white population ratio in Memphis was 55-45. In 2000, the black-white ratio was 61-34. Some people have tried to estimate the percentage of eligible voters who are black or white, but Duckett says that is guesswork because voters don’t have to declare and there are a large number of “others.”

    In 1995, the City Council amended the charter by ordinance, and the council now consists of seven regular districts and two super districts with three members each. But the change “appeared to have no effect or intended effect on the existing law concerning mayoral elections,” says city attorney Sara Hall. “Nobody has done anything that would overtly change what Judge Turner ordered us to do. The question now is should we.”

    While not advocating or discouraging such action, Duckett agreed there are “sufficient facts” to challenge the runoff law. There is a precedent. In 1988, Dr. Talib-Karim Muhammad filed a class-action suit in Memphis challenging at-large elections. The lawsuit was incorporated in the Justice Department’s action.

    Another change since 1991 is the higher incidence of crossover voting as opposed to racial bloc voting. Herenton and Cohen and a handful of other Memphis politicians have enjoyed a significant measure of crossover votes.

    Could a white Memphian sue under Section 2? While telling the Flyer she does not know the particulars in Memphis, Justice Department spokeswoman Cynthia Magnuson noted a recent case in Mississippi, United States v. Ike Brown and Noxubee County. This is the first case filed by the Justice Department in which it alleges that whites are being subjected to voting discrimination on the basis of race.

    The issue of runoffs in the mayoral race and citywide races should be raised and decided sooner rather than later so voters and candidates know the score — and the scoring system.

    Categories
    Cover Feature News

    From Rotan Lee to Joseph Lee

    By John Branston

    January 1997: Willie Herenton appoints Herman Morris, who is then MLGW general counsel, to be interim president of MLGW.

    June-August 1997: Rotan Lee, a utility consultant from Philadelphia (and no relation to Joseph Lee), introduces himself to Morris and Herenton. His brief contact with Morris doesn’t lead to anything. Lee goes to Herenton and signs a $150,000 contract as a consultant. Morris gets the president’s job officially.

    August 1997: The Flyer, which broke the story about the possible sale of MLGW, reports details of the proposal from interviews with Herenton, Lee, and Allen Morgan Jr. of Morgan Keegan. They suggest a sale could fetch $800 million and make the city debt-free while lowering property taxes.

    December 1997: The Flyer reports that MLGW sends out 3,000 cut-off notices per day and that there are about 400 cut-offs each day. Over one-fifth of MLGW customers are more than 30 days past due on their bills. The 1,900-member IBEW union and MLGW management oppose privatization.

    Summer 1998: After meetings draw scant interest, Rotan Lee and Herenton drop plans for privatizing MLGW.

    October 1999: Herenton is reelected for a third term, defeating several opponents, including city councilman Joe Ford. Ford’s brother Edmund is elected to the City Council, setting the stage for a seven-year saga of cut-off notices and careful treatment of Edmund Ford’s chronically overdue MLGW bills.

    January 2001: MLGW’s board adopts, without discussion or publicity, a severance policy for Morris and other executives that collectively could pay them over $1 million if they “voluntarily” retire.

    March 2002: A letter to Morris from CA editor Angus McEachran triggers the creation of a VIP list of influential Memphians and Morris relatives “who require my personal awareness, attention, or staff intervention when they have problems.” In an e-mail, Morris says the McEachran matter “could set editorial policy toward MLGW for years and must be handled with touch.” Apparently unknown to them, four CA editors and executives make the VIP list, which does not become public for five more years.

    May 2002: Herenton, who makes $140,000, recommends a $231,000 salary for Morris after MLGW officials say that is what chief executives at 16 comparable utilities make. Morris gets a raise to $184,000 instead. His five-year term expires, but he continues to serve.

    July 2003: A powerful windstorm roars through Memphis and does more than $100 million in damage. Herenton goes to Little Rock for a fund-raiser two days later. Morris and MLGW are criticized for their storm response and unwillingness to accept help from certain utilities.

    August 2003: In a memo, Herenton suggests Morris give more business to local and minority firms on a $1.5 billion TVA bond deal.

    October 2003: Herenton easily defeats Shelby County commissioner John Willingham and wins a fourth consecutive term as mayor.

    November 2003: The Flyer reports that after the City Council balked at its rate-increase request, MLGW and Morris ignored Herenton and took their case directly to the public in full-page ads and opinion columns in the CA.

    December 2003: Herenton calls MLGW “an island unto itself” and says it is wasteful and inaccessible. The utility’s souvenir bobblehead doll of Morris, the mayor says, is “self-aggrandizing advertising.” Board member James Netters, who is Herenton’s pastor, tells the Flyer that Herenton does not communicate what he wants to the board. Herenton proposes that city finance director Joseph Lee replace Morris, whose term has expired, but the council asks for a national search instead.

    January 2004: Morris is succeeded by Netters, who serves as interim president for six months, earning approximately $95,000.

    January 2004: The City Council and the CA call for an investigation of Herenton and the TVA bond deal. Eleven months later, although the council has done nothing, the CA publishes an editorial headlined “Council Probe Has Potential.”

    January 2004: The Flyer reports details of Morris’ proposed severance package which, by Herenton’s calculations, totals $1,171,286 in severance, accumulated pension contributions, vacation, sick leave, and “storm restoration pay.” Herenton balks at the “vulgar” proposal. The CA ignores the Morris proposal and reports that “Morris bows out with $205,000.” By the Flyer‘s calculations, the actual final figure is closer to $500,000.

    June 2004: Lee is renominated by Herenton and approved this time by the City Council. A new five-member board is also installed, chaired by Herenton’s former CAO Rick Masson.

    2006-07: Lee orders subordinates not to cut off power to Edmund Ford. In February 2007, a federal grand jury orders Lee to appear to answer questions about the matter.

    February 2007: A day after other media report the VIP memo, the CA publishes a story in which McEachran says he did nothing improper in contacting Morris, worked out a seven-year repayment plan for $10,000 owed to MLGW because of the utility’s meter and billing errors, and got no special treatment.

    Categories
    Cover Feature News

    Power Play

    CREDIT: (AP Photo/Wade Payne)

    In publicly rejecting MLGW president Joseph Lee’s resignation last Thursday, Mayor Willie Herenton declared, “I will not, cannot in good conscience participate in a media, political witch hunt that is currently operating in the city of Memphis around the leadership of this utility company. Let me also say that I cannot approve any initiative that has the support of The Commercial Appeal, Carol Chumney, and Myron Lowery.”

    He referred to the troika as “an array of evil.”

    After refusing to accept his resignation, Herenton encouraged Lee to focus on “regular folk” and their mistrust of the utility’s meter-reading and billing.

    “This is one disturbing issue, that I have been overwhelmed by criticism and concerns in the community. I’m asking Mr. Lee, help me and the citizens understand the spiraling increase … that leads many to believe that the billings are excessive and arbitrary,” Herenton said.

    (AP Photo/Wade Payne)

    Herman Morris

    Herenton then announced his solution: “Next week, I will be requesting from the Memphis City Council an allocation of funds to provide assistance to needy citizens, many of whom are on fixed incomes. I will be asking the City Council to support my request for $5 million … to assist us in helping us to help the people who need it most.”

    Every Thursday, the MLGW board of commissioners meets downtown at the utility company’s headquarters. Before the afternoon session, the floor opens to citizens wishing to address the board. Last week, Georgia King took the floor and asked a key question, not only for the future of MLGW but also for election-year city politics.

    “When was the customer ‘VIP list’ started, and by whom?” she asked.

    King was referring to the list of high-profile MLGW customers whose utility accounts were under the supervision of MLGW executives. The list, which was apparently generated as the result of an e-mail by then MLGW head Herman Morris, was released to the public by Lee’s attorney Robert Spence just after Lee’s grand-jury appearance last week.

    MLGW board chairman Rick Masson assured King that an internal investigation would soon be under way to address the question.

    Though Herenton had rejected Lee’s resignation earlier in the meeting, he left the door open to revisit the issue, after first decrying the array of evil, which he perceived as trying to force his hand to remove Lee following the revelation of Lee’s “preferential treatment” of VIP-list member and city councilman Edmund Ford.

    (AP Photo/John L. Focht)

    Willie Herenton

    “I find it unacceptable at this point in time to consider accepting his resignation, when, apparently, the wave of public sentiment and the blitz of bias exerted by The Commercial Appeal and other members of the media, I believe, has had undue influence, perhaps, on many key decision-makers,” Herenton said.

    The mayor then acknowledged that City Council chairman Tom Marshall had initiated an independent investigation of MLGW, and he contrasted the two approaches to solving the crisis of public confidence in the utility company — the “media, political witch hunt” of the evil array and the objective investigation.

    Marshall told the Flyer that “the mayor indicated that he is deferring until the results of the investigation are complete. Ultimately, he will revisit the issue of the termination of Mr. Lee. If you listen carefully, as I perceive it, the mayor is still open to that possibility, depending on the outcome of this investigation.”

    Joseph Lee

    The mayor focused on the differences between having an agenda for Lee’s removal and the facts to support such a move. “Hopefully, the investigation will be thorough, unbiased, not tainted by any predispositions or judgments based on a biased media that is really focused on discrediting Joseph Lee and this institution,” Herenton said, adding, “I applaud the councilman [Marshall] for his leadership and hope that the individuals who have accepted that engagement will conduct it with the highest of integrity and professionalism.”

    Marshall appointed attorneys Oscar Carr and Saul Belz to lead the investigation. The attorneys were slated to outline the investigation plan at the Tuesday, March 6th, City Council meeting. Marshall says that Belz will present the results of the investigation to the council March 20th.

    “Part of my reason in not accepting this resignation is that that investigation has not been complete,” Herenton said. “I have no facts surrounding any recommendations that Mr. Lee should be removed from his position.”

    Justin Fox Burks

    Carol Chumney

    While Herenton exercised his prerogative to reject Lee’s resignation, Marshall says that Lee’s future as MLGW president rests as much with the council as it does the mayor.

    “The City Council has authority, as prescribed in the charter, with 11 [out of 13] votes, to remove the president of MLGW without the consent of the mayor. In addition to that, the council also appears to have the authority to remove all of the [MLGW board] commissioners without the authority of the mayor,” Marshall said.

    The MLGW “crisis of confidence” issues encompass more than the creation and maintenance of the so-called VIP list. The independent investigation will also address the meter-reading and billing practices of MLGW, which Herenton said give the appearance of “excessive and arbitrary” billing. Herenton has attributed the questionable billing practices to a “a conspiracy to sabotage [Lee] from within.”

    Marshall offers a simpler explanation. “I’m having trouble believing [the sabotage allegation]. I don’t think that such sabotage exists,” Marshall said. “There is the potential for incompetent billing practices going on, but not as the result of any kind of direct effort. If there is malfeasance, it’s the result of inability,” added Marshall.

    MLGW board member Nick Clark expressed a concern for the utility’s business practices that may not go away with leadership change. “The core problem, in terms of the future of MLGW, is the politicalization of business issues, because that interferes with the operation of a public utility.

    “Why does MLGW have a problem with the culture of mistrust with certain members of the City Council?” Clark added.

    It hardly needs to be said that that mistrust goes both ways. At this point, neither the public nor anyone else has a clear grasp on just what the problems are at MLGW. Are bills really out of line? Is Lee a capable administrator or just a Herenton crony in over his head? Was Herman Morris’ VIP list anything more than a way to maintain good PR? Were favors granted to others besides Edmund Ford?

    With any luck, the coming weeks will bring some answers. Meanwhile, the power struggle continues.

    Attorney Saul Belz, who will lead the independent investigation of MLGW, is scheduled to appear before the City Council, in order to provide the council with the scope and timeline of the investigation. Visit www.memphisflyer.com for updates throughout the coming week.

    Categories
    Opinion Viewpoint

    Willie and “the Dozens”

    One of the first things a would-be opponent of incumbent Memphis mayor Willie Herenton will discover is that he or she is in for a mauling — figurative or maybe even otherwise. As for the latter, just ask retiring councilman Brent Taylor, who was asked outside by the mayor, or ABC-24’s Cameron Harper, who, while persisting in an interview attempt, was warned to get his hands off … or else.

    Most of the abuse, though, is verbal — the kind of extreme stuff you might expect from a proud alpha male and former fighter who happens to be undefeated both in the boxing ring and in the political arena. Mayoral opponent Carol Chumney got a whiff of that last week when, without really having said much about the current MLGW mess and Herenton protégé Joseph Lee, she nevertheless got relegated by Herenton to an “array of evil” — right up there, presumably, with North Korea and Iran.

    But the real rough stuff is what Herenton aims at fellow black politicians who, whether declared adversaries or not, get on his wrong side. What the mayor is doing has been known historically in Memphis’ black neighborhoods as “doing the dozens.”

    That’s the confrontational practice of trading insults which get rougher and rougher (up to the nuclear threshold of 12, hence the name) until somebody either gives up or one of the contestants is, one way or another, acknowledged the winner, or … things get out of control. Out on the street, people have gotten killed. Dozens and dozens of them.

    In a political contest, things are unlikely to get that far. But the mayor, who proudly boasts his rough-and-tumble origins, has demonstrated time and again that he is not loath to administer psychic wounds that, in the macho-conscious African-American community especially, can be crippling.

    A case in point was his statement last week in a WDIA radio interview aimed at another rival for the mayoralty, former MLGW head Herman Morris, who announced his candidacy last week. Herenton’s response? “I want the world to know, there’s a man up in here in City Hall. If they’re looking for a boy, they identified one in Herman Morris, but he ain’t going to enter this gate.”

    The venue, a historic black radio station, was no accident. Nor was the insult. Herenton has aimed that same barb before — at least twice to real or putative mayoral opponents. Back in early 1999, when it appeared likely that then county commissioner Shep Wilbun would be running for mayor, Herenton entertained this reporter in his penthouse office at City Hall and pointed out a vintage photograph from his first election-night celebration in 1991.

    Wilbun, the mayor noted, was in a back row of the jammed entourage on stage, straining to get into the picture. “Look at that boy!” said a literally gleeful Herenton, who went on to declare that Wilbun’s chances of getting into the foreground were no better in 1999 than they had been eight years before.

    Another Herenton opponent that year was Joe Ford, then a well-liked city councilman and, as a member of the prominent Ford political clan, regarded as the best bet to upset the mayor in a crowded field. In the very first forum involving the two of them, Herenton waited until Joe Ford seemed hesitant on an answer to someone’s question and then called out to the candidate’s brother, former congressman Harold Ford Sr., in the audience: “Harold, you got to do a better job of getting this boy ready!”

    Candidate Ford seemed flustered and never quite recovered his aplomb in that race. Both he and Wilbun went down hard, along with the rest of a generally accomplished field whom the mayor, in his election post-mortem with the Flyer, dismissed as “clowns.”

    In no sense, literal or metaphorical, is Herman Morris, a former star athlete and a middle-aged man of ample professional experience, a “boy.” But he and Chumney and John Willingham and whoever else ventures to run against Willie Herenton this year can expect that kind of verbal treatment — and worse.

    In his exhibition boxing match last year against a gallant but used-up Joe Frazier, Herenton boxed circles around the onetime world champion, but he made sure to pull every punch. His mayoral opponents this year won’t be so lucky.

    Jackson Baker is a Flyer senior editor.A longer version of this essay appears in “Political Beat” at www.memphisflyer.com.

    Categories
    Politics Politics Feature

    Shocking!

    CREDIT: Jackson Baker

    Although petitions for city office won’t be available at the Election Commission until next month, this year’s Memphis municipal election — or at least the mayoral component of it — is already fully under way.

    To judge by the charges and countercharges and the quantity of mud that has so far been slung, this contest promises to be as entertaining and down-and-dirty as any in the past (see also Viewpoint).

    And the fact is, for all the complaints levied by abstract theorists at “horse-race” journalism, we are electing people, not position papers, and all of it — the battle of personalities, the spin machines, the fund-raising competition, and certainly the size and effectiveness of the contenders’ cadres — counts toward a bona fide measure of the candidates and what they might do in office.

    But in this election year, more than in many previous, issues will play a huge role in voters’ minds and none more so than the issue of Memphis Light, Gas and Water, which — both for those ordinary citizens whose service is constantly under threat and for those privileged ones who (we now know) have been allowed to run up huge bills — has alarm bells ringing throughout the city.

    Rarely has the distinction between haves and have-nots been so starkly drawn as by the disclosures of the last few weeks concerning the now infamous “third-party notification” lists kept by current MLGW president, Joseph Lee, a protégé and appointee of incumbent mayor Willie Herenton.

    But at least one major opponent of Herenton’s, former MLGW president Herman Morris, is also tainted by the scandal — particularly by a 2002 e-mail, dating from his own tenure as head of the giant city utility, that arguably might have established the precedent.

    Morris’ memo, written in response to a customer complaint from then Commercial Appeal editor Angus McEachran, urged staff to “make sure we handle this matter with sensitivity.” Another key point of the e-mail was that MLGW should develop a list of customers “that require my special awareness, attention or staff intervention when they have problems.” He spelled that out to mean a longish list of elected officials (city, county, and state) and news media members.

    The memo, conveniently leaked to the media by Herenton allies, was clearly meant to blunt Morris’ almost simultaneous announcement of his candidacy and to share out an albatross that was already a burden on the mayor himself. Meanwhile, candidate Carol Chumney, a frequent critic of Herenton on MLGW’s future and other issues, could enjoy the serendipity of having become chair of the City Council’s MLGW committee as of January 31st.

    As such, she is entitled to conduct investigations and to shepherd solutions regarding MLGW and all the controversies attending it, old and new. In her campaign opening last month, she made a point of standing in opposition to the sale of MLGW, something which Herenton proposed a few years back and a project which many of his detractors believe he still holds in reserve.

    The new scandal gives Chumney ample opportunity to burnish her reformer credentials (it also presumably gives a boost to the anti-establishment candidate John Willingham), while at the same time it inevitably tarnishes those of Morris.

    When he was asked about the memo at his opening announcement last week, Morris floundered for some time, managing in a remarkably unhoned and stammering answer to acknowledge that he had given access to “family and friends” and to influential members of the community at large but not making clear distinctions between such a procedure and the possibility of granting special privileges.

    In a curious way, the awkwardness of Morris’ response was exculpatory. It was as if, instead of indulging in some ready-made spin, he was trying to reason it all out as he spoke.

    In a brief Flyer interview this week, the newly announced candidate had thought it through more carefully. (See sidebar.)

    Special Election(s) Jackson Baker

    Chair candidates Bailey (left) and Norman

    Report: Yard signs indicate that the two Republican candidates in next Tuesday’s special elections for state Senate District 30 and state House District 92 — Larry Parrish and Richard Morton, respectively — are putting forth an effort, but the two Democratic nominees — state representative Beverly Marrero for the Senate position and G.A. Hardaway for the House seat — are heavily favored.

    Two-Man Race for Chair of Shelby Dems? So it would seem, after Saturday’s preliminary caucus, in which a record crowd showed up at Airways Junior High to elect delegates for the party convention on March 31st. Current chairman Matt Kuhn is not seeking reelection, and things are shaping up for a two-man race between lawyer Jay Bailey and minister Keith Norman.

    Bailey is supported by David Upton and some, but not all, members of the party’s old Ford faction, as well as by the activist Grant brothers (Greg and Alonzo), Del Gill, and blogger Thaddeus Matthews. Norman has emerged as the candidate of the Sidney Chism faction and is likely also to be supported by Desi Franklin of the MidSouth Democrats in Action reform group. It should be noted that other Democrats — including longtime activist Jody Patterson, who says she will run — may also launch candidacies before March 31st.

    For more reports on the mayor’s race and other political news, go to “Political Beat” at www.memphisflyer.com.

    A Q&A With Herman Morris

    Flyer: Do you think it was strange that the text of your memo about access to certain customers became public just as you got ready to announce for mayor?

    Morris: It was a very curious timing. Someone must have scoured the records of the utilities.

    What’s the difference between how you handled “special” customers and how Joseph Lee has handled them?

    On my watch, if you didn’t pay or didn’t make an arrangement to pay, you got a cut-off notice and services were terminated. It didn’t matter who you were. I wanted elected officials to be able to get through. They, after all, were representatives of a constituency. Big industrial users were a somewhat different case with major issues. But even they, if they got months in arrears, could get cut off.

    What about the well-publicized case of former Commercial Appeal editor Angus McEachran? It was in reaction to a query from him, about wildly fluctuating monthly charges, that you wrote the memo that got leaked.

    Angus was a tough issue. We ultimately concluded that he paid his bill every month and that our meter malfunctioned. He ended up owing more than he thought he did, so we worked out a payment plan to collect it from him.

    The case that’s aroused most attention has been Councilman Edmund Ford’s. Did you have the same problem as Joseph Lee, and did you, too, let him go indefinitely without paying?

    I’m not aware of any time that we had anyone go delinquent for the period of time that he did later on, except maybe in cases of bankruptcy, when we couldn’t by law cut them off. My recollection is that Edmund Ford did get cut off, though he would also come in and make payments to avoid cut-offs.

    Can you shed any light on your departure from MLGW in 2003?

    My departure remains a mystery to me, too. It could have been that I was opposed to the sale of MLGW. It could have been a more open attitude toward providing services to outside communities awaiting annexation. It could have been disagreements about staffing or the way the mayor wanted to handle the “prepaid” issue [an advance purchase of TVA power via preferred brokers designated by the mayor]. I was never given a specific statement or reason.

    Another issue that has aroused the public is that of too easy and too lucrative pension arrangements for public employees. Was that an issue with your own golden parachute?

    At the time, the parachute didn’t seem very golden. I negotiated fairly in terms of my departure. I wasn’t eligible for a pension, so I had to negotiate. At 52, I wasn’t quite old enough, and I hadn’t been there 15 years. I was just under the limit both ways for a pension. In all honesty, the final settlement probably fell short of being the equivalent of what I would have received through retirement eligibility.

    Categories
    Opinion

    News About This and That

    The MLGW story has legs, but the county public school realignment has even longer legs. MLGW is good water-cooler fodder. School zones determine where people live and how the county grows. If I were a decision maker, I’d be picking the brains of two people: Willie Herenton and developer Jackie Welch. Herenton knows this story cold and could predict the ramifications better than anyone because of his experience in the city school system when it still looked a little bit like the county system. Welch made a great living selling new school sites to the county for 20 years. The two men are anything but friends, but they agree on a surprising number of things on this issue, and anyone who ignores or demonizes either of them will get it wrong.

    • Regionalism does matter. That’s one of the conclusions that can be drawn in the post-mortem of Marion, Arkansas’ failure to land the new Toyota manufacturing plant. Not only did Mississippi governor Haley Barbour out-hustle the competition, he lined up support for Tupelo from the governor of Alabama. Last time I looked, Alabama also borders Tennessee. The Memphis Regional Chamber of Commerce took a my-governor-right-or-wrong approach, and Marion/Memphis once again came up empty-handed. It’s time for the chamber’s board and local business leaders to do some soul searching.

    • Speaking of the chamber of commerce, the front-page news in last weekend’s Nashville Tennessean was the latest news of the weird in the continuing saga of football player Adam “Pacman” Jones of the Tennessee Titans. The front-page story in last weekend’s Commercial Appeal was the latest news of the weird in the continuing saga of Mayor Willie Herenton. In which city would you rather be running the chamber or building a career or a business?

    • Everyone’s an editor these days, and the problem of sourcing a story has never been clearer than it is in the MLGW saga. MLGW spokeswoman Gale Jones Carson was Willie Herenton’s spokeswoman until this year. Former MLGW president Herman Morris is running against Herenton for mayor. A story that suggests the Morris years were golden years is most likely pro-Morris spin. A story from Carson must be treated as pro-Herenton spin. Board members were appointed by Herenton but are supposed to show independence and represent citizens. One of them, Nick Clark, wrote an opinion column for The Commercial Appeal Tuesday saying Joe Lee should quit.

    • The Morris style is a mystery. He announced his candidacy at The Peabody in front of a mostly geriatric crowd that buffered him from the news media. A picture was worth a thousand words. A couple days later, knowing full well that political storms were brewing in Memphis, he headed for California for an NAACP function. Odd timing.

    • The story about the $12.5 million settlement between the Federal Communications Commission and four radio networks (including Clear Channel) representing more than 1,500 stations got buried beneath other news. But opening the airways was a big deal at the National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis in January. In theory, the settlement will mean a greater variety of music and programming. We’ll see.

    • There are a couple of pieces of good news for downtown Memphis. First, notice the bulldozers and tree-clearing on Mud Island north of the Interstate 40 bridge. It’s preparation for more houses and apartments on the last large piece of undeveloped property on the island. Second, the University of Memphis law school is proceeding with plans to move to the old Front Street post office and customs house. James Smoot, dean of the law school, said last week the move-in is scheduled for 2009.

    • A confusing and little-noticed change in the Memphis City Charter could make it possible for newcomers to run for council and even mayor this year. The original charter says mayoral candidates have to be residents of Memphis for five years. But at this writing, city attorney Sara Hall was researching the question. I’m not the only one confused. When I called the Memphis City Council and Shelby County Election Commission last week, both chief administrators thought that the five-year requirement was still in place. If we’re wrong, watch for a fresh face with big-name support to jump in.

    Categories
    Letters To The Editor Opinion

    Letters to the Editor

    On-campus Stadium Strikes a Nerve

    Thanks to Jackson Baker and the Flyer for presenting such a detailed article regarding the feasibility of an on-campus stadium for the University of Memphis — and Harold Byrd’s determination on this issue (“Damn the Torpedoes!,” March 1st issue).  

    As a graduate of the U of M and a loyal fan, I have always wanted us to have on-campus facilities for both basketball and football. A few years ago, I volunteered to help the Tiger Scholarship fund recruit new members. The idea of an on-campus stadium would always come up, and [athletic director] R.C. Johnson would quickly dismiss the idea.

    I cannot understand why university officials would not want thousands of passionate alumni and loyal fans visiting the campus for several weekends each year. What better way for a school to stay connected with its alumni, supporters, and potential donors? Every other major university in the country realized this decades ago, and it is time for the U of M to join them.

    Steve Staggs

    Eads

    Regarding Harold Byrd’s drive to have the proposed new Memphis football stadium located on the University of Memphis campus: I believe his ideas are right on track! Louisville, Kentucky, and Oxford, Mississippi, just to name two, have both provided a template for a winning strategy, which Memphis should strongly consider. Richard TravisMemphis

    Although your story prominently featured Harold Byrd, it really was about the status of the University of Memphis in this community. I have long thought that the U of M was underappreciated and underrecognized.

    The article highlights the fact that the campus does not attract enough traffic. If people know what they have, perhaps they will appreciate it for what it is — a wonderful resource for the community.

    Bruce S. Kramer

    Memphis

    Congratulations on a great article. Sometimes our politicians forget that an on-campus stadium is for the University of Memphis. It is not an afterthought in a plan to fix the Fairgrounds or to re-energize downtown (The Pyramid). It should be a true home field for our university.

    Thanks for publicizing a private citizen’s view of things. Many times our politicians compromise so many things to get a project started that it never really serves its real purpose.

    Mike Garibaldi

    Memphis

    I am a graduate student at the U of M. I am strongly in favor of Byrd’s proposal. This would inject some much-needed life into the city and to the university’s football program. A new stadium would make recruiting quality students and athletes considerably easier for coaches and faculty. I commend the Flyer for putting the limelight on the stadium issue.

    William Newby

    Memphis

    I’m a recent graduate of the University of Memphis and an avid fan of Tiger sports. After attending four years of football games as a student at the Liberty Bowl, I agree with Byrd that there would be countless benefits to building an on-campus football stadium.

    An on-campus stadium would create more of a collegiate football experience for students and fans, foster new traditions, and build a stronger community for the university. The U of M is the only state university in Tennessee without an on-campus stadium. It would raise awareness for Tiger athletics for all the commuters on campus (17,876 people, or 93 percent of all students this semester).

    The problem of funding can be solved by increased ticket and concession sales, private donations, corporate sponsorships, and advertising. Harold Byrd has the right idea: An on-campus stadium for the Tigers makes perfect sense!

    Erin Webb

    Memphis

    Those who truly love the University of Memphis have dreamed of an on-campus stadium for years. It would open untapped sources of money that we have been needing for years by bringing alumni back to the campus. Byrd’s “idea” should be given serious consideration!

    Kay Kelly

    Memphis

    I am a 1972 graduate of the University of Memphis, and I agree whole-heartedly with Harold Byrd. I believe a football stadium on the campus would be a great asset to the university and to the city of Memphis.

    Jimmy Moore

    Memphis