Tag: Joe Cooper

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Politics Politics Feature

Out of the Past: Joe Cooper Mulls a Re-emergence

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Joe Cooper is a name from the political past: He called this past week to suggest that he was thinking seriously of running for the Shelby County Commission next year. Most of us, myself included, had lost track of Cooper, who was a squire on the old Shelby County Court back in the 1970s, and once considered a player.

That was before a run of bad luck and/or bad conduct that would see him bereft of his first wife and his office and, temporarily, of his freedom. At that time, Cooper received the first of two felony convictions, this one for acquiring bank loans circuitously, in the names of influential friends. That mischance, arguably, may have owed something to simple politics. Cooper, then a nominal Republican when the GOP controlled the Justice Department, had ostentatiously tried to do some impolitic public brokering on behalf of Democrats.

Jackson Baker

Joe Cooper in 2012

Though he thereafter attempted to regain his equilibrium in politics (this time as a Democrat) and as a businessman, Cooper never quite got back on his feet, though he maintained enough connections and savoir faire to be an advisor and back-room wheeler-dealer on behalf of other public figures.

If you needed an autographed photo of Grover Cleveland by 3 p.m. tomorrow, Cooper could get it for you. He proved useful in an administrative position here and there, and for years arranged an annual Thanksgiving turkey giveaway on Beale Street for the homeless and indigent.

As the late state senator and Juvenile Court Judge Curtis Person Jr., one of several prominent Memphians who had a soft spot for Cooper, used to say, “Joe has a good heart.” In recent years, he partnered with Jerry “the King” Lawler in several valid commercial ventures.

But there were lapses. Cooper got nailed by the FBI in a money-laundering scheme and ended up having to shill for a federal sting against city politicians in order to reduce his own time in a new conviction. As he said in 2012, when he was mulling over a commission race: “I know I’ve got some baggage, but I also know how to get things done.” If he follows through this time around, Cooper would likely be seeking the East Memphis commission seat now held by Republican member Brandon Morrison.

• In an online post last week, I noted that Shelby County Commissioner David Bradford of Collierville has the habit, which has been contagious to other members, of voting “yes” instead of the venerable “aye” in answering roll calls.

This week comes Bradford’s explanation of the practice, which is worth repeating:

“I was wondering if anyone had picked up on my ‘yeses,'” he wrote. “It was a conscious choice to use ‘yes’ instead of ‘aye,’ and honestly I thought I might get reprimanded by the parliamentarian the first time I used it. I’ve strived to stay with the ‘yeses’ throughout my term. I wish I could say my ‘yeses’ were some sort of stand against 16th century [parliamentary precedent], but, alas, they are not. 

“The reason I chose ‘yes’ over ‘aye’ is three-fold:

“1) About 20 percent of it is that I prefer the less formal. I think using ‘aye’ makes the whole system seem more complex, when the simple ‘yes’ conveys the same meaning. I hope less formal and less complex provides a system that is more approachable and understandable to all.

“2) About 75 percent has to do with clear communication. The buttons on our screens that we use to vote don’t say ‘aye.’ They say ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ So the engineer in me that likes everything to be orderly, drives me to say what’s on the screen before me. 

“3) That last 5 percent is just to see who’s listening and who catches on. Bravo to you, sir!”

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Politics Politics Feature

Few Surprises in Memphis Election Filings

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The probable lineups for various races in the forthcoming Memphis city election have been set for so long — most of them long before last week’s filing deadline — that it was interesting indeed to see some surprises develop before the stroke of noon on Thursday.

• There were no real surprises in the mayor’s race. It remains the case that of the 12 candidates who qualified, only four can be considered viable: incumbent Mayor  A C Wharton, Councilmen Jim Strickland and Harold Collins, and Memphis Police Association head Mike Williams. Wharton and Strickland are, at this point, in the first tier all by themselves.

In any case, the four mentioned candidates, by a general consensus, seem to have been settled on as the four contestants in a series of forthcoming forum/debate events, though all mayoral  candidates and candidates in other races, for that matter, have been invited to Thursday night’s Sierra Club environmental forum at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library. 

There was a genuine surprise in the council District 2 race, however: Frank Colvett‘s last-minute entry after the unexpected withdrawal of incumbent Bill Boyd presents voters with a likely showdown between party-affiliated entries. Colvett, president of GreenScape in Memphis, a custom design firm, is a longtime Republican activist who has served as state party treasurer and has been an active member of the Northeast Shelby Republican Club. He has already lined up backing from several GOP heavyweights.

His major opposition will probably come from newcomer Rachel Knox, who made a name for herself as an audience participant in Memphis City Council debates, especially on behalf of employees facing reductions in their benefits. Knox seems to have solid backing from Democrats, both grassroot and establishment, and is riding a wave of recent fund-raisers, but District 2 traditionally favors Republicans.

There are three other candidates in the race: Detric Golden, who switched from the mayor’s race; Jim Tomasik, who has run partisan races as both a Republican and a Libertarian, and this time is running on a de-annexationist ticket; and Marti Miller.

• Despite the up-to-the-brink aspect of it, there was no great surprise in the filing-day withdrawal of Justin Ford from the mayor’s race. Virtually from the moment of his first announcement, the youthful Shelby County Commission chairman had deported himself less like a real candidate and more like someone exploring the best way to maximize his name identification without committing himself to the serious effort of a campaign. In the vernacular of sport, Ford never made a football move.

The question is, does Ford’s switch to the race for city court clerk mean that a real race can be expected of him for that office? That race already features quite a few name players. Besides one Thomas Long, son of the incumbent, there are Shep Wilbun, a former City Council member and Juvenile Court clerk who has kept his name active; Wanda Halbert, who is just coming off a relatively long incumbency on the council; and, in what may be the real surprise in this race, Kay Spalding Robilio, who was a Circuit Court judge for a quarter century before resigning from the bench last year.

The clerk’s race is a winner-take-all, so even someone like the relatively unknown William Chism Jr., whose last name — a familiar one in local politics (Democrat Sidney, Republican George) — got him the Democratic nomination last year for Probate Court clerk, can hope for a lottery-like score.

• Did the district attorney general’s office stonewall a request by veteran political figure and twice-convicted felon Joe Cooper to have his citizenship rights restored in time to file for the Super District 9, Position 2 seat? Cooper alleges that is the case, and both the D.A.’s office and the state of Tennessee seem to have corroborated their opposition officially in responses to recent court hearings.

In any case, the D.A.’s office professed not to be able to have an attorney present for a hearing on Cooper’s case before Judge Robert Childers in Circuit Court early last week, and Cooper was forced into the expedient of seeking an injunction in Chancery Court for a stay on the filing deadline that would apparently have applied to all candidates in all races.

At that Thursday hearing, not two hours before the filing deadline, Chancellor Jim Kyle told Cooper that he could not rule on the case unless Cooper had actually filed a petition that had been denied. Subsequently, Cooper paid his filing fee at the Election Commission and submitted a petition that had two signatures, 23 less than the 25 required. It will be up to the Election Commission to rule on its admissibility.

Cooper has been campaigning, one way or another, for months. He had engaged professional consultants and had begun putting up campaign signs. To the question of why, in all this time, he hadn’t bothered to acquire at least 25 signatures on a qualifying petition, he answers to the effect that the state had advised him he could not legally do so before having his rights restored. And, for whatever reason, his court challenge on that point waited until very late in the game, indeed.

Though Cooper was talking of strategies ranging from a crash campaign to present signatures to the Election Commission to the launching of appeals to the state attorney general’s office or to the U.S. Justice Department, he acknowledges that his chances of getting anywhere, at least for this election season, seem remote. 

Meanwhile, state Representative G.A. Hardaway is working on a long-range solution to problems of this sort. Hardaway, who made it clear he was not endorsing Cooper but had made himself available as a potential witness for Cooper in Circuit Court, said he would file legislation in the 2016 General Assembly that would automatically restore a convicted defendant’s citizenship rights upon completion of his sentence, putting the burden of subsequent challenge on the state. Even without Cooper, the Super District 9, Position 2 race will not lack from drama. IBEW union leader Paul Shaffer will have significant support from Democrats, while the well-funded Philip Spinosa can count on solid backing from Republicans. Two former School Board members, Stephanie Gatewood and Kenneth Whalum both have appealed to existing, somewhat diverse constituencies. And the two remaining candidates, Tim Cook, who has some name recognition from previous races, and Lynn Moss, who is running on the same de-annexationist platform as Tomasik in District 2, can hope that lightning will strike in this winner-take-all race, which as an at-large position, has no runoff.

Other city races will be briefly previewed next week.

Two memorial events highlighted the weekend. On Saturday, former President Bill Clinton delivered a eulogy for Circuit Court Judge D’Army Bailey before a large crowd at Mississippi Boulevard Baptist Church. In his remarks, Clinton paid tribute to Bailey’s chief creation, the National Civil Rights Museum, as an institution whose power would never die.

Clinton concluded with these words: “This man was moving all his life. … He moved. To the very end he moved. And God rest his soul.”

A smaller ceremony was held Saturday at the chapel of Elmwood Cemetery for Pierre Kimsey, producer of several well-watched public affairs programs at WKNO-TV, including Behind the Headlines. One of the features of that event was the showing of several Emmy-winning feature shorts produced and directed by Kimsey.

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Politics Politics Feature

Commission Plays 52-Pickup

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Early on in Monday’s regular business session of the Shelby County Commission, Commissioner  Melvin Burgess, a Democrat, moved to defer for two weeks a vote on appointing someone to fill a Judicial Commission vacancy, on the grounds that a discussion on the matter would crowd out some necessary and potentially lengthy deliberations on the county budget and tax rate for fiscal 2015-16.

That was either a face-value statement, as Burgess insisted, or a political maneuver, as the Republican members of the commission — or most of them — suspected, and very shortly the provisional consensus on a budget/tax rate combination that had apparently been reached in a lengthy commission session on May 20th began to come asunder.

Several of the GOP members — conspicuously excluding Steve Basar, who supported Burgess’ motion — objected that most of the 15 applicants for Judicial Commissioner were sitting in the commission audience and had cleared their personal slates in order to be present for the scheduled vote.

; Privately, they began to sense that some deal had been made that involved trade-offs of various kinds, and Basar’s support of the Burgess motion convinced some of them, at least, of something that Commissioner David Reaves, a GOP member from Bartlett, was willing to voice later on:

“It all goes back to the chairmanship vote,” Reaves said, referring to a reorganizational vote of the newly elected commission last fall. Basar, who had been vice chair of the previous commission, had expected to be elected chairman but was stunned to find that most of his fellow Republicans were committed to other candidates. In the end, a majority of Republicans united behind Democrat Justin Ford, who had often voted with the GOP contingent during his first term.

Whatever the reason for that reversal — and they were probably as much personal as political — it made for a commission divided along clearly partisan lines, with the body’s Democrats, plus Basar, on one side, and the Republicans, plus Ford, on the other.

For weeks last fall, the two factions waged procedural warfare, with the Democratic/Basar coalition seeking either to unseat Ford as chairman or to drastically limit his authority. In the end, Ford survived, though with modestly curtailed prerogatives, and the showdown eased up. It, indeed, had been largely forgotten, until Monday, when Burgess made his motion. 

Ford, as chairman, attempted to disallow any deferral, but in the resultant vote, Burgess’ fellow Democrats, plus Basar, prevailed.

“Basar tipped his hand,” Reaves said. “He’s looking toward September, for the next chairman’s vote and trying to gain some leverage. Why else would he vote that way? It allowed us to figure out quickly that he had flopped.”

Basar denied any such motive, but he agreed that the Republicans began to shift, more or less in unison, to a common strategy, “once they saw me voting again with the Democrats.”

One consequence was a defeat for a long-pending ordinance proposed by Basar to apply pedestrian safety laws to unincorporated areas of Shelby County. Basar needed nine votes, but Republicans Reaves and Terry Roland, who had agreed to help him meet his quota, withdrew their support.

Subsequently, the old arithmetic of Democrats-plus-Basar versus Republicans-plus-Ford reasserted itself on vote after vote, preventing agreement on matters that, as of the marathon commission meeting of May 20th, had seemed either settled or within easy reach. 

The commissioners had then seemed to agree on a formula dividing some $1.8 million equally between each of the 13 commissioners for them to distribute to non-profit organizations in their districts. That matter, now involving a lesser sum of $1.3 million and altered to include other services and recipients beyond non-profits, was referred back to committee on Monday.

More importantly, a sense of distrust had arisen among the commission Republicans regarding what they thought had been a common commitment to use part of a $6 million surplus claimed by the administration of Mayor Mark Luttrell to lower the county tax rate one cent, from $4.37 to $4.36. 

The GOP members now began to suspect behind-the-scenes collusion between the administration, which had never been sold on the tax decrease, preferring to use any left-over differential on infrastructure, and Democratic members, who, now supported by Basar, were proposing to raise several sums apparently agreed upon on May 20th — notably for the Sheriff’s Department and Juvenile Court, each of which were seeking significant increases.

Consequently, Roland proposed a 4-cent reduction in the tax rate (“as a way of getting one cent,” he would later acknowledge).That went down, by the same quasi-party line vote as before, as did a follow-up vote for the 1-cent reduction.

In the end, a “flat” or stable tax rate at the current level of $4.37 received the same 7-6 vote distribution for the first of three required votes, and all budget items were deferred or referred back to committee.

In a true sense, nothing got resolved on Monday, though several commission meetings, both scheduled and ad hoc, are sure to revisit the budget/tax rate matters between now and the July 1st fiscal-year deadline. And several members, seeing the prospect of consensus slipping further way, are foreseeing that an official arbitration process will need to be invoked.

“Irresponsible,” was Chairman Ford’s verdict on Monday’s meeting.

• On the mayoral-race front, most observers are now betting that the Rev. Kenneth Whalum Jr., the New Olivet Baptist Church pastor and former school board member, will run for mayor, despite his insistence that he will defer to Memphis Police Association President Mike Williams, a declared candidate.

“He’s making noise like he is,” said Williams last week at Broadway Pizza, after one in a series of what will be several organizational meetings, noting that “I have never asked Whalum about not running. …  I’m just moving at my pace. Even if he runs, we’re still going to be friends. … My destiny has nothing to do with his destiny.”


•Oh, and make room for Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges on your tout sheet. The Zambodian prince, a frequent mayoral candidate in the past, says he’ll pull a petition for mayor next week.


• And, almost unnoticed, Joe Cooper (yes, that Joe Cooper) has put together a potentially effective campaign team in his latest quest for a political comeback as a candidate for the City Council Super District 9, Position 2 seat.

Cooper says he expects to spend $100,000 on his race and has engaged the professional consulting team of Matt Kuhn and Mike Lipe to help him do it. Gene Buehler and Karla Willingham Templeton are Cooper’s campaign co-chairs.

Cooper, who serves wrestling legend Jerry Lawler as an agent and manager, says that Thursday of this week will be officially recognized as “Jerry Lawler Day” in both Memphis and Jackson, Tennessee, with Mayor A C Wharton said to be ready to issue a proclamation in his City Hall office on Thursday and Jackson Mayor Jerry Gist honoring Lawler similarly on Thursday night.


• So, guess who else is being touted for Mayor. Yep, Harold Ford Jr.

But not of Memphis, Ford’s erstwhile home base. No, the transplanted former 9th District congressman and 2006 U.S. Senate candidate, is apparently being talked up for mayor of New York, his current abode — the most recent hints of such a prospect coming from Bloomberg Business, which reported last week on a Lincoln Center “American Songbook” gala that, according to the periodical, honored Ford for his fund-raising efforts on behalf of the center.

Said the article: “‘Mayor’ was on the lips of some guests, though not Ford’s. Asked about his interest in leading the city, Ford, who once considered a run for a U.S. Senate seat from New York and has endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race, said ‘I’m a new father for the second time, that’s what I’m focused on.'” 

The next mayoral race in New York will occur in 2017. Current Mayor Bill de Blasio, an avowed liberal, is in some quarters considered vulnerable to a challenge from the center or right.

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Politics Politics Feature

The Beat Goes On

As the Election Commission’s April 17th date for making candidate petitions available approaches, the 2015 city election season becomes ever more clearly a case of the old making way for the new. Within the past few weeks, such core pillars of the city council as Chairman Myron Lowery and Councilmen Shea Flinn and Harold Collins have announced they will not be candidates for reelection. Flinn’s future plans remain unknown, although they are rumored to involve some sort of relationship with the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce. Another key councilman, Jim Strickland, announced back in January that he would not run for reelection and would opt instead for a mayoral race, which is now fully underway. Collins’ announcement of non-council candidacy was widely regarded as confirmation of his long-indicated plans to join the widening cast of characters in the contest for mayor. So far the dramatis personae in that race are Strickland, county commission Chairman Justin Ford, Memphis Police Association President Mike Williams, and former University of Memphis basketballer Detrick Golden.

Meanwhile, the incumbent, Mayor A C Wharton, kept himself front and center over the Easter weekend with a “coffee and chat” on Saturday morning at the Midtown IHOP on Union Avenue, followed by a number of appearances at events held in conjunction with the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 assassination.

After the IHOP event, sponsored by Shelby County Commissioners Melvin Burgess Jr. and Reginald Milton, Wharton was asked if the proliferation of opponents in the mayoral field would help or hinder his chances of reelection. “You can’t worry about that,” he answered. “I just have to keep my attention on what I’m doing.”

The mayor shed some light on a bit of verbal zig-zagging he had indulged in earlier this year on the prospect of the city’s gaining a Cheesecake Factory, confirmed last week as coming to Wolfchase Galleria. On the occasion of his State of the City address in January, Wharton had alerted his listeners to the likelihood of the popular restaurant franchise coming to Memphis.

But shortly thereafter, at a well-attended address at Lafayette’s Music Hall, the mayor made an effort to pass off his earlier forecast as having been merely a thinking-out-loud recollection of his daughter’s telling him she’d like to see such a happy event come to pass.

Now that the Cheesecake Factory was definitely on track, had the mayor’s rhetorical fluctuations been something of a screen for the to-and-fro of negotiations, he was asked on Saturday. “You’re very discerning,” was his answer, accompanied by a self-effacing chuckle.

Council Chairman Lowery had long ago dropped hints that he might not be a candidate, and that his son Mickell Lowery, a sales representative at FedEx, might be on the ballot instead as a successor for the Position 3 seat in Super-District 8.

Councilman Lowery had served consecutively since his first election in 1992, with a brief intermission during his three-month service as interim mayor in 2009, following the retirement of longtime Mayor Willie Herenton. And, like the practiced politician that he is, he contrived to get the maximum amount of public notice for his departure and his son’s prospective advent.

First came a press conference in Lowery’s City Hall office last week in which the chairman gave his own bon voyage to the attendant media, expressed gratitude for having been able to serve for so long, and predicted that there would be a spirited race to succeed him, no doubt including many candidates. Wife Mary was on hand for the occasion, and so, conspicuously, were son Mickell Lowery, his wife Chanisa, and young Milan Lowery, the councilman’s granddaughter. Asked his own intentions after the press conference, the younger Lowery indicated only that he would have “something to say” soon. When, he was asked. “It won’t be too long,” was the reply.

Indeed it wasn’t. Mickell announced his own candidacy for the seat on Monday, from the steps of LeMoyne-Owen College, his alma mater, as well as his dad’s. The choice of venue, said the aspiring councilman, was symbolic in that the school represented “advancement in our community,” a quality he saw as consistent with his campaign theme, “New Leadership for a Better Memphis.” 

Candidate Lowery added that he wanted “to make sure that the priorities of City Hall match the priorities of the community.” He named crime reduction as one of his priorities, and may have intended to cite some more. 

But just then a chip off his block — his toddler daughter Milan, who nestled in granddad’s arms — made a bit of a noise, and Daddy Mickell demonstrated his quickness on the uptake with what seemed a relevant segue: “I intend to be talking with students as early as elementary school,” he said.

Asked about his advantages in what might still become a competitive and well-populated race, Mickell stressed what he said were years of “hard work” for the community as a neighborhood football coach and “on various boards.” By way of further emphasizing his community work, he added, “That’s why I didn’t try to run 10 years ago, simply off my last name.”

Even so, his beaming father was on hand again on this second announcement occasion, as well as Mickell’s wife and child and a decent-looking collection of friends and family.

• As had been widely predicted, Flinn’s long-expected announcement of non-candidacy for his Position 2, Super-District 9 seat, opened up the possibility that candidates already announced for Strickland’s District 5 seat might effect a shift of venue into the at-large race.

It may or not signal a trend, but one of the previous District 5 hopefuls has already made the passage over. That would be Joe Cooper, the ever-persistent pol who may ultimately eclipse all existing records for the maximum number of candidacies launched during a lifetime.

In the truest sense, Cooper’s campaign strategies have been out-of-the-box, and so have many of his proposals, such as his advocacy, during a race for county commissioner some years back, that the resident bison at Shelby Farms be moved out to make room for possible development on the rim of the park property. That idea backfired, drawing the wrath of every environmentalist within geographical reach.

Cooper’s latest proposal is equally idiosyncratic. This week, he floated the idea of turning the Coliseum building and its parking lot over to the proprietors of the Wiseacre brewery for the creation of a “tourist attraction” that would simultaneously allow visitors to observe the beer-making process and alternately to spend time with a museum featuring the grunt-and-groaners who once rassled at the Coliseum.

Oh, and the two airplanes owned by the late Elvis Presley and now scheduled for eviction by the new gods of Graceland could find a resting place in the parking lot.

Another frequent political candidate, former County Commissioner George Flinn, has thrown his name in the hat as a would-be successor to state Republican Chairman Chris DeVaney of Chattanooga, who made a surprise announcement recently that he would be departing the position to head up a hometown nonprofit.

Flinn said he would seek, as chairman, to promote unity among the state’s Republicans and to promote “inclusiveness” in party membership.

His most recent electoral run was as the GOP’s 2014 candidate for the state Senate seat vacated by now Chancellor Jim Kyle and won ultimately by Kyle’s wife Sara Kyle, the Democratic nominee.

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Politics Politics Feature

The Council District 5 Race

The District 5 City Council seat, which has been occupied for two terms by Jim Strickland, who is vacating it to make a mayoral run, is a crucial one for several reasons, including the fact that the Midtown/East Memphis district contains both substantial commercial and residential turf and several different hotbeds of politically active citizens.

It bears repeating that it will be a solid month before April 17th, the first date on which candidate petitions can even be drawn, and that any list of candidates is, of necessity, only a preliminary one. But there are several individuals who are campaigning already and have to be taken seriously.

There is Mary Wilder, for example, a veteran political and civic activist and longtime presence in the Evergreen Vollintine neighborhood, who has political credibility and name recognition from a previous race or two and from having served as an interim state Representative in state House District 89.

Wilder was the beneficiary last Thursday of a well-attended fund-raiser at Annesdale Mansion, hosted by former state Senator Beverly Marrero (whose vacated House seat Wilder assumed temporarily in 2007), and longtime progressive activist Happy Jones, who noted that Annesdale was an ancestral home. Between the two of them, Marrero and Jones symbolized the broad appeal Wilder hopes to demonstrate along the Poplar Corridor.

In brief remarks, Wilder cited her 11 years as United Methodist services director and her work on behalf of preservation initiatives and environmental causes. She also served as facilities director at MIFA.

A candidate with similar appeal and who, like Wilder, was an early entry is Charles “Chooch” Pickard, an architect who also has evinced a strong interest in preservationist issues and strategies for dealing with blight. Pickard has served as executive director of the Memphis Regional Design Center and currently serves on the MATA board. He has signed on some seasoned campaign pros to help his race.

In her introduction of Wilder last week, Marrero challenged Wilder’s supporters to work hard because, as she said, “there’s a lot of money on the other side.” 

There are several candidates that remark could describe, but one of them is certainly Worth Morgan, a member of a well-known brokerage family, if at this point still something of an unknown quantity. Morgan is an executive at SunStar Insurance of Memphis, and word is that his campaign will be well-endowed financially.

In that sense, with his themes unspoken to so far, his campaign could resemble the one successfully run in 2007 by current Councilman Reid Hedgepeth, whose race was in a sense under the radar but who had similar sources of support.

Another candidate who can count on significant financial backing and whose political profile is somewhat more developed, is Dan Springer, who has served as an aide to both Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell and U.S. Senator Bob Corker.

Springer, who currently serves as communications director for Evolve Bank and Trust, has begun making the rounds of local civic and political clubs to introduce himself.

Coming from a totally different political corner is Paul Shaffer, business manager for IBEW Local 474 and a long-established presence in local Democratic Party politics. The well-liked Shaffer can count on serious backing from organized labor, but his support does not end there. In past races for a council super-district, he has enjoyed good across-the-board support from Democratic political figures of note, and he could well get a lion’s share of them this time, too.

As other political observers have noted, the District 5 picture could be complicated by the recently much-rumored prospect of a retirement from the Council by Super District 9 member Shea Flinn, to assume executive duties with the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce. If that should come to pass, several of the names mentioned here, along with various others, could well end up on the ballot as potential successors to Flinn.

In any case, the District 5 field indicated here is likely to experience both pluses and minuses, and several other potential candidates have floated preliminary trial balloons. (Candidates omitted in this list should fear not; as indicated, we’ve got time, and they shall get their due.)

One of those who talked about making a District 5 race early on but who has been dormant of late is Mike Ritz, the former two-term county commissioner from Germantown who, as commission chairman, played a major role in important stages of the school merger/de-merger controversy.

On the eve of a move into Memphis last year, Ritz, a sometime businessman-banker with a long-term pedigree in both city and county governmental affairs, discussed his desire to seek the District 5 seat in the event that Strickland, as expected, chose to vacate it for a mayoral run.

Ritz has, however, decided against a council race. The reason? “I couldn’t find much interest out there — not only for my race but for anybody’s race.”

On the supposition that all of you reading this are sitting down, I can announce that, er, somewhat to my surprise, I was informed this week that yet another contestant — and an unexpected one, at that — is waiting in the wings with a definite hankering to enter the already crowded District 5 City Council race.

Joe Cooper.

Wow, that was noisy — all those chairs falling! Well, pick yourselves up, and I’ll say it again. Joe Cooper.

“I don’t want anybody thinking this is a joke” said Cooper, on the telephone. And I can assure you, Cooper is no joke.

Yes, Cooper has taken some hits — more than his share, maybe. He has two felony convictions, and there’s no hiding that. The first one, back in the 1970s, when he was a ubiquitous and influential member of the county court, is regarded in some quarters as having been payback for breaking ranks with a local Republican Party that was just beginning to feel its oats as a political force.

The offense was technically a species of mail fraud, in which Cooper, clearly hard up for cash, arranged some personal loans for himself in the name of friends, many of them influential government players. Irregular, to be sure, and he (but not they) got nailed for it by an unsympathetic D.A.’s office.

Cooper did some time, and for several years afterward divided his time between attempts at reestablishing a political career and several business start-ups, none of which endured for very long. He remained knowledgeable about government, however, and served in other people’s campaigns and offices and as a man-to-see about working the system and as an all-purposes resource — “the world’s greatest concierge” — as he called himself.

Do you need an autographed picture of President Chester A. Arthur by 2 p.m. tomorrow? Cooper is your best bet to get it. And much else.

In 2008, he got nailed again for selling Cadillacs to drug dealers, who paid cash for contracts that bore other people’s names — money laundering. While Cooper ended up doing more time, his punishment was mitigated by his subsequent assistance to the FBI in making bribery cases against local officials, and his cooperation netted him a sentence of only six months on the money laundering charges.

Besides treading these dangerous legal waters, Cooper has survived some significant physical ailments in recent years, and he, unquestionably and in a very unique sense, bears the aura of a survivor. For all his derogators — and they are many — he has his defenders, also numerous, although many of them, perhaps most, may be loath about boasting the fact publicly.

Cooper is what he is. He can make the case that he’s learned the hard way about staying on the beaten path, and it’s a path that he knows something about. He isn’t likely to win, but, in the crowded field that the District 5 race is becoming, who knows? He can at least hope to make a runoff (permitted in district races, though not for at-large positions).

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News

FBI Informant Cooper Gets Six Months for Money-Laundering

CREDIT: jb

“The judge told me what I’ll have to do, and I’ll just have
to do it,” Joe Cooper said stoically on Wednesday after being sentenced by U.S.
Judge Daniel Breen in federal court to six months’ prison time for money
laundering. After serving his time, Cooper is scheduled for yet another
six-month period for house arrest, which would be concurrent with two years of
probation.

Cooper was extended a six-month delay before reporting for
incarceration, ostensibly to allow him time to make provisions for his ailing
wife Betsy. There is speculation, too, that the long-time political player, a
cooperating witness in two recent federal prosecutions, may be called upon to
testify in further cases.

Cooper was arrested in August 2006 by FBI agents after a
sting established that, while working as a car salesman at Bud Davis Cadillac,
he had arranged proxy sales to known drug dealers. After agreeing to plead
guilty, he then cooperated with federal authorities in yet another sting, in
which he delivered payoffs furnished by the FBI to two city councilmen in return
for their votes on zoning projects.

One councilman netted in that sting, called Operation Main
Street Sweeper, was Rickey Peete, who pleaded guilty after resigning his seat
and is now serving a 51-month prison term. The other councilman, Edmund Ford
Sr., completed the full four-year term for his seat, which was won in last year’s election by
his son Edmond Ford Jr., and was acquitted in a trial last month.

The mixed results did not prevent the government from
recommending what prosecutor Tom Colthurst described as a “six-level reduction”
in the federal sentencing guidelines for Cooper, whose cooperation in the Main
Street Sweeper cases was regarded as “timely, supportive, and extensive.”

Colthurst said he could not recommend outright probation,
however, since the money-laundering scheme Cooper was involved in had
resemblances to the illegal nominee loans for which he was convicted in a late
’70’s federal prosecution that effectively terminated what had been a thriving
political career. At the time Cooper was a member of the Shelby County Court,
precursor to the present Shelby County Commission.

Cooper, who was represented in court by attorney Kemper
Durand, acknowledged mistakes and expressed remorse,. He said he hoped his
subsequent cooperation with the government would help set matters right.

Elaborating on that theme in remarks to reporters
afterward, Cooper said, “When you make a stupid mistake…you have to right it.”
Asked whether he thought his case and the other recent ones might have a
positive effect, Cooper said, “Absolutely…..People who were thinking about
being bad have to think about something else. People who thought they were
bullet-proof will have to check their bullet-proof vests.”

Public corruption, he said, “will be either shut down or
slowed down because of this.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

A Well-Connected Man

CREDIT: by Jackson Baker

There was a time when Joe Cooper would routinely describe himself, with a sly smile that in recent years revealed an ongoing dental problem, as “poor old Joe Cooper” or, alternatively, as a “poor old country boy.” Since Cooper is to rural as, say, asphalt is to ‘tater crops and has lived his entire life in Memphis or its suburbs, this last self-description was something of a stretch. And one that Cooper would indulge in, usually, when he was in the throes of working this or that deal.

Joe Cooper does deals — most of them legal, despite the fact that, as of last year, when he copped to a guilty plea on charges of money laundering for a drug dealer, he is a convicted felon, twice over.

His first misadventure with the law came back in the ’70s, when he did a spell at an Alabama federal facility for bank fraud. That was when, as a member of the old Shelby County Court (precursor to the present County Commission), Cooper — never bashful about publicity — was doing his best to cut a figure and got in over his head financially. To extricate himself, he prevailed on several friends (including some prominent ones who shall here go nameless) to take out loans, the proceeds of which went to Cooper, who agreed to make the repayments.

“Nominee loans,” they were called, and they were technically illegal — enough so that, as Cooper maintains, the Republican-appointed U.S. attorney’s office of the time prosecuted them as payback for some political apostasies on Cooper’s part. (A Republican himself at the time, he had run in the GOP primary against then congressman Dan Kuykendall, softening up the incumbent for a later defeat by a Cooper friend, one Harold Ford Sr., then a Democratic state senator and soon to be the founder of a local political dynasty.)

“I never really saw myself as a law-breaker on that,” Cooper maintains. “This is different.”

“This” was a money-laundering charge, which stemmed from Cooper’s, um, creative way, as a salesman at Bud Davis Cadillac, of selling luxury vehicles to a couple of credit-poor drug dealers through car loans in other people’s names. Nominee loans redux, sort of. To shorten what is a long story, one of the dealers skipped, and Cooper reported the car stolen. In the wake of that, the apprehended dealer cut a deal with the FBI, which set up a sting on Cooper. The feds, looking for some more political fish to fry in the wake of the Tennessee Waltz scandal, saw the well-connected Cooper as good bait.

Cooper recalls the day of his bust in August 2006. He’d been asked to meet the drug dealer at a suburban Piggly Wiggly store on the premise that he’d be getting a catch-up payment on the irregularly sub-leased Cadillac. When agents surrounded his car and informed him he was under arrest, Cooper at first thought it was somebody’s practical joke. “Who put you guys up to this?” he said, chuckling.

That laugh didn’t last long. Soon enough, he was in cuffs and, he says, was given 30 minutes to decide between some unmitigated hard time (20 years max) or cooperation with the government. Cooperation meant putting a sting on some longtime associates. Cooper reviewed his life and prospects in the manner of a man going down in an airplane and, 10 minutes later, decided on the latter option.

For all the threadbare and even seamy aspects of his persona in recent years — a state of affairs that Cooper gamely admits (“Well, let’s just say I’m a colorful person; what can I say?”) — the former county squire, sometime governmental aide, and perennial candidate for this or that local office does indeed have his connections.

Not one person in a thousand knows that Joe Cooper is the nephew of Sam Cooper, the late industrialist and philanthropist for whom the well-traveled boulevard that bisects central Memphis is named. Nor that the late social-conservative lion Ed McAteer, a dedicated supporter of Israel, once made a point of endorsing Cooper for one of his numerous electoral races — at least partly on the ground that Cooper was Jewish. (He is — though he is, shall we say, a country mile from being observant.)

Many is the local officeholder who will privately acknowledge a debt of gratitude to Cooper for services performed before, during, and after their successful political campaigns. Few are those, especially these days, who will own up to that publicly.

“There aren’t too many people I haven’t crossed paths with. Just networking is what I do, and I’m pretty good at it,” Cooper says, claiming to have raised campaign money for numerous state legislators and most members of the City Council and County Commission over the years, including several who rarely if ever voted for the many measures which, as lobbyist, he pumped for. “In the situation I’m in, none of them really want to be around me now, and I understand that.”

Some of the “networking” Cooper claims to have been a part of over the years:

A mission on behalf of arranging the Lennox Lewis-Mike Tyson heavyweight title bout here in 2002. Cooper says that, using his own money, he rented a plane for $3,400, rendezvoused with the two fighters’ managers, and connected them by telephone to Mayor Willie Herenton. “The deal was done the next day,” he says.

A near-miss effort, in tandem with several council members, to arrange a referendum on deeding over Mud Island to an Indian tribe so as to facilitate legal casino gambling. It fell through, says Cooper, because “somebody in Nashville” blocked it with a legal stratagem.

Various missions on behalf of Stax founders Al Bell and James Stewart to save the legendary Memphis music label before it finally went under.

And, of course, he was for years the main factotum for the controversial late serial entrepreneur William B. Tanner, who, like Cooper, had his brushes with the law and once did federal time (for mail fraud and income-tax charges). “I can’t tell you how many times Tanner would send me out on something,” says Cooper, recalling, “I always made him give me $5,000 to use as tips.”

On one errand for Tanner, says Cooper, he had handed out enough bills to end up in possession of Donald Trump‘s favorite table at the fashionable New York restaurant Le Cirque, with a late-arriving Trump complaining about the fact long and loud.

All of that may be the case, but most of Joe Cooper’s lobbying efforts in recent years had a more mundane, even low-rent look to them. Which is not to say they didn’t involve some significant pocket change, as did his frequent efforts on behalf of zoning requests for billboard developer William Thomas.

Testifying last week in his trial on bribery and extortion charges, the now-exonerated former councilman Edmund Ford made the curious statement that he’d thought Joe Cooper was a “millionaire.” Apprised of that, the never quite financially stable Cooper opined, “Well, he knew I was a channel for some wealthy people. I guess he thought I was wealthy myself.”

In any case, though he was a frequent enough visitor to the council to have something like free access to the council offices, he regarded Ford and Councilman Rickey Peete (now having pleaded guilty and serving time for his part in the Operation Main Street Sweeper sting) as “my point men.”

As he puts it, “They thought I hung the moon.” In Peete’s case, “there was money, and that kept him happy.” With Ford, the relationship was relatively ambiguous, consisting, as both he and Cooper testified, of a running exchange of favors done over the years.

The “not guilty” verdict for Ford may have hinged on that very ambiguity. The videotapes introduced into evidence in Ford’s trial (shot from a miniature camera attached to a button on Cooper’s Polo shirt) showed Cooper forking over hundred-dollar bills to Ford while speaking of such matters as a specific billboard measure and a request that Ford intercede with then city attorney Sara Hall.

But the tapes also showed Cooper and Ford discussing a variety of things — like Ford’s own Cadillac car loan (co-signed by developer Rusty Hyneman, although Hyneman contends the signature is fraudulent) and another loan Cooper was helping arrange, with the help of another mega-developer, Jackie Welch) to help Ford purchase a new funeral-home facility. In the end, jurors would say they had difficulty finding enough of a one-to-one correlation on the specific charges of the indictment.

That frustrates Joe Cooper, who insists he did his part to get a conviction and makes no secret of his hope to get lenient treatment when he comes up for sentencing on June 18th. In the meantime, he makes ends meet for himself and his wife Betsy with a job as a deliveryman for a medical-supply company. “It was about the 500th job application I put out. Nobody wants to hire a felon.” And he wonders: “How do you think I’m perceived now — as a bad person?”

He might be gratified to learn that an understandably heady and relieved Edmund Ford, on his way out of federal court following his acquittal, had this to say: “I have nothing against Mr. Cooper, and I wish him well.”

That may qualify as the second surprise verdict of the last several days.

Categories
News

Jury Begins Deliberations in Edmund Ford Trial

“The tapes are not married to anybody. The tapes do not
have a plea agreement.”

With those words, federal prosecutor Larry Laurenzi wrapped
up the government’s case Tuesday against former City Councilman Edmund Ford,
whose fate is now in the hands of the seven women and five men on the jury.

During six days of testimony, prosecutors presented
videotapes of four payments from undercover informant Joe Cooper to Ford.
Laurenzi said Cooper was merely “a tape recorder” and his criminal record and
desire to cut a deal with prosecutors should not distract jurors.

“Joe Cooper is not the proof,” he said.

Laurenzi pointed out that Ford and Cooper get right down to
business with a minimum of small talk – and without the profane language of many
of the Tennessee Waltz tapes featuring Ford’s brother, former state senator John
Ford.

“He (Edmund Ford) had to accept the money knowing that it
was given to him for his political influence,” Laurenzi said. “It wasn’t the FBI
or (FBI Agent) Dan Netemeyer, it was greed. It was just greed.”

Michael Scholl, Ford’s attorney, said “this whole case is
about manipulation” and jurors were shown only “snippets” of tapes cast in the
most incriminating light.

“It should be shocking to watch how you can take little
pieces of a conversation and set up anybody,” Scholl said.

However, he also argued that Ford was the victim of
entrapment, which seemed to concede that he had taken the money as the tapes
show.

Scholl reminded jurors that Ford and his wife Myrna, who
testified in the trial, are a “mom and pop operation” in the family funeral
home.

“Not only do you have to believe that Mr. Ford is lying,
you’ve got to believe that his wife got up here and lied, too,” he said.

In his instructions to the jury, U.S. District Judge Samuel
H. Mays told jurors they must not be influenced by sympathy.

Jurors were given detailed instructions about entrapment.
Federal courts have ruled that a bribe need not be explicitly stated as a “quid
pro quo.” The defendant must know that the payment is made in return for
official acts, but a certain amount of subtlety is acceptable. The Ford
videotapes show him taking $100 bills as Cooper and Ford discuss pending
decisions of the City Council or other official actions.

Categories
News

Prosecution Rests; Defense Calls Ford’s Wife

Edmund Ford’s wife of 29 years took the witness stand Friday in the former city councilman’s bribery trial in federal court.

Myrna Ford was soft-spoken and smiled pleasantly at jurors, her husband on the other side of the courtroom, and their three children in the spectators’ section during an hour of mostly gentle questioning.

She told defense attorney Michael Scholl and jurors that she and her husband have a close marriage and are “one” for business purposes in the strenuous life of running a sometimes struggling funeral home. She said she does several business “multitasks” while Edmund does the embalming. “He has a gift,” she said.

Prosecutor Tom Colthurst had just begun his cross-examination when the trial was adjourned for the weekend at noon because of a previous commitment of U.S. District Judge Samuel H. Mays. It is not certain that Ford will take the stand himself, although Scholl has said he will. The case is expected to go to the jury Tuesday. Mays denied a routine motion for dismissal of the case Friday and said there is enough evidence to send it to the jury.

Myrna Ford said she has known Joe Cooper, the government’s star witness, for about 15 years. In recent years, she said, his visits to the funeral home became so frequent that one employee suggested someone “needed to give him an office.”

Earlier this week, Cooper testified and narrated videotapes he secretly made of himself making $8,900 in payments to Ford in 2006. Myrna Ford said she was not present when those payments were made but deposited the proceeds in a bank account to invest in a downpayment on the couple’s new funeral home. She said the business often deals in cash.

Her final statement to defense attorney Scholl was “I love my husband but I fear God more.”

Under cross-examination, she said the funeral home declared bankruptcy three times, in 1997, 1998, and 1999, and they did not file tax returns from 2002-2005. Ford was elected to the city council in 2000. Colthurst got Mrs. Ford to admit that the Fords would have had to produce tax returns to get conventional financing for the new funeral home. Instead they went to developer Jackie Welch, who has not been charged with anything although his name has come up several times along with Rusty Hyneman.

Earlier Friday, the government rested its case after calling a city official to verify that the Office of Planning and Development and Land Use Control Board both rejected applicant William Thomas’ attempt to put billboards and storage facilities on a site near Interstate 240 and Steve Road. Cooper was the lobbyist for Thomas before the Memphis City Council.

Myrna Ford’s testimony contrasted sharply with Cooper’s sometimes emotional testimony and testy exchanges with Scholl. The defense strategy appears to be to put Cooper, a two-time loser on federal charges, “on trial” against the Ford “team.”

The trial seems a bit anticlimactic now that the Tennessee Waltz trials have come to an end and Ford and Rickey Peete are no longer on the city council. Peete pleaded guilty to charges similar to the ones Ford is facing and has gone to prison, but the jury has not been told about that and prosecutors are not supposed to bring it up.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Cooper Sentencing Postponed Again, Until May 1st

CREDIT: jb

Sentencing for Joe Cooper, who pleaded guilty almost a year ago to federal charges of money laundering, has been rescheduled for May 1st. This follows a previous postponement of Cooper’s sentencing, which had been scheduled for last summer.

Former county squire Cooper is expected to be a key government witness in pending bribery and extortion cases involving outgoing city councilman Edmund Ford Sr., who, along with former councilman Rickey Peete, was targeted in a sting in which Cooper, who was cooperating with the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s office, wore a wire. (Peete pleaded guilty and received a sentence of four years and three months.)

Ford and Peete were indicted in November. Cooper had been arrested earlier in the year on a tip from drug dealer Korreco Green, who was in federal custody at the time. Green, who had been purchasing a car from Cooper at Bud David Cadillac, decided to work with the FBI and tipped agents to the elaborate and irregular means by which Cooper, who had a previous felony conviction, had arranged financing for Green’s automobile purchase.

Ironically, Green’s arrest had come after he missed several payments and Cooper had sworn out a warrant for his arrest as a car thief.

–Jackson Baker