Tag: John Ford

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Politics Politics Feature

Two 2020 Races Generate a Flood of Candidates in Shelby County

Ready? Deirdre V. Fisher, Eddie Jones, Gortria Anderson Banks, John Ford, Paul Boyd, Rheunte E. Benson, Thomas Long, Del Gill, Joe Brown, Tanya L. Cooper, Tavia Tate, Adrienne Dailey-Evans, Michael Finney, Reginald Milton, George D. Summers, Lisa W. Wimberly, Wanda R. Faulkner.

Those 17 names represent just the first wave of applicants at the Shelby County Election Commission for the right to seek the post of General Sessions Court clerk, a post that has been held since 2011 by Ed Stanton Jr. (not to be confused with his son, lawyer Ed Stanton III, who received appointments from President Barack Obama both as U.S. attorney and later as a U.S. district judge, though his nomination for the judgeship was bottled up and kept from confirmation by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell).

The senior Stanton, a Democrat, was a longtime employee of county service before his selection by the General Sessions judges to fill a vacancy as clerk and his subsequent two re-elections in 2012 and 2016. Stanton, a solid sort, attracted few challengers as an incumbent clerk, but there are obvious reasons — foremost among them, perhaps, being the $134,986 annual salary — why the job, now open, has generated the current flood of office-seekers.

Jackson Baker

District 97 Candidate Gabby Salinas (r)shmoozes with voter Sherry Compton; Another District 97 hopeful, Allan Creasy, chats up Norma Lester

Some of the candidates are neophytes. Others have names that are, how to put it — well-worn: Del Gill, Joe Brown, John Ford? Ford may not ultimately be eligible, inasmuch as his rights seem not clearly to have been restored since a felony conviction from the FBI’s Tennessee Waltz sting. Two current county commissioners are on the list of hopefuls — Jones and Milton. Long and Boyd have previously held clerkships. Of this early list of 17, all are Democrats except for Boyd, Finney, Summers, and Wimberly, who are Republicans. 

So far, only seven of the petition-pullers have filed, but expect that number to grow, as will the number of new applicants asking for petitions.

• Meanwhile, the candidate field for state House District 97 is doing some multiplying as well. This is the seat in Bartlett/Eads that has been the bailiwick of longtime Republican incumbent Jim Coley, who decided to take his leave after a final term in which various ailments were incapacitating him. Two fellow Republicans have declared their candidacies for the job — John Gillespie, who works as a grant coordinator for Trezevant Episcopal Home, and Brandon Weise, an employee of the Shelby County Register’s office.

Gillespie made the first splash and has attached himself to Coley’s coattails, as well as to the Republican establishment in general, and lines up with a somewhat modified version of the education savings account bill (aka: voucher program) steamrollered into passage last year when then House Speaker Glen Casada, acting on Governor Bill Lee‘s behalf, kept the voting rolls open in the House long enough to to turn one legislator’s crucial nay note into an aye.

Weise stands in opposition to the voucher program, which would affect only Shelby County and Davidson County schools and would be likely to fall in behind new GOP Speaker Cameron Sexton of Crossville, who opposed the bill relentlessly last year and has indicated he would like to at least delay its immediate implementation. Weise, however, does observe Republican orthodoxy on matters such as opposition for federally funded Medicaid expansion and support for block grants to deal with health-care issues.

Democrats have their own contest pending in House District 97, with Allan Creasy, a narrow loser to Coley last year, making a renewed try for the seat. And another Democratic near-success story from 2018, Gabby Salinas, is also looking for another way into the General Assembly, after giving GOP state Senator Brian Kelsey a serious scare in his re-election race last year.

Both candidates see themselves as still having hot hands and ready-to-go constituencies. Before taking on Kelsey, Salinas had been able to turn on a head of steam to defeat David Witherspoon, a well-supported candidate and an early favorite in the Democratic primary. Salinas has the benefit of an affecting backstory regarding her childhood pilgrimage to the United States from Bolivia with her family in order to seek treatment for her at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. A personal endorsement by Marlo Thomas of St. Jude, daughter of the institution’s founder, Danny Thomas, proved helpful to Salinas’ candidacy.

Both Creasy, a popular manager and bartender at Celtic Crossing restaurant in Cooper-Young, and Salinas are opposed to the governor’s voucher legislation, and both also favor acceptance of federal Medicaid expansion funds under the Affordable Care Act. Both were much in evidence pressing the flesh at Sunday’s annual Democratic Women’s Christmas party at the IBEW headquarters building on Madison.

After several years in which Democrats figured only as sacrificial lambs in suburban legislative districts, the fact of having competitive primaries in such districts has the party faithful both nervous and excited.

• At its regular monthly meeting on Monday, the Shelby County Commission: 1) approved with near unanimity the use of PILOT (payment-in-lieu-of-tax) rents in the Pinch District TIF area by the Center City Revenue Finance Corporation, contingent upon the developer’s complying with CRFC requirements that not less than 28 percent of spending on construction will go to minority vendors; with the same requirement being imposed on the ongoing Union Row project; 2) voted to resolve a work-overload issue in the Register of Deeds office by approving two new full-tme positions and three temporary positions; 3) approved an add-on funding formula to enable additionl capital improvement projects at municipal schools; 4) agreed to hear in committee a proposal by Commissioner Van Turner for a MATA Capital Funding Ordinance to codify Shelby County’s commitment to transportation needs.

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Politics Politics Feature

Bogus Ballot Battle on Hold; Candidates Line Up for 2020

So what’s the status of the “bogus ballot” question, which was due to be given a post-election judicial hearing last week?

“On hold” is the answer. Several factors have intervened to postpone a final reckoning about the legality of sample ballots circulated at election time by entrepreneurs on behalf of candidates willing to pay potentially thousands of dollars to have themselves “endorsed” by shell organizations.

One factor was a heart attack suffered by retired Circuit Court Judge William B. Acree of Jackson, who was imported before the election to rule on the propriety of “pay-for-play” ballots circulated by organizations calling themselves the “Greater Memphis Democratic Club” and the “Shelby County Democratic Club,” respectively.

The former is operated by Greg Grant, the latter by M. Latroy Alexandria-Williams. Neither organization has an actual connection to any official organ of the Democratic party, and both “endorsed” candidates with demonstrable Republican connections in sample ballots mailed and handed out to prospective voters.

Lawyer John Marek, a candidate for Memphis City Council in the recent city election, the Shelby County Democratic Party, and the Young Democrats of Shelby County all joined on a request for an injunction against circulation of the ballots. Acree wound up hearing the case when all local judges, most of whom had previously patronized such ballots, recused themselves.

With three hours to go before the polls closed on election day, October 3rd, the judge issued a temporary restraining order against further circulation of the ballots and scheduled a follow-up hearing for last Wednesday, November 13th, to consider a permanent ruling on the matter.

Judge Acree’s heart attack was not the only event to intervene against that schedule. Defendant Alexandria-Williams, as was his right, filed a notice of removal of the case from state to federal jurisdiction. For his part, Grant has of yet not made a decision to join in the notice of removal. The case now rests in the hands of U.S. District Judge Sheryl Lipman, who has not yet ruled on whether she intends to keep the case or remand it back to state court.

Nor have the attorneys for the plaintiffs — Bruce Kramer, Jake Brown, and Melody Dernocoeur at Apperson Crump — decided on whether to seek the remand themselves. A goal of the attorneys, incidentally, in whatever is the final court of record, is a ruling of “unjust enrichment,” whereby the ballot entrepreneurs would be required to forfeit the profits they made from the sale of their endorsements.

• The 2019 Memphis city election may have come to a finish with the conclusion of last Thursday’s runoff elections for two city council positions in District 1 and District 7, won by Rhonda Logan and Michalyn Easter-Thomas, respectively.

But 2020, which will be chock-full of elections, is just two flips of the calendar away, and one of the races sure to draw much attention will be that for the position of General Sessions Court clerk, which will be vacated by current longtime clerk Ed Stanton Jr. (father of former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton III).

Three of the known contenders for the clerkship are, like Stanton, Democrats and well known to followers of local politics. The first name in the hat was that of Shelby County Commissioner Eddie Jones, who filed two weeks ago. At about the same time, Commissioner Reginald Milton began informing people of his interest in the race.

The two commissioners were just joined on the ballot by former longtime state Senator John Ford, who filed for the race on Monday. Yes, that John Ford, the controversial member of the Ford political clan who ran afoul of the FBI’s Tennessee Waltz sting in 2005, was convicted of bribery, and served a term in state prison.

Ford formerly served a term as General Sessions clerk, simultaneous with holding his Senate seat. Having long since regained his citizenship rights, Ford aims to re-establish himself as a public official. Despite his notoriety, he was regarded as someone with an in-depth knowledge of the ins and outs of state government and as a go-to legislator for mental health and various other public issues.

Milton, a community organizer and chairman of the commission’s community grants committee, which he brought into being, was a veteran of several political races before his 2014 election to the commission and his 2018 re-election. He greeted the news of Ford’s filing by saying, “I’ve never run an easy race. I’m used to it.”

Confiding that he would make a formal announcement next week, Milton said, “I appreciate those willing to offer themselves for public office, and I look forward to sharing with the public why I feel I would be best suited for this position.”

• As was noted in this space recently, state Representative Jim Coley (R-District 97) has decided to retire and won’t seek re-election in 2020. So far, two Democrats have made known their interest in seeking the seat — Allan Creasy, who got 45 percent of the vote in District 97 in a race against Coley last year, and Gabby Salinas, who gave Republican State Senator Brian Kelsey a close race in his 2018 re-election bid.

Republicans will try to hold on to the seat, of course, and there is an active GOP candidate in the field — John Gillespie, who works as a grant coordinator at Trezevant Episcopal Home and is making his first try for political office. Gillespie issued a press release this week claiming receipts of $47,000 at a recent East Memphis fund-raiser — not a bad first-time haul.

…

Jackson Baker

Democrat Edmund Ford Jr. (left) and Republican Amber Mills (right) co-sponsored County Commission resolutions providing $80,000 to the County Health Department for testing children for alleged exposure to lead in water sources at Shelby County Schools and adding to the Commission’s legislative agenda an official notice of the issue to the General Assembly and Governor Bill Lee. The Commission approved both resolutions unanimously.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

John Ford, Reginald Milton, Eddie Jones, Others to Battle for General Sessions Clerk

CREDIT: JB

JB

John Ford (l); Reginald Milton (r)

The 2019 Memphis city election may have come to a finish with the conclusion of last Thursday’s runoff elections for two city council positions in District 1 and District 7, won by Rhonda Logan and Michalyn Easter-Thomas, respectively.

But 2020, which will be chock-full of elections, is just two flips of the calendar away, and one of the races sure to drawn much attention will be that for the position of General Sessions Court clerk, which will be vacated by current longtime clerk Ed Stanton Jr. (father of former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton III).

Three of the known contenders for the clerkship are like Stanton, Democrats, and well known JB

Eddie Jones

to followers of local politics. The first name in the hat was that of Shelby County Commissioner Eddie Jones, who filed two weeks ago. At about the same time Commiss9oner Reginald Milton began informing people of his interest in the race .
The two Commisdsioners were just joined on the ballot by former longtime state Senator John Ford, who filed for the race on Monday. Yes, that John Ford, the controversial member of the local Ford political clan who ran afoul of the FBI’s Tennessee Waltz sting in 2005, was convicted of bribery, and served a term in state prison.

Ford formerly served a term as General Sessions Clerk, simultaneous with holding his Senate seat. Having long since regained his citizenship rights, Ford aims to re-establish himself as a public official. Despite his notoriety, he was regarded as someone with an in-depth knowledge of the ins and outs of state government, and as a go-to legislator for mental health and various other public issues.

Milton, a community organizer and chairman of the commission’s community grants committee, which he brought into being, was a veteran of several political races before his 2014 election to the commission and his 2018 reelection. He greeted the news of Ford’s filing by saying, “I’ve never run an easy race. I’m used to it.”

Confiding that he would make a formal announcement next week, Milton said, “I appreciate those willing to offer themselves for public office, and I look forward to sharing with the public why I feel I would be best suited for this position.

UPDATE: Other candidates for General Sessions Clerrk who have filed or requested petitions though Thursday, November 19, are:

Democrats Deirdre V. Fisher, Gortria Anderson Banks, Rheunte E. Benson, and Thomas E. Long; and Republican Paul Boyd.

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News The Fly-By

A Question of Character

The minutes had turned to hours as I waited for my Uncle George to arrive. It was the day after I’d graduated from junior high. As my favorite relative, my uncle, who lived in Kentucky, had promised me we’d take a road trip from my home in Missouri to Chicago, and just the two of us would enjoy the sights. My family had left the city when I was a child, so to me it was going to be a pilgrimage I’d excitedly anticipated. But, just to be exclusively in the company of the man I had idolized from afar most of my then short and uneventful life was going to be thrilling enough.

On those rare occasions when I saw him — family reunions or his brief stopovers while traveling through — I became fascinated by the stories George told of people, places, and events that he’d experienced in his life. Though my other siblings would tire of his well-worn tales, I always intently listened, as if I’d never heard any of them before. I relished his braggadocio, tales of how he set foolish men straight, how he took it upon himself, at the risk of possible repercussions, to right injustice whenever he encountered it, even in the pre-civil rights era. I envisioned him as a black version of Don Quixote. Yet, when I would sing his praises to my mother, she would wistfully reply, “Yes, son, George is a character.”

This past week marked the reemergence of two colorful “characters” from this city’s past. In an extensive interview with the Flyer’s sage political columnist Jackson Baker, former state Senator John Ford, released from the legal probation that followed his release from prison as the result of his bribery conviction after the 2005 Tennessee Waltz scandal, went back on the offensive. He alleged he was among a group of black Democrats targeted by a predatory justice system. He asserted videos presented by federal prosecutors were edited to make him look guilty. The boisterous Ford attempted to make the argument that we should all be fearful that freedom of speech is under attack, based on what happened to him. In an accompanying interview, Ford also lashed out at the credibility of his attorney in the bribery case, Michael Scholl. Having reported on the trial, I can say Ford should thank his lucky stars the adept Scholl was almost able to defy the logic of what was undeniably incriminating evidence.

And then it was “Joe Time.” Television personality and former Shelby County Court Judge Joe Brown once again briefly ruled the airways in another reality show setting. His outburst inside a Juvenile Court room, as the pro bono legal representative of a woman he met in the hallway, was the fodder of websites, twitter, and ridiculous analysis ad-nauseum. The fact is, and what Brown continually refused to honestly address, is that as a former jurist he knew better than to stage such a contemptuous performance in another judge’s domain. He wouldn’t have stood for such a scene when he was on the bench.

But, the recent exploits of “Joe and John” reflect the fear of an aging generation of which I am a part. No one wants to feel obsolete. None of us wants to admit the sense of wide-eyed enthusiasm that propelled our youth now seems reduced to spouting the type of clichés we once thought were the last resorts of the foolish and the prideful. Our generation now often dreams of creating new moments by simply ignoring the truth of history or by rewriting it with a different and more favorable spin. We don’t want to admit the time we had on our drive to succeed in life has waned so much. It’s just easier to use the “shortcuts” we learned along the trail to make up for the time lost and the time we have left to still make a difference.

If we had gone on that trip to Chicago, maybe Uncle George would have taken the time to explain something like that to me. Maybe he would have told me there is a stark difference between “having character” and “being a character.” To be a character takes little more than to establish a personality that stands out from the crowd. That can be manufactured. To have character is to realize honesty and truth are more than just words. They are the foundation of our existence.

At some point, I stopped waiting on Uncle George.

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Politics Politics Feature

Flash Points

Two events occurred on Monday of this week that indicate the unpredictability — nay, the volatility — with which the election seasons of 2014 may be expected to proceed.

On Monday afternoon, the Shelby County Commission was in session and considering, among other matters, the question of whether the administration of county Mayor Mark Luttrell should be urged to rebid the county’s existing 2011 contract with Christ Community Health Services (CCHS) to administer Title X federal funding for women’s health issues.

Commissioner Steve Mulroy had proposed a resolution to that purpose. He had voted with the pro-CCHS majority in 2011 and had done so, he said then and has repeated of late, so as to attach to the contract with CCHS guarantees of high-level service.

His request for a rebid this week was based on statistics he presented casting doubt about the organization’s adequate compliance.Commissioners opposing the resolution suggested, however, that his true motive had to do with propitiating pro-choice advocates of former Title X contractor Planned Parenthood in his current candidacy for county mayor.

For various reasons, many of them ad hoc rather than inevitable, the resolution was defeated. Question: Does the commissioner get credit for fighting the good fight or do his motives remain suspect, or does it even matter?

The same kinds of questions remain in the aftermath of the ruckus kicked up in Juvenile Court by former judge and TV eminence Joe Brown, who was jailed Monday for contempt of court but later released on his own recognizance.

Again, suspend for the time being your thoughts about the merits of the case: Will Brown, a candidate for District Attorney General, get votes — for himself and other Democrats — for taking on the Juvenile Court establishment? Or will he lose them by appearing to be a hothead?

Or, again, does it even matter?

On such questions — the kabuki principle, as it were — electoral outcomes may depend. Just sayin’.         

• And there’s this: Former state senator and convicted felon John Ford, who finally received notification late last week that the legal probation that followed his release from federal prison in August 2012 was at an end, is free to speak freely about what’s on his mind now. And one thing very much on his mind is a belief that he is an innocent man who was “set up” by a predatory justice system determined to target him.

In the course of two lengthy sit-down interviews with Ford — one last October in the living room of his condominium in a gated East Memphis suburb, another at the Ruth’s Chris Steak House in January — along with several telephone conversations, the former kingpin state senator, now meditating on a possible electoral comeback, confided his assorted thoughts and recollections about his fall from grace and his two felony trials of the late 1990s.

A comprehensive article on our conversations, “Waiting for Godot with John Ford,” will appear in the April issue of Memphis Magazine, and another article, “John Ford’s J’ACCUSE!,” focusing on the legal aspects of Ford’s two trials, appeared on memphisflyer.com.

Reprinted here is a seriously abridged portion of the latter, dealing with Ford’s conviction for bribery in Memphis in 2007 and the prison term of four-plus years, largely served in the low-security federal facility at Yazoo City, Mississippi.

“The crime was being committed on their part,” Ford says of the FBI agents who netted Ford, along with six other officials, in the “Tennessee Waltz” sting of May 2005.

“If you tried to bribe me, you would be guilty of trying to bribe me,” Ford says, but he contends that the video used in evidence at his trial, which shows him taking thousands of dollars in bills from an agent posing as a legislative lobbyist, allegedly to secure Ford’s help in passing a bill, was in effect edited to distort the facts.

“All they had was what they recorded on tape. You can make a video show what you want it to show,” says Ford. “Where’s the evidence? They’re the ones making a recording. There’s nothing illegal about that, about somebody counting out money and giving it to you. They give you some money and talk about something else.”

Is Ford saying that the money was passed for something other than the illegal purposes the government said it was for? “That’s exactly what I’m saying,” is Ford’s answer, but he doesn’t specify what. (In a separate interview with WMC-TV reporter Kontji Anthony, Ford says he was serving as a “consultant” to the agent’s pretended music business.) Ford is clearly making a case that he was framed. And what would be the motive?

Ford suggests that “Tennessee Waltz” and other governmental-corruption trials arose from the politics of the Bush-era Justice Department.

“I think for certain they targeted Democrats who had a lot of power — Democrats in particular who were black who had a lot of power.” As for Republicans — and Democrats — who were conservative, “They didn’t bother with them. I know a lot [of people] who should have been targeted who weren’t targeted. They’re still serving. They did things of their own volition, not when somebody set ’em up.”

Pending the end of his probation, Ford had been reticent about going public with his accusations against the legal system.

“That’s why they have probation, to keep your butt quiet for a year or two. Boom! Everybody that goes to prison — federal, county, state, whatever level — are not there because they committed a crime or because they’re criminals. It’s because the system wanted them there!”

And more in that vein about the bind he felt during his probation period: “You have freedom of speech, but you’re limited. You say something against a judge or a prosecutor or something like that, they can get you. They can say ‘boom boom’ and take your freedom away.

“What you say can and will be held against you. What you say may not be pleasing to them, it’ll be derogatory. They’ll cop an attitude so quick. They’ll try to find something. It ain’t gotta be right. If the judge goes along with it, boom!

“I know it. I’ve seen it. You don’t have to do anything that’s wrong to go to prison. A lot of folks who were down there where I was, we talked. They didn’t commit a crime. They hadn’t done any crime. They lost their cases like I did. They couldn’t out-gun the government. But I did in the end, though, didn’t I?”

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Politics Politics Feature

Blasts From the Past

Yes, that smaller image is who you think it is.

In her candidacy for the state House of Representatives seat made vacant by the death this summer of longtime incumbent Lois DeBerry, Kemba Ford called on a once-familiar political presence for backup.

In her basic campaign handout, Ford used a background image of her father, former state senator John Ford, and she proudly cited his name in campaign speeches. During a recent forum, candidate Ford told the audience, “I have a direct line to someone who walks the walk and talks the talk.”

She went on to invoke not only the name of her father but that of his brother, former U.S. representative Harold Ford Sr., to reinforce her connection to the well-known Ford political clan.

Opinions differ as to whether John Ford, a major presence in the Tennessee General Assembly before his conviction in the Justice Department’s Tennessee Waltz bribery sting, is prohibited from restoring his rights to run for office again or was grandfathered in before the passage of post-scandal legislation that would bar such activity.

In any case, the former state senator, who is now employed at his brother Edmund Ford‘s funeral home, professed in a recent conversation to have no such ambitions. He was, however, pleased to do what he could to help the electoral efforts of his daughter. That meant, among other things, telephoning friends and allies and asking them to assist, financially and otherwise.

As it happens, John Ford is not the only former senator to play a role in the just-concluded special election campaign. Former state senator Roscoe Dixon — who, like ex-Senator Ford, was caught up in the Tennessee Waltz scandal and, like him, recently was released from prison — was an active campaigner for candidate Joshua Forbes.

Dixon, who is active in the NAACP and often appears before local legislative bodies in support of that organization’s goals, made an effort to be a substitute panelist for the absent Forbes at an earlier candidate forum sponsored by Democratic members of the state legislature but was forced to withdraw when candidate Terica Lamb complained.

Nor is Dixon’s volunteer activity his only involvement with the public realm. He is a principal in CAATS, a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center which recently received $1 million in funding from the Memphis City Council for capital improvements in its treatment facility.

Yet another former state senator convicted in the Tennessee Waltz affair, Kathryn Bowers, has taken an active part in several political campaigns and has volunteered on a few civic projects since her own release.

One more Tennessee Waltz figure, former Memphis City Schools board member Michael Hooks Jr., has made a full reentry into the mainstream. Hooks operates a construction management and consulting company that provides assistance on capital improvement projects locally, including several funded by city government.

Hooks has also been involved in several local political campaigns, figuring prominently in the 2011 reelection campaign of Mayor A C Wharton. And he is an active member of the Memphis Rotary Club.

All of these Tennessee Waltz figures — having, as the saying goes, paid their debt to society — have recovered some degree of their former influence and seem determined to resume some gainful place in the social and civic mainstream.

Time will tell to what degree they succeed, but they all have their well-wishers.

(See “Political Beat Blog” for a rundown on the aforementioned special House District 91 Democratic primary, which concluded on Tuesday.)

• State senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) has evidently, like Ernest Hemingway before him, some sense of what the snows of Kilimanjaro are like. In a recent email to supporters, he conveyed news of “a 5-day hike to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, which at 19,341 feet, is the tallest mountain in Africa.”

Kelsey went on to posit a moral to this story: “The lesson it taught me in persistence is one that will prove helpful in continuing the fight for opportunity scholarships for low-income children in Tennessee.”

What are called “opportunity scholarships” in Kelsey’s lexicon are referred to as “school vouchers” by others, particularly the opponents of the senator’s several bills over the years to extend public education funds to private institutions. In his newsletters, Kelsey refers to such opponents in Tennessee as “those who view the local school district as an employment agency rather than an education agency.”

Governor Bill Haslam, the head of state government and the titular head in Tennessee of Kelsey’s party, would not ordinarily be classified that way, and Kelsey presumably didn’t mean to be referring to Haslam in the aforementioned description of his legislative adversaries.

Yet it was Haslam who pointedly obstructed Kelsey’s last effort to pass a voucher bill. Early in the 2013 session of the General Assembly, the governor had approved a modest pilot effort toward establishing a voucher system, one that would provide modest-sized vouchers for 5,000 low-income students currently enrolled in schools certified by the state as failing.

That was not enough for Kelsey, who counterposed a bill that would have greatly expanded the amount of vouchers and made them available to children in families making as much as $75,000 a year.

Finding Kelsey unwilling to compromise, and with time running out on the session, Haslam made it clear that he did not want alternate voucher legislation of the scope proposed by Kelsey put forward.

The co-sponsor of the Kelsey bill, state senator Dolores Gresham (R-Somerville), got the message and professed a willingness to back off, as did Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey, who had preferred a stronger voucher bill. Kelsey, however, remained intent on going forward.

The result was that the governor put his foot down and called for his own measure to be withdrawn, while announcing it was too late to work out any other version, and the session ended with no voucher bill at all.

In the newsletter, Kelsey finds inspiration in his struggle up Kilimanjaro: “Persistence pays off! Over and over during my hike up Kilimanjaro, my guide repeated, ‘po-le, po-le,’ which means ‘slowly, slowly’ in Swahili. He knew that climbing the mountain too fast would lead to altitude sickness and would leave me short of my goal. …

“Persistence pays off! Once I finally reached the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, the views from above the clouds made all the hard work worthwhile. I hope that I will have a similar experience with opportunity scholarships in 2014.”

The senator concludes his account with these lines from Hemingway’s classic “The Snows of Kilimanjaro”:

“There, ahead, all he could see, as wide as all the world, great, high, and unbelievably white in the sun, was the square top of Kilimanjaro. And then he knew that there was where he was going.”

There’s a problem with the analogy, though: Mt. Kilimanjaro figures in the Hemingway story as the unachieved goal of the character Harry Street, who lies dying at the foot of the mountain and, at the end of the story, perishes without having attained his goal. Indeed, Kilimanjaro is treated as the very symbol of the unattainable.

Categories
Opinion

After the Rainmaker

In the long-running epic series The United States v. The Fords of Memphis, John Ford is about to reclaim the starring role.

In May 2005, the feds indicted then-senator Ford in Operation Tennessee Waltz. Coincidentally, it was a few days after Harold Ford Jr.’s announcement of his candidacy for U.S. Senate.

In December 2006, federal prosecutors in Nashville indicted John Ford a second time on charges related to his consulting for TennCare contractors. That same month in Memphis, the feds indicted John’s younger brother Edmund, then a Memphis city councilman, on bribery charges stemming from a zoning case.

In 2007, John Ford went to trial and was convicted and sentenced to 66 months in prison. Also in 2007, Edmund Ford was indicted a second time for bribery along with former MLGW president and chief executive officer Joseph Lee.

In 2008, Edmund Ford was tried and acquitted on the charges connected to the zoning case. He still faces trial on the MLGW-related charges.

All this, of course, followed the mistrial and retrial of Harold Ford Sr., culminating in his acquittal in 1993.

It looks like the spotlight is about to shift once again to John Ford and the city of Nashville, scene of Ford’s legislative prowess for more than 20 years. On June 24th, Ford, now a prison inmate in Leitchfield, Kentucky, is scheduled to go on trial again.

“I will be ready, but I won’t be ready if [prosecutors] dump hundreds of documents on me at the last minute,” said Ford’s attorney, federal public defender Isaiah S. Gant, who says he has been trying to get the government’s prospective exhibits for several months. “I haven’t gotten one sheet of paper since February.”

A status hearing before a judge is set for June 9th. Assistant U.S. attorney Eli Richardson, head of the public corruption office in Nashville, said he expects the case to begin June 24th. When and if the case goes to trial, Ford will be moved to a facility in Nashville and come to court in civilian clothes. Prospective jurors are likely to be questioned about their knowledge of Ford’s Memphis conviction, although that might not come up in the actual trial.

“Generally speaking, that would not come in unless he took the witness stand,” Gant said.

Former federal prosecutor Hickman Ewing Jr. said if Ford takes the stand he can be asked if he has been convicted of a felony even though his conviction is on appeal.

Ford isn’t the only one who’s already been punished. His consulting partners, Doral Dental and United American Health Care (parent company of a Tennessee subsidiary called Omnicare), have both lost their TennCare contracts with the state Department of Finance and Administration. UAHC, a publicly traded company, made the disclosure in a quarterly filing last month.

“Management believes the discontinuance of the TennCare contract will have a material impact on the company’s operations,” the company said.

As UAHC’s rainmaker, Ford was paid more than $400,000. Most of Omnicare’s 100,185 enrollees came from Shelby County and West Tennessee. They are expected to transfer to other managed-care organizations this year. UAHC got 60 percent of its total revenue from the TennCare contract. Its stock price has fallen from $9 in early 2007 to $1.76 this week.

TennCare, Omnicare, United American Health Care … who cares? Why go forward with a second John Ford trial? Because, unlike Tennessee Waltz, which was based on an FBI sting operation and a fictional company called E-Cycle Management, the TennCare case involves real companies. A conviction would send a clear message to companies and politicians alike about the legality as well as the ethics of consulting, which has had its practitioners on the Memphis City Council and Shelby County Commission, as well as in the General Assembly, where Ford and others openly listed it as their occupation.

In announcing the Nashville indictment, then assistant U.S. attorney Craig Morford said it showed Ford’s “appalling willingness” to betray the public trust. Morford has since moved on to the attorney general’s office in Washington.

The upcoming Ford trial comes at a time when a change in administration in Washington is certain and a power shift from Republicans to Democrats is a fair bet. Politically appointed assistant United States attorneys customarily start sending out their resumes now. After this year, they won’t have John Ford to kick around any more.

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Cover Feature News

The Last Waltz

CREDIT: Trey Harrison

Prosecutor Procedural

If there is a sub-genre of that literary favorite, the police procedural, it might be called the prosecutor procedural, and Operation Tennessee Waltz would be a bestseller.

The final chapter was written last week when Michael Hooks Jr. was sentenced to 30 days in jail. Hooks’ attorney, Glen Reid, said his client was not part of Tennessee Waltz, and prosecutor Tim DiScenza agreed. But Hooks had the misfortune to be part of a small-time corruption case involving bogus invoices to Shelby County Juvenile Court, which led, through his partners Tim Willis and Barry Myers, to Roscoe Dixon, John Ford, and the FBI undercover operation that came to be known as Tennessee Waltz.

Like any good novel, that story had money, deception, corrupt power, famous names, bag men, lucky breaks, moral ambiguity, courtroom suspense, and the threat of physical violence. It began late in 2002 and consumed the resources of the FBI, federal courts, prosecutors, and the media for more than five years. The timeline that follows is based on trial testimony, transcripts of taped conversations, and interviews with prosecutors, investigators, and defense attorneys conducted after the investigation became public on May 26, 2005.

2000-2001: Tim Willis and Barry Myers, politically ambitious young men, meet while working on a campaign. Myers, a Roscoe Dixon protégé wise to the ways of state legislators, tells him, “You need to be able to take care of people.” Two more young men on the make, Shelby County administrator Calvin Williams and Darrell Catron, get Myers a job at Juvenile Court. Catron and Willis devise an embezzlement scheme involving bogus invoices.

2002: The FBI and agent Brian Burns begin an investigation of Juvenile Court. Federal agencies, while not without their own politics, are considered, by unwritten agreement, less political than elected district attorney generals such as Shelby County D.A. Bill Gibbons. Willis, who already has a Mississippi conviction for credit-card fraud, compounds his problems by lying to the grand jury.

January and February 2003: Willis and Catron agree to cooperate with the government. Catron pleads guilty to embezzlement, but his sentencing is postponed. Willis is not charged but instead tells investigators about corruption in local and state government. His information is deemed credible, and the FBI pays him $34,000 in 2003 to tape conversations with public officials. He records incriminating conversations with Myers and Williams about Dixon, John Ford, Kathryn Bowers, Michael Hooks Sr., and others.

Summer 2003: The FBI’s interest shifts from Juvenile Court to the state legislature in Nashville. Agents entrust Willis to offer Dixon a payoff for influencing a children’s dental contract. As is the case with all undercover witnesses, they are gambling that he will not betray them. They are especially worried about Ford, who is believed to have connections nearly everywhere. Local FBI agents come up with the name Tennessee Waltz. The proposal is vetted in Washington, D.C., with the FBI’s public corruption unit, which must approve undercovers, and the U.S. Attorney General’s Office, which must approve wiretaps. A deputy of Attorney General John Ashcroft, a Republican from Missouri, gives the approval.

Fall 2003: The FBI designates retired agent Joe Carroll and a young African-American undercover specialist known as L.C. McNeil to set up a fake company called E-Cycle Management to try to get legislation helping it do business in Tennessee.

2004: Willis, now making $77,000 a year plus expenses, tells state lawmakers he is lobbying for E-Cycle and has “a little discretionary money to take care of folks.” In February, he makes a videotaped payment to Dixon. Willis introduces lawmakers to Carroll, who is using the fake name Joe Carson. Ironically, “Joe Carson” has done previous well-publicized FBI undercovers of public corruption in other states within the last 10 years. By May, Dixon is suspicious of the large amounts of money E-Cycle is throwing around but apparently does not Google “Joe Carson” and “FBI agent.” McNeil, meanwhile, is getting a wealth of incriminating information from taped conversations with the talkative Myers. Near the end of the legislative session, E-Cycle has Dixon withdraw its bill.

January 2005: Carson is working hard on Chattanooga senator Ward Crutchfield and his bag man, Charles Love, while McNeil has forged a friendship with Ford. McNeil is also taping Michael Hooks Sr., who is eager to make money off of Shelby County contracts. Dixon, meanwhile, has quit the legislature to take a full-time job as a top assistant to Shelby County mayor A C Wharton, whose past campaigns he managed. This opens new doors but also complicates matters for the FBI.

Spring 2005: Ford is taped several times taking payoffs from McNeil. In a meeting at his office in Memphis, a suspicious Ford threatens to shoot Willis, who is terrified. Prosecutors and the FBI decide they must wrap up the investigation for two reasons. One, they fear it will be exposed and someone will get hurt; two, they can’t allow E-Cycle’s legislation to come to a floor vote and they are running out of excuses. On May 13th, agent Mark Jackson gives Dixon a last chance to confess, but he sticks to his lies. A few days later, prosecutors and the FBI set a date of May 26th for top-secret indictments of Dixon, Ford, Myers, Bowers, Chris Newton, Crutchfield, and Love. On May 25th, they get one last surprise: Harold Ford Jr. announces he is running for Senate, throwing an unintended political theme and Ford angle into the story, which will get national media attention.

Summer and Fall 2005: The dominoes begin to fall. Newton, Myers, and Love plead guilty. Myers will provide key testimony against Dixon and Bowers. Love will incriminate Crutchfield. Williams, who is not named in the May indictment, insists that he is writing a tell-all book about Willis and political corruption in Shelby County.

2006: Dixon goes on trial in June. Jurors hear several hours of tapes and testimony on the stand from Myers and Willis, whose credibility is not shaken by Dixon’s attorney. Dixon himself testifies and admits that he took payments. His alibi is destroyed by Tim DiScenza, whose courtroom presentation spares none of the dirty details on the tapes. Dixon is convicted and sentenced to 63 months in prison. The government sends a message that it is willing, even eager, to take more cases to trial. In August, Michael Hooks Sr. pleads guilty to bribery, leaving an arsenal of incriminating tapes forever out of the public view. The nephew of civil rights legend Dr. Benjamin Hooks is sentenced to 26 months in prison.

January 2007: Williams goes to trial. Willis testifies against him. Like Dixon, Williams takes the stand in his own defense. And, like Dixon, he is convicted of extortion in connection with a grant for a community program in Memphis. He is sentenced to 33 months in prison.

June 2007: Ford goes to trial. The key witnesses against him are Willis and his old “friend” McNeil. But Ford’s biggest problem is the collection of videotapes that show him taking a series of clandestine $10,000 payments. He is convicted on one count of extortion and sentenced to 66 months in prison. Later in 2007, Crutchfield and Bowers change their pleas to guilty.

Epilogue 2008: Michael Hooks Jr. is expected to serve his 30 days, probably in a halfway house, later this year. His father is in the federal prison in Montgomery, Alabama. Ford is supposed to report to prison in Texas on April 28th. Dixon is in a federal prison in Louisiana. Myers is in prison in Yazoo City, Mississippi. Williams is in prison in Forrest City, Arkansas. Bowers will begin serving her 16-month prison term in June. Crutchfield received home confinement instead of prison time due to health considerations. Newton has served his prison sentence. Catron did not testify at any trials and received probation.

FBI agent Brian Burns was reassigned to Buffalo, New York. His partner, Mark Jackson, was reassigned to Los Angeles. The government says “McNeil” is working on another undercover assignment at an undisclosed location. The government will not say where Willis is or what he is doing.

— John Branston

No Robin Hoods Here

On the night in December 2006 before he was arrested and charged with felonious graft in relation to his service as a Memphis city councilman, Rickey Peete was hanging out with a tableful of reporters and fellow pols in the Hard Rock Café on Beale Street. There had been a show-and-tell featuring Mayor Willie Herenton and Joe Frazier, the former heavyweight champ who was Herenton’s scheduled “opponent” in the next night’s charity boxing match.

A mayor’s race would be coming up within months, and, at Peete’s table, the subject easily elided from one species of contenders into another. The councilman began confiding his sense of what he saw as virtually unlimited political prospects not only for himself but for members of his family.

“Just my last name alone is practically a guarantee of victory in Memphis,” the genial Peete said, his infectious Cheshire grin expanding to Brobdingnabian proportions.

Wrong.

Within hours, Peete would be in handcuffs, charged with vote-selling and bribery and on his way to being a two-time loser in federal court, his good name and political career (both painfully rehabilitated after an 1988 bust for extorting money from a developer) ruined anew, and with his very liberty soon to expire.

The federal sting that nailed Peete was called Operation Main Street Sweeper. It was something like a second cousin to the more ballyhooed Tennessee Waltz operation that not long before had baited an assortment of corruptible officials with offers of swag, thereby sweeping in political offenders across the breadth of the state.

One of those had been Kathryn Bowers, who, at the time she was nabbed by the FBI — mid-session in Nashville in May 2005 — was a freshly elected state senator who doubled as chairman of the Shelby County Democratic Party. Less than a month before her arrest, she had been gloating on her triumph over party adversaries and the enlarged prospects that had come with her elevation from the state House of Representatives to the more elite senior body.

Within two years, Bowers was an emotional and physical wreck, under a doctor’s care and forced to cop a plea after initial protestations of innocence. “I ask for forgiveness of my bad decisions of receiving money in an inappropriate manner” was the awkward, curiously euphemistic mea culpa she managed to sputter out in February of this year, when she was being sentenced by U.S. district judge Daniel Breen to a 16-month prison term, followed by two years’ probation.

With the possible exception of former state senator John Ford, a millionaire who was already beleaguered on a number of graft fronts at the time that the Tennessee Waltz trap was sprung, the other sting victims (if that’s the right noun) were — by their own lights at least — riding high at the time they were busted.

Roscoe Dixon, the former state senator whose seat Bowers had filled, had vacated it to take a well-paying job as an assistant to Shelby County mayor A C Wharton. And he had spent much of the spring of 2005 in near-successful efforts to get the Shelby County Commission to appoint his erstwhile legislative aide-de-camp, one Barry Myers, to either the state Senate or the state House of Representatives.

The hard-working chairman of that selfsame County Commission for the 2004-’05 term was Michael Hooks Sr. Honorably rehabbed from a drug offense some years back, Hooks had just been a legitimate ballot contender himself for the state Senate seat won by Bowers. His son, Michael Hooks Jr., a respected member of the Memphis school board, was an aspiring actor who, in that same spring of 2005, appeared in a climactic speaking role in the surprise Indie hit Hustle & Flow.

All of the above hopefuls, along with the long revered state senator Ward Crutchfield of Chattanooga and assorted other members of state and local government, would end up under arrest and subject to trial. Most would cop pleas, and all would receive sentences of one kind or another. Those who, like Senator Ford and the hapless Dixon, dared to brazen it out and actually stand trial ended up as big-time losers, getting significant time.

With the exceptions of state representative Chris Newton, a Newport Republican widely regarded by his GOP mates in the legislature as a Democratic fellow traveler, all of those nabbed in the various stings orchestrated by the FBI and the local U.S. Attorney’s Office from 2005 to 2007 were either nominal or highly active Democrats.

A late exception was former county commissioner Bruce Thompson, a Republican who came under investigation in late 2007 for improprieties connected with his brokering a school construction contract. The case against Thompson, however, was not based on a sting per se. The crime, such as it was, had sprung from Thompson’s own machinations, and that fact, as much as his political persuasion, made the ex-commissioner’s legal situation unique.

Numerous local Democrats profess to smell a fish regarding these operations, but it’s difficult to get any, save the indicted themselves, to go on record with their suspicions.

In all fairness, testimony at several of the Tennessee Waltz trials indicated at least perfunctory attempts to recruit Republican legislators. And the audio and video introduced in evidence seemed to confirm that the FBI agents posing as computer entrepreneurs from a company called “E-Cycle” invited GOP members to the “receptions” that were, in reality, fishing expeditions.

To be sure, one or two Republicans got close enough at least to sniff from the bucketloads of cash made available to high-class helpers. State senator Jeff Miller of Knoxville opted out of reelection and decided to add “former” to his title not long after he belatedly declared $1,000 worth of E-Cycle cash as a “campaign contribution.” (And two indictees in recent years — former County Commission administrator Calvin Williams and ex-Juvenile Court aide Darrell Catron — were once regarded by the Shelby County Republican Party as prize recruits from the African-American community.)

The fact remains that the chief indictees of the Tennessee Waltz investigation were disproportionately Democratic, disproportionately black, and disproportionately from Memphis. They also seemed to be disproportionately from that part of the traditional Democratic apparatus known loosely as the “Ford organization.”

There are several ways to construe this fact, but, for comparison’s sake, two of them may be stated as: 1) Such folk were more corruptible than others involved with the trade of politics; or 2) pure and simply, they were targeted. Both these scenarios have their believers. And neither, alas, is subject to definite proof.

It is a fact, attributable to pure coincidence perhaps, that there was a lengthy hiatus in prosecutions of this sort, at least locally, during the two terms of Bill Clinton’s presidency. But during the Republican administrations that came immediately before and, as we have seen, immediately after, prominent Democrats were on the mark statewide.

No doubt, Knoxville bankers Jake and C.H. Butcher were shady operators back in 1983. They were also important components of the Tennessee Democrats’ party-building efforts. Ditto with Memphis congressman Harold Ford (“Senior,” as he has come to be known following the celebrity of his namesake son and congressional successor). Call it another coincidence, but Ford and several fellow defendants who had been connected with the Butchers were acquitted of bank fraud by a rural West Tennessee jury in the first year of the Clinton administration. Did Dan Clancy, the holdover prosecutor and a self-declared Democrat, let up on the throttle (even if only unconsciously), or had the government’s case always been as shockingly weak as it seemed to be? This, too, is a case of you-flips-your-coin-and-you-takes-your-choice.

But even if political bias, at least of the conscious variety, is discarded as a motive in the prosecution of politicians these last several years, there is another factor at work: Most of those indicted and convicted of accepting money for votes or for otherwise boondoggling the public trust (Crutchfield, the Butchers, and Thompson are clear exceptions) stem from working-class origins.

These were not the high-flying and well-protected financial scammers whose schemes, toting up in the stratospheric millions, are often too Byzantine for the public or juries or prosecutors even to comprehend, much less punish. These are basically blue-collar criminals doing low-level, white-collar crimes.

Most, before achieving office, were unused to the ways and mores of legitimately acquired wealth but came to occupy positions that exposed them on a daily basis to influential and privileged people or institutions on whose behalf they were routinely asked to intercede. Familiarity can breed, besides contempt, simple covetousness.

The truly sad fact is that many of those netted in the stings of recent years went down for what, in the scheme of things, amounted to nickels and dimes. But the sadder reality — the bottom line, as it were — is that nobody made them do it. And none of them answered to the name of Robin Hood.

— Jackson Baker

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News

Judge Gives John Ford’s Attorney Time to Read Transcripts

John Ford will probably not be going to prison before December.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Daniel Breen set a date of November 19th for Ford’s attorney, Robert C. Brooks, to file a motion to allow Ford to remain free on bond. Ford was convicted of bribery in the Tennessee Waltz investigation earlier this year and sentenced to five and a half years in prison.

Brooks, an appeals specialist, said he needs six weeks to read the 3000-page trial transcript and decide whether to ask for an appeal bond. Brooks took over Ford’s Memphis case from trial attorney Michael Scholl.

Should Brooks make that motion, Breen said a hearing on it would be held in Memphis on November 28th. Breen said Ford’s report date would be moved back to some time in December.

Ford has a November 6th trial date in Nashville on unrelated federal charges stemming from his consulting work for Tenn-Care contractors. His Nashville attorney, Isaiah Gant, was in Breen’s courtroom Monday and told the judge it is likely that the trial will begin on that date although a delay is possible. Gant said the trial is expected to last four or five weeks.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tim DiScenza said Ford could begin serving his prison sentence in October as originally scheduled and still make his November 6th trial date. DiScenza said many defendants have other cases pending. He said Ford could start doing his time at a facility in Nashville or federal marshals could bring him to Nashville from Texas when the trial starts.

“Mr. Ford is no different than any other defendant who goes to trial,” said DiScenza.

Brooks said ‘there appears to be this rush to get Mr. Ford locked up.” But he said that putting Ford in prison at this time would “deny him due process and assistance of counsel.”

Breen said that if Ford’s Nashville case begins November 6th then he will revisit the issues raised in Memphis by Brooks.

Ford left the courtroom without speaking to reporters.

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News News Feature

Wrapping Up Tennessee Waltz

John Ford boasted that he was “the guy who makes the deals,” but court exhibits made public after his sentencing indicate that his friends and fellow deal-makers did not exactly swarm to his defense in his hour of need.

U.S. district judge Daniel Breen allowed letters of support for Ford to be placed in the public record in the case. In August, Breen sentenced Ford to 66 months in prison for his bribery conviction — the longest sentence so far in the Tennessee Waltz case.

Twelve people wrote letters to Breen on Ford’s behalf requesting leniency in the sentencing. Seven of the writers were supporters and family members who also spoke at the sentencing hearing — Frank Thomas, Howard Richardson, Mabra Holeyfield, Pamela Wherry, Vickie Miller Brown, Joyce Miller Ford, and Autumn Ford Burnette.

Five others wrote letters but did not speak. They included attorney Edward Dixon of Shreveport, Louisiana; William H. Graves, presiding bishop of Christian Methodist Episcopal Church; Jerry D. Taylor, pastor of Greater Love Baptist Church; and Billene Durham. One more letter was filed under protective seal, and its author is unknown.

While there is obviously a limit on the number of people who can speak at a sentencing hearing without overtaxing the judge’s patience, there is no limit on letter-writing. Ford spent more than 30 years in politics in Memphis and Nashville. According to his attorney Michael Scholl, his supporters, and his own taped conversations, he was exceptionally powerful and effective and worked at the center of numerous big deals. But only one current elected official — state representative Ulysses Jones — spoke or wrote to Breen on Ford’s behalf. No state or city officials spoke or wrote.

In other Tennessee Waltz news, government witness Barry Myers is scheduled to be sentenced October 4th. Kathryn Bowers has an October 24th sentencing date, and Ward Crutchfield is scheduled to be sentenced on November 28th. Ford has a court hearing in Nashville on September 18th and a November 6th trial date on federal charges stemming from his consulting work for TennCare providers.