laura davis aaron – Memphis Flyer

There come times when you wonder why everyone isn’t a
political junkie. Last year’s nail-biting U.S. Senate race between winner Bob
Corker and (narrow) loser Harold Ford Jr. – climaxing with the now
famous Battle of Wilson Air, when the GOP’s Corker deftly out dueled Democrat
Ford at the latter’s ambush of a Corker press conference — was one such time.

Another, believe it or not, is this year’s Memphis mayoral
race, which — despite the opting out of one potential lead actor, Shelby
County Mayor A C Wharton, and the refusal of another, incumbent Memphis
mayor Willie Herenton, to play ensemble – has had its dramatic, as well
as its comedic, moments.

Much of the entertainment value has come, as expected, from
the scramble involving the three major contenders to Herenton – city
councilwoman Carol Chumney, former MLGW head Herman Morris, and
former Shelby County Commissioner John Willingham. We’ll get to that core
drama in a moment.

But besides this main plot, which some have called by the
shorthand initials A.B.H. (for “Anybody-but-Herenton”), there’s running
mini-drama involving the several supporting players in the 14-member mayoral
field. We can call that one A.G.H. – for “Ain’t Gonna Happen.”

For, if there is real doubt as to whether Willingham, whom
the polls have shown to be hovering in the low single digits, is delusional in
his hopes of winning, it’s a dead-level cinch that these others are. None of
them even blip the radar screen.

Which is not to say that they haven’t made their
contribution to the dialogue. Nor that they haven’t made for compelling theater
on those rare occasions when they’ve been admitted to a forum involving the Big
Three (as for the Big Unit himself, the incumbent mayor, fahgitaboutit!, he’s
made it clear he’s not about to show in tandem with the others).

Consider this piece of wisdom from Laura Davis Aaron,
delivered at the League of Women Voters’ omnium gatherum affair at the
Main Library on Poplar on Sunday:

Knowing what she was about to unleash, Aaron first issued
this full-disclosure caveat to the attending audience (fairly numerous, all
things considered): “I want you close your eyes for a minute. I wanted to be a
lawyer once, but they ran out of the courtroom.” Non sequitur or not, we got the
drift of that. Then came the moment she was preparing us for:

“God gave me a plan and a vison: “Dr. Aaron, you must put
senior citizens in The Pyramid!'” (Pause.) “And I said: ‘To do what?'”

Once again the voice of the Almighty: “‘Take what they’ve
got in their homes to the Pyramid. and you’re gonna have them run a flea
market in that Pyramid!'”

And that, mind you, was only the first of two instances of
divine intervention at Sunday’s forum. Aaron was followed minutes later by
fellow candidate Dewayne A. Jones, who proclaimed more modestly, “God
makes the leader. I am your David,” and promised at some point to bring
forth his own “vision of empowerment.” He may even have had it ready on Sunday,
but wisely decided to hold it in reserve after Aaron’s bombshell.

There were contributions of a more secular sort from the
candidate chorus on Sunday. Roosevelt Jamison, in particular, proved
himself something of a phrasemaker. At one point, the youthful-appearing
Jamison, a Desert Storm vet, said disarmingly to the crowd, “I know I don’t
look old, but I am old.”

And he certainly got his fellow also-rans on his side when
he complained that “the media isn’t playing with a full deck” – meaning that he
and the other unsung names on the mayoral ballot weren’t getting their proper
share of attention.

The line from Jamison that got the whole audience going,
though, was this zinger, in response to the issue of gang activity and what to
do about it: “”We need to stop the gangs on top!” — a clear reference to
the rascals in charge of the governmental and business status quo.

Jamison was not done. He went on to insist, “Our government
has corrupted us in our city,” designating as particular problems “welfare” and
“babies having babies.” He got murmurs of approval from the conservatives in the
audience when he said, “We need mens [sic] to stand up to be mens. Stop leaving
everything to our women!”

Then there was Randy Cagle, who embraced past
traditions as well, calling, among other things, for a return to corporal
punishment in the schools. As he pointed out, “I got busted a lot of times at
school, but I’m not dead.”

Businessman Cagle, who has made every forum so far to which
all mayoral candidates have been invited, obviously relished the attention.
Often Cagle was gently corralled by a hint from LWV moderator Danielle
Schonbaum that he was about to exceed his allotted time limit.

On one such occasion, he said the obvious: “I could go on
forever. I love it.”

As candid and direct as that remark of Cagle’s was in its
own right, it had the ancillary virtue of prompting a rare understatement from
the famously voluble Willingham. “I’m like Cagle,” said the former commissioner.
“I can talk to you for three hours.”

Three hours was not quite what Willingham and fellow
top-tier candidates Morris and Chumney enjoyed during Monday night’s prime-time
broadcast forum on News Channel 3, WREG-TV, but the three of them managed a
compelling hour.

Observers’ opinions differed afterward as to who came out
ahead in a format that culminated with direct exchanges between the candidates
themselves.

But there were several discoveries to be had by the
viewers, who learned, among other things, that Chumney has been endorsed by the
AFL-CIO (she mentioned the fact four, maybe five times) and that Willingham, who
would seem to be about as white as white can be (ditto for his supporters),
considers himself the exponent, first and foremost, of “my base in the black
community,” which he helpfully enumerated as being in the vicinity of 13,000
voters.

Cynics may dispute it all they want, but the former
commissioner made it clear several times in his opening statement and thereafter
that he thinks of himself as the candidate of black Memphians. Willingham also
made the claim that his commission race of 2002, which resulted in an upset
victory over then incumbent Morris Fair, had been but a trial run for the
two mayoral races he’s run since (three, counting one for county mayor last
year).

He had run back then, Willingham confided, “to get my name
out.”

Whatever.

More to the point, he certainly got his name out Monday
night, sparring with the other two candidates (and occasionally, lightly, with
moderators Claudia Barr and Richard Ransom) and discoursing on
several of his pet schemes, two of which – converting the Fairgrounds into a
mini-Olympic village for international competitions and reserving desk jobs in
the Memphis Police Department for returning vets of the Iraq war – were
distinctly original.

In WREG’s own post-debate viewer poll, Willingham was, in
fact, running a strong second to Chumney.

As for the councilwoman, she had boasted on air – as she
has every right to – that such scientific polls as have been taken all position
her at the lead of the mayoral pack or tied for it. That was the basis for her
no-thank-you answer to commentator Norm Brewer‘s first question, asking
all the candidates if they shouldn’t back out, making room for a single
consensus contender to take on Herenton, who remains a not-quite-prohibitive
favorite.

(No one else volunteered for self-sacrifice, either.)

Though occasionally lapsing into some repetitive-sounding
spin, Chumney certainly managed to seize her share of the spotlight and to get
out large chunks of her crime plan (also available on her Web site) and other
proposals.

Morris, too, had his moments, staking out his claim to be a
racial uniter and unflappably fending off his opponents’ attacks on his record
at MLGW (Chumney on the alleged V.I.P. list he’d kept while head of the utility
and Willingham on what he – but not Morris, still a true believer – saw as the
folly of investing in Memphis Networx).

With some logic, Morris could claim afterwards that the
others’ persistent questioning of him meant that they must have regarded him as
“the frontrunner.” He wishes.

The bottom line is that all three candidates handled
themselves well and did themselves no damage, as each continued to vie for the
right to be regarded as the main contender to Herenton.

To Be Continued, you may be sure.

Memphis mayoral candidates continued to campaign, as is their wont, over the weekend:

Incumbent mayor Willie Herenton, who is eschewing formal debates with his opponents, spoke briefly to a rally at a Frayser mall Saturday but mainly spent his time there autographing campaign T-shirts and demonstrating his prowess at the “Cupid Shuffle” as a sound system blared out some music.

Opponent Carol Chumney held a well-attended opening at her Poplar Avenue headquarters on Sunday, once again chiding Herenton for being willing to spar with Joe Frazier while ducking debate, but she seemed to broaden her attack to include rival Herman Morris as well as Herenton: “My opponents love to walk you through their humble beginnings, but their actions both in political office and as executives demonstrate that they have long forgotten where they came from.”

Morris held at least one major fund-raiser over the weekend, while John Willingham presided over a headquarters open house that spread over Sunday and Monday.

Present at Mt. Olive C.M.E. Church for an all-candidates forum Sunday were Chumney, Morris, and Willingham, but not Herenton. A wide representation of other mayoral candidates also attended, including Laura Davis Aaron — who cited as two reasons for running the fact that “Mayor Herenton reads my mail” and that she needs a job — and Dewayne A. Jones Sr., who shouted so loudly as to temporarily short out his microphone.

• With Congress in recess, 9th District congressman Steve Cohen is much in evidence locally. Among other things, Cohen presided (along with Tennessee senator Lamar Alexander) over a ceremony formally changing the name of the Federal Building to the Clifford Davis/Odell Horton Federal Building, in honor of the late U.S. district judge Odell Horton.

Cohen also proposed to President Bush that he appoint former deputy attorney general James Comey to succeed the disgraced and now resigned Alberto Gonzales as U.S. attorney general. (Comey, along with the bedridden John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, had resisted as unconstitutional a Bush wiretapping plan aggressively pushed by Gonzales, then White House counsel.)

Cohen addressed a Chamber of Commerce-sponsored banquet as the first of its Frontline Politics speakers this year and took part in a panel on crime sponsored by the Public Issues Forum. The congressman’s remarks at the Frontline dinner at the Ridgeway Center Hilton struck a new note, in that Cohen, a longtime critic of the Iraq war, acknowledged for the first time that residual U.S. troops might need to remain in the war-torn country for some time to come.

Cohen also scheduled a meeting, tentatively set for Tuesday of this week, with members of the Memphis Black Ministerial Association, one of whose leaders, the Rev. LaSimba Gray, has led an assault on Cohen’s support for a congressional Hate Crimes Bill.

There are several anomalies associated with the ministers’ protest — among them, that Cohen’s predecessor, former congressman Harold Ford Jr., had consistently supported such legislation without drawing criticism from the association.

Pointing out further inconsistencies this week was an association member, the Rev. Ralph White, who originally expressed solidarity with the protest but later satisfied himself it was based on misconceptions. Said White: “I’ve read the bill, and I’m satisfied that it does not restrain a minister from expressing opposition to homosexual conduct or anything else that might be offensive to his conscience or Christian doctrine. The language of the bill specifically guarantees such freedom of speech.”

Turning the attack back on its maker, White said, “What LaSimba Gray has to answer to is whether he is consciously trying to aid the congressional campaign of Nikki Tinker. Nobody seems to be wondering what her attitude toward the Hate Crimes Bill is.”

Actually, many people have so wondered, but a Washington, D.C., spokesman for the elusive Tinker, a 2006 Cohen opponent who has already filed to run a reprise of last year’s congressional race, has publicly said she will, at least temporarily, distance herself from discussion of such issues — as she did at an equivalent period of last year’s race. White, who also sought the 9th District seat last year, is holding open his options for another run of his own.

• Senator Alexander, just back from an extended fact-finding trip to Iraq in tandem with Tennessee Senate colleague Bob Corker, seems, like Cohen, to have moderated his stand on Iraq somewhat. Alexander continues to push for a bipartisan resolution, co-authorized with Colorado Democrat Ken Salazar, based on the findings of the Iraq Study Group and calling for an end to U.S. combat operations.

But the senator indicated in Memphis last week that he had been impressed by progress made by the ongoing U.S. troop “surge” in Anbar Province and other points and, pending a scheduled report to Congress next month by General David Petraeus, was keeping an open mind on continued troop commitments in Iraq.

• A casualty of County Commission voting Monday was Susan Adler Thorp, a former Commercial Appeal columnist and consultant who had been serving as public relations adviser to Juvenile Court judge Curtis Person but whose position ended up being unfunded. Somewhat later, a commission majority would authorize equivalent sums for a new “outreach” position, yet to be filled.

• The 2007 recipient of the Tigrett Award, funded by FedEx founder Fred Smith in honor of the late John Tigrett, will be former U.S. senator Howard Baker, it was announced last week. The award will be presented by the West Tennessee Healthcare Foundation at a gala later this year.

• Next week: a systematic look at this year’s City Council races.

Him Again

Richard Fields was back on the attack, battling his foes by means of publicly circulated letters.

To be sure, one of the epistles was written not by Fields but by Lambert McDaniel, an imprisoned ex-club owner, to Gwen Smith, the point person in Mayor Willie Herenton‘s accusations concerning a lurid blackmail plot against him orchestrated by lawyer Fields and other alleged “snakes.” In the letter, McDaniel, who was incarcerated on a drug charge, refers to Smith by pet names and advises her to stay in touch with “the Mexicans” — presumably drug connections.
What relevance the letter has to Herenton’s charges against Fields — who, according to the mayor, urged Smith to seduce and entrap the mayor — is uncertain. Clearly, it does milady’s reputation, already sullied, no good. But, by association, it wouldn’t seem to entitle Fields — or Nick Clark, his acknowledged confederate in the purported topless-club investigation — to any merit badges, either.

Fields is a textbook illustration of the adjective “unabashed,” however. Confirming reports that the lawyer’s own poison pen had been unsheathed for yet another epistolary crusade, Shelby County commissioner Sidney Chism denounced Fields in the commission’s public session Monday, during a debate on whether to assign Head Start children to the non-profit Porter-Leath Children’s Center.

In one of Fields’ widely circulated broadsides, Chism, a child-care provider himself, was taken to task for his initial opposition to the Porter-Leath arrangement and was told, among other things, he should be “ashamed” of himself.

Chism’s response was scornful. Citing a variety of allegations against Fields that have been insistently put forth by blogger Thaddeus Matthews, Chism challenged Fields’ bona fides, saying that, if all that was said about Fields was true, “he shouldn’t be anywhere around children, anyhow.”

Whatever the accuracy of the charges and counter-charges swirling about Fields, there was little doubt about one thing: With an election happening, the odds were better than even that there will be, in some guise or another, a Richard Fields ballot this year, as there was in each of the last two local election cycles. If so, would this be good or bad for Fields’ endorsees? This, too, remains to be seen.