Tag: Mayor

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Politics Politics Feature

A Conciliatory Mayor Herenton and His New Council Take the Oath

CREDIT: courtesy WMC-TV

Despite advance forecasts on CNN that Memphis would be in
for severe weather on Monday, such was not the case. They probably should have
checked with our mayor. The weather outside was mild and sunny, as was the
weather inside at the Cannon Center, where Willie Herenton, flanked by his
doting 86-year-old mother, took the oath of office for a fifth time and said, “I
pledge to you to start afresh.”

That meant dispensing with “old baggage,” Herenton said, after sounding a note
that was both Lincolnian and Biblical: “Somewhere I read, ‘A city – or a house –
divided against itself cannot stand.’ God help us all.”

The reference to the Almighty was anything but perfunctory. It was vintage
turn-of-the-year Herenton. As he had on previous New Year’s occasions, the mayor
left no doubt about the nature of his political sanction. “God always chooses
the individuals to lead His people,” he said, and vowed, “Here am I. Send me,
Lord.”

Tinged as that was with the grandiosity of yesteryear, it was, in context, good
enough for new council chairman Scott McCormick, who, in follow-up remarks, said
a thank-you to God himself, and responded in kind to the moderate portions of
the mayor’s address. “He now has an approachable council,” said McCormick. “The
roots of mistrust are behind us.”

And, who knows, it may be true. After all, as McCormick noted, it was a new
council, with nine new members out of the 13, and, of the four remaining, none
were among those who had made a point of tangling with the mayor.

There were omens of another sort, of course – for those who wanted to look for
them. There were, for example, ambiguous words from Shelby County Mayor A C
Wharton, who was drafted from the audience by moderator Mearl Purvis to formally
introduce Herenton.

Buried in the middle of Wharton’s otherwise friendly and flattering sentiments
(from “your country cousin,” as the county mayor styled himself) was this sentiment addressed both to Herenton and to the audience at large: “The last time I checked, Midtown was in
Shelby County, Boxtown was in Shelby County, Memphis was in Shelby
County….”

Whatever the meta-message of that, it had the sound of simple friendly teasing.

And there was another vaguely suggestive verbal thread. In each of the oaths
taken by Herenton, by the 13 council members, and by city court clerk Thomas
Long was an archaic-sounding passage pledging that the sayer would “faithfully
demean myself” in accordance with the proprieties and “in office will not become
interested, directly or indirectly” in any proposition which could lead to
personal profit.

All well and good, but, applying that first verb in its current lay sense, too
many members of the former council had been charged in court with conduct that
society – and the lawbooks – might regard as “demeaning,” and too many had
developed a personal “interest” in the issues they were asked to vote on.

Still, it is a new council, it’s a new year, and it’s certainly a good
time to “start afresh,” as Mayor Herenton said. So go ahead: Hold your breath.

And, hey, for what it’s worth, the temperature did drop down into the 30’s a scant few hours after the swearing-in.

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Politics Politics Feature

Mayoral Warning of Jurisdictional “Gray Line” Only Discordant Note in First Get-Together with New Council

CREDIT: jb

Though the grins were plentiful as Mayor Willie Herenton and members of his council-to-be in 2008 got together for lunch at The Rendezvous on Wednesday, the smiles may have tightened up a little when His Honor climaxed the get-acquainted event with a speech that warned of a “grey line” and of “certain areas where either branch decided to get into the other branch’s domain.”

A shot across the bow it seemed, a recap of sorts of the mayor’s troubles with past councils — most recently on council staff appointments — on matters where, as Herenton indicated, the legislative and executive branches of city government may have had conflicting ambitions.

But that was as contentious as things got Wednesday as former councilman and Rendezvous owner John Vergos, along with another former council member, the Rev. James Netters, co-hosted the luncheon in which nine newly elected members came together for the first time with the four holdover council members.

Oh, Joe Brown made special mention of “divisiveness,” and Netters referred to even worse times of the past, like the late ‘60s, when he and other members of the city’s first elected council had to deal with “riots, violence, and murder,” in the context of a prolonged sanitation strike and the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

But mostly talk was of the upbeat sort, beginning with Vergos’ mention of a Rhodes College brochure touting Memphis’ virtues and continuing with mutual pledges all around of cooperation in the New Year.

Afterward, the mayor, who announced he would not hold the annual New Year’s Day prayer breakfast on which, customarily in recent years, he would issue policy thunderbolts, gave reporters a list of objectives which included such familiar (but unachieved) standbys as Metro government and bringing the city school system into municipal government as such.

Herenton also pledged to resolve financial and jurisdictional disputes in the operation of the Beale Street tourist quarter. He deferred to the council on the matter of whether it should pass its own version of a county commission ordinance on topless clubs, but it is taken for granted he wants a more lenient ordinance than the county version, which bans beer sales in such establishments and requires pasties of dancers.

Ironically enough, a wall of the basement room in which council members, staffers, and the mayor contained objets d’art, including a rendering of a reclining nude, sans pasties.

The entire complement of the 2008 council membership was on hand, with the exception of new member Reid Hedgepeth. Mayoral aides Keith McGhee and Pete Aviotti also attended.

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Cover Feature News

From the Victory Podium

CREDIT: Preston Lauterbach

The song “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now” blared over the public address system in a Cook Convention Center ballroom Thursday as supporters of Willie Herenton pushed toward the stage where the mayor delivered his victory speech.

The emcee barked “he shook the haters off” into the microphone, as the jubilant crowd roared its approval.

Campaign manager Charles Carpenter set, or at least reinforced, the celebration’s defiant tone in his introduction to Herenton’s comments. “Reporters ask me, ‘What’s the difference between this race and 2003?’ In 2003, the mayor, who had been doing an excellent job at that time, had business community support and white community support. But this election, he had little of either,” Carpenter said.

Herenton took the microphone on a stage crowded with familiar faces, including former Memphis Light, Gas & Water head Joseph Lee, blogger and former Herenton-hater Thaddeus Matthews, attorney Robert Spence, Memphis police director Larry Godwin, and former councilwoman TaJuan Stout Mitchell.

“I’m in a very serious mood,” he told the crowd, before thanking God for his favor. “It is out of this favor that we received this victory tonight. I now know who is for me and … who is against me. I thank God for discerning.”

Herenton thanked the friends who he said had supported him unconditionally. “I appreciate loyalty,” he said. “This election was hard for me. There were people [who] I thought were with me, and I found out, they weren’t.

“I’m going to be nice tonight,” Herenton continued, “but there are some mean, mean-spirited people in Memphis. These are the haters. I know how to shake them off,” he said, his next words lost in the applause.

“Memphis has some major decisions to make. Memphis has to decide whether or not we want to be one city, or … a divided city,” he continued.

He mocked the “haters,” anticipating their criticisms of him: “He didn’t get many white votes.”

The mayor recalled two incidents in which he perceived racism. He said that a “90 percent white” crowd at a University of Memphis basketball game booed his honoring DeAngelo Williams with a key to the city. “I know the haters are going to say I need to pull the races together — I didn’t separate us.”

He then told of his television appearance with Justin Timberlake, remembering the audience as “95 percent young white kids who booed me on national television. The white citizens of Memphis were not in outrage. Nobody wrote letters and said that was shameful.”

Herenton did single out his “few white brothers who have stuck with me,” including developer Rusty Hyneman and used-car salesman Mark Goodfellow.

Returning to whites other than those few, Herenton warned, “If you’re not careful, they’ll work a game on you. They have psychology.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Analysis: The Memphis Mayoral Election, Precinct by Precinct

Mayor Willie Herenton had a strong political base, taking 75 percent or more of the vote in scores of black precincts, plus getting thousands of white votes.

Carol Chumney was a bona fide challenger, winning 70 percent or more of the vote in some white precincts.

And Herman Morris was a spoiler with no political base who had just two precincts that could truly be called a stronghold, where he won more than 60 percent of the vote.

That’s what the unofficial precinct-by-precinct returns show for last week’s mayoral election. The results were released by the Shelby County Election Commission Tuesday.

An analysis by the Flyer shows that Herenton won in a time-tested fashion. He established a base and held it, rolling up thousands of votes and 75-percent majorities in predominantly black precincts. And that was enough to win, although overall Herenton got just 42 percent of the vote.

Call it The Rule of 75. In Memphis, a successful mayoral candidate must be popular enough to get 75 percent or more in several precincts

Simply put, neither Chumney nor Morris were able to do that. In general, they split the anti-Herenton vote, although Chumney had much more of a base than Morris. Chumney finished with 35 percent and Morris with 21 percent. Neither challenger could put together those key 75-percent margins needed to run even with Herenton.

At Trinity Methodist Church in Midtown, for example, Morris (who lives two blocks away) got 49 percent, Chumney 44 percent, and Herenton 6 percent of the more than 1700 votes cast.

In 11 precincts where at least 300 votes were cast, Herenton actually got more than 80 percent in of the vote (Gaston Community Center, Lauderdale Elementary, Southside High, Riverview Junior High, Pine Hill Community Center, Annesdale Cherokee Baptist Church, Westwood High, Lakeview Elementary, Raineshaven Elementary, New Nonconnah M.B. Church, and Double Tree Elementary).

Call those “home runs.” He got at least 70 percent of the vote in scores of other precincts, which offset the precincts where he got less than 10 percent.

Chumney won two precincts with more than 80 percent (Wells Station Elementary and Kingsbury Elementary). But those two home runs were better than Morris could muster. He played small-ball and picked up 65 percent of the vote in his best precinct (Christian Brothers High School) where at least 300 votes were cast.

Voters are not racially identified, but an educated guess can be made by targeting precincts where the voting population is either almost all white or all black. An examination of such precincts indicates that Herenton got thousands of white votes despite polls showing him with virtually no white support.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Post-Election, Herenton Settles Accounts With Pollsters, Ford, Morris Et Al.

CREDIT: jb

“The press had it all wrong. So did the pollsters. I said all along it was
mathematically impossible for either Chumney or Morris to beat me.”

That was Mayor Willie Herenton on Monday afternoon, holding court in his outer
office and still basking in a fifth-term victory that was all the sweeter
because it exceeded expectations. Everybody else’s expectations, that is. “I
knew I won early voting,” Herenton said.

And he had another theory about the mayoral voting that ended with him on top
with 70,177 votes, some 13,000 more than his closest competitor, Councilwoman
Carol Chumney. The mayor thought that too much analysis had been wasted on the
battle for white votes between Chumney and the third-place finisher, former Memphis
Light, Gas & Water head Herman Morris. Pundits and reporters alike had neglected
to factor him into that contest-within-a-contest, Herenton insisted.

Yes, on election night Herenton had inveighed against “haters” in a euphemistic
way reminiscent of former congressman Harold Ford Sr.’s condemnation of “East
Memphis devils” from his own post-election platform in 1994.

To be sure, whites had been virtually absent from Herenton’s victory celebration
at the Cook Convention Center, and no one was likely to forget the mayor’s
frequent campaign references to conspiratorial “snakes” and past trickery by the
white power-establishment, nor his persistent declarations that the 2007 mayoral
contest was about “race and power.”

Yet he was now willing to insist that he had been a serious contender for the
white vote all along. Nay, more — that his success with white voters is what
made the difference in this year’s race.

“I’ve been analyzing the returns,” the mayor said, “and I don’t think I got
70,000 African-American votes. I think 10,000 whites voted for me.”

If that was true, and had the lion’s share of those 10,000 votes gone instead
for Chumney, she might indeed have won — an argument that might fuel a
conspiracy theory about managed polls that the runner-up’s camp seems to be
taking seriously.)

Herenton himself has an eye for conspiracy. He sees the aborted visit by Ford
Sr. to a climactic Herenton rally — one that ended in a widely publicized
no-show by the former congressman — in that light. Having missed the rally, Ford
might at least have made a public endorsement of his candidacy. “But he couldn’t
even do that!” Herenton said.

Noting that longtime adversary Ford had made an early-voting trip into Memphis
on the eve of that rally, the mayor said, “I’m convinced he came down here just
to cast a vote against me!” And he promised: “I’ll have some things to say about
him [Ford] later on.”


THE DRUG TEST ISSUE

Another
sore point with Herenton was Morris’ frequent challenges for the mayor and the
rest of the field to join him in taking a drug test. The mayor vanished into his
inner office temporarily and returned with several pages showing the results of
a test, taken for insurance purposes back in June that demonstrated negative
findings in such categories as HIV, cocaine, alcohol, and tobacco.

He asked me to withhold specific figures, and I will. But it was clear — on this
medical accounting, at least — that the mayor had earned a clean bill of health,
in every sense of the term. As he said, he looked to be in terrific shape for a
67-year-old man. Even his blood pressure, as he pointed out, was within range.
“See?” he said, smiling. “You people in the press can’t even give me high blood
pressure!”

The mayor made a special point concerning when the report had been done. “Look
at the date: June 26th! That was before [Morris] started that nonsense about
drug tests. Some people advised me to show these results, but I had no intention
of dignifying him with a response, as if I owed him an answer on something like
that!

“Nothing goes in my body stronger than aspirin. Oh, I’ve admitted I like a red
wine — a Merlot. But that’s it,” he concluded.


ON FIXING THE CITY

By now,
Herenton had been joined by former city CAO and current MLGW overseer and Plough
Foundation head Rick Masson, who, like his ex-boss, seemed to be floating on the
kind of post-election high that needs no drug to activate.

Masson said nothing, but his facial expression alternated between the watchful
attentiveness required of any good subordinate and the kind of smirk that ought
to be outlawed by the Geneva Convention.

Herenton turned to the issue of his election night remarks, the bitterness of
which had been unmistakable. “I’m okay now. I got that out of my system,” he
said.

He recalled being at the airport recently when a white man came over —
strutting, to hear the mayor tell it:

“He said [Herenton imitating a peremptory voice]: ‘Mayor! When are you going to
start trying to fix our city?’

“I looked back at him and said, ‘And when are you going to start helping me?’ He
didn’t have anything to say to that.”

The mayor’s message seemed to be that he’s ready to listen whenever his critics
want to start talking — so long as it’s a real dialogue.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Herenton: A Winner Again — But Still in Need of Unity

CREDIT: Preston Lauterbach


BY
JACKSON BAKER |
OCT 6, 2007

Willie Herenton, Memphis’
African-American mayor, easily won reelection to an unprecedented fifth term
Thursday in a city election whose outcome was strangely anti-climactic given
advance hoopla from recent polls that seemed to promise a tight three-way
race.

Sorely tested for the first
time for the first time since his first mayoral race in 1991, the ex-Golden
Glover, who was undefeated in the ring as a youth, maintained his
unblemished record as a political campaigner, as well.

With all precincts in,
Herenton had 70,177 votes, or 42 percent of the total. He was followed by city
councilwoman Carol Chumney, with 57,180 votes, or 35 percent, and former
Memphis Light Gas & Water head Herman Morris, who garnered 35, 158 votes, or
21 percent.

In the end, Herenton – whose
vote came almost exclusively from the city’s black voters – seemed to have
made the case that the race was between himself and Chumney, a white who had
played scourge and gadfly to his administration for the last four years.

A rush to the polls of some
75,000 voters, a record, in the two-week early-voting period was oddly
counter-pointed by a smaller-than-expected turnout on Election Day.
Ultimately, the same demographic inner-city base that prevailed for Herenton
in his historic 1991 win over an entrenched white incumbent, Dick Hackett, was
at his disposal again. Demographic trends have since accelerated, and an
estimated 65 percent of Thursday’s voters in a city now firmly majority-black
were African-American.

A Head Start in the Early Vote

Late in the campaign, as polls showed her within a
percentage point or two of Herenton, a confident Chumney had proclaimed,
“We’re winning early voting, with fifty percent of the vote,” That turned out
to be well short of the mark (Herenton netted an estimated 41 percent of early
votes). Chumney’s expectations were as unrealistic in their way as the
consistent claims of former Shelby County Commissioner John Willingham, the
most prominent of the also-rans in a 14-strong field, that he had a dual base
among Republicans and black Memphians that would propel him to
victory.

Willingham, a white, a maverick, and a conservative,
proved to have no base at all, finishing with less than 1 percent of the vote.
His possession of an endorsement from the Shelby County Republican Party
gained him virtually nothing, as Chumney, who served 13 years in the
legislature as a Democratic state representative, captured most Republican
votes in a city where the terms “Republican” and “white” have a significant
overlap.

It seemed clear that the latter of those two
descriptors played a profound role in the outcome of this election, as it had
in Herenton’s first race in 1991. Third-place finisher Morris, the
mustachioed, reserved former head of Memphis Light Gas & Water, the city
utility, spent most of his time competing with Chumney for white voters and,
though African-American himself and, for that matter, a stalwart of the NAACP
and a veteran of the civil rights struggle, fared no better among black voters
than she did. His failure to gain traction in the inner city was owing to
several factors – ranging from his decidedly bourgeois image to an apparent
reluctance among black voters to let themselves be divided.

The Ford No-Show

An interesting sidelight to the campaign was an all-out
publicity campaign by the Herenton campaign last weekend promising
reconciliation between the mayor and his longtime inner-city adversary, former
congressman Harold Ford Sr., now a well-paid consultant living in Florida.
Ford, said a variety of well-circulated handbills, had joined “Team Herenton
’07” and would appear with Herenton at a giant rally at the mayor’s South
Memphis church. That would have been a reprise of the ad hoc collaboration
between the two rivals that most observers credit for Herenton’s bare 162-vote
margin of victory in 1991.

In the event, Ford was a no-show at the Tuesday night
rally, and the eleventh-hour embarrassment for the mayor was doubled by the
former congressman’s disinclination, when contacted by the media, even to make
a public statement endorsing Herenton. The whole affair lent an air of
desperation to the Herenton campaign effort but turned out to be no big deal.
If anything, it reinforced the general impression of precipitant decline for
the once legendary Ford-family political organization – beset by convictions,
indictments, and other tarnish and with its current star, Harold Ford Jr.,
having decamped for Nashville and the Democratic Leadership Council.

David Cocke, a former Democratic Party chairman and a
longtime ally of the Ford political clan, supported Chumney but foresaw the
Herenton victory, putting it this way late in the campaign: “Most people do
not vote on the basis of ideas or issues. They vote from the standpoint of a
common cultural experience.” And from that standpoint Willie Herenton, a
onetime Golden Gloves boxing champion who contemptuously dismissed the visibly
mature Morris as a “boy” trying to do a man’s job, had first dibs on the
street cred.

Still, the former schools superintendent is also a
seasoned executive who in his four terms to date had brought about extensive
downtown redevelopment and earned a good working relationship with the Memphis
business establishment – one, however, that had begun to fray around the edges
in the last year or so due to a rising crime rate (only last week FBI
statistics showed the city to be Number One in that regard in the nation) and
fluctuating economic indicators.

At some point in 2008, either on the August general
ballot for two countywide offices or on the November ballot for state and
federal offices, the Charter Commission impaneled by Memphis voters last year
will almost certainly include a provision limiting the mayor and members of
the city council to two four-year terms each. A similar provision in a county
referendum more than a decade ago prevailed by a whopping 84 percent majority,
and results of that sort can be anticipated from next year’s city
vote.

But in the meantime Willie Herenton, who had earned the
unofficial title “Mayor for Life” from friends and foes alike until doubt
crept into that consensus toward the end of his latest term, will be
grandfathered in. He may indeed end up serving indefinitely or may, as many
expect, quit his new term midway, making way for his longtime friend and
sometime campaign manager, Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton, also an African
American. Wharton’s easygoing presence and appeal across both racial and
political lines made him the subject of a widely based draft movement in the
weeks leading up to last July’s withdrawal deadline.

The two mayors had dinner together on the eve of that
deadline, after which Wharton, who had made a show of considering a run,
withdrew from consideration – diffidently but conclusively. That outcome has
given rise to persistent rumors of a deal between the two chief executives, in
which an early exit by Herenton would permit not only Wharton’s succession in
a special election but some sort of stratagem to create a de facto
consolidation between city and county governments. Herenton had served notice
in this campaign year that he intended one last major push for his long-held
goal of consolidation if reelected.

Consolidation Still on His Plate?

When then Nashville mayor Bill Purcell addressed the
Memphis Rotary Club this past summer, he provided some backup for his Memphis
counterpart, who had introduced him, telling the assembled business and civic
leaders that Metropolitan government had been “the smartest thing that
Nashville ever did” and that, if Memphians wanted a government that was too
big, too expensive, and too political, they should keep things just the way
they are. Acknowledging the rivalry between the two Tennessee metropolises,
Purcell quipped that the status quo suited him just fine.

In his victory speech Thursday night, Herenton was
ambivalent on the matter of unity. Even while savoring his victory and
counting his blessings, he expressed what appeared to be sincere hurt over his
unpopularity among white voters – a source of tut-tutting to some Herenton
detractors, a redeeming sign of vulnerability to others. “I’m going to be nice
tonight,” Herenton he had said early on, “but there are some mean,
mean-spirited people in Memphis. These are the haters. I know how to shake
them off,”

Maybe so, maybe no. In any case, he made a pass at
being conciliatory. Looking ahead to restoring relations with the business
community and stemming white resentment (and population flow outward), and
perhaps also reflecting on a newly elected city council which will have a
majority of new members, the mayor said, “Memphis has some major decisions to
make. We have to decide if we want to be one city…or if we want to be a
divided city.”

Thursday’s election results reinforced a sense of
division. “This city is still highly racially polarized,” said John Ryder, a
longtime Memphis Republican figure who co-chaired the campaign of third-place
finisher Morris. “The man in the middle got squeezed,” Ryder said. He was
referring to his candidate, but his remark clearly had more general
application.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

It’s Herenton for Four More Years

CREDIT: Preston Lauterbach

Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton won his fifth term tonight with 42 percent of the vote.

City Councilwoman Carol Chumney placed second with 35 percent, followed by former MLGW CEO Herman Morris with 21 percent.

The numbers were:

Herenton, 70, 177
Chumney, 57, 180
Morris, 35, 158

There were 11 also-rans, the best known of whom was former Shelby County Commissioner John Willingham, who had 1, 118 votes, or .68 percent.

Following a gracious concession speech from Morris and a rather ungracious concession speech from Chumney, it was time for Herenton’s “victory” speech. And an odd one it was.

After thanking his supporters, Herenton began reciting a litany of grievances against various “haters” and “mean people,” including a FedExForum crowd that booed him — a crowd that was, in Herenton’s words, “90 percent white.”

Herenton went on to say he now knew “who was for him and who was against him.”

For a man who’d just garnered 42 percent of the total vote, there is still ample evidence that there may more of the latter than the former.
— Bruce VanWyngarden

from the victory stand:

The song “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now” blared over the public
address system in a Memphis Cook Convention Center ballroom Thursday as
supporters of Willie W. Herenton pushed toward the stage where the mayor
delivered his victory speech.

The emcee barked “He shook the haters off,” into the
microphone, as the jubilant crowd roared its approval.

Campaign manager Charles Carpenter set, or at least
reinforced, the celebration’s defiant tone in his introduction to Herenton’s
comments. “Reporters ask me, ‘What’s the difference between this race and 2003?’
In 2003 the mayor who had been doing an excellent job at that time, had business
community support and white community support. But this election, he had little
of either,” he said.

Herenton took the microphone on a stage crowded with
familiar faces, including former Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division head
Joseph Lee, former Herenton hater Thaddeus Matthews, attorney Robert Spence,
Memphis Police Director Larry Godwin, and Tajuan Stout Mitchell.

“I’m in a very serious mood,” he told the crowd, before
thanking God for His favor. “It is out of this favor, that we received this
victory tonight. I now know who is for me and… who is against me. I thank God
for discerning.”

Herenton thanked the friends whom he said had supported him
unconditionally. “I appreciate loyalty,” he said. “This election was hard for
me. There were people [who] I thought were with me, and I found out, they
weren’t.”

“I’m going to be nice tonight,” Herenton continued, “but
there are some mean, mean-spirited people in Memphis. These are the haters. I
know how to shake them off,” he said, his last words lost in the applause.

“Memphis has some major decisions to make. Memphis has to
decide whether or not we want to be one city, or… a divided city,” he said.

He mocked the “haters,” anticipating their criticisms of
him. “He didn’t get many white votes.”

The mayor recalled two incidents in which he perceived
racism. He said that a “90 percent white” crowd at a University of Memphis basketball
game booed his honoring DeAngelo Williams with a key to the city. “I know the
haters are going to say I need to pull the races together — I didn’t separate
us.”

He then told of his television appearance with Justin
Timberlake, remembering the audience “95% young white kids that booed me on
national television. The white citizens of Memphis were not in outrage. Nobody
wrote letters and said that was shameful.”

Herenton did single out his “few white brothers who have
stuck with me,” including developer Rusty Hyneman and used-car salesman Mark
Goodfellow.

Returning to whites other than those few, Herenton warned,
“If you’re not careful, they’ll work a game on you. They have psychology.” — Preston Lauterbach.

Chez Chumney

At ten o’clock Thursday night, Carol Chumney ended her campaign for city
mayor in the same aggressive spirit that distinguished her term on the Memphis
City Council. Promising to “work with mayor Herenton any way I can” in her
concession, she nevertheless took the opportunity to launch a final volley at
the city leadership, saying, “we have sent a message that Memphis deserves
better.”

The parting shot at Mayor Herenton rallied the crowd of more than a hundred
close supporters and volunteers gathered in the Peabody Continental Ballroom,
most of whom hadn’t seen their candidate in person since the election results
were announced on television. For many, it was clearly a cathartic end to a
long and exhausting day.

Earlier, as the first few precinct reports trickled in by word of mouth, the
mood at Carol Chumney’s election night party was bouyant, if slightly tense,
and continued to remain so even as the early returns showed Mayor Herenton
with a significant lead. But by the end of the night, with the outcome all but
certain, any trace of that early hope had given way to sore discontent.

“I’m disappointed in the people of Memphis,” said longtime Chumney supporter
Zenia Revitz. “I can’t believe that they didn’t open their eyes and see what’s
going on in this community.” Her reaction may have best captured the mixed
emotions felt by those present, as she quickly qualified her remark by adding,
“So far, that is. We’re only at fifty percent,” referring to the number of
precincts still uncounted. No one at the event was willing to fully give up
the chance of a turnaround until it became unmistakably clear that none would
come.

Another strong supporter, Joan Solomon, summarized what many at the party saw
as a flawed election process, stating simply, “Everyone that voted for Morris
was voting for Herenton.” A Rassmussen poll commissioned by WHBQ Fox 13 taken
just days before the election showed that in a two-way race against Herenton,
either Chumney or Morris would have won with a comfortable majority. Together,
the two candidates provided the embattled mayor with the chance to win a fifth
term with a 42 percent plurality of the vote.

The message of the Chumney campaign was strongly populist, and as such, their
election strategy was centered around volunteer support. Noting in her
concession speech that she was “outspent probably about 2 to 1,” the
councilwoman credited “hundreds of volunteers” with the large measure of her
success. Campaign manager Charles Blumenthal was also quick to praise the
campaign’s unpaid workers, calling the campaign operation “a well-oiled
machine,” adding that out of fourteen full-time staff, only four were paid.

Indeed, it was a different kind of campaign from what one usually sees in
Memphis. In spite of the high-priced venue, the campaign began with small
funds and very little financial support from the business community, not
building fund-raising momentum until the final month of the race. Chumney’s
largest donations came from labor unions and trade associations, with most of
the city’s old money going to Herman Morris.

Also remarkable was the fact that compared with the two other major
candidates, few current or former elected officials endorsed Chumney or participated
in her bid for city mayor, with only two notables present at the
election night event. State Representative Mike Kernell was there, long an
ally and friend of Chumney’s, along with freshman Shelby County Commissioner
Steve Mulroy, who appeared with her onstage. Otherwise, the rest of her
support appeared to come from family, friends, activists, and more than a few
political neophytes.

While there were more whites than blacks at Chumney’s final campaign stop, the
racially mixed crowd represented a fairly adequate cross-section of the
citizenship of Memphis. Chumney was pleased by the support she received from
predominately black neighborhoods. “There were some [African-American]
precincts where I was running at 30 percent, it made me feel good.”

After the loss, Chumney was upbeat, but expressed disappointment in the low
turnout. “The people who didn’t vote should be kicking themselves because this
was their chance to make a change.”

This is Chumney’s second bid for an executive seat, first running against
Shelby County Mayor A.C. Wharton in 2002 and garnering only 17 percent of the vote.
Ineligible to run for mayor and city council at the same time, she leaves her
seat on the Council to Jim Strickland, who handily won the seat with 73 percent over
Bob Schreiber. After finishing the remainder of her city council term, she
said she plans to return to her private law practice, but she was otherwise
undecided on any future political plans.

“Who knows?” she said, “we’ll see what the future holds.”

—Derek Haire

Herman Morris’ Last Dance

At 7:45 at the Holiday Inn-University of Memphis Thursday night, things were quiet. A few folks were meandering in, riding the escalator to the mezzanine in twos and threes. Kevin Paige and his band were singing “Crazy” in the ballroom.

The crowd, such as it was, was racially mixed and age-diverse. The big-screen television at the back of the room flashed photographs of candidate Herman Morris and his family. Herman as a young track star, a young lawyer, a family man, etc.

Downstairs in the lobby, the South Carolina-Kentucky game was on a television in the corner. The game was close and exciting, but the numbers crawling across the bottom of the screen gave early indication that the race for mayor was going to be neither.

The early voting and absentee totals — almost half the predicted vote — showed incumbent Willie Herenton with 43 percent, Carol Chumney at 34 percent, and Morris a distant third, with 24 percent. Those percentages wouldn’t vary significantly all night.

Kevin Paige is singing “Killing Me Softly.”

The food lines and bar lines are growing quickly as the ballroom fills. There is little optimism. There are lots of hugs and wry smiles.

At 8:30, with a little more than 20 percent of precincts reporting, the percentages haven’t changed: Herenton 43, Chumney 32, Morris 25. It’s over.
With perfect ironic, and no doubt unintentional timing, Paige’s band breaks into “Signed, Sealed, Delivered.”

Ooops.

Republican maverick Tom Guleff wanders about with five-year-old son Logan in tow. Adman Dan Conoway, sips a beer and chats up latecomers. Campaign cochairman and longtime judge and civil rights activist Russell Sugarmon, quietly works the door. Memphis schoolboard member Jeff Warren leans over a laptop, checking the discouraging numbers. Sadly, for this campaign, the only number getting bigger is the number of folks in the ballroom, which is near capacity. But their man Morris appears doomed to finish a distant third.

With 50 percent of precincts counted, the percentages remain markedly consistent: 42, 33, 24. As the numbers flash on the television screen someone shouts, “Time for a drink.”

Warren shakes his head ruefully and says, “I’m very disappointed. I think Herman is the one man who could bring this city together.”

There is a clattering of applause in the outer room. The candidate, surrounded by his wife, mother, and children enters the ballroom. The outpouring of affection seems genuine and somehow poignant.

Morris steps to the microphone and says, “It’s a great day for Memphis.” But nobody in the room believes him.

Morris continues, thanking his campaign committee and supporters, and thanking his wife Brenda for 27 years. It is, in fact, the couple’s wedding anniversary. Morris presents a large bouquet of red roses to his wife and says, “Happy anniversary.”

The rest of Morris’ speech sounds suspiciously like a hurriedly edited “victory” speech. He repeats the “great day in Memphis” line, and thanks the crowd for playing a part in “bringing the city together.” He implores the crowd to work with the apparent victor, Willie Herenton, and even asks for a round of applause for the mayor. When the crowd responds weakly, he exhorts them: “We can do better than that!” They do, barely.
“

“And now,” he says, “let’s have one heck of an anniversary party!”

The band strikes up the old Etta James song, “At Last,” and Herman Morris and his wife dance, staring into each other’s eyes, encircled by photographers and television cameras.

It could have been a helluva party.

As the crowd files out, the television in the corner of the lobby is showing happy women doing “The Electric Slide” at Herenton headquarters.

But here at the Holiday Inn nobody feels much like dancing.

— Bruce VanWyngarden

Notes on the runners-up:

Opinions on the responses to their defeats by mayoral runner-up Carol Chumney and third-place finisher Herman Morris vary significantly.

Everybody seems to have regarded Morris’ Election Night statement to have been a “gracious” – if somewhat pro forma and dull-normal – concession. (In other words, the staid Morris bowed out the same way he came in.) Particularly appreciated was the former MLGW head’s suggestion to his supporters that they give the victorious Mayor Herenton a round of applause. (Some, however, thought he was smirking at the resultant Sound of One Hand Clapping.)

I remember Morris breaking through his cocoon of dignified restraint a few times during the campaign. Once in particular, when, at a fundraiser before some of his well-heeled supporters at the Galloway House, he waxed passionate and eloquent with an analogy between the desperate emotions of the Memphians of the Yellow Fever era and those of today’s city-dwellers hoping to ride out the crime menace.

When I moderated a Rotary Club debate between Morris, Chumney, and John Willingham, I gave each of them a chance to re-enact one of the glory moments I had glimpsed them in during the campaign. In Morris’ case it was that speech at The Galloway House.

What he ended up doing was some wonky recitation of his published crime plan. Nothing even close to what I’d asked for. When I saw him elsewhere, a day or two later, I said, “Hey, Herman, what happened? I was trying to set you up.”

He shrugged and said, “Well, that sort of thing isn’t on call.”

And my thought was: It’s a good thing for the Yankees that Roger Clemens’ fast ball is on call.

In contrast to Morris’s speech on Election Night, Chumney’s swan song was more of a trumpet blast – some might say, a tooting of her own horn for some further campaign yet to be waged. Not until the end of a fairly extended address to her still enthusiastic troops did a note of conciliation creep in. And that, to mix a metaphor, was a rather left-handed note: “I had worthy opponents. I will work with them any way I can…”

Given her limited success in bonding with her soon-to-be-former councilmates and with the man who had just defeated her for mayor, that wouldn’t seem to be an extraordinary number of ways. And she would probably be wasting her time if she sat by a telephone waiting on a phone call from one of the indicated worthies.

Also striking was her dismissal of the only one of the three late polls – the one conducted by Steve Ethridge for The Commercial Appeal – that hadn’t shown her neck-and-neck with Herenton. A “disservice to the public,” she called it. Gotcha, Carol. That’s how I feel about the folks who don’t show me proper appreciation, too.

Still, there was something gallant, even impressive (if arguably myopic), about Chumney’s bulldog attitude, her persistence, and her refusal to stop finding fault with the Herenton administration in her concession speech, even at a time when protocol called upon her to make nice. (No observer of protocol she, for better or for worse, and actually for both.)

If she had somehow managed to win, she would have become an instant cynosure for the national media. Governing? Well, who knows…..

Morris vs. Chumney for county mayor in 2010? Not impossible. — Jackson Baker

Stay tuned to Memphisflyer.com for updates.

Categories
Opinion

The Morning After

“My fellow Memphians:

“In the aftermath of my historic victory, I look forward to the challenges (insurmountable though they are) of being your mayor (even though most of you didn’t vote for me and some of you can’t stand me).

“As a compassionate and forgiving leader, my first order of business is burying the hatchet (in my opponents’ heads, ha-ha!) and extending the hand (knife) of friendship (vengeance) to my worthy (pitiful) opponents. In the heat of a political campaign, we sometimes (repeatedly) say things we don’t really mean (but they sure get out the vote). If my words have offended anyone (King Willie, Boy, Carol the Cranky), I sincerely apologize for suggesting my opponents were unfit for this high office (on drugs, corrupt, a traitor to his race, a social misfit).

“In the coming weeks and months, we must put our differences aside (never in a million years) and work together for the common good (once I figure out what that is).

“The city of Memphis is known throughout the country and the world for its unique attributes (bankruptcy capital, foreclosure capital, tops in violent crime). Indeed, these days one can hardly read a newspaper or watch a television report without learning something new and exciting about our fair city (that makes you cringe). There is nothing like a mayoral campaign to stir the fresh breezes (invective) of open debate (minus the incumbent) and healthy discussion (anonymous slander and spin) that will cleanse (pollute) our great city.

“Now the honeymoon is over (it never began). It is time to roll up our sleeves and get to work (find a good real estate agent).

“Allow me to outline some of the challenges we face. After I am sworn in as your mayor in January, I plan to hit the ground running (to my suite at FedExForum).

“Our city’s economy is strong (perilous) and our municipal bond rating is admirably high (thanks to the highest property taxes in the state). There will always be doomsayers, but if home foreclosures stay within manageable levels (don’t become as common as political yard signs), then we can expect (hope for) stable revenues in 2008. Our city is growing (thanks to annexation), and, if the (lame-duck) City Council acts, our population will exceed 700,000 after the residents of southeast Shelby County and students at Southwind High School become proud Memphians (kicking and screaming).

“As I said during the campaign, I will restore integrity and a high standard of service to Memphis Light Gas & Water (as soon as I figure out who to appoint as CEO and the board of directors in the wake of the Joseph Lee debacle). With new leadership (pray for warm weather), our citizens can take pride in getting monthly utility bills that are accurate and cost-efficient (even higher than last winter) despite the uncertainties of the markets for oil ($80 a barrel headed to $100), natural gas (a crapshoot), and power from TVA, which has promised to hold its increase to single digits (9 percent).

“I will work tirelessly with the members of the Memphis City Council, which has had considerable turnover (it’s about time) and an infusion of fresh faces eager to improve our city (make a name for themselves) and lay aside racial divisions (until the first tough vote).

“If we have learned anything in the last four years, it is the futility (inevitability) of racially divisive comments and the importance of working together (to screw our enemies and solidify our base).

“Nothing is more important than the education of our children, including the 115,000 students in the Memphis City Schools (poor things). As I said during the campaign, as your mayor I will do everything I can to improve public education (which is almost nothing) and will work closely with the superintendent (as soon as a new one is chosen by the school board). Rest assured that your tax dollars that support public education will be closely monitored (increased in order to pay for $450 million in long-term facilities upgrades).

“What exciting (scary) times these are! I can’t wait to get to work (on a stiff drink).”

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: Voting For the Least Worst

So who are you voting for for Memphis mayor? It’s the issue everyone’s talking about. Of course, by the time you read this, it may be a moot point, but I think it’s important to speak and write honestly about the topic. And what I’ve seen and heard and read during this election cycle troubles me.

The thing that’s struck me about most of the conversations I’ve had and the e-mails I’ve received is that almost everyone is voting from fear. The fear expressed by some, for instance, that four more years of Mayor Herenton’s increasing weirdness and erratic behavior — to wit: the press conference this summer claiming unnamed “snakes” were plotting to get him, or the one he staged with the city attorney two weeks ago about crooked or defective voting machines, etc. — will doom us to divisiveness and stagnation.

Conversely, comments I’ve heard and read from some African Americans indicate they are voting for Herenton because they are afraid that if a white candidate (Carol Chumney) wins — or a candidate they perceive as “not black enough” (Herman Morris) — they could be “throwing away” all the gains they’ve earned from having a black mayor for 16 years.

Then there’s the “anybody but Herenton” crowd. These folks aren’t worried about skin color, they just don’t want Willie anymore. They’re trying to decide between Chumney and Morris, based solely on which of them has the best chance to beat Herenton. They’re constantly poll-watching, analyzing the percentages, waiting for the latest data, afraid they will pick the “wrong” candidate.

I know that each of the three major contenders for Memphis mayor has their true-believers, folks who aren’t voting from fear or gauging the odds of one candidate against another. But I think a great many of the city’s voters are voting to make sure something doesn’t happen, rather than choosing a candidate they truly beleive in.

It’s ironic and more than a little sad — given that this is the Flyer’s annual “Best of Memphis” issue — that so many of us are voting not for who we think is best for the job, but to avoid the worst.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Old Foe Harold Ford Sr. Comes to Herenton’s Aid Again

Never let it
be said that the twain don’t meet. They are about to – for the second time in a
generation. Mayor Willie Herenton, involved in what he acknowledges is a
difficult reelection race, has called for support once more from an old political
foe, former 9th District congressman Harold Ford Sr., who bridged their
personal distance to help Herenton become Memphis’ first elected black mayor in
1991.

Though the
Get-Out-the-Vote assistance of Ford, a significant political broker, was widely
regarded at the time as essential to Herenton’s victory, the mayor repeatedly
disparaged that interpretation in subsequent years. For a decade and a half, he
and Ford, who had never enjoyed cordial relations, lapsed into a state of
intense rivalry and an ongoing war of words, one which Herenton escalated as
recently as the congressional campaign of 2006 — when the ex-congressman’s son
Jake was a candidate — to include all “the Fords,” whom Herenton described as
power-mad.

At the time the mayor was supporting Democratic nominee Steve Cohen, the ultimate winner, against Jake Ford, who was running as an independent. The senior Ford, now living in Florida and working as a well-paid political consultant, spent considerable time in in Memphis working on behalf of both son Jake and another son, Harold Ford Jr., his successor in Congress, who was then running for the U.S. Senate.

Relations between Herenton and the Ford family had rarely been so strained.

But an email circulated by the Herenton campaign Sunday spelled out a different and sunnier scenario, containing this
paragraph from the mayor: “I am proud to announce another member of TEAM HERENTON
07.
Our former U.S. Congressman, Harold Ford Sr., has not only endorsed my candidacy
for re-election, but he began campaigning with us today in churches throughout
Memphis. He will continue campaigning with us through Election Day, Thursday,
October 4.”

The release
went on to offer free tickets to a joint rally: “Join us on Tuesday,
October 2nd,
at my church home, Mount
Vernon Baptist Church
at
6 p.m.
as Memphis prepares to face a huge voter turnout on October 4th.”

The
announcement of this unusual alliance occurred less than a week before
Thursday’s mayoral election, at a time when recent polls have indicated that the mayor’s
two chief opponents, councilwoman Carol Chumney and former MLGW head Herman
Morris, are both within striking distance of him.