Tag: mayoral race

Categories
Opinion

Ten Inconvenient Truths

1) There is a very good chance that the winner of the mayor’s race will be rejected by half the voters and a good chance that the winner will be rejected by six out of 10 voters.

2) Things could be worse, and maybe they have been. In 1971, 1975, and 1979, a charismatic mayoral candidate given to fits of ego, arrogance, candor, and foibles in his bachelor lifestyle rallied his political base while writing off the “other” racial group and won a narrow victory. His name was Wyeth Chandler, and he was mayor from 1972 to 1982. The Peabody was closed. Downtown was emptying out. The Martin Luther King Jr. assassination was a recent memory, not a chapter in the history books. Firemen went on strike as buildings burned. Chandler got almost all the white vote and almost none of the black vote.

3) Willie Herenton increasingly refers to himself in the third person. This is not a good thing in Memphis or any other city.

4) Herenton has seemingly written off many of his former supporters, although his special assistant, Pete Aviotti, thinks he will get 65 percent of the vote. When Chandler hunkered down with his white base in 1975 and 1979, black Memphians, who were then slightly in the minority, said it was tragic. If Herenton gets almost none of the white vote after serving 16 years, it will be no less tragic today.

5) Herman Morris is Republican retro, from his supporters, who include John Ryder, Minerva Johnican, and Lewis Donelson, to his big house in Midtown, which was lit up like Christmas while his neighbors were still in the dark after Hurricane Elvis (luck of the grid, it was said) to his membership on corporate boards that pay more for meetings than most people earn.

6) It is well and good that Morris, who grew up in Binghamton, went to Rhodes and Vanderbilt Law School and has a very nice family. But it is telling that, until he was a candidate for mayor, he did not often attend neighborhood meetings in either his current or former neighborhoods of Evergreen and Vollintine-Evergreen.

7) If there was a public institution less open to scrutiny than MLGW under Morris (and Herenton, who appointed the board), it would be hard to name it. The place was a fortress. Its board made a mockery of open meetings by going into executive session in the morning and a perfunctory public session after lunch. Sure, the notorious Morris VIP list included Mom and some corporate chiefs. But it also included Morris pals at The Commercial Appeal, which conveniently low-balled the details of the retirement package Morris sought and Herenton rejected back in 2003.

8) Carol Chumney will speak truth to power, but what if she had the power? As a candidate, her favorite word often seems to be I, as in “what I did.” Being mayor is about “we.” An election is partly a popularity contest. In other circumstances, Chumney’s distance from her council colleagues would be understandable, even admirable, given that two of them were indicted. As a mayoral candidate, it’s a legitimate concern.

9) What about me? asks John Willingham. True, candidates have run on flimsier credentials, and Willingham is a former elected county commissioner with the endorsement of the local Republican Party steering committee. But when he had a one-on-one shot at an already weakened Herenton in 2003, he got about 30 percent of the vote. Only in college football do you expect a rematch after losing 70-30.

10) Chumney and Morris have a better chance than Willingham, but he won’t support either of them. Enough said.

Categories
Opinion

Signs of Trouble and Hope

In 1980, Ronald Reagan asked Americans: Are you better off than you were four years ago? Enough of them thought the answer was “no” that Reagan beat incumbent Jimmy Carter and was president for the next eight years.

The Memphis mayoral election on October 4th will be an indicator of how well off Memphians think they’ve been since Willie Herenton was elected. Except Herenton has been in office for 16 years, not four years, which is so long that it may be hard for some people to imagine Memphis without him.

You want signs that things are bad?

If you are statistically inclined, a national survey of home loans by the community activist organization ACORN says Memphis is highly vulnerable to foreclosures because 46 percent of home purchase loans in 2006 were high-cost subprime loans. Memphis ranks first in the Southeast and sixth in the country in such loans.

If you are profit-minded, another survey, by CNNMoney.com, ranks Memphis ninth in the country in the number of foreclosures. One man’s misfortune is another’s opportunity, and last week something called the National Foreclosure Institute ran full-page ads in The Commercial Appeal for a series of workshops on how to make money off of this. Along with 10 other people, I attended one of the workshops this week. The speaker said, “You are sitting on the tip of the greatest fire sale in real estate history” — which you can exploit by taking their course for $1,495.

If you are fearful, you may have heard mayoral candidate Carol Chumney say in a debate this week that crime is so bad that Memphians are afraid to walk to their mailboxes, which, if true, will make voting problematic.

If you are nostalgic, you may have heard mayoral candidate John Willingham say in the same debate that the Mid-South Fairgrounds was a great place 40 years ago before Memphis lost, by his unofficial count, 115 major corporations.

If you are disgusted, you can move out of Memphis to the suburbs or to DeSoto County, Mississippi, the fastest-growing county in the state.

Thousands of people will vote for Chumney, but the one vote she needs is Herman Morris’. Thousands of people will vote for Morris, but the one vote he needs is Chumney’s. Apparently, neither one of them is going to get it. They are beating each other up instead.

That has to please Herenton. He won’t get the votes of the people who have thrown up their hands and moved or are scared to walk to their mailboxes or foresee the greatest real estate fire sale the world has ever seen or long for the good old days. He will, however, get votes from Memphians who think they are better off than they were 16 years ago, which could be enough.

On the bright side, Memphis is growing a bit, from 650,000 in 2000 to about 670,000 today. Before the housing bust, there was a housing boom from downtown to Whitehaven to Hickory Hill to Cordova. Inner-city housing projects came down. Robert Lipscomb, the city’s chief financial officer, says 16,000 Memphians became first-time homeowners in the last 12 years. The foreclosure crisis, he agrees, is real, especially in Hickory Hill and Frayser. “On the one hand, there is upward mobility,” he says. “On the other hand, there is no margin for error” if the buyer gets sick or loses a job.

Webb Brewer, head of Memphis Legal Services, says there’s a fine line between the benefits of the housing boom in Memphis and the excesses of a housing bust. “A decade ago I was championing the cause of home ownership, and people were talking about creative financing,” he says.

Now, he helps victims of predatory lending, creative financing’s evil twin.

“The big question,” Brewer says, “is how many people who got into the housing market were able to sustain it?”

If the foreclosure rate on subprime mortgages is 15 percent, is Memphis still better off? What if it is 30 percent? Does that mean 70 percent achieved the dream of home ownership? As Herenton has noted, it’s the nature of the media to report the bad news of crime, corruption, foreclosures, and flight. A growing middle class and a sense of well-being relative to 1991 are harder stories to tell, but they may determine the outcome of the Memphis mayoral election.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

What We Talk About When We Talk About Running for Mayor

CREDIT: jb

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 – this year’s mayor’s race has had its dramatic, as well
as its comedic, moments.

To see what we mean, go to “Political Beat”.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

POLITICS: In the Spotlight

CREDIT: jb

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.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

A C, in D.C., Says No

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

As Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, in Memphis on Monday night for a stop on his “Road to One America” tour, prepared to make his remarks at the MIFA Thrift Store on Vance, mayoral candidate Herman Morris, smiling and pressing the flesh, was working his way through the largely white and youngish crowd of some 300 — most presumably registered to vote in this year’s Memphis city election.

Morris, accompanied by his wife Brenda, couldn’t have seemed more carefree, and when someone said to him, “You must be the happiest man in Memphis right now,” Morris grinned. “Maybe the second happiest,” he corrected. “I’d have to see what A C looks like!”

Morris’ campaign had not exactly turned into duck soup as a result of Shelby County mayor A C Wharton‘s decision, revealed earlier Monday, not to seek the Memphis mayoralty. But Wharton’s abrupt rejection of a blue-ribbon “Draft A C” committee’s appeals had certainly kept Morris, and rival candidate Carol Chumney, for that matter, out of the dead-duck category.

And, as Morris’ quip indicated, it may also have relieved reluctant warrior Wharton of anxieties which, several reports had it, were abundant. Some of them concerned the prospect of a brutal, mauling mano-a-mano with his old friend and ally, Mayor Willie Herenton, an ex-pugilist never slow to throw campaign haymakers. Others had to do with intra-family matters.

And, finally, Horatio at the Gate was not exactly the right game for the laid-back county mayor — whose dapper, reassuring nature was one of his main attractions for those, including many influential members of the city’s business community, who had beseeched him to run against a once-popular city mayor whose ability to inspire confidence in the community at large may have run its course.

It had to be remembered, after all, that Wharton had been courted to run for this or that office many times over the years, but only once — in 2002, faced with an open county mayor’s seat and promised, then as now, with ample support from the Memphis business establishment — had he answered the call. A reelection race in 2006, against a largely nominal challenge by then county commissioner John Willingham, was a given.

Wharton’s native reticence was touched upon Monday by an admittedly “disheartened” Rev. Bill Adkins, who, along with the Rev. LaSimba Gray, had been one of two co-founders of the “Draft A C” movement. Repeating his confidence — and that of most observers, seemingly confirmed by a new poll — that Wharton would have been elected, Adkins acknowledged, “But he was always aggravated by having to make the decision. That’s how he is. He called us up when he first heard about the committee and said, ‘What are y’all doing?'”

The county mayor, still attending a mayors’ conference in Washington, D.C., released a lengthy, characteristically gracious statement later Monday. Noting that he had his reasons for demurring, Wharton said in part: “Some of these factors included family considerations, timing, and the impact on the community, but in the end, there was one factor that I simply could not ignore: I am in the right job at the right time to help Memphis the most.”

He went on: “The county mayor is the highest elected office in our region, representing the hopes and dreams of 912,000 people. Shelby County Government is one of the largest local governments in the entire country, and it is in the role as its mayor that I can have the most profound and lasting impact on Memphis. … Perhaps, it is the nature of county government that it operates quietly and often below the radar. But that fact of life makes it no less important.”

And so the dream harbored for so long by so many of an A C candidacy died — neither with a whimper nor with a bang. Rather, with a smile and a shrug.

• Meanwhile, the mayoral field appeared set. The same Commercial Appeal poll (done by Steve Ethridge, who had prepared all of the others so far, in whole or in part) that had showed the county mayor an easy winner had City Council member Chumney deadlocked with Herenton in a Wharton-less field, with Morris running third and Willingham (making his second race for city mayor) and former FedEx executive James Perkins well behind in the lower single digits.

Both Morris, who has enough of a bankroll to enlarge his beachhead with the voters as the campaign wears on, and Chumney took comfort from Monday’s news, and both released dutiful statements commending Wharton as they resolved to continue pressing their own efforts.

In any case, as Thursday’s filing deadline approached, much voter attention had turned to the rapidly growing roster of City Council candidates. The long-rumored decision by council mainstay Jack Sammons not to seek reelection was confirmed during the week by a Sammons announcement, and his Super-District 9, Position 3, seat was rapidly attracting comers — amomg them, prominent Democratic activist Desi Franklin and former interim legislators Shea Flinn and Mary Wilder.

The departure of incumbent Sammons, along with those previously announced, ensured that the post-election City Council will, like the County Commission that was elected in 2006, contain a majority of newly elected members.

With that prospect, the appetite among hopefuls was growing (see also Viewpoint, p. 17), and all 13 seats were likely to see some animated contests. Check the Flyer Web site for updates, and watch this space for continued analysis of the races.

• By the time this column is read, a winner will have been declared in Tuesday’s special election for state House District 89. After a post-primary period in which the race was largely absent from political radar screens, it began to blip again — mainly through the efforts of teacher/restaurateur Steve Edmundson, who had launched an independent write-in campaign as a challenge both to highly favored Democrat Jeannie Richardson and to Republican nominee Dave Wicker, still largely an unknown quantity.

Mindful that only 250 or so voters had taken advantage of early voting, Richadson’s cadres quickly ginned up some campaign events and a GOTV effort to counter both Edmundson and what they suspected might be a sandbagging, late-breaking Republican effort on Wicker’s behalf.

• Unless former Memphis school board member Michael Hooks Jr. holds to his resolve and stands trial for his role in the Tennessee Waltz saga and somehow overcomes, the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office will shortly end up with a perfect record of convictions for the several defendants who have been indicted in the sting since May 2005.

That was the situation this week after Chattanooga state senator Ward Crutchfield pleaded guilty in federal court here last Thursday to accepting a “gratuity” (i.e., a bribe), and former Memphis state senator Kathryn Bowers followed suit on Monday.

Both Crutchfield and Bowers made an effort to appear at peace with the situation, having both reached the “acceptance” stage of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross‘ famous death cycle, and the diminutive Bowers, who freely acknowledged having done wrong in taking some $11,500 in inducements from undercover “E-Cycle” agents, was more successful.

On the way to her rendezvous with the media outside the federal building, Bowers limped a little. “It’s the shoe,” she said, pointing to a pair of new taupe-colored open-weave high-heeled shoes. She had dropped something on her foot on the 4th of July, “and it still hurts,” she said. “I’m only 4 feet 10, and when you’re that short, you’ve got to do something to help you stand tall.”

But the glummer and more taciturn Crutchfield had his moment of poise, too. Asked by a reporter what words he would have for his wife of some 50 years when he returned home to Chattanooga with his once lofty reputation in shreds, Crutchfield replied: “Hon, I’m home.”

Crutchfield will be sentenced on November 28th, Bowers on October 24th, both by trial judge Daniel Breen.