Tag: Morris

Categories
Opinion

One Vote at a Time

There is always a grain if not a rock of truth in everything Mayor Willie Herenton says, no matter how unpopular. He’s right about this: If you are going to stay in Memphis for a while — and not everyone is — then you will have to look at things differently.

Last week, I became a big fan of the Memphis NAACP. They lost but they looked good doing it, and they showed class. No organization or individual had more reasons to be partisan in last week’s election. The NAACP was co-plaintiff in the 1991 lawsuit that abolished mayoral runoffs. Not one but two favorite sons were in the race for mayor: Herenton, a trailblazer since he was a school principal in the 1970s, and Herman Morris, NAACP chairman from 1992 to 2000. Both are black. Carol Chumney isn’t.

But the NAACP’s election-day efforts were all about turnout, not any particular candidate. They lost only in the sense that turnout in the 54 precincts they targeted was not as good as they hoped it would be. In fact, it was dismal — 38 percent overall and in the teens in some target precincts.

Spartan simplicity is not always the rule at local nonprofits, but it is at the NAACP. Their little office on Vance is right across from the Cleaborn Homes housing project. On a day of excess, partisanship, and pack journalism, what better place for a reporter to view the election than a place with no cameras, no candidate signs or leaflets allowed, no bar, and no buffet? And no big screen. The only television was a 12-inch model with an antenna. Lean too close to read the numbers, and it stuck you in the eye. Move it, and you messed up the picture.

Beneath portraits of local NAACP heroes Maxine Smith, Vasco Smith, Benjamin Hooks, and Jesse Turner, volunteers worked on three clunky Compaq computers that were probably rejected by E-Cycle Management. Others worked the phones, reading from a printed script (“We’re calling on behalf of the Memphis branch NAACP to encourage you to vote today for the candidate of your choice”) and offering a ride to the polls. Forget public-service announcements and editorials; in the trenches, turnout means one vote at a time.

By mid-afternoon, the numbers coming in were not good. Wearing a yellow T-shirt that said “Lift Every Voice and Vote,” NAACP executive secretary Johnnie Turner looked worried. With five hours to go until the polls closed, nearly every precinct was hundreds of votes short of its turnout goal.

“Last year, we made almost all of our goals, but the way this is looking, people are not turning out,” said Turner, who has run the Voter Empowerment Project since 2000.

She was writing down numbers and doing the arithmetic, which was considerable. The goal was a 5 percent increase in each precinct. The 1999 election was chosen as the benchmark because the 2003 election was a Herenton blowout with a 23.7 percent turnout. That bar was too low. Or so Turner thought. Now, Asbury, Alcy, Glenview, Gaston — site after site — wasn’t coming close to the 1999 turnout, much less the hoped-for increase.

“We’ll have to regroup,” Turner said. “This election has been strange. I started to say divisive, but maybe it’s kind of polarized. Anytime the community sees discord, they take the attitude ‘I don’t want to be part of this mess.'”

When I went out to eat, I got to watch my first live shooting in a while. At Cleaborn Homes, a young man in a white T-shirt was running between the buildings. Another man with a pistol was chasing him and firing several shots from about 30 feet away, all of which missed. A minute later, the guy who’d been shot at walked past my car with the nonchalance of someone who had just missed getting sprayed with a water hose.

When I came back, Turner had made an executive decision. The original goal had been “overly ambitious.” The new goal would be the 2003 turnout plus 7 percent. In effect, the former teacher was lowering the grading curve.

“Now this is more like it,” Turner said as the polls closed and new numbers came in. “We’re going to make it.” As it turned out, however, the 1999 standard may have been unattainable, but it was not unrealistic. The overall turnout for the election was higher — more than 165,000 voters last week compared to 163,259 in 1999.

At 9 o’clock, when the first returns showed Herenton far ahead and Morris in third place, there was no cheering at the NAACP. And no booing. Soon after that, everyone left, except Turner and a few others.

Nice effort, I said on the way out. “Yes,” she said. “Honest.” And it was.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Herman Morris’ Last Dance

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

The crowd, such as it is, is racially mixed and age-diverse. A big screen at the back of the ballroom flashes 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 is on a television in the corner. The game is close and exciting, but the numbers crawling across the bottom of the screen give early indication that the race for mayor is going to be neither.

The early voting and absentee totals — almost half the predicted vote — show 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 begins singing “Killing Me Softly.”

The food lines and bar lines in the ballroom are growing quickly. There seems to be 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 much: 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 5-year-old son Logan in tow. Adman Dan Conaway sips a beer and chats up latecomers. Campaign co-chairman and longtime judge and civil rights activist Russell Sugarman 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. 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 have brought this city together.”

There is a growing brushfire of applause in the outer room. The candidate, surrounded by his wife, children, and family, enters the ballroom. The outpouring of affection seems genuine and more than a little poignant.

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

Morris continues gamely, thanking his campaign committee and supporters and thanking his wife Brenda for 27 years of marriage. 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 his supporters 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.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Polls: The Dark Side

The next time a pollster calls you, just say no.

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say to a pollster can and will be used against you and the democratic process.

Polling organizations have a right to call us. I confess I read the polls and find them interesting fodder for discussion. But I do not trust them, and my usual response when called by a stranger on behalf of a pollster is “none of your business” or something like that. The late Chicago columnist Mike Royko had an even better idea: Lie to them.

Several polls were taken by different organizations prior to last week’s Memphis mayoral election, which was won by Willie Herenton with 42 percent of the vote.

One early poll showed Carol Chumney leading, with lots of “undecideds” and virtually no white support for the mayor. That poll, of course, was designed to convince Herenton to bow out and to get Shelby County mayor A C Wharton to enter the race. Fat chance.

Another poll showed Herman Morris gaining ground but still losing. His handlers were all over that, claiming their man had momentum, as if that is the most important thing in an election.

Yet another poll showed Herenton winning by a whisker. The excitement was almost unbearable! Don’t touch that dial! Stay tuned!

The most outrageous poll, taken by Steve Ethridge and published by The Commercial Appeal just before the election, showed Morris running close with Chumney and within striking distance of Herenton. This played neatly into the CA‘s editorial endorsement of Morris and the Morris yard signs that said “only” Morris could win. As it turned out, Morris could “only” win if the only other candidate was Prince Mongo. Chumney squeaked past Morris by 22,000 votes. And Herenton shocked the world at 495 Union Avenue by getting twice as many votes as Morris.

The CA and Ethridge should be ashamed and disgraced but not because they, in effect, threw the election to Herenton by low-balling Chumney and unrealistically boosting Morris, as some have suggested. They should be ashamed because they used the CA‘s stature as the city’s only daily newspaper to sell a highly dubious piece of partisan polling as big news, knowing full well it would be seized upon by the Morris camp.

Some anti-Herenton voters no doubt felt that they would be “wasting” their vote if they cast it for Morris or Chumney. Pollsters have a name for a poll with an intended outcome: “push” poll.

Some polls are more honest than others, but as far as I’m concerned, the benefit of the doubt goes against all of them. I know far too many people who’ve been involved in campaigns over the years, and winning may not be everything to them but it sure beats coming in second. What all the pollsters and their fans fail to grasp is that, in Memphis at least, voting and responding to a poll are not the same thing.

If a candidate runs a serious campaign and that candidate’s previous accomplishments and present positions on the issues make him or her seem like a worthy public servant, then that candidate absolutely deserves your vote, and polls be damned.

Voters, fortunately, can be pretty discerning. John Willingham, who said he had 10,000 black supporters, got only 1,118 votes in all. You can bet the Shelby County Republican Party, which endorsed him and put out sample ballots supporting him, is doing some hard thinking, if it is actually possible for them to think.

The most accurate predictor, on the other hand, turned out to be Herenton, who said the race was between him and Chumney and he would win it. It was, and he did.

I know, columnists and reporters also call people on the phone and try to get them to open up about all kinds of things. Some of us write opinion columns, like this one. But that’s different from a poll masquerading as news.

This opinion column is worth exactly what you paid for it. In that respect, it has one thing in common with a poll.

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
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

Early Voting Ends — and So Does the Early-Voting Reality Show

CREDIT: jb

Phase One of the 2007 Memphis municipal election – early
voting – is over, as of Saturday. The final head-count of voters at the
Election Commission and at 14 satellite locations was nearly 75,000 – a huge
number — despite an alarm sounded week before last by incumbent mayor Willie
Herenton that the Diebold machines being employed for the vote were unreliable.

The mayor’s reaction was interpreted by his main
adversaries – councilwoman Carol Chumney and former MLGW head Herman Morris – as
a red herring and as what Morris called a “desperate” act. Whatever the case,
the record volume of responses during this year’s early voting attests to the
widespread public interest in both the mayor’s race and the 13 races for city
council.

And so crucial was the two-week period regarded that some
candidates – notably Reid Hedgepeth, running for the District 9, Position 3
seat; and Cecil Hale, vying for the District 9, Position 1 seat – devoted almost
all their time and energies to long stints of greeting voters at early-voting
sites (Hale taking pains always, both verbally and with signs, to remind
arriving voters that he was “U.S. Army, Retired”).

Even those hopefuls who varied their campaign activities to
include attendance at other events, including candidate forums, made a point of
logging considerable time at several of the early-site locations.

One of the East Memphis locations that was especially
favored was at White Station Church of Christ on Colonial Rd. There so many of
the District 9, District 5, and District 2 candidates gathered on a daily basis
that they often developed relationships transcending their rivalry for this or
that position.

That wasn’t inevitably the case, though. A distinct
coolness governed encounters between Hedgepeth and his supporters (prominent
among whom was his close friend Richard Smith, son of FedEx founder Fred Smith)
on one side and opponent Lester Lit, who had been critical of the political
newcomer — early, often, and explicitly — on the other. (It should be said that the Hedgepeth
crew, which also at various times and various locations included the candidate’s
mother and mother-in-law, were generally patient and gracious to an extreme.)

And, once in a while, cool turned into hot, as it did at
the Bert Ferguson Community Center location in Cordova, where competing District
2 candidates Brian Stephens and Todd Gilreath got into each other’s space one
too many times, leading to a heated verbal exchange between the two.

But mostly all was sweetness and light. Opponents stood
shoulder to shoulder with each other as they handed out literature to voters,
asked about each others’ families, and traded jokes and gossip in the manner of
ad hoc comrades in arms.

Entirely good-natured was the teasing that District 9,
Position 2 candidate Kemp Conrad took from his rivals for his habit of running
after new arrivals to be the first candidate they encountered. And, in the wake
of a now famous Commercial Appeal article outlining various
office-seekers’ financial and legal misfortunes, those who, like District 2
candidate Scott Pearce, took bigger-than-usual hits, got friendly (and maybe
even sincere) commiseration from other candidates.

Rarely, it should be said, was discussion of issues the
dominant leitmotif of exchanges between candidates and their respective
entourages – or, for that matter, in their conversations with prospective
voters.

Overall, as indicated, the atmosphere at White Station and
at other heavily frequented sites begat a kind of apolitical camaraderie among the
various competing hopefuls that one might associate with TV reality shows like
American Idol.

It remains to be seen what that might portend, for
better and for worse, in election years yet to come. But there is no
doubting that early voting is now a permanent part of the election culture in
these parts.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Herenton Has Most Money; Morris and Chumney Cite Successful Fund-Raising

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Mayor Willie Herenton is still the king of fundraising, but
one challenger , Herman Morris, is coming on strong, while another, Carol
Chumney, says she, too, is having increasing success in raising money.

Morris actually raised more money than Herenton in the most
recent campaign spending reporting period which started July 1st. But
Herenton had more money on hand before July and still has much more than either
Morris or Carol Chumney.

Herenton raised $117,800 and spent $378,675 in the last
three months. He has $242,083 on hand. His largest expenditures include $56,000
to Clear Channel Outdoor for billboards, $47,800 for radio ads, and roughly
$13,000 for t-shirts. Herenton raised almost all of the money locally in the
latest reporting period.

Morris raised $219,222 and spent $249,912. He has $11,096
on hand and has personally loaned his campaign $35,576. His largest expenditures
were to Conaway Brown for advertising. The candidate administered an indirect
slap to rival Chumney at his Thursday press conference, saying that he was
making his gains “while other candidates find that they are dropping and falling
or standing stagnant.”

At a press availability of her own Thursday, Chumney at
first minimized the apparent edge enjoyed by both Herenton and Morris. “We’ve
raised a lot of money, enough to do what we need to do,” she said. Claiming to be
as well known as Herenton and better known than Morris, she said the relevance
of that was “it doesn’t take as much to talk to the voters and tell them what
you want to do “

But she would go on to say, “We’ve raised a lot of money
lately, especially in the last two weeks.”

Chumney, who trails Herenton by only two percentage points
in a recent poll, apparently filed her documents just before the deadline
Thursday, and they had not been received at the Shelby County Election
Commission Friday morning.

Friday’s
Commercial Appeal quoted Charles Blumenthal, Chumney’s campaign manager, as
saying Chumney had raised $165,000 in the period, quadrupling her efforts from
the previous period. Blumenthal had given The Flyer a different number
Thursday, $142,000, and repeated the figure again Friday.

Blumenthal
made a point of noting that Chumney had $18,000 on hand, as against some $11,000
for Morris.

(UPDATE: Chumney’s filing, as received by the Election Commission on Saturday, shows quarterly receipts of $142,127, with $25,258 as cash on hand.)

The election is October 4th, with Saturday being
the last day for early voting. More than 25,000 have voted this week alone,
bringing the total early vote to 55,484, a record. On Thursday, 8181 people
voted.

Last week, Herenton tried to stop early voting because of
alleged problems with voting machines, but voters and poll workers apparently
have overcome the problems or found them to be non-existent.

Chumney was optimistic about her early voting totals.
“We’re winning early voting, with fifty percent of the vote,” she contended on
Thursday — without, however, explainiing the basis for that belief. (Results of early voting cannot be ascertained until all voting is concluded after the polls close on Election Day itself, October 4th.)

Morris made no such claims , but, when asked Thursday about
Herenton’s recent remark concerning the “mathematical impossibility” of his
prevailing in the election,” Morris answered with a reference to Herenton’s
stewardship of the now questionable FedEx Forum deal with the city.

“First of all, we’re not going to take math lessons from
someone who couldn’t count five floors in the FedEx Forum garage,” Morris
quipped. And he repeated that he was rising at the other candidates’ expense and would prevail.
“We’ll be there at the end.”.

Jackson Baker and John Branston

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

Big Heads

Since the mayoral election is upon us, this seemed like the perfect time to take a walk down memory lane and look at some perfectly ridiculous images of our leading candidates.

First, there’s Mayor Willie Herenton: Champ or egomaniac, take your pick.

Herman Morris was serving as president of MLGW when somebody thought it would be a good idea to make a bunch of bobbleheads in his likeness. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t.

FOXFunnies, the online creation of former Fox newsman Darrell Phillips, gave Memphians this rather boring likeness of Carol Chumney. If you visit the Web site, however, you can control Chumney’s “blink rate,” a truly satisfying endeavor.

And then there’s John Willingham, who appeared shirtless in the Flyer shortly after auctioning his pacemaker on eBay. This time, we’ll spare you.

So there you have it: big head, bobblehead, blinking head, and John Willingham. This really could have been Prince Mongo’s year.

Skirting the Issue

On Sunday, September 23rd, The Commercial Appeal ran a media column considering the potentially bleak outlook for women’s magazines. “Are women’s magazines obsolete?” McClatchy reporter Rachel Leibrock asked in “Whither the Women’s Mag,” a eulogy to Jane, a glossy girlcentric periodical that called it quits in July. In related news, the CA officially launches Skirt, a women’s magazine, later this week.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

POLITICS: No-Shows

CREDIT: jb

By now, with early voting under way and scarcely two weeks
to go before Election Day itself, it is apparent — even to the extreme
Pollyanna types among us — that Mayor Willie Herenton will not be aiding
the voters (or his opponents) by participating in any multi-candidate forums.

That’s unless you count the two times he has appeared in
series with his three major adversaries – city council member Carol Chumney,
former MLGW head Herman Morris, and former Shelby County Commissioner
John Willingham.

The first of those occasions occurred several weeks back
when the mayor deigned to appear – separately, as did the others — before a
public evaluation session of the Coalition for a Better Memphis, answering the
same set of policy questions as his opponents. He was third in line for that
event and, coincidentally or not, also finished third in the Coalition’s
ultimate numerical evaluations (behind Morris and Chumney, in that order).

Only last week, Herenton made another partial concession to
the forum concept when, at Homebuilders on Germantown Parkway, he deigned,
albeit briefly, to sit on the same stage as his three main contenders at an
event put on by the Cordova Neighborhood Association. Speaking first, he
itemized his dogs and ponies and then left, leaving Chumney to chastise him for
not staying to “answer questions” and Morris and Willingham to do similar
tut-tutting.

Actually, the format of the evening, which also featured
candidates in several council districts, did not permit questions, nor, ipso
facto, did it allow for answers.

Herenton next had an opportunity for some joint Q-and-A
action on Sunday, when he, the other mayoral candidates, and aspirants for
various council seats were invited to appear at an event sponsored by the
Central Gardens Neighborhood Association at Idlewild School.

His Honor had accepted the Association’s invite, but he
opted out when he learned he would not be able, as at the two prior events, to
speak his two-cents’ worth and then depart, but would be expected to stick
around with the others to field questions – including some from the audience and
from children at three neighborhood schools and, potentially at least, from his
opponents.

As it happened, the Central Gardens folks excluded several
candidates who had not managed to complete the Association’s fairly extensive
questionnaire on issues before a deadline had passed. As a result, both Chumney
and Willingham, along with various council candidates, found themselves on the
outside looking in, having to settle for passing out their campaign literature
to arriving attendees.

Among mayoral contenders, only Morris and the inimitable
Laura Davis Aaron were empanelled. Morris, who – buoyed by a fresh
endorsement from The Commercial Appeal — seems to be enjoying something
of a late rise, performed well, and Aaron, whose persona has sometimes seemed to
be an SNL improvisation, outdid herself with a dire warning – Grim
Reaper-like, given the presence of the student corps – that children educated in
the public schools, unlike their home-schooled counterparts, would die.

(It was some consolation that “Dr.” Aaron, who claims to
receive visions from God, did not say when.)

One of the questions directed at the field of candidates
concerned their attitude toward those of their opponents who had spurned the
opportunity to come forth. Predictably, the absent Herenton drew barbs from
Morris and others – as did incumbent District 8, Position 1 councilman Joe
Brown from opponent Ian Randolph, who has picked up some good late
support in various quarters.

Brown has indeed been a no-show at the campaign year’s
public forums and other collective events, whether or not his reason is what
Randolph alleges it is — to exploit voter confusion of himself with the other
Joe Brown, the former Criminal Court Judge who now holds court on syndicated
national television.

The other main target of complaints concerning his chronic
abseentism from public scrutiny was Reid Hedgepeth, a political newcomer
who is seeking election to the District 9, Position 3 seat being vacated by
council veteran Jack Sammons and who has stout support from Sammons,
FedEx founder Fred Smith, and other influential Memphians.

Hedgepeth’s support group also includes the first-time
candidate’s fellow developers, or so alleges opponent Lester Lit, a
retired businessman who makes that charge in a radio ad now running and who
verbally blistered Hedgepeth on Sunday for consistently making himself scarce.

“Vote for me or Desi [Franklin] or Mary
[Wilder],” was Lit’s generous advice to attendees at the Central Gardens
forum. (Both Franklin and Wilder, who also seek the District 9, Position 3 seat,
were present, as they – like Lit — have been for other candidate forums this
year.)

Hedgepeth’s is a special case, for – unlike Brown, who
maintains his own North Memphis community center for constituents, and unlike
Herenton, who has been the cynosure at several mass rallies in the inner city
and who has made selected drop-in appearances elsewhere, Hedgepeth has, by
apparent design, been the subject of few public sightings.

Sammons, who by general acknowledgement is directing the
Hedgepeth campaign, pooh-poohs the necessity of his protégé’s making appearances
at forums and other such events. “He needs to be out where the people are,” said
the retiring councilman on the occasion of the recent opening of Hedgepeth’s
Park Place campaign headquarters.

And that, Sammons went on, passing his hand over a wall
map, meant concentrating on door-to-door canvassing. It should be said that
there are skeptics in other candidates’ camps who doubt that Hedgepeth is doing
much door-to-door, either. What is incontestable is that Hedgepeth has beaucoup
campaign signs – including what would seem to be scores of large wooden ones –
all over District 9 and, for that matter, in adjoining areas, both inside and
outside the city.

And this week saw the appearance of a TV spot in which the
30-year-old former University of Memphis tight end appears both personable and
focused and promises, once in office, to be the source of “straight talk” and
“practical solutions.”

Meanwhile, it would seem, voters will have to do without
much of either. Hedgepeth’s highly packaged and well-financed campaign so far
has distinct resemblances to the election efforts of Nikki Tinker, a
repeat candidate for the 9th District congressional seat who, in both
2006 and in the campaign she has already launched for 2008, has eschewed much in
the way of policy statements and whose public appearances are highly controlled.
She, too, like Hedgepeth, has relied heavily on mailouts, visible campaign
paraphernalia, and expensively produced media.

Whether coincidentally or not, both Hedgepeth and Tinker
also reportedly have stout support in local corporate circles.

None of that conclusively demonstrates anything, for better
or worse, about the potential of either candidate in office, but it is the kind
of outward, detached manifestation that Joe Saino, a candidate for
District 9, Position 2, had in mind on Sunday at the Central Gardens forum when
– almost in the manner of ’60s balladeer Joe South — he denounced the
prevalence of “signs, signs, signs.”

But even Saino, a retired businessman and public official
who is best known these days for his muckraking blog efforts at
memphiswatchdog.org, has his signs out. They all do. On the day after Election
Day we’ll see which ones were omens and which just turned out to be litter.

(Next week: the Flyer‘s pre-election issue.)