The detractors of 9th District congressional candidate Nikki Tinker say she’s nothing but a corporate shill and a pretty face, hiding behind surrogate mudslingers in her race against incumbent congressman Steve Cohen. Can she disprove all that in this weekend’s televised debate with Cohen?
See Jackson Baker’s take in “Viewpoint” here.
After a lengthy delay, during which Nikki Tinker and her supporters became visibly restless, the feminist PAC Emily’s List last week conferred its endorsement on the 9th District congressional challenger, whom it had also backed during Tinker’s first try for the office in 2006.
One probable reason for the organization’s hesitation was a highly organized lobbying campaign against such an endorsement, conducted for months by several long-term local feminists who support incumbent Democrat Steve Cohen and who cited to Emily’s List Cohen’s lengthy record of support, both as state senator and as congressman, for women’s causes.
During the multi-candidate Democratic primary of 2006, Tinker got a considerable boost from fund-raising efforts and late-term advertising on her behalf by Emily’s List (the name is derived from the acronym for “Early Money Is Like Yeast”). The organization also made a point of distributing flyers attacking ultimate winner Cohen, who would go on to win the general election against two opponents.
As the press release announcing its endorsement of Tinker noted, the corporate attorney came within six points of leader Cohen in the 2006 primary. The release credited Tinker with “the passion and experience needed to get results in Washington, D.C.” and made reference to her “work in the business sector,” service as “a civil rights attorney,” and stint as campaign manager for former congressman Harold Ford Jr., among other points.
“If elected,” noted the release, “Tinker will be the first African-American woman elected to Congress from Tennessee and the youngest African-American woman currently serving in the House.”
Predictably, Tinker proclaimed that she was “proud to receive this endorsement.” Equally unsurprising was adverse reaction from the Cohen camp. The congressman’s campaign manager, Jerry Austin, noted, “They spent half-a-million dollars roughing up Steve in 2006 and couldn’t beat him.” Austin said numerous women supporting Cohen countered “in the best way possible; they stopped writing checks to Emily’s List.”
Cohen supporters contributed to a lengthy and impassioned “comments” thread when news of the endorsement was posted on the Flyer website. And it drew recriminations from several former devotees of Emily’s List and its largely pro-choice agenda.
Typical was Libby De Caetani, a Democratic activist and longtime Memphian who had just completed a move to Asheville, North Carolina, but who got wind of the matter and responded heatedly in a message sent to each member of the Emily’s List governing board.
Expressing “shock and disappointment,” De Caetani characterized Cohen as “a strongly progressive and popular” congressman with “an A-plus record on women’s reproductive rights” who had been newly recognized by an award from Planned Parenthood. She continued: “All I can guess now is that you have willfully chosen to waste good money and effort on a candidate who lacks leadership and substance, is a lackey of the airline industry, has no record of community service and has NEVER said publicly that she supports legislation that ensures women’s reproductive rights.”
Ironically, Cohen had just been the beneficiary during the previous week of a well-attended “Women for Cohen” fund-raiser at the Elliot Perry loft downtown. One of his campaign co-chairs, legendary civil rights activist Maxine Smith, also figures in a newly launched billboard campaign on the congressman’s behalf.
In the wake of the Emily’s List action, several Cohen supporters wondered if the congressman, a supporter of presidential candidate Barack Obama, had inadvertently invited it by a recent quip comparing Obama’s never-say-die rival Hillary Clinton to the maniacally determined character played by actress Glenn Close in A Fatal Attraction. Longtime boosters of the former state senator and freshman congressman know well Cohen’s tendency to improvise stand-up comedy lines. Indeed, his wit is regarded as a vital part of his legislative arsenal — as well as being a potential Achilles’ heel.
In the case at hand, Cohen had been quick to make an apology, conveying “great respect” for Senator Clinton and continuing, “She has waged a historic campaign which has done much to break the glass ceiling. My comments obviously do not reflect the sentiments of Senator Obama or the Obama campaign. Nor do they reflect my opinion of Senator Clinton whom I have known for years and admire. My hope is that our party will come together to work to defeat John McCain.”
Go to memphisflyer.com for more on this story and other politics.
About “The Stanford St. Jude Championship Offers Hope for the Fairway” by Frank Murtaugh:
“I hate to disagree with a sports maven like you, Frank, but the field for this event is nothing if not a disappointment, and no matter how much lipstick you put on this pig, it’s still a pig.” — gadfly
About “Tinker Gets Nod Again From Emily’s List,” Jackson Baker’s article concerning support for 9th District congressional challenger Nikki Tinker from the political action committee Emily’s List:
“The biggest lesson learned from the Hillary Clinton run for President, which applies to Tinker as well, is second-wave so-called feminists will vote for gender over qualifications and issues. How sad. It’s everything I fought against when I was younger, and it’s painful to see that reverse sexism is considered acceptable.”
— MissSharonCobb
“If the Tinker folks don’t realize that the Memphis Flyer (and most of the Memphis blogging community) is a fire ant colony for Steve Cohen, here’s your warning!!! They will sting you, and then they will carry your body down to their nest to feed their young and produce more eggs.” — tomguleff
About “Mayor and City Council Mull Putting School Board Out of Business” by John Branston:
“Wow. I like my power grabs naked, for sure, but this is a daring daylight coup.” — stork
Comment of the Week:
About “Marsha! Marsha! Is She in Peril?” by Jackson Baker:
“Marsha Blackburn is George W. Bush in drag.” — karn
A new poll conducted on behalf of the reelection campaign of 9th District congressman Steve Cohen purports to provide evidence that Cohen is running well ahead of all challengers, including attorney Nikki Tinker, his principal foe in the August Democratic primary.
The poll, conducted of 400 likely primary voters by Lake Research Partners in late April, shows Cohen with a lead of 52 points over Tinker in a candidate preference poll. The congressman is the choice of 63 percent of those polled, with Tinker selected by 11 percent, and state representative Joe Towns laying claim to 5 percent. Undecided voters add up to another 20 percent.
In its summary, the Lake poll says that Cohen “wins nearly six-in-10 African Americans (59 percent) and more than eight-in-10 white voters (83 percent). The congressman leads among black men, with 70 percent; black women, with 54 percent; white women, with 81 percent; and white men, with 86 percent. Tinker’s support among black women, her strongest group, is presented as 14 percent.
“Even after voters are introduced to positive information about both Steve Cohen and Nikki Tinker, including explicit references to the candidates’ races, Cohen continues to garner majorities of both the black and white vote,” says the Lake group’s summary.
Cohen’s approval rating among all voters is pegged at 40 percent “excellent” and 38 percent “good,” with only 1 percent rating his job performance as “poor.”
The “bottom line” according to the poll: “Voters express strong satisfaction with Steve Cohen’s leadership and are in no mood to replace him.”
Weighted, as is the district, toward black voters, the poll is aimed at those voters considered to be certain to vote.
One poll feature asks voters to express favorable or unfavorable opinions about Cohen, Tinker, Towns, and, for comparison’s sake, a number of other well-known public figures, both local and national, alongside whom Cohen measures up well.
• No white flag from Tinker, of course, who seems to be revving up her own campaign (and almost certainly will be forthcoming with her own polls). Her campaign receipts, while lagging behind Cohen’s, are still significant, and she is making sure to touch the bases. One recent example was the Shelby County Democrats’ annual Kennedy Day dinner last Friday night at the Central Avenue Holiday Inn, where Tinker patiently and cheerfully worked all the tables in the room.
One of those tables might have given her a jolt. Occupied by Cohen himself, it also seated several supporters — among them former Shelby County commissioner Julian Bolton, one of Cohen’s more determined adversaries in his 2006 race and, as such, yet another indicator that the congressman himself has been energetically touching the bases.
• Cohen may wish he’d suppressed his energy level just a tad. Known, since his state Senate days, as a ready man with a quip, he got one off from the dais Friday night — a tongue-in-cheek comparison of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to the relentless stalker played by actress Glenn Close in the 1987 shocker Fatal Attraction. The remark got some national play from ABC’s Jake Tapper and on CNN and various political websites.
Cohen is a supporter of likely Democratic nominee Barack Obama but has long had friendly ties with the Clintons, as well, and he hastened to follow up with a fulsome apology to the New York senator.
• Keynote speaker at the Kennedy Day dinner was Nashville-area congressman Jim Cooper, who serves as Obama’s state chairman and doubles as a prime adviser to the Illinois senator on health-care issues. Political observers have long noted the similarities between the semi-voluntary coverage plan touted by Obama this year and that advanced by Cooper in 1994, as an alternative to one favored by then first lady Clinton.
• The first debate in this year’s assessor’s race took place Monday night at Neil’s on Madison. Both Democrat Cheyenne Johnson (currently CAO to outgoing assessor Rita Clark) and Republican Bill Giannini gave good accounts of themselves. Giannini caused something of a stir when he served notice to several of Clark’s appointees who were present that they’d likely be out of a job if he got elected.
• The race to complete the term of the late Trustee Bob Patterson has heated up, too — with Republican Ray Butler getting some early billboards out and Democrat Paul Mattila, currently the interim Trustee, picking up some key endorsements, from 8th District congressman John Tanner, among others.
Just Darling
Last names are so last millennium. 9th District congressional candidate Nikki Tinker is poised to join the ranks of Elvis, Cher, and other celebrities who outgrew complex nomenclature. A recent e-mail from her campaign begins with the announcement that, “Nikki has officially kicked off her campaign to be your next Congresswoman.” Nikki’s last name doesn’t appear anywhere in the letter except for the closing disclosure, “Paid for by Tinker for Congress.”
Should her latest run for Congress prove unsuccessful, perhaps the Pinnacle Airline attorney will return to the political arena as a symbol.
Graffiti Bridge
Some graffiti has cropped up on the recently restored and freshly painted railroad trestle on Front St. near Butler. The inartistic green scrawl isn’t lewd or profane. In fact, the message, “You are safe,” is almost comforting. The vandals got away, of course.
Gangsta Gangsta
We’re all Joe Pesci now. A recent report by My Eyewitness News Everywhere got right down to business: “Police say people in Memphis are willing to shoot to kill over just about anything these days,” reporter Sarah Buduson said in prelude to a story that was about people shooting people over video games, tools, and dogs.
Sigh. What happened to the good old days when people shot each other over money, cocaine, or their lowdown cheatin’ ways?
Reading Marilyn
If conservatives stop reading The Commercial Appeal, the liberals win!
In her most recent screed, Marilyn Loeffel, local politician and culture warrior turned CA columnist, wrote that her audience is composed of conservatives, who don’t read the paper because they don’t wish to support the liberal media, and busy, cash-strapped “middle-of-the-roader[s],” who therefore “don’t know about the warfare of words, the rhetoric rebellion.”
Does General Loeffel write for anybody who actually reads the paper?
According to
Roll Call, a Washington, D.C. publication for political insiders, the
Rev. LaSimba Gray is asking members of the Congressional Black Caucus to “stay
out” of the 2008 Democratic primary race pitting incumbent 9th
District congressman Steve Cohen against repeat challenger Nikki Tinker.
Noting an appearance in Memphis last weekend on Cohen’s behalf by U.S. Rep.
Emanuel Cleaver of Kansas City, who is black, Gray said, according to the
newspaper, “”Steve
Cohen has been quoting many of them heavily and bringing them into the district
and we are simply asking them to stay out of this race.”
Gray strove unsuccessfully during the 2006 congressional race to winnow down a
large field of African-American candidates to a consensus black
candidate to oppose Cohen, who, as the minister noted, is both white and Jewish.
Roll Call quoted Gray as contending that the second-place finish in last
year’s primary of Tinker, a corporate attorney, meant that “she has won … the
primary of African-American candidates.” Gray said further, “The road has been
cleared for Nikki and we are busy meeting with candidates who ran last time to
show them the reality — the fact that with all of them in the race they can’t
win.”
Gray’s concept of a black-versus-white showdown was frowned on by Cleaver
spokesman Danny Rotert, who remarked that Cohen seemed to stand high in the
estimate of his constituents and observed, “If somebody here [Kansas City] said
Congressman Cleaver can’t represent his district because it’s a [majority] white
district, that would not go very far. So it’s too bad that that’s the rhetoric
that’s being used in Memphis.”
As of the last Federal Election Commission filing, Roll Call noted,
Tinker had $172,000 in cash on hand compared to Cohen’s $374,000. As the
periodical also observed, the feminist organization Emily’s List, which supported Tinker
strongly in 2006, has so far been non-committal about 2008.
A number of Tinker’s former Memphis supporters have also indicated they will not
be backing her in next year’s race. One such, lawyer Laura Hine, said she had
committed to Tinker in 2006 before Cohen made his candidacy known. Affirming her
support for Cohen in next year’s race, Hine said recently, “The fact is, he’s
been a very effective congressman, speaking to all the issues I care about.”
One such issue, according to Hine, was pending federal Hate Crimes legislation,
which Cohen has backed and Tinker has been silent about. Rev. Gray recently made
an effort to organize opposition to Cohen’s stand among black ministers, on the
ground that the bill would muzzle their opposition to homosexuality.
Other
local African-American ministers, like the Rev. Ralph White and the Rev. O.C.
Collins Jr., have refuted that allegation, citing specific sections of the bill,
and made a point of supporting Cohen. The Memphis chapter of the NAACP also
recently affirmed its support of the bill and Cohen’s activities on its behalf.
Next year’s Democratic primary apparently will see a return match of Steve Cohen vs. Nikki Tinker for the right to represent the 9th District (an area which dovetails, more or less, with Memphis) in the U.S. House of Representatives.
The 2008 version of that race will be different in several particulars, to be sure. A plus for Tinker is the fact that she is unlikely to be, as she was last year, one of a dozen or so African-American candidates, most of them reasonably credentialed to serve in Congress, all of them competing for the same presumed voter base. To Cohen’s benefit is the fact that he will be running as the incumbent with a record of achievement — and certainly of effort — that his constituents can judge him on. Give the congressman this: He stays busy, amazingly so for a first-termer. Merely attempting to keep up with what he’s keeping up with and then reporting it puts any media outlet in risk of accusations of partiality. What are we to do? Tell him to take more vacations?
We have generally favored Cohen’s positions — and certainly his style — since we started observing him years ago as a state legislator. But the fact remains that we, like most local observers, were decidedly impressed by several figures in last year’s congressional race and would have been content if any of half a dozen of them had been elected.
Frankly, we never quite put Nikki Tinker in that category, though we certainly understood her appeal to many people — enough of them, along with formidable sources of financial support, to make her runner-up to Cohen in last year’s primary. Our basic problem with Tinker was that she declined, early or late, to stake out positions on the major issues. The sentimental story she kept telling about her grandmother was all well and good, but her prospective constituents deserved to know more about her views on the major issues of war and peace and governmental policy. For better and for worse, we know where Cohen stands on things.
Unhappily, Tinker has shown no more inclination than she did last year to convey her thoughts on the issues. Specifically, when her views about the currently (and, we think, unnecessarily) controversial Hate Crimes Bill (see Politics, p. 14) have been sought, she has not only been uncommunicative, she has been unreachable, leaving it to a spokesperson in far-off Washington to say that she is concentrating on “voters,” not issues. Whatever that means. The implication was that to discuss the things that matter most to her would-be constituents would somehow be a disservice to them.
The fact is, we think the current attack on Cohen’s vote for the Hate Crimes Bill — identical to the positions taken by his predecessor, Harold Ford Jr., and by every member of the Congressional Black Caucus in the current session — is a sham argument orchestrated by ad hoc partisans of Tinker for whom Cohen’s race is the real issue.
For her own credibility, we think it is incumbent that Tinker herself address for the record the Hate Crimes Bill — and other issues of the day, for that matter. That’s how she’ll win our respect.
Memphis mayoral candidates continued to campaign, as is their wont, over the weekend:
Incumbent mayor Willie Herenton, who is eschewing formal debates with his opponents, spoke briefly to a rally at a Frayser mall Saturday but mainly spent his time there autographing campaign T-shirts and demonstrating his prowess at the “Cupid Shuffle” as a sound system blared out some music.
Opponent Carol Chumney held a well-attended opening at her Poplar Avenue headquarters on Sunday, once again chiding Herenton for being willing to spar with Joe Frazier while ducking debate, but she seemed to broaden her attack to include rival Herman Morris as well as Herenton: “My opponents love to walk you through their humble beginnings, but their actions both in political office and as executives demonstrate that they have long forgotten where they came from.”
Morris held at least one major fund-raiser over the weekend, while John Willingham presided over a headquarters open house that spread over Sunday and Monday.
Present at Mt. Olive C.M.E. Church for an all-candidates forum Sunday were Chumney, Morris, and Willingham, but not Herenton. A wide representation of other mayoral candidates also attended, including Laura Davis Aaron — who cited as two reasons for running the fact that “Mayor Herenton reads my mail” and that she needs a job — and Dewayne A. Jones Sr., who shouted so loudly as to temporarily short out his microphone.
• With Congress in recess, 9th District congressman Steve Cohen is much in evidence locally. Among other things, Cohen presided (along with Tennessee senator Lamar Alexander) over a ceremony formally changing the name of the Federal Building to the Clifford Davis/Odell Horton Federal Building, in honor of the late U.S. district judge Odell Horton.
Cohen also proposed to President Bush that he appoint former deputy attorney general James Comey to succeed the disgraced and now resigned Alberto Gonzales as U.S. attorney general. (Comey, along with the bedridden John Ashcroft, then the attorney general, had resisted as unconstitutional a Bush wiretapping plan aggressively pushed by Gonzales, then White House counsel.)
Cohen addressed a Chamber of Commerce-sponsored banquet as the first of its Frontline Politics speakers this year and took part in a panel on crime sponsored by the Public Issues Forum. The congressman’s remarks at the Frontline dinner at the Ridgeway Center Hilton struck a new note, in that Cohen, a longtime critic of the Iraq war, acknowledged for the first time that residual U.S. troops might need to remain in the war-torn country for some time to come.
Cohen also scheduled a meeting, tentatively set for Tuesday of this week, with members of the Memphis Black Ministerial Association, one of whose leaders, the Rev. LaSimba Gray, has led an assault on Cohen’s support for a congressional Hate Crimes Bill.
There are several anomalies associated with the ministers’ protest — among them, that Cohen’s predecessor, former congressman Harold Ford Jr., had consistently supported such legislation without drawing criticism from the association.
Pointing out further inconsistencies this week was an association member, the Rev. Ralph White, who originally expressed solidarity with the protest but later satisfied himself it was based on misconceptions. Said White: “I’ve read the bill, and I’m satisfied that it does not restrain a minister from expressing opposition to homosexual conduct or anything else that might be offensive to his conscience or Christian doctrine. The language of the bill specifically guarantees such freedom of speech.”
Turning the attack back on its maker, White said, “What LaSimba Gray has to answer to is whether he is consciously trying to aid the congressional campaign of Nikki Tinker. Nobody seems to be wondering what her attitude toward the Hate Crimes Bill is.”
Actually, many people have so wondered, but a Washington, D.C., spokesman for the elusive Tinker, a 2006 Cohen opponent who has already filed to run a reprise of last year’s congressional race, has publicly said she will, at least temporarily, distance herself from discussion of such issues — as she did at an equivalent period of last year’s race. White, who also sought the 9th District seat last year, is holding open his options for another run of his own.
• Senator Alexander, just back from an extended fact-finding trip to Iraq in tandem with Tennessee Senate colleague Bob Corker, seems, like Cohen, to have moderated his stand on Iraq somewhat. Alexander continues to push for a bipartisan resolution, co-authorized with Colorado Democrat Ken Salazar, based on the findings of the Iraq Study Group and calling for an end to U.S. combat operations.
But the senator indicated in Memphis last week that he had been impressed by progress made by the ongoing U.S. troop “surge” in Anbar Province and other points and, pending a scheduled report to Congress next month by General David Petraeus, was keeping an open mind on continued troop commitments in Iraq.
• A casualty of County Commission voting Monday was Susan Adler Thorp, a former Commercial Appeal columnist and consultant who had been serving as public relations adviser to Juvenile Court judge Curtis Person but whose position ended up being unfunded. Somewhat later, a commission majority would authorize equivalent sums for a new “outreach” position, yet to be filled.
• The 2007 recipient of the Tigrett Award, funded by FedEx founder Fred Smith in honor of the late John Tigrett, will be former U.S. senator Howard Baker, it was announced last week. The award will be presented by the West Tennessee Healthcare Foundation at a gala later this year.
• Next week: a systematic look at this year’s City Council races.
Him Again
Richard Fields was back on the attack, battling his foes by means of publicly circulated letters.
To be sure, one of the epistles was written not by Fields but by Lambert McDaniel, an imprisoned ex-club owner, to Gwen Smith, the point person in Mayor Willie Herenton‘s accusations concerning a lurid blackmail plot against him orchestrated by lawyer Fields and other alleged “snakes.” In the letter, McDaniel, who was incarcerated on a drug charge, refers to Smith by pet names and advises her to stay in touch with “the Mexicans” — presumably drug connections.
What relevance the letter has to Herenton’s charges against Fields — who, according to the mayor, urged Smith to seduce and entrap the mayor — is uncertain. Clearly, it does milady’s reputation, already sullied, no good. But, by association, it wouldn’t seem to entitle Fields — or Nick Clark, his acknowledged confederate in the purported topless-club investigation — to any merit badges, either.
Fields is a textbook illustration of the adjective “unabashed,” however. Confirming reports that the lawyer’s own poison pen had been unsheathed for yet another epistolary crusade, Shelby County commissioner Sidney Chism denounced Fields in the commission’s public session Monday, during a debate on whether to assign Head Start children to the non-profit Porter-Leath Children’s Center.
In one of Fields’ widely circulated broadsides, Chism, a child-care provider himself, was taken to task for his initial opposition to the Porter-Leath arrangement and was told, among other things, he should be “ashamed” of himself.
Chism’s response was scornful. Citing a variety of allegations against Fields that have been insistently put forth by blogger Thaddeus Matthews, Chism challenged Fields’ bona fides, saying that, if all that was said about Fields was true, “he shouldn’t be anywhere around children, anyhow.”
Whatever the accuracy of the charges and counter-charges swirling about Fields, there was little doubt about one thing: With an election happening, the odds were better than even that there will be, in some guise or another, a Richard Fields ballot this year, as there was in each of the last two local election cycles. If so, would this be good or bad for Fields’ endorsees? This, too, remains to be seen.
Expert Witness
Last Sunday, Alexander Rogers Coleman was shot by an off-duty police officer after he pulled a knife on his brother at New Life Baptist Church in South Memphis. Michael Conner, the suspect’s brother, told WREG-TV that Coleman “came back with the knife or whatever, and I guess he saw the dude with the gun or whatever and he turned around and that’s when the dude shot him in the back.” Police officials have described the shooting as a “personnel” matter and have promised an internal investigation. Or whatever.
Headline of the Week
Last Tuesday’s Commercial Appeal contained a story titled “Leaders get behind ED plans.” To their credit, our leaders decided to stick with their plans even after it was explained that ED stands for economic development and not erectile dysfunction.
Fly Girl
CA columnist Bart Sullivan recently revealed that Nikki Tinker, the ambitious attorney who hopes to unseat 9th District congressman Steve Cohen, has been courting the Baptist Ministerial Association. She even arranged for Pinnacle Airlines, her employer, to provide a free airplane ride to select members of the ministers’ congregations. “After declaring her candidacy, Pinnacle Airlines flew the group in circles around Memphis on June 23rd,” Sullivan wrote, without ever explaining the point of flying them around in circles. Maybe they were trying to get a little closer to Jesus?
Pinnacle spokesperson R. Phillip Reed added that the “trip” was “not directly or indirectly associated with the Tinker for Congress campaign.” It was simply a chance for Tinker to fly some Baptists around and around in circles.
Sullivan went on to cite Tinker’s D.C. spokesman, Cornell Belcher, who didn’t really say much, but anytime you can attribute a quote to someone named Cornell Belcher, you should.