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POLITICS: New Mayor, New Council?

CREDIT: jb

Naming “crime, cronyism, and corruption” as major issues in
this year’s mayoral election, candidate Carol Chumney addressed the
Germantown Democratic Club Monday night, pledging if elected to “get a good
team” in order to bring renewed efficiency to Memphis city government.

Subsequently, city council member Chumney fielded at least
two questions from the membership (which includes several Memphis voters who
live in Cordova) about her reported difficulties with the mayor’s office and
fellow council members.

One member asked: What about her “relation building” and
“leadership style”? Would these be obstacles?

Chumney responded that she had developed good relations
with fellow legislators while a state House member for 13 years and said, “City
government has been a little different because there’s been quite frankly some
corruption. Many times I would be the only one who would stand up and say
anything. Some folks are going to get mad at you. I’m a strong leader, I will
tell you that.”

When another member followed that up by asking if the city
council would back her proposals if she were elected mayor, Chumney said, “We’re
going to elect a new city council.” Noting the virtual turnover of membership in
the county commission in last year’s elections, she expressed confidence that
city voters would follow suit. “It’s going to happen here. They’re going to vote
and vote in a new team.”

Pledging to renew cooperation between city and county
law-enforcement teams, Chumney said, “It’s disrespectful to expect the police to
go two years without a pay raise while asking them to risk their lives for us.”

She repeated her objections to Riverfront Development
Corporation proposals, including the recently approved Beale St. Landing
project, and called both for the city’s retention of The Coliseum and for
“something classy” in the downtown Pyramid.

Chumney said she’d heard “disturbing rumors” about the past
management of Memphis Networx and reported plans for its pending sale and
promised “to get to the bottom of it.” She said the council’s authority over a
prospective sale was uncertain but said she was seeking authoritative word on
that from the state Attorney General’s office.

  • Germantown is becoming an important campaign venue for
    candidates running for office in adjacent Memphis. A week or so earlier members
    of the Republican Women of Purpose organization heard a presentation at the
    Germantown Public Library from Brian Stephens, city council candidate in
    District 2, the East Memphis-suburban seat being vacated by incumbent Brent
    Taylor

    Stephens has been active in an effort to strengthen laws
    regulating sexually oriented businesses (S.O.B.’s in the accepted jargon) and
    specifically to make sure that veteran topless-club entrepreneur Steve Cooper
    does not convert a supposed “Italian restaurant” now under construction in
    Cordova into an S.O.B.

    He discussed those efforts but offered other opinions as
    well, some of them surprising – a statement that “consolidation is coming,
    whether we like it or not,” for example – and some not, like his conviction (a
    la Taylor) that tax increases are not necessary for the city to maintain and
    improve basic services.

    In general, Stephens, who seems to have a head start on
    other potential District 2 aspirants, made an effort to sound accommodationist
    rather than confrontational, stressing a need for council members to transcend
    racial and urban-vs.-suburban divisions and expressing confidence in the ability
    of currently employed school personnel to solve the system’s problems.

  • Also
    establishing an apparent early lead over potential rivals is current school
    board member Stephanie Gatewood, running for the District 1 council seat
    being vacated by incumbent E.C. Jones. Gatewood’s fundraiser at the Fresh
    Slices restaurant on Overton Park last Thursday night drew a respectable crowd,
    and her membership in Bellevue Baptist Church on the suburban side of District 1
    provides an anchor in addition to an expected degree of support from the
    district’s African-American population.

  • One night
    earlier, Wednesday night, had been a hot one for local politics, with three
    more-than-usually significant events, and there were any number of dedicated
    and/or well-heeled visitors to all three:

    –Residents of the posh
    Galloway Drive area where U of M basketball coach John Calipari resides
    are surely used to long queues of late-model vehicles stretching every which way
    in the neighborhood, especially in election season when Calipari’s home is
    frequently the site of fundraisers for this or that candidate.

    But Wednesday night’s event, a $250-a-head fundraiser for District 5 city
    council candidate Jim Strickland, was surely a record-setter –
    out-rivaling not only Calipari’s prior events but most other such gatherings in
    Memphis history, including those for senatorial and gubernatorial candidates. A
    politically diverse crowd estimated at 300 to 500 people showed up, netting
    Strickland more than $60,000 for the night and bringing his total “cash on hand”
    to $100,000.

    –Meanwhile, mayoral candidate Herman Morris attracted
    several hundred attendees to the formal opening of his sprawling, high-tech
    campaign headquarters on Union Avenue – the same HQ that, week before last,
    suffered a burglary – of computers containing sensitive information, for one
    thing – a fact that some Morris supporters find suspicious in light of various
    other instances of hanky-panky currently being alleged in the mayoral race.

    — Yet a a third major political gathering took place Wednesday night, as Shelby
    County Mayor A C Wharton was the beneficiary of a big-ticket fundraiser
    at The Racquet Club. Proceeds of that one have been estimated in the $50,000
    range – a tidy sum for what the county mayor alleges (and alleged again
    Wednesday night) is intended only as a kind of convenience fund, meant for
    charitable donations and various other protocol circumstances expected of
    someone in his position.

    Right. Meanwhile, Wharton declined to address the most widely speculated-upon
    subject in Memphis politics: Will he or won’t he enter the city mayor’s race? As
    everybody knows, and as the county mayor has informally acknowledged, he is the
    subject these days of non-stop blandishments in that regard, and there’s very
    little doubt that these have accelerated since a dramatic recent press
    conference by Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton alleging “the 2007 Political
    Conspiracy.”

    While some of
    Mayor Wharton’s intimates at the Wednesday night affair were keeping to the line
    that the chances of his running for city mayor were minimal to non-existent,
    their answers to inquiries about the matter were delivered after what we’ll call
    meaningfully inflected pauses. The door may be shut for now, but it clearly
    isn’t padlocked.

    jb

    Chumney in Germantown

  • NASHVILLE
    — The name of McWherter, prominent in Tennessee politics for most of the latter
    20th century, will apparently resurface in fairly short order, as Jackson lawyer
    and businessman Mike McWherter, son of two-term former governor Ned
    McWherter    , is making clear his plans to challenge U.S. Senator Lamar
    Alexander    ‘s reelection bid next year.

    Apparently only one thing could derail Democrat McWherter — a renewed Senate
    candidacy by former Memphis congressman Harold Ford Jr., who last year
    narrowly — lost a Senate race to the current Republican incumbent, Bob
    Corker    . “I don’t think I would compete against Harold. But I don’t think he
    will run,” McWherter said in an interview with The Flyer at Saturday’s
    annual Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner in Nashville.

    The 52-year-old activist sees Alexander as a slavish follower of President
    George W. Bush.

    “With one or two exceptions, he’s done everything the president has wanted him
    to do. He’s toed the party line,” said McWherter, who has recently paid courtesy
    calls on ranking Democrats, both in Tennessee and in Washington, D.C., informing
    them of his interest in running next year and soliciting their support.

  • Keynote speaker
    at the Democrats’ dinner in Nashville was presidential hopeful Bill
    Richardson    , whose situation somewhat paralleled that of former Massachusetts
    governor Mitt Romney, who earlier this month had been the featured
    speaker at the state Republicans’ Statesmen’s Dinner, also in Nashville.

    On that occasion, Romney – who had been invited before the entrance of former
    Tennessee senator Fred Thompson became likely – was a de facto lame-duck
    keynoter, and, mindful of the attendees’ expected loyalty to favorite-son
    Thompson, cracked wanly, “I know
    there’s been some speculation by folks about a certain former senator from
    Tennessee getting into the presidential race, and I know everybody’s waiting,
    wondering. But I take great comfort from the fact than no one in this room, not
    a single person, is going to be voting for — Al Gore.”

    That bit of verbal bait-and-switch got the expected laugh, and so did a joke
    Saturday night by New Mexico governor Richardson, who uttered some ritual praise
    of native Tennessean and former presidential candidate Gore and then, when the
    crowd warmly applauded the former vice president, jested, “Let’s not overdo it.
    I don’t want him in this race!”

    jb

    • Categories
    Politics Politics Feature

    Who’s On First?

    It may take some time to evaluate the enduring effects, but the fact is that the three main contenders in the Memphis mayor’s race all have found something to brag about in the several days since the candidate field became complete:

    • Mayor Willie Herenton finished first in a straw poll held by the Shelby County Democrats at the Rendezvous Restaurant last Thursday night. And he did so by typically Herentonian means, without bothering to attend the event.

    A few score Democrats showed up at the event to pay $50 a head for the privilege of voting in a mayoral straw poll while raising money for the party. The only mayoral candidate who was there from start to finish was Herman Morris. Carol Chumney came late and addressed the crowd, as had Morris earlier. John Willingham had a spokesperson on hand who talked him up before the attendees.

    Only the mayor was absent and went unspoken for. But his was the name called out by party chairman Keith Norman when it came time to announce the winner. Norman declined to give out any numbers or declare who finished second or third.

    What was proved by the event and by its outcome? That Herenton has a hard core of supporters and a network that serves him well, for all the fact that he’s not campaigning this year in the conventional sense: no fund-raisers, no polls, no inclination to participate in forums.

    A scientific poll? Of course not. What it did prove, however, was that the mayor — who presided over a couple of weekend headquarters openings — is not lacking where G.O.T.V. (get-out-the-vote) is the game. And that’s what the game will be during early voting and on October 4th.

    • For her part, Councilwoman Chumney turned up the leader in a fresh trial heat by pollster Berje Yacoubian showing her to be leading a second-place Herenton and a third-place Herman Morris. The numbers were 33 percent for Chumney to Herenton’s 29 percent to 14 percent for Morris.

    Underlining the surprising showing for Chumney, whom many observers had thought to have declined from her peak as a leader in early spring polls, was the fact that Yacoubian had made public statements only a week earlier, telling Fox 13 News, which also broke the news of his poll, that Herenton was a “good bet” to be leading the field.

    Au contraire, when Yacoubian got around to toting things up. His sampling of some 300 presumably representative voters showed Chumney to be considered a better bet than Herenton on issues like crime and education, with Herenton having a lead only on the matter of economic development.

    Among other things, what that meant was that Chumney’s standing had apparently survived her widely publicized refusal to vote, back in April, for a council resolution asking for the resignation of Joseph Lee, then still at the helm of MLGW. The fact that the resolution, offered by colleague Jack Sammons, then failed by a single vote was thought to have been an embarrassment for Chumney. So was the fact that her own previously offered resolution, directing Herenton to accept a much earlier resignation offer from Lee, had failed to draw a second.

    Both circumstances underscored Chumney’s reputation as a go-it-alone maverick with few if any allies in city government. Yacoubian’s poll results suggest that voters may find Chumney’s non-observance of the maxim “go along to get along” more attractive than not.

    • Though Morris had reason to be discouraged by all of this, his demeanor, on a stepped-up round of activity, didn’t show it. He seemed unfeignedly confident as recently as Monday night, when the former head of both MLGW and the local NAACP (an alphabet spread that, in theory, encompassed a good deal of potentially centrist turf) addressed a meeting of the Germantown Democrats.

    Parenthesis: One of the peculiarities of the current political season — as noticed both by ourselves and by Mediaverse blogger Richard Thompson — is the number of forums, fund-raisers, speaking appearances, and other events involving candidates in the Memphis city election that have taken place in the bordering municipality of Germantown.

    That has to do both with the fact of overlapping populations (many members of the Germantown Democratic Club are residents of Cordova and Memphis voters) and with the circumstance that, with governmental consolidations of various kinds in the air, people in the near suburbs are taking an unusual interest in how things go in Memphis voting.

    Consolidation was, in fact, one of the matters that Morris dealt with forthrightly during Monday night’s meeting. He endorsed it, categorically, and went so far as to express impatience with half-measures like the current intergovernmental talks involving an enhanced liaison of Memphis police with the county sheriff’s department.

    “Consolidate everything!” Morris pronounced, and to that end, he recommended following the example of Louisville, where city and county voters voted consolidation in after an extensive period of public discussions. Similarly, he said, Memphis and Shelby County voters should be paid the “respect” of having the issue “put in front of us.”

    When a club member said she was “tired” of questions about impropriety surrounding various officials now in office, Morris barely hesitated before responding, “I am, too. And I’m tired of people reelecting them.”

    In general, Morris cast himself as Mr. Candor, attributing the financial problems of Memphis Networx, which he championed while leading MLGW, to the short-sightedness of the profit-focused private investors involved in the public/private initiative. He freely acknowledged hatching thoughts of a mayoral run in December 2003, immediately after being forced out of his utility perch by Herenton. And he flatly declared, “I don’t trust those numbers,” concerning Herenton’s current economic forecasts.

    He suggested that his major opponents drew their strength from white or black enclaves, respectively, “while I’m 50-50, right in the middle.”

    One note being struck resoundingly in private by Morris’ campaign people is the prospect, in fact, that he will shortly inherit some of the racially balanced support that was evidenced in the short-lived “Draft A C” campaign to induce a mayoral candidacy by Shelby County mayor A C Wharton.

    With only two months to go, Morris needs a boost — more than he’ll get from the drug test which he successfully passed last week after challenging all the contenders to take one as well.

    • The fourth name candidate in the Memphis mayor’s race, John Willingham, meanwhile, resolved to soldier on, despite the fact that few observers (and no polls to date) have given him much chance. “Look what happened in 2002,” he said, a reminder of his runaway upset win that year over the late Morris Fair, then an incumbent Shelby County commissioner. Last week’s cover story, by the way, erred in suggesting that Willingham had plans to convert Shelby Farms, now administered by the nonprofit Shelby Farms Conservancy, into an Olympic Village. It is the Fairgrounds that Willingham has in mind for his proposal. More of that anon.

    Categories
    Opinion

    A “Momentous” Decision

    The most powerful force in the universe is not gravity, earthquakes, or tsunamis. It is American parents bent on getting their children into the school of their choice.

    This force — abetted in Greater Memphis by cars and roads, separate city and county school systems, private schools, and the proximity of Mississippi schools — is the reason why the latest federal court desegregation order on Shelby County schools is doomed to fail.

    To paraphrase a famous quotation, U.S. district judge Bernice Donald has made her ruling. Now let’s see her make it stick.

    At least Donald acknowledged the elephant in the living room: The new Southwind High School between Germantown and Collierville will be, if not this year then next year or the year after that, a virtually all-black high school. As her ruling says, it is expected to have an 88 percent or higher black enrollment on the day it opens this month.

    Overall, the Shelby County school system is 34 percent black. There is some nuance and a lot of historical context in Donald’s 62-page order, but the gist of it is that racially identifiable schools are a no-no in the system, and individual schools should more closely mirror the system demographics, plus or minus 15 percent, in both their student body and their faculty.

    Courts can rule all they want about public schools, and for a year or two they can dictate the demographics of schools. But parents and politicians are free agents. The people’s court is going to challenge and eventually overrule the federal court. This is especially true in Memphis when a suburban school starts out as a county school and becomes a city school via annexation. In 1980, Shelby County built Kirby High School. It was majority white. Memphis took it over in 2000. Last year, it was 1 percent white. In 2000, Memphis and Shelby County jointly opened Cordova High School, which is now a city school. Its white enrollment declined to 41 percent in 2006-’07, from 60 percent in 2004-’05.

    Southwind High School is in the Memphis reserve area. Memphis School Board members approved the site and will eventually take it over. Last year, the Memphis City Council and the Memphis and Shelby County Office of Planning and Development did everything but pull the trigger on the so-called southeast annexation. It failed mainly because council members Tom Marshall and Dedrick Brittenum recused themselves.

    Marshall was the architect of the annexation plan. He is still on the council until the end of this year. He is also chairman. He told the Flyer this week he expects the council to take up annexation after the October election. If and when it does, he says this time he will vote for it.

    If Memphis annexes Southwind High and selective (i.e., not-gated) nearby neighborhoods — even if it delays the effective date for a few years — then the county school system has to recalculate its racial math. Hundreds of black students and a sprinkling of white students will shift from the county system to the city system.

    History suggests that the harder Donald pushes to eliminate racially identifiable schools, the more “churn” she will produce from the people’s court. In 1971, another Memphis federal judge ordered forced busing to desegregate schools. Within three years, nearly 30,000 white students left the system and Memphis had the largest private-school population in the country. Today, more than 95 percent of the 115,000 MCS students attend racially identifiable schools because there are fewer than 9,000 whites in the system.

    In her ruling, Donald said the county school district “does not yet merit a passing grade,” and she called the school board’s compliance track record “decidedly mixed.”

    In some ways, her historical analysis is generous. She could have pointed out (but did not) that the county board, with no district seats, was all-white until a couple of years ago and that its former superintendent allowed a single real estate developer, Jackie Welch, to pick most of the school sites. In other respects, however, her ruling is naive. It ignores the reality of school choice broadly defined to include magnet schools, separate city and county school systems, private schools, and DeSoto County schools. In the long run, there is nothing that Donald or any federal judge can do to eliminate racially identifiable schools.

    The ruling overlooks something else. The Shelby County schools have grown from black flight as well as white flight. In 1987, the system was only 14 percent black compared to 34 percent today. The neighborhoods in the southeast annexation area are primarily middle class. Residents include former Shelby County mayor Jim Rout.

    Southwind High School is mentioned only once in the ruling, so it’s impossible to say how much it weighed on Donald’s decision. Appointed by Bill Clinton in 1996, she is the lone black judge on the federal bench in Memphis. Like her judicial colleagues, Donald, a native of DeSoto County and graduate of the University of Memphis, does not grant interviews about pending matters and lets her rulings speak for themselves. What can be said, however, is that Southwind High is a far cry from the dilapidated schools with no air-conditioning and third-hand textbooks of the 1960s and ’70s — a period the ruling describes in great detail, for whatever reason.

    Most parents will probably skip the history, arithmetic, and the 62 pages and get to the bottom line: What does it mean for my house, my neighborhood, or my kid?

    Donald’s order calls for a special master — a “neutral expert” in desegregation issues — to be picked within 30 days. The county school board is supposed to achieve full compliance, as determined by Donald and the special master, by 2012. Apparently, Southwind High School will be allowed to open this month as a “racially identifiable”county school that doesn’t meet the county guidelines. After this year, it’s anyone’s guess.

    With positive leadership and a focus on excellence instead of race, Southwind High has a chance to be a very good school. Instead, sadly, it has already been called a dumping ground by one neighborhood leader.

    Donald writes about “the momentous, irreversible nature of this court’s pending decision.” But it could be momentous in a different way than she thinks.

    Categories
    Politics Politics Feature

    Keeping Busy

    CREDIT: Jackson Baker

    p>
    It is surely obvious by now that 9th District congressman Steve Cohen is going to be a frequent flyer on YouTube and the network and cable broadcasts and, for that matter, will be grounded in print via choice quotations in major newspapers and magazines.

    All that is assured by the longtime state senator’s stage presence, his concern for timely issues, and his way with words, which caused The Tennessee Journal recently to lament the absence of “the wittiest” member of the state legislature.

    Add to that an apparent instinct for finding his mark among Washington, D.C.’s power players and on the crowded beltway media stage and what can only be described as an innate anti-bashfulness, and you begin to see why Cohen is rapidly putting in the shade the admittedly impressive benchmarks for celebrity established by his predecessor, former Representative Harold Ford Jr.

    Faced with a certain challenge in 2008 from at least one opponent, corporate attorney Nikki Tinker, his 2006 runner-up, Cohen is also making a serious effort to touch all the bases important to his constituency. Make that “constituencies.” The congressman’s appearance at a press conference in front of the federal building on Friday highlighted several major issues — each relating to a different component of the base that he hopes will reelect him next year.

    The stated purpose of the press conference was to announce a just-enacted congressional increase in the minimum wage.

    Three increases over a two-year period, beginning this week, will raise the minimum wage from the current $5.15 to $7.25, affecting 115,000 Tennesseans directly and 350,000 altogether. African Americans, as Cohen did not fail to note, will be major beneficiaries.

    As Dorothy Crook of AFSCME, standing alongside Cohen, pointed out in words the candidate for reelection had to be pleased by, “In Nashville, you worked hard for it, and I knew you would work hard for it in Washington.”

    Cohen also took the opportunity at his press conference to mention the role played by himself and his Nashville Democratic counterpart, Jim Cooper, in securing $125 million in new funding for historically black colleges. What that meant for Memphis’ financially beleaguered LeMoyne-Owen College, Cohen said, was no less than $500,000.

    More? Asked about an issue of key importance to his white liberal supporters, Cohen owned up to being one of 70 House members who wrote a “line-in-the-sand” letter to George Bush declaring that they “will only support appropriating additional funds for U.S. military operations in Iraq during Fiscal Year 2008 and beyond for the protection and safe redeployment of all our troops out of Iraq before you leave office.”

    And at least two other recent Cohen efforts were responsible for some still discernible quantum waves. This past week, he joined with Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton, chair of a House Transportation subcommittee overseeing FEMA, in a widely noted letter blasting the agency for wasting $67 million worth of ice that was meant for Katrina rescue but never got used.

    There was also Cohen’s recent highly public break with other Democrats and with his normal labor allies in opposing passage of a House bill that contained a collective-bargaining provision disliked by FedEx founder Fred Smith but openly coveted by rival UPS and the Teamsters union.

    Even potential adversaries might have to concede the diligence of these efforts and their diversity, reminiscent of his often surprising range in the state Senate, where he mixed gun-carry bills and liberalized drink measures in with the standard bread-and-butter positions expected of any card-carrying liberal Democrat.

    Opponents may say that the congressman’s motives on the legislative and constituent fronts are largely, if not completely, political. Maybe so, maybe no; in any case, one hears that politicians customarily do just that: practice politics. Indeed, they presumably are elected to do that. And the last several days have contained several practical demonstrations that Steve Cohen, no mere talking head he, knows a thing or two about how to do it.

    For an expanded version of this column in “Political Beat,” go here.

    Categories
    Opinion Viewpoint

    Why Run for the Council?

    This is the last week to file papers to run for the Memphis City Council, where all 13 seats are up for grabs and seven of those positions are wide open. So what does the job offer, aside from the usual clichés about public service?

    Well, the council-mayor form of government in Memphis has only been around since 1968; in fact, some of its original members, including J.O. Patterson Jr., Fred Davis, and Lewis Donelson, are still active in professional and civic affairs. So it’s possible to make a few generalizations and predictions based on its history.

    First, a couple of things the council is not: a path to temptation and ruin or an easy road to the mayor’s office. Events of the day make it seem like the council is a sewer, and in the game of politics the scent of corruption is often in the air. But actual convictions for corruption in the line of duty are rare. Rickey Peete was convicted of bribery twice, most recently in 2007. John Ford was also convicted of bribery but for something he did long after his service on the council 25 years ago. Ditto Michael Hooks. All things considered, the Hall of Shame is a pretty elite club.

    And while several current and former council members have run for city or county mayor — Patterson, Ford, Mike Cody, Pat VanderSchaaf, Jack Owens, Bill Gibbons, Jack Sammons, Joe Ford, Shep Wilbun, and Carol Chumney, among others — they all lost. The exception was the late Wyeth Chandler in 1975. Mayor Willie Herenton is a former school superintendent. His predecessor, Dick Hackett, was county clerk before moving to City Hall. Henry Loeb, the mayor when Martin Luther King Jr. was killed, came from the old City Commission.

    More common is the City Council member who gains some name recognition and connections and either wins or is appointed to a full-time government job or something close to it. The ranks include Gibbons, John Ford, Owens, Wilbun, and, more recently, Herenton appointees Janet Hooks and TaJuan Stout Mitchell. Jeff Sanford, a councilman in the Chandler era, is head of the Center City Commission, which pays more and has fewer employees than the sheriff, district attorney, or clerk’s offices.

    Some council members move over to the Shelby County Commission, where the pay is the same but the hours are lighter and so is the public scrutiny. That group includes James Ford, Gibbons, Wilbun, Joe Ford, and Michael Hooks.

    Council members get to vote on some big deals, but they don’t originate them. High-profile building projects such as The Pyramid and FedExForum were ideas whose time had come, and their champions were outsiders. The same is true of big ideas like consolidation, term limits, selling MLGW, and freezing taxes, which are often discussed but have not come to a vote in the city of Memphis in nearly four decades. The standard brawls and debates are over such mundane matters as setting the tax rate, approving the budget, putting in or cutting out favored items, and haggling with the mayor over his nominations for the jobs of division directors and head of MLGW.

    The coolest thing about being on the council is that people suddenly pay attention to you whether or not you have anything interesting to say simply because you have a title. Council members get lots of face time on television, especially if they are as accessible and quotable as Sammons, Chumney, and Peete. This is the real 15 minutes of fame, although in the case of Sammons and Peete it was more like 15 years. And they get very nice pensions (about $9,000 a year) after 12 years, thanks to an ordinance passed by, you guessed it, the City Council.

    For more than a decade, the council has been divided racially with either six whites and seven blacks or seven whites and six blacks. This is likely to change next year because the city of Memphis is now approximately 63 percent black. Women, who had only token representation on the council until the 1980s, are also likely to increase their representation. Six of the seven members not running for reelection are men.

    All in all, it is no ordinary job, not the best and not the worst, and apparently nice work if you can get it, which plenty of people seem to want to do judging by the filings at the Shelby County Election Commission.
    John Branston, a Flyer senior editor, writes the City Beat column.

    Categories
    Editorial Opinion

    A Bridge Too Far?

    Anybody who expresses skepticism about the prospects of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, in tandem with the FBI, for closing out a prosecution successfully should probably submit to the proverbial head examination. After all, in the 11 Tennessee Waltz-related cases tried or otherwise resolved so far, federal prosecutors and the men and women of the bureau have proved to be literally invincible — a perfect record.

    In the last week alone, guilty pleas were wrung from two lions of the state legislature: former state senator Kathryn Bowers of Memphis, who had resigned after being indicted, and state senator Ward Crutchfield of Chattanooga, who still serves. It’s clear though that he, like Bowers, who is due for sentencing this fall, will be among the missing when the General Assembly reconvenes in January.

    But we are reserving judgment about both the validity and the outcome of new prosecutions announced last week by the two federal offices. These indictments — of former MLGW head Joseph Lee, city councilman Edmund Ford, and Ford’s landlord Dennis Churchwell — pose some troubling questions. Not that we countenance the offenses these three men are accused of — namely, engaging in improper trade-offs of favors to secure private goals from city government. Basically, the entire nexus of the case lies in the incontrovertible fact of Ford’s being a world-class deadbeat in relation to the whopping bills he owed to MLGW in utility fees and to Churchwell in rent for his funeral home.

    The government charges that Ford was given a pass by Lee in return for the councilman’s favorable attitude on matters, some personal and financial, of importance to the utility president. Churchwell and Ford are accused of a compact in which the councilman voted Churchwell’s way on zoning issues in which the latter had a vested interest, in return for inhabiting his professional quarters rent-free.

    Sleaz-eee! This is big-time corruption, and it should be punished. We shed no tears for Lee, who was sacked from his job when these and other matters became public, nor for Ford, who already carries a bribery indictment and is clearly a scofflaw of unmatchable arrogance, nor for the self-serving Churchwell, for whom the word “lout” may well have been invented.

    The question is: How much of this unsavory one-hand-washes-the-other mess actually rises to the level of crime? It is not by way of excusing the behavior to observe that these acts are consistent with and bear the same shape, odor, and texture of the way politics, government, and private interests have always interacted. If this case succeeds, are we to call for the prosecution of a public servant who sponsors or votes for significant legislation on behalf of a major campaign contributor? Does anybody doubt that causal connections to one degree or another exist in such instances? And how does one extricate from all these itemized quid pro quos simple facts of friendship or convenience?

    The burden of proof is, as always, on the government, but in this case we trust it can also demonstrate to a jury that it is not expanding its immense power into areas of conduct that, however questionable, have rarely if ever been regarded as criminal.

    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.

    Categories
    Editorial Opinion

    The Eavesdropping Case

    Shelby County has figured more than once in judicial decisions of momentous national importance. Arguably, the most influential Supreme Court decision of the last century was Baker v. Carr (1962), which struck down legislative gerrymandering of the crude rural-vs.-urban kind.

    The lead plaintiff in Baker v. Carr was the late Charles Baker, longtime chairman of the Shelby County Court, who sued to force state government (Joe Carr was the Tennessee secretary of state) to give equal representation to urban counties in the apportionment of the state’s legislative districts. The fallout from Baker v. Carr has affected all reaches of American government — local, state, and federal.

    What Baker sought was simple justice, and his manner of radical revisionism was to insist on fidelity to immutable constitutional principles of fairness. He was a “strict constructionist,” we are tempted to say.

    That point is relevant to the outcome of a ruling issued last Friday by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals concerning the legality of the domestic warrantless-search procedures of President George W. Bush. The administration had appealed a 2006 decision by federal judge Anna Diggs Taylor of Detroit in favor of plaintiffs, including the American Civil Liberties Union, which had challenged the administration’s ongoing program of arbitrary domestic eavesdropping.

    Of the three appeals judges who heard the case, two — Julia Gibbons, a Bush appointee, and Ron Gilman, a Clinton appointee — hailed from Memphis. Gibbons and a fellow judge, appointed by the senior President Bush, constituted a majority of two. They reversed Judge Taylor’s prior ruling, on the grounds that the plaintiffs in the case lacked proper standing.

    In essence, what the appeals court majority held was that unless the plaintiffs could demonstrate that they had themselves been subject to the kind of surveillance under challenge, they could not sue to challenge it. The bottom line was that the administration, which has claimed the inherent authority for such eavesdropping under the Military Authorization Act that followed the 9/11 attacks, was free to continue.

    We believe, along with Judge Gilman, that the perfectly legitimate principle of “standing” was misapplied or applied over-literally in the eavesdropping case.

    In finding, as had Judge Taylor, that the eavesdropping procedures were explicitly prohibited by the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, Gilman went on to note that summary judgment had been asked by both sides to the dispute, “[b]ut the government did not contest the plaintiffs’ statement of undisputed facts or provide its own statement of undisputed facts. … If the adverse party does not so respond, summary judgment, if appropriate, shall be entered against the adverse party.”

    In short, even on the technical issue, the previous ruling should have been upheld. We await the inevitable Supreme Court ruling on this case, which we expect to be as momentous for this century as Baker v. Carr was for the previous one.

    Categories
    Cover Feature News

    It’s Now or Never for Networx

    CREDIT: Richard Thompson

    Who made the best bid for Memphis Networx? Was it the well-funded seven-month-old holding company from Colorado — Communications Infrastructure Investments (CII)? What about New York’s proven infrastructure firm American Fiber Systems (AFS)? Or was it BTi Corporate (BTi), the darkhorse candidate that wants to turn Memphis into the bio-tech research hub of the Americas?

    MLGW’s board says CII won the bid fair and square. The other bidders say the fix was in from day one.

    It might be helpful for the City Council to hear all three companies explain why they think they made the best bid. But given the long, strange saga of Memphis Networx, such an occasion might distract from the unspoken question that loomed like a family curse over last Thursday’s vote by the MLGW board to sell Networx for a cash return on its $29 million investment of just $994,000: Namely, how in the world did Memphis Networx become lodged so inextricably between the frying pan and the fire?

    Networx representatives made the case that delaying the company’s sale any longer will send it into a tailspin of irreversible loss. “It’s now or never” has been a reoccurring theme in the Networx debate. But when “now” is a paltry return of $994,000, “never” isn’t much of a threat.

    The MLGW board meeting did reveal several apparent flaws in the bidding process. A presentation delivered by the McLean Group — the consulting firm hired to assist Networx through the sale — may have done more damage to the credibility of the consultants’ ultimate findings than anything brought to the podium by angry representatives of AFS and BTi.

    McLean Group chairman Dennis Roberts and junior consultant Tom Swanson made the losing bidders sound so bad it became impossible to imagine how such nonserious bidders could have made it to the final three in the first place.

    As the deal was explained to the media by Nick Clark — who sits on the boards of both MLGW and Memphis Networx — the bidding process was managed quietly through the McLean Group to weed out frivolous bidders and to avoid conflicts of interest. In a sneering assault on BTi’s credibility, one McLean Group consultant announced that a BTi principal had been making his living installing stereo equipment. (BTi founder and CEO Paul Allen has since stated that nobody in his telecom company has ever installed stereo equipment.)

    The McLean consultants also said Allen’s company didn’t follow the rules and that its bank letters were unconvincing. They said BTi representatives didn’t show up for a scheduled due diligence meeting. (BTi has given the Flyer a letter from Thomas Murray of Fifth Third Bank reconfirming its interest in financing the Networx purchase based on a thorough process of due diligence.)

    AFS’ problem, as identified by the McLean Group, was basically that they couldn’t show anybody the money. AFS has filed a declaratory action suit to prove their seriousness.

    No BTi representatives were present when McLean consultants trashed their company’s bid, but AFS CEO Dave Rusin was visibly disturbed by the McLean Group’s findings. He shook with anger at times while explaining in measured words how his company survived the dot-com crash in 1999, weathered the telecom meltdown of 2001, and is a serious and reputable company.

    He convincingly answered charges that his company wasn’t good for the cash by asking what was wrong with the $60 billion available to AFS’ historically cooperative financiers: Sierra Venture Partners, Lucent Venture Partners, North Atlantic Capital, and Hamilton Lane.

    Dave Danchak, AFS senior vice president of corporate development, angrily said that the McLean Group’s figures didn’t look like anything he’d ever seen before.

    Germantown resident David McCabe, a representative of BTi Corporate, arrived for the second half of the marathon meeting.

    “They’re hiding something,” he insisted, accusing the McLean Group of spinning the facts.

    McCabe also challenged the McLean Group’s assertion that BTi missed its due diligence meeting. He said that Networx representatives called unexpectedly on a Wednesday afternoon and asked if BTi could assemble its team and be in Memphis the next morning. According to McCabe, doubts were expressed on the front end as to whether or not his people could make it on such short notice, but they said that they would be in Memphis as soon as possible.

    McLean consultant Swanson admitted that the due diligence process had been “accelerated,” a fact conveniently left out of the McLean Group’s original narrative, which alleged that the stereo-installing bunglers of BTi just couldn’t follow the rules. “Their story keeps changing,” McCabe declared.

    After listening to McCabe’s indignant rebuttal of the McLean’s Group’s analysis, the MLGW board concluded that the McLean Group and BTi had had “a miscommunication.”

    Although Rusin and Danchak of AFS had initially refused to comment on BTi’s proposal, the AFS reps returned to the podium and expressed sympathy for their competitor.

    “Mr. McCabe talks about how the story keeps changing,” Rusin said. “Well, guess what? We come here today and find that the numbers have changed.”

    Rusin and Danchak then unveiled their company’s lawsuit. MLGW board chairman Rick Masson expressed concern that the suit was part of an intentional ploy to further devalue Networx, which has only enough operating capital to survive for a month to 45 days.

    CEO Dan Platko then delivered a grim assessment of Networx’ financial condition, and Clark described what might happen if the sale was delayed. Staff cuts would be necessary, he said, service would then decline, and customers would flee. According to Platko and Clark, it was doomsday eve for Networx, and the clock was ticking.

    In spite of potential conflicts of interest, Clark maneuvered back and forth between his dual roles as MLGW governor and Networx board member. He spoke of the need for a transparent process and occasionally played the role of devil’s advocate, despite the fact that the Networx board had approved the sale to CII and had signed a binding agreement with the company.

    Clark cited a Flyer story and asked a series of questions supposedly based on this newspaper’s ongoing coverage of the Networx sale. But Clark’s Flyer-based line of questioning left out the same embarrassing facts about possible conflicts of interest that were raised in the article that he’d omitted in a previous report to City Council chairman Tom Marshall.

    After confirming that Platko had once been employed by Intira, a company co-founded by former Networx CEO Mark Ivie, Clark moved to another subject, without mentioning the fact that Swanson — the McLean Group’s allegedly unbiased third party — had also been a vice president at Intira. Nor did Clark mention that Swanson, prior to assuming his McLean Group duties, may have accepted a lucrative, paid consulting gig with Networx via his personal firm, TJSwansonCo.

    After Clark’s omissions were noted, Platko and Swanson admitted that they’d worked together at Intira. Swanson later said that prior to the Networx deal, he and Platko hadn’t done business together since leaving Intira. However, a contract signed by Platko on October 5, 2006, suggests that Networx’ chief executive offered Swanson $2,000 a day for consulting with Networx’ sales division, a month before the McLean Group was called in to assist in Networx’ eventual sale.

    The information becomes doubly troubling in light of Networx officials’ repeated failure to identify Swanson as having any duties above and beyond the work he was doing through the McLean Group. (Detailed questions submitted by the Flyer to Swanson and Platko have yet to be answered.)

    “It was an imperfect process, but it’s an imperfect world.” This, more or less, was the opinion MLGW board members unanimously expressed prior to finally signing off on the sale of Networx to CII.

    In a two-to-one vote with one abstention, the board passed a resolution to go forward with the sale of Memphis Networx to CII. In light of AFS’ lawsuit and mounting concerns within the City Council, it’s unclear what that resolution ultimately means.

    Documents dating from 2004 show that Networx executives and at least one board member were actively negotiating to sell Memphis Networx to AFS in an unpublicized all-stock deal.

    Although sources conflict on the details, it appears that Networx officials’ enthusiasm for closing the original deal may have faded when it was discovered that the offer would be small and paid in stocks, especially in light of the fact that MLGW, as a publicly held company, is prohibited from owning stock in a private company.

    When asked last Thursday, Networx board member Andrew Seamons said it was highly unlikely that any of the private investors would have an interest in absorbing the AFS stock into their share of the sale. Seamons is professionally affiliated with Pitt Hyde’s Pittco investments. Hyde, who recently stepped down from his position as AutoZone chairman, is one of the original private investors in Memphis Networx.

    Over the weekend, one highly placed proponent of the Networx sale to CII circulated news items intended to prove BTi was in over its head on the Networx deal.

    Considering the board’s vote to sell Networx to CII, it’s hard to imagine what anyone stands to gain by further discrediting BTi. Unless it’s the fact that continuing the debate over who placed the best bid shifts focus away from the only questions that matter: When did Networx’ executives know the company was in a tailspin; and how were the company’s finances managed from that point on?

    If the McLean Group was contacted to assist with the sale of Networx in December, as reported, serious concern over the company’s finances had to be growing by the time Platko offered Swanson $2,000 a day for services that have yet to be sufficiently explained.

    Networx’ history of questionable decision-making ranges from disastrous technology purchases to a miscalculated deal with ServiceMaster that cost the telecom thousands of dollars a month for nearly a year. How did that history change when new CEO Platko found out that his company was in serious trouble? Did he tighten up the company’s belt or did he enable spending that further exacerbated Networx’ dire situation?

    Platko and his predecessors had the advantage of using Networx’ private status to withhold information whenever anyone attempted to delve too deeply into the specifics of the company’s spending practices. The choice Networx executives have given its public owners — nothing or next to nothing — demands answers not available in the financial postmortems Clark has delivered to the press.

    Epilogue: When Platko replaced his former colleague Mark Ivie as head of Memphis Networx in 2006, MLGW’s ratepayer/owners were not notified of the change. Clark, an appointed steward of the public’s interest in Networx, has described the lack of attention given to such changes at a company funded (in part) by public dollars as “fortunate.” To interpret his comment as “the less the public knows about what’s being done with its money, the better” may be unfair, but it’s also unavoidable.

    Clark says he recognized that Networx was experiencing trouble when he joined the board in 2005. Ironically, given the final outcome, he says he kept quiet for fear of scaring off potential customers.

    MLGW has fully enabled this disaster. Its board members have harbored concerns about Networx’ financial well-being for at least two years but allowed Networx to keep a low profile while the telecom was clearly wasting away. Silence and complicity in the name of maintaining Networx’ “competitive edge” precipitated MLGW’s recent “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” decision, wherein the only thing worse than selling its valuable telecom asset for a $28 million loss is not selling it right now … for a $28 million loss.

    On Tuesday the Memphis City Council voted to discuss Networx-related issues at a meeting of the MLGW committee. Details of that committee meeting were not available at press time.

    See MemphisFlyer.com for updates on the Networx story.

    Categories
    Politics Politics Feature

    Coming to Shove

    As was noted here last week, momentum for a mayoral candidacy by Shelby County mayor A C Wharton — and pressure on that famously reluctant (or coy) official — has seriously intensified as the clock keeps on ticking toward next week’s filing deadline.

    Things were patently coming to a head with the public emergence of a “Draft A C” movement led by, among others, the Revs. La Simba Gray and Bill Adkins. Despite Mayor Willie Herenton‘s attempted dismissal of the effort, and of the two African-American ministers as relatively unimportant figures motivated by “personal” or even mercenary reasons, the fact is that both had once been key members of Herenton’s political team.

    Adkins especially was a major force in the epochal first race by Herenton in 1991, relentlessly proselyting for the then “consensus” black candidate on his daily radio show.

    These days, neither Adkins nor Gray is regarded as necessarily “first tier” among African-American leaders, though Gray made a serious effort to become so last year in his sponsorship of forums designed to produce a single black candidate around whom other blacks might cohere.
    No such figure materialized in a race ultimately won by then state senator Steve Cohen. But if Wharton, who agreed to meet with his newly energized suitors, ended up saying yes to their entreaties, there would be no need to look further to find consensus, and the resultant combination of African-American forces with a business community already avid for A C to run was bound to be a first-tier effort.

    In famous lines by T.S. Eliot, the poet’s probable stand-in, J. Alfred Prufrock, opined, “I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be.” Well, A C was meant to be. And it has to be remembered that in the play Eliot was referencing, Hamlet does finally act.

    Meanwhile, other mayoral candidates were increasingly making themselves available. Several hopefuls were scheduled to appear at a Tuesday night meeting of the Southeast Memphis Betterment Association at Asbury Methodist Church, including newcomer Randy Cagle and, er, oldcomer Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges.

    Among the promised attendees generally acknowledged to be “serious” challengers were council member Carol Chumney, former MLGW head Herman Morris, and former Shelby County commissioner John Willingham.

    Scheduled to make what would seem to be his first public appearance as a candidate for mayor was former FedEx executive Jim Perkins, who is the unknown quantity of the mayoral race so far. Perkins reportedly has a million dollars of his own money to spend on the race, and that fact alone has been enough to encourage speculation that he might figure significantly in the outcome.

    Coincidentally, Tuesday happened also to be the deadline for candidates’ filing disclosures for the second quarter of the year, just ended. Preliminary indications have been that candidate Morris will show cash on hand in the six figures, with Chumney lagging behind, and Willingham pulling up the rear.

    Meanwhile, Willingham is doing what he can to engender what, in our time, is rather quaintly called “free media” (i.e., news coverage).

    At a recent meeting of the Southeast Shelby Republican Club at the Pickering Center in Germantown he used the club’s traditional “introduce-yourself” round asked of all guests by delivering what amounted to a campaign address that was standard Willingham.

    Contained within it was a litany of the maverick former commissioner’s sworn foes — including old ones like establishment Republicans David Kustoff, Kemp Conrad, John Ryder, Maida Pearson, and Alan Crone, all former party chairmen who announced their support of his then potential 2006 commission opponent, Mike Carpenter, early enough to help persuade Willingham out of a reelection race and into one for county mayor.

    But there were some new names, too — prominent among them Bruce Saltsman, former governor Don Sundquist‘s transportation commissioner, whom Willingham, without further explanation, held liable for the “shenanigans” of the now suspect FedExForum deal. And the former commissioner intimated he knew of dark deeds committed by some well-known developers.
    But all of this would definitely play second or even third feature to the potential restaging, right here in River City, of Shakespeare’s most famous play.