Tag: political

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Opinion Viewpoint

“Making Progress”

The media spectacle that Arizona senator John McCain made of himself in Baghdad on April 1st was simply another reprise of an old and ghastly ritual. McCain expressed “very cautious optimism” and told reporters that the latest version of the U.S. war effort in Iraq is “making progress.”

Three years ago, in early April 2004, when an insurrection exploded in numerous Iraqi cities, U.S. occupation spokesman Dan Senor informed journalists: “We have isolated pockets where we are encountering problems.” Nine days later, President George W. Bush declared: “It’s not a popular uprising. Most of Iraq is relatively stable.”

For government officials committed to a war based on lies, such claims are in the wiring.

When Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara visited Vietnam for the first time in May 1962, he came back saying that he’d seen “nothing but progress and hopeful indications of further progress in the future.”

In October 1966, when McNamara held a press conference at Andrews Air Force Base after returning from another trip to Vietnam, he spoke of the progress he’d seen there. Then-military analyst Daniel Ellsberg recalls that McNamara made that presentation “minutes after telling me that everything was much worse than the year before.”

Despite the recent “surge” in the kind of media hype that McCain was trying to boost in Baghdad, this spring has begun with most news coverage still indicating that the war is going badly for American forces in Iraq. Some pundits say that U.S. military fortunes there during the next few months will determine the war’s political future in Washington. And opponents of the war often focus their arguments on evidence that an American victory is not possible.

But shifts in the U.S. military role on the ground in Iraq, coupled with the Pentagon’s air war escalating largely out of media sight, could enable the war’s promoters to claim a notable reduction of “violence.” And the American death toll could fall due to reconfiguration or reduction of U.S. troop levels inside Iraq.

Such a combination of developments would appeal to the fervent nationalism of U.S. news media. But the antiwar movement shouldn’t pander to jingo-narcissism. If we argue that the war is bad mainly because of what it is doing to Americans, then what happens when the Pentagon finds ways to cut American losses — while continuing to inflict massive destruction on Iraqi people?

American news outlets will be inclined to depict the Iraq war as winding down when fewer Americans are dying in it. That happened during the last several years of the Vietnam War, while massive U.S. bombing — and Vietnamese deaths — continued unabated.

The vast bulk of the U.S. media is in the habit of defining events around the world largely in terms of what’s good for the U.S. government — through the eyes of top officials in Washington. Routinely, the real lives of people are noted only as shorthand for American agendas. The political spin of the moment keeps obscuring the human element.

Awakening from a 40-year nap, an observer might wonder how much has changed since the last war that the United States stumbled over because it could not win. The Congressional Record is filled with insistence that the lessons of Vietnam must not be forgotten. But they cannot be truly remembered if they were never learned in the first place.

Norman Solomon’s latest book is War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death.

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Editorial Opinion

Reaching a Balance

Thanks to a spot that runs regularly on the local Air America radio affiliate, we learn that some or another major media source — we forget which, but we were impressed — declared Memphis “the greatest American place” back in 1998. If we are, it is because the conditions of our existence have historically compelled a mingling of cultures, resulting most noticeably in a series of glorious musical heritages. We use the plural on purpose, having heard music
historiographer David Evans of the University of Memphis discourse convincingly on the separate musical streams — ragtime, blues, jazz, R&B, rockabilly, rock-and-roll, and more — that have issued into the world from Memphis.

But our greatness in the future will depend on how well we achieve a synthesis of our populations in other ways, especially politically and socially. Like the rest of America, Memphis and Shelby County are now past that era in which the words “black” and “white” adequately describe ethnic variety. We are home now to Asians and Hispanics in truly significant numbers.

It is this last fact, along with the rough balance of Caucasians and African Americans in our mix, that made the honor conferred on us this past weekend by Major League Baseball so appropriate. In becoming the site of the first annual Civil Rights Game and, according to baseball commissioner Bud Selig, the likely permanent home of the game, Memphis achieved both a signal distinction and the opportunity to become an annual example to mankind.

That opportunity is a burden, too, of course. We may be currently notorious in the eyes of the state and nation for instances of public corruption, but few other American jurisdictions, we venture, have achieved an effective symmetry in government to the extent that we have.

Consider: The current congressman in Memphis’ 9th congressional district, Steve Cohen, is a white who won a hefty majority last year against a black opponent with a famous last name. The current mayor of Shelby County, where Caucasians still dominate on Election Day, is A C Wharton, an African American who won a lopsided majority in 2004 over a well-known white member of the County Commission.

A white candidate, City Council member Carol Chumney, has gained enough currency in Memphis’ black precincts to have finished ahead of Memphis’ incumbent black mayor, Willie Herenton, in the first major poll of city voters. Meanwhile, a significant number of influential whites are involved in the mayoral effort of another candidate, former MLGW head Herman Morris, who is African American.

Racial issues still flare up in local government. The current controversy over a proposed second Juvenile Court judge is a case in point, though even that issue has as much to do with reaching an effective balance between the county’s municipal and governmental jurisdictions as anything else.

We still argue at the table over who gets the best seat or the first cut of meat. But we sit down together, and we’re used to it. If we can take the next major step and stabilize population flow in an environment that is economically secure for all, we will, in fact, deserve to be called a great American place.

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Politics Politics Feature

Bad News for the Mayor

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

If there is a given in the developing Memphis mayoral campaign, it is that incumbent mayor Willie Herenton is weaker than anyone — friend, foe, or neutral — had previously imagined and that his weakness extends across the political spectrum.

That was the message of two new independent polls whose existence was first reported on MemphisFlyer.com last week. Though complete facts and figures were not available at press time, the two surveys reportedly not only show Herenton in significant decline with the electorate — both white and black — but reveal that City Council member Carol Chumney‘s two-years’ worth of high-profile challenges to the mayor have elevated her to first place among the candidates now in the field.

Multiple sources confirm that one of the polls, performed by veteran pollster/strategist John Bakke on commission from businessman Karl Schledwitz, demonstrated Chumney to be in first place as of now and — to answer something that political junkies have wondered about incessantly — is doing well among the city’s black voters in addition to its disenchanted whites. Former MLGW head Herman Morris, still working on his name recognition among voters at large, lags behind (though he, too, reportedly polls higher than Herenton), and erstwhile Shelby County commissioner John Willingham is further back still. Another poll, reportedly taken by lawyer Richard Fields, is said to contain similar findings.

One of Morris’ mainstays, lawyer John Ryder, was philosophical about the results. “This will obviously buoy Carol, but it won’t hold up over the long haul. Meanwhile, Willie will have to be pleased.” Ryder maintained that Morris was the mayor’s chief threat in the long term, and that what he saw as Chumney’s short-term strength might actually be of some benefit to Herenton.

Morris himself noted that his entrance into the race had been later than Chumney’s by several months and expressed confidence that future polls would show a significant rise on his part.

News of the poll generated a good deal of speculation about a possible entry in the mayor’s race by Shelby County mayor A C Wharton, who has been relentlessly encouraged to make a race — by members of the city’s business establishment, in particular. A number of observers conjecture that Wharton, who said earlier this month that he would not run against Herenton, will rethink that position.

“He’ll definitely run if Herenton drops out, and there’s a 30 percent chance that he’ll run even if Herenton stays in,” opined one. For his part, the county mayor told the Flyer last week that he’d had conversations on the subject but that he wouldn’t “kiss and tell” concerning the contents.

Whatever impetus had developed for a Wharton run was seriously blunted, however, by news late last week that the county mayor’s son, A C Wharton III, had been arrested in Knoxville on charges of statutory rape. No one imagines that the incident would damage Mayor Wharton’s popularity or electability. The concern is that the gravity of this private family matter would erode whatever appetite he had for running.

Justin Fox Burks

Carol Chumney

One of the known findings of the Bakke poll was that 51 percent of those polled had a negative reaction to Mayor Herenton. At the other extreme, A C Wharton’s negatives were said to be only 3 percent. Another surprise finding was that a significantly larger percentage of African-American voters described themselves as “conservative” than those who considered themselves “liberal.”

• State Senate speaker pro tem Rosalind Kurita (D-Clarksville) is launched on a serious P.R. effort to still the waters that were roiled among Democrats by her decisive vote in January for Republican Ron Ramsey (Blountville) as Senate Speaker and lieutenant governor.

Ever since then, Kurita’s action — which deposed long-time Speaker John Wilder (D-Somerville) and allowed her own elevation to the Senate post she now holds — has cast her as an outcast among influential state Democrats. One of the most prominent, Senate Democratic leader Jim Kyle of Memphis, wrote an open letter to statewide Democrats denouncing her for alleged defects in “trust, confidence, and moral character.”

Kurita, who before the vote was widely regarded as a likely Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2008, has lately made a point of granting interviews explaining her vote on the speakership as a principled one in favor of majority control. (Until the switch last month of GOP senator Micheal Williams of Maynardville to “independent” status, Republicans held a one-vote majority in the Senate.)

This past weekend, while in Memphis to take part in Tennessee History Day activities, she met with members of Memphis’ liberal blogging community at the East Memphis home of lawyer/activist Jocelyn Wurzburg. The invitation-only affair, arranged by local activist Paula Casey, was billed as “off the record,” but the emerging consensus from the attending bloggers indicates they were only slightly mollified by Kurita’s explanations for her vote. However civilly it is expressed, “No Sale” is still their predominant reaction.

• Shelby County Democrats have a new leader as of Saturday. Elected party chairman by the newly chosen Democratic executive committee was the Rev. Keith Norman. The vote, at Airways Middle School, was 48 to 18 for Norman over lawyer Jay Bailey.

Though the results were no surprise, the margin of Norman’s win was larger than expected, and his support clearly spanned across all of the pre-existing party factions.

Bailey’s cause had been hampered by what many saw as a too-little-too-late response to a mailing sent by lawyer Richard Fields to all voting delegates outlining a series of past disciplinary actions assessed or initiated against Bailey’s work as an attorney.

Fields himself was elected to the new executive committee, returning him to a body he was forced to resign from a year ago for working in harness with the state Republican Party’s lawyers to void the special election of state senator Ophelia Ford, since reelected.

According to blogger Thaddeus Matthews, a sworn Fields adversary, another new committee member, radio talk-show host Jennings Bernard, will attempt to have Fields unseated for activity since then that benefitted Republican candidates.

The new committee will have its first meeting this Thursday night at the IBEW Union Hall on Madison.

• Yes, Virginia, there’s another special election coming in Shelby County. This one, at Governor Bredesen‘s direction on Monday, is for the seat in state House District 89 (centered on Midtown). The seat became vacant with the election last month of then Rep. Beverly Marrero to fill a vacancy in state Senate District 30.

Democratic and Republican primaries will be held on Thursday, May 31st, with the general election following on Tuesday, July 17th. Kevin Gallagher and Jeannie Richardson are known Democratic candidates; so far, no Republican candidate has announced.

At press time, the Shelby County Election Commission had not announced a filing deadline.• City Council member Brent Taylor has formally announced a decision that has been privately known for some time: Taylor, who was first elected in 1995 to represent District 2 (Cordova) and was the council’s best-known and most consistent conservative, will not seek a fourth term.

A ready man with a hard-edged quip, Taylor was the subject of headlines back in 2004 when an irate Mayor Herenton, in the course of a heated meeting, asked him outside.

That argument, over personnel matters, blew over. But until Taylor began preparing his exit over the last year, he could be depended on as a headline-maker and as an exponent of minimalist government.

Taylor’s announcement ensures a likely free-for-all for his seat — one of several open ones in this year’s city election. Petitions for city positions may be picked up at the Election Commisson beginning Friday, April 20th. Filing deadline will be Thursday, July 19th, and withdrawal deadline a week later, Thursday, July 26th.

• Friends and family paid homage to the late Larry Williams at a well-attended Saturday service at the P&H Café on Madison, a site favored by Williams, well-known as a writer and columnist for The Commercial Appeal and beloved as a political satirist on TV and in local Gridiron shows.

Williams, who frequently teamed up with the late Terry Keeter in public performances, was also a key member of the campaign team of 9th District congressman Steve Cohen during Cohen’s first congressional run in 1996.

For further details on these and other political stories — including a report on political guru James Carville‘s appearance in Memphis last week — see “Political Beat” at www.memphisflyer.com.

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Analyze This

Psychology always trumps ideology. Well, at least according to James Carville. The squinty, chrome-domed architect of Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign is always good for a memorable quote, but some of the Ragin’ Cajun’s more recent antics have left political observers wondering whether or not the cantankerous analyst, author, and political talk-show regular is still relevant. No sooner had the Democrats retaken the House and the Senate by running hard against President Bush and the conservative agenda than Carville was publicly fretting that the party’s left flank would be its undoing. He brought down the wrath of the left’s vociferous online community by forcefully suggesting that Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, whose “50 State Strategy” played a certain, if not entirely quantifiable, role in the Dem’s first decisive victory since 9/11, should be immediately replaced by Harold Ford Jr., the triangulating conservative Democrat from Tennessee who ran a textbook 1992 campaign and lost his Senate campaign to moderate Republican Bob Corker. The conservative, anti-Dean rhetoric caused some on the winning side to wonder if Carville had become so deeply entrenched in Beltway groupthink that he was no longer the man who once famously claimed that “Republicans will always take on people in the interest of power,” while “good Democrats will never fear to take on the power in the interests of people.”

On Thursday, March 29th, at 7 p.m., the Rhodes College Lecture Board brings the always colorful and ever controversial Carville to the McCallum Ballroom in the Bryan Campus Life Center on the Rhodes College campus.

James Carville at rhodes college, Thursday, March 29th. Tickets are $20 at the door, $10 for students. Rhodes students get in free.

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Politics Politics Feature

Showdown Time

CREDIT: Gallagher Photo: Jackson Baker

As the Shelby County Commission voted Monday to hold interviews with potential candidates for interim state representative in House District 89 on Monday, April 2, with a vote on the interim member scheduled on April 9, contests were developing on the Democratic side of the aisle — both for the interim position and for the right to serve as permanent member via a subsequent special election.

Two Democrats were being talked up, as of Monday, to serve as interim state representative — activists David Holt and Mary Wilder. Holt was the subject of something of a draft movement among local progressive bloggers, while Wilder was being pushed by longtime activist/broker David Upton.

The real surprise is that, in the looming special election primary, Democrat Kevin Gallagher is losing ground among erstwhile supporters. Gallagher had been considered a tacit consensus choice and a virtual shoo-in after yielding to former District 89 representative Beverly Marrero in the District 30 state Senate special election, which she won.

Since that understanding was reached, however, Gallagher, who served most recently as campaign manager for 9th District congressman Steve Cohen, has alienated many of his former backers — both through acts of omission (some considered him too remote a presence during Marrero’s special election race with Republican Larry Parrish) and acts of commission (he has had a series of awkward personal encounters with members of his support base).

Rapidly gaining support for the permanent seat among Democrats is another longtime activist, Jeannie Richardson — who has picked up backing (some of it silent for now) with both Upton, her original sponsor, and with members of the blogging community who don’t normally see eye to eye with Upton.

All of this was occurring on the eve of another important vote among Democrats — that for local Democratic chairman, to take place next Saturday during a party convention. The two leading candidates are lawyer Jay Bailey and minister Keith Norman.

What amounted to the first one-on-one encounter between Bailey and Norman took place Monday night at the Pickering Center in Germantown through the auspices of the Germantown Democratic Club.

Gallagher Photo: Jackson Baker

Both candidates acquitted themselves well overall, and each made a point of bestowing praise — or at least friendship and respect — on the other. But each wielded a rhetorical two-edged sword in the process.

Norman, for example, was able tacitly to benefit from discussion of an anti-Bailey campaign mailer, even while deploring it. The mailer — a hefty collection of photocopied court records concerning disciplinary actions taken (or initiated) against lawyer Bailey — had, as everybody present knew, been sent at considerable expense to each voting delegate at Saturday’s forthcoming party convention.

In his opening remarks, Bailey had left no mystery as to who the sender of the packets had been.

“I’m proud of being a professional. I’m proud of being one of the people in this community who went through some things but was able to stand up and see my way through it … . I will not allow my character to be assassinated by innuendo by someone sending out an anonymous packet who was too afraid to put their name to it. I’ll tell you who it was. It was Richard Fields.”

Fields, a frequent adversary, had failed to explain that most of the actions against him had been dismissed, said Bailey. He acknowledged having had a drug problem a decade ago that was at the heart of a suspension imposed on him at the time, but denounced Fields’ packet as the kind of “mudslinging” that had cost other Democrats elections in the past — “eight judicial races and four clerk’s races.”

The reference was to Fields’ practice, begun last year, of distributing open letters making the case against various candidates for office.

During his own remarks, Norman expressed solidarity with Bailey on the point, wondering “where the money came from” for Fields’ mailer. “If you haven’t won lawsuits, you don’t have that kind of money.”

Jackson Baker

Norman and Bailey made nice (sort of) Monday night.

In an apparent reference to Fields’ first campaign letter, sent out last year concerning the backgrounds of several judicial candidates, Norman said he knew “the party was in trouble” when he saw it, and he cited the fact as one of the inspirations for his ultimate decision to seek the chairmanship.

“I knew nothing about this stuff,” Norman said about the current mailer. “I don’t care what Jay Bailey did 10 years ago.” Without mentioning Fields by name, he criticized “someone who had the audacity and nerve” to put it out, “maybe trying to make me look bad.”

In the course of disclaiming any intention of being judgmental about opponent Bailey, Norman, pastor of First Baptist Church on Broad, went so far as to lament the recent firing of an assistant minister at Bellevue Baptist Church for an act of child molestation — “something that was done 34 years ago.”

Of Fields’ mailer, Norman said, “I won’t stand for it” and noted that he and Bailey had discussed preparing a formal joint response, but he added pointedly, “Because it was against Jay, I wanted him to address the issues. That hasn’t happened yet.”

The two candidates agreed that unity across factional lines was a high priority for the party and that the high incidence of corruption among elected officials, many of them Democrats, was a major problem, but they seemed to differ about the degree of loyalty owed by the party chairman or the party as a whole to candidates running as Democrats.

“There are times that we have to make difficult decisions about whether to support particular Democrats,” Norman said, speaking of those with ethics issues. “We can’t go around co-signing everybody’s loan. We’re tearing our credibility down.”

While agreeing that candidates with conflicted personal situations ought to be counseled “either to work their way through it or to work themselves out of the race,” Bailey laid greater stress on unconditional loyalty to a formal Democratic ticket, once selected by the electorate in a primary. He also urged strong support of issues important to organized labor, a traditional Democratic constituency.

As evidence of his ability to cross factional lines and improve the fortunes of the Democratic Party, Norman cited both his pastoral history and his former career in the business world doing “turnarounds” of sagging commercial properties.

He noted the examples of East St. Louis, Illinois, and Gary, Indiana — two municipalities blighted by economic distress and civic corruption. “Memphis is about 25 light years away from that,” Norman warned somberly.

Democrats will choose between the two candidates on Saturday at Airways Junior High, site of the preliminary party caucus four weeks ago.

It remains to be seen whether the field of candidates is complete for the Memphis mayoral election. Various names are still being talked up, and one of them, despite his conditional disclaimer of last week, is Shelby County mayor A C Wharton, who backhandedly acknowledged this week that he is still being hot-boxed to run for city mayor by members of the business community, according to reports.

“I won’t kiss and tell” was Wharton’s somewhat cryptic response. The county mayor has said he won’t run against incumbent mayor Willie Herenton. The implication was that if Herenton ceased being a candidate for any reason, Wharton himself might very well take the plunge.

Roll Call, a Washington, D.C., insiders’ publication, published an article last week about Representative Steve Cohen’s relatively high-profile tenure in office so far and speculated on the kind of opposition he might face in a 2008 reelection bid.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the article mentioned as likely opponents several of the leading candidates against Cohen in last year’s election — Jake Ford, Julian Bolton, Ron Redwing, Ed Stanton, and others.

Perhaps the most frequently mentioned of likely adversaries, also cited in the Roll Call piece, is Nikki Tinker, the Pinnacle Airlines lawyer who was runner-up to Cohen in last year’s Democratic primary. Tinker is making the political rounds and was one of the attendees at Monday night’s forum for Democratic chairmanship candidates.

Tinker declined to comment “right now” on her intentions.

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Opinion

Politics and Justice

How long do you think it will take the national media to follow the strands of the fired federal prosecutors story to Tennessee? I’d say about two weeks, at most.

On April 9th, former state senator John Ford goes on trial in federal court in Memphis. He’s a big fish in his own right and he’s the uncle of Harold Ford Jr., who is a celebrity, and the brother of Harold Ford Sr., who had his own federal trials in 1990 and 1993. The second trial, which resulted in Ford’s acquittal, was marked by exactly the sort of political meddling in the Justice Department that is now being exposed in the Bush administration.

There are so many good angles it’s hard to cram them all in, but here goes.

Don Sundquist’s name could come up in the John Ford trial because the powerful senator from Shelby County was a go-to guy from 1994 to 2002, when Sundquist was governor. Ford has a May 22nd trial date in Nashville on charges related to consulting.

But there’s much more. When he was a congressman in 1991, Sundquist recommended that Hickman Ewing Jr. be replaced by Ed Bryant as U.S. attorney for Western Tennessee. Ewing and his assistants were on the trail of Harold Ford Sr., who confronted Ewing in an elevator in the federal building in 1989 and told him, “You are a pitiful excuse for a U.S. attorney, but I can guarantee you that you won’t be the U.S. attorney much longer.”

Like the eight fired prosecutors who are now in the news, Ewing was replaced in mid-term. Ewing, Sundquist, and Bryant are Republicans, while Ford is a Democrat. In 1993, Bill Clinton was the newly elected president, and when Democrats in the Justice Department tried to influence jury selection in the second Ford trial, the government’s two trial attorneys resigned, albeit for only a day. So did Bryant, who was going to be replaced anyway along with 92 other U.S. attorneys as part of the new administration.

Sundquist, of course, went on to become governor. In his second term, when Tennessee Waltz was still just a song, federal prosecutors began an investigation of fraudulent state contracts. One close friend of Sundquist, John Stamps, was sentenced to two years in prison in 2005. Another Sundquist friend, Al Ganier, was indicted on federal obstruction charges in 2004. Three years later, he doesn’t even have a trial date. But in a court order in 2005, U.S. district judge Karl Forester wrote that Sundquist was “the impetus” for the federal investigation and said prosecutors had evidence that Sundquist “improperly interceded” on Ganier’s behalf.

Sundquist has not been charged and has said he is confident he is not under investigation. If the phrase “improperly interceded” rings a bell, that’s what has Joseph Lee on the hot seat over at MLGW in connection with another Ford, brother Edmund.

Meanwhile, federal prosecutors in Memphis and Nashville who were there at the start of the political corruption investigations have moved on. In Memphis, Terry Harris took a job with FedEx. In Nashville, Jim Vines resigned in 2006, and first assistant Zach Fardon left in January.

Will Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resign? He apparently lied about what he knew about the firings and when he knew it. Lying can be criminal. It was one of the factors that got Roscoe Dixon such a harsh prison sentence, and it’s one of the charges against Michael Hooks Jr., scheduled to go to trial later this year.

The bumbling of the Justice Department has been criticized by, among others, Bud Cummins, former U.S. attorney in Arkansas, who was fired last year to make room for a pal of Karl Rove and then smeared by his old bosses. Two years ago, Cummins, a Republican, staunchly defended Gonzales and President Bush.

If Republican prosecutors are upset, how do you suppose Democratic pols feel about being seven times as likely as Republicans to be indicted? A suggested opening argument in the John Ford trial: “Ladies and gentlemen, in the 1996 presidential election, Memphis delivered Tennessee, whose electoral votes clinched it for Clinton/Gore. The Republicans and Karl Rove never got over it, and Mr. Ford is the victim of a political vendetta by a Justice Department whose leadership lies.”

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News The Fly-By

Ethical Dilemma

CREDIT: Maciej Oleksy | Dreamstime.com

Local governments have attorneys, planners, and engineers on staff, but it might be time to hire an ethicist. Or at least put one on retainer.

Under state law, local governing bodies are required to approve a new ethics policy by June 30,
2007. But last week, after a discussion over who should review ethics complaints, the County Commission ethics policy ad hoc committee sent its lawyers back to the drawing board.

Last year, in the wake of the Tennessee Waltz scandal, the state legislature enacted the 2006 Ethics Reform Act, which stipulates that local governments adopt ethical standards relating to conflicts of interest and gifts.

Under a mandate from the state, the County Technical Assistance Service developed a model policy that included a five-person County Ethics Committee to receive and investigate ethics violations. The model committee was to be composed of three county commissioners, one constitutional county officer (or another county commissioner), and one member of another board governed by the committee … or another county commissioner.

Mayor A C Wharton went before the ad hoc committee last week to suggest that the Shelby County panel should be composed of retired judges, lawyers, and business leaders.

“Whatever model we go with, there’s got to be a window that the public can peek in,” said Wharton. “We’ve got to get the public away from the idea that … elected officials just look out for each other.”

While Wharton thought that public involvement would add credibility to the county’s ethics policy, some members of the commission bristled at the thought of the general public constantly looking over their shoulders.

“I have a problem with laypeople trying to determine what’s legal and what’s not,” said Commissioner Sidney Chism. “You go on Web sites and read comments from people who think they are highly intelligent, and I find they’re just straight-out crazy.”

It’s an interesting question: Who is best suited to judge the ethics of elected officials? And who do elected officials think is best suited to judge them?

Commissioner Mike Carpenter noted that people face a jury of their peers every day at 201 Poplar, and those decisions can result in life sentences. Or worse.

Lawyer David Cocke, a member of the ad hoc committee, said that the public often demands ethics reforms that are more stringent than what is legally required. But even though that may scare local politicians, public involvement is the only thing that will satisfy and reassure an increasingly jaded citizenry.

“Everyone suspects politicians are going to take care of their own,” said Cocke. “You’ve got to find people who are impartial to make recommendations.”

The public cannot be blamed for believing that politicians look out for other politicians. Think about last year’s motion to censure City Council members Rickey Peete and Edmund Ford in the wake of federal bribery charges. The council couldn’t even find the votes to ask them to resign, much less censure them.

After the County Commission committee decided to craft a new draft based on the model policy, Commissioner Henri Brooks proposed keeping all allegations secret until an investigation had determined that an ethics violation had actually taken place. The commissioners wanted to protect against someone making ethics violation allegations for political gain.

Fair enough, but keeping allegations secret — even false ones — would be so much worse. Someone would leak the allegation to the media, reporters would call, and no one would be able to comment officially. But I’d bet the person who reported the ethics violation would be more than willing to talk, especially if it was a false allegation for political gain.

Too many politicians have abused the public’s confidence. If the public is going to trust elected officials, it’s going to take a lot more openness and a lot more information.

But as jaded as Shelby Countians are, they also seem very forgiving. Look at some of the dubious things John Ford was reportedly doing before he was indicted. People still like him. And Rickey Peete was reelected to the City Council after a bribery conviction.

But I could be wrong. Maybe my ethicist will know.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Bump in the Road

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

A few weeks ago, Keith Norman, matched against rival candidate Jay Bailey, seemed a good bet to become the next chairman of the Shelby County Democratic Party.

His public boosters included both Shelby County commissioner Sidney Chism, the former Teamster leader and ex-party chairman who leads one of the major party factions, and Desi Franklin, a leader of the Mid-South Democrats in Action, a reformist group that came on the local political scene in the wake of the 2004 presidential campaign.

The combination of Chism’s supporters and the MSDIA group (abetted by members of Democracy in Memphis, an outgrowth of the erstwhile Howard Dean movement) was enough to put Matt Kuhn over as party chairman in 2005. At the time, Kuhn, a youthful political operative and veteran of numerous campaigns, was regarded as a compromise “third-force” choice — a break from the back-and-forth pendulum swings between the party’s “Ford faction” and Chism’s group, loyal, more or less, to Mayor Willie Herenton.

Jackson Baker

Keith Norman

To be sure, local Democrats are disputatious (maybe we should say “free-minded”) enough to do justice to 20th-century humorist Will Rogers’ line, “I’m not a member of an organized political party; I’m a Democrat.” Their loyalties are not so hard and fast as to be confined permanently to one bloc or another.

Lawyer Bailey, son of former longtime county commissioner Walter Bailey, had a span of his own, ranging from members of the old Ford faction to party loyalists grateful for his legal representation of several defeated Democratic candidates who challenged the results of last year’s countywide elections.

Even so, depending on how the delegate-selection process from the party’s March 3rd caucus actually sorted out, the Chism-Franklin arithmetic was regarded in many quarters as good enough to give Norman, a Baptist minister, the advantage in the forthcoming local Democratic convention, to be held on Saturday, March 31st.

This impression was bolstered by Norman’s speaking appearance late last month at a meeting of the MSDIA — one that was attended by curious party members from various factions.

At that event, Norman spoke eloquently and persuasively (as befits someone long used to dealing with a large congregation, in his case, the First Baptist Church on Broad Street). He proclaimed a “big tent” philosophy in which a variety of viewpoints would be welcomed within the party, talked turkey on matters of fund-raising, Get-Out-the-Vote efforts, and managed to skirt potentially divisive issues like abortion and gay rights.

Though Bailey is a trial lawyer with ample rhetorical skills of his own, it seemed obvious to attendees at the MSDIA meeting that Norman, a towering but good-natured presence, would be a hard man to match up to, one-on-one. It seemed clear, too — both from Norman’s presentation and from testimonials paid him by various Democratic luminaries and activists — that his appeal could be wide enough to transcend factional differences.

Jackson Baker

Richard Fields

Ninth District congressman Steve Cohen passed along his compliments, and even David Upton, a longtime Bailey associate and backer, had good things to say about Norman.

Some of his professed supporters, however, may have done him more harm than good.

The Fields Case (Continued)

There was the strange case of attorney Richard Fields, who in recent election years has comported himself in the manner of a would-be kingmaker. In fairness, Fields probably sees himself as some kind of public ombudsman, overseeing the political process in the interests of the people.

In any event, Fields made a big splash during the 2006 countywide election process, composing open letters about the attributes, positive and negative, of various candidates. His widely distributed observations on judicial candidates in particular were regarded as having had palpable effect in the election results.

Fields, however, was not universally accepted as an unbiased observer. Some African-American observers — notably blogger Thaddeus Matthews — argued that Fields was bolstering mainly white, establishment-supported candidates and selectively bashing independent-minded blacks.

The very charge, true or not, was ironic, given Fields’ background as a civil rights attorney, his marriages to black women, and the biracial nature of his several children.

In truth, Fields supported both whites and blacks and Democrats as well as Republicans, though Matthews and others, notably attorney Robert Spence, saw him as having hedged his endorsements, even changing several, in order to create a false appearance of objectivity.

As chronicled in a previous column (“The Fields Case,” February 1st issue), two white candidates for General Sessions judgeships — Janet Shipman and Regina Morrison Newman — saw their promised endorsements belatedly withdrawn by Fields in favor of equally qualified black candidates, Lee Coffee and Deborah Henderson, respectively.

Coffee and Henderson, who, among their other important endorsements, had that of the Shelby County Republican Party, both won, and Shipman and
Newman each later agreed with Spence’s assessment that they had fallen victim to Fields’ need to do some old-fashioned ticket-balancing.

Spence himself had serious arguments with erstwhile supporter Fields during his service some years ago as city attorney and later made unspecified charges that Fields had tried to extort unwarranted favors from him.

Jackson Baker

Legislative Leaders: West Tennessee may have lost some clout in the Tennessee General Assembly, but not Shelby County, which boasts both party leaders in the Senate. Here Mark Norris (left), Republican majority leader, and Jim Kyle, Democratic leader, mull over a compromise on medical tort reform.

When Spence became a candidate in the special Democratic primary to fill a state Senate vacancy early this year, Fields materialized yet again as a public scold, sending out an advisory letter warning voters of what he saw as Spence’s derelictions as city attorney. Spence lost to fellow Democrat Beverly Marrero, who also won the general election last week to succeed Cohen (and interim fill-in senator Shea Flinn) as state senator from District 30.

In any case, Fields’ ad hoc career as commentator on elections and would-be arbiter of candidacies was already well-launched when he rose during the last several minutes of Norman’s meeting with MSDIA members to make a point of revealing his own support of the minister, announcing, in fact, that he had “vetted” Norman’s candidacy beforehand.

That statement, together with Norman’s own wry revelation that Fields had made several telephone calls to him that day to make sure he would be in attendance at the MSDIA event, created an impression, right or wrong, that Fields was a prime mover in the Norman candidacy.

Confusion in the Ranks

Reaction to Fields’ intervention was virtually immediate. This was, after all, no judicial election for which Fields, as a longtime practicing attorney, could be thought of as supplying a pure, even-handed evaluation of credentials. This was the most partisan of all possible partisan matters — the selection of a party leader — and Fields was not exactly the ideal endorser.

He had, after all, been forced to resign last year as a member of the very Democratic committee that will have to decide on a new chairman. His offense? Pooling his legal efforts with those of the state Republican Party to overturn the 2005 special election victory of Democrat Ophelia Ford for reasons of possible election fraud committed on her behalf.

No one on the committee quarreled with Fields’ right to seek that legal end — just not as a member of the Democratic committee. (Ford’s election was, in fact, ultimately voided by the state Senate, though she won election to the seat overwhelmingly in last year’s regular election.)

Several rank-and-file Democrats expressed open displeasure concerning Fields’ involvement in the chairmanship race, and blogger Matthews would later report that Norman, when asked about it, “denounced” Fields as a potential supporter. Asked about that this week, Norman declined comment. He also would neither confirm nor deny that he had distanced himself, as reported by Matthews, from Chism’s support.

For obvious reasons, all of this fuss caused some rethinking about Norman’s inevitability as a chairman. The pastor himself would say only that he preferred to speak of “principles” rather than personalities, that he wanted to avoid immersion in factional disputes, that he had no wish to be judgmental, and that he had resolved to keep his own efforts “on higher ground.”

Last week saw the resolution of two political mini-dramas with the special-election victories of Democrats Marrero and G.A. Hardaway for state Senate and state House positions, respectively. (New District 92 representative Hardaway, a longtime campaigner for father’s-rights legislation in child-custody cases, will presumably bring with him his continued dedication to that cause.)

One other piece of news from the week (actually late last week): Shelby County Election Commission chairman Greg Duckett was named to the state Election Commission — which means that a new member will shortly be named to the county Election Commission.

Whoops! Here comes another political drama — maybe not so mini. The fact is, the local commission is facing not a single routine replacement but something resembling a total makeover — at least of its three-member Democratic Party contingent.

The commission as a whole has come under frequent challenge during the past year for alleged derelictions in supervising elections, and, while the commission’s two Republicans, Rich Holden and Nancye Hines, appear to have escaped their partymates’ wrath and seem assured of a safe return, the remaining Democrats are at risk.

As Senate Democratic leader Jim Kyle, a member of the Shelby County legislative delegation that will resolve the issue, put it on Thursday: “I wouldn’t be surprised if either Maura [Sullivan] or O.C. [Pleasant] went off, too. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if they both did.”

A total swap-out for the Election Commission’s Democrats? Other legislators from Shelby County — like delegation chairman Joe Towns, who personally took no position on the prospect of a complete makeover — said they’d heard similar conjectures.

The list of Democratic applicants for one, two, or three positions include the two party holdovers, Sullivan and Pleasant, and several other well-known local Democrats, including former commissioner Myra Stiles’ recent countywide candidates Coleman Thompson, Shep Wilbun, and Sondra Becton and local AFSCME leader Dorothy Crook.

Some measure of Democrats’ discontent with the status quo on the commission can be gleaned from the fact that Suzanne Darnell, representing the local Democratic executive committee’s task force on the election process, has requested a meeting with Election Commission members and staff to discuss 14 separate points of misgiving concerning the way elections went last year.

The points ranged from doubts concerning election hardware and software to questions concerning the commission’s oversight and the fact that the post of deputy commission director continues to go unfilled. The late Barbara Lawing, a longtime Democratic activist and proponent of civil rights and feminist issues, will be the only posthumous recipient of the seven Women of Achievement awards that will be given Sunday at 4 p.m., at the University of Memphis-area Holiday Inn as part of National Women’s History Month. Other recipients will be the Rev. Rebekah Jordan, Donna Fortson, Nancy Lawhead, Gertrude Purdue, Modeane Thompson, and Sheila White.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Brand Name

CREDIT: Ever | Dreamstime.com

Memphis City Schools is probably not “the best part of wakin’ up.” Good things don’t “come to those who wait.” And students can’t “have it your way.” But the school system is trying to create a brand that will be as ubiquitous and memorable as Folgers, Heinz, and Burger King.

MCS is in the midst of a revamped campaign surrounding its “Every Child. Every Day. College Bound” tagline. After months of using the phrase on the district’s Web site, letterhead, and signage, the school board voted this month to make it the district’s official “brand” with a community-wide awareness campaign to follow.

Superintendent Carol Johnson has called the subject a civil rights issue, pointing out that citizens must have some form of post-secondary education to attain a decent standard of living. As it is, only a quarter of the city’s population has a college degree.

The board’s resolution cites a culture of lowered expectations and says that students are more likely to fall short of their potential without a specific goal. For at least one school board commissioner, however, “Every child. Every Day. College Bound” is a lie.

“It’s ridiculous to me,” says New Olivet Baptist Church pastor and at-large school board member Kenneth Whalum. “Every child, every day, is not college-bound. It’s just that simple.”

Whalum has no argument with the concept that every MCS student should be able to go on to post-secondary education. However, he feels the school board should focus on other priorities, goals he calls “no less fanciful” but “more realizable.” One of which is school safety and curbing the number of on-campus assaults.

“How about ‘Every Child. Every Day. Safe and Sound’? If you don’t live until graduation, then you’re not going to college,” he says.

MCS’ graduation rate is currently 66 percent, meaning that 34 percent of MCS students drop out or don’t finish high school with enough credits to earn a diploma. Statewide, 81 percent of Tennesseans over the age of 25 have attained a high school diploma or similar status.

And now that the board has made the slogan official, Whalum wants to see it become the truth, as well.

“I want to see the results, and I want to see them soon,” he says. “I want to see the data that every child, every day, is college-bound. I think that’s fair. If you say it, mean it. If you don’t, why are you saying it?”

I think the school district has good intentions. Even if every child isn’t going to college, at least the district is saying that it believes every child should be educated as if they were.

I believe in high expectations (especially if the other option is low expectations), but it takes hard work on everyone’s part. The danger is in students becoming frustrated and giving up before they have a chance to succeed.

But the thing that interests me the most is the use of the word “brand.” Not “motto.” Not “mission.” Not “slogan.” “Brand.”

When Johnson first came to MCS, she made no secret that public schools compete for children, or, as they are called in other service realms, “clients.” Parents can choose private schools, parochial schools, home schooling, or charter schools for their children.

It’s one thing to promote that every child in an urban school district can be prepared for a post-secondary education. But in adopting a brand, the school system itself becomes the product, not the students it serves.

Communities based around more affluent school districts often assume that every student is “college-bound,” especially as it is defined by MCS: any post-secondary education, whether it be technical training, two-year colleges, or military service. But in promoting the idea that every MCS student goes to college, the district is not only changing their students’ worldview, but sending an important message to parents who might be considering other educational options. Or other school systems.

Whalum is probably correct about one thing: There’s not always truth in advertising. Wearing deodorant is good, but it’s not going to make you a chick magnet. A pair of sneakers isn’t going to turn you into Carmelo Anthony. And not every MCS student is going to college.

But “Every Child. Every Day. College Bound” sounds a whole lot better than “You want fries with that?”

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Justice Served?

Memphians might remember Bud Cummins as the federal prosecutor who came over from Little Rock two years ago to try the strange case of former Shelby County medical examiner Dr. O.C. Smith.

Last week, Cummins was in the national news on another strange case — the case of the fired federal prosecutors who were purged by the U.S. Justice Department under President Bush. Under subpoena and the bright lights of C-SPAN, Cummins and five other former prosecutors testified before House and Senate committees in Washington.

In an exclusive interview with the Flyer, Cummins talked about the “painful process.” A lifelong Republican, he served as U.S. attorney in Little Rock for five years, until he was notified last June that he was being replaced in December.

“This is the kind of thing you convince yourself only happens in the other party,” he said. “But the truth is, from time to time it is no longer a question of party, it is a question of right or wrong.”

Cummins said he was not questioning the right of the president and attorney general to replace federal prosecutors, but he resents the way it was done.

“The way they chose to implement the decisions was incompetent,” he said. “The way they have attempted to defend themselves to Congress has been unfair to some of the individuals involved.”

Cummins told the congressional committees that “a senior Justice Department official warned him on February 20th that the fired prosecutors should remain quiet about their dismissals.” Cummins said he was warned that administration officials would “pull their gloves off and offer public criticisms to defend their actions more fully.”

Cummins was fired in order to provide a job for Tim Griffin, a former aide to Bush adviser Karl Rove and an opposition researcher for the Republican Party. Cummins told the Flyer that the heavy-handedness creates an impression of political interference that will be hard to combat.

“Once you lose your credibility, people start second-guessing every decision you make,” he said.

He added that he is grateful to President Bush for the opportunity to be a U.S. attorney and “not critical at all for him giving someone else that opportunity. That is the nature of the job. You can be up there throwing strikes, but if the manager takes the ball from you, that is the way it goes. Ultimately, it’s the manager’s call.”

As a prosecutor, Cummins and colleague Patrick Harris showed guts in trying the O.C. Smith case after local prosecutors either passed on it or recused themselves because of their working relationship with the medical examiner. Smith was accused of staging a bizarre incident in which he was found bound with barbed wire and a homemade bomb outside his office. The government elected not to retry the case, although Cummins said he was prepared to do so.

At trial, Cummins had to deal with several witnesses from the police department and district attorney general’s office who were protecting Smith, whose lawyers claimed he was attacked and bound by a lone assailant. Smith did not take the stand. His alleged attacker is still at large but has not struck again.

In an interview with the Flyer in 2005, Cummins defended Bush and the attorney general as “absolutely intolerant of prosecutors engaging in political activity of any kind. If you can’t leave politics at the door, you shouldn’t come here or you won’t last.”

In hindsight, he gave his bosses too much credit.

The purge of federal prosecutors is especially troubling for Memphis and unfair to U.S. attorney David Kustoff and assistant U.S. attorney Tim Discenza. Even though all the Memphis and Shelby County politicians indicted so far in Tennessee Waltz and Main Street Sweeper have been black Democrats, Kustoff, Discenza, and FBI agent in charge My Harrison have promised to be nonpolitical. Since the investigations are ongoing, they deserve to be taken at their word. But the treatment of Cummins and his seven colleagues makes that hard to do.