Tag: voting

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Politics Politics Feature

Post-Election, Herenton Settles Accounts With Pollsters, Ford, Morris Et Al.

CREDIT: jb

“The press had it all wrong. So did the pollsters. I said all along it was
mathematically impossible for either Chumney or Morris to beat me.”

That was Mayor Willie Herenton on Monday afternoon, holding court in his outer
office and still basking in a fifth-term victory that was all the sweeter
because it exceeded expectations. Everybody else’s expectations, that is. “I
knew I won early voting,” Herenton said.

And he had another theory about the mayoral voting that ended with him on top
with 70,177 votes, some 13,000 more than his closest competitor, Councilwoman
Carol Chumney. The mayor thought that too much analysis had been wasted on the
battle for white votes between Chumney and the third-place finisher, former Memphis
Light, Gas & Water head Herman Morris. Pundits and reporters alike had neglected
to factor him into that contest-within-a-contest, Herenton insisted.

Yes, on election night Herenton had inveighed against “haters” in a euphemistic
way reminiscent of former congressman Harold Ford Sr.’s condemnation of “East
Memphis devils” from his own post-election platform in 1994.

To be sure, whites had been virtually absent from Herenton’s victory celebration
at the Cook Convention Center, and no one was likely to forget the mayor’s
frequent campaign references to conspiratorial “snakes” and past trickery by the
white power-establishment, nor his persistent declarations that the 2007 mayoral
contest was about “race and power.”

Yet he was now willing to insist that he had been a serious contender for the
white vote all along. Nay, more — that his success with white voters is what
made the difference in this year’s race.

“I’ve been analyzing the returns,” the mayor said, “and I don’t think I got
70,000 African-American votes. I think 10,000 whites voted for me.”

If that was true, and had the lion’s share of those 10,000 votes gone instead
for Chumney, she might indeed have won — an argument that might fuel a
conspiracy theory about managed polls that the runner-up’s camp seems to be
taking seriously.)

Herenton himself has an eye for conspiracy. He sees the aborted visit by Ford
Sr. to a climactic Herenton rally — one that ended in a widely publicized
no-show by the former congressman — in that light. Having missed the rally, Ford
might at least have made a public endorsement of his candidacy. “But he couldn’t
even do that!” Herenton said.

Noting that longtime adversary Ford had made an early-voting trip into Memphis
on the eve of that rally, the mayor said, “I’m convinced he came down here just
to cast a vote against me!” And he promised: “I’ll have some things to say about
him [Ford] later on.”


THE DRUG TEST ISSUE

Another
sore point with Herenton was Morris’ frequent challenges for the mayor and the
rest of the field to join him in taking a drug test. The mayor vanished into his
inner office temporarily and returned with several pages showing the results of
a test, taken for insurance purposes back in June that demonstrated negative
findings in such categories as HIV, cocaine, alcohol, and tobacco.

He asked me to withhold specific figures, and I will. But it was clear — on this
medical accounting, at least — that the mayor had earned a clean bill of health,
in every sense of the term. As he said, he looked to be in terrific shape for a
67-year-old man. Even his blood pressure, as he pointed out, was within range.
“See?” he said, smiling. “You people in the press can’t even give me high blood
pressure!”

The mayor made a special point concerning when the report had been done. “Look
at the date: June 26th! That was before [Morris] started that nonsense about
drug tests. Some people advised me to show these results, but I had no intention
of dignifying him with a response, as if I owed him an answer on something like
that!

“Nothing goes in my body stronger than aspirin. Oh, I’ve admitted I like a red
wine — a Merlot. But that’s it,” he concluded.


ON FIXING THE CITY

By now,
Herenton had been joined by former city CAO and current MLGW overseer and Plough
Foundation head Rick Masson, who, like his ex-boss, seemed to be floating on the
kind of post-election high that needs no drug to activate.

Masson said nothing, but his facial expression alternated between the watchful
attentiveness required of any good subordinate and the kind of smirk that ought
to be outlawed by the Geneva Convention.

Herenton turned to the issue of his election night remarks, the bitterness of
which had been unmistakable. “I’m okay now. I got that out of my system,” he
said.

He recalled being at the airport recently when a white man came over —
strutting, to hear the mayor tell it:

“He said [Herenton imitating a peremptory voice]: ‘Mayor! When are you going to
start trying to fix our city?’

“I looked back at him and said, ‘And when are you going to start helping me?’ He
didn’t have anything to say to that.”

The mayor’s message seemed to be that he’s ready to listen whenever his critics
want to start talking — so long as it’s a real dialogue.

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Best of Memphis Special Sections

Best of Memphis 2007

Here at the Flyer we like to joke that the votes cast in the annual Best of Memphis Readers Poll are the most important ones of the year. And they are important — important to the hundreds of people represented in the categories who strive to make this city a more interesting and vibrant place to live. What it means when someone casts their vote — be it for “Best Restaurant” or “Best Sports Team” — is that they care. As it happens, this issue hits the stands the day before the mayoral and City Council elections. We hope readers hit those polls as well. It’s important.

Congratulations to all the winners. As always, a “BOM” designation means that the winner of that particular category received more than 50 percent of the total votes cast. “Readers Choice” means that the vote was too close to call.

Thanks to the readers who make this issue possible and to our advertisers who make all our issues possible. And special thanks to photographer Justin Fox Burks who came up with the trophy concept to illustrate the sections and went so far as to spray-paint a Huey’s burger gold. Another nod goes to Chad and Taryn at Elite Trophy & Screen Printing, which provided the trophies.

Compiled by Greg Akers, Mary Cashiola, Chris Davis, Pamela Denney, Susan Ellis, Michael Finger, Michael Flanagan, Leonard Gill, Chris Herrington, Preston Lauterbach, Bianca Phillips, and Bruce VanWyngarden. designed by Carrie Beasley.

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Pics from the Memphis Flyer BEST OF MEMPHIS 2007 Party

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Editorial Opinion

End Notes

First, the good news: The Memphis municipal election of 2007 involved some of the more interesting cross-cultural campaigning, in both the racial and the political senses, that we can remember in recent political history. In particular, white candidates made more

overt appeals to black voters than has been customary of late. A high point (if that is the right term) was the extravagant public claim of also-ran candidate John Willingham, a white Republican, that he was the candidate of black Memphians and had no fewer than 13,000 African-American votes locked up early on.

In this case, the very claim — not the reality of it — was the message.

Now, the bad news: The Memphis municipal election of 2007 involved some of the more flagrant appeals to racial divisiveness that we can remember in recent political history. In particular, Mayor Willie Herenton, who knows better, made several calculated appeals to racial solidarity based on the dubious assumption that there are, on the white side of town, any number of ongoing plots against black political power.

In this case too, the claim itself is the message.

Much money has been spent by the various campaigns on TV and print advertising, yard signs, and other appeals to voters. This, too, has a high side and a low side — inasmuch as the truth content of such communications has been ambivalent at best. (Poor Rickey Peete. Besides a bad conscience and the likelihood of prison time, the tarnished councilman has to live with the fact that his name is now proverbial — having been coupled, rightly or wrongly and sometimes with a bare minimum of justification, with this or that candidate in attack ads.)

Then there are the polls — sometimes commissioned in the interests of specific candidates and sometimes not — and under suspicion of being so even when such is patently not the case. The Flyer itself has neither paid for nor commissioned any polls — though we were the first media outlet to release a key poll by Berje Yacoubian late in the mayoral campaign. This fully annotated sampling was promptly doubted by partisans of the major candidate who did less well than his two opponents.

And, sure enough, another poll came along in another news outlet showing a wholly different configuration. For the record, yet a third major poll, commissioned by a TV station, was released this week, and it conformed quite closely in its results to the poll that ran in the Flyer.

Who’s right? Early readers of this space will still be wondering — as are we — though many will be looking at it ex post facto and will already know how things came out.

In any case, we rest easy with the fact that, in several of the City Council races, talented and able candidates were abundant, and we presume that voters had enough information at their disposal to be able to sift the real from the shoddy and to make the proper decisions.

We can only hope that such a presumption is not itself presumptuous.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: Voting For the Least Worst

So who are you voting for for Memphis mayor? It’s the issue everyone’s talking about. Of course, by the time you read this, it may be a moot point, but I think it’s important to speak and write honestly about the topic. And what I’ve seen and heard and read during this election cycle troubles me.

The thing that’s struck me about most of the conversations I’ve had and the e-mails I’ve received is that almost everyone is voting from fear. The fear expressed by some, for instance, that four more years of Mayor Herenton’s increasing weirdness and erratic behavior — to wit: the press conference this summer claiming unnamed “snakes” were plotting to get him, or the one he staged with the city attorney two weeks ago about crooked or defective voting machines, etc. — will doom us to divisiveness and stagnation.

Conversely, comments I’ve heard and read from some African Americans indicate they are voting for Herenton because they are afraid that if a white candidate (Carol Chumney) wins — or a candidate they perceive as “not black enough” (Herman Morris) — they could be “throwing away” all the gains they’ve earned from having a black mayor for 16 years.

Then there’s the “anybody but Herenton” crowd. These folks aren’t worried about skin color, they just don’t want Willie anymore. They’re trying to decide between Chumney and Morris, based solely on which of them has the best chance to beat Herenton. They’re constantly poll-watching, analyzing the percentages, waiting for the latest data, afraid they will pick the “wrong” candidate.

I know that each of the three major contenders for Memphis mayor has their true-believers, folks who aren’t voting from fear or gauging the odds of one candidate against another. But I think a great many of the city’s voters are voting to make sure something doesn’t happen, rather than choosing a candidate they truly beleive in.

It’s ironic and more than a little sad — given that this is the Flyer’s annual “Best of Memphis” issue — that so many of us are voting not for who we think is best for the job, but to avoid the worst.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

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

CREDIT: jb

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Opinion

How I Tried To Screw Up My Vote

It is possible but certainly not easy to cast a vote for someone you don’t mean to vote for.

I tried, I really tried.

Following Mayor/Candidate Willie Herenton’s two press conferences Wednesday, I walked over to the Shelby County Election Commission office two blocks from City Hall. Short of creating a public nuisance, I was hell-bent on making voting as difficult as possible, given that the mayor/candidate had just charged that early voting is flawed by voter error, machine error, and possible skullduggery.

First, I cast my real vote for mayor and City Council. As of Wednesday, a total of 14,660 people have voted absentee or in early voting, according to the Election Commission.

Then I went and talked to James Johnson, administrator of elections for the commission. With Johnson standing at my side, I voted again on a “demo” machine with a mock ballot featuring such names as Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy. Things being what they are in Memphis, I suppose I should add that those gentlemen are dead and not running for mayor of Memphis.

The real machine and the demo machine were identical, and they are both identical to the machines being used at early voting sites around Memphis.

Here’s how I tried to break the system. I presented my driver’s license, verified my address and Social Security number, and received a plastic card for Machine #4. I inserted the card, and a screen with instructions came up. It explained how to choose a candidate by touching the candidate’s name on the screen. After that, an “X” would appear, which could be erased by simply touching the “X,” in which case the voter can start over.

I went to the next screen where the candidates for mayor appeared in two columns.

I deliberately and carefully pressed the line between two candidates several times, erasing my dummy vote each time. By pressing the line, it was pretty much a toss-up as to which name registered as my choice, but the main thing was that my choice was clearly indicated by a white X against a maroon square about the size of a small postage stamp.

It so happens that the names Willie Herenton and Carol Chumney are right next to each other on the ballot. Herman Morris and John Willingham are in another column.

I voted and erased my vote a dozen times. I tried and failed to make the machine record “Herman Morris” by touching “Willie Herenton” and vice versa. I also touched the line between Herenton and Chumney, with the results I already mentioned.

After my final vote, I touched “next” on the screen, voted for City Council members, and touched “next” again. That put me on a “summary” page where the names of the candidates I had voted for appeared in somewhat smaller although clearly legible type. The names were the same as the ones I had pressed on my final and “real” vote.

So of course I touched “back,” erased everything, and repeated the process several more times. I got the same correct result when I went to the summary page. At that point I pressed “cast ballot” and my vote was recorded and I was done.

Johnson told me he is “very confident” in the voting machines and the process, despite Herenton’s accusations. Johnson said he personally went to the Whitehaven location where voters reported problems that eventually made their way to Herenton’s campaign staff, which decided to ask for a halt to early voting.

“The first I heard of this was yesterday,” Johnson said.

He had received nothing in writing as of Wednesday afternoon and said he would take no action at this time.

There are demonstration units at each location,” he said. “If there is a malfunction, we have sufficient replacements.”

Johnson said it is impossible to scientifically state that any candidate is ahead or has no mathematical chance of winning because the votes are not counted as to candidate choice by anyone until after the polls close on October 4th.

Herenton and campaign manager Charles Carpenter asserted that Herenton is leading and that the race is between him and Carol Chumney. The mayor said an unnamed male candidate has no chance mathematically of winning. Carpenter said this assessment is based on exit polling, phone calls, and their “proprietary system.”

With Johnson in tow, I tested the demo machine. I slapped it. I palmed it with an open hand. I poked it with my finger. I poked it with the tip of my pen. I poked two names at the same time. But I could not turn Willie into Herman or Carol into John.

Maybe you can. But — bear with me here — to make a mistake you have to know you made a mistake. Once you press “cast ballot” there is no way of knowing if the machine screws up and records your vote for someone else. And if you goof and get totally flustered, why would you press “cast ballot” before notifying a poll worker of the error?

Unless, that is, you wanted to make a stink for the sake of making a stink.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Turn, Turn, Turn …

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

As the rain clouds that doused West Tennessee on Monday passed eastward on Tuesday — in the direction of Republican Bob Corker’s presumed stronghold of East Tennessee — Democrat Harold Ford Jr. had every reason to hope for a perfect storm that would elevate him to the U.S. Senate.

It would end imperfectly for the Memphis congressman, however, three percentage points and some 40,000 votes behind his more mundane opponent. At The Peabody, where there was a goodly-sized media contingent and a giddy crowd had gathered for a potential celebration, hope dimmed only gradually.

And when, well after midnight, a somber Ford finally reached the podium and looked out over his sea of faithful supporters, some of them still calling out encouragement as if the next day would bring another vote, another shot at glory, the look of blank disappointment on his face said something otherwise.

It attested to the congressman’s realization that his own — and his family’s saga — had reached a turning point. Not only had he lost, but so had brother Jake, a poor second-place finisher (as an “independent”) to Representative Ford’s soon-to-be successor in the 9th Congressional District, Democratic nominee Steve Cohen — who even then was reveling with an exuberant crowd of his own supporters at Palm Court in Midtown.

As Ford spoke his brief subdued remarks of concession to a gathering that included Uncle John Ford, who resigned from the state Senate last year and faces imminent trial for his role in the Tennessee Waltz scandal, it began to dawn on some that the proud political family’s ranking official had suddenly become Ophelia Ford, the modest and muted successor to powerhouse brother John as senator from District 29.

Presumably, her margin of victory over Republican Terry Roland had been substantial enough this time to withstand the charges of vote irregularities that earlier this year caused her Senate colleagues to void her narrow victory in a 2005 special election for the seat.

Jackson Baker

John McCain (center) stumps for Bob Corker in Nashville

Though the national media saw in Tuesday’s outcome only the abrupt (if perhaps temporary) end of the golden-boy saga they had been chasing these last several weeks and months, the local subtext of the election results had to be: What next for Harold Ford Jr.? What next, indeed, for the Fords?

There had been signs, to be sure, that the weather was turning irreversibly against Representative Ford.

As the campaign wound down and the last week’s polls showed GOP adversary Corker with a double-digit lead, it began to seem that the congressman had over-reached himself — that his family history would trip him up, if nothing else.

Some Democrats — local and statewide — took umbrage on election day upon hearing that Harold Ford Sr. — the Florida lobbyist, former congressman, and Ford-clan patriarch — was putting out copies of a “Harold Ford Sr. Approved Democratic Ballot” on which his second-born son, Jake Ford, had the place of honor for the 9th district rather than Cohen, the Democratic nominee.

That smacked too much of the old Ford machine for various Democrats, whose loyalty to Harold Ford Jr.’s curiously new-breed politics — ranging from indistinct to undeniably right-of-center — was tenuous at best. (See “The Third Man”)

Discontent with Ford among hard-core Democrats may have been a marginal affair, but further analysis may show that this election actually hinged on the margins.

Any student of the blogosphere — suddenly swirling with political dervishes in Tennessee as elsewhere — could attest to the passions that were driving partisans at the edges of ideology. And, whereas in the outer, traditional world, ads for the pious, button-downed-collar Ford were making converts — such as Knoxville’s Frank Cagle, a journalist and conservative activist of the old school — he was still being regarded with suspicion online by red-hots both left and right.

Beyond the convenient descriptors of race or party label, there was in fact not much in the way of ideological difference to distinguish between Corker and Ford. Whatever their private convictions, both had progressively moved from their party’s moderate wings to positions that were clearly right of center.

Both candidates, formerly pro-choice on abortion, now described themselves as pro-life. Both opposed gay marriage. Both favored an extension of the Bush tax cuts, opposed immediate troop withdrawals from Iraq, and supported the president on the so-called “torture” bill. Their differences even on issues like tort reform and Social Security were being fudged.

Chris Davis

Steve Cohen at his Palm Court victory party

So it came down to a contest between individuals — Corker, the plain-spoken businessman and former Chattanooga mayor, versus Ford, the dazzling, charismatic wunderkind of 2006.

Right up to the end, Ford was routinely being described by those pundits who were hazarding election forecasts as having run this year’s best campaign. But that surely was a paradox: In the year of a roaring Democratic tide, with personal gifts that were undeniable and with coverage of his race with Corker devoted disproportionately to him, how indeed could Ford have lost?

One clue, perhaps, was the debate that raged amongst progressive bloggers in Memphis. It narrowed down to the following choices: Hold your nose and vote for Ford, whose politics had gone conspicuously rightward; vote for a fringe candidate of the left, such as the Green Party’s Chris Lugo; desist from voting in the Senate race altogether; or, as a fourth alternative that came to be increasingly taken seriously, vote for Corker.

Several developments drove that resolution: There was a factor that loomed much larger in Tennessee than elsewhere, where pundits chose to ignore that old chestnut about all politics being local. This was the fact, familiar to most Tennesseans within reach of a TV set or a morning newspaper, of the Ford family of Memphis, a.k.a. the Ford political “machine.”

The franchise began in 1974, the year of Watergate, when a two-term Democratic state representative named Harold Ford won an upset victory over white Republican Dan Kuykendall. Soon, Ford Sr. (the suffix, of course, derives from latter-day circumstance) was encouraging his siblings — all, like him, the sons and daughters of N.J. and Vera Ford, operators of a successful South Memphis funeral home — into the new world of politics.

Such were the leadership skills of the first Congressman Harold Ford that soon there were Fords everywhere in government — on the City Council, on the County Commission, in both chambers of the Tennessee legislature. Over the years, those family members, like John Ford of the state Senate, became dominant figures — exercising power up to, and sometimes beyond, established governmental lines.

John Ford’s indictment last year and subsequent resignation capped a swaggering, often scandalous career in which the senator’s very real legislative acumen soon became a secondary issue in the minds of Tennesseans. Ironically, the senator’s arrest in May 2005 occurred on the very eve of his nephew’s announcement for Senate.

Harold Ford Jr., raised in Washington, D.C., and schooled in such environs as St. Alban’s Prep School, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan, had every chance to avoid being stereotyped as “one of the Fords.” First of all, he was different — even early on, he was the same smooth article that TV viewers saw this year in Ford’s political ads.

Almost preternaturally self-assured and glib, he moved into the frames of his commercials and hit his marks with a grace and flourish that any professional actor might admire. Indeed, he was so accessible a figure that reigning political shibboleths ceased to be of any use to would-be analysts. It had long been said, for example, that no black could win in Tennessee.

Ford’s U.S. Senate candidacy directly confronted that assumption. It soon became clear that, while he was black enough, at least in concept, to be the overwhelming favorite son of the state’s African-American constituencies — 16 percent of the total population — he also conformed closely enough to middle-class models of success that crowds of young white professionals soon began to crowd his rallies. His professions of piety (he called himself “Jesus-loving” and began to carry a Bible on the stump) proved effective in rural surroundings and even on TV, where his nods and finger-pointing heavenward was reminiscent of famous pro athletes.

One measure of Ford’s possible appeal to social conservatives was that in Shelby County — where, as returns approached completion, he was maintaining a consistent 65 percent of the total vote — the referendum on state Amendment One, which would ban gay marriage, was winning by tidal-wave proportions — 80 percent to 20 percent. At the very least, this meant no sign of the usual anti-Democratic backlash that in recent years has accompanied evangelical voting.

In retrospect, Ford’s strong showing should have surprised no one. Added to his personal panache — virtually without parallel among Tennessee politicians, black or white — were the facts of an undeniable voter discontent with Republican rule and, for that matter, with politics-as-usual.

But the three percent lead that Bob Corker held onto as a margin never disappeared. And as news organizations began to call the race for the Republican, Harold Ford Jr.’s excellent adventure finally expired.

In the end, the same factors that gave him his chance ultimately may have doomed him to defeat: He lacked an important part of his base. Close, but no cigar.

After all the excitement, after all the better-than-expected election results in Shelby, Davidson, and Hamilton counties (all urban centers), Harold Ford did what most Tennesseans thought he would do at the beginning of his race: lose to an established Republican in a taken-for-granted red state.

Maybe it was never possible he would win. At the end of it all, campaign strategist Tom Lee acknowledged to the media that his candidate had reached or achieved most of the campaign’s goals, falling short, perhaps, only in the upper northeast corner of the state, the so-called Tri-Cities of Kingsport, Bristol, and Johnson City, traditional Republican strongholds all.

Maybe it was what the national media saw as racial content in the infamous line, “Harold, call me,” spoken by a white bimbo in a Republican National Committee ad — though most Tennesseans doubted it. Indeed, Ford seemed to do well among young, white professionals, who flocked to his rallies and sported his bumper stickers on their Volvos and SUVs. Indeed, they were as much a core constituency as African Americans were.

And he seemed to do well in some of the rural counties where a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage also ran up a big vote. At various times, he even appeared capable of doing the impossible — stealing the religious vote from the Republicans. He promised on national TV that he would be a “Jesus-loving, gun-supporting” senator; he began toting a Bible on the stump and seemed about to create a brand-new political type.

But red-state reality insisted on asserting itself.

Even in his concession speech before adoring supporters at The Peabody, Ford clung to that most surprising and unexpected component of his 2006 persona. Quoting passages of scripture, he made one last nudge of head upward, pointed heavenward one last time, and thanked his maker, the celestial one, for the opportunity to do what he had almost done. And then, after having spoken the merest congratulations to his victorious opponent, he moved offstage, slowly, as most disappointed mortals would, the consoling arm of congressional colleague Lincoln Davis, his campaign chairman, draped over his shoulder.

Ultimately, Harold Ford Jr. fell back to earth, having fallen just short of becoming a political archetype. But, like Icarus of legend, he made a good flight of it while it lasted.

Meanwhile, Cohen was flying high, having won the 9th District seat with a solid 60 percent margin that exceeded what most of his backers regarded as possible. At 57, Cohen would not only have the opportunity for national office that he had hankered for since his earlier try for Congress in 1996 — against Harold Ford Jr. — he would be privileged to begin his term of service as a member of the House majority. That was a privilege his predecessor had never enjoyed. Even the new congressman’s unabashedly liberal bias — unlike Ford’s conservatism — seemed perfectly in tune with the new Congress, where Democrats had also strengthened themselves in the Senate.

As vintage rocker Randy Haspel played piper for the packed and racially diversified crowd of young and not-so-young Democrats at Palm Court, the state senator’s recent bête noire, the moody, unpredictable Jake Ford, was nowhere to be found.

Absent from his brother’s event at The Peabody, the erstwhile congressional aspirant was rumored to have been involved in this or that fracas on election night. Soon enough, even the gossip about him died down — nobody seemed to care any longer what the facts were — and his somewhat less than 15 minutes in the limelight had pretty much wound down.

It was otherwise with Republican Mark White, the third-place finisher in the 9th, who would presumably be able to translate his newly enhanced name recognition into another — and better — chance at elective office somewhere down the road.

Other results: Something of that sort might also be the case for Democrat Bill Morrison, the Bartlett schoolteacher who waged a spunky if underfunded race against incumbent Republican Marsha Blackburn, an easy winner in the 7th Congressional District.

In the 8th Congressional District, the loser was Republican John Farmer, who had a good time venting his idiosyncratic brand of conservative populism even while losing badly to Democratic incumbent John Tanner. Farmer also lost a race to Beverly Marrero, the Democratic state representative from District 89.

There were no surprises in the other local legislative races. Republican Paul Stanley beat Democrat Ivon Faulkner for Curtis Person’s old District 31 state Senate seat; Democratic incumbent Barbara Cooper won over her perennial GOP challenger, George Edwards, in House District 86; Democrat Mike Kernell continued his personal streak of invincibility against Republican challenger Tim Cook in House District 93; and Republican Ron Lollar beat Democrat Eric P. Jones in House District 99.

Winners in Memphis school board races were: Kenneth Whalum Jr. succeeding the retiring Sara Lewis by a landslide in At Large, Position 2.; Betty Mallott, displacing incumbent Deni Hirsch in District 2; Martavius D. Jones, unopposed in District 4; and Carl Johnson, reelected in District 6.

As indicated, state Amendment One, to ban gay marriage in Tennessee, won lopsidedly, by a 4-to-1 margin, as did Amendment Two, providing property-tax relief for seniors.

Oh, and to no one’s surprise, Governor Phil Bredesen, running against underfunded Republican Jim Bryson, who declared late as the GOP’s sacrificial lamb, won easily in what may have been the most unnoticed major statewide contest in recent Tennessee history — confirmation, if any were needed, that not every contest this year had to be a matter of heavy weather.

 

 

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Cover Feature News

Center Stage

CREDIT: AP Photo

“Can a bright young charismatic African American overcome racial bigotry and his family history to win a pivotal state for the Democrats in November?”

That remark is in quotes because it, or sentiments tantamount to it, underlie the unvarying storyline of virtually every analysis of the U.S. Senate race in Tennessee — of which there have been almost too many to count: Last week’s cover story in Newsweek. A four-page spread in Time before that. Long takes in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today. Daily coverage on the cable news networks. CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS. Larry King. Chris Matthews. Anybody. Everybody …

And let me not be bashful: The sentence quoted above is one that I proposed, as far back as two years ago, would be the unchanging be-all and end-all of national media attention to Harold Ford Jr.’s race.

Here was another prediction from back then that also holds up well: “You will never have seen, nobody will ever have seen, a statewide candidate, in this or any other state, ever, get the non-stop bombardment of favorable, idolatrous treatment from the media that Harold Ford Jr. will receive in his race for Senate.”

Those predictions fall short of today’s reality only in that Ford, scion of a venerable African-American political clan in Memphis, seems largely to have escaped being yoked to the nether side of the aforesaid family history, which includes (along with an acknowledged high side of achievement) indictments of various principals, notably Uncle John Ford, the state senator now retired and facing trial for bribery and extortion in the ongoing Tennessee Waltz scandal.

Representative Ford, who inherited his House seat from his father 10 years ago, has escaped such comparisons for a variety of reasons, including his own presumed squeaky-cleanness in matters of legislative probity. But the ultimate reason is the same as that which has made the 36-year-old Memphis congressman such a national cynosure.

His race as the Democratic nominee against Republican Bob Corker, the former mayor of Chattanooga, is important because its outcome, as so many have noted, could determine which party controls the Senate in the next Congress. But a basic, underlying reason why Ford has commanded so much attention is the same as that which resulted in a politically inexperienced Arnold Schwarzenegger‘s election as governor of California.

In a word (two words, actually): star power. Even political enemies concede that Ford has it. Hence the attempts at disparagement in Republican attack ads: “Well, he does look good on TV!”

Ford has proved something of a moving target for Republican potshots, however. His political profile, especially over the two- or three-year run-up to his Senate race, has seen him cast so many right-of-center votes — on Terri Schiavo, on the GOP-inspired bankruptcy bill, on extending the Bush administration’s tax cuts, on authorizing the war in Iraq, on approving the so-called torture bill, etc., etc. — that various organized groups of hard-core Democrats (influential, especially on the blogosphere, but probably marginal numerically) find themselves hard-pressed to give Ford their vote.

And, for all his newly gained celebrity, nobody really knows to what extent Ford’s decisions have been tactical — designed to gain acceptance in “red-state” Tennessee — or matters of conviction.

Whatever the case, even his political profile, such as it is, has proved subordinate to issues of personality. It is no accident that theatrical issues per se have dominated the campaign of late — beginning with Ford’s now-famous “airport ambush” of a Corker press conference (intended to target allegedly questionable ethics on the part of former Congressman Harold Ford Sr., the candidate’s father, now a well-paid health-care lobbyist).

That was followed by an enduring controversy over an ad produced by the Republican National Convention that featured a leering young woman, who happens to be white, inviting the congressman to “call me.” The critical consensus, right or wrong, has inferred “racism” at the core of the ad, and that characterization has, for better or for worse, dominated recent reportage on the campaign.

Give Ford this: When asked last weekend about the bimbo ad on Fox News Sunday, Ford was honest enough to respond, “No, I think it was smut. I don’t think race had anything to do with that ad.”

That did not prevent the legions of national media pundits from conducting endless smug discussions on the theme — increasingly taken for granted — that the ad was racist. It did not even prevent so renowned a political analyst as CNN’s Jeff Greenfield from wrongly attributing to Ford himself the original claim that the commercial was racially based.

AP Photo

Nor, less forgivably, did it deter such wild responses as that from Vanity Fair writer and blogger James Wolcott. “Bob Corker is gay,” Wolcott opined, tongue presumably in cheek. “He may not know it yet, he may never know it, he may go to his sarcophagus wrapped in denial, but his fascination with Ford’s prowess and good looks gives him away, as does his political affiliation.”

Never mind that Corker, married with two daughters, had seen the RNC product before it went into general circulation, promptly disowned it, and insisted it be taken down. Never mind that the ad was clearly in a series with several others that had attempted to attack not the Democrat’s race but his alleged taste for bright lights and fine living.

Never mind, too, that Willie Herenton, Memphis’ first elected black mayor, had mused out loud and enviously only the week before: “Ford’s light enough that he can go in there and be accepted by those folks. I’m realistic enough to know that I wouldn’t have a chance. I’m just too dark.”

Indeed, it is a truism that Ford’s appeal transcends race. To be sure, he can expect an enormous, virtually unanimous vote from the African-American precincts in hometown Memphis and in the state’s other urban centers (even Chattanooga, home base of his GOP adversary). But one need only observe the crowds at racially heterogeneous Ford rallies to see how strongly he affects another vital constituency: young white professionals.

Ford moves as easily in such company as he famously does amongst his partisan opposite numbers in the House of Representatives. For years he has made a point of boasting his personal relationships among hard-core Republican types like Bob Barr, the former congressman from suburban Atlanta who was the first voice demanding impeachment of Bill Clinton back in the late 1990s.

To journalists covering politics in 2006, Pennsylvania’s Republican senator Rick Santorum — he of “man-on-dog sex” fame for a notorious moralistic outburst — is the likely sad-sack victim of this year’s expected Democratic tide. To Ford, however, Santorum is a prized co-sponsor of the Memphis congressman’s bill to provide investment grants to indigent newborns — bragged about at every public opportunity.

If there is nothing new in Ford’s coziness with his counterparts across the ideological aisle, what has many observers buffaloed is the revelation of a hitherto unsuspected religious side to the congressman.

It was signaled indelibly on several occasions during the campaign year — when Ford stepped up to the pulpit and preached a sermon at one inner-city church, when he taped a striking commercial in the sanctuary of another, when in all three televised debates and in countless TV interviews he was seen to bob his head upward and point toward heaven, pro-athlete style, and — most extraordinary of all — in this statement made this past weekend during his interview with Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace.

Wallace, clearly smitten with the purported conservatism and media bling of the candidate, asked what voters might expect from Ford as a senator.

Without blinking, Ford stared into the camera and said, “What Tennesseans will get is a Jesus-loving, gun-supporting believer that family should come first, that taxes should be lowered, and that America should be strong. When Tennesseans send us to the Senate, that’s what they’ll get in my votes, and that’s what they’ll get in the kind of leadership that we have not had in the Senate over the last six years.”

Jesus-loving? However that might play in the boons where, this generation’s clutch of nattering nabobs notwithstanding, Ford was a clear hit — or at worst an attractive novelty — it could hardly bring joy to the previously quite supportive Jewish communities of Tennessee, especially not after a now notorious speech delivered by Ford Sr. last month. Addressing a Saturday afternoon rally for his son’s Senate campaign on Summer Avenue, the former congressman abruptly segued into a denunciation of 9th District Democratic nominee Steve Cohen, against whom another son, Jake Ford, was running as an independent.

“We’re from a Christian city here,” thundered Ford Sr. “He [Jake Ford] doesn’t believe in legalizing marijuana. This man that’s running against Jake wants some sex shops running in downtown Memphis on a Sunday! That’s our religious holiday.”

The week after news of that got out, a prominent Memphis businessman, one of Harold Ford Jr.’s main financial backers, went to participate in early voting. “I couldn’t bring myself to vote in the Senate race,” he later confided. He went a step further, writing and dispatching a letter to a number of other well-known donors and politically interested individuals, advising them of his own action and the reason for it: the introduction into Ford’s race of what sounded to him like a militant and exclusive brand of Christianity.

Other Democrats looked at the phenomenon differently, seeing it as an extraordinary effort to steal the faith issue back from years of proprietary GOP ownership.

The polls in the Senate race — Zogby, Rasmussen, Mason-Dixon et al. — have been little help to the ever-widening audience watching the Ford-Corker contest. They have fluctuated wildly of late but mainly within a five-point margin of error, showing first one and then the other candidate in the lead. And it was often difficult to pinpoint the reasons for a shift. When, sometime in September, all the polls showed Ford to have closed what had been Corker’s double-digit lead after the August 3rd party primaries, that was easy enough to understand.

Corker had blown away GOP opponents Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary, largely through a series of well-done TV commercials that showcased him as a likable family man and successful entrepreneur with a solid record of achievement as mayor of Chattanooga. But a major difference between that race, in which his opponents were financially handicapped, and Corker’s general election encounter with Ford was that the Democrat would be formidably equipped — both from state and national party sources and from Ford’s own undeniable ability to raise big money, much of it from out of state.

Republicans tried to make much of that latter fact, contrasting Ford’s “New York” and “Hollywood” connections with the down-home “Tennessee life” of Bob Corker. At times that approach, in Corker’s later ads and in his stump rhetoric, seemed to resonate with voters. The problem was that he inexplicably forgot about it during a six-week period in August and September.

That was when the Corker campaign appeared to be channeling the RNC’s standardized attack mode, with “cookie cutter” ads that unimaginatively, even drearily, attempted to portray Ford as a “liberal,” as if a mere code word, especially one that had long since ceased to typify Ford, if it ever had, could win the campaign.

Meanwhile, Ford and the Democratic National Committee had launched their own series of ads, equally attack-minded and no doubt as one-sided and unfair as Corker’s were. (Could anyone seriously believe, as several of the Ford/DNC ads alleged, that mega-millionaire Corker, who made his fortune as a pioneer in providing low-income housing, would bother to swindle the taxpayers of Chattanooga out of three measly mayoral pay raises?)

The difference was that Ford inhabited his ads, with a smooth, fluent, and compelling presence that any professional actor might envy. Corker’s advantage soon melted away — precipitating an internal campaign crisis that resulted in the dispatching of youthful campaign manager Ben Mitchell, who was replaced (reportedly at high-level insistence from the state and national GOP) by seasoned vet Tom Ingram.

Mitchell was probably something of a scapegoat. It was widely rumored, in fact, that a cautious and penurious Corker himself had dictated the shape of campaign strategy prior to the Ingram takeover.

In any case, Corker got back on an even keel, with new ads, better produced and more precisely focused. The more effective ones were homey and personal, featuring straight-from-the-shoulder homilies from the candidate himself and cameos by family members.

Other ads were more aggressive, aimed at the suspected seam between Ford’s newly unveiled religiosity and a more glittery private life. (In that vein also was the ill-starred RNC’s “bimbo” ad mentioned before.)

Ford Sr., both a behind-the-scenes adviser in the Senate race and a formidable analyst of it, was probably correct in suggesting that, early on, Corker relied too much on the national Republican apparatus. Two fund-raising visits by President Bush, with declining poll ratings, offered minimal coattails for Corker, at best. And, in an environment of general time-for-a-change disenchantment among voters, the GOP candidate’s parroted invocations of a low-tax, national-security, socially conservative formula seemed to be getting him minimal traction.

What began to come through for Corker was the image of a homegrown product who had schooled in the state, developed a business here, and maintained close connections across Tennessee.

Though the diminutive Corker lacks the sui generis star quality of Ford, he communicates a genuine personal warmth at close range. A case in point: As an attendee at Shelby County trustee Bob Patterson‘s annual Christmas party last year, Corker made a point of sitting in a chair and spending the better part of an hour with an arthritis-afflicted lady, answering all her questions and eschewing during that time the opportunity to work Patterson’s teeming crowd of influential party-goers.

The Chattanoogan does give good one-on-one (as does Ford, for that matter). And his early reluctance concerning more public forms of give-and-take (he famously turned down an opportunity to debate Ford on NBC’s Meet the Press) eventually dissolved as he became more comfortable with the hurly-burly of statewide campaigning.

Addressing a lunchtime throng at Logan’s Bar-B-Q in Humboldt, in mid-October, Corker seemed to surprise even himself with a leather-lunged exhortation of his “Tennessee Life” saga that drew hearty roars from what looked to be a working-class audience.

And Corker seemed to be holding his own against Ford in the three televised statewide debates — strange affairs in one sense, given that the candidates disagreed on very little, both coming off as right-of-center types with fuzzed positions on issues like abortion (who was and who wasn’t pro-life, and to what extent?), Social Security, and medical tort reform.

As momentum switched from side to side, it even remained possible, as the end approached, that a race which had become something of a national spectacle could be inflected by a more local one — the race to succeed Ford in Memphis’ 9th congressional district.


The Battle for the Ninth

If Harold Ford Jr. seemed destined to have become a national figure, so, too, had the winner of the 15-strong Democratic primary to succeed him, state senator Steve Cohen of a largely Midtown Memphis district.

Brash and sometimes even obstreperous, Cohen was nevertheless widely admired for his off-setting wit and for his distinguished 24-year service in the Senate, during which he largely brought into being the state lottery, championed the arts and animal rights, and was the go-to guy for any measure affecting the rights of women. Sometimes overlooked by those who saw him as a pure liberal was his sponsorship of gun-carry measures and strong defense of Second Amendment rights, legacies from his former service as legal adviser to the Memphis Police Department.

Cohen was defeated in a bid for Congress in 1996, losing to Ford Jr. in what was essentially a mismatch due to the district’s majority African-Americans status and the still-effective machinery of the Ford organization.

The circumstances of the 2006 Democratic primary favored him, however. With a significant black following of his own (he polled nearly 20 percent of the African-American vote), Cohen easily out-pointed the other members of the large primary field, most of them black and many of them possessing their own constituencies.

Going into the general election, Cohen had the backing of Memphis mayor Herenton and Shelby County mayor A C Wharton, as well as numerous other influential black public figures. He also had endorsements from most of his erstwhile primary foes. But he did not have the endorsement of Representative Ford himself, who kept a public silence on the race while his brother Jake Ford, running as an independent, made the general election race a three-cornered affair with Cohen and Republican nominee Mark White.

In many ways, Jake Ford, an unknown quantity, was much smoother than most people expected from someone without much of a pedigree other than the admittedly powerful one of his family name. There were times during the several general-election debates and forums when he suggested something of the glibness and mental grasp of his famous older brother and, for that matter, of his father, whose sporadic eloquence was as much a foundation of his power as his adept management of the once-legendary Ford political machine.

But there were disturbing episodes as well — suggesting that there may have been good reasons for his long years of relative anonymity. (Something of the same seemed to apply also to Aunt Ophelia Ford, inexplicably a no-show for most of the campaign season during her return engagement with Republican Terry Roland for the state Senate District 29 seat — one that she lost when apparent vote irregularities caused the Senate to void her 2005 special-election victory.)

At one point, Jake Ford was compelled to call a press conference to acknowledge several arrests during his late youth and early manhood, including one for assaulting his father.

And there was the League of Women Voters debate, at which Jake Ford came up short in his answers to several basic-sounding questions, not even hazarding an answer and pledging instead to be a “good learner” if elected to Congress. There was the Jekyll-Hyde edge to his personality — one that saw him shift, suddenly and unpredictably, from polish and poise, even grace, to a menacing belligerence.

He and his younger brother Isaac and a mystery aide all figured in various reports of real and attempted intimidation. Cousin Joe Ford Jr., one of several former primary opponents who endorsed Cohen, felt compelled to call out the aide, identified only as “Tyrone” on the Remixx World! blog, charging the aide with sinister threats of payback on the “street.”

White, for his part, came off well if somewhat indistinctly, stressing his success as an entrepreneur, his former experience as a teacher, and professing what seemed sincerely to be an interest in the problems of the inner city. He took that concern to the point of chiding President Bush during his touchdown in Memphis on Corker’s behalf, urging the president to accompany him on a tour of the more challenged neighborhoods of Memphis and saying, “I can’t imagine why he [Bush] won’t follow me!”

The Republican’s hopes were twofold — that he could stave off attrition of his Republican base in Cohen’s direction and that he could make inroads into the black community, particularly the religiously devout portion of it, largely on the strength of what he considered shared moral values. That part of his strategy took a less high-minded detour, though, as both he and campaign manager Howie Morgan began intensifying attacks on Cohen through press releases and mailers that suggested the Democrat favored gay marriage and legalizing marijuana.

Cohen had been forced to deny both allegations already by opponent Ford, who also made several statements that seemed to suggest that bachelor Cohen, known far and wide for his involvements with various attractive women over the years, might be gay.

For all that, Cohen seemed to be maintaining his lead — although the various mechanics of that race, including what was expected to be a massive voter turnout for Representative Ford’s Senate bid, made any precise forecast unpredictable.

Categories
News News Feature

Obstacles on the Road

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

“We got started on a rough, rough road,” acknowledged county Election Commission chairman Greg Duckett at a post-election meeting last week. Duckett and his colleagues were there to take stock of the fallout from the August 3rd election and the prospects for countywide voting on November 7th.

That was some days after an interview with the Flyer (see article below) in which Duckett and Election Commission executive director James Johnson expressed relative optimism about this year’s election process, relegating the various issues that have come up to the realm of politics as usual. That was before last week’s meeting. Upon further review …

There is the matter of the official precinct-totals lists, which commission members, along with everybody else, have acknowledged are virtually unreadable.

There is the matter of impounded machines, voting cards, and other paraphernalia that cannot be reprogrammed or made ready for the next round of election activity in October — when early voting in November’s general election begins — until legal challenges from defeated candidates in the just-concluded August election are disposed of.

There is the matter of judicial oversight for the candidate appeals that, as of early this week and with the clock ticking, had not yet been arranged.

There is the matter of election software that didn’t work as advertised. There is the matter of early-voting ballots that gave voters ballot choices that were wrong for the districts they lived in. There is the matter of an out-sourced contract for handling and transportation of election machines that commissioners have started to think is needlessly expensive and inefficiently managed. And there is the matter of late-reporting boxes that changed winners to losers and which proved to have been “in-house” along with the county’s other boxes but were unaccounted for until the final few minutes of the counting process.

Considering that much of the last year’s local political news concerned a special state Senate election that had to be voided because, among other things, dead people were discovered to have voted, there is little wonder that skepticism about the voting process reigns among much of the electorate.

Besides the four losing Democratic endorsees who have formally appealed the results of the August 3rd countywide election results, there are activists who see larger, more endemic problems with the election process and are on the case, it would seem, to stay.

There are the likes of Dr. Yahweh (formerly Sweet Willie Wine) and Warren Cole, whose unresolved complaints about the new voting machines were the last item on the agenda of the outgoing Shelby County Commission and will undoubtedly be brought up again in September during the first meeting of a newly elected commission.

And there is John Harvey, the sheriff’s deputy-cum-computer maven, whose researches into irregularities were instrumental in bringing about the voiding of last year’s District 29 state Senate contest between Ophelia Ford, the presumed winner, and Terry Roland.

On his “Voting in Memphis” blog, Harvey noted the concluding item of the official post-election audit report: “We were unable to compare the increases in the protective counter per the certificate of the results to the public count per machine for the following wards and precincts due to the end of day numbers not being recorded on the certificate of results.”

There follows a list of 45 precincts across Memphis and Shelby County. What the auditors seem to be saying, in almost impenetrable language, is that errors cannot be ruled out in the vote tabulations in those 45 precincts.

The Diebold Issue

As for those conspiracy theorists who continue to suspect the Diebold Corporation’s voting machines, Duckett and the other commissioners provide at least a partial degree of support — voting unanimously to consider possible litigation against Diebold. That lawsuit would be based on the fact that Diebold oversold the commission on the effectiveness of both its hardware and its software.

“I don’t think Diebold or any of us realized the magnitude of this ballot,” was how Democrat Duckett expressed the general discontent early in last week’s meeting. An hour and a half later, after specifics of the company’s failings had received an airing, the conversation became somewhat less indulgent.

Notably, the PC cards provided by Diebold had to be reprogrammed for each voter instead of automatically meshing with the commission’s data-base of registered Shelby County voters.

“When Diebold was selling us this program, they said it would be seamless, and then when it came time for election, they said, ‘Whoops, it’s not seamless,'” according to the scornful assessment of Republican commissioner Rich Holden.

One consequence of the glitch was that during the two weeks of early voting, when voters were not restricted to their home precincts, an unspecified number of voters found themselves confronted with ballot choices that belonged to a district other than their own.

Faced with the prospect of such problems recurring during early voting for the November 7th election, Johnson tentatively arranged with the Accenture Corporation to provide a software solution that would integrate the commission’s database with individual voter cards in a one-step process.

Problem is, Accenture wants $28,000 to do the deed, and commission members felt that Diebold should be liable for that expense. With time a factor, the commission unanimously voted to authorize a go-ahead for Accenture, coupled with both a request that Diebold pay for the process and a threat to sue if they don’t.

Resolving the Appeals

The defective software provided by Diebold may be at the root of the appeals filed by four losing candidates: Juvenile Court candidate Shep Wilbun, Probate Court clerk candidate Sondra Becton, Shelby County clerk candidate Otis Jackson, and Criminal Court clerk candidate Vernon Johnson.

Or a still unexplained oversight problem could be the issue. The Election Commission consensus was that the final boxes read were checked in and accounted for but, for reasons not yet explained, not uploaded into the system when initially received.

It could merely have been, as Duckett suggested, a question of the order in which election personnel at the precinct level did things — whether the tapes were dated before or after they were prepared for transport, the matter of drive time to the commission headquarters, the length of check-in lines once they were delivered, and so forth.

Complicating the issue of resolving the appeals further is the fact that, as commission attorney Monice Hagler Tate explained, Chancellor Walter Evans, who issued a temporary restraining order against disturbing the election materials (both hardware and software), had recused himself from the case, leaving it to the state Supreme Court to appoint a judge.

With the hearing on Evans’ order set for this week, Hagler said, assistant county attorney Danny Presley had advised that the hearing would likely have to be continued.

Looking Ahead to November

So long as Evans’ restraining order is in effect and the election appeals remain unresolved, the Diebold machines and the voter cards used in August are tied up and cannot be made ready to use in the November election. On the software count alone, that could mean the emergency requisition of as many as 1,000 of the computerized voter cards.

As for the difficulty of extracting useful precinct figures, this, too, is a bone being picked with Diebold, which should, Holden suggested, be able to facilitate aligning voting results so they can be reported precinct-by-precinct in real time, at least unofficially.

As of now, this would be “hard to do on the Web site,” said James Johnson. Even the rough totals released on CD by the commission require a complicated and laborious manual parsing — “impractical” for reporting purposes, as Duckett conceded.

At one point in last week’s meeting, Duckett reviewed one of the several problems connected with the election process and said, “Houston, we have a problem.” Change “Houston” to “Memphis and Shelby County,” and many would agree.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Need to Know

Who won the elections last Thursday? Well, we know — sort of. Or think we do. But so many of them, in late-breaking county-wide races, especially, were disposed of by razor-thin margins that we — and the candidates who ran in them — would surely like to know what the precinct-by-precinct totals were. And, as of press time Tuesday, those totals were not forthcoming. This was five days after voting, mind you — and five days before the time period for filing appeals will expire.

Now, we like happy endings, and hopefully those precinct vote totals will have long since been made public by the time you read this — especially since state election coordinator Brook Thompson advises candidates to consider having their appeals on file by Friday, “to be on the safe side,” as he puts it — even though the weekend carries with it an additional grace period of one day.

Monday is it. No further reckoning past that point.

Under those circumstances, the earlier the better. Candidates, voters, and news media in Davidson County (Nashville) had full access to precinct totals almost as soon as balloting had ceased — well before this past weekend, in any case. Was it because the Davidson County Election Commission opted for new ESS machines this year, while the Shelby County Election Commission, given a choice between ESS and Diebold, chose machines manufactured by the latter, instead?

Probably not. That sounds too pat, even for the most suspicious conspiracy theorists among us. (Diebold results have been challenged in several states, and a former executive of that company was once quoted as saying he would use any means at his disposal to get candidate George W. Bush elected president.)

What then was the problem locally? James Johnson, executive director of the Election Commission, said on Monday that his office was “ahead of the game” on getting the precinct totals ready, and that local auditors from Watkins Uberall were already on the case verifying them. They would be ready by Tuesday morning. Fine, dandy. Except they weren’t.

We don’t want to be judgmental. All five members of our Election Commission — three Democrats, two Republicans; three men, two women — are conscientious, dedicated individuals. As are Johnson and his staff. And all were faced with a brand-new ball game, with the longest and most complicated ballot in Shelby County history and using new, unfamiliar machines to boot.

All we urge is that next time — meaning this November, when conditions should be far easier — we should do better. The public and the candidates deserve to know everything they can, as soon as they can.