Tag: Willie Herenton

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Politics Politics Feature

Forum Fever

Forums are all the rage these days as Labor Day approaches — after which the crowded 2007 pre-election calendar starts to overflow big-time.

Among the events to watch are two forthcoming candidate debates co-sponsored by the Flyer and the Memphis Rotary Club. On September 4th, candidates for the hotly contested District 9, Position 2 seat will square off, and one week later the major mayoral candidates will have at it. Both events are at noon at the Cook Convention Center.

Having thus done my duty by our own events, I must next tip the hat to the Coalition for a Better Memphis, which actually succeeded in getting all four major mayoral hopefuls — including the debate-leery Mayor Willie Herenton — on the same stage, though only one after the other, answering the same series of across-the-board questions.

The event last Thursday, at the Bridge Builders site downtown, wasn’t therefore a debate — as moderators Roby Williams and Bobbi Gillis stressed — but it may have been the next best thing.

Standing in front of a climbing wall in a cavernous, well-filled room, the four hopefuls appeared in sequence before the same audience and answered the same questions from Williams and Gillis, while members of the coalition set about grading the answers according to a four-level scale.

Based on what the candidates said, how they said it, and what others said about it later on, these are some broad conclusions:

John Willingham, who was first up, clearly meant to demonstrate that he was no crank but a serious man with serious proposals. The former Shelby County commissioner was a beneficiary, as he always is from time-restrictive formats, of the two-minute-per-answer limits on the nine questions asked.

Kept thereby from waxing prolix, Willingham was still able to offer a host of specific proposals. Some of them, e.g., drastically curtailing a mayor’s contractual authority and the number of his patronage positions, seemed good fits for the current debate on charter changes. Others, like his concept of turning the Fairgrounds into an Olympic training village that could generate 2,000 jobs and $2 billion in annual revenues, were of the sort that Willingham fans would consider visionary and non-fans might regard as fanciful.

Even under the time and format constraints, Willingham put forth too many proposals and statistics to be easily summarized. All that was consistent with the suggestion that the mayor’s job was to be both an executive and an idea man. Conversation among attendees afterward indicated that those who tend to see him as a crank will continue to do so; those who regard him as farsighted and misunderstood, likewise. A point of general agreement concerned his limited base and the small likelihood of his being elected.

Herman Morris was the second candidate to appear. He spoke briskly and without hesitation, letting general statements substitute for extended elaboration.

Contrasting his up-from-poverty background with his quality education (Rhodes College, Vanderbilt law school), Morris characterized himself as an able executive with a proven track record, especially at MLGW, which he headed for seven years. He also noted such involvements as his former chairmanship of the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce, experience on industry-seeking missions, and 20 years’ membership on a state lawyers’ ethics panel, two years as chairman.

In answer to a question about achieving diversity in government, Morris, an African American who emphasizes his potential appeal to both races, gave an answer that might resonate better with whites than with blacks.

The standard for city employment, he said, should be “not just diversity, but … merit, experience, talent, skills, history, track record of success,” as it was at MLGW under his administration, he said. That was a head-scratcher, unless, as a Republican well-wisher opined, it was one means of distancing himself from recent publicity regarding his well-received remarks at gay/lesbian forums.

Verdict: Morris, markedly less stiff than when he first announced, held his place in line. He’s viable if he can somehow generate better across-the-board traction than he’s managed so far. Among other things, he repeated his challenge for other candidates to follow his lead in taking a drug test. For all the trying, that one has not yet so much as blipped on the public radar screen.

He may have a way to go before convincing a majority that he is something “new and different and better.”

Willie Herenton was the third candidate to appear. Unsurprisingly, the mayor wanted to talk specifics — or at least those stats and achievements that suggested his first four terms had been a success.

Herenton eschewed the “hating on me” rhetoric of an earlier speech to the Whitehaven Kiwanis Club. Appearing stately and dignified, he warned against “novices,” boasted of his “40 years in public service,” recapped his career as a school principal, school superintendent, and mayor, and repeated his series of rhetorical challenges to the Chamber of Commerce concerning which mayor had presided over the city’s best economic growth, per capital income, etc. “Of course, I already know the answer to that,” he said.

Herenton declared, “We have virtually eliminated decayed public housing as we have known it in the past.” He also boasted a blameless personal record on ethics matters and claimed to have achieved the most diverse city workforce in Memphis history. Other professed achievements were more familiar — like downtown redevelopment in general and, in particular, the FedExForum and the NBA franchise that came with it.

So far, so good, except that such accomplishments are no longer regarded as unalloyed benefits and are the subject these days of a critical second sight.

All in all, the mayor may not have provided a fresh prospectus or a convincing rebuttal to his opponents’ insistence that it’s “time for a change.”

Carol Chumney was the final speaker, and her reception was every bit as revealing as anything explicit she said at the event. Council member Chumney’s persona as a persistent scold of the administration and of government and politics as usual continues to serve as both medium and message.

Unlike the other candidates, the former state legislator made few concrete proposals, couching her statements almost solely in terms of the shortcomings she perceives in the current city administration or in terms of general goals. Her very first sentence said it: “I’m running to bring about safe streets, safe schools, and safe neighborhoods and to clean this city up once and for all.”

Though her Web site contains specific proposals, Chumney on the stump rarely deals in such specific terms. Her remedies at the forum were more broadly stated: e.g., “more accountability … a mayor more capable of inspiring the city … stronger on children and youth … neighborhood watch programs … stronger code enforcement … partnerships with all kinds of people,” and so forth.

As during the nearly four years of her service on the council, Chumney proved most compelling when she presented herself as the avenger, as the dedicated scourge of everything that is wrong with city government. “You know, we have a lot of moonlighting going on at City Hall. People don’t talk about that,” she said at one point. And ears perked up.

Overall, to judge by word-of-mouth afterward, Willingham’s presentation was discounted more than it might have been if his prospects were deemed brighter; Morris held his own; Herenton came off well (if somewhat out of answers on the freshness front); and Chumney, questions about her financial wherewithal notwithstanding, is still getting the benefit of the doubt.

• Among the several other groups sponsoring candidate forums are Mid-South Democrats in Action (MSDIA) and One Hundred Black Men, who collaborated in an event last week at the University of Memphis Law School featuring candidates for the three council positions in Super-District 8.

Turnout by the candidates was good — as, in the opinion of most observers, was the content of candidate responses. The major absentees for the forum were Position 1 incumbent Joe Brown and Position 2 challenger Janis Fullilove (who was apparently conducting a simultaneous campaign event).

• Two District 9 races are attracting much attention. That for Position 2 is widely regarded as a showdown between lawyer/broadcast executive Shea Flinn and businessman Kemp Conrad — a Democrat and a Republican, respectively, though both have support across partisan lines. Newcomer Frank Langston also has good support. “Memphis Watchdog” blogger Joe Saino will have an impact, as may Joseph Baier.

Contenders for Position 3 include another well-connected newcomer, Reid Hedgepeth, businessman Lester Lit, lawyer/activist Desi Franklin, neighborhood activist and former interim legislator Mary Wilder, and Democratic activist Boris Combest. The first three named have most of the sign action so far.

A detailed version of these items is available in “Political Beat” at www.memphisflyer.com.

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Cover Feature News

Four More Years?

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

We have seen the field. That is the hard, inescapable fact of last week’s filing deadline. The next mayor of Memphis will almost certainly be one of three contenders — two of whom are familiar properties: the proud (some say reckless, some say haughty) incumbent Willie Herenton, and the determinedly independent (some say foolishly stubborn) City Council member Carol Chumney. A third candidate, former NAACP official and MLGW head Herman Morris, has yet to make his profile clear, and that is perhaps his major problem.

Oh, there is yet a fourth candidate, former Shelby County Commissioner John Willingham, who is well enough known. Respected, even beloved, by some for his densely detailed plans to fix virtually everything and regarded as an eccentric by a perhaps greater number, Willingham constitutes a relatively distant second tier all by himself.

And after him, among the 12 other candidates who qualified by the July 19th filing deadline, there is naught but anonymity, lacking as of now even Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges, the barefoot denizen of the Planet Zambodia and the numbing punchline to an old joke which, for some time now, has been told only by himself to himself.

A perennial, Mongo filed his papers correctly but was disqualified for one more run because of unpaid fines relating to state election requirements. The now officially irrelevant Mongo did have one moment of historical importance, shaking loose a few hundred frivolous protest votes that likely would otherwise have gone to then-incumbent mayor Dick Hackett in 1991 and thereby making possible the victory, by a margin of 142 votes, of former Memphis City Schools schools superintendent Herenton as the city’s first elected black mayor.

If not for that, Mongo would have been no more consequential than a candidate who remains on the ballot — Bill (formerly Willie) Jacox, the perennial’s perennial, who disappeared from Shelby County ballots for a decade, as did his crude self-advertising handbills that used to litter telephone poles throughout the city, but who is back this year. Two other candidates — bus driver Carlos Boyland and businessman Randy Cagle — were so obscure that, when they tried to launch early candidacies at the Election Commission’s downtown office in 1996, they were erroneously given petitions to run for county mayor that year.

Cagle made something of a fuss at a recent neighborhood forum in southeast Memphis when he accused the media of downplaying his prospects and keeping him, and others like him, out of the charmed ranks of acknowledged contenders.

It doesn’t work like that, of course. Though here and there over the years an effort has been made to logroll somebody into or out of prominence, the media don’t make or break anybody. They — we — are still merely chroniclers of moods and momentums that stir of themselves, or, as in the case of Shelby County mayor A C Wharton, the reluctant warrior who last week finally and firmly squelched insistent draft efforts by a multitude of well-known and unknown courtiers desperate for a change at the city’s helm, are put into motion by specific forces in the community itself.

Now, as always before and (one hopes) forever, ours is a representative system. That, for better and for worse, is the root fact.

Who, then, do the major players represent? Here is a capsule of sorts:

Mayor Willie Herenton: By his own testimony, the incumbent mayor is still the man who, as he told an almost hysterically happy, cheering crowd of mainly African-American citizens at The Peabody on an October night in 1991, was “willed” by them into power and prominence as the culmination of historical justice and inevitability, whose accession to power was attended, at the last rally and at the first post-victory celebration, by no less a figure than Jesse Jackson, the civil rights avatar who had been on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in 1968 with the slain martyr Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

One of the ironies of this mayor’s career is that he could not have represented outcasts from power and passions so long denied had he not, just prior to his ascension, been suddenly cast into disrepute with a civic establishment that had once embraced him and appointed him to its major power boards. Forced from his perch as head of the Memphis schools system by a sexual scandal (the late 1980s were post-Gary Hart and pre-Clinton times) and by alleged administrative irregularities, Herenton became a martyr for that moment of change.

Justin Fox Burks

The mayor, an able and commanding figure and (as he never tired of reminding people) a once-undefeated Golden Gloves champion, won three subsequent elections on the strength of his personal dominance and visible successes — mainly in civic (read: downtown) reconstruction and a record of (apparent) fiscal solvency. But his fourth term, which began with a thunderous denunciation of his City Council and a heady claim of divine sponsorship, proceeded into financial difficulties, an era of resurgent crime, and all-too-mortal wrangles with disbelievers, who included both council members and those members of a disaffected population who were challenged by Herenton to “leave” if they didn’t like how he did things in his dominion.

As it happens, the number so aggrieved has risen to the point, among blacks as well as among whites, that the mayor actually ran second (to Chumney) in the first set of polls conducted in this electoral season. Hence his reaching again for the martyr’s mantle and African-American solidarity, as in the now famous press conference of mid-June when he accused various disloyal “snakes,” in concert with a vengeful power establishment, of scheming to overthrow him with — shades of those late 1980s — a sexual-blackmail plot.

But as the Rev. Bill Adkins, a major ally in Herenton’s campaign of 1991 and co-founder of the ill-fated “Draft A C” movement, observed last week, “He really hasn’t done what he promised to do for black people. The truth is, on matters like minority contracting, he’s not even been as good as Dick Hackett was!”

Outlook: Though favored at the moment by prognosticators looking down track, Herenton fared no better than even with Chumney in the last major Wharton-less poll, taken the week before last for The Commercial Appeal by Ethridge and Associates. The mayor still has much to prove, even to his presumed hard-core base in the black community.

Carol Chumney: A maverick’s maverick, first-termer Chumney is, hands down, the most unpopular City Council member among her colleagues in city government, both on and off the council. More than once, she has put on the table a motion for an action or cause with more than plausible rationale, only to look in vain for a second. The most recent and telling case of this came back in April, when Chumney proposed a resolution asking Mayor Herenton to reverse course and accept the proferred resignation — initially rejected by the mayor — of the then beleaguered MLGW president Joseph Lee.

As so often before, Chumney’s motion failed for lack of a second. Accused by colleague Joe Brown of trying to advance her political chances and by member Brent Taylor of procedural irregularity, Chumney responded indignantly, “If I’m out of order, so be it!” A subsequent resolution by councilman Jack Sammons asking Lee to resign encountered racial-bloc voting and failed of approval by a single vote – Chumney’s. She had declined to vote for it on the technically correct ground that Lee had already tried to resign — or at least gone through the motions of doing so.

When Lee’s dormant resignation finally was accepted, on the heels of his misguided (and apparently misinformed) blackmail threat against an MLGW board member, the suddenly ubiquitous Nick Clark, Chumney claimed vindication. But the consensus among many neutral observers was that she had lost face — not just by virtue of her colleagues’ rejection but because she had appeared too unyielding and unwilling to consider compromise, that mother’s milk of consensus politics.

It is, of course, her very intransigence that has accounted for Chumney’s surprisingly high standing in the polls and for the fact that the former Democratic state representative from Midtown draws cheers when she appears before government-bashing conservative groups anywhere in the city.

If Herenton has cast himself as the symbol of a long-suffering race, Chumney has succeeded in becoming the Joan of Arc of the disaffected. Moreover, she has genuine reformer’s credentials, having played a leading role in exposing and correcting child-care abuses while a member of the state House and, as a council member, taking damn-the-torpedoes positions against questionable, if long-accepted, practices in city government. A case in point was the now-vanished arrangement whereby only 12 years of city service entitled one to a comfortable lifetime pension.

Chumney can also take credit for go-it-alone probes that in the last year or two turned up evidence of the city’s fluctuating credit rating and its tenuous budgetary predicament.

Jackson Baker

Mayoral candidate Carol Chumney: Joan of Arc of the disaffected?

Outlook: Though boosted by a grass-roots network of sorts and by recent trends that arguably favor female candidates, all other factors being equal, Chumney seems doomed to run a cash-poor campaign, and though her unquestioned ability to garner free media will help her in that regard, her long-range prospects among black voters remain a mystery, while at the same time she has real competition for the city’s white vote.

Herman Morris: Once a star scholar and athlete and, in his adult years, a man of considerable professional attainment, this up-from-humble-origins success story has found himself cast all too often as a contemporary member of what used to be called “the black bourgeoisie.” This is despite a long early history of legal and political activism on behalf of civil rights causes and candidates.

Morris’ reputation in the public mind is largely fixed from his seven years’ service as president of MLGW, an important (and, these days, crucial) administrative venue that depends disproportionately on behind-the-scenes activity, even more so than other appointed positions of less obvious public urgency. Even in moments of crisis — like the “Hurricane Elvis” windstorm of 2003 — it is elected officials, notably the mayor, who bear the brunt of public attention.

Until this year, when he followed through on a long-nursed ambition to run for mayor — at least partly, many think, to atone for what he regarded as ill treatment by Herenton — Morris was mainly known for the falling-out with Herenton that led to his ouster from MLGW in late 2003 or for the supposed “golden parachute” that, perhaps unfairly, he was considered to have left with or perhaps even for his championing of utility investments, including the now-controversial Memphis Networx, a public/private fiber-optic venture that is popularly believed to have been a financial bust and is on the verge of being abandoned, at a fire-sale price, to a private financial concern.

Morris is the kind of public figure who requires careful scrutiny to properly “get” him, and the same is apparently true of Networx, which, in February of this year, long before the taxpayer-funded investment became an issue, newly announced mayoral candidate Morris made a point of publicly touting. Indeed, in an age in which Memphis is encumbered by a “connectedness” gap (see Editorial, p. 16), Networx might, as the Flyer‘s Chris Davis has suggested in a series of articles, have been the foundation of a viable public utility in its own right.

If Morris is to succeed in the politics of this year, however, he has to stake out some basis for popular appeal. He is funded well. This month’s disclosures showed him well into the six figures — though still considerably below the half-million dollars and up that Herenton has in cash on hand. Morris’ voter support, too, has so far depended largely on affluent sectors of the community and on Republican sources as much as on Democratic ones.

With that need in mind, we may be treated to further quirky moves like Morris’ recent demand that other candidates join him in having drug tests — a patent play to so far wholly unsubstantiated rumors concerning the incumbent mayor.

Outlook: With his mixture of black and white support, based disproportionately in the middle class, Morris may well turn out to be the default anti-Herenton candidate, but his long-term prospects depend on further progress in what has been a slow evolution from his naturally reserved private persona into the kind of glad-handing bonhomie type that a mayoral race requires.

John Willingham: What can we say that we have not said many times already about this gallant and largely misunderstood public figure, to whose gadfly-like prodding of the governmental structure the public owes much — not only in the realm of exposing abuse (à la the now-notorious FedExForum deal, private garage and all) but in the determined venting of alternate public courses, like Willingham’s various proposals for serious tax overhaul?

Willingham has a reputation in too many quarters as a crank, though he overcame it big-time with his upset victory in 2002 over an establishment pillar, the late Morris Fair, to become a member of the Shelby County Commission. That triumph was owing to Willingham’s becoming a channel for massive discontent over the way public funds were used, sans public consent, to bait the Grizzlies into relocating to Memphis.

Forced into an ill-advised race against Shelby County mayor Wharton in 2006 by his correct perception that too many forces, financial and otherwise, were committed to defeating his bid for reelection to the commission, Willingham is once more a private citizen, and, unfortunately for his electoral prospects, even many of his veteran well-wishers have written off his chances, casting their lot with other candidates. His devoted but long-suffering wife Marge has made no secret of her wish that her husband would cease and desist from his flirtations with public office, especially now that his chances seem so slim.

But he is still there, for one more Revere-like ride, it would seem, passing out pamphlets showing he still has an ambitious eye for redesigning the public sphere (most recently to convert the much-pondered-over Fairgrounds into an Olympic Village).

Outlook: The ex-Nixon administration aide, multi-patented inventor and engineer, and well-known barbecue maven is the longest of long shots, eminently more qualified than, say, the unlamented Mongo, but in most quarters given no greater potential for success than the Zambodian would have had. Indeed, some longtime friends wonder if Willingham isn’t taking votes away from the other potentially viable challengers.

Whoever is destined to be mayor of Memphis after October 4th is guaranteed to be dealing with a City Council with a majority of newly elected members. That outcome was foreshadowed by accelerated attrition and by the wave of indictments for public corruption that swept aside two veterans, and it was made certain when council mainstays Tom Marshall and Jack Sammons, both of whom apparently considered mayoral runs themselves, opted out of reelection races just before filing deadline.

That means that such front-burner issues as what to do with the Fairgrounds (a legislatively vetted proposal from developer Henry Turley awaits possible implementation), whether or not to seek functional merger of the city police with the Sheriff’s Department, and how finally to dispose of the ghost facility known as the Pyramid (tomb of a previous governmental generation’s civic imagining) will all come under the purview of fresh eyes and — we are entitled to hope — fresh perspectives.

This new council and the newly elected (or reelected) mayor will also have the advantage and the challenge of dealing with recommendations for change by the Charter Commission that was elected last year and has dutifully and quietly gone about what could turn out to be momentous labors.

In any case, a new team will be taking the field, and the game of Memphis city government will almost surely take new and unexpected turns, no matter who the manager of record turns out to be.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

A C, in D.C., Says No

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

As Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, in Memphis on Monday night for a stop on his “Road to One America” tour, prepared to make his remarks at the MIFA Thrift Store on Vance, mayoral candidate Herman Morris, smiling and pressing the flesh, was working his way through the largely white and youngish crowd of some 300 — most presumably registered to vote in this year’s Memphis city election.

Morris, accompanied by his wife Brenda, couldn’t have seemed more carefree, and when someone said to him, “You must be the happiest man in Memphis right now,” Morris grinned. “Maybe the second happiest,” he corrected. “I’d have to see what A C looks like!”

Morris’ campaign had not exactly turned into duck soup as a result of Shelby County mayor A C Wharton‘s decision, revealed earlier Monday, not to seek the Memphis mayoralty. But Wharton’s abrupt rejection of a blue-ribbon “Draft A C” committee’s appeals had certainly kept Morris, and rival candidate Carol Chumney, for that matter, out of the dead-duck category.

And, as Morris’ quip indicated, it may also have relieved reluctant warrior Wharton of anxieties which, several reports had it, were abundant. Some of them concerned the prospect of a brutal, mauling mano-a-mano with his old friend and ally, Mayor Willie Herenton, an ex-pugilist never slow to throw campaign haymakers. Others had to do with intra-family matters.

And, finally, Horatio at the Gate was not exactly the right game for the laid-back county mayor — whose dapper, reassuring nature was one of his main attractions for those, including many influential members of the city’s business community, who had beseeched him to run against a once-popular city mayor whose ability to inspire confidence in the community at large may have run its course.

It had to be remembered, after all, that Wharton had been courted to run for this or that office many times over the years, but only once — in 2002, faced with an open county mayor’s seat and promised, then as now, with ample support from the Memphis business establishment — had he answered the call. A reelection race in 2006, against a largely nominal challenge by then county commissioner John Willingham, was a given.

Wharton’s native reticence was touched upon Monday by an admittedly “disheartened” Rev. Bill Adkins, who, along with the Rev. LaSimba Gray, had been one of two co-founders of the “Draft A C” movement. Repeating his confidence — and that of most observers, seemingly confirmed by a new poll — that Wharton would have been elected, Adkins acknowledged, “But he was always aggravated by having to make the decision. That’s how he is. He called us up when he first heard about the committee and said, ‘What are y’all doing?'”

The county mayor, still attending a mayors’ conference in Washington, D.C., released a lengthy, characteristically gracious statement later Monday. Noting that he had his reasons for demurring, Wharton said in part: “Some of these factors included family considerations, timing, and the impact on the community, but in the end, there was one factor that I simply could not ignore: I am in the right job at the right time to help Memphis the most.”

He went on: “The county mayor is the highest elected office in our region, representing the hopes and dreams of 912,000 people. Shelby County Government is one of the largest local governments in the entire country, and it is in the role as its mayor that I can have the most profound and lasting impact on Memphis. … Perhaps, it is the nature of county government that it operates quietly and often below the radar. But that fact of life makes it no less important.”

And so the dream harbored for so long by so many of an A C candidacy died — neither with a whimper nor with a bang. Rather, with a smile and a shrug.

• Meanwhile, the mayoral field appeared set. The same Commercial Appeal poll (done by Steve Ethridge, who had prepared all of the others so far, in whole or in part) that had showed the county mayor an easy winner had City Council member Chumney deadlocked with Herenton in a Wharton-less field, with Morris running third and Willingham (making his second race for city mayor) and former FedEx executive James Perkins well behind in the lower single digits.

Both Morris, who has enough of a bankroll to enlarge his beachhead with the voters as the campaign wears on, and Chumney took comfort from Monday’s news, and both released dutiful statements commending Wharton as they resolved to continue pressing their own efforts.

In any case, as Thursday’s filing deadline approached, much voter attention had turned to the rapidly growing roster of City Council candidates. The long-rumored decision by council mainstay Jack Sammons not to seek reelection was confirmed during the week by a Sammons announcement, and his Super-District 9, Position 3, seat was rapidly attracting comers — amomg them, prominent Democratic activist Desi Franklin and former interim legislators Shea Flinn and Mary Wilder.

The departure of incumbent Sammons, along with those previously announced, ensured that the post-election City Council will, like the County Commission that was elected in 2006, contain a majority of newly elected members.

With that prospect, the appetite among hopefuls was growing (see also Viewpoint, p. 17), and all 13 seats were likely to see some animated contests. Check the Flyer Web site for updates, and watch this space for continued analysis of the races.

• By the time this column is read, a winner will have been declared in Tuesday’s special election for state House District 89. After a post-primary period in which the race was largely absent from political radar screens, it began to blip again — mainly through the efforts of teacher/restaurateur Steve Edmundson, who had launched an independent write-in campaign as a challenge both to highly favored Democrat Jeannie Richardson and to Republican nominee Dave Wicker, still largely an unknown quantity.

Mindful that only 250 or so voters had taken advantage of early voting, Richadson’s cadres quickly ginned up some campaign events and a GOTV effort to counter both Edmundson and what they suspected might be a sandbagging, late-breaking Republican effort on Wicker’s behalf.

• Unless former Memphis school board member Michael Hooks Jr. holds to his resolve and stands trial for his role in the Tennessee Waltz saga and somehow overcomes, the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office will shortly end up with a perfect record of convictions for the several defendants who have been indicted in the sting since May 2005.

That was the situation this week after Chattanooga state senator Ward Crutchfield pleaded guilty in federal court here last Thursday to accepting a “gratuity” (i.e., a bribe), and former Memphis state senator Kathryn Bowers followed suit on Monday.

Both Crutchfield and Bowers made an effort to appear at peace with the situation, having both reached the “acceptance” stage of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross‘ famous death cycle, and the diminutive Bowers, who freely acknowledged having done wrong in taking some $11,500 in inducements from undercover “E-Cycle” agents, was more successful.

On the way to her rendezvous with the media outside the federal building, Bowers limped a little. “It’s the shoe,” she said, pointing to a pair of new taupe-colored open-weave high-heeled shoes. She had dropped something on her foot on the 4th of July, “and it still hurts,” she said. “I’m only 4 feet 10, and when you’re that short, you’ve got to do something to help you stand tall.”

But the glummer and more taciturn Crutchfield had his moment of poise, too. Asked by a reporter what words he would have for his wife of some 50 years when he returned home to Chattanooga with his once lofty reputation in shreds, Crutchfield replied: “Hon, I’m home.”

Crutchfield will be sentenced on November 28th, Bowers on October 24th, both by trial judge Daniel Breen.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Why the Mayor Will Lose

John Branston (“City Beat,” July 5th issue) says Willie Herenton will win. I say: no way.

Put simply, Memphians are tired of Mayor Willie Herenton, including his shenanigans and histrionics. This is not unlike the fatigue the American public is suffering with our current president (and the members of his party), which was substantially responsible for the transfer of power from Republicans to Democrats in last November’s congressional elections.

Just like the W. in the White House, W.W. Herenton has an Iraq. It’s called crime. Memphians are scandalized by an upsurge in violent crime in the Bluff City, a troubling trend that has placed Memphis in the first tier of the most dangerous cities in the country.
History has a way of showing mayors who preside over dangerous trends in their cities to the door. So too will it happen in Memphis where, other than calling for an unfunded and — probably unfundable — dramatic increase in the number of police, our mayor has done little or nothing to stem the advancing tide of criminality in our city.

The second element in Herenton fatigue is also analogous to the national scene. Memphians have watched as an arrogant, aloof, frequently disconnected mayor launched all manner of attacks on those he perceives as his enemies. The last unhinged politician who compiled an “enemies list” was Richard Nixon, and we know how well that turned out for him.

Herenton attacks the media and anyone who dares speak out against him as being racist or, worse, ungodly. One need only look at the recent, surreal press conference conducted by the mayor in which he accused several unnamed “snakes” of mounting a campaign to unseat him. Never reluctant to play the race card when it suits him, the mayor suggested that those out to get him were motivated by racial animus.

Never mind that the Memphis electorate (including black voters) is increasingly showing the ability to discriminate among candidates, not on the basis of race but on the basis of competence — a phenomenon most vividly displayed in the elections of Steve Cohen to Congress and A C Wharton as county mayor. So, where’s the race card in that deck (other than the mayor’s joker)?

The mayor’s credibility is at an all-time low. One clear proof of that comes from the recent thumping that his man, Robert Spence, took in a race for the state Senate seat vacated by Cohen. The fact that voters apparently were more influenced by a circular circulated by lead “snake” Richard Fields calling attention to Spence’s shortcomings than by Spence’s close affiliation with the mayor bodes ill for the voters’ willingness to credulously accept the mayor’s conspiracy theory.

The ultimate factor in Herenton fatigue is doubt about his competence. Whether it’s raising city property taxes to the point where Memphis enjoys the distinction of having the highest property taxes in Tennessee, presiding over a failing public school system, demonstrating the same kind of cronyism in the appointment and retention of city officials (remember Joseph Lee?) or the granting of favors to his pals like the other “W” (remember beer board baron Reginald French?), Herenton has disaffected wide swaths of the Memphis electorate regardless of race, and several early polls (which the mayor predictably discounted) showed that.

Finally, the one potentially superseding force that would assure Herenton’s loss would come when and if Shelby County mayor A C Wharton comes to his senses and realizes that the future of this city is far more important than his sense of loyalty to a man who is dragging down both Memphis and Shelby County.

I predict that 16 years of King Willie will be end up being enough for most voters in Memphis. What’s more, I think black voters are tired of being played by a mayor who has no problem, when it suits him, of cozying up to the same constituency of white businessmen he now accuses of turning on him. I predict they will see through his transparent tirades and turn him out of office.

Marty Aussenberg writes the “Gadfly” column on www.memphisflyer.com.

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Politics Politics Feature

Coming to Shove

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Still in the Game

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

It would seem that mayoral candidate Herman Morris, whom some have sought to write off, remains a force to be reckoned with.

A generous crowd of attendees turned out for the former MLGW head at a Racquet Club fund-raiser May 24th, where Morris showed off his gracious wife Brenda and his two academically excelling sons. He may have over-promised somewhat, though — calling himself the only potential mayor “with a real first lady.” John Willingham, for one, has a potential “real first lady,” and so, presumably, do many of the 14 or so others in the race.

Even so, Morris has served notice that he’s in the mayor’s race for the long haul, with at least a chance to be regarded down the line as the major alternative to incumbent Mayor Willie Herenton. (That presupposes a foldo from City Council maverick Carol Chumney, though — and that’s not guaranteed to happen.)

Morris’ chief liability would seem to be that he isn’t entirely comfortable while greeting individuals or crowds. As his handlers say, though, there’s time — four months plus — for Morris to grow into the role.

The fund-raiser was the second of two timely events scheduled for challenger Morris last week. The first was a Tuesday night appearance with Willingham in a unique two-candidate mayoral forum sponsored by the East Shelby Republican Club.

The crowd at Pickering Community Center in Germantown (strange place that, for a Memphis mayoral forum!) seemed somewhat predisposed to Willingham, a longtime club member himself. The former commissioner, who is given to verbal prolixity the way Britney Spears is given to nights out, profited from the one-minute-per-answer rule imposed by moderator Stan Peppenhorn.

Another reason for his relatively strong showing was that Willingham, no fool despite his sometime air of eccentricity, knew the subject matters asked about in greater detail — whether they concerned governmental subjects at large or Willingham hobby-horses like the FedExForum “Garage Gate” scandal which he did as much as anyone to uncover.

Morris came off as able and responsive, though his answers were generally delivered in over-broad outline, even in the case of a brief discourse on the utility he once headed.

Sometimes that penchant worked to his advantage, as when he began an answer to a question about prospective new taxes by saying, “We don’t need any.” (Really that’s all his audience wanted to hear, and any explanation as to why that was the case was so much icing on the cake.) Similarly, Morris deftly dispensed with a question about term limits with the line: “Good idea. Three terms too late!”

Quips, Ideas, and Red Flags: The most intriguing new idea came from Willingham, who indicated that it might be “worth it” to look into public financing of an on-campus football stadium for the University of Memphis if the school and the state of Tennessee could provide as much as two-thirds of the funding. Morris seemed more open to a Fairgrounds site at some point down the line.

All in all, though, Morris may have done what he needed to for the long haul of a race that, after all, ends in October. His very reason for being there was to indicate to the attending Republicans that he was amenable to their concerns — a point reinforced as well by the presence of his co-campaign manager, party veteran John Ryder. (The other co-chair is former officeholder Minerva Johnican, a longtime Democrat.)

And though Shelby County Republican chairman Bill Giannini has publicly said there was “no chance” that Morris would get an endorsement from the local GOP, the chairman has also asserted that there was “no chance,” either, that Willingham could get elected — a belief widely held in political circles, even among members of Willingham’s own circle.

An End-Game Strategy: Under the circumstances, Morris needs only to hold on long enough — meanwhile building up name identification, credibility, funding, and support — to become identifiable in the public mind as the logical alternative to incumbent Mayor Herenton, who polls suggest is plumbing the depths of unpopularity right now.

Presupposing that there is no bounceback for Herenton (which cannot be ruled out), Morris’ hopes depend largely on a stall developing in the campaign of Chumney, who was the leader in early mayoral polls but whose go-it-alone reputation may at some point cost her.

In any case, the Willingham-Morris mano a mano — ridiculed in some quarters for not being more inclusive — served its purpose as a friendly intramural sparring match, put on for the edification of Republicans looking for a candidate to get behind. One note of caution for both men: One influential Republican commented afterward that Chumney, who has a following among grass-roots sorts alienated from politics as usual, might get as many GOP votes as “both these guys put together.”

STATE POLITICS

“Tired Blood”: Another legislative week begins with the ever-surprising saga of state senator Ophelia Ford unresolved, and, as things now stand, unlikely to be.

After weeks in which her chronic absenteeism from the ongoing legislative session in Nashville and a mystery illness were the main facts discussed about her, Ford made up for lost time in the last couple of weeks with some conspicuous acts of commission.

There was her odd performance week before last in a subcommittee hearing on the Department of Children’s Services’ handling of investigations into child deaths. Ford, member of a family known for its funeral home business as well as for its total immersion in politics, may have mistakenly chastised the DCS for negligence in the matter of death certificates (not a departmental concern), but it was her manner, seemingly both confused and overbearing, that gave rise to doubts about her sobriety.

When the senator was hospitalized the next day after falling off a bar stool in her Nashville hotel, those doubts were magnified, especially when brother Joe Ford, chairman of the Shelby County Commission, talked of a likely alcohol problem and proposed to journey to the state capital personally in order to get his sister into rehab.

Nor was that all. Next a Nashville cabbie complained of being manhandled by an “intoxicated” Ford, though the driver has declined so far to press charges.

For all that, Senator Ford’s situation seemed to have stabilized as this week got under way. Denying an alcohol problem, she issued a statement attributing her recent problems to clinical “anemia,” which she also described by the popular name “tired blood.” She also insisted that she intended to continue serving in her office, at least until the election year 2010, and meanwhile Commissioner Ford apparently dropped his rehab plans.

One factor in staving off a more drastic resolution is the fact that Ford’s vote could be crucial in determining the outcome of several key issues as the legislature winds down this week and next. Senate Democrats were of no mind to sacrifice one of their own, and Senate Republicans were not pressing the issue.

Kurita resolution advances: Having passed the first major obstacle by getting a favorable vote on her proposal to elect Tennessee’s constitutional officers in her own chamber last week, state Senate Speaker Pro Tem Rosalind Kurita hopes to gain approval by the House this week.

If successful, she would then need to get two-thirds approval in both bodies next year in order to put the proposal, in the form of a constitutional amendment, on the statewide general election ballot in November 2010. The offices affected would be lieutenant governor, attorney general, treasurer, comptroller, and secretary of state.

While visiting Memphis the week before last, Governor Phil Bredesen took a stand against the proposal, contending that in all instances (save, possibly, the office of lieutenant governor) the proposed change would put the affected officials under too much direct pressure from “special interests.”

In any case, Kurita’s success so far was a counter of sorts to the fact that key Senate Democrats still resent her vote in January in favor of Republican Ron Ramsey as Senate Speaker and lieutenant governor.

Down to the Wire: Voters in state House District 89, centered on upper Midtown, go to the polls this Thursday to determine the winner of two special primary elections.

Democrats choose between Kevin Gallagher and Jeanne Richardson, each of whom — to judge by endorsements and turnouts at their events — would seem to command a decent-sized share of the party base.

Two relatively unknown Republicans — Wayne McGinnis and Dave Wicker Jr. — vie for their party’s nomination.

The two winners will compete in a special general election on July 17th. — JB