Tag: Willingham

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Polls: The Dark Side

The next time a pollster calls you, just say no.

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say to a pollster can and will be used against you and the democratic process.

Polling organizations have a right to call us. I confess I read the polls and find them interesting fodder for discussion. But I do not trust them, and my usual response when called by a stranger on behalf of a pollster is “none of your business” or something like that. The late Chicago columnist Mike Royko had an even better idea: Lie to them.

Several polls were taken by different organizations prior to last week’s Memphis mayoral election, which was won by Willie Herenton with 42 percent of the vote.

One early poll showed Carol Chumney leading, with lots of “undecideds” and virtually no white support for the mayor. That poll, of course, was designed to convince Herenton to bow out and to get Shelby County mayor A C Wharton to enter the race. Fat chance.

Another poll showed Herman Morris gaining ground but still losing. His handlers were all over that, claiming their man had momentum, as if that is the most important thing in an election.

Yet another poll showed Herenton winning by a whisker. The excitement was almost unbearable! Don’t touch that dial! Stay tuned!

The most outrageous poll, taken by Steve Ethridge and published by The Commercial Appeal just before the election, showed Morris running close with Chumney and within striking distance of Herenton. This played neatly into the CA‘s editorial endorsement of Morris and the Morris yard signs that said “only” Morris could win. As it turned out, Morris could “only” win if the only other candidate was Prince Mongo. Chumney squeaked past Morris by 22,000 votes. And Herenton shocked the world at 495 Union Avenue by getting twice as many votes as Morris.

The CA and Ethridge should be ashamed and disgraced but not because they, in effect, threw the election to Herenton by low-balling Chumney and unrealistically boosting Morris, as some have suggested. They should be ashamed because they used the CA‘s stature as the city’s only daily newspaper to sell a highly dubious piece of partisan polling as big news, knowing full well it would be seized upon by the Morris camp.

Some anti-Herenton voters no doubt felt that they would be “wasting” their vote if they cast it for Morris or Chumney. Pollsters have a name for a poll with an intended outcome: “push” poll.

Some polls are more honest than others, but as far as I’m concerned, the benefit of the doubt goes against all of them. I know far too many people who’ve been involved in campaigns over the years, and winning may not be everything to them but it sure beats coming in second. What all the pollsters and their fans fail to grasp is that, in Memphis at least, voting and responding to a poll are not the same thing.

If a candidate runs a serious campaign and that candidate’s previous accomplishments and present positions on the issues make him or her seem like a worthy public servant, then that candidate absolutely deserves your vote, and polls be damned.

Voters, fortunately, can be pretty discerning. John Willingham, who said he had 10,000 black supporters, got only 1,118 votes in all. You can bet the Shelby County Republican Party, which endorsed him and put out sample ballots supporting him, is doing some hard thinking, if it is actually possible for them to think.

The most accurate predictor, on the other hand, turned out to be Herenton, who said the race was between him and Chumney and he would win it. It was, and he did.

I know, columnists and reporters also call people on the phone and try to get them to open up about all kinds of things. Some of us write opinion columns, like this one. But that’s different from a poll masquerading as news.

This opinion column is worth exactly what you paid for it. In that respect, it has one thing in common with a poll.

Categories
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.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

Big Heads

Since the mayoral election is upon us, this seemed like the perfect time to take a walk down memory lane and look at some perfectly ridiculous images of our leading candidates.

First, there’s Mayor Willie Herenton: Champ or egomaniac, take your pick.

Herman Morris was serving as president of MLGW when somebody thought it would be a good idea to make a bunch of bobbleheads in his likeness. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t.

FOXFunnies, the online creation of former Fox newsman Darrell Phillips, gave Memphians this rather boring likeness of Carol Chumney. If you visit the Web site, however, you can control Chumney’s “blink rate,” a truly satisfying endeavor.

And then there’s John Willingham, who appeared shirtless in the Flyer shortly after auctioning his pacemaker on eBay. This time, we’ll spare you.

So there you have it: big head, bobblehead, blinking head, and John Willingham. This really could have been Prince Mongo’s year.

Skirting the Issue

On Sunday, September 23rd, The Commercial Appeal ran a media column considering the potentially bleak outlook for women’s magazines. “Are women’s magazines obsolete?” McClatchy reporter Rachel Leibrock asked in “Whither the Women’s Mag,” a eulogy to Jane, a glossy girlcentric periodical that called it quits in July. In related news, the CA officially launches Skirt, a women’s magazine, later this week.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Two More for Mayoralty

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

All right, pundits. Get your slide-rules out, and calculate who takes votes from whom. Mayor Willie Herenton and Councilwoman Carol Chumney won’t be alone in this year’s mayor’s race. It appears they are certain to be joined by former Shelby County commissioner John Willingham and former MLGW head Herman Morris.

Willingham, who has been a candidate in both of the last two mayoral contests (one for city mayor in 2003 and another for county mayor last year), recently held an organizational meeting at Pete & Sam’s Restaurant on Park and made it clear to a decent-sized crowd of attendees that he’d be running.

Reportedly, Willingham is forming an exploratory committee. One of his main men, incidentally, is Leon Gray, the former radio talk-show host for the local Air America affiliate.

Morris will be making his first race and, to judge by table talk at last weekend’s Shelby County Republican Lincoln Day Dinner at the University of Memphis-area Holiday Inn, he stands a very good chance of getting the local GOP’s endorsement. (Morris, Willingham, and Chumney were conspicuous among the attendees at the dinner, as was District 5 City Council candidate Jim Strickland. All save Willingham have Democratic personal histories.)

Before taking the MLGW job, attorney Morris had headed up the local NAACP chapter. His multiplicity of insider connections ensures that he will not lack for financing. The question remains: Can he put together a sufficiently large coalition of establishmentarians and voters disillusioned with Herenton (both blacks and whites) to be anything more than a spoiler?

Ancillary question: From whom will Morris take more votes? Herenton or Chumney?

As for Willingham, even some of his closest friends are dubious that the third time could be the charm for him. In both of his prior mayoral races he was a distant second (to Herenton and A C Wharton, respectively), though he sought to challenge the vote count in both instances.

The former commissioner and Renaissance man of sorts (he’s been a barbecue maven, an engineer, and a Nixon administration aide, among other things) is quite literally irrepressible, though, and remains determined to vent several issues having to do with revamping local government and exposing alleged corruption.

Willingham professes not to believe that he and Chumney are competing for the same vote, although the councilwoman, too, has developed something of a following among voters who want to turn the page and start all over.

For that matter, Morris also has potential appeal of the throw-the-rascals-out sort. One task confronting the well-connected lawyer is to prove, à la Kipling, that he can “walk with kings and keep the common touch.” He has certainly walked with kings, but the former star collegiate athlete remains an unknown quantity in terms of street cred and how-to on the hustings.

Who Knew the Secret? Ramsey Confides: One of the reigning celebrities at the GOP’s Lincoln Day celebration Saturday night was newly installed state Senate speaker Ron Ramsey of Blountville, who ousted octogenarian John Wilder, the longtime, nominally Democratic speaker, last month.

Lieutenant Governor Ramsey regaled the crowd with humor (referring to his election as the first Republican Senate speaker since Reconstruction, he cracked: “One hundred forty years! Just think of it, 140 years! John Wilder was just a young man!”) and a choice revelation:

Although the key vote for Ramsey by Rosalind Kurita (D-Clarksville) was a surprise to most people until the moment it happened, Ramsey revealed the five people who knew about it and saw it coming: himself, his wife Cindy, Kurita, his chief of staff Matt King, and state senator Mark Norris of Collierville, who succeeded Ramsey as the Senate’s majority leader.

Kyle vs. Kurita: Kurita, by the way, was the subject of a scathing letter sent out this week to elected Democratic officials throughout the state by state senator Jim Kyle of Memphis, the Senate Democratic leader. Writing in his individual capacity on campaign letterhead, Kyle denounced Kurita for an action he saw as undercutting Democratic prospects in the state and beseeched fellow Democrats to “hold her accountable for her actions.”

Before her vote to unseat Wilder, Kurita had been elected by the Senate Democratic caucus to serve as head of the party’s candidate-recruitment efforts.

(The full text of Kyle’s letter is available here.)

Back to Basics: The major speeches at the annual Lincoln Day banquet — from Ramsey, 7th District congresswoman Marsha Blackburn (who took aim at “the media”), and former Oklahoma congressman J.C. Watts, the keynoter — reflected, if anything, a hardening of existing GOP positions on social issues like gay rights and abortion and a qualified — but not absolute — support for President Bush‘s Iraq policy.

Watts, an African American and potential vice-presidential candidate who is sometimes touted as his party’s answer to Democratic senator Barack Obama, did, however, include a conspicuous appeal for “diversity” in a speech that electrified the crowd.

Coming Out Smoking: Governor Phil Bredesen‘s proposal in his Monday-night State of the State address to finance educational improvements by tripling the state’s cigarette tax (to 60 cents a pack) is his first major revenue-enhancement initiative and could turn out to be a controversy on the order of his scraps with former state senator (now congressman) Steve Cohen on lottery issues.

A C’s Mixed Bag: Shelby County mayor A C Wharton, speaking to the downtown Rotary Club on Tuesday, expressed a guarded preference for the idea of elected additional judges in Juvenile Court. Wharton declined, however, to commit himself on two other issues: a preferred location for a proposed Toyota plant (nearby Marion, Arkansas, versus Chattanooga) and the question, after a recent court decision affecting Knox County, of whether several constitutional Shelby County offices should be elected or appointed.

(See memphisflyer.com for more on these stories.)