It came off more or less as planned – the “Draft A C”
press-conference-cum-rally held Wednesday morning in a vacated storefront at the
Southeast Memphis “Lamar Crossing” shopping center – in the heart of a
working-class, largely African-American territory that was Willie Herenton
turf all the way the last time a city election was held.
That was 2003, when the incumbent Memphis mayor’s
all-but-nominal opponent was John Willingham, a Cassandra-like figure, then a
county commissioner, whose accurate sense of the questionable FedEx Forum deal
and other possible boondoggles never quite translated into votes for himself.
Willingham, now out of office, is trying again and
attracting even less attention. Other candidates have been hoping to unseat the
four-term mayor – among them maverick city council member Carol Chumney, who led
some early polls and has a grass-roots constituency if not much money; Herman
Morris, the likeable if somewhat introverted former MLGW head, whose campaign
war-chest is much more impressive but who has already had to spend too much of it
just in an effort to get better known; and former FedEx executive Jim Perkins, a
man of ample private means who finally got his toe in the water at a Southeast
Memphis mayoral forum Tuesday night but has not yet made much of a splash.
“They’re all fine folks,” acknowledged restaurateur Tommy
Boggs, who sat at the head table of Wednesday’s draft-Wharton affair, but he,
like the others up there – political consultant Ron Redwing, citizen activist
Lois Stockton, former Shelby County mayor Bill Morris, and ministers La Simba
Gray and Bill Adkins – opined that only A C Wharton could unite the city in a
time of serious public disaffection with local government and with the man,
Willie Herenton, whose looming presence has basically defined the last era of
Memphis political history.
As is well known, various polls of late have indicated that the
incumbent’s hold on voter confidence has slipped considerably, among blacks as
well as whites. The last eight years have seen a gradual downhill slide for
Herenton, said Adkins. “It wasn’t just one thing,” shrugged the man who played a
major role in the dramatic 1991 campaign that made Herenton the city’s first
elected black mayor and began a dramatic shift to African-American dominance of
a relatively balanced version of city government.
But now, Adkins said, something had to give, and if Wharton
needed some public nudging to launch his own campaign for city mayor, they were
all there to provide it.
“We’re taking a risk so he can take a risk,” said Morris,
and Gray, clearly offended at Herenton’s suggestion that he and Adkins might be
looking for personal gain in launching the draft-Wharton movement, announced
that neither he nor the others could be bought. On the contrary, he was ready to
put his money where his mouth was, rising to sign a thousand-dollar check for
the still unlaunched campaign and encouraging others to follow his lead.
All the indications were that the object of all this
encouragement didn’t need much more coaxing. Two of his main aides, Jerry Fanion
and John Freeman, were on hand for the affair, and when asked if Wharton’s
failure to publicly discourage the movement in advance suggested his tacit
approval of it, Adkins shrugged again, repeating, “This is a draft.”
If so, the once-reluctant county mayor seemed about ready
to enlist. He would shortly issue a public statement acknowledging that he had
heard the public outcry (his draft notice, as it were) and pledging that he
would give it his full and dutiful attention.
There was only one mild blip on the draft movement’s screen
Wednesday morning. A latecomer to the press conference, brandishing a reporter’s
pad, said he had always voted for Wharton but had seen little in the two-term
county mayor’s public performance other than the same old propitiation of the
same old establishment and insisted on knowing, “What has he done for the
average person?”
There was an awkward pause and then, before he and the
others rose, signaling that this late-blooming skepticism was as good a reason
as any to end the press conference, Morris said, “He’s been
honest!”
No doubt. But an even more responsive answer might have
been that the smooth and likeable county mayor was above all things reassuring.
And a sense of assurance, the principals at Wednesday’s affair all said in so
many words, was the one thing most conspicuously lacking just now in the public
weal.
Only Memphians with long memories – and that would
certainly include all of those at the racially diverse head table of Wednesday’s
press conference – might have reflected on the irony that when Wharton, then
the county’s Public Defender, was evaluated at a variety of forums, along with
Herenton and several more activist types, as a possible “consensus” black
candidate for mayor in 1991, he was way back in the pack, never a contender.
That was as
good a sign as any that times as well as priorities have changed – and changed
dramatically — in the meantime.
