Lo and behold, Mayor Willie Herenton,
beleaguered or not, is back on the mountaintop.
So I found out last Friday night, when the
mayor, accompanied by Convention and Visitors Bureau head Kevin Kane, showed up
in the lobby of The Peabody on the fringe of a milling crowd of Republicans here
for the weekend’s Southern Republican Leadership Conference.
After he’d beckoned us over, I introduced
the mayor to Jennifer Duffy and Charlie Cook, two pundits who collaborate on a
respected and nationally syndicated political column. Although Herenton’s
principal motive had seemingly been to make sure I noticed the “Frist Is My
Leader” sticker he was wearing, he quickly rose to the bait when told that Duffy
agreed with me that 9th District congressman Harold Ford Jr. had good chances of
being elected to the Senate this fall.
The mayor would have none of it. Shrugging
off the snowball effect of an unprecedented degree of national media attention
to Ford, Herenton said, “People who live outside Tennessee, they don’t have a
damn vote.”
People, he went on, are persuaded by
“ideology — where the country is and where the country needs to go.” He recalled
advising optimistic supporters of Democrat John Kerry in 2004: “I don’t give a
damn what y’all say. Bush is going to win the election.”
Maybe the mayor, considered at least a
nominal Democrat, was absorbing the vibes of all those nearby Republicans,
because he went on to remind us that he’d supported GOP candidate Lamar
Alexander for the Senate in 2002. And when Bob Corker, another Republican
senatorial hopeful, happened by, he managed to translate Duffy’s salutary
prognosis about Ford into the teasing — and misleading — statement, “She’s not
for you.”
As others came and went, joining our group,
Herenton shifted into reflections on his forthcoming 2007 reelection bid. “Who
can beat me?” he asked rhetorically.
Somewhat later, the mayor segued into an
attack on the “atheist” members of the media who had, he suggested, been ill
equipped to understand embattled state senator Ophelia Ford’s statement last
week that God himself may have tapped her to be a candidate.
“I am a man of faith. I believe God calls
people for special missions,” Herenton said in words that recalled his own
claims at a well-remembered New Year’s Day prayer breakfast in 2004. He likened
himself to David: “Why me? All I do is tend the sheep?” Continuing to deplore
the media’s “disconnect” on the subject of religion, Herenton went on to defend
the spirited “holy dance” he performed in church recently, a video portion of
which turned up on various detractors’ Web sites.
The background of that, as the mayor
explained it, was his near-escape, “by inches,” from a fast-traveling car as he
crossed a street adjoining LeMoyne-Owen College recently. “If the car had hit
me, it would have mangled my body. So when I went to church, I said, for
whatever reason, God has spared me.” Thus the dance — one of praise and release.
Herenton went on to recall a Flyer
profile I’d written in 1999, as he stood poised on the brink of what would turn
out to be a resounding mayoral victory over an assortment of well-known
opponents.
“Still the Man,” that article had been
headed. The mayor smiled broadly as he recalled and savored the title and as he
remembered a photograph mentioned in the article — one that still adorns a wall
of his penthouse office at City Hall. The photo shows him standing triumphant on
a crowded stage at The Peabody on Election Night 1991.
The upset winner of that epochal year had
borne the same infinitely elated, broad grin that the older version of Willie
Herenton sported now as he recalled a further significant detail from the
photograph: “There I was, and Harold Ford was behind me.” This was the senior
Harold Ford, father of the present congressman and a man considered Herenton’s
great rival for power back then, even as the currently serving Ford is often now
deemed the mayor’s chief rival for public attention.
“Harold Ford behind me!” Willie Herenton repeated. And it sounded like a
religious affirmation all by itself.
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