Tuesday, January 10, 2006
POLITICS: Cohen for Congress?
Posted by Jackson Baker on Tue, Jan 10, 2006 at 4:00 AM
This district – majority-black and traditionally Democratic but containing also several new pockets of upscale development – includes most of historic Memphis and would merit special attention on that score alone. Just now, it is notable also as the launching pad for the widely watched U.S. Senate candidacy of current incumbent Harold Ford Jr., who basically inherited the office from his namesake father but has since become something of a national media cynosure altogether on his own.
Up to the end of the year the soon-to-be-vacant seat had attracted a mixed bag of promising newcomers and seasoned activists from the local political and governmental pools. But no big names – at least partly due to lingering suspicion that Rep. Ford might change his mind and run for reelection. That’s about to change – especially as it becomes more and more obvious that Ford is in the Senate race to stay.
Enter state Senator Steve Cohen, who first ran for the congressional office in 1996 as the younger Ford’s first, last, and only serious opponent. For years the articulate and oft feisty Cohen, father of the state lottery and a tireless advocate for civil liberties and the arts, has been among the state’s best-known and most respected legislators.
Cohen last week confirmed that he
will probably run for the 9th District seat.
Though he launched a characteristically long-shot campaign on behalf of legalizing medical marijuana only last year and is more or less constantly at odds with his party’s titular head, Governor Phil Bredesen, concerning a variety of Tennessee-specific issues, Cohen’s vistas have always been as much national as statewide.
And, after a quarter-century in Nashville, he seems ready for another challenge. Given the facts that Cohen isn’t up for reelection until 2008 and that he’s accumulated a decent war chest over the years, he can afford to take a shot at something else this year.
Going into the holidays Cohen had four options: a late entry into the U.S. Senate race; a damn-the-torpedoes challenge to Bredesen; a run against District Attorney General Bill Gibbons; and the congressional race. Only the last two prospects looked serious, and Cohen told friends at the end of the year that he’d made up his mind to make another run for Congress.
Though the civil-rights credentials of Cohen, a liberal’s liberal, are in order, he’ll still have demographics against him, as he did in 1996. But the potentially diverse field he confronts this year gives him better chances than his essentially one-on-one contest ten years ago against Ford, who was after all a dynastic successor. (Rufus Jones, a state rep back then, also ran in 1996 but became marginalized as the third man out.)
Still in the field for 2006, and unlikely to yield, is corporate lawyer Nikki Tinker, a bright young African-American who has garnered serious support from the city’s business and social elite and has attracted some national attention as well. Though Alabama transplant Tinker’s somewhat top-heavy, trickle-down campaign has not yet sprouted real grass roots, she is personable enough to make an impact in the long run, and in the meantime it surely doesn’t hurt to have king-sized billboards and help from the likes of actor Morgan Freeman, who graced a major fundraising event for Tinker last week at Isaac Hayes’ Club.
More problematic is whether Tinker, the titular head of one of Rep. Ford’s unopposed campaigns, can convince Ford loyalists that she’s the heir apparent – given that the congressman, his eyes on the Senate prize, must be both officially and actually neutral. Some Ford intimates regard Tinker’s efforts in that regard as a stretch.
Others very much in the game and expected to be heard from include, among Democrats: Joseph Kyles, Tyson Pratcher, Ralph White, Ron Redwing, Ed Stanton, Lee Harris, and William Whitman. Among Republicans: Mark White, Derek Bennett, and John Farmer.
All these have either picked up petitions for the office, have filed, or have otherwise expressed interest in running.
Meanwhile, at least two other well-established political names have been talked about as likely entries: state Representatives Joe Towns and Henri Brooks. Brooks finished a close second to Ophelia Ford last year in the special Democratic primary for state Senate District 29.
And another perhaps momentous name has received a good deal of recent speculation: that of Circuit Court Judge D’Army Bailey.
A debate last week between Mike Rude and Mike Ritz, opponents in the Republican primary for the District 1,Position 1 county commission seat, produced some fireworks, notably when Rude, answering a question about his position on consolidation, went on to denounce Memphis mayor Willie Herenton as a proponent and then said this:
“I’m a Republican, and I’m going to fight for Republicans, and my opponent is a financial contributor to the man that’s wanting to consolidate, and he’s supporting Ophelia Ford to beat Terry Roland, and I just – to me, it just boggles my mind why we can’t stand up and unite.”
Ritz, who acknowledged having supported Herenton financially in the past, denied any involvement on Democrat Ford’s behalf against the GOP’s Roland in the recent special election for District 29 – a fact confirmed by members of Ford’s organization.Rude later said he had meant only to say that Herenton had supported Ophelia Ford, not Ritz. For the record, even this is uncertain, since, while the mayor’s press secretary, Gale Jones Carson, who is state Democratic Party secretary, supported Ford, Herenton, often a political foe of the Ford family, took no active part in the special election.
Thanks mainly to the support given to the Diebold Corporation by former Election Commission chairman and current member O.C. Pleasant, a Democrat, Diebold machines won out over models proposed by the rival ES & S Company in 3-1 vote by the commission last week to determine the election machinery that will be used in this year’s local elections.
Voting with Pleasant for Diebold were Republican members Nancye Hines and Rich Holden; voting against Hines’ motion for Diebold was Democratic member Maura Black Sullivan, who was returning to action after a recent serious illness. Commission chairman Greg Duckett abstained.
The backstory was that Holden, who harbored serious doubts about Diebold as a company, had intended to vote for ES & S and that Duckett was regarded as a tiebreaker in that case for ES & S. But Holden said he found his hands tied when representatives of both the county purchasing department and the commission staff announced endorsements of Diebold.
At the rank-and-file level, local Democrats tended to favor E.S. & S, while Republicans on the whole supported Diebold.
Perhaps more meaningful in the long run was the commission’s endorsement by a 3-2 party-line vote -- the Democrats prevailing – for add-on “Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail” technology which would provide a reliable paper trail to authenticate the results of local elections. VPAT, as the technology is called for short, must still be approved by the state for use in local elections.