Sunday, July 11, 2010
Rocking and Rolling with the Willie Herenton Campaign
Posted by Jackson Baker on Sun, Jul 11, 2010 at 2:15 AM
Willie Herenton’s first significant venture into all-day campaigning in the 9th District wasn’t a mammoth effort, but it was a significant one.
A small but sturdy group of supporters of Herenton’s congressional campaign — enough to make up a caravan of nine or ten vehicles — accompanied the former mayor on a motor tour of the district, stopping periodically at major intersections to wave signs and yell greetings and slogans to passing motorists.
Herenton — who was front and center himself at these stops — got what surely was an encouraging amount of honks from drivers passing by, some of whom slowed down to engage Herenton in conversation.
This is Willie Herenton, winner of five mayoral elections, campaigning:
Leaving Herenton’s campaign headquarters on South 3rd at roughly 10:30. Herenton’s motorcade—blaring out R&B numbers from one of the vans — wove its way through several South Memphis stops before heading down Winchester to a stop in Hickory Hill, thence to the Orange Mound Community Center and to points in north Memphis. At several stops, including Orange Mound and a flea market at New Hope Baptist Church, Herenton got to do a little speechmaking. At New Hope and at Hickory Hill, he was met by TV news crews.
The tour was partly structured and party improvised, and it surely didn’t call on much in the way of financial resources. By itself, it could not be considered threatening to the huge lead that incumbent 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen is alleged to hold in the Democratic primary contest (a lead that Herenton and his supporters insist doesn’t really exist). But what it suggests for the immediate future should be of concern to Cohen.
Any fair-minded observer watching Herenton wielding a sign and waving and getting honks would have to conclude that the former mayor’s cachet\, his charisma, and his legendary place in the history of Memphis politics (and of African-American involvement in politics, particularly) are all live and well and could be fanned into a fairly significant piece of electoral combustion if Herenton continues the kind of show-the-flag campaigning — cheap but effective — that he undertook on Saturday.
Whether this means that Herenton — whose level of committed support was pegged at 9 percent in one recent poll (to Cohen’s 62 percent) — could rise into the 30-percent bracket by the August 5th primary date, or (more ominously for Cohen) into higher and seriously challenging percentage brackets remains to be seen.
But here is a case in point. Rather mischievously the caravan was routed past several Cohen checkpoints — the congressman’s Whitehaven Plaza headquarters, for example, and the residence of Cohen supporter Anthony “Amp” Elmore on Semmes. Nobody came outside to respond to the mayor’s amplified (and good-natured) taunts at either of those places, but there was a telling event at the residence of a woman half a block up the street from Elmore.
She happened to be outside as the caravan crawled by, and she waved at it, as so many people had done all day (including one paraplegic who had rolled himself dangerously into a South Memphis street to do so.) What made this interesting was the fact that she had a Cohen sign in her yard. (Such signs were not infrequent wherever the motorcade went.) What made the situation even more interesting was the fact that she was talked into uprooting the sign.
Maybe the Cohen sign went back as soon as the caravan had passed, and maybe such loyalty switching as it might indicate would be miniscule at best. But maybe, too — well, maybe the Cohen campaign better take all of this seriously,
The fact is that at an eqivalent stage of the 1991 Memphis mayor’s race incumbent Dick Hackett was considered to have a lead in the 60-percent range, with challenger Herenton trailing well behind. And we know how, with the aid of some highly concentrated late blitzing, that all got transformed.
Just sayin’. This congressional race may end up with a smashing Cohen victory, as almost every prognosticator (including myself) has suggested up until now. But it ain’t over. Maybe it hasn’t even hit its stride.
Comments (17)
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What idiocy. If this sort of whooping and hollering is what wins this Congressional race, it will exemplify the lack of education in this district. Steve Cohen speaks articulately on the issues, and his record backs him up.
"INTELLIGENT, EDUCATED, AFRICAN-AMERICANS WILL NOT VOTE FOR THIS MAN."
He won five elections without those low voter turnout, "we have arrived, comfortable, I got mine" intelligent, educated, African-Americans you describe.
I stand by my previous comment: "INTELLIGENT, EDUCATED, AFRICAN-AMERICANS WILL NOT VOTE FOR THIS MAN." This man is a disgrace to this city. He has done nothing but destroyed it. Take a look at this once immaculate city, it is filthy and crime-ridden. People in other parts of the state have a very bad opinion of Memphis.
i just pray that people look at what happened when he was in local politics and REMEMBER the arrogance and the way that he is, a racist jerk.
So, lemme see if I understand: a few car horns have suddenly changed what was, based on the available polling, close to being a rout into a "horse race?" After all, aren't all elections, regardless of the odds, horse races, at least to the media?
Are you paying attention, Messrs. Yacoubian, Bakke and Ethridge? You can throw away all your polling techniques now. They're way too scientific. The "car horn index" of popularity is all you need.
Maybe we should scrap the whole cumbersome election process in favor of placing decibel meters at strategic intersections. It'd be a whole lot easier to vote by car horn than by ballot, wouldn't it?
LOL!
I said a week or so back that Herenton had been reduced to little more than a 'carnival barker'. These videos prove it. This election will be a rout and then Herenton will basically go out of mind, out of sight. It's over.
i've said it before: exploiting ignorance and racial bias -- if Willie were white he'd be tea-partying with the worst of them. good luck, TN-9.
Yeah Marty, because we all know how biased Jackson Baker is against Steve Cohen. Come on, give him a break. He's just being fair.
Oh, leave him alone, Auto. I don't take any offense. For Marty, contention is as necessary as oxygen. I do wonder where he found the phrase "horse race," thugh -- certainly not in the article.
And watch out in using irony ("we all know how biased Jackson Baker is against Steve Cohen"). You'd be surprised how many people take such statements literally. All I hope to be is accurate, fair-minded to both candidates, and as complete as possible.
Marty I don't know how the professional pollsters do their work, but to write off Herenton in a local election is just plain ridiculous. He has as many admirers as he does detractors.
C'mon, auto: you had to stretch yourself way out of shape to come up with that interpretation. Besides, you don't need to jump to JaB's defense; he does a good job all by himself. Brown-nose much?
I never accused JaB of being biased, and wouldn't. He goes to great lengths to avoid that, even at the expense of sometimes looking like he's trying to be all things to all people. By the way, it's possible to be both fair and opinionated. JaB's a good example of that.
As for the term "horse race," that was a reference to the media's all-too-frequent attempt to cast elections that way. It's a common criticism of the spin they put on elections in order to maintain interest in them, sometimes when they appear to be foregone conclusions (like this one appears to be). http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/politi…
Uh. Marty, go ahead and call both me and Branston "JB." It's better than "JaB!"
And, btw, I thi k you omitted a "not" inyour last comment. Either that or there's a Freudian slip
Congressman Steve Cohen has always believed that the best politics is doing the job you were elected to do well. Since elected in 2006, Steve has:
• Worked with President Obama on tax cuts to create and save jobs in the 9th Congressional District
• Authored an amendment to prohibit employers from discriminating against job applicants with poor credit records
• Fought for a much needed Health Care Reform bill that gives health care to millions and reduces the 9th District’s burdens by allowing The Med to recover funds spent treating out of state patients
• Introduced legislation to help relieve the burden of student loan debt in bankruptcy cases
• Fought to hold BP executives accountable for the spill in the Gulf of Mexico
• Protected the First Amendment by introducing The Citizen Participation Act to ban meritless SLAPP lawsuits meant to stifle the voices of the American public
• Introduced The Honor The WISH Act allowing our military personnel control over their funeral arrangements
• Passed a resolution calling upon the United States House of Representatives to apologize for its role in allowing slavery and the Jim Crow era that followed.
Memphis is well on its way to becoming the prosperous city that we all deserve, and it is very important that we keep it on that path. Vote to re-elect for Congressman Steve Congressman for District 9!
As someone who was born in Memphis and lived there for the first 30 years of my life, I must say I am disappointed, dismayed and disillusioned that the city I still call home cannot rise above race. It has been twenty years since I lived in Memphis. In that time, I have seen the city stagnate under the weight of unresolved racial discord. In no small part, Willie Herenton must accept responsibility for that. The lack of vision and abuses of power that ultimately drove him from City Hall should have ended his political career. The fact that Mr. Herenton has any credibility as a candidate says a great deal about the voters in Memphis and their inability to move beyond the cronyism that has characterized local politics for a hundred years. I feel sad whenever I hear that the city I love chooses more of the same one election after another. Perhaps this year will be different.
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