by Jackson Baker
t ain't over
till it's over, and, like a still-active volcano, the Shelby County Commission,
which erupted in two disputes last year between its seven white Republicans
and six black Democrats, may have simmered again briefly. And conceivably
done some damage to the sunshine.
"It's the story of my life," Juvenile Court referee Herb Lane said bitterly Monday afternoon after his candidacy to become a General Sessions Court judge fell short in balloting by members of the Shelby County Commission. The victor was attorney Lynn Cobb, who serves as finance chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party and who garnered all seven GOP votes on the commission.
(After the customary post-balloting vote shifts, Cobb's election was made unanimous. And several African-American commissioners had already voted for Cobb on the first go-round.)
Lane, a declared Republican who last week had rated high among GOP commissioners, got only the votes of two black Democrats Monday -- James Ford, who nominated him, and Shep Wilbun. "Last year I was criticized for not going after African-American voters. This year I get hit for going after them," said Lane, who was upset for a Criminal Court judgeship last year by incumbent Judge Carolyn Blackett.
While thus acknowledging that he had actively solicited votes from the commission's black Democrats, Lane angrily denied that he had been a party to any arrangement whereby Commissioner Julian Bolton could claim credit for a quid pro quo in the appointment of a black successor to Lane as a referee.
A weekend news report suggested that Bolton had tried to broker such an arrangement. Juvenile Court Judge Kenneth Turner said that he intended to appoint Felicia Hogan, an African American, should a vacancy occur but firmly distanced himself from any potential bargain with Bolton. And, in fact, Bolton's preferred black candidate for referee was known to be not Hogan but Cary Woods, a former director of the Memphis Housing Authority.
Some Republican members of the Commission said that the flap had not affected Monday's voting, but others, including Chairman Mark Norris, acknowledged that Lane -- who had led in early unofficial polling among GOP commissioners -- lost support because of it. "They didn't believe me," Lane maintained, though GOP commissioners said they had in fact taken Lane at his word.
Bolton's involvement, even if it was limited to trying to take credit for a process already under way, could not have helped Lane with GOP members, many of whom still resent his role, while serving as chairman last year, in two highly divisive showdowns -- one over racial disparity in county contracting, another over how to constitute the voter base for future county school board elections. (While conceding Monday that he had talked to Judge Turner about future appointment prospects, Bolton, too, denied that any kind of "deal" had been involved.)
Several GOP commissioners conceded that the Republican bloc had caucused in the days preceding Monday's voting to achieve unanimity, but most said that last week's frequent committee meetings on budget matters had provided the occasion for discussion. Asked point-blank whether there had been an organized private meeting of Republican commissioners, Tommy Hart said, "I'd rather not answer that."
A state "sunshine" law prohibits such private meetings by members of public bodies. Ironically enough, the law was sponsored, during his service as a state senator, by the late General Sessions Judge James White, whose seat was being filled in Monday's voting.
Denied again Monday, incidentally, was Bob Talley, a lawyer who has sought a judgeship of some kind since 1990 and who indicated he would try again in next year's elections. Talley was not nominated Monday. A third nominee was Rhonda Harris.
* The commission's unanimous vote Monday -- on an add-on initiative by Commissioner Cleo Kirk -- to provide some $450,000 in new funding for summer youth jobs followed by a week the city council's commitment of an additional $250,000 for such jobs.
Both results could be interpreted as ex post facto victories for U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., who several weeks ago challenged both Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout and Memphis Mayor W.W. Herenton to come up with extra money for summer jobs and later appealed to the commission and the council to provide it.
Rout signaled his assent to the new funding Monday through county CAO Jim Kelley; there was no indication of attitude from Mayor Herenton, who saw the council change the name of its summer jobs program from the Mayor's Youth Initiative to the Memphis Summer Youth Program.
The summer jobs development was one indication of a kind of stealth process whereby Rep. Ford seems to be gaining a strategic advantage over Herenton, who could end up opposing the congressman's father, former Rep. Harold Ford, in a 1999 mayoral race.
Another front in that cold war may have developed apropos a troubled MHA grant proposal. (See "MHA Board Chair Accuses Ford Jr. of Interference" in this week's City Reporter.)
* In a press conference Monday, city Councilman Rickey Peete joined State Reps. Larry Miller, Joe Towns, and Ulysses Jones, Free the Children director Sara Lewis, and developer Harold Buehler in calling for rejection of Governor Don Sundquist's proposal to balance the state budget by using $88 million, or any portion thereof, of the reserve funds of the Tennessee Housing Development Agency.
How to Mentor a Muckety-Muck
THERE'S A STARRING ROLE FOR A MEMPHIAN in former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich's wry tell-all opus about his time in the Clinton administration, Locked in the Cabinet (Alfred A. Knopf, 338 pg., $25).
Technically, Ken Sain is an ex-Memphian, having lived in Washington since serving in Al Gore's 1992 vice-presidential campaign and taking a job on the veep's staff the next year. (He now serves as an aide to Andrew Cuomo, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.) But Sain renewed his Bluff City ties last year when he holed up here and served as point man for the Clinton-Gore reelection effort in West Tennessee.
And, even before his experience with the real White House, Sain was for some years a member of the "White House gang" of Young Democrats who lived in a large frame house of that color on Monroe Avenue which attracted legions of local Democratic luminaries for high-profile parties and political announcements. The house -- whose other inhabitants then included activists David Upton, John Freeman, Andy Hill, and Glen Keesee -- served as the 1996 campaign headquarters for Harold Ford Jr.'s successful 9th District congressional campaign.
Sain's role in Reich's saga is that of guru to the older man while he is on loan to him as an advance man for an official trip. Using his inimitable combination of sass and deference, Sain lectures Reich on his deficiencies as a "high muckety-muck." Speaking in what Reich calls "Afro-Tennessean," he instructs the Secretary: "Right now, you're a low-maintenance non-muck. You can't do the talk 'cause you don't know the walk. You don't know the first thing. You're a member of the cabinet of the President of the United States, and you act like an insurance salesman."
Among other things, Sain tells Reich, a "high-maintenance muck" must allow aides to carry his baggage, go through doorways before others, know how to wedge his way into camera shots, and look always "like he's late for a meeting with the president." He must arrive to give his own speeches "in the nick of time" and leave events before others deliver theirs. He must limit handshake time to five seconds, except in the case of "big donors," who get a 10-second max.
The accomplished muckety-muck must also know how to walk slightly behind the president or vice president when with those dignitaries, and how, during their speeches, to "stand behind and to the side and look as though you're interested in every word."
And finally: "The tenth and final rule of muck-dom is the most important. Whenever in public -- in an airport, on the street, wherever -- always look cool. Don't frown. Don't clown. Don't be down. A true muck is always in charge."
The "hardest challenge" of the muckety-muck canon, Sain goes on to explain, is "un-learning it when you leave the Cabinet."
Just Another Stevie Ray Clone
"YOU KNOW THAT STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN song `Caught in the Crossfire?' Well, that's how I feel."
That comment, delivered early this week, might qualify for the ultimate public-affairs trivia quiz. Who said it? None other than Marilyn Loeffel of Cordova, Governor Don Sundquist's recently defeated nominee for the nine-member state Board of Education.
Loeffel was turned back by a 5-2-1 vote of the K-through-12 Education subcommittee of the state House of Representatives last week, but -- on advice from the governor, she says -- she has vowed to fight on, invoking Rule 80, a little-used parliamentary procedure that would allow the full Education Committee, if it chose, to review her nomination and submit it, by a favorable vote, to the full House.
"That won't happen if the Speaker [Jimmy Naifeh of Covington, the House Democratic leader] doesn't want it to happen," Loeffel concedes, and most observers concur that a favorable reconsideration is unlikely.
Meanwhile, Loeffel is the occasion of some intramural strife amongst her conservative allies. (Hence her "crossfire" remark.)
She was the speaker at last Saturday's Dutch Treat Luncheon at Wilson World on Cherry, and, after she had recapitulated for the attendees her struggle to join the state Board, a verbal firefight broke out over the role of Memphis school board member Jim Brown in a voice vote last month whereby the city board instructed its lobbyist, Percy Harvey, to oppose Loeffel's nomination in Nashville.
Brown, who was in the audience at Wilson World Saturday, was pilloried by several present for his failure to go on record in opposition to the city board resolution, which was proposed by member Bill Todd and reported as being unanimous.
Ex-Marine Brown, who was supported by conservatives in his 1995 board race, offered a low-key defense of his actions. Acknowledging that his attention had drifted at the time of Todd's resolution (which was offered late, after the audience and media had left the Board of Education auditorium), he said he regarded the resolution as, in any case, unbinding and unofficial.
Loeffel's reaction, which reflected that of various other critics of Brown at the luncheon, was, "We didn't elect Jim Brown to have him fall asleep at meetings."
Loeffel says that Governor Sundquist has assured her that he won't announce a state board appointee to replace her until next year. As she fights on, she continues to maintain that various of her positions have been misreported by critics. On the question of school vouchers, for example: "I support checking into vouchers. I'm not necessarily for them."
But she acknowledges having once said that public education was a "joke" -- one of several remarks that, in tandem with her positions on issues like vouchers and special "charter" schools and her past presidency of the local conservative group FLARE, had provoked stiff opposition to her nomination from the Tennessee Education Association and other groups.
"I've apologized for that remark. I should have said public education is a tragedy," Loeffel says.
Commenting in general on the resistance to her nomination, Loeffel said, "They're letting Ellen [DeGeneres] out of the closet, and they're trying to stuff me back in."
(Other than to repeat that he thought he was right in appointing Loeffel in the first place, Governor Sundquist declined further comment on her continuing efforts.)