The Democrats Look West

p until now, state Democrats' gubernatorial hopes for 1998 have been fairly thoroughly invested in Nashville -- in residents of that city or in political personalities closely identified with it. There are several reasons for that: Nashville is the last bastion of the old white Democratic Solid South; it is, after all, the state capital; and it has long been the fund-raising and organizational center of statewide politics.

In 1994, it was widely believed that the Nashville establishment went out of its way to scuttle the gubernatorial hopes of then-Shelby County Mayor Bill Morris -- even to the point of involving him in legal problems stemming from the employment of county inmates at his fund-raising functions. And other hopefuls from the provinces -- especially those from West Tennessee -- received short shrift in the year that saw Nashville Mayor Phil Bredesen ultimately carry the party standard against Memphian Don Sundquist.

But, with the surprise dropout announcement last week of former House Majority Leader Bill Purcell, who had been the clear Establishment favorite for governor, all Democratic eyes are suddenly looking west. After all, such other state capital stalwarts as Bredesen and businessman Clayton McWhorter were sounding bashful, as was Chattanooga photo magnate Olan Mills. And there had been one major Nashville dropout, U.S. Rep. Bob Clement.

But two Memphians were suddenly front and center. State Senator Steve Cohen, who ran an impressive issue-oriented campaign in 1994 (and would attract respectful attention if he did so again), began advertising his availability. And Tennessee Regulatory Authority member Sara Kyle -- considered a top prospect when she won election to the old Public Service Commission in 1994 -- was also thinking out loud about a race.

Kyle, a Clement family member, was clearly regarded as a serious threat by Sundquist, who had lobbied the state senate hard to abolish the PSC; subsequently, he made sure that members of the successor agency, the TRA, were enjoined from taking part in political activity. This past spring Kyle's husband, State Sen. Jim Kyle, got a bill passed exempting her so as to appear with him in his potential 1998 campaign for Shelby County Mayor; Sundquist vetoed it.

"This is a critical moment in the Kyle household," said Sen. Kyle this week, stressing the obvious fact that somebody's political campaign -- his for mayor or hers for governor -- will have to be shelved next year. The Kyles are parents of three small children, and whoever isn't running will have to shoulder most of the child-care burden.

Meanwhile, the husband-wife political duo are sure to be bombarded with appeals of various sorts -- some statewide, arguing for a Sara Kyle gubernatorial race; some local, pleading for Jim Kyle to be the local party's savior against Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout, the heavily favored GOP incumbent.

Besides Cohen and Kyle, there is yet a third West Tennessean who is rethinking his prospects as a gubernatorial hopeful. This is State Sen. Roy Herron, who had previously succeeded former Gov. Ned Ray McWherter, his fellow townsman, in the state House of Representatives.

Herron is one of the smoothest and most versatile of up-and-coming politicians. Generally seen as a moderate, he is at home both with the party's liberal faction and with down-home rural Democrats. Last year he was actually put on the bill of the conservative-oriented "National Affairs Briefing" at The Pyramid by event organizer Ed McAteer; typically, Herron addressed the issue of abortion rights without antagonizing either side to the issue.

Herron is actually the favorite of several local Democrats who might otherwise favor Cohen or Kyle but see him as more saleable statewide than the Midtown state senator and who fear that a race by Sara Kyle would rob them of a ticket-leader in next year's county election.

So far, state Democratic chairman Houston Gordon of Covington, whose deadline of Labor Day to find a consensus candidate was ruined by Purcell's withdrawal, is keeping his own counsel on where to place his next bet.

* Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout says he is redoubling efforts to find a solution to the current Shelby County Commission boycott by six black Democrats. There is some prospect that some of the Democrats will return for next Monday's meeting, which will be preceded, however, by a Sunday-night rally at Cherokee Missionary Baptist Church, called by the Memphis Baptist Ministerial Association to support the boycotting members. So far the GOP members hold firm to the terms of last week's abortive compromise agreement.

* With enemies like these, who needs friends? So must Criminal Court Judge Joe Brown of Division 9 be thinking after the state Attorney General's office, operating on behalf of the District Attorney General's office, appealed to the state Court of Criminal Appeals to get both him and Criminal Court colleague John Colton out of their hair.

The bottom line: Brown got called everything but a wise man, but he ended up strengthened, not weakened, by what on the surface was meant to be a disciplinary action. Long regarded as Legal Nemesis Number One by a prosecution team which privately feared that he wanted to showboat his way to glory with the James Earl Ray case, Brown got some severe wrist-slapping from the three-judge appeals court panel that met in Jackson Friday, but afterward his was the hand in control of the case, not Colton's.

The court, which met in special emergency session in Jackson last Friday, rebuked both Brown and Colton for their "fact-finding" activities, but it settled the issue of jurisdiction of the Ray case in Brown's favor and specifically empowered him to oversee further tests of the 30.06 rifle with which Ray allegedly (and by his own 1969 confession) shot and killed Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

Colton, meanwhile, was out of the play -- the appeals court judges having declined even to hear a brief from Mike Roberts, the "special master" whom Colton had lately attempted to invest with investigative and subpoena powers. And the prosecution team, which earlier this year had argued that Colton's Division 3 -- site of Ray's conviction and sentencing in 1969 -- should be the repository of any further legal efforts, seemed content with the finding.

The appeals court action had both jurisdictional and procedural overtones. In a ruling which took them no more than half an afternoon to come by, the three judges who heard briefs Friday morning from both the D.A.'s office and from Ray's attorney, William Pepper, found that both judges had -- just as the state maintained in its appeal -- exceeded their authority.

They took Colton off the case and severely reprimanded Brown. But he stayed in control, and apparently can, if he wishes, order further tests of Ray's 30.06 rifle -- which the D.A.'s office has been resisting on the grounds that it would reveal nothing new and that Ray, who confessed Dr. King's murder in 1969 and immediately began trying to retract that confession, clearly was the assassin. Brown's expressed intent to pursue the testing issue beyond a preliminary inconclusive finding by defense team experts had triggered the recent showdown.

Although Colton's intervention -- which began three weeks ago with his appointment of Roberts to investigate the question of jurisdiction -- may have originally been designed to rein in Brown's presumed excesses, the D.A.'s office quickly became alarmed when Roberts undertook his investigative role.

As Roberts put it recently, "They [in Division 9] are dealing with weapons; we're dealing with people." Roberts had prepared a subpoena list numbering at least 20 people, and the D.A.'s office began seeing that procedure as a more glaring irregularity than Brown's desire to be a free-handed "finder of fact" and which, ironically, Colton may have seen himself as an antidote to.

The Court of Criminal Appeals not only confirmed Brown's jurisdiction of the current proceedings but referred to his court as the "trial court" -- a usage which could have serious implications at later stages of the legal process.

* At separate points during Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton's $1,000-per head-or-couple fund-raiser at The Peabody last Thursday night, two big donors, both veterans of the 1991 campaign of former Mayor Dick Hackett, were each struck with the same thought (or deja vu experience):

They had been there before -- at a similar big-ticket bash four years earlier for Hackett -- who was a huge favorite to win the 1991 election and who garnered the same sort of blue-chip, fat-wallet support as was mustered for Herenton last week. As both men recalled somewhat uneasily, their man had lost anyhow -- by the grand total of 142 votes. Might history repeat itself?

Certainly the cast of characters was similar -- a cross-section of the city's (and county's) major developers and a Who's-Who list of other movers and shakers, several of whom were candid about their desire to fire a warning shot across the bow of former U.S. Rep. Harold Ford, a potential mayoral candidate.

Something in the vicinity of half a million dollars was raised for Herenton's reelection effort, still formally unannounced, at the event, hosted by Pitt Hyde and chaired by Pete Aviotti. *

* In Miami three weeks ago for the Young Democrats 1997 annual convention, Shelby County's Y.D.'s put in a bid for the 1999 national YD convention, hosting an "Elvis Party" attended by several hundred of this year's convention delegates and using the slogan "Elvis in '99" as part of their pitch. Competing sites are Arkansas, the Virgin Islands, and the District of Columbia.

Perhaps hoping that lightning would strike twice, state YD president Joseph Kyles of Memphis put in a late bid for the national presidency, just as he did earlier in the summer at Tennessee's YD convention. In Nashville, the ploy took him all the way. In Miami, it didn't, but it may have generated a trade-off that got Tennessee one position and African-Americans four positions on the national YD executive committee, Kyles believes.

Kyles himself was named national Political Action director, with a license and a budget to travel the country and recruit more YDs.

* The Public Issues Forum, a generally liberal-oriented discussion group, will hear Dr. Frank W. Ling of UT-Memphis's Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, next Monday at 7:30 p.m. at Memphis Botanic Gardens. His subject: "The Best Intentions: Unintended Pregnancy and the Well-Being of Children and Families."