They Came, They Saw…

And city and county were still getting their acts together for the General Assembly.

by Jackson Baker

NASHVILLE – After a weekend visit to Nashville from members of the Memphis City Council that drew controversy back home but was formally welcomed by representatives of the state’s capital city, the 1998 General Assembly got under way this week, and, as it did, neither Memphis’ nor Shelby County’s legislative packages were yet complete.
Longtime county lobbyist Bobby Bowers said that the finishing touches were still being put on the county’s list of legislative desiderata as this year’s session was convened Tuesday, and the outlook was similar for the City of Memphis, whose lobbyists, Robin Merritt and Harlan Mathews, had tried to get clearance from the administration of Mayor Willie Herenton and from the city council back in December but were put on hold.
Council member Janet Hooks, one of those attending an official council “retreat”at the Crowne Plaza (which also included a complement of state legislators), complained to city CAO Rick Masson about the delay in presenting a legislative package, and Masson and others noted in return that the council had failed to hear out Merritt and ad hoc lobbyist John Farris after the two had waited all day to be heard at a council session in December. (The lack of a quorum had been the reason, councilman Tom Marshall said.)
Copies of a proposed package were shipped overnight for a follow-up session at the Crowne Plaza on Sunday. The package included sections on economic development, crime, and public finance, most of which received a provisional okay from the council members present in Nashville, as well as several recommendations from District Attorney General Bill Gibbons, some of which – notably provisions calling for landlord liability in cases of drug-dealer eviction and extension of liability to second-hand dealers in cases of stolen merchandise – received a turndown from the council members.
Another controversial Gibbons proposal that was rejected was one giving arresting officers the right to confiscate driver’s licenses of DUI suspects refusing to take Breathalyzer tests.
(Final action on the city ’s 1998 legislative package was scheduled to be taken up by the full council in Memphis this week.)
The council’s Nashville retreat itself became the subject of controversy when some members expressed doubt about its value and one, councilman Brent Taylor, stayed home after publicly branding it “a waste of time and money.” Others saw the affair to be a useful occasion to show the Memphis flag after a year in which Chapter 98 and other actions of the state legislature had demonstrated the city’s possible vulnerability in the state capital.
n While what looked to be a few thousand Tennessee Democrats gathered for two fund-raising events at the BellSouth Tower in Nashville Monday night (legislative fund-raising is suspended while the General Assembly, which convened Tuesday, is in session), Governor Don Sundquist entertained perhaps 30 Republican sympathizers at the governor’s mansion for a fund-raising affair of his own.
And his take from the $5,000-a-ticket corporate-donor affair may have added up to more than half of what the Democrats got from their two shindigs, priced at $500 and $100 a head, respectively. Although reckonings were incomplete, Monday night’s score may have ended up: Democrats, $250,000; Sundquist, $150,000.
That would nudge the governor ever closer to the $6 million mark in money raised. And Sundquist – so far without any sign of Democratic opposition for 1998 – has already indicated that he’s thinking hard about making some of his surplus available to needy Republican legislative candidates.
The Democrats’ latest official dropout from potential candidate ranks was state Senator Steve Cohen, who called a press conference in Nashville Monday to rule out the idea of making another race for governor this year. Cohen had been one of several contestants in the 1994 Democratic primary for governor and had finished well out of the running, but he was being urged to try again this year by several well-wishers who noted that he might have the nomination race this year – and the bully pulpit thereafter – to himself.
One of the urgers, however, was not state Democratic chairman Houston Gordon of Covington, whose recent calling-all-cars mail-out to state Democrats seemingly beseeching someone, anyone, to run for governor became the subject of humor across the state – and among Democrats gathered for the pre-session events in Nashville Monday.
“It’s got to be a joke, and that’s one reason I called my press conference,” said Cohen, who added that another reason was that he had been asked whether his announced support of a proposed state Restoration of Religious Freedom Act was an indication of a pending gubernatorial candidacy. “I wanted to separate my political plans from my support of issues as cleanly as possible,” Cohen said.
Cohen’s withdrawal from the gubernatorial sweepstakes, following that of several other prominent state Democrats (including state Senator Roy Herron of Dresden and U.S. Representative John Tanner of Union City, both of whom repeated their reluctance to run Monday night), left the field open for some unlikely gubernatorial prospects.
“Believe it or not, I’ve been sounded out by a few people already,” said Memphis city councilman Tom Marshall, one of those on hand for the Democratic fund-raisers. Similar words were uttered by Jeff Clark, a computer-sciences professor at Middle Tennessee State University and former state party treasurer, who was an aide in the 1994 governor’s race of former Shelby County Mayor Bill Morris. Neither is likely to run, however.
n Cohen left the way open for a possible race for Shelby County Mayor – one more electoral position the Democrats are having trouble filling. Another official who says he’s thinking that race over is Memphis city councilman E.C. Jones, who has toyed with running for this or that race under this or that party banner and most recently had said he would run for county register as a Republican.
n It didn’t command as much attention as their falling-out of late last year, but Shelby County’s two most prominent governmental executives did try to make nice to each other last week.
The occasion was the 63rd anniversary of the late Elvis Presley’s birthday, which saw Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton and Shelby County Mayor Jim Rout collaborate in the cutting of a symbolic birthday cake in honor of the King. There was much mugging and making merry, and no one had to be point out that the gesture was clearly an attempt to make up for the fact that the two mayors did not jointly participate in last month’s ceremonial lighting of the City of Memphis Christmas tree on Riverside Drive.
Only hours before that ceremony, Mayor Herenton had made it clear to representatives of Mayor Rout that the presence of the latter in the tree-lighting ritual would not be welcomed. It has been customary for the two mayors to cooperate in the annual ceremony, but hard feelings about their differing viewpoints during last year’s annexation/incorporation crisis – together with the memory of some mutual name-calling – got in the way of their usual holiday comity.
n Mayor Herenton’s annexation of the glittering new Wolfchase Galleria commercial area – effected on New Year’s Day after negotiations with representatives of surrounding residential areas and with the City of Lakeland – will bring into the city ’s coffers an estimated $26 million in sales tax and property tax revenues.
Is the city’s acquisition of this valuable property to be regarded as “cherry-picking?” That term denotes the kind of revenue-conscious selectivity that Lt. Gov. John Wilder of Somerville, one of the foremost legislative advocates of last year’s radical and now-defunct Chapter 98 package, has called one of the two basic problems to be remedied in the state’s current urban annexation formula. (The other is the “free ride” certain suburbs may be getting in the services and amenities they derive from adjoining cities.)
Surprisingly perhaps, Wilder demurs at using the term “cherry-picking” for the Wolfchase pickup. “I do not know that it is. But Hickory Withe was,” he said Monday night at the Democratic Caucus pre-session fund-raiser at Nashville’s BellSouth Tower. Perhaps he was being diplomatic about Wolfchase, mindful of a need to mend fences with some Memphis legislators. By comparison, Hickory Withe, the small but upscale Fayette County community which Wilder had hoped to save from annexation by either Memphis or the nearby town of Oakland, is a matter that clearly still sticks in his craw.
If Wilder opted to be circumspect about Wolfchase, an official closer to home felt less constrained. Shelby County Commissioner Mark Norris told an audience at the conservative-oriented Dutch Treat Luncheon at the Midway Cafe on Poplar Saturday that Memphis’ annexation of Wolfchase might adversely affect ongoing litigation concerning county school-board elections.
Alluding to the fact that there is legitimate argument as to whether Memphis taxpayers contribute more to the upkeep of suburban schools or vice versa, Norris noted that a suit seeking to include city voters in the county board elections is slated to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court and said of tax changes wrought by the Wolfchase annexation, “The net-flow analysis could be impacted.”
Norris had a gag-line about the imbroglio concerning the weekend’s city council retreat in Nashville. Noting the presence in his audience of councilman Taylor, Norris cracked, “The truth is, Brent Taylor stayed here because he wanted to hear me speak.” n

Down Home Away from Home

Last weekend’s get-together of Memphians in Nashville indicated that, here and there, gender factors can still shape how people respond to a political challenge.
Concerning his possible 1998 Democratic primary challenger, Shelby State political-science instructor Joseph Kyles, State Rep. Joe Towns Jr. (D-Whitehaven) offered this succinct reflection: “He better bring some butt, ’cause I’m going to whip his ass.”
Concerning a possible electoral challenge to her brother, Circuit Court Judge James Swearengen, from lawyer Gene Gaerig, city council member Barbara Swearengen Holt said, “Well, we’ll just whip his socks off.”
Even in 1998, it’s hard to imagine the sources of those metaphors being reversed.
n No, we’re not making his up. Among the Nashville council members dining with Memphis counterparts Saturday night was one Earl Campbell, a namesake of whom was a Hall of Fame running back for the then-Houston Oilers back in the ’70s and ’80s.
Councilman Campbell’s district, moreover, backs up to the site of the stadium being built for the NFL Oilers in downtown Nashville. But it turns out that this Campbell, far from being a rah-rah booster for the itinerant, soon-to-be-transplanted Oilers,was part of a goal-line defense on the key bond issue and other enabling votes that came before the council. “I was one of those who voted consistently against letting them come at our expense. We just got worn down and outvoted,” said Campbell.
n Nashville Mayor Phil Bredesen dined with the Memphians and was a more or less gracious presence, offering – on behalf of himself and his city’s council – to reciprocate the visit with some semi-official occasion in the Bluff City down the line.
Bredesen has already paid at least one visit to Memphis that was not much noted at the time. He was on hand at the Liberty Bowl in November for the Oilers’ victory over the New York Giants. “Mainly, I just sat in the stands with a group from Nashville, although I made my rounds of the suites, too,” Bredesen recalled.
The game against the Giants was one of only thee Oilers games Bredesen attended during the 1997 season. He went to one of the team’s two pre-season exhibitions in Nashville, and he journeyed to Miami to see the Oilers’ overtime loss to the Dolphins in the second game of the season.
As for the still-unresolved question of where the Oilers, due to arrive in Nashville for the 1999 season and seasons thereafter, will play their home games next season, Bredesen offered, “I don’t have any reason to believe they won’t be in Memphis next year.” But he added, “Of course, I’m aware that the powers-that-be are concerned about the poor attendance.” (Oilers owner Bud Adams, angry at the large turnout from Pittsburgh Steelers fans at the 1997 season’s Liberty Bowl finale and noting that his fellow NFL owners had groused about low turnouts, has dropped hints about moving the Oilers for the 1998 season, a year before that city’s stadium will be ready.)
n Council chairman Myron Lowery, commenting wryly on a part of District Attorney General Bill Gibbons’ legislative package seeking to include “sheds, outhouses, and garages” in the definition of “habitation” in cases of burglary: “If they want my outhouse, let ’em take everything they can carry.” n