by Jackson Baker
t’s a comedy.” That was the reaction of State Senator
Steve Cohen to the final list of countywide Democratic candidates after last
Thursday’s filing deadline for local party-primary balloting on May 5th.
The Midtown legislator, one of several prominent Democrats who were thought of, at one time or another, as potential party candidates for Shelby County mayor, wasn’t laughing, however. And neither were any other local Democrats.
Jim Rout, the GOP’s incumbent county mayor, had to be chortling big-time, however. He drew three opponents overall, and Rout might as well have hand-picked them.
Unopposed as a Democrat on the May 5th primary ballot is one Keith Martin, a self-professed manic-depressive whose daily garb is his old high-school football jersey.
Rout’s opponent in the Republican primary is Ernest Lunati, whose proprietorship of a sex club some years back led to a conviction for prostitution and who ran for city mayor in 1995, carrying a whip with him to public mayoral forums.
| PHOTO BY JOHN LANDRIGAN |
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The Democrats’ best hope? |
And finally for Rout to contend with on the ultimate August 6th general election ballot, there is independent Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges (the Zambodian native and sometime restaurateur whose well-worn resume surely needs no recapitulation here).
Clearly, it’s a no-contest situation at the mayoral level. Because of the separate ballots on which their names will appear, the electorate won’t even be treated to the potentially entertaining spectacle of a three-way contest between Martin, Lunati, and Hodges.
At least Rout has some nominal opposition, however. Another Republican officeholder, District Attorney General Bill Gibbons, gets a bye. And County Trustee Bob Patterson was, in effect, reelected after John Freeman, an aide to U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., turned up with insufficient signatures on his last-minute petition for the Democratic primary.
The Democrats’ hopes for cracking the GOP’s lineup of countywide officials would seem to be confined to three races – that for Republican Bill Key’s Criminal Court clerkship, that for sheriff against incumbent A.C. Gilless, who is running this year as a Republican, and in the race for register, where former University of Memphis basketball coach Larry Finch was a surprise filee last week. Long-term incumbent Guy Bates, making his second race as a Republican, said of Finch’s challenge, “Hey, I’ll promise to stay away from playing basketball and coaching if Larry’ll stay out of politics.”
Fat chance. After the dust had settled last Thursday, Finch found himself being regarded as the Democrats’ best chance – on name recognition alone – to unseat a Republican incumbent. Bates may not even get to the finals against Finch (who has nominal primary opposition in Stanley L. Shotwell). The incumbent has problems in the GOP primary, facing activist Layne Provine, who has stout support among party regulars, and Tom Watson, the firefighter and frequent candidate who always campaigns long and hard.
Key is potentially vulnerable because he will be opposed in August both by a Democrat (probably the Rev. Ralph White, who is opposed in his primary by Charles J. Jackson) and by one of his disgruntled ex-employees, former sheriff Billy Ray Schilling, who filed last week as an independent and who could split up the outer-county white vote which Key is counting on. (Don’t bet on it, however.)
Former Memphis police director Melvin Burgess carries the Democrats’ hopes against the entrenched and well-financed Gilless. Burgess, however, faces opposition in his own primary from Clyde Venson, and the candidacy of city councilman E.C. Jones as an independent may impact on his vote in August more than it does on Gilless’.
The incumbent sheriff has some primary foes of his own, of course – primarily Novella Smith Arnold, the AIDS activist whom Gilless banned from the Shelby County jail, and former sheriff Gene Barksdale, a once-powerful but now sorely truncated political figure. (Mrs. C.B. “Cob” Smith is another Republican candidate). Gilless’ primary opposition is generally believed to be nominal, however.
Democratic candidates – such as they are –for county commission seats held by Republican incumbents are also regarded as no threats. In fact, the most competitive races involve Republicans running against each other on the May 5th primary ballot.
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Shoo-in Jim Rout. |
In the race for District 1, Position 1, now held by retiring commissioner Pete Sisson, social conservative Marilyn Loeffel vies against Paul Stanley, a marketing sales executive and former Young Republican state president who has considerable mainstream support in the party, and against businessman Scott McCormick, a personable former Memphis City Council candidate whom many observers see as a spoiler whose presence works to Loeffel’s advantage. (Others see McCormick, who has pockets of support in key neighborhoods, as able to profit himself from a three-way split.)
The race for District 1, Position 1 is also complicated by the presence on the August ballot of independents Henry Brenner, a former Republican activist who ran afoul of the party by backing county mayoral candidate Jack Sammons against Rout in 1994, and newcomer Charlie Burch, both of whom would tend to split the vote that Democrat Irma Waddell Merrill hopes to claim.
There’s a hot Republican primary contest in District 1, Position 2, between incumbent commissioner Linda Rendtorff and activist Lyle Tudor, a Cordovan who’s been angling to run for something for quite a while.
Another intriguing contest is that between incumbent commissioner Morris Fair and his challenger, restaurateur John Willingham, in the GOP primary for District 1, Position 3. Willingham has let it be known that he will attack Fair for not backing judicial partisan primaries in a key commission vote last year.
Probate Court clerk Chris Thomas has two potential Democratic opponents in Stan Howell and Kendrick Sneed, both unknowns, but his real problem is fellow Republican Pat VanderSchaaf, who barely lost to Thomas in the 1994 GOP primary and decided, fairly late in the game, that she’d try again in this year’s primary.
The meager turnout of Democratic candidates for countywide races – amounting, in effect, to a no-show – had to be disappointing to party regulars who, under the leadership of chairman Mark Yates, will try to do some long-term reforming of the ranks.
In what may be a first move, Yates announced last week that he would be leaving his day job as local chief of staff for Rep. Ford and seeking a position in investment banking, the arena he left before joining Ford’s staff.
Besides Cohen and State Senator Jim Kyle, who had been local Democrats’ first choice to run for county mayor before deciding against a race late last year, other potential Democratic candidate recruits who ended up not toeing the line were: FedEx employee Mike Cody Jr., son of the former state Attorney General, for Shelby County clerk (against the now-unopposed incumbent Jayne Creson); Cecelia Robilio, daughter of City Court Judge Kay Robilio and GOP activist Vic Robilio, for Juvenile Court clerk; and Jimmy White, former state Labor Commissioner who is currently an aide to assessor Rita Clark, for County Trustee.
n As of last Friday, candidates for the 39 judicial positions up for grabs this year were empowered to pull petitions. Between now and the filing deadline of May 21st, most incumbent judges and a good many wannabes are likely to get in.
One veteran jurist, Criminal Court Judge Bernie Weinman, wants to narrow the options a bit. “I’ve heard it said that I might not run if I draw some opposition. Not so. I’ll run again, no matter how many opponents I might have,” averred Weinman, who was elected to his present post in 1974, after serving as a city court judge for the nine previous years.
n State Senator Cohen, author of a controversial new bill allowing citizens’ use of deadly force against perpetrators of violent crimes (See “Cohen Pushes Controversial Deadly Force Bill,” City Reporter, this issue), possesses a much-vaunted reputation as a defender of civil liberties. But he also has a long history of proposing fairly stern law-and-order legislation – some of which, like the deadly-force bill, may raise eyebrows here and there among his backers.
In the current session, Cohen has also offered a bill that would impose extended jail terms on motorists found to have higher levels of alcohol consumption and another that would place graduated restrictions on driver’s licenses for motorists under the age of 18.
In 1994, when he was a candidate for governor, Cohen espoused the death penalty, and he was an early proponent in the General Assembly of “right-to-carry” legislation enabling selected citizens to bear concealed weapons.
Cohen, a former legal adviser to the Memphis Police Department, sees his defense of privacy rights to be a unifying factor in his legislative career. Plus: “You have to deal with reality. A lot of what I propose is just dealing with the facts of life.”
Cohen is also the sponsor this year of a Restoration of Religious Freedom Act, which would limit the ability of state government to restrict a variety of religious practices and which substitutes for a federal bill that was found last year to have unconstitutional aspects.
n Governor Don Sundquist’s proposal for publicly funded, privately organized charter schools suffered a setback last Thursday night when Memphis School Board president Lora Jobe, backed by other members of the board, strenuously objected to the concept at a public forum at Board of Education auditorium. Word from Nashville is that the administration bill won’t even make it out of the state House of Representatives K-through-12 subcommittee. n