by Jackson Baker
.S. Eliot was right. April is proving to be a cruel month – at
least for the political candidates actively vying in primary contests
on the May 5th ballot.
Two hopefuls – Probate Court Clerk candidate Pat VanderSchaaf and County Commission candidate Scott McCormick took serious hits as major opponents – incumbent Chris Thomas in the first case and Commission candidate Paul Stanley in the second – got Commercial Appeal endorsements during the week. (Stanley and McCormick are vying for the honor of being chief challenger to social conservative Marilyn Loeffel in the District 1, Position 1 Republican primary race.)
And both Morris Fair, the incumbent commissioner in District 1,
Position 3, and his GOP primary challenger, John Willingham, had
to put up their guard against some unexpected circumstances. Restaurateur
Willingham, who is placing a lot of his hopes in outer-county
voters, saw himself described last week in The Collierville Herald
as having been disqualified for having “failed to file his [nominating]
petition accurately and on time.”
PHOTO BY JOHN LANDRIGAN
Morris Fair
“Just a mistake,” said the paper’s editor, Ron Caldwell, whose reporter Daisy Fontaine evidently confused Willingham with John Freeman, a prospective Democratic candidate for county trustee, whose petition had indeed been invalidated. Caldwell promised a correction.
Fair’s predicament was due more to human design than to human error. Copies of sanctions he and his former securities company, UMIC, had received over the years were surfacing here and there – clearly as a means of besmirching the incumbent’s reputation. The documents, issued by the National Association of Securities Dealers, record several fines in the years 1979 through 1995, all in the low thousands of dollars, and one 30-day suspension.
Fair responded Monday that UMIC had been a large enterprise with hundreds of employees functioning during years when securities codes – and their penalties – were constantly undergoing revision. “The fines and the suspension were not on me directly but on me as chief officer and board member of the company for this or that infraction,” Fair said. And another source in the securities business likened Fair’s penalties to the speeding tickets acquired by an average motorist during the course of a driving career.
The battle between Fair and Willingham may get rougher yet. The two may be running closer than previously thought, with Willingham pressing a relentless attack against Fair for his key commission vote against partisan judicial primaries and for past financial contributions, as governmental liaison for Union Planters Bank, to prominent Democratic campaigns, including Clinton-Gore and those of the Ford family.
Fair, however, has considerable support among Shelby County’s political and economic elite, has been endorsed by many more Republican leaders and office-holders, and owns a considerable war chest which will play a role in last-minute Get-Out-the-Vote efforts.
n Charles Salvaggio, who was mayor of Germantown for two terms and headed an impressive outer-county political organization that he virtually handed over to his supporter and successor, current mayor Sharon Goldsworthy, is now thinking seriously of challenging his onetime protege this fall to get his old job back at the helm of the 38,000-plus upscale suburb.
“The amount of support that’s been offered to me is real strong, and we’re looking at it,” confirms the self-made entrepreneur (Memphis Door and Hardware, Charles Salvaggio Builders), who left the mayoralty in 1994 to seek the Republican nomination for Congress in the 7th District. He lost a close race to the current incumbent, Ed Bryant, but concedes readily that he isn’t through with politics.
“Once it’s in your blood, it tends to stay there,” says Salvaggio, who thought long and hard about a race for sheriff and was ready to go for it when Sheriff A.C. Gilless, whom Salvaggio supports, declared for reelection.
“Sharon has a go-it-alone style, and I don’t think that really works well in a community like ours, where the aldermen have a tremendous amount to say,” says Salvaggio, who, like his successor, saw occasional strains develop with members of the city’s Board of Aldermen.
Reflecting on last week’s series of tornadoes that did enormous damage in several parts of Tennessee, including Nashville, Salvaggio recalls having to implement emergency measures during the tornado that ravaged Germantown in the late winter of 1994.
“It came right through my own backyard and did $175,000 worth of damage. You don’t easily forget things like that,” Salvaggio says.
n Memphians who spend time in Nashville had a variety of reactions
to the two tornadoes that tore through the state capital on Thursday,
doing much damage to downtown and to the Capitol building and
its environs.
PHOTO BY JOHN LANDRIGAN
John Willingham
State Representative Joe Towns (D-Whitehaven) had just driven his car up to the doors of the capitol so as to load up and get on the road to Memphis when the first tornado struck at about 4:30 Thursday afternoon.
“I guess it was exciting, but I’d just as soon have passed up that kind of excitement,” said Towns, who marveled that much of the surrounding terrain and infrastructure suffered extensive damage while his car remained intact.
The 200-mile-an-hour winds that ripped the Capitol building’s Tennessee flag left but one star remaining of the emblem’s three – a fact which occasioned State Senator Steve Cohen to jest, “See. That proves that God wants us to be one state!” (Cohen, a frequent defender of the traditional division between church and state, was a sponsor this year of a state Restoration of Religious Freedom Act.)
Cherrie Holden, the newest member of the state Board of Education, had just finished attending a board meeting and had already left for Memphis when the tornadoes struck. Knowing that his wife would likely be somewhere in the Capitol area, husband Rich Holden, a GOP member of the county Election Commission, spent several anxious minutes trying to locate her before the two made telephone contact.
n Rick Bray, a longtime champion of gay and lesbian issues and the former president of the local chapter of the National Organization for Women, said sayonara – or rather “Yeeeha!” – to his many area friends Monday at a going-away party at Molly’s La Casita Restaurant on Madison.
Bray, a native of Jonesboro, Ark., who has spent the last several years in Memphis, is bound for Jackson Hole, Wyoming. (Hence the Western-style farewell cry, which was also inscribed on a paper wall mural which he’ll take with him.)
The crowd of well-wishers Monday crossed several boundaries, gender- and political-wise, but many of those present considered it an appropriate omen that on the day before the party a jury in Chicago had found anti-abortion protesters guilty of violating RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) statutes in their efforts to blockade abortion clinics.
Bray is an abortion-rights activist.
n Former Supreme Court Justice Penny White will be the keynote speaker at a Friday luncheon of the Association of Women Attorneys at The Peabody. The association is sponsoring a “Take Your Child to Work Day” Friday.
n New Horn Lake Road from Mallory to Holmes Road will be redesignated Dedrick “Teddy” Withers Parkway in ceremonies from 1 to 2:30 p.m. Sunday. The late Withers was a state representative and foreign trade entrepreneur.
n U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. learned Friday, apparently while taking part, along with Vice President Al Gore, in the world runway dedication ceremony at the Memphis International Airport, that he had flunked the Tennessee bar exam he took in February.
“Obviously, the results demonstrate that I was not as prepared as I could have been. I do intend to sit for the July 1998 Tennessee bar exam, and now know that I must carve out more time to study,” Ford said in a statement.
Dave Brown’s enduring popularity as a TV weatherman is due in large part to the unique mix of gravity and cheer with which he has always informed Mid-Southerners on the workings of the elements. As he demonstrated last Thursday night, when he addressed the annual Victims’ Rights dinner at the Marriott Hotel, Brown is equally adept – and cathartic – on the workings of the fates.
Probably no one in the overflow audience of law-enforcement people, crime victims and their families, and other concerned Memphians was dry-eyed during Brown’s moving tribute to his daughter and two children, murdered by a drunk driver last year. Yet the overriding note struck by Brown was that of a gallant, even optimistic, determination to move forward in honor of the victims, and his message clearly transcended individual cases.
Several other events of the last few days constituted a reminder of the special grace some among us have had to summon up for the rest of us by way of example. U.S. Senator Bill Frist’s loss of two parents within the space of four days was dealt with earlier in this space, but unremarked until now is the further example of Shelby County Trustee Bob Patterson, who also lost both parents in the course of a week earlier this year, at a time when he was still convalescing from the effects of extensive heart surgery last year.
At no time did Patterson ever lose his characteristic grin, which was on evidence again Saturday at his annual Bar-B-Q at Kirby’s Farm and which didn’t drop even when a torrential shower forced the whole host of invited guests inside the old Kirby farmhouse, overseen in style these days by host Walter Willis.
This weekend will see another chapter in the saga of grace amidst adversity. Veteran Commercial Appeal reporter Terry Keeter will be on hand for at least the Saturday night finale of this year’s Gridiron Show performances at the Paramount Ballroom in Southeast Memphis. (That’s the promise anyhow of Criminal Court Clerk Bill Key, who pledges to bring Keeter.)
Keeter, of course, has for years been the driving force behind the satirical political revue which annually raises thousands for journalism scholarships and various charities. He had been hospitalized for advanced emphysema and still requires a respirator; therefore he won’t do his usual patter and twinkletoes. But he’ll be there. The show goes on. n – J.B.