by Jackson Baker
nsurprisingly, last-minute charges were flying at the approach
of next Tuesday’s countywide primary – notable mainly for several
hotly contested Republican races.
•From the very start, the GOP primary race between incumbent Probate Court Clerk Chris Thomas and challenger Pat VanderSchaaf – a reprise of their closely fought primary contest of 1994 – has generated the most fireworks. And, as the May 5th primary date approached, the rockets’ red glare – or rather the bright red ink of hotly combative mail-outs – was still the most noticeable feature of the electoral landscape.
The two traded accusations last week, with voters receiving a flyer from VanderSchaaf alleging that Thomas’ office was running a deficit, that he had created a new spot on the payroll for “his campaign manager,” and that he had “given us the highest fees in Tennessee.” It also boasted that the challenger had, among other things, “led the fight to save MLGW,” “been a successful entrepreneur,” and “served as [GOP] vice chairman with Bill Lawson and Dr. Kyle Creson.”
Thomas differed with these conclusions, defending his own record and contending that Republican party records did not confirm VanderSchaaf’s vice chairmanship. In a flyer of his own, he said, inter alia, that VanderSchaaf was a “career politician” who was guilty of “a poor attendance record” as a member of the Memphis city council, where, moreover, she had voted for a pay raise and for tax increases. The flyer, headed “JUST SAY NO!,” also suggested that VanderSchaaf would be “double dipping” if she held on to her council job after being elected clerk.
Thomas also sent voters a similar-looking mailout boasting his achievements – among them being the use of modern technology and recognition from his peers statewide – and listing some of his supporters. The problem with Thomas’ attack flyer, as the VanderSchaaf camp was quick to point out, was not just in its allegations – many of which they disputed – but in the fact that it arrived in voters’ mailboxes unsigned.
“That was an oversight. I just got preoccupied,” said Thomas this week, noting that his wife Angela has been suffering from breast cancer.
Most observers saw the Thomas-VanderSchaaf race as too close to call. VanderSchaaf, incidentally, called a press conference early this week to indicate that, if elected, she would resign her council position.
•There is a Democratic primary for Probate Court clerk, too, and Commercial Appeal columnist Susan Adler Thorp drew attention to the little-noticed race by devoting most of her Sunday column to praise of one of the contestants, Stan Howell, who is opposed by one Kendrick Sneed.
•Much attention has also been focused on three GOP commission races, all in District 1. The contest for Position 1 puts social conservative Marilyn Loeffel against marketing sales executive Paul Stanley and businessman Scott McCormick.
McCormick made a pointed assault on Stanley last week, charging that he was ill-equipped to talk about bringing new jobs to Shelby County – a subject the two discussed in a recent joint appearance before the county Young Republicans – in that Stanley’s own firm, the Harland Company, was in the process of exporting some 45 commercial-printing jobs to Texas.
“That’s a matter of consolidation, and it was decided on by senior management before I even joined the company,” Stanley said. He charged that McCormick, the co-owner of American Quick Print, was “grasping at straws.” Stanley said McCormick had run a “poor campaign” and was using the current race merely to get name recognition for another city council race. (McCormick lost a runoff in 1995 to councilman Brent Taylor.)
Two other GOP District 1 commission races – incumbent Linda Rendtorff vs. challenger Lyle Tudor in Position 2, and incumbent Morris Fair vs. challenger John Willingham in Position 3 – were either leaning to the incumbents or tightening up, depending on who you talked to.
Both Tudor and Willingham were running as insurgents, attacking the establishment credentials of their opponents.
The crowded Republican primary race for Register was hard to call, too – with incumbent Guy Bates thought to hold a slight edge over challengers Layne Provine and Tom Watson. The winner will be matched in the August general election against Democrat Larry Finch, whose name-recognition factor as the former University of Memphis basketball coach makes him the Democrats’ best bet this election year.
Other Political News:
Mike Whitaker of Somerville and Covington, chairman of the endangered state Racing Commission and the lawyer who is so far the Democrats’ only declared candidate for governor, intends to file officially this week, he confided at last week’s Coon Supper, held annually by the Naifeh family of Covington on the grounds of that town’s country club.
How much money has Whitaker raised to go against Don Sundquist, the GOP incumbent who has a war chest in excess of $5 million? “None,” was Whitaker’s honest answer. “But I haven’t asked anybody yet,” he continued.
Well, Whitaker was asked, how much was he going to try to raise once he got started? “I’m going to try to keep it under a million,” was Whitaker’s response – which could be taken alternatively as a Zen Koan, as unintentional irony, as a tongue-in-cheek reply, as simple realism, or as a statement of principle.
Whitaker put it forth as the last of these. “I’d be embarrassed to be out there hitting up people for those enormous sums the way the governor has been,” he said.
Most observers think that, even if the plucky Whitaker (who has demonstrated a willingness to espouse unpopular positions such as abolition of the death penalty) should change his mind about his financial ceiling, he’s in very little danger of being embarrassed or of missing his goal on the high side.
n Sundquist spent much of his time at the Coon Supper walking around the grounds with former Democratic governor Ned Ray McWherter, who won reelection in 1990 against token opposition.
Did the current governor see an analogy between his predecessor’s good fortune then and his own prospects now? “I hadn’t really thought about it,” Sundquist said, maybe just a bit disingenuously, “but I’d like to think there are parallels.”
n Although Jimmy Naifeh, Speaker of the House of Representatives, is perhaps the reigning Democrat statewide, the grounds at Covington Country Club get more crowded each year with Republicans, many of them local. Whitaker spent much of his time last Thursday night in friendly conversation with Shirley Ward, a chum from school days who these days is a stalwart of the local GOP and a candidate for Tipton County register.
n Two other Democratic gubernatorial prospects were on hand for the Coon Supper Thursday night – State Senator Steve Cohen and Memphis businessman John Lowery. Cohen’s name has been in and out of speculation, and there was much talk in Nashville last week that the senator might actually run if some version of a lottery vote – either Senator Ward Crutchfield’s bill for a constitutional convention on the issue or Cohen’s own perennial call for a lottery referendum – got on the November ballot.
“Probably not” was Cohen’s word Thursday night. The odds were long, the time was short, the money was problematic, and, besides, “I actually get along with Governor Sundquist pretty well.”
And no lottery vote, with its presumed galvanizing effect on Democratic voters, especially in Memphis and the state’s other urban centers, appeared likely as the legislature wound down.
Lowery – erstwhile local staff director for former U.S. Rep. Harold Ford and the proprietor of Revelation Corporation of America, a commercial cooperative involving five major black church denominations – was, he said, keeping his powder dry and his petition at the ready.
n As it turned out, veteran Commercial Appeal reporter Terry Keeter, who had been on a respirator following his extended hospitalizaton at Methodist Hospital for emphysema, pneumonia, and other medical complications, was able to appear in formal dress at Saturday night’s finale of the 1998 Gridiron Show and to make brief remarks of appreciation to the audience, who as usual included numerous members of the Memphis and Shelby County political community.
Chief writer for this year’s Gridiron Show, at the Paramount Ballroom in Southeast Memphis, was Larry Williams, Keeter’s former CA colleague and his longtime co-writer of the annual local show, which has raised funds for journalism scholarships and a variety of other causes.
n As the 1998 General Assembly got ready to adjourn this week, two initiatives of interest to Memphis were still shrouded in uncertainty. State Senator Tom Leatherwood was wielding unusual influence over both.
Leatherwood was one of seven Nay votes in the Senate Government Operations Committee on the question of extending the state Racing Commission, without which the proposed (and commission-approved) Penn National track in northeast Memphis cannot proceed.
Sponsor Jim Kyle, in whose Senate district the track would be built, joined with Memphis (and Penn National) lobbyist Robin Merritt and State Rep. Mike Kernell, however, to conceive a strategy of attaching the proposed extension as an amendment to a routine government organization bill, bypassing the legislature’s committee structure and giving the extension a good chance of passing, according to no less an observer than Lt. Gov. John Wilder, the canny presiding officer of the Senate.
The outlook was cloudier for the proposed state lottery. Crutchfield’s bill to convene a constitutional convention on the proposition seemed decisively blocked by the aforesaid Leatherwood, who let it be known that his tie-breaking vote on the Senate Finance Committee might be had if lottery sponsors agreed to find some legislative vehicle permitting suburban residents to call referenda on their proposed annexation by cities.
“No deal” was the answer from shapers of the emerging annexation bill – and from Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, who made a special pilgrimage to Nashville last week to urge Memphis members of the Shelby County delegation not to compromise.
n Another pilgrim, Shelby State Community College president Bud Amann, journeyed to the capital with several members of his staff to address the Shelby delegation and ask for last-minute help for his beleaguered institution – unique among the state’s publicly supported colleges in that it will lose, rather than gain, monies this year under the state’s enrollment-based funding formula.
Amann, who is also making the case these days for the merger of his institution with State Technical Institute, came prepared with a brochure itemizing Shelby State’s needs – ranging from revamping its physical plant to capital improvements to funds for improving student services.
His audience, at the regular weekly delegation lunch in Legislative Plaza, consisted of exactly one legislator – State Senator John Ford, who sat and ate a box lunch while Amann delegated his staff members to deliver other box lunches and copies of the brochure to the missing members of the delegation. Several legislators send word that they were unable to leave the floor, and, indeed, both Senate and House were running overtime as the General Assembly tried to get through its business before its scheduled statutory adjournment this week.
But some African-American members of the delegation acknowledged privately that Amann’s ongoing feud with them over a nursing-school issue played a role in their not finding time to meet with Amann. At issue last year was whether several nursing students who had flunked the school’s qualifying exam and claimed discrimination against them should be readmitted.
State Rep. Joe Towns, among others, declined to support a compromise proposal that allowed the protesting students to retake their exam. Towns repeated his reservations last week, alleging that other, favored students had received copies of the exam and that the flunked students should, in fairness, be readmitted without condition.
State Rep. Lois DeBerry, House Speaker Pro Tem, while expressing a willingness to hear Amann out, said that an attempt to approach the legislature for aid this late in the session had very little chance of success.
Undeterred, Amann vowed to return to Nashville this week, seeking one last audience at the delegation’s weekly lunch. n
The long-running series of skirmishes involving the Shelby County Board of Equalization appears to be heading toward resolution, with the apparent victor being the forces in Shelby County government, including the assessor’s office, the county commission, and Mayor Jim Rout, who have considered the board a rogue body of sorts, too predisposed to cooperation with tax appeal representatives like David Scruggs and Jerry Caruthers.
The crucial turn in the struggle, ironically enough, seems to have come from the decision to replace two board members by Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, who has himself often been at odds with the county government establishment.
Herenton last week named Lily White and Ervin McKay to the board to succeed longtime members Floyd Newsum and Sam Pearson. Pearson especially had often been critical of county officials’ efforts to impose curbs on what they saw as the board’s abuses or self-indulgence or its alleged chumminess with the tax reps.
Other personnel changes recently have included the resignation of board chairman Dr. John W. Bennett of Collierville as board chairman and the commission’s action Monday in naming Bobby G. Maxwell to the nine-member body to succeed W. Wayne Bingham. The commission voted to retain Greta Thompson and L.A. Westley, both named by the commission last year as it intensified its drive to regulate the board.
Memphis still has a board vacancy to fill, and Jay Kahn of Germantown and C. Vincent Lyons of Bartlett will continue on the board.
Bennett’s resignation announcement, accompanied by charges that the newly reconstituted board was in danger of becoming “a politically manipulated and dysfunctional body,” was doubly significant in that Bennett had been voted in as chairman just last year by the board holdovers who managed to deposed Thompson, the administration’s appointee.
Bennett, Pearson and others have maintained that both Tom Stone, Mayor Rout’s appointee last year as executive director, and first-term assessor Rita Clark, whose office suffered a recent computer glitch that required many of its current property assessments to be amended, are ill-equipped to understand the process of taxpayer appeals. They have also contended that a performance review of the board released last week was suspect because the accounting firm of a Rout political ally, Bill Watkins, had a major role in its preparation.
That report found that Board of Equalization members had engaged in questionable relationships with tax reps, even to the point of receiving gifts and collaborating on the preparaton of policy statements. The report also backed up contentions by various county officials that the current Board of Equalizaton was dilatory in pursuing tax appeals.
Last month, the county commission established the period of May 1st through July 31st as a time frame to hear taxpayer appeals this year. n