Call It What It Is: War The Fords and Mayor Herenton clash in a life-and-death political struggle. by JACKSON BAKER et's be clear about what happened. At some point on Thursday evening, September 2nd, what had been an unusually exciting election contest, featuring two main contenders and a handful of realistic alternatives, became outright war -- a duel to the death (metaphorical, it is devoutly to be hoped) between two rival political enterprises. When campaign workers for mayoral candidate Joe Ford encountered a crew doing watchdog service for Mayor Willie Herenton on Lauderdale Street, the campaign transformed itself both symbolically and actually. The story is by now familiar (if still unsettled in some of its details): The Ford workers, some 15 to 20 strong, were exchanging their man's yard signs for others that had boosted the incumbent and were challenged by the Herenton duo, school board member Carl Johnson and mayoral bodyguard Tony Elion, the latter moonlighting as a campaign worker. Elion was armed at first with nothing more than a videocam, with which he was taping the sign-switching activity. Verbally accosted by the Ford workers, Elion was then, as he later contended, "bumped" by one of them, whom he identified in a later police report as belonging to a possible "criminal element." With that, Elion retreated to the truck he and Johnson had arrived in and retrieved from it both his badge and his police sidearm. Though no one maintained that the bodyguard had pointed the weapon at anyone, the Ford workers -- perhaps understandably -- took fright and scattered. And the incident was on its way to being an instant alarm bell throughout both inner-city Memphis and the city as a whole. Early news reports, based on the fact that U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. had later arrived on the scene and confronted Johnson and Elion, had it that the congressman himself had been among those to whom Elion had shown his weapon. In fact, Ford Jr. was not there, but a sibling, Jake Ford, was, according to Elion, who would later suggest that the congressman's younger brother had been among the most provocative of the Ford contingent. This detail is more than incidental, at least symbolically. For the year or so that Rep. Ford has been rumored as a U.S. Senate candidate in 2000 against incumbent Republican Bill Frist, the name of brother Jake has been consistently mentioned as that of the likely Ford-sponsored candidate to run for the vacated 9th Congressional District seat. The fact that Rep. Ford not only visited the scene (where, according to Elion's official report, he demanded to know why a gun was being pointed "at my campaign workers") but dominated the Ford-sponsored press conference held later Thursday night, is an indication of what is at stake in this year's mayoral race. The Senate Scenario: Consider: It has become increasingly clear that the congressman, whose recent "listening tour" of Middle and East Tennessee drew favorable media attention, is serious about the challenge to Frist. Not only are both he and his father, former congressman Harold Ford Sr., attracted to the idea, but statewide and national Democratic Party officials are actively pushing for it. Moreover, as erstwhile Ford aide Charley Dyer put it recently, the congressman is probably ill-suited to long-term service in the House of Representatives "corral." In many ways, his celebrity has more in common with a show business figure's than that of the conventional politician, and, like his counterparts in the entertainment world, Rep. Ford has an eye for the quick opening and the main chance. The Ford clan, understandably proud of its prodigy, has been leaning toward supporting the congressman in a Senate run. In one scenario, Jake would run for the Congressional seat, presumably win it, and have the option of keeping the seat if brother Harold entered the Senate or possibly, in the event of a Frist victory, turning it back over after some interval during which Harold Jr. would have been providing some conspicuous service to the Democrats at the statewide or national level. In the event of a presidential victory next year by Vice President Al Gore, Ford Jr., if defeated in the Senate race, would be considered a cinch to hold a high-profile job in the new Democratic administration. In short, there would be in reality less risk to Ford Jr. from a Senate run than some poll-watchers commonly suppose. Uncertainties in the Mayor's Race: But most of that reasoning was based on the assumption of a victory by Uncle Joe Ford in this year's mayoral race. In the beginning, many -- perhaps most -- observers reckoned the race as being Councilman Ford's to lose. The assumptions were that there was measurable discontent with Herenton among both whites and blacks in Memphis; that as city council chairman in the current year, Joe Ford could stake a claim to prestigious public service in his own right; that the Ford organization had in several past campaigns demonstrated its supremacy in the city's African-American precincts; and that the presence in the mayor's race of several other name competitors, both black and white, would so split Herenton's share of the total vote that he could not compete with the Ford monolith. Several factors have since undermined these assumptions -- one in particular. Though he has had his moments on the stump -- generally in situations where he has been able to perform, independently of either his opponents or his relatives, before friendly audiences -- Joe Ford has been less impressive than anybody had foreseen. Moreover, he has often been overshadowed on the campaign trail by brother Harold Sr. or -- as in the aftermath of the gun incident -- by nephew Harold Jr. Then, too, although the campaign stock of former Shelby County Commissioner Pete Sisson, an avowed and longtime Herenton foe, may have risen recently through his formal endorsement by the county Republican Party (which fields a practiced Get-Out-the-Vote operation, dependent heavily on mailouts), Sisson, too, has campaigned sluggishly. Sisson can rise to the occasion -- as at a recent mayoral forum in Raleigh, where his plea that the city was "going downhill" resonated with the racially mixed working-class crowd. But in recent voter surveys carried out by pollster Steve Ethridge and reported in The Commercial Appeal, Sisson has not got out of single digits. Nor, so far anyhow, have such credentialed contenders as former city council member Mary Rose McCormick and current County Commission chairman Shep Wilbun (both of whom seem, however, to have picked up momentum) and such a potentially promising vote-getter as pro wrestler Jerry Lawler. Though the published polls show Herenton to possess some of his expected vulnerabilities, he still has a commanding lead over Ford. And, revealingly, the Ford organization's several spinmeisters, who are both talented and determined, have not contested these numbers. Nor have they circulated any figures from their own celebrated pollster, John Bakke. They merely say that the tide will turn -- that, in particular, the patented Ford GOTV operation will turn out masses of voters, particularly among lower-income African Americans, during the campaign's last days. A Shift in Tactics: To that end, Joe Ford's strategy seems to have decidedly shifted of late. Early on, the Ford campaign boasted that their candidate had greater strength among white voters than anybody realized. And, indeed, even the Ethridge polls seems to show Ford holding his own with Herenton among whites, though both are at relatively low levels. Lately, the Ford campaign seems to be targeting more directly the lower-income blacks on which its fortunes may depend. Joe Ford's recent attacks on the Herenton administration's alleged coziness with white downtown developers (at the expense of impoverished "communities") is one indication of this. It's almost as if Harold Ford Sr.'s celebrated post-campaign verbal slip of 1994, "East Memphis Devils," had begotten a sequel, "Downtown Devils." Another indication is the almost exclusive use of African Americans in filmed scenes for Ford's latest TV commercials. And yet another is the increasingly intensified focus on placing yard signs in black communities -- the very context for last week's confrontation. Herenton's camp maintains that the Fords are replacing their signs without residents' permission. The Fords insist otherwise. And the evidence seems somewhere in between. The Upshot: If Mayor Herenton loses the current race, he will surely be unhappy. He will have lost face along with political position. But he has several business interests and connections, and he could -- as the old saw has it -- cry all the way to the bank. The Fords have more to lose if Joe Ford goes down. It is not just that Rep. Ford's senatorial plans would be seriously compromised. If the current poll findings, which show Herenton leading among the city's blacks, hold up on October 7th, the Fords would also have suffered a defeat that would shake the organization to its very roots. The Fords depend for their prestige and electoral success not only on actual, but on perceived, strength at the grass roots level. It could be that, as one observer recently noted, Memphis blacks practice a divided loyalty, with a preference for members of the Ford family at legislative levels (besides Rep. Ford's congressional position and Joe Ford's soon-to-be-vacated one on the council, there are Uncles James Ford on the commission and John Ford in the state senate) and a predilection for Herenton at the executive level. As one black attendee at a Herenton meet-and-greet event said privately this week, "Look, Harold [Sr.] won Congress for us, so he and his are entitled to it. But Willie won the mayorship for us, and he ought to keep that, too." All of that is beside the point that Herenton and the Fords are engaged in what they themselves see as a desperate fight to the finish just now. At a Rotary Club mayoral forum this week, Herenton concluded his remarks with the contention that he, and other Memphians, were "terribly frightened" by the prospect of dominance over city affairs by "the Ford machine." For their part, the Fords are bound to have some trepidation of their own as they look at the current unfavorable poll results. It is serious business, on both parts. Though guns are unlikely to be flashed henceforth (in fact, both sides this week joined in a judicial consent order renouncing the carrying of weapons of any kind by their campaign workers), this is still war. War for the possession of ultimate political power in Memphis.