The Mayor's Race Feeling the Heat, Seeing the Light by Jackson Baker It has been a mayoral race that, as everyone knows, has generated a generous share of heat. There have been insults galore, an indictment (and persistent rumors of more to come), the requisite number of charges and the expected number of countercharges. There was the night a gun was drawn in front of a score of campaign workers, and there was the morning that a candidate dissolved in tears before a crowded auditorium. There were press conferences innumerable -- including one in which the candidate who called it turned out to have nothing to say. There were endorsements abounding, including one big one that turned out not to be an endorsement at all. For those who paid attention, the mayoral campaign of 1999 has also generated a fair amount of light. Issues were not only discussed, but they were also dissected -- on Web sites, in speeches and handouts, and in what seemed to be an endless series of mayoral forums. The most distressing single fact was that, with one key exception (the incumbent mayor) the contenders all saw the city of Memphis to be in crisis. As was the case in the races for city council ("Seeing the Blight," p. 10), the spectres of urban decline and economic stagnation were incessantly invoked. And looming above everything -- or perhaps merely symbolizing some deeper conflict -- there was the epic pre-millennial struggle of Ford (or, strictly speaking, the Fords) versus Herenton. Six months ago, there was a general perception that two-term Mayor Willie Herenton, who had already amassed well above half a million dollars, might walk into office again unopposed -- or, at worst, end up in a lazy run against the kind of no-name opposition that he faced in 1995. As we were the first to tell you, there was only a dim prospect that the oft-rumored showdown between Herenton and his chief nemesis and rival for power, former U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (now a well-paid health-care lobbyist), would occur, but a good chance indeed that the ex-congressman's brother, city council chairman Joe Ford, would serve as a stand-in for his clan's long-deferred grudge match with the mayor Rep. Ford had helped elect back in 1991. The preternaturally laid-back Joe Ford had made very little impression upon the public back then. Half a year later, with his ex-congressman brother serving as his campaign manager, he has still largely failed to register in his own right; that is his chief problem as a candidate and the main reason why, with a week to go in the 1999 campaign, Herenton is clinging to a lead against councilman Ford and 14 other opponents. Of these, only five are considered, along with Ford, to be serious. They are: Shelby County Commissioner Shep Wilbun, former commissioner Pete Sisson, former city council member Mary Rose McCormick, and pro wrestling legend Jerry Lawler. Each has made something of an impact on the election, but -- if one is to take at face value the several published polls of Steve Ethridge in The Commercial Appeal -- none has yet mounted a challenge serious enough to rival either Herenton or Ford. Even as we speak, the gap between the Top Two and the Second Tier is likely to be widening, due to the deployment by Herenton and, especially, by the Fords of early-voting fleets consisting of vans, buses, and automobiles. As we have noted before, much rides on the outcome. If Joe Ford wins, not only does his family gain another key (perhaps the key) local political office, but the way would also be clear for Harold Ford Jr., namesake to his father and his successor in Congress, to make a run for the Senate next year against Republican incumbent Bill Frist. (It is widely believed that the young two-term congressman, who has with amazing speed acquired a national reputation, has his eyes on the presidency down the line.) A loss by Joe Ford, on the other hand, would literally endanger the family's hold on local political power. The councilman, a quiet, somewhat passive man, has borne this burden with dignity but with evident pain. He has seen his moderately dissolute (and long-gone) youth rehashed in public, he has been belittled by the incumbent mayor as an ill-prepared "boy," and he has been dominated at crisis moments by brother Harold and nephew Harold Jr, each a type-A contrast to his muted B-flat personality. One example of the latter occurred when former congressman Ford summoned media outlets to a press conference at which candidate Ford was to have discoursed on Mayor Herenton's youthful arrest as a rape suspect. When reporters got there, the councilman -- who may have discovered in the meantime that the long-ago arrest was ill-based -- offered no comment. Another instance came when mayoral bodyguard Tony Elion, who said he felt threatened, displayed his police weapon while doing off-duty surveillance of sign-switching by Ford campaign workers. The youthful Rep. Ford Jr. , not his uncle the mayoral candidate, presided over the press conference that was called to protest the circumstance. Although some have dismissed Joe Ford's case against Mayor Herenton as merely personal (a penthouse style of governing, too many bodyguards at too great a cost, etc.), that kind of stylistic criticism blends into areas of substantive disagreement, in particular, into the one genuinely thematic concern Councilman Ford has expressed -- that Herenton's concerns are too much with the city's socio-economic elite, that for their sake he has channeled development money into downtown while neglecting to pursue the grants that would benefit low-income constituents. This is a criticism that each of the mayor's other major opponents has expressed to some degree as well. McCormick and Lawler have joined in an attack upon the Herenton administration for extending too many tax write-offs, and Shep Wilbun's insistence upon broadening the city's tax base by developing "20,000 vacant lots" amounts to another version of the same thing. And while Sisson, whose constituency is basically white and middle-class, is less inclined to such an economic critique, he, too, chastises the mayor for his failure to avail himself of various potential governmental grants (including some state aid which he says has already been extended to the city, but not accepted). Herenton's answer to all this is to say that downtown serves as the city's beacon, that development of this urban core nourishes the entire urban area, and that he has planted the seeds for a long-term revival that will see Memphis become one of the nation's destination cities for the next century. Some say the decision between Herenton and Ford will be made in the city's white community. Others insist that African Americans will make the choice. Among both major groups the mayor seems to be most popular with voters who perceive themselves as upscale. In that sense, the election could turn out to be a referendum on voter satisfaction with the city and with the current status of crime control, education, and economic development. Everybody's polls show enough volatility in the electorate that a movement of undecideds in either population could tip the balance. The Undercard: Sisson, Lawler, McCormick, and Wilbun It was the night of the Tony Bennett concert, and a local Republican lady was riding the monorail back downtown afterward over a Mississippi River depleted by drought. Asked whether, as a party regular, she was supporting the GOP's official endorsee, Pete Sisson, she gave a start of displeasure and lifted her cloth purse to show a red-and-white Herenton pin attached to it. She leaned in to say, as if confidentially, "Did you see him in that televised debate?" Meaning, as it turned out, Sisson, not the mayor. Indeed, in that forum Pete had come off badly, not only snagging the flow of his answers on a characteristic verbal tic -- "Uh, Uh" -- but periodically coming to a dead stop in the middle of a sentence, letting an incomplete answer to a question just hang there in dead air. One of the panelists would later compare him to Admiral Stockdale, Ross Perot's 1992 vice-presidential running mate, a former P.O.W. who was confessedly out of his depth debating with the likes of Al Gore and Dan Quayle and seemed dazed and bewildered. That was not completely fair to Sisson, of course. The former Shelby County commissioner was merely complying with the protocol of the forum, literally ceasing his remarks whenever one of the event's timekeepers, down there on the front row out of the camera's view, held up the last of a series of cue cards, the one that said Time Up. Septuagenarian Sisson was indeed showing his age, but only in the sense that he was a holdover from that generation which Followed the Rules and was unfailingly polite. Anybody else would override the interruption, at least long enough to bring their thought to some rhetorical finality. But not Pete. And, anyhow, local pollster Steve Ethridge's surveys, which appeared at intervals in The Commercial Appeal, showed Sisson (aided, no doubt, by several Republican Party mailouts) to be making regular, if plodding, progress with the voters -- finally emerging, in the third poll, with a solid two digits, 10 whole percentage points. Which was more than could be said of the rest of the so-called "second tier" -- Jerry Lawler, Mary Rose McCormick, Shep Wilbun. And, as for the G.O.P. lady who was apostate enough to wear her feelings on the sleeve of her purse, a cynic would later point out that she was a Herenton appointee, a member of such-and-such a commission, and would argue that this fact, not any failings on Sisson's part, was responsible for her campaign allegiance. Even so, it seemed clear that Sisson was doomed to top out somewhere in the low double digits, doing well enough to be a bump in the road for the mayor but coming nowhere near the 65 percent of the white vote -- which itself had to be 45 percent of the whole, he and his handlers would candidly admit -- that could make him (in a phrase whose irony was transparent) "Everybody's Mayor." Not that Sisson's didn't communicate some populist and a hint of vision. His determination to air-condition all the city's schools seemed genuine, and he stood by his guns on the need for city/county consolidation, promising to put the issue on a referendum ballot if elected. But his animus toward Herenton -- which dates from the late '80s, when then-Commissioner Sisson attempted to force then-schools superintendent Herenton from office -- was obvious and, some thought, the real reason for Sisson's candidacy. Herenton would charge as much at one of the seemingly endless series of 1999 candidate forums and add what he thought was the clincher: "A vote for Sisson is a vote for Ford." To be sure, that case could be made. Sisson had been talking about running against Herenton for a solid year before the current campaign season, but his real opportunity didn't emerge until this past spring, when Joe Ford's announcement of candidacy coupled with Shep Wilbun's public musings about running lit up the local GOP hierarchy's hopes that a three-way split in the black Democratic vote might allow a Republican candidate to wedge his way through. Such a candidate would, inevitably, be white. But what the hierarchy had in mind was someone like District Attorney General Bill Gibbons or attorney John Bobango, a retiring first-term councilman whose desire to be mayor was well known. Both had reputations as middle-of-the-road moderates. Each opted out for this year, however -- Gibbons on the ground that he had promised to support Herenton, Bobango on the premise that the time was not right Thereafter, Sisson and his backers -- yellow-dog Republicans and old commission allies like engineer/county historian Ed Williams -- pulled out all the stops to get the party nod and contrive a semblance of Republican unity -- persuading the local Republican steering committee to override a subcommittee's recommendation to stay neutral in the mayor's race and inflating a studiously noncommittal appearance by Governor Don Sundquist at a Sisson fund-raiser into the illusion of a gubernatorial "endorsement." For several reasons, some obvious, Sisson's campaign never got to the point of full viability. There was a refreshing air of sincerity, even innocence, to much of what he said. Late in the campaign, Sisson recalled being, with two other mayoral candidates, at a scantily attended forum held by the Midtown Democratic Club. He knew, he said, that he couldn't reach many people, certainly not his core constituency, at such events. "But I actually enjoy learning things from talking to people, any kind of people." There was another side to that coin, however. When he thought something, he said it, even if it was impolitic. He made a point of advertising his opposition to "race-based affirmative action programs," and he told an all-black audience, a propos a plan of his for rat control, "You're the ones who have all the rats!" If -- despite being featured in three mailouts and a series of TV commercials -- Sisson seemed destined to top out at something less than his desired maximum, he wasn't the only hopeful having problems. There was the case of Jerry Lawler, whose campaign was proving to be both a good deal more and a good deal less than advertised. In the beginning -- early this year, when he first expressed interest in the mayor's race (in Time magazine, of all places) -- Lawler seemed to be reacting, pure and simply, to Jesse Ventura's unexpected win in the Minnesota governor's race last year. But his testing the wind seemed copycat, unserious stuff -- especially when Lawler made it clear, through word and deed, that he had no intention of letting his lucrative TV contract as an itinerant commentator for the World Wrestling Federation be compromised by a run for mayor. Indeed, as it turns out, Lawler says he'll keep the gig even if he should be elected mayor -- a possible challenge to that provision of the city charter calling for a "fulltime" mayor. ("What's the difference between what I'd be doing and what Mayor Herenton is doing right now?" responds Lawler, a propos the incumbent's several different ongoing business involvements.) In the course of time, as Lawler came out with this or that prefabricated plan for dealing with this or that issue (crime, education, urban growth, civic beautification, what-have-you), the essential ambiguity of his candidacy was undiminished. His suggestions tended to be either simplistic (use a "pencil sharpener" to eliminate waste and thus reduce the need for additional taxation) or highly dramatized (take control of school affairs in the mayor's office) or contrived (Lawler would offer a package of "urbanized design concepts"). The bottom line of everything was an assault upon "politics as usual." But as Jerry the King advanced some of these notions in the hurly-burly of candidate forums (where the veteran of thousands of wrestling matches normally seemed more decorous and less edgy than his rivals, whose capacity for "mudslinging" he would deplore in a concerned-citizen tsk-tsky manner), he proved more than capable of reasoning them through. Whatever their origin, he had clearly thought about them. Even when he was patently winging it, as when he was asked at a contractors' forum about prevailing-wage concepts, he displayed exceptional intuitive grasp and seemed able to find the central point. Lawler's forensic abilities did not a campaign make, however; nor did his pre-existing celebrity which forced (or encouraged) him to carry stacks of photographs of himself. Everywhere he went, whether to shopping malls or to outdoor picnics or to gatherings of candidates he -- and he alone in this year's field -- was compelled to sign autographs nonstop. (At one forum, he was asked by Joe Ford to sign a picture.) But Lawler's obligations to the WWF made him an on-again/off-again candidate, who lost the better part of the campaign week to the road and to the duty of presiding over the cable histrionics of professional wrestling. And, as soon as various polls -- some candidate-sponsored, some ostensibly independent -- began to make their way around, it became obvious that, for all the autographs and high-fives and instant recognition commanded by Lawler, not all of that would automatically translate into votes. He was, in fact, seemingly stuck in the single digits. Early on, Lawler dismissed the necessity for conventional campaigning. Yard signs he wouldn't need, he said, because "all they're about is name recognition, and I've already got name recognition." After the polls began to circulate, yard signs -- albeit relatively crude ones -- began to show up in supporters' yards. And round little stickers bearing the name "LAWLER" began to show up on people's torsos (they were virtually the only ones being passed out to attendees of the Mid-South Fair). Jerry the King evolved even to the point of saying at a Leadership Memphis/Channel 24 candidates' forum last week that, if elected, he was a quick study (as, indeed, he had proved he was) and could learn fairly easily what it took to be a "politician." That was an enormous concession, a step up from his previous quibble that, if elected, he would indeed be a "professional mayor" rather than a "professional politician." Add to the enemies' list professional pollsters. If their findings were unkind to Lawler (among other things, the polls which Steve Ethridge did for The Commercial Appeal found that Lawler polled high negatives), the word-of-mouth for him was still promising here and there. Canvassers for Jerry Hall, an African-American city-council candidate running in an overwhelmingly black district, reported that Lawler was still getting a lot of talk -- seeming confirmation of the candidates' contention that he could bridge his city's racial divide. But something happened late in the campaign which boded ill for the King. He was indicted by a Shelby County grand jury on charges of reckless endangerment, stemming from a quarrel with a female airport cop over a parking ticket. (Lawler was accused of running his car over the officer's foot, something he adamantly denied.) Aside from the fact that it blunted his momentum once again and threatened him with the worse fate, down the line, of possible conviction, the indictment also canceled out a Lawler serendipity that might be called the Extra Credit Factor. That's the slack society normally cuts for physical types (jocks in college as well as pro wrestlers) who are able to demonstrate a command of the social and intellectual amenities. The problem was that getting indicted for mayhem against a woman -- be she cop or not, be he guilty or not -- was a reminder to people of the roughneck nature of Lawler's chosen trade. At the various forums, Jerry the King and Mary Rose McCormick, the only viable female candidate as such, had spontaneously developed something of an act. Each could do a nifty one-liner off the other's. Asked by one of the arch-conservatives of the monthly Dutch Treat Luncheon how they stood on abortion (of all mayoral things!), McCormick and Lawler out-did their rivals with this repartee. "I'm pro-vasectomy," she said. "I've had a vasectomy," he offered. In last week's Leadership Memphis/24 debate another opportunity came up. Someone had asked about how to curb violence in the schools, and McCormick concluded her answer with a reference to dubious content in Saturday morning cartoons and "what comes on after them." "Was that a shot at me?" asked Lawler. "It was a body slam!" McCormick said. (Ironically enough, under those post-indictment circumstances, Lawler had followed with: "I don't fight women.") It was generally conceded that McCormick -- a retired teacher, a past president of the Memphis Education Association, a veteran of several terms on the city council -- possessed credentials. That she, like Sisson, was a septuagenarian was arguably as much selling point, given the city's aging demographics, as handicap. Yet, for all the feistiness of her makeup ("Does this body really need guarding?" she had cracked during a round-robin response of candidates on the mayoral-bodyguard question), she sometimes seemed to wear down a bit at the more interminable of the forums. Late in the campaign, the CA published a photograph of McCormick under a hair dryer, and she let it be known that she thought the shot was out of bounds, both unflattering and sexist. To her credit, she did not attempt to wave the gender flag overmuch. Or, when she did, she did it with style. In debate, she liked to contrast "the politician and the stateswoman," and her informal (and finally formal) slogan, "The best man for the job is a woman" was a little masterpiece of verbal construction, going in both directions at once on the issue of sexual equality and/or primacy. McCormick and her supporters got defensive or edgy whenever (which was often) someone suggested that she couldn't win the mayor's race. And, indeed, she did seem a logical fallback candidate in several categories. She was: a woman, a Republican, a progressive, a senior, a fiscal conservative, a champion of diversity. She was articulate and colloquial ("You boys got anything else you wanna ask?" she said to a luncheon of the Frayser Exchange Club), serious and funny, both thoughtful and relaxed. She had proposals to make in most every sphere of city government -- from mass transit to community development to legal services to how to deal with the difficult problem of diversity. Yet somehow all of this was not translating into votes. In the three published Ethridge polls, her negatives went up, as did everybody's, but her approval rating, alone among the major candidates, went down. Her backers remained determined, however, and hopeful that, if nothing else, she would be the fallback candidate of last resort. Shep Wilbun, who con- cluded his term of chairman of the Shelby County Commission a month ago, was having trouble with the numbers, too. But in his case it was more understandable. Of the three leading African-American candidates, Wilbun was the one who seemed conspicuously to lack organization and the visible fruits of fund-raising. Wilbun's apparent financial predicament could be a bit misleading: He was said to be using some of his own money, and there were those who had charted his frequent fund-raising events over the years and concluded that he'd been a bit busy for someone content to remain forever at the local legislative level. The commissioner could not, or would not, afford any fleets of buses, vans, or cars for early voting, however. But, aware that observers of this year's series of mayoral forums appreciated his level of performance in them, Wilbun was confident that others would end up doing some of his work for him. As he put it, "A lot of those people who are riding other people's buses to the polls are voting for me. I don't think so. I know so." The fact that Wilbun has, as commission chairman, just presided over a 72-cent property tax increase was something which he hoped to convert from a liability to an asset. It was evidence, he suggested, that he would be able to make the hard choices confronting city government. In an election season when economic populism had become the language of challenge to the incumbent mayor -- Wilbun did as much as anyone to define the terms of the discourse. He hoped, he said, to represent the "downtrodden," the one-third of the population which "the rest of us are carrying on our backs." To gain the wherewithal to do that, this Dartmouth-educated developer proposed developing the city's "20,000 vacant lots" so as to broaden the city's tax base. While he agreed with others that city/county consolidation was desirable and that short-term measures to that end were in order, he declined to favor any action by Memphis that wasn't reciprocated by every other municipality in Shelby County . Wilbun was disinclined to pull his verbal punches. This was a city which had "cancer," he said. And in a season when every challenger had his preferred medicine to offer, his seemed to be a species of castor oil. It remained to be seen whether that was an appealing enough remedy to get him out of the single digits. --J.B. What, Another One? Meanwhile, back at the "Ford seat," Joe's brother Edmund emerges from obscurity. by Heather Heilman Just when you think you've got your Fords straight -- the head power broker, the charismatic son, a couple of blank slates, the one who really enjoys confrontation, etc. -- they spring another one on you. Where do they come from? Or do we really want to know? Anyway, Ed Ford, 44, is running for the District 6 City Council seat being vacated by his brother Joe. He's the youngest of the 15 Ford siblings and (surprise) a licensed funeral director. He showed a little chutzpah four years ago when he started his own funeral home, E.H. Ford Mortuary Services, in competition with the family's business. And he's running for the office even though the family was said to have originally tapped his sister Ophelia for the seat. He's supposedly running without help of the family political machine, although his brother James is his campaign manager and treasurer. And he's got the Ford name, which may be all that matters. Ed Ford, a self-described "good guy," says he is late starting his political career because for a long time he "didn't want to be in politics because it's so crooked." But when you're a Ford, certain things are expected of you. Ed Ford says that people in the community have long called on him for help, and he has always tried to do what he can. If he held political office, he believes he could be more effective. "I'm a public servant, not a politician," he says. District 6, which covers southwest Memphis, has been represented by a Ford since 1971. Besides Joe Ford, brothers John Ford and James Ford have held the job. The district has suffered economically as stores and businesses have closed or moved south of the state line. The median age of district residents is 67. Young families are moving out and the only ones who seem committed to staying are retired homeowners. "I'm tired of all our money going to Mississippi," Ed Ford says, adding that he intends to find out what can be done to reverse the trend. "Third Street's got to be nice," he says, in order to encourage gamblers to spend money on their way to and from Tunica. And tourists who visit Graceland want to be able to stay and eat nearby instead of driving all over town. More than that, the people of the district deserve better, according to Ford. "There's money down here," he says, "And we like nice things, too." For the record, Ed Ford's ascension to public office won't go unchallenged. His three opponents say that the community is ready for change. They say the Fords have become complacent and out of touch and may be in for a surprise on election day. Perry Bond, 38, has lived in the district for 29 years and is making his third try for the city council. He is a customer service representative for Cigna HealthCare and a driving school instructor. He says Mississippi can't be blamed for the district's troubles. "We had the same problems eight years ago the first time I ran," he says. "This is the most neglected district. We get no respect from downtown, and the economic decay is really getting down to a crisis situation." But he says he can turn the situation around in two terms. Michael Tharps, 45, is chief bailiff and chief administrative officer of Judge Joe Brown's District 9 Criminal Court. He has run for office in the past, including a bid for state representative, but has never tried for the city council before. His vision for the neighborhood includes cleaning up abandoned lots and moving and redeveloping Martin Luther King Park with a golf course, bike trail, and visitor's center while allowing Mapco to develop on the current site of the park. Cherry Davis, 51, is a medical technologist, realtor, and former business owner in District 6 who closed her boutique because she was "tired of the break-ins." After watching the community decline for several years, she has decided to make her first foray into politics. "I've just been dissatisfied with the lack of progress in the district and the lack of accountability on the part of the current councilman," she says. She believes there are many things that could be done to improve the district, which haven't been done because of a lack of communication between the councilman and the constituents. She promises to develop an overall strategic plan to improve the district. Hear Them Roar A group of influential women organizes across racial AND POLITICAL lines. by John Branston Maxine Smith, the veteran civil rights leader and former school board member, was explaining the intricacies of "Coke parties" to five of her fellow organizers of "10,000 Women for Herenton." "This is big," she told the racially mixed group meeting to plot strategy at the blufftop home of Henry and Lynne Jordan Turley. "A simultaneous Coke party held all across the city. This is something that has been going on for years in the black community on a precinct basis." When the idea failed to catch fire, Smith threw up her hands in mock dismay. "Y'all are typical white women," she laughed. "You don't want to have no Coke parties." Such are the difficulties of trying to forge new political alliances now that race is not the defining factor in the Memphis mayoral election. The steering committee of "10,000 Women for Herenton" includes political veterans, liberal feminists, professionals, and several women with limited political experience but a lot of money and newspaper clippings from the society pages. With careful attention to racial balance, they have pulled together to try to re-elect a mayor whose record of appointing women to top jobs is unremarkable but who is nevertheless seen as a bridge-builder across the great racial and city/suburban divides. "If we don't get involved in the political process, we're not going to make a difference," says organizer Gayle Rose, cofounder of the Women's Foundation and president of the Rose Family philanthropic foundation. Billing themselves as "Memphis' most influential women," the steering committee over which she presides includes 50 blacks and 50 whites. Each of them is charged with contacting 10 more women, who in turn will each contact 10 more, making -- in theory, at least -- a voter pyramid of 10,000 women for Herenton. In the past, such a group might have worked together on the Blues Ball or Memphis in May. Now, says Rose, the goal is more ambitious and difficult. "We're trying to see if there is a women's vote. Can we organize across cultures?" A recent two-hour strategy session provided a glimpse of some of their prospects and problems. Historically, women have not been a force in Memphis city-wide elections. City Councilman Pat VanderSchaaf ran for mayor in 1982 and councilman Minerva Johnican ran in 1987, but neither made a strong showing. Former councilman Mary Rose McCormick is in the race this time, but although her feminist credentials are a matter of record (she was a teachers union leader, a neighborhood leader, and a diligent councilman), she isn't getting any help from this group. "A candidate can't expect us to support them just because they are a woman" says Franketta Guinn. "We have to look at who can win." Herenton's electability and his perceived inclusiveness clearly outweigh his record of including women in his administration. Guinn notes that in his eight years as mayor, Herenton has appointed 48 blacks and 46 women (some are both) to various boards and commissions, including such male bastions as the Airport Authority, the Sports Authority, and MATA. But as often as not, when Herenton and a woman in his employ have been in the news, the context has not been favorable. Going back to his school superintendent days, the list includes teacher/girlfriend Mahnaz Bahrmand; former city attorney Monice Hagler Tate, who resigned in anger; bodyguard Yalanda McFagdon, who was fired in a drug scandal; Brenda Jones, a member of the police brass whose expense reports were investigated; and Debra Brown, the director of the Division of Housing and Community Development, which has been criticized for a shoddy application for federal grants. The only other female division director is Personnel Director Westelle Florez. Despite this record, Herenton has garnered a Memphis Who's Who of female endorsements including Florez, Brown, Johnican, former councilman Florence Leffler, Pat Kerr Tigrett, Kristi Jernigan, Perre Magness, Barbara Hyde, Narquenta Sims, Ethele Hilliard, Carol Prentiss, and some 200 others. "I've seen him as a bridge mayor without compromising who he is," says Rose, whose ex-husband, Mike Rose, served with Herenton on the board of Holiday Corporation. "What we may offer to an apathetic white community is some hope for a voice in government and politics." With less than two weeks until the election, the job at hand is getting information packets in the hands of 10,000 women and getting as many of them as possible to vote early. Organizers were disappointed that the "suffragist march" they staged Sunday in period garb at the train station failed to generate any publicity. Happy Jones, a veteran of Sixties political activism in Memphis, suggests that further references to this stunt may "trivialize" the cause and should therefore be omitted. The group agrees. Smith's Coke party idea is adopted, after some light-hearted suggestion that it be amended to "cocktail party" in some neighborhoods. "Because of the way the city's organized we have to have black parties and white parties," worries Lynne Turley. "I'm afraid we're going to lose the multi-cultural aspect." White voter apathy is a more pressing concern. Rose has just received an e-mail from campaign headquarters that says white turnout is low so far in early voting. On a more hopeful note, Turley suggests that the Sunday endorsement of Herenton by The Commercial Appeal may influence some white voters. Jones, the senior member of the group along with Smith, has a no-nonsense appraisal of the situation. "The lower-class white community isn't going to vote for Herenton anyway," she says. "They're going to vote for Jerry Lawler or someone." The group turns to the matter of an upcoming radio commercial. Should the voice-over be black, white, or both? Or even a man? "No, not a man," says a chorus of voices. They decide to go with a single "professional" female voice. But the subject of mustering support from churches reveals another cultural divide. While black churches and their ministers have been political flash points in Memphis for years, many high-toned white churches frown on such activism. "If you expect my Episcopal priest to get up and tell people to vote, you're crazy," says Jones. On the issue of poll workers and poll watchers on election day, the battle-tested Smith and Jones once again don't mince words. "I know what happens when Harold Ford gets paranoid," says Smith. Poll workers must know the rules and keep their eyes open for any possible violations that should be reported to the Election Commission. In response to a question from Rose, Jones says it is much better to use women than men for the job. "All they do is get their testosterone going and start a fight," she opines. As the meeting comes to a close, Rose wonders if the women's group has enough momentum to survive after the election. "Yes, it has potential," Guinn says enthusiastically. Then she adds, "The first thing we want to do is meet with the mayor--no matter who it is."