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| PHOTO BY TREY HARRISON |
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Willie Herenton |
Herenton polled 74,896 votes (or 45.74 percent); City Council chairman Joe Ford finished in second place, with 41,161 votes (or 25.14 percent) — a gap so wide as to make Herenton's vow seem viable and to undermine the possibility of a Senate race next year by U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., whose visage had filled Memphis TV screens during the campaign's last week as young Ford pleaded with voters to give his uncle Joe a chance.
Not only did the Ford organization take a hit in Thursday's voting; so did the Shelby County GOP, which saw considerable defections of local Republicans toward Herenton and away from the official party endorsee, former Shelby County Commissioner Pete Sisson, who finished fourth (with 18,012 votes, or 11 percent) behind pro wrestler/commentator Jerry Lawler (19,092 votes, or 11.66 percent).
Precinct-wise, the finally tally went as follows: Herenton, 188; Ford, 19; Lawler, 20, and Sisson, 7. Clearly, Herenton's victory was citywide and on such a scale as to justify the word "mandate," which was being used and sometimes shouted deliriously by the celebrants who began jamming the city 's cavernous downtown Convention Center almost as soon as the first totals were reported, only minutes after the polls closed at 7 p.m.
Just as clearly, the Ford organization would have to regroup. The dimunition of its Get-Out-the Vote power could be measured not only by Joe Ford's poor showing but by the third-place finish of City Court Clerk candidate Greg Grant, who had won a place on one of the once coveted sample ballots put out by the organization at election time. And, even though Edmund Ford, a political unknown before this election, won the District 6 city council seat vacated by his brother Joe, he seemed vulnerable to a runoff for most of the night, finally finishing with 55.9 percent of the vote against three no-name opponents.
Part of the reason for Joe Ford's debacle lay in his own personal shortcomings. Halting of speech, passive in deportment, and unable or unwilling to respond with vigor to Mayor Herenton's public belittlings of his candidacy, the councilman saw the burden of his campaign fall to his more illustrious relatives, sibling Harold Ford Sr., the former congressman and political dynamo who has presided over the family fortunes for a quarter-century, and his nephew, the current congressman.
In retrospect, there were four key moments in the campaign which defined its course. There was an early mayoral forum, back in the summer, in which Herenton publicly dismissed Joe Ford as a "boy" who wasn't "ready" for the challenge of running for higher office.
There was the infamous late-night episode in which a Herenton bodyguard flashed his gun at Ford campaign workers removing the mayor's yard signs and replacing them with those of candidate Ford. The fallout seemed to hurt the Ford campaign more than that of the mayor.
More recently, there was a published comment by former congressman Ford which indicated that he might be a shadow mayor behind the scenes if his brother happened to win. That was followed by a gaffe in which County Trustee Bob Patterson, Sisson's campaign manager, advised a largely black crowd to vote for Ford if they couldn't vote for Sisson.
Patterson's blunder seemed to jibe with Herenton's public claim that "a vote for Sisson is a vote for Ford," and it also served to accelerate a late movement of white Republican voters, already wary of a possible Ford-Sisson connection, into the mayor's camp. (Sisson, along with former city council member Mary Rose McCormick and Shelby County Commissioner Shep Wilbun all did less well than they — and their supporters — had hoped for and really did not measurably affect the final results. Third-place finisher Lawler, forced to do on-again/off-again campaigning because of his commitments to the World Wrestling Federation, might have had more impact with a fuller effort.)
In the immediate aftermath of his smashing victory, Herenton professed a willingness to "work with members of the Ford family," sentiments which matched conciliatory statements by Harold Ford Sr., Harold Ford Jr., and Joe Ford..
But, having beat the Fords on their own turf of inner-city Memphis as well as having done measurably well in white East Memphis Herenton was under no great compulsion to engage in any power-sharing, and the power base from which the Fords operated and from which Harold Ford Jr. would need to launch any Senate bid in 2000 had obviously suffered major damage.
Two of the key strategists behind Herenton's impressive victory had accurately predicted that Memphis' rising middle-class and generally good economic times would carry the day for their man.
Campaign treasurer Osbie Howard, who has been with Herenton since 1991 (after joining his first mayoral campaign on loan, ironically, from Harold Ford Sr.), had one of the best predictions of election day. Two hours after the polls opened, he told a reporter that Herenton would get about 47 percent of the vote and that the turnout would be 40 percent, which was 10 percent less than Election Commission Chairman O.C. Pleasant was predicting. Both numbers were within one percent of the actual results.
"You have to kind of stay back from the action and look at what is really happening," Howard said in a post-election analysis of his prescience. "As the campaign unfolded, I saw no issues emerge. I didn't see any reason for anybody not to want to continue with the leadership the city has had."
A C Wharton, the lawyer and public defender who managed Herenton's campaign, said the election was "about demographics as much as anything." As he talked, a steady stream of black and white volunteers in Herenton t-shirts flowed through the Herenton headquarters on Elvis Presley Boulevard Thursday afternoon. They included remnants of the old Dick Hackett constituency, women driving SUVs in the "10,000 Women for Herenton" brigade, and City Hall insiders like Howard, the former city treasurer.
Wharton contrasted the Herenton and Ford coalitions.
"The mayor has a quiet constituency that has grown with him from the the time he was superintendent of the school system and through two terms as mayor," said Wharton. "He's grown with his constituency. Harold has grown apart from his constituency. A lot of the people who used to depend on him for their Social Security checks have passed on."
In the hours before the polls closed, there was much less activity at Joe Ford's headquarters on American Way. Ford relied on his brothers Harold and John and a loose coalition of disgruntled former city officials such as ex-police chief Melvin Burgess and former city councilman Kenneth Whalum. Asked to analyze the turnout, Whalum predicted it would exceed 50 percent, while Harold Ford simply said, "It's a Joe Ford turnout." As it turned out, both were off the mark.
"I thought it was a bad idea to run Joe," said Howard. "It may have been closer it Harold had run himself, but the result would have been the same."