A Fortunate Turn ‘The loser now/ may be later to win.’ Even Steve Cohen’s perennial lottery bill. by Jackson Baker Guess what is suddenly a fair bet to become reality after years of being on the short end of the odds in the General Assembly? A lottery proposal, that’s what, and both State Sen. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) and State Sen. Ward Crutchfield (D-Chattanooga) are seeing their respective lottery proposals lifted by the ill public wind which has blown so hard at the tax reform proposals of Governor Don Sundquist. Crutchfield, who annually sponsors a bill for a constitutional convention, is sponsoring two such in the current session of the legislature. And Cohen electrified legislators last week with his surprise call for a constitutional convention to deal with two measures at once — tax reform and the lottery. The Midtown senator, whose attempts to pass pro-lottery legislation go back even further than Crutchfield’s, has seen his pet proposal prosper because of the fear and loathing inspired by Sundquist’s call for a state income tax. At his news conference last week, Cohen reported a favorable response from such key figures as House of Representatives Speaker Jimmy Naifeh of Covington and Lt. Gov. John Wilder of Somerville, the Senate’s chief presiding officer. Though neither was necessarily ill-disposed toward Sundquist’s controversial income-tax proposal, both Wilder (in the November special session) and Naifeh (in the first week of the current regular session) doomed it by statements which publicly abandoned an income tax as unrealistic. Cohen’s proposal for a three-stage convention process — a referendum approving it by the people, a vote in November for delegates, and finally, the convention itself — was another matter. “It sounds OK to me,” was Naifeh’s first reaction. And Cohen, who has year after year waged an uphill battle on behalf of this or that lottery proposal, was hearing much the same from other legislators. What is it that makes Cohen’s current proposal so palatable and its prospects so good? Basically it allows a reprieve for the members of the General Assembly, made aware of a state revenue crisis by persistent jeremiads from Sundquist and state Finance Commissioner John Ferguson but also made well aware of public resistance to an income tax by the squall which greeted it in the November special session. In the words of Knoxville News-Sentinel columnist Tom Humphrey, “Even many ardent critics of a state income tax have said they would go along with submitting the idea of tax reform to a statewide vote. And for all legislators, the proposal provides an opportunity to turn two of the hottest political topics in the state over to a convention without legislative involvement. That could be fine political cover in an election year for legislators fretting about fallout over taxes.” Moreover, Sundquist and Ferguson have estimated that, without significant tax reform, the state will run a deficit of $382 million next year. Stan Chervin of the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations has estimated that a lottery would bring about $200 million to the state annually — a halfway decent down payment on the emergency. Of course, the lottery itself is almost as controversial an idea as the income tax. Fear of the gambling bugaboo is what has thus far kept Tennessee from joining most of the states adjoining it from voting a lottery in. Putting both of the too-hot-to-handle issues into the referendum/convention process that Cohen proposes is a way for legislators to pass the buck in an election year. And, after all, anybody who votes for Cohen’s proposal — whether pro- or anti-lottery personally — can always claim that all he or she did was give “the people” a chance to vote on the measure. That’s an all-purpose disclaimer, and that’s why Cohen may have a winner on his hand. n All bets are now off in the upcoming race for General Sessions Court Clerk. The filing of State Senator Roscoe Dixon on Tuesday will force the odds to be recalculated drastically. Dixon, an ambitious politician whose thoughts once upon a time were fixed on the Memphis mayor’s race, is a veteran of citywide campaigning who, before their relations cooled somewhat during the last year, was often a surrogate for the powerful political organization headed by former U.S. Representative Harold Ford Sr. He becomes an instant favorite for the March 14th Democratic primary, even if Rep. Ford follows through on a tentative agreement to support his former aide John Freeman, a white with good relations with numerous African-American political figures. Freeman, who had counted on a large percentage of the county’s black vote, now finds himself — if he wishes to stay in the race — forced to compete for the county’s white vote more vigorously than he had expected with fellow Democrats Matt Kuhn and E.C. Jones. Jones, a councilman with a significant holdover war chest from his recent re-election campaign, will do well in his bailiwick of Frayser and Raleigh. Despite his engaging personality and excellent track record as a political manager (four victories out of four major campaigns, most of them out of state), Kuhn is something of an Unknown Quantity to most Memphians. Kendrick Sneed, another black Democrat, is not expected to loom large in Democratic primary voting, but each of the other principals has the potential to make it a battle royal of sorts. Dixon, however, has every reason, going in, to expect that most of the black vote will lean toward him. A possible surprise entry on the Republican side of the ballot is former State Rep. David Shirley, who picked up a petition from the Election Commission last Friday. A maverick conservative populist, Shirley cannot be discounted by GOP incumbent Chris Turner, if for no other reason than he has run two straight close races in suburban east Shelby County with State Rep. Larry Scroggs, who had the support of Governor Don Sundquist and the Republican establishment. Two independents, Richard Reed and Robert Matthews, have also picked up petitions to run for General Sessions Court Clerk. n The assessor’s race became, in its turn, somewhat more complicated on Friday with the pickup of a petition by Jimmy White, a former aide to current assessor Rita Clark until he was fired two years ago in the wake of some highly publicized reappraisals of property that happened to benefit some influential politicians. White, who could end up challenging his former boss in the Democratic primary, was bitter and made no secret of his belief that he had been scapegoated by Clark. Francis (Bubba) Winkler, who has long talked up an assessor’s race as a Republican, also picked up a petition last Friday. Lady of Maine For all the poor-mouthing that Memphians engage in, masochistically and ritually, there is much for them — us — to boast as well. Like the disproportionate number of authors in these parts. Count ’em up sometime: They include bestsellers and winners of all the bigtime prizes. (Yeah, you know who.) No slouch at all and fully deserving of a place among this illustrious company is the University of Memphis’ Janann Sherman, whose new biography of a pathfinding legislator (No Place for a Woman: A Life of Senator Margaret Chase Smith, Rutgers University Press, 376 pp., $35) is a gem of storytelling as well as the kind of reliable history that is destined for scholars’ shelves. Sherman is well known locally and elsewhere for her collaboration with the late Carol Yellin in the delightful and informative 1998 paperback volume A Perfect 36, concerning Tennessee’s crucial role in the passage of the women’s suffrage amendment. Like that volume, which was copiously and handsomely illustrated, this book hath charm as well as substance. Unlike most histories — even the most solid — this book is not one to take to bed with you, unless you want to be up all night. It’s a page-turner — a fact which is attributable both to author and subject. Though she was too immersed in her times to see herself as anything much different from any other politician, the lady from Skowhegan, Maine, was in fact a precursor of today’s politicized feminist. She was of that once-familiar mold, the widow who succeeds a husband and is expected only to fill out his term — in this case in the U.S. Congress. The independent-minded Smith did more than that, of course. She went on to serve several terms in the U.S. Senate — where, as a steadfast moderate, she opposed Joe McCarthy and once angered Barry Goldwater to the point of prompting a “Goddamn!” so audible that it was heard in the Senate galleries. In 1964, Smith even went on to mount a semi-credible run for president as a would-be alternative to the conservative Arizona senator. Sherman, who spent much time with her subject before Smith’s death in 1995, possesses a trim story-teller’s style. She is also well enough acquainted with the arts of psycho-history to divine plausible — and entertaining — motives for Smith’s subsequent politics from the events of her early personal history. All in all, a must-read for anyone interested in either modern congressional history or the theme of women in politics. — J.B. (Janann Sherman will sign copies of No Place for a Woman following a reading at Davis-Kidd bookstore at 6:30 p.m. Thursday, January 20th.)