The Local Front Outshone by national events, the primary races for two offices begin to heat up. by JACKSON BAKER Jerome Turner (1942 – 2000) So much attention is being lavished by political junkies on the ongoing presidential primaries that some local election contests not far down the calendar page are largely going overlooked. These, of course, are the local party primaries for the offices of county assessor and General Sessions Court clerk, held on March 14th, the same day as the statewide presidential primary. In both cases, there's a scramble between candidates of one party for the right to challenge the incumbent of another party. In the assessor's race, the incumbent is Democrat Rita Clark, and her challengers include Republicans Grady Frisby, Joyce Hassell, Tom Leatherwood, Bill Stewart, and Francis (Bubba) Winkler. Former assessor Michael Hooks and Bob Kahn have filed for the office as independents and will also be on the August general election ballot. Incumbent Chris Turner faces perennial challenger Tom Watson in the Republican primary for the office of General Sessions clerk. The Democrats vying to take on the winner include Roscoe Dixon, Patricia McWright Jackson, E.C. Jones, Matt Kuhn, and Kendrick Sneed. Clark, like every other holder of the assessor's office in recent memory, finds herself vulnerable as she seeks a second term. Her task is complicated by the candidacy of Hooks, who has a well-established identity as a Democrat and presumably will draw party votes in August, especially those of African Americans, away from the incumbent. Among the Republicans, meanwhile, the clear favorites in next month's election are two outgoing legislators -- Leatherwood, a state senator, and Hassell, a state representative. Each can lay claim to a sizeable chunk of the county 's GOP constituency, though Leatherwood, who already had several fund-raising events under his belt before the General Assembly reconvened last month, got a clear head start on Hassell. (State law prohibits sitting legislators from raising money during a session.) The two legislators made their first forum appearances Saturday and Monday, before the members of the Dutch Treat Luncheon and the Shelby County Republican Women, respectively. Neither dwelled on the fine points of the assessor's duties, as the other candidates tended to. That's one of the anomalies of the race; like Clark in 1996, when she successfully challenged incumbent Harold Sterling, Leatherwood and Hassell are relying more on their political networks than on the possession of any expertise. Stewart, a CPA who worked under Sterling in the assessor's office, took exception at the Monday forum to Leatherwood's comparison of the assessor's job to one of "herding cats." He, Frisby, and Kahn have been stressing the technical aspects of the job, as has Winkler, who has been perhaps the most impressive speaker at the forums. The Democratic race for the clerk's position is generally regarded as a three-way contest between Dixon, a state senator; Kuhn, a well-regarded and seasoned young political activist; and Jones, who currently serves on the city council and has either run in, or mulled over running in, a multitude of races. Both Kuhn, who held a fund-raiser Friday night that attracted such political pros as Karl Schledwitz, former county mayor Bill Morris, and former Democratic chairman John Farris, and Jones could well split the vote among Democrats in general and politically conscious whites in particular -- a fact benefitting Dixon, a prominent Democrat and an African American who might be favored even if matched against only one of them. These races show signs of heating up in the short time left before election. Stay tuned. * The best line of the political week came from State Senator Leatherwood, who was introduced Saturday by Dutch Treat Luncheon emcee Ed McAteer, who inadvertently deleted the middle syllable and consonant in the word "senator." Said Leatherwood: "I am a sinner, but I wouldn't go so far as to call myself the "state sinner." * Two fund-raising events Thursday night drew roughly equivalent sums, in the neighborhood of $15,000. One, at the home of Bill Farris, was on behalf of the state Democratic Party; another, at the Home Builders center on Germantown Parkway, benefitted GOP state House of Representatives candidate Paul Stanley. Speaking at the Democratic affair, state party chairman Doug Horne made it clear he was still gamely looking for a candidate to oppose U.S. Senator Bill Frist, the incumbent Republican. Frist, battling what appeared to be a case of laryngitis, delivered the keynote speech at Saturday's annual Lincoln Day dinner at the Adam's Mark Hotel. * Despite the fact that he has in the meantime added a state income tax -- widely unpopular among state Republicans -- to his arsenal of tax reform proposals, Governor Don Sundquist drew a heartier and far friendlier reception at the Lincoln Day affair than he had a year ago, when his home-county partymates largely sat on their hands while he spoke. * A week or so ago, there was a huge cause celebre over the issue of whether a supporter of Vice President Al Gore's presidential bid had called U.S. Senator Bob Kerrey (D-Nebraska) a "quitter" and a "cripple." Kerrey was in New Hampshire to support former Senator Bill Bradley, Gore's rival for the Democratic nomination, and, so the story went, was harassed by some of the vice president's supporters after a Gore rally at the coastal town of Somersworth. Subsequently, Bradley and others in his campaign demanded an apology from Gore personally, one which never materialized. In any case, several Memphians on hand for the fracas remember the whole occasion somewhat differently. David Upton, Brad Walden, and Evelyn Stell -- all veteran Democratic activists and all Gore supporters -- had attended the Portsmouth rally, which occurred on the Saturday afternoon before the presidential primary of February 1st. Upton recalls that, after the rally had ended and Gore had departed the scene, along with members of his staff, Kerrey -- accompanied by two other Bradley supporters, U.S. Reps. Gerrold Nadler of New York and Jim McDermott of Washington State -- showed up at the site to spin Bradley's point of view to the traveling press corps, whose members had stayed behind for a grilled outdoor lunch. "There was a huge commotion, and some Gore supporters started chanting 'Gore, Gore, Gore'," said Upton, who added that the chant at one time merged into one of "Stay and Fight!" -- a slogan which Gore has used to chastise Bradley for leaving the Senate in 1995, at the time of a Republican congressional takeover. Arguably, since Kerrey has recently announced his imminent retirement from the Senate, the chant might apply to him as well, opined Upton. "There were a few people who tried to start a chant of 'Quitter, Quitter,' but nobody really took that up," contends Upton, who, along with Walden, denies that anybody ever shouted the term "cripple" at Kerry.. Both maintained they were close to the melee -- which also included an impromptu debate between Kerrey and U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), a Gore backer. At one point, says Walden, Kerrey was approached by a Gore supporter -- not one representing the campaign, however -- who stomped a mud puddle, splashing the senator and bystanders (including Walden) and then scurried away. "But what he did was disapproved of by everybody, and even he didn't use the word 'cripple,'" Walden insists. All the Memphians present recall good-humored conversations between themselves and other Gore supporters and Kerrey. Stell reminded the Nebraska senator of how she ferried him about when he was in Memphis some years ago as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. And the two of them traded gibes about how the candidate favored by the other should withdraw from the race after New Hampshire. * Don Rawlins of AutoZone was also among the Memphians on hand in New Hampshire two weeks ago. Rawlins, like Memphian David Kustoff, was there to campaign for Republican George W. Bush. Kustoff is Bush's Tennessee campaign director. Judge Jerome Turner's Channels to the Media The late federal judge Jerome Turner, who is elsewhere remembered in this issue (see editorial), presented an austere no-nonsense image to the world, and he subscribed to rigid standards of judicial propriety governing the release of information. But he found ways -- some conventional, some inventive -- to make himself accessible and helpful to the media. During the course of the several consequential trials he presided over, he would customarily admit reporters to his chambers at the end of a day for a bit of give-and-take concerning the events that had transpired. In theory, these conversations were for purposes of clarification only, but a careful reporter could always discern between the spoken lines some hints of Turner's private attitude toward the proceedings -- and a sense of how he might choose to rule later on some matter of substance. And sometimes the judge went beyond hinting. At one point during a redistricting case some years back, Turner was having lunch with a colleague at a downtown deli, his back to a reporter who had entered the restaurant and sat -- so he thought -- unnoticed at the next table. Raising his voice ever so slightly, Turner began to observe to his fellow judge, "You know, I'm surprised the press didn't pick up on ." Whereupon he wondered out loud why such and such a line of questioning had not been featured, together with an overlooked nuance or two, in published reports. Needless to say, the reporter, after leaving the restaurant, made sure that his next article contained some reference to the matter overheard and congratulated himself on the serendipity. It was not until another year or two had passed that the reporter finally realized that the affair hadn't been a matter of luck. He had been "leaked" to, in the only manner this distinguished and wholly proper jurist would allow himself to employ for the fact in question. And, while reporters covering Turner's trials knew that the judge would do his best to set them straight, they also knew that anybody who burned the judge on a confidence -- either by rendering it inaccurately or by bruiting it about too much -- would never get another one. In this matter, as in those in his courtroom, Jerome Turner was a fair-minded but firm arbiter. -- J.B.