Journey's End Senator Cohen, just back from Germany, may figure in the legislature's last act. by Jackson Baker tSate Senator Steve Cohen is back in the U.S.A. and ready for the legislative wind-down in Nashville after two weeks in Germany as leader of a National Conference of State Legislators delegation. But while he was gone he had two experiences that he, as a Jewish American, found exceptionally potent. One was a cruise that Cohen and other delegation members took down the Rhine aboard the Mainz, a riverboat that was once owned by Adolf Hitler and was used by Hitler's propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, as a trysting venue. The other was the opportunity for Cohen, as delegation leader, to lay a "Never Again" wreath in memory of victims at the site of the Dachau concentration camp outside Munich. (The senator is also a member of the Tennessee Holocaust Commemoration Commission.) "Both experiences were very meaningful for me," said Cohen, "and both indicated in different ways that time passes and things change." The senator went so far as to say that German politics not only seemed "more issue-oriented" than the American (or Tennessee) variety but "less divided by race or by religion." While observing the work of three different German provincial parliaments (Landtäge), Cohen found to his fascination that several measures he had sponsored in the Tennessee General Assembly -- a graduated drivers' license provision, a rise in highway speed limits, and animal-rights legislation -- had their counterparts in Germany. Cohen, who is a candidate this year for the vice-presidency of the National Conference of State Legislators, which sponsored the German trip, took two weeks off from the deliberations of the General Assembly but returned to find the legislature no closer to resolving its budget dilemma than it was when he left. "I don't foresee voting for any version of the budget that I've seen, the House version, the Senate version, or the governor's version," said Cohen, adding, "It makes no sense to put off tax reform." Governor Don Sundquist has proposed a state income tax, which has been stoutly resisted (or run away from) in both houses, which have struggled to put together patchwork formulae. n Another issue before the legislature this week finds Cohen and his Senate colleague from Memphis, John Ford, being closely watched to see how they might resolve potentially clashing allegiances -- to the Democratic Party and to Republican Governor Sundquist, with whom both senators are friendly. The test case was the governor's veto of a campaign-finance reform bill, which was scheduled to come before the Senate this week for a potential override. The bill, which would force the state Republican Party to make public an "operating expenses" fund it has previously been allowed to keep to itself, was vetoed by Sundquist earlier this month, but the Democratically controlled House voted two weeks ago to override the veto on a party-line vote. Both legislative chambers must override a gubernatorial veto, however, and the issue was no sure thing in the Senate, in which the Democrats own a tenuous 18-15 majority. Since one key Democrat, State Senator Doug Henry of Nashville, has long been on record as believing that governors are entitled to have their vetoes sustained, Sundquist entered the week needing to persuade only one other Democrat to see things his way. Both Ford and Cohen were likely prospects. Each voted with the governor on a 1995 vote to sunset the former Public Service Commission, and each has proved willing to vote with the governor and against his fellow Democrats on other key votes. For his part, Sundquist has kept his lines open to both Democrats. He has lent at least some degree of moral support to Cohen for the senator's perennial state-lottery measure, for example, and, although both he and Ford deny any quid pro quos on the issue, an administration ruling to ignore another firm's low bid and to extend the state's contracts with Cherokee Children and Family Services of Memphis and other child-care brokers has proved helpful to the controversial local agency, which has ties to Senator Ford. (See note below.) Ironically, Cohen and Ford figured prominently in the origination of the campaign-finance bill. Back in April, when the Senate's State and Local Government Committee, which Cohen chairs, approved the legislation on a 5-4 party-line vote, Cohen suspended activity as a vote was being called for and went to one of the Capitol building's restrooms to locate Ford and bring him back to become the tie-breaking vote for the measure. That circumstance, which has already entered Capitol Hill lore, would seem to make it unlikely that either senator would become involved with an effort to turn the legislation back. To vote with the governor now would be construed as a major flip-flop and would further risk the ire of prominent Democratic senators, such as Speaker Pro Tem Bob Rochelle of Lebanon, who were the targets in 1998 of last-minute advertising fueled by the GOP's unmonitored operating-expenses fund. Moreover, as Cohen noted, another such well-funded campaign this year might tip control of the Senate over to the Republicans, who could then name Senate committee chairmen of their choice. "I think I'm a little better prepared to hold on under those circumstances than John is," he said. Cohen is chairman of the Senate's State and Local Government Committee, Ford of the body's General Welfare, Health, and Human Resources Committee. In any case, as the legislative week began, Cohen, a longtime proponent of campaign-finance reform, acknowledged that while he was leaning toward voting to override it, he wanted to review the finished bill in light of other reform measures, and both he and Ford were, theoretically at least, potential converts to the governor's cause. * It somehow didn't attract much notice, but U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. took a sharply critical position last week concerning actions by his uncle, State Senator Ford. Appearing on Mike Fleming's call-in radio show on WREC-AM, Rep. Ford was asked about Senator Ford's highly profane recent telephone conversation with Commercial Appeal reporter Mark Perrusquia, who was attempting to question the senator concerning his negative attitude toward state audits of Cherokee, the day-care operation which members of the extended Ford family have interests in. The conversation, as evidenced by a transcript which appeared in the morning daily, was replete with typographically deleted expletives and abusive language directed at Perrusquia. "That was wrong. It was inappropriate," said Rep. Ford Friday in remarks similar to those he had made on the radio program a day earlier. The congressman explained that he had written a letter to his uncle taking him to task for both his language and his attitude toward a legitimate press inquiry. * The Shelby County Assessor's office has gained a reputation over the last several years as an unstable haven for incumbents, with the last two assessors -- Michael Hooks and Harold Sterling -- having been defeated for re-election and the current one -- Rita Clark -- regarded as having a difficult challenge on her hands against two major opponents. But the element of permanency is not wholly alien to the office. One of Clark's chief assistants -- as head of her "citizens' answer center" -- is Patrick Lafferty, who has served in the office for 10 years and held similar positions for both Hooks and Sterling. At 36, in fact, Lafferty is what passes for a veteran in the office. A participant at an after-hours reception for Clark at Central Station last week, Lafferty recalled being at similar functions for the incumbents' two predecessors. "I love this office," said Lafferty, who certainly can lay claim to having had a better chance than most (including the assessors themselves) to learn its nooks and crannies. * Political diversity was also in evidence at the reception for Democrat Clark, who will face off on the August 3rd general election ballot against Republican nominee Tom Leatherwood and two independents, Hooks and Bob Kahn. (Both Leatherwood and Hooks are considered major threats.) One of the incumbent's fervent supporters is Barbara Walker Hummel, the 1947 Miss America and mother of one of Clark's top aides, Robert Hummel. To say that Barbara Walker Hummel has a Republican background is something of an understatement. "Only the ones my son works for," she replied when asked whether she supported Democrats these days, and she told a story of being asked during her tenure as Miss America a half-century ago to pose for a newspaper photograph with one of the county's then-new voting machines. After looking at the ballot lineup on the machine's face, Hummel said, she saw nobody there but Democrats. (This was back in the years when there was still a Democratic "Solid South," and the Democratic primary was considered tantamount to election.) Making the same wry face she said she made more than 50 years ago, Hummel recalled asking the press photographer, "Do I have to push the Democratic button?" Ever the trouper, she did. And in August she'll do it again -- whether or not a photographer is looking. * Vice President Al Gore, who spent last Thursday at Cordova Middle School here, didn't get to hang out with his local political supporters until just before takeoff time for Air Force Two late Thursday afternoon. But he made up somewhat for lost time by greeting what amounted to a local Democratic Who's Who lined up beside the airplane's ramp. The 40 or so people present included Mayor Willie Herenton, State Rep. Lois DeBerry, Josie Burson (mother of Gore's chief of staff, Charles Burson), Bartlett businessman Harold Byrd (who had lined up the Cordova school stop for Gore), city councilman John Vergos, former state attorney general Mike Cody, longtime party kingpin Bill Farris, the Revs. Billy Kyles and Ben Hooks, Cordova activist Margaret Box, Millington philanthropist Babe Howard, health-care lobbyists Greg Duckett and Calvin Anderson, and numerous others. Instead of a handshake, all got an embrace and some relatively casual conversation from the new, loosened-up Gore. Three Get Commission Nod Last Friday turned out to be a good day in court for three members of the four-person field vying in the August 3rd general election for the right to succeed Joe Brown as Judge of Criminal Court, Division 9. All four candidates -- prosecutors Linda Harris and Phyllis Gardner, defense attorney Paula Skahan, and lawyer/minister J.C. McLin -- were on hand at the downtown Holiday Inn Express to make presentations to the state's Judicial Commission, which was empowered to recommend three names of potential interim appointees to Governor Don Sundquist. (A fifth hopeful, attorney John L. Dolan Jr., dropped out during the week and endorsed Gardner.) When the presentations were over, the commission met, compared notes, and recommended the names of Harris, Skahan, and McLin. Assistant district attorney Gardner, who has the support of many in the local legal establishment (including her boss, D.A. Bill Gibbons) and who many believe might have gotten the nod from Sundquist, was conspicuously missing from the list. One possible reason was an effective presentation from Memphis lawyer Hal Gerber, who had represented one of four defendants prosecuted by Gardner in the late '80s for alleged child molestation and occult activities at a Frayser child-care center. Quoting material from a decision by a state appeals court overruling the one conviction achieved by Gardner, Gerber excoriated the prosecutor for destroying taped interviews with children at the day-care center (an act which prevented their availability for disclosure to the defense) and pronounced her "unfit" to serve as Criminal Court Judge. Several residents of the Georgian Hills area, site of the child-care center, were on hand to support Gerber. Skahan immediately issued a statement expressing gratitude for being named by the commission and asking for an "expeditious" appointment by Sundquist. Many observers now expect the governor to withhold making an appointment before the election can resolve things, however.

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