As the rain clouds that doused West Tennessee on Monday passed eastward on Tuesday, in the direction of Republican Bob Corker’s presumed stronghold of East Tennessee, Democrat Harold Ford Jr. had every reason to hope for a perfect storm that would elevate him to the U.S. Senate instead.
It would end imperfectly for the Memphis congressman, however, three percentage
points and some 40,000 votes behind his more mundane opponent. There had been
signs, to be sure, that the weather had been turning irreversibly against Ford.
As the campaign wound down and
the last week’s polls showed GOP adversary Corker with a double-digit lead, it began to seem that the congressman had over-reached himself – that his family history would catch him up, if nothing else.
Some Democrats – both local and
statewide – took umbrage on election day upon hearing that Harold Ford Sr., the
Florida lobbyist, former congressman, and Ford-clan patriarch, was putting out
copies of a “Ford Democratic Ballot” on which his second-born son, Jake Ford,
had the place of honor for the 9th congressional district, not state
Senator Steve Cohen, the Democratic nominee.
That smacked too much of the old
Ford machine for various Democrats whose loyaly to Harold Ford Jr.’s curiously
new-breed politics was tenuous at best.
Discontent with Ford among
hard-core Democrats may have been a marginal affair, but this election turned
out to hinge on the margins.
Any student of the blogosphere
— suddenly swirling with political dervishes, in Tennessee as elsewhere – could
attest to the passions that were driving partisans at the edges of ideology.
And, whereas in the outer, traditional world the pious, button-downed collar-ad
Ford was making converts – in the likes of Knoxville’s Frank Cagle, a journalist
and conservative activist of the old school – he was still being regarded with
suspicion online by redhots both left and right.
Beyond the convenient
descriptors of race or party label, there was in fact not much in the way of
ideological difference to distinguish between Corker and Ford. Whatever their
private convictions, both had progressively moved from their party’s moderate
wings to positions that were clearly right of center.
Both candidates, formerly pro-cnoice
on abortion, now described themselves as pro-life. Both opposed gay marriage.
Both favored an extension of the Bush tax cuts, opposed immediate troops
withdrawals from Iraq, and supported the president on the so-called “torture”
bill. Their differences even on issues like tort reform and Social Security were
even being fudged.
So it came down to a contest
between individuals – Corker the plain-spoken businessman and former Chattanooga
mayor versus Ford the dazzling, charismatic Wunderkind of 2006. Ford was
routinely being described by those pundits who hazarded election forecasts and
roundups last week as having run this year’s best campaign.
But the debate that raged
amongst progressive bloggers in Memphis, Ford’s home-town bailiwick, narrowed
down to the following choices: hold your nose and vote for Ford, whose politics
had gone so far right as to be almost untenable; vote for a fringe candidate of
the left like the Green Party’s Chris Lugo; desist from voting in the Senate
race altogegther; or, as a fourth alternative that came increasingly to be taken
seriously, vote for Corker.
Several developments drove that
resolution. There was a factor that loomed much larger in Tennessee than
elsewhere, where pundits chose to ignore that old chestnut about all politics
being local. This was the fact, familiar to most Tennesseans within reach of a
TV set or a morning newspaper, of the Ford family of Memphis, a.k.a. the Ford
political “machine.”
The franchise began in 1974, the
year of Watergate, when a two-term Democratic state representative named Harold
Ford won an upset victory over white Republican Dan Kuykendall. Soon, Ford Sr.
(the suffix, of course, derives from latter-day circumstance) was encouraging
his siblings – all, like him, the sons and daughters of N.J. and Vera Ford,
operators of a successful South Memphis funeral home, into the new world of
politics.
Such were the leadership skills
of the first congressman Harold Ford that soon there were Fords everywhere in
government – on the city council, on the county commission, in both chambers of
the Tennessee legislature. Over the years those family members, like John Ford
of the state Senate, became dominant figures – exercising power up to, and
sometimes beyond, established governmental lines.
John Ford’s indictment last year
for bribery and extortion in the FBI’s Tennessee Waltz scandal capped a
swaggering, often scandalous career in which the senator’s a very real
legislative acumen soon became a secondary issue in the minds of Tennesseans.
When sister Ophelia won his seat after his forced resignation and then saw her
election voided by her new colleagues because of demonstrated election
irregularities, that was just more frosting on an established image.
Harold Ford Jr., raised in
Washington and schooled in such environs as St Alban’s Prep School, the
University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan, had every chance to
avoid being stereotyped as “one of the Fords.” First of all, he was
different – even early on the same smooth article that TV viewers saw this year
in candidate Ford’s political ads.
Almost preternaturally
self-assured and glib, he moved into the frames of his commercials and hit his
marks with a grace and flourish that any professional actor might admire.
Indeed, he was so accessible a figure that reigning political shibboleths ceased
to be of any use to would-be analysts. It hade long been said, for example, that
no black could win in Tennessee.
It soon became clear that, while
Ford was black enough, at least in concept, to be the overwhelming favorite son
of the state’s African-American constituencies – some 16 percent of the total
population – he also conformed closely enough to middle-class models of success
that crowds of young white professionals soon began to crowd his rallies. His
professions of piety (he called himself “Jesus-loving” and began to carry a
Bible on the stump) proved effective in rural surroundings and even on TV,
where his nods and finger-pointing heavenward seemed reminiscent of famous pro
athletes.
One measure of Ford’s possible
appeal to social conservatives was that in Shelby County — where, as returns
approached completion, he was maintaining a consistent 65 percent of the total
vote — the referendum on stae Amendment One, which would ban gay marriage, was
winning by tidal-wave proportions – 80 percent to 20 percent. At the very least,
this meant no sign of the usual anti-Democratic backlash that in recent years
has accompanied evangelical voting.
In retrospect, Ford’s strong
showing should have surprised no one. Added to his personal panache — virtually
without parallel among Tennessee politicians, black or white – were the facts of
an undeniable voter discontent with Republican rule and, for that matter, with
politics-as-usual.
But the final three percent that
Bob Corker held to as a margin never disappeared. And as news organizations
began to call the race for the Republican, Harold Ford Jr.’s excellent adventure
finally expired.
In fine, the same factors that
gave him his chance ultimately may doomed him to defeat. In the final analysis,
he lacked an important part of his base. Close but no cigar.
After all the exciement, after
all the better-than-expected election results in Shelby, Davidson, and Hamilton
counties, all urban centers, Harold Ford did what most Tennesseans thought in
the beginning of his race he would do – lose to an established Republican in a
taken-for-granted red state.
Maybe it was never possible he
would win. At the end of it all, campaign strategist Tom Lee acknowledged to
the media that his candidate had reached or achieved most of the campaign’s
goals, falling short, perhaps, only in the upper northeast corner of the state,
the so-called Tri-Ciies of Kingsport, Bristol, and Johnson City, traditional
Republican strongholds all.
Maybe it was what the national
media saw as racial content in he infamous “Call Me, Harold” climax, spoken by a
white bimbo in a Republican National Committee ad – though most Tennesseans
doubted it. Indeed, Ford seemed to do well among young white professionals, who
flocked to his rallies and sported his bumper stickers on their Volvos and SUVs.
Indeed, they were as much a core constituency as African Americans were.
And he seemed to do well in some
of the rural counties where a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage
also ran up a big vote. At various times he even appeared capable of doing the
impossible – of stealing the religious vote from the Republicans. He promised on
national TV that he would be a “Jesus-loving, gun-supporting” senator, began
toting a Bible on the stump, and seemed about to create a brand-new political
type.
But the final stubborn three
percent GOP rival Corker clung to never dissolved. Red-state reality insisted on
asserting itself.
Even in his concession speech
before adoring supporters at The Peabody, however, Ford clung to that most
surprising and unexpected component of his 2006 persona. Quoting passages of
scripture, he made one last nudge of head upward, pointed heavenward one last
time and thanked his maker, the celestial one, for the opportunity to do what he
had almost done. And then, after having spoken the merest congratulations to his
victorious opponent, he moved offstage, slowly, as most disappointed mortals
would, campaign chairman Lincoln Davis’ arm draped over his shoulder.
Ulimately, Harold Ford Jr. fell
back to earth, having fallen just short of becoming a political archetype. But,
like Icarus of legend, he made a good flight of it while it lasted.