On the Democratic mayoral front, itยs still a three-way struggle between Public Defender A C Wharton, Bartlett banker Harold Byrd, and State Representative Carol Chumney. Whartonยs camp — candidate, entourage, and all — exudes a confidence that could, in the end, be self-limiting.
At the opening of his Poplar Avenue headquarters on Saturday, Wharton exhorted his crowd (several hundred strong, but containing no notable new faces) with thoughts about victory and of ยprogressย for Shelby County but avoided mention of any issues or other particulars.
As before, the chief plank in Whartonยs platform would seem to be himself — a smooth, likeable, reassuring presence, but one with a rhetoric that so far is skating lightly on the surface of eggs..
During the previous week a member of Whartonยs campaign team fretted abut an ยimage problemย and confided his fears that the candidate might be taking his African-American base for granted,. He noted the continued courtship of black ministers by opponent Byrd, who indeed scheduled a ยMinistersย Luncheonย as such for this week.
Despite occasional reports from his own camp that he intends some hard-hitting issues-talk, Byrd himself has tended so far to be somewhat unspecific, although at a recent, well-attended womenยs luncheon he promised an array of ยposition papersย and uttered some cautious grace notes about Memphis Mayor Willie Herentonยs proposals for city/county consolidation.
Chumney, meanwhile, has her endorsements — from the AFL-CIO and from the Womenยs Caucus, among others — and is pursuing a strategy of direct advocacy for positions, including those of consolidation and programmed debt-reduction.
On the Republican side, most party cadres are still lined up solidly with State Representative Larry Scroggs, who — along with Chumney — has been freshly empowered by new legislation, signed week before last by Governor Don Sundquist, that eases restrictions on in-session fundraising for members of the General Assembly, who are now allowed to raise money for local races.
Especially considering that the legislature — hung up as always in a budget-plan stalemate — is now in the second week of a three-week hiatus, that should generate some immediate fundraising activity on the part of Scroggs and Chumney, both of whom are facing opponents with fatter war chests.
In Scroggsย case, thatยs George Flinn, the radiologist and broadcasting magnate, who is prepared to open his considerable private cashbox wide — to the tune of half a million dollars in the primary alone, ยor more if the situation requires it,ย according to campaign chairman Phil Langsdon. Much of that would presumably be used for newspaper and broadcast advertising — the ยair war,ย as it is referred to in political-campaign lingo. The Flinn campaign has also hired as campaign manager Ruth Ogles, who ran a respectable race of her own for the Memphis school board in 2000.