POLITICS

TRIPLE JEOPARDY

Exit Fields?
Pity the Shelby County Democrats, if you will.
            They
just barely managed a show of unity two months ago after the election of a new
chairman, compromise candidate Matt Kuhn,  amid a three-way power struggle, 
and in a special election two weeks ago, they held on to John Ford’s
old state Senate seat by the squeaker margin of 13 votes for Ford’s sister
Ophelia

            Now they
have new worries. Richard Fields, an influential Democrat who won a seat
on the party’s executive committee back in July, is in danger of losing it this
month. The reason? Lawyer Fields has had the temerity to provide pro bono
representation to Republican Terry Roland in Roland’s ongoing legal
challenge to Ophelia Ford’s victory, which was formally certified Monday
by the county Election Commission along 3-2 party lines.

            In doing
so, Fields may have transgressed against party bylaws. Or so maintains fellow
committeeman Del Gill who has filed a resolution forcing a vote on
whether to expel Fields at next week’s regular monthly meeting of the executive
committee.

            Gill’s
resolution, which chairman Kuhn has agreed to put on the next week’s regular
agenda of the executive committee, would present Fields with three choices:

(1) He can “repudiate his support”
of Roland and “dissociate his legal representation.”

            (2) He can
voluntarily resign from the committee and remain a “bona fide Democrat.”

            (3) He can
face a committee vote to remove him, which, if successful, would cause the
term “none bona fide Democrat” to be attached to his name.
            Gill’s
cosigners on the resolution include William Larsha, Derrick Harris,
and party vice chair Cherry Davis. More importantly, a brief survey of
opinion indicates that he may have at least 
the tacit support of a broad array of Democrats, cutting across the
usual party dividing lines.
            The
local  party bylaw, Article III, cited
by Gill could be subject to some legal parsing, however. While it prohibits, on
pain of expulsion, “supporting candidates running
against Democrats in General Elections,” either financially or otherwise, it
makes no specific reference to legal representation.

 Enter Loeffel  . A month or two back Debbie Stamson,
an assistant and protégé to retiring 
Shelby County clerk Jayne Creson, was attending a meeting of the
Shelby County Commission and wondered out loud if commission member Marilyn
Loeffel still harbored ambitions of running for Creson’s job next year.

At the time, the commissioner,
though not a signatory to the anti-term limits suit pressed by three of her
colleagues, must surely have been wondering if the courts would permit her to
run again, if she chose to, in her Cordova district. So far they hadn’t, and,
when asked, Loeffel confirmed that she had an undiminished interest in running
for the clerk’s position.

That was despite the fact that  Stamson had just held a well-attended  monster fundraiser at the Germantown home of
supporter Wayne Mashburn, son of a semi-legendary former clerk, “Sonny”
Mashburn

Loeffel was undeterred by that show of force.
The  commissioner, who was first elected
in 1998 on a tide of socially conservative votes, remains confident that that
army will rise again to support her in what shapes up as a hotly competitive
Republican primary campaign against Stamson, whose husband Steve will
simultaneously be running for reelection as Juvenile Court clerk..

In her official announcement of
candidacy Monday, Loeffel made brief reference to her two terms as a part-time
commissioner and said, “I’ve chosen to ask Shelby
County residents for the opportunity to serve them in a full time capacity.”

            Meanwhile,
sometime radio talk-host and former City Court clerk candidate Janis
Fullilove looms as a potential Democratic opponent for either Loeffel or
Stamson.

 Enter Thaddeus.
Another entry in next year’s political sweepstakes is broadcaster/blogger Thaddeus
Matthews, the scourge of numerous politicians, including all members of the
Ford family and, from time to time, Mayor Willie Herenton,

Matthews announced last week that
he would seek the District 3 county commission seat now held by the outgoing Michael
Hooks, who has the misfortune of being both term-limited and indicted in
the Tennessee Waltz extortion scandal.

 Gibbons fundraiser.
District Attorney General Bill Gibbons filled the upstairs room at the
downtown Rendezvous restaurant Tuesday night for a fundraiser/reception that
drew many of Gibbons’ fellow luminaries in addition to a large crowd of other
supporters.
            Among
those attending in support of Gibbons’ 2006 reelection effort were both Memphis
mayor Herenton and Shelby County mayor A C Wharton. Reaffirming his
previously announced endorsement of Gibbons, the often controversial Herenton
joked, “I hope I do him more good than harm.”

 It only hurts when he laughs.
At a fundraiser here last week at the home of city councilman Jack Sammons,
Governor Phil Bredesen kept a smiling and relaxed demeanor despite the
presence across the street of demonstrators protesting his paring of the
TennCare rolls, a move he has defended as necessary for budgetary reasons.
             “Inviting
me is one way to get demonstrators to show up at the end of your driveway,”
joked the governor, who said he had spoken with several of the protesters and
urged the attendees at the fundraiser to do so. “These are good people,” he
said.

 Focus on
lobbyists. The governor’s appearance in Memphis came at the end of a day in
which the members of his recently appointed Citizens Advisory Panel on Ethics
held the last of several statewide meetings at the university’s Fogelman
Center.
             Presided
over by former state Attorney General Mike Cody and former state Senator
Ben Atchley of Knoxville, the meeting was attended by  several local legislators, including state
Senators Steve Cohen of Memphis and Roy Herron of Dresden, and
state Representatives Paul Stanley and Brian Kelsey of Germantown
and Dolores Grisham of Covington.
            Cohen
called for ratcheting up the current “cup-of-coffee” law to the end
of eliminating  all lobbyist-funded
favors for members of the General Assembly — a point that was seconded by
Stanley and Kelsey.
            Asked
how much legislation was currently initiated by lobbyists rather than members
of the Assembly, Cohen answered bluntly, “Almost all of it.”
             Grisham,
who said she and two other relatively short-term Republican legislators shared
the services of a single staffer, called the absence of adequate staffing for
legislators “unacceptable.” It meant, she said, that increasingly
legislators are forced to use lobbyists as sources of advice on legislation.
“The good ones will give you both sides,” she said.
            Current
lobbyist and former legislator Rufus Jones of Memphis got the day’s best
laugh when asked what the duties of a lobbyist were.
            “The
first thing you’ve got to do is get a client,” Jones said. “You can
go up there and lobby all day long, but if you don’t have a client, you’re in
trouble!”
            The
panel is scheduled to report its recommendations to Governor
Bredesen this week.

 Taking the bitter
with the sweet. Two Tennesseans hopeful of advancing themselves politically
faced criticism last week.
            9^th
District congressman Harold Ford Jr., who aspires to the U.S. Senate,
was named “worst black congressman” by the “CBC Monitor,” a group which
performed an analysis of the voting records of members of the Congressional
Black Caucus. The group is apparently affiliated with the “Black Commentator,”
a Web site which has consistently found fault with Rep. Ford, who
coincidentally addressed the Black Caucus’s annual legislative meeting in
Washington last week.

Ford was assigned a 5 percent
satisfactory rate on nine selected “bright line” issues, including his vote for
the stringent  bankruptcy bill passed by
Congress this past spring.
            U.S.
Senator Bill Frist, a presidential hopeful whose vacated seat Ford and
others will be seeking next year, faces insider-trading inquiries from both the
Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission concerning his
sale of Hospital Corporation of America stock just before the stock of HCA,
founded by Frist’s extended Nashville family, took a nosedive on the stock
market.
            Frist
has said he had “no information about HCA or its performance that was not
publicly available” and supporters maintain that his action was related to a
need to avoid potential conflicts of interest prior to his presidential run.
           

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