The marvel of our political system is that we get the quality of
public servant that we do, given that anyone who wishes to rise in the system
has to wait for the right year, the right opponent (which, in practice, means an
open seat or one held by the rare embattled incumbent), and an opportunity that
coincides with one’s own professional or personal timetable.

An illness, a new baby, a change of employment — all these
things have kept people from advancing in politics. It isn’t like law or
business, say, whereby one can start small and progress by orderly, planned
stages to a lucrative partnership or a chain dealership or whatever. All careers
involve the element of luck, but politics uniquely depends on all the planets
being aligned properly at just the right moment.

It is, in fact, a riverboat gamble. And that’s our way of
continuing a series of mini-profiles of candidates for the open 9th District
congressional seat. This week we look at the two candidates, both Democrats,
with the lengthiest political resumes.

Julian Bolton is that rare case of a political
talent whose pathway to advancement may finally have come unblocked by adversity
— in his case by the 1994 term-limits referendum that, affirmed by the state
Supreme Court only this year, effectively closed out his reelection prospects on
the Shelby County Commission.

Bolton came up in the Ford organization when, as a young
professor of drama at LeMoyne-Owen College, he was drafted in 1982 to run
against Shelby County commissioner Minerva Johnican A once-influential politician and an African-American woman capable of crossing
partisan lines, Johnican had run afoul of 9th District congressman Harold Ford, then the closest thing to a boss that Shelby County had seen since the days of
E.H. Crump. In a photo
finish, Bolton won, and he began a lengthy commission tenure that had its
erratic moments but showcased his considerable forensic skills.

Along the way, Bolton picked up a law degree and, briefly, was
the local representative of the Johnny Cochran law firm. Once regarded as
something of a showboat on the commission, he served an effective year as
chairman in 1995-96, during which several black-white issues per se
predominated. In the last year or two, Bolton has managed to combine the roles
of fiscal watchdog and champion of social services and took the lead in
challenging both urban sprawl and the county’s PILOT (payment-in-lieu-of-taxes)
programs.

Though he was one of the litigants in the effort to overthrow
term limits, Bolton announced long before its resolution that he wouldn’t run
for reelection even if the suit succeeded. He was a relatively late entry in the
congressional race — a fact which has hampered both his fund-raising and his
development of a campaign structure.

As Aubrey
Howard , his current
finance chairman, notes, Bolton is both an established presence and a veteran
campaigner. But he has his work cut out for him in this year’s crowded field.

Steve Cohen
is, simply put, the elephant in the room. The farthest thing from a racist one
could imagine, Cohen, who has sponsored civil rights legislation and won
humanitarian awards, will nevertheless gain from his being the only well-known
white in an overwhelmingly African-American field. A political realist, he is
aware that, in the 9th District as elsewhere in Shelby County, demographic
voting is the rule rather than the exception, and, for starters, he can probably
count on a 20 to 30 percent share of the Democratic primary vote.

That fact is hardly his only advantage, however. In the course
of a lengthy political career that began with his election, while still in his
20s, to the 1977 state Constitutional Convention (which elected him its vice
president), Cohen has proved a steadfast champion of a variety of causes. He
served on the County Commission and (briefly) as a General Sessions judge.
Elected to the state Senate in 1982, Cohen in fairly short order claimed a
prominent place in the statewide political firmament, despite an almost
irrepressible penchant for controversy. His feuds with other public figures are
legendary, but as former Senator Robert Rochelle of
Lebanon (perhaps Cohen’s foremost adversary over the years) once acknowledged,
“You may not agree with him, but at least he does espouse the same principles
from point to point.”

Cohen’s best-known accomplishment is the creation of the state
lottery, the result of 16 years of unstinting effort, and, as the senator never
fails to remind his audiences in this campaign season, a boon to the
college-scholarship hopes of many a 9th District student. Cohen has also worked
to enact key animal-rights and arts legislation and facilitated the development
of The Med and the city’s downtown tourist district. He is a poster boy for
women’s-rights issues, and, contrary to his image in some circles as a flaming
liberal, the former police legal adviser has taken consistently conservative
positions on death-penalty and gun issues.

In 1996, Cohen failed in his first bid for the 9th District
seat. (The winner, Harold Ford
Jr ., was no slouch, in
addition to his institutional and demographic advantages.) If he should succeed
this time, it is scarcely imaginable that Cohen (a ready man with a quip,
sometimes to his own detriment) will be your usual diffident back-bencher. Many
of his supporters (and some of his adversaries) view him as a good bet to become
an instant national figure.

Next week: The rundown of candidates vying for the open 9th
District congressional seat continues. Yes, Ron Redwing,Joseph Kyles, Marvel Mitchell
et al., your spotlight moment is coming. You, too, GOP candidates.

Elsewhere on the Political Front:

One of the
extravagant claims made by Tennessee Waltz figure Barry Myers
on the surveillance recordings played last week during the trial of former state
Senator Roscoe Dixon
was Myers’ assertion that he had been the major force in electing A C Wharton
as Shelby County mayor in 2002.

The boast was made to FBI undercover agent “L.C. McNeil,” who
was masquerading as an executive of the bogus electronics firm E-Cycle
Management and whom Myers, later indicted as a go-between in the extortion
sting, clearly saw as someone worth impressing.

Among those somewhat stupefied by Myers’ contention was Wharton
himself, who was A) widely regarded as unbeatable once he’d thrown his hat into
the ring; and B) assisted in his campaign by the likes of Bobby Lanier ,
David Cocke ,
and Harold Ford Sr. ,
all somewhat better known than Myers in political circles.

Said former Shelby County public defender Wharton at last week’s
campaign appearance here at the Rendezvous by Governor Phil Bredesen :
“That reminds me of some of the clients I used to have, who would take credit
for everything from Santa Claus to the Easter Bunny if you listened to them.”

[Image-1]Bredesen, who signed his new Cover Tennessee state health-insurance initiative into law this week, was one of the political figures who came out of the Dixon trial smelling like a rose. The governor, too, figured in the surveillance tapes ย– primarily on several in 2003 which the FBI used to demonstrate Dixonย’s predisposition to accept cash in return for his legislative services. (ย“Predication,ย” that process is called; it was a necessary precondition for involving Dixon in the later E-Cycle sting.

At issue in 2003 was Dixonย’s support for the TennCare credentialing of Forba LLC, an out-of-state firm which was doing business in Tennessee as Childrenย’s Dental Clinic, Inc. As Dixon acknowledged to ย“cooperating witnessย” Tim Willis, who was working undercover for the FBI and, unbeknownst to Forba itself, offering an inducement to Dixon, the clinic engaged in several dubious practices, including the binding of children preparatory to their dental treatment.

ย“The governor hates it,ย” Dixon said, going on to say that Bredesen regarded the operation as ย“a baby mill.ย”

Asked at his Rendezvous appearance if he recalled the Forba matter, Bredesen said that he did. ย“That sort of thing was one of several issues we faced in terms of tightening standards for TennCare,ย” he said.

The trial of Dixon, which resulted last week in his conviction on five
counts of conspiracy, bribery, and extortion, was avoided by many local
political figures, including several mentioned in testimony, but presiding judge
Jon McCalla ‘s
courtroom was something of a cynosure for others, who dropped in periodically.
Among the last to do so was City Council member TaJuan Stout-Mitchell ,
who sat with Dixon’s wife
Gloria Dobbins , holding
her hand as they awaited the verdict.

Upon receiving his guilty verdict, and just before he left the
courtroom, an impassive Dixon gave a brief hug to both his wife and Mitchell,
telling each, “It’ll be all right.”

Sentencing is scheduled for September 8th.

Don’t look now, but a storm may be brewing in statewide GOP ranks come
next month. U.S. senator Bill
Frist , a home-state
presidential aspirant, is reported to be furious that the Williamson County
Republican Party is dickering with a Frist rival, Massachusetts senator Mitt Romney ,
to appear at a fund-raising dinner in the county, a bedroom suburb of Nashville.