Two big winners in Thursday’s voting in Shelby County were
9th District congressional candidate Steve Cohen, victorious
in the Democratic primary, and Steve Mulroy, winner of the pivotal
District 5 position on the Shelby County Commission. Cohen will be heavily
favored in the coming November general election against Republican MarkWhite and independent Jake Ford.
Mulroy has won his position outright, and his relatively
easy victory over Republican nominee Jane Pierotti reverses the current
7-6 partisan breakdown in the Democrats’ favor. An activist whose energy and
scope was displayed over the last year in such causes as saving Libertyland and
voting-machine reform, Mulroy had become a fixture of the local scene even
before his involvement in the commission race.
When an impressed observer commented to Mulroy Thursday
night about his win, “You know, Steve, a year ago I had never heard of you,” the
clearly ebullient lawyer said modestly, “A year ago I hadn’t even heard
of me!”
To no one’s great surprise, incumbent Democratic county
mayor A C Wharton easily won reelection, as did Sheriff Mark Luttrell
and District Attorney General Bill Gibbons, both Republicans.
Several countywide positions were won narrowly by
Republican incumbents on the basis of the final precincts counted, dashing the
hopes of several Democrats who led for much of the night. Judicial elections saw
most incumbents and other pre-election favorites triumphant – though incumbent
judges Michelle Alexander-Best and Donn Southern were defeated by
Karen Massey and Karen Webster, respectively.
Prosecutor Lee Coffee won a hotly contested
multi-candidate race in Criminal Court, Division 7, another prosecutor, Jim
Lammey, won an open seat in Division 5, and Deborah Henderson eked
out a narrow win over Regina Morrison Newman for a General Sessions
Division 4 judgeship.
As expected, retiring state senator Curtis Person
was elected Juvenile Court judge over four opponents – three of whom were black
female Democrats with overlapping constituencies.
Winners in legislative races, besides the favored
incumbents, were Steve McManus in the Republican primary for District 96
(vacated by Paul Stanley, winner of the GOP state Senate primary in
District 31); Ron Lollar in the GOP primary for House District 99; and a
rematched Ophelia Ford and Terry Roland, Democrat and Republican,
respectively, for the state Senate District 29 seat that was declared void after
last year’s suspect special election.
Educator Bill Morrison won the Democratic primary in
the 7th congressional District, earning the right to face GOP
incumbent Marsha Blackburn in November.
STATEWIDE, Governor Phil Bredesen and state Senator
Jim Bryson of Franklin handily won the Democratic and Republican
gubernatorial primaries, respectively. Easy wins were also had in the U.S.
Senate primaries for Democrat Harold Ford and Republican Bob Corker.
The Senate race is almost certain to loom large on the
barometer of national politics this fall. But in the short run nothing competed
for dramatic impact of Cohen’s victory in the 9th
District Democratic primary – over a long list of contenders, including
newcomers Nikki Tinker and Ed Stanton, lawyer Joe Ford Jr.,
and outgoing Shelby County Commissioner Julian Bolton.
During the campaign Cohen came under strenuous attack —
especially from Tinker surrogates and from Bolton, the latter of whom made
explicit a simmering concern in some quarters that Cohen was too white and too
Jewish to represent the predominantly black 9th District.
Cohen, who was backed by several prominent blacks, overcame
such sentiments – capturing almost a third of the total vote in the 15-strong
primary field (in the process garnering, one report suggested, as much as 15
percent of the district’s black vote). And, ten years after his first try for
Congress, he was poised to assume a long-coveted place on the national
stage.
THE CONTRAST TO 1996 couldn’t have been more obvious. The
Steve Cohen who mounted a platform at Palm Court in Overton Square Thursday
night was smiling. He was surrounded by celebrants, not commiserants. And,
instead of the bitterness that had quickly settled over him when the racial
dimensions of his defeat became obvious ten years ago, this Cohen was suffused
with the inner calm of knowing that he had picked up significant support in all
quarters of the 9th District constituency.
The one he will represent in Congress for the next two
years unless some major upset should come about in the next three months.
Democratic primary winner Cohen, a public official for
almost three of his five-odd decades, won’t formally ascend to the pinnacle of
his ambitions until and unless he nails down a victory over Republican nominee
Mark White and independent candidate Jake Ford in November.
Technically, the fat lady hasn’t sung yet.
But you could tell she was tuning up from the hum of
jubilation that surrounded Cohen as he began to speak to his throng of
supporters Thursday night.
That disappointment from the past still lingered in the
form of a wistful recollection. Cohen began on a sedate note. “I’ve had
victories, and I’ve had defeats,” he said, even tearing up a little as he
recalled that other August in 1996, when he had been on the wrong end of a
2-to-1 shellacking by Harold Ford Jr., the congressman’s son who would
become a congressman in his own right and then a national figure.
Cohen found the silver lining. That defeat, he said, had
made it possible for Ford, a “great, charismatic congressman” to serve “with
pride and distinction” in the House and to be on the brink of his own glorious
opportunity. Together, he and Ford, who was the overwhelming winner in
Thursday’s Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, could now do significant
things for the people of Memphis and Tennessee.
And, Cohen said, serving another decade in the state Senate
had allowed him to bring to fruition his dream of a state lottery – the crowning achievement of
his 26 years spent there so far.
A truly lusty cheer rang out from the crowd at this artful
– and evidently sincere — squaring of a personal cycle.
Other Democrats had failed on this night to win, Cohen said
in acknowledgement that most of his party’s nominees for countywide offices were
in difficult straits (all but mayor A C Wharton would eventually lose,
some of them by a relative handful of votes). But they, too, he promised, would
have a chance at some future redemption.
ONE OF THOSE DEFEATED DEMOCRATS, lawyer Gail Mathes,
who had waged a spirited campaign against victorious Republican incumbent
Bill Gibbons for the office of District Attorney General, would shortly
arrive to congratulate and embrace the victorious Cohen. Despite flooding
Democratic households with robo-calls from 2004 Democratic presidential
contender John Kerry and, on the last day of the campaign, former
president Bill Clinton, Mathes’ campaign had come up well short, and
Mathes seemed calmly resigned to the outcome. And philosophical.
“This race may have encouraged him [Gibbons] to be more
active on the job,” Mathes had told the Flyer’s Bianca Phillips at a
post-election gathering for Democratic candidates at the University of
Memphis-area Holiday Inn. That fact, she said, may have made her losing effort
worthwhile. “We would not be in the [crime] situation we’re in if he had worked
as hard for his entire term as he has in the last seven months.”
Understandably, perhaps, Gibbons didn’t see things that
way. On the basis of early-voting returns alone – which showed him leading
Mathes by 20 percentage points, the incumbent D.A had made an early victory
speech to cheering supporters at the Fox and Hound Restaurant on Sanderlin,
telling them, “I regard this as an endorsement by the people for our decision to
confront violent crime.”
He acknowledged privately that crime statistics had gone up
in the last two years but said the election outcome indicated his good-faith
efforts were properly understood and appreciated. Calling himself “a uniter,
not a divider,” Gibbons, who was supported by several key Democrats during his
campaign, said he had enjoyed across-the-board support despite Mathes’ robo-calls
and a late mailer accusing him of negligence in dealing with sexual-harassment
cases, among other matters.
Other disappointed Democrats, notably Juvenile Court clerk
candidate Shep Wilbun, were not quite so sanguine about their defeats as
Mathes had been. Late returns made Wilbun the apparent loser – by the narrow
margin a few hundred votes – to incumbent Republican Steve Stamson, who
had taken the clerkship from Wilbun four years ago.
An aggrieved Wilbun, who has blamed his 2002 loss on what
he regards as trumped-up (and later dismissed) charges of misconduct that were
brought against him during that campaign, now suspected dirty pool again and
reportedly stormed down to the Election Commission office in an effort at
protest.
THREE OTHER DEMOCRATS – Otis Jackson, running for
Shelby County clerk against Republican Debbie Stamson; Sondra Becton,
making her second consecutive race against former boss Chris Thomas in
the Probate Court clerk’s race; and Vernon Johnson, challenging incumbent
Republican Criminal Court clerk Bill Key – had similar hairbreadth losses
after being on the cusp of apparent victories. (The two Stamsons are a
husband-and-wife team.)
Fairly comfortable victories were won by Republican
incumbents Gibbons and Sheriff Mark Luttrell (over Democrat Reginald
French). Other GOP winners were incumbent Trustee Bob Patterson over Democrat
Rebecca Clark, incumbent Circuit Court Clerk Jimmy Moore over
Roderic Ford, and incumbent Register Tom Leatherwood over Democrat
Coleman Thompson.
The most convincing win was that of county mayor Wharton
over Republican challenger John Willingham, an outgoing Shelby County
commissioner who has levied a number of complaints – some plausible and enduring
– against the Shelby County government establishment in recent years.
But Willingham, who was among the first to decry the terms
of the now suspect city/county contract to build the FedEx Forum as an arena for
the NBA’s Grizzlies, could not convert any of his crusades into electoral
success. The popular Wharton obliterated him by a margin of almost 3-to-1.
Informed early Thursday night of the first totals showing
such a gulf, Willingham shrugged and said merely, “This is bad.” It remains to
be seen whether he will go on to challenge voting procedures as he did when he
lost another lopsided race against Memphis mayor Willie Herenton in 2003.
Some clue may be had from the fact that late Thursday night
Willingham supporter Warren Cole made an appearance at the Election
Commission and told the Flyer‘s Greg Akers that he had
“suspicions” about the accuracy of the early-voting results and about the
election-day totals as well.
AFTER THE DISCOVERY ON THURSDAY that an election-eve
scare concerning a purportedly stolen ballot box had been based on a
misunderstanding, concern in most political quarters had settled on the
remarkable fact that election-day totals had lagged well behind those of a
two-week early-voting period, by a ratio that some estimated to be as much as
2-to-1.
The long lines and lengthy delays of early voting had been
well publicized, perhaps to the point that many voters who had waited until
August 3, when a massive turnout had been predicted, had been discouraged and
did not bother to vote. Whatever its cause, Thursday’s lighter-than-expected
turnout may have resulted in totals skewed to elderly and suburban voters, who
presumably had enjoyed a larger window of opportunity during early voting than
had the city’s working-class population.
In any event, the long-predicted swing of voter dominance
to the county’s Democrats – predicted in every election since 1990 – has yet to
occur, despite what would seem to be an ever-increasing demographic advantage
based on the growing preponderance of African Americans in Shelby County’s
population.
The black voting base of Shelby County is expected,
however, to emerge as a major factor in voting this November – particularly on
behalf of Rep. Ford’s Senate bid against Bob Corker, the former
Chattanooga mayor who won a convincing victory over two primary foes, former
congressmen Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary, coming close to achieving
an absolute majority.
Though Corker’s campaign rhetoric reflected obeisance to
the same fiscal and social conservatism that animated Bryant and Hilleary, he is
widely perceived as having a more moderate profile, and this fact, coupled with
Ford’s own propensity these days for moderate-to-conservative rhetoric, could
mean that demographic factors will count for more than usual in a statewide
election.
They will increasingly account for more than usual in
countywide elections, too, as the victorious Gibbons, in a swing by county
Republican headquarters late in the evening, made clear.
The Flyer‘s Shea O’Rourke was on hand when
the D.A. had this to say to the GOP faithful gathered there. “I
want to talk to you as my fellow Republicans, and I think the message is clear
from this – [GOP chairman] Bill Giannini and I have talked about this a
lot — we are a Democratic county now. I think all of us realize that. And in
order to survive as a political party in this county, we have got to be willing
to reach out and reach other right-thinking Democrats and bring them along with
us.”
Moments later, a victorious Sheriff Mark Luttrell said
something similar: “I
think one of the things as Republicans that we have to do is we have to really
reach out. We’ve really got to reach out because if we don’t reach out, I think
we’re going to be marginalized even more. And when I say ‘reach out,’ I’m not
talking about compromising anything. I’m talking about getting out there and
convincing people that the message that we have is the right message.”
At that, a woman in the audience
yelled out “Amen!” And the hearty applause that came next indicated that — to
the Republicans on hand, at least — the sentiments expressed by Gibbons and
Luttrell would be a key part of that message.
(Greg Akers, Shea O’Rourke, and Bianca Phillips also contributed to this report.)