For Memphis' Fords, politics is a business and a cult
By spainishirish Posted in Spotlight Blogs | User Blogs — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Anyone who has spent time in Memphis--particularly in the Ninth Congressional District--is familiar with the Ford family. In addition to the threadworn political machine they built, the Fords have a cult-like following among some of the poorer and less educated voters in the district.
Both the machine and cult have lost a lot of steam in recent years. Why? Much of the time, knowledge of the Fords comes to Memphians via the most recent news of a family member's arrest or other bad behavior. As people in the district have become better informed and less prone to listen to demagogues, the Ford family's political fortunes have started to decline.
Harold Ford, Jr., still wants to use the Ninth Congressional District as a springboard to the United States Senate. He is the Democratic nominee in Tennessee, and he has worked furiously to disengage from his scandal-ridden family.
There's a fly in the ointment, though.
Ford's brother Jake is not the Democratic nominee for that open congressional seat. Therefore, given the hereditary presumptions the Fords have toward the office (Ford's dad previously held it), Jake entered the race as an independent against the Democrat, Steve Cohen.
And you can guess who Junior won't endorse.
As reported in the local alternative weekly The Memphis Flyer, Junior delivered the bad news to Cohen only recently:
District congressional nominee Steve Cohen, who has grappled with a variety of health and family issues since his victory in the August 3rd Democratic primary, has some political ones as well.
Cohen happened to bump into his party's U.S. Senate nominee, Harold Ford Jr., at a Midtown hostelry last week. And, oh yes, during the three minutes or so that the two men of the hour had for a brief but cordial (or, in diplomatic parlance, "correct") conversation, the question of the hour came up.
The longtime state senator from Midtown had the opportunity to ask the outgoing 9th District congressman directly: Will you endorse me?
Ford's answer: "I can support you, but I won't endorse you." (If that sounds ever so much like John Kerry's famous equivocation about an Iraq spending measure, "I voted for it before I voted against it," you have to remember that Ford was an early supporter - a national co-chairman, in fact - of the Massachusetts senator's late presidential campaign.)
But Junior, who learned to demagogue with the best of them, had an explanation.
It will be remembered that days before, during his post-primary statewide bus tour, the barnstorming Ford had been quoted in the Nashville Tennessean as saying he was a Democrat who supported Democrats - and, as Ford explained, both Cohen and Jake Ford, the congressman's brother, who is in the congressional race as an independent, were Democrats.
And Junior has been consistent in one respect. He also has endorsed Joseph Lieberman, the other "Independent Democrat" in this year's national election.
http://memphisflyer.com/memphis/Content?oid=oid%3A18983
Harold Ford, Jr., is bright and articulate and should be taken seroiusly. But this race has, and always has had, the potential for rapid implosion because of Ford's family ties.
(UPDATE: Former co-workers down in Memphis inform me that below the radar screen, the Cohen flap has gotten particularly nasty in recent days as some Ford supporters have resorted to racism and anti-Semitism; I can't independently verify that but these are not firebrand partisans who relayed that information. I will update when I get something concrete from them).