MEMPHIS FLYER

Politics: Tightening UP
By Jackson Baker

The difference between GOP senatorial nominee Bob Corker and his Republican
primary opponents, Ed Bryant and Van Hilleary, was in the quality and
frequency of his advertising vis-à-vis theirs. For a solid month Corker, a
self-made multi-millionaire with healthy backing from his party's
establishment, was able to introduce himself to the state's TV viewers as an
accomplished mayor, an adroit businessman, and a friendly, somewhat
countrified fellow with an extra-nice mom.

Poor Bryant and Hilleary, both running unimaginative and negative campaigns,
might not have been able to compete even with equivalent financing, but the
fact is, they didn't have enough campaign money to counter the television
onslaught, and they fell steadily behind. Ironically, their last chance came
in the last two weeks of the campaign when, for reasons yet to be explained,
Corker (who was well ahead in the polls at the time) took to attacking his
opponents with advertising that was not only negative but demonstrably
misleading.

Bryant and Hilleary counter-attacked, pointing out that neutral observers
expressly belied the content of Corker's attacks and considered them unfair.
They lost anyhow, but with another month and another million apiece, the two
hapless ex-congressmen have been able to make up some ground.
The experience is relevant to what has happened to Corker in his current
campaign against Democrat Harold Ford Jr.

For several weeks as the general-election effort against Ford got under way
the former Chattanooga mayor ran TV commercials virtually non-stop -- but
not the sort he had used to establish himself as a likeable, trustworthy
figure in the primary. Rather, he filled the airwaves with negative attack
ads, like his last ones against Bryant and Hillary.

It was almost as though he had established a groove -- a rut, rather -- and
couldn't get out of it. Worse, Corker himself didn't figure in any of them
except as a late-appearing figure whose voice-over, in accordance with
Federal Election Commission regulations, "approved" the ads. Worse yet, the
ads were as misleading as those against Bryant and Hilleary had been. Worst
of all, his new opponent, Ford, had the money to compete with him on the
airwaves.

Ford was in the attack mode, too, and his own ads were no model of fairness
or accuracy, either. But he was in them, an undeniably telegenic and
persuasive presence, and that set him apart from his opponent. Corker's
early lead evaporated, and Ford caught up and began to race ahead.

But wait! In the last week or two, there was Corker with his doting
cutie-pie mom again, and here comes another commercial featuring the Bobster
himself, talking regular-folks common-sense talk about those blowhards in
government and how a straight-arrow businessman like himself could
straighten out all the stuff they've got wrong.

This reversion to best-foot-forward politics is the apparent result of a
shakeup in the Corker campaign. Tom Ingram, a veteran operative who has
been serving as Senator Lamar Alexander's chief of staff, is the new
campaign manager, taking over from Ben Mitchell, and the new ad strategy is
first fruit of that change.

Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, the bleeding in the Corker campaign
seems to have been stanched, and now he and Ford are now trading leads in
this or that poll.

*Undeniably, Ford has momentum -- the result of his star quality and
campaigning skills as well as what could turn out to be a national
buyers'-remorse reaction to the Bush administration.

But, though the fact seems to have escaped most observers in the national
media, Ford has critics within his own party -- most of them on the left, to
be sure, and not nearly as numerous as his detractors imagine but, arguably,
influential beyond their numbers and, inarguably, out of love with their
party's nominal standard-bearer.

The reason? What they see as Ford's apostasy from Democratic Party precepts.
This includes his votes with the Republicans on such thematic/social issues
as the flagburning and marriage amendments and Congress' mandated medical
review in the Terri Schiavo case, economic issues like the bankruptcy bill
and extension of the Bush tax cuts, and a plethora of national-policy
concerns, such as Ford's continuing support of the Iraq war effort and his
go-along votes on national-security issues.

Two of the latter occurred within the last week, as the Memphis congressman
cast yea votes on two administration-backed bills -- one extending broad
authority to the president to define torture as it applies to captured enemy
aliens, the other granting the chief executive the power, in effect, to
decree warrantless surveillance. On the former bill, Ford was one of 34
House Democrats to vote as he did, on the latter one of 18.

Especially given apparent popular disenchantment with the Iraq and with
President Bush's conduct of both it and the War on Terror generally, Ford's
actions reignited the always-simmering discontent among his hard-core
Democratic critics, who consider Republican attack ads on Ford as too
"liberal" to be somewhere between an unintentional irony and a bad joke.
Not to talk too far out of school, but several indisputably Republican
and/or conservative sources acknowledge the possibility that Ford's
increasingly conservative rhetoric may be more than election-year posturing.
One GOP loyalist and erstwhile Bryant supporter is resolutely behind Corker,
but he recently conceded, somewhat reluctantly; "Harold Ford Jr. may be as
conservative as it is possible for an African-American Democrat to be."

Tellingly, Ford's campaign paraphernalia does not feature the word
"Democrat," and, in a campaign that has focused unusual attention on the
longtime Republican preserve of East Tennessee, seems almost to have
proscribed use of the word on the stump. Even in home-town Memphis, he told
a headquarters crowd back in April, "I'm not a Democrat running up to
Washington yelling 'Democrat, Democrat, Democrat.'"

*Another issue - mainly of concern to local Democrats but important enough
to have attracted attention on the editorial page of the Nashville Tennessean - concerns the current 9th District congressional trifecta, in
which Democratic nominee Steve Cohen is opposed both by Republican nominee
Mark White and by "independent" Jake Ford, the congressman's brother, who
says that, if elected, he would caucus with House Democrats.

But in a recent radio interview Jake Ford echoed his brother's political
ecumenism somewhat. Noting that he was "running without a party
affiliation," the younger Ford characterized his race as being "about people
politics, not party politics," and said, "All too often people want you to
get wound up in the issues Democrats want you to hear about or Republicans
want you to hear about. I just want to represent the people."

Rep. Ford himself continues to maintain a neutral posture vis-à-vis Cohen
and brother Jake. The congressman's hesitancy has permitted the flourishing
of persistent rumors that the Ford brothers are operating their campaigns in
concert. Other than the common support of both by proud papa Harold Ford
Sr., there would seem to be little evidence for such an assumption.

An equally persistent rumor - also unconfirmed and unlikely- has it that
Jake Ford's continued pursuit of the congressional seat might be, from the
Ford clan's point of view, conditional and subject to negotiation.

In any case, Ford's Democratic critics cite Rep. Ford's ambiguous attitude
toward the three-way congressional race as yet another impediment to their
acceptance of his own candidacy. A refrain has begun to recur in the posting
of a hard corps of anti-Ford bloggers - most of them in Ford's back yard of
Memphis and Shelby County but some also posting out of Nashville and
elsewhere.

Why, Democratic skeptics in the blogosphere say, should we put aside our
doubts and support Harold Ford Jr. as the party nominee when he wont' do the
same for Steve Cohen?

Meanwhile, Ford defenders among longtime Democratic partisans are
increasingly advancing another question: What's the big deal on Ford's
credentials? they ask. Worst-case scenario: that a Senator Harold Ford Jr.
would be an old-fashioned Southern Democratic conservative of the sort
people in these parts once took for granted. So?

*The brouhaha over disgraced former Republican congressman Mark Foley of
Florida has prompted 7th District Democratic congressional candidate Bill
Morrison to hazard the what-did-she-know-and-when-did-she-know-it formula
against heavily favored GOP incumbent Marsha Blackburn. Morrison's thesis:
that assistant majority whip Blackburn, like House Speaker Dennis Hastert
and other members of the Republican congressional leadership, may have had
some advance inkling of Foley's proclivities.

That's probably a stretch, but the fact that Morrison chose to ask it is
some indication of the impact the Foley affair might be having on Republican
fortunes.

Another indication of problems on the GOP ranch is the fact that 9th
district congressional candidate White felt free last week, during President
Bush's fund-raising stopover here for Corker, to challenge the president for
not responding to White's suggestion of a joint tour of Memphis' inner city.
"Why he will not follow me there is beyond me," said Republican White, who
hopes to take advantage of the Cohen-Ford split but needs to pry loose from
traditionally Democratic African-American votes.