Democrats of Tennessee’s 7th congressional district, who haven’t
elected one of their own to represent them in the U.S. House of Representatives
for more than thirty years, are dreaming anew as of this week.
Several of them have launched an impromptu “Draft Mike” movement, hoping to
persuade Mike Heidingsfield,
current head of the Memphis-Shelby County Crime Commission, to carry the party
standard this fall against incumbent congressman
Marsha Blackburn,
one of the GOP’s rising stars in the House.
The good news
for the needy Democrats is that Heidingsfield, who has just returned from a year
spent training members of the fledgling Iraqi police force on behalf of the
State Department, is willing to consider the idea. Or so he said after
addressing members and guests of the Germantown Democratic Club at the Butcher
Shop restaurant in Cordova Monday night.
“I surely
wouldn’t close the door on it,” said Heidingsfield when asked point-blank after
his speech about the prospect of running. And, though he has been addressing
several groups of late about his experiences in Iraq, regardless of their
political coloration (a speech to the downtown Kiwanis Club was reviewed in the
“Fly-By” section of last week’s Flyer), he affirmed Monday night that, if
he ran, he would likely do so as a Democrat.
Appropriately
enough for those Democrats who might thereby get their hopes up, Heidingsfield’s
status as a former Air Force colonel and high-profile tour of duty in Iraq give
him the kind of military cachet that was possessed by the last Democrat to be
elected from the district – former Admiral William Anderson,
a long-term incumbent who was defeated by the GOP’s Robin Beard,
an ex-Marine, in 1972.
No other
Democrat has won since, though Bob Clement,
then of Dickson, and later a congressman from Nashville’s 5th
District, came close against Republican Don Sundquist in
1982. (Clement lost a race for the U.S. Senate in 2002; Sundquist served two
terms as governor and retired from politics in 2003.)
One thing that
Heidingsfield, who headed up the U.S. police-training mission in Iraq, and
Blackburn, who has made several trips to that beleaguered Middle East country,
share is their upbeat assessment of the Iraqi people’s gratitude for their
liberation from former dictator Saddam Hussein.
From that point, their perspectives differ, however.
Blackburn has
continually professed optimism about the prospect for an enduring democracy in
Iraq, while Heidingsfield has made it clear that he foresees the likely
development there of a Shiite theocracy, like that of neighboring Iran, and the
possible splitting of Iraq into three spheres of influence – one Shiite, one
Sunni, and one Kurdish.
Asked Monday
night whether the United States should have invaded Iraq in the first place,
Heidingsfield said, “No, I don’t think we should have gone in there” and went on
to say that the American military presence had drawn the very kind of militant
Islamic opposition that had been wrongly identified in Iraq prior to the March
2003 invasion.
Heidingsfield
said American forces were so stretched thin and tied up as a result of the Iraq
venture that a future military effort against Iran, a more dangerous power,
might be hampered. He said he had “no doubt whatsoever” that such a military
mission was in the planning stages.
Blackburn,
meanwhile, was heard from during the week – issuing a press release that blasted
former Vice President Al Gore as well as
two former Democratic presidents for “trashing [their] country while traveling
on foreign soil.”
Focusing on
remarks made by Gore in Saudi Arabia about alleged abuses in the Bush
administration’s anti-terrorism policies, Blackburn said, ““We’ve
now watched Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore slam the
United States in speeches across Europe and the Middle East. Whether they’re
pandering to audiences hostile to the United States or simply espousing their
policy views, their comments fuel the sort of anti-American propaganda broadcast
by Al-Jazeera. This behavior is unprecedented and dangerous.”
N
Among the attendees at the Germantown
Democratic Club’s Monday night meeting were several office-holders, both
Democratic and Republican. One of the latter was District Attorney General
Bill Gibbons, who held the latest in a series of events, a campaign
“kickoff” at the Doubletree Hotel on Sunday and simultaneously issued a mailout
bearing several hundred endorsements, some from Democrats. At press time, the
GOP’s Gibbons was still unopposed, though two Democrats – Mimi Phillips
and Alicia Howard had pulled petitions.
The already crowded Democratic field for the 9th
District congressional race may shortly draw another entry – state
Representative Joe Towns, who said last weekend he should be regarded as
a “certain” candidate.
Attorney Larry Parrish, who had been
considered a possible candidate for the state Senate seat of the retiring
Curtis Person, is apparently going to run for a Circuit Court judgeship,
instead – the one now held by D’Army Bailey..
Last week saw all five of the U.S. Senate
candidates considered to be major gathered at one podium for the first time.
Appearing in Nashville at a forum sponsored by the Tennessee Press Association
during the TPA’s annual convention were Democrats Harold Ford Jr. and
Rosalind Kurita and Republicans Ed Bryant, Bob Corker, and
Van Hillleary.
By all accounts, the joint
appearance was free of the kind of vitriolic exchanges that are almost certain
to ensue in the two parties’ hotly contested primaries as well as in the general
election to follow. The most obvious divergence of opinion was between Kurita
and Bryant over trade issues.
“I am not a free trader.
I believe this is a nation of free souls, not a
multinational corporation….I believe the most important thing is protecting
American jobs,” said Kurita, who represents the Clarksville area in the state
Senate.
Replied Bryant, a former
congressman from West Tennessee’s 7th District: “You can put up all
the walls you want, tariffs, but that’s not going to work.”
The candidates expressed general
agreement that future military action may be called for against Iran, which has
announced plans for a stepped-up nuclear program.
Later in the week the Republican
candidates engaged in a game of one-upmanship via competitive press releases.
Corker, the former Chattanooga mayor who is perceived as a moderate and has
raised the most money of any Senate candidate so far (almost $5 million!),
issued a release boasting that he had bested Hilleary in a straw-vote poll of
Washington County Republicans (though he confessedly was edged out in the poll
by Bryant).
For his part, Hilleary put out a
release about his higher standing in two other recent polls, one conducted
jointly by the Knoxville News Sentinel
and radio station WBIR and the other by an independent polling firm for
OnMessage Inc,
Bryant issued one release about
the Washington County poll and another claiming a $150,000 year-end edge in
fundraising over fellow conservative Hilleary. (The last round of financial
disclosures showed both clustered closely together, just short of the
million-and-a-half mark.)
Ford raised hackles and eyebrows
– at least in the political blogosphere – by a statement issued after last
week’s funeral of Coretta Scott King. One sentence in the brief
statement — “Funerals should not be ceremonies to fabricate a life’s
works” – puzzled various bloggers and respondents,
some of whom regarded Ford as thereby siding with Republican critics of
anti-Bush political statements made at the funeral, while others saw the remark
as an instance of impenetrable waffling.
A later appearance by Ford on the
morning show of TV/radio host Don Imus seemed to put the congressman
resolutely on the side of the political positions taken during her lifetime by
King. Ford appeared to condone at least the religious/cultural context of the
avowedly political remarks made by former president Carter, the Rev. James
Lowery, and others.
Reminder:
Thursday of this week sees the first important deadline of this election year.
All candidates wishing to file for offices in the May 2nd party
primaries for countywide offices must have their completed petitions into the
Election Commission by noon. Candidates wishing to run as independents for
countywide office have until April 6 to file. Thiss Web site will monitor
last-minute filing developments this week.
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