Fellow contender Carol Chumney is also sloganeering for change. Her campaign mantra (For the People, For a Change) seeks to tap into the same appetite for a new direction in city leadership, while the slogan on Mayor Willie Herenton's billboards and Web site (Continuing Progress) promises to build on the accomplishments of his previous terms. This election season, it has been the mayor's unofficial slogan (Shake the Haters Off) that has gotten the most attention, but it is Morris' theme of togetherness that I find most intriguing.
This column is not meant as an endorsement or rejection of any candidate -- there is far more to judge all three of these hopefuls on than their slogans. Instead, with the election just over two weeks away, I wonder whether a campaign based on togetherness, as Morris' campaign is, can succeed in Memphis.
Memphis has a history of electing candidates whose campaigns divide, rather than unite, the community, and much of that dividing occurs along racial lines. In 1967, Henry Loeb was elected with virtually no African-American support, a strategy that did not serve him well as the city encountered the sanitation workers' strike of 1968. More recently, Herenton was first elected in 1991 with little white support over incumbent Dick Hackett by a mere 142 votes.
In a book studying the 1991 election, "Racial Politics at the Crossroads," Rhodes College professors Marcus Pohlmann and Michael Kirby wrote that Memphis had reached a "point of racial reflexivity," where any crossover support for one candidate would dampen enthusiasm (and with it, potential voter turnout) in the candidate's own racial community. For candidate Herenton, therefore, any impression of white support was likely to diminish the crusade-like enthusiasm in the African-American community that ultimately made it possible for Memphis to elect its first black mayor. Indeed, Herenton received approximately 3 percent of the white vote, while Hackett received only 1 percent of the African-American vote in 1991.
If Herenton is to win a fifth term on Oct. 4, it appears that it will be won, just as his first election was, without substantial white support. In a July poll commissioned by The Commercial Appeal, only 4 percent of white respondents thought the mayor should be re-elected. In that sense, 2007 looks a lot like 1991.
Most significantly, Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton, former U.S. representative Harold Ford Jr. and Ford's successor, Rep. Steve Cohen, have enjoyed significant crossover voting, although in Cohen's case, his support in the African-American community was hard won and appears to be even harder kept. For his part, even Herenton has previously enjoyed substantial white support in rolling to his landslide elections in 1995, 1999 and 2003.
If Morris, or any candidate, is going to follow these examples of interracial coalitions, he will have to convince voters in diverse segments of the community that togetherness can and must work for Memphis to thrive going forward. As Herenton himself said after his historic first election in 1991: "As your new mayor, not just for a few, but for all Memphians, I envision a great and vital metropolis rushing excitedly towards the 21st century, a century which will feature a Memphis that proudly boasts equal opportunity and access, racial justice and peace, cultural unity and harmony -- for all."
That kind of interracial togetherness would be some progress worth continuing.
3 comments:
i've had this conversation several times in recent days - not surprising since the election is on the horizon and people are more reflective, perhaps. is life better here in memphis than it was 16 years ago?
hrm. not sure. given the obvious handicap that i didn't live here 16 years ago, i can only trust what i read, what the census and education websites say about the quality of life, and the narratives of people who were here.
it is certainly true to say that memphis has changed. ("it used to be bombed-out..." was one recent remark i heard.) downtown, beale street, urban revitalization...lots has happened. but i'm also quite fascinated with the increased polarization of the communities.
during the days of serious desegregation, memphis became #1 in the country - for percentage of students in private schools. the increased bifurcation of destinies between kids in memphis city and those who "got out" to the suburbs, or now to desoto county have relatively little contact with each other.
i'm not entirely convinced that there is complete racial harmony nor dischord in the city. looking at the opposition steve cohen already faces in his re-election (by tinker), there might be more beneath the surface than what is apparent in the present elections.
it would be interesting to say that campaign slogans are emblematic of the underlying sentiment in the community. are we poised for change? or are we shaking off the haters? depends on your vantage point i suppose...
My handicap on answering your question - is Memphis better than 16 years ago - may be as significant as yours. I was only 12 years old when Herenton was first elected and have spent more years of the last 16 away from Memphis than here. Still, I sense that you are hitting on one thing that hasn't changed all that much since 1991 - the polarization of the community. There is a real sense that we are not a single unified community, but rather a variety of interest groups battling amongst each other. This is a real tragedy. The desegregation crisis and abandonment of the public schools is the best example of the us vs. them mentality. The blind opposition to Cohen (though he did at least win the election over Jake Ford) is perhaps the most recent example. The fact that the Commercial Appeal provides different editions of its newspaper to various communities within the Memphis area is, in my mind, the most glaring symptom of this problem. Until this area believes that we are in this together, there is unlikely to be much progress. I'm not sure that any candidate can successfully make that case to the multiple segments of the community because in this community, unity just doesn't sell.
that's a really interesting response, given my several discussions with folks at work this week regarding a "city desk" at the CA and how different parts of the community receive different news... hrm.
i also responded to smart city memphis this week in response to their question about what memphis will be like in the future (depends on what we do whether it looks the same or different). one idea that i have been working through builds on the work of albert hirschman - exit, voice and loyalty. we do all three all the time, but in memphis, social conventions and rules of politeness mean that exit is the proper form of voice. it's impolite to offend people by talking about or directly addressing issues, so people just leave. that's their voice. people "vote with their feet," so to speak. i spend a lot of time thinking about how to activate voice, de-activate exit and make loyalty something other than a default response more indicative of hopelessness than allegiance.
i work on children's issues at my day job - and it's tough to get people to think & care about "other people's children." the realities for children in the city of memphis and in suburban shelby county are soooooo very different. i just did a police ride-along last month that was a real eye-opener. highly recommend it.
in any case, perhaps we'll have some opportunities to educate a new crop of elected leaders and hopefully they will make good choices about child-friendly legislation (modeled after kansas city's number one question initiative).
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