RACE, ETHNICITY GIVE ROUGH FINISH TO TENNESSEE REP. COHEN’S THURSDAY PRIMARY
By Rachel Kapochunas, CQ Staff
CQPolitics.com
spage.cfm?parm1=5&docID=news-000002935693
Aug 7 2008
DC
Thursday’s primary in Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District, in
which freshman Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen is trying to fend off a
serious challenge, will conclude a fiercely fought campaign in which
race has been an inevitable issue — and in which religion and even
ethnicity issues have raised political tensions.
The contest is the direct result of primary two years ago in the
black-majority, overwhelmingly Democratic Memphis-based district,
which five-term African-American Democrat Harold E. Ford Jr. had
left open for a Senate bid that he narrowly lost. Cohen — a Jewish
state senator who was the only major white candidate in a field with
several substantial African-American candidates, including corporate
attorney Nikki Tinker — won the 2006 primary with 31 percent of the
vote to set himself up as the prohibitive favorite for a November
general election that he won easily.
Although Cohen had a mainly liberal voting record in the state
legislature that he has maintained since coming to Congress, some
black activists objected that the district should return to the black
representation that had been provided by Ford for 10 years and by
his father, Harold Ford Sr., for the previous 22 years. Among those
voicing that sentiment was Tinker, who finished second with 25 percent
in the 2006 primary and emerged as Cohen’s strongest challenger in
this year’s much less crowded primary field.
Tinker has hit hard in an effort to portray Cohen as unfit to
represent a district in which about three-fifths of the residents are
black. She began running an ad last week that featured an image of a
Ku Klux Klan member with a burning cross. In the ad, former County
Commissioner Walter Bailey contends that Cohen, as a Memphis city
commissioner, was the only person who voted against renaming a park
that memorializes and contains the remains of Nathan Bedford Forrest,
a Confederate general who helped establish the KKK. The commercial,
though, prompted a sharp rebuke from Cohen’s supporters, including
a group of black Democrats who held a press conference to denounce
the ad as misleading and divisive.
This was not the only attempt by Tinker’s campaign to stir emotions
with the theme, "Who is the real Steve Cohen ?" aimed at countering
actions by the congressman that might burnish his appeal to his black
constituents. These include a non-binding resolution sponsored by
Cohen, and passed by the House last week, that offered a national
apology for the past enslavement of blacks in America and for the
subsequent "Jim Crow" era of legal segregation and discrimination
against African-Americans that lasted for nearly a century. Cohen has
also introduced a resolution to recognize the impact of soul music
on American society and another to recognize the contributions of
Negro baseball leagues.
The voiceover in another Tinker ad states, "While he’s in our churches
clapping his hands and tapping his feet, he’s the only [state] senator
who thought our kids shouldn’t be allowed to pray in school." The ad
also states that "apologies," a reference to Cohen’s House resolution,
aren’t always enough.
Cohen, though, has a longstanding relationship with African-American
voters stemming from more than 20 years served as a state senator in
the Memphis area. He is the self-proclaimed "father of Tennessee’s
lottery," which has raised money for state education and scholarship
programs that he says have benefitted.
The field is much slimmer than it was in 2006, when 15 Democratic
candidates entered the contest to succeed Ford. Still, there are three
other contenders, all of them black, according to Cohen, vying for
votes with front-runners Cohen and Tinker. This group includes one
officeholder, state Rep. Joe Towns, Jr., who entered the 2006 primary
but did not wage a serious campaign and received a tiny share of the
vote. Towns is a cousin of 13-term New York Democratic Rep. Edolphus
Towns .
The contest has divided constituency groups of blacks and women who
align with Democratic candidates. The Congressional Black Caucus
(CBC), which rebuffed Cohen’s efforts to join after he arrived in
Congress, gave a $5,000 donation to Tinker’s campaign. Other donations
have been made to Tinker by committees associated with CBC members
Stephanie Tubbs Jones of Ohio, Gregory W. Meeks of New York and Elijah
E. Cummings of Maryland. And the powerful political action committee
EMILY’s List, which supports Democratic women candidates who favor
abortion rights, has endorsed Tinker, as it did in 2006.
Cohen counters with endorsements from significant African-American
figures such as former NAACP executive secretary Maxine Smith and
CBC members John Conyers Jr. of Michigan, Charles B. Rangel of New
York and Jesse L. Jackson Jr. of Illinois, as well as from Planned
Parenthood, which supports abortion rights, and the feminist National
Organization for Women.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has not played
an active role in the primary campaign by running independent
expenditures on Cohen’s behalf, but he overall has enjoyed the
fundraising benefits of incumbency, leading Tinker in total receipts
by $856,000 to $407,000 as of July 18 and holding a cash-on-hand lead
as of that date of $672,000 to $99,000.
Amid all the clamor over race, an ancient issue of ethnic conflict
halfway around the world has also emerged as an unexpected factor in
the contest. Tinker’s candidacy has received a number of donations
and statements of support from Armenian-Americans who say the deaths
of more than 1 million Armenians at the end of World War I was a
genocide committed by the Ottoman Empire.
Some activists have labeled Cohen a "genocide denier" for seeking to
block a 2007 House resolution to commemorate the 100th anniversary of
the mass deaths of Armenians. Cohen is a member of the Congressional
Turkish Caucus, which seeks to promote U.S. relations with Turkey —
the successor to the Ottoman Empire and a key U.S. ally in the war
in Iraq — a nation that portrays the Armenian deaths years ago as
the result of an ongoing conflict that should not be characterized
as genocide. A Turkish-American Web site identifies Cohen as having
a grandfather who was born in Turkey.
Race, Ethnicity Give Rough Finish to Tennessee Rep. Cohen’s Thursday
Primary The issue became personal on Wednesday, according to local
news reports, when Peter Musurlian, an Armenian-American filmmaker
and activist from California, followed a local reporter who had
been invited into Cohen’s home, prompting the congressman to shove
Musurlian out the door.
The winner of the high-volume primary almost certainly will enjoy
a quieter general election campaign for which three independent
candidates, but no Republicans, have filed to run. CQ Politics rates
Safe Democratic.
The best-known of the independent candidates is pharmaceutical company
representative Jake Ford, Harold Ford’s brother, who also ran in the
2006 general election and received 22 percent of the vote, ahead of
the 18 percent taken by Republican Mark White but well below the 60
percent won by Cohen.
Other primary contests: Thursday’s primary will also determine which
Democrat will stage a longshot bid to unseat first-term Republican
Sen. Lamar Alexander in November. Former state party Chairman Bob
Tuke is favored to take first place against five competitors,including
former Knox County Clerk Mike Padgett.
Democrats lost their top Senate recruit in November 2007 when Democrat
Mike McWherter — the businessman son of Ned McWherter, Tennessee’s
governor from 1987 to 1995 — dropped out of the race, citing the
taxing demands of campaigning.
CQ Politics rates Alexander’s re-election campaign as Republican
Favored, which means he’s likely to win but will face competition —
and an upset, while unlikely, cannot be completely ruled out. Tennessee
is one of the few Southern states where Democrats retain a strong
foothold for major offices: Phil Bredesen , the state’s second-term
governor, and five out of 9 House members are Democrats.
Nonetheless, Alexander is very well-known from his two terms as
governor (1979-87), his stint as Education secretary under President
George H.W. Bush and his unsuccessful bids for the 1996 and 2000
Republican presidential nominations, and he will carry a daunting
advantage in campaign funds into his fall contest.
Crowded primaries are on tap for several House seats, with two
Republican incumbents facing vigorous challenges.
One is in the eastern 1st District, a Republican stronghold where David
Davis won the crowded 2006 GOP primary to succeed retiring Rep. Bill
Jenkins with 22 percent of the vote before scoring an easy general
election victory that fall. This year, Davis’ hold on the seat is
being challenged by Johnson City Mayor Phil Roe, who placed fourth
in the 2006 Republican primary with 17 percent. This will be Roe’s
second consecutive campaign for the northeastern 1st District seat.
In the western 7th District, three-term Republican Rep. Marsha
Blackburn is being strongly challenged by former Republican state
Sen. Tom Leatherwood, but her reputation as a conservative lawmaker,
as well as her advantages of incumbency, are likely to carry her to
a win Thursday.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
