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August 12, 2006
Texas Lessons for Tennessee
By Carl LeubsdorfJACKSON, Tenn. - For Harold Ford Jr., Ron Kirk is a role model.
But the young Tennessee congressman admires the former Dallas mayor more as a person than for the way he ran his Senate campaign in Texas four years ago.
Mr. Ford and his aides say Mr. Kirk let Republicans transform his image from pro-business moderate to liberal with a capital "L."
They hope their study of Mr. Kirk's failure to become the South's first elected African-American senator will help Mr. Ford this year in Tennessee in a race that could decide Senate control.
Since he won a House seat 10 years ago at 26, though more liberal than other Tennessee Democrats, he has cast some high-profile conservative votes.
He is spending the August congressional recess touring rural areas, trying to counter GOP contentions that its candidate, wealthy former Chattanooga Mayor Bob Corker, is more in tune with Tennessee than Mr. Ford, a graduate of a tony Washington prep school and the University of Pennsylvania.
Addressing a racially mixed rally crowd of 125, Mr. Ford took his perceived weaknesses head on.
"They're going to tell you that I'm black. They're going to tell you that I'm a liberal. They're going to tell you that I'm from Memphis," the slim, energetic candidate said. "Well, two of them are true. I'm from Memphis, and I'm black."
But he said he opposes gay marriage, is "a practicing Christian" and backs the Second Amendment's right to bear arms.
At a luncheon in Humboldt, Mr. Ford put his pitch this way:
"When they want to tell you I'm a liberal, look at the record. I'm the one who ran against Nancy Pelosi," he said, recalling his abortive 2002 bid to topple the liberal House Democratic leader.
Backers say Mr. Ford can avoid the liberal label. "With his voting record, he can overcome that," said Doug Cotner, 64, a Jackson insurance agent.
But the congressman's advisers concede it won't be that simple.
"A lot of people will automatically confer on an African-American that he's a liberal," said strategist Michael Powell. He said a difference between Doug Wilder's election as Virginia governor and Mr. Kirk's failure in Texas was "they were able to drive [Mr. Kirk's] liberal label up in the polls."
David Beckwith, a key Republican strategist in 2002, acknowledged that John Cornyn's campaign accentuated ideology by raising issues such as the nomination of conservative Texas jurist Priscilla Owen and liberal Senate Democratic leaders in Washington.
"The problem for any Democratic candidate for federal office in a conservative state is that it is all too easy to tie him to the people he will be empowering if he gets there," Mr. Beckwith said.
As for Mr. Ford's other perceived problems, white backers mostly said they doubted race was one of them. But James Coleman, 64, a retired African-American plant manager, said it remained a handicap.
"Some people have not accepted the racial atmosphere change yet," he said.
Interestingly, there were signs Mr. Ford's biggest problem may be the legal troubles of his large, politically active family. His father and congressional predecessor was indicted but acquitted on bank fraud charges. One uncle resigned as a state representative after being convicted of insurance fraud; another resigned from the state senate after his indictment in an alleged bribery scheme.
"He's not like that," said Jack Barkley, 49, of Gibson, a white factory worker and Ford backer. "But the rest of his family are crooks."
Mr. Ford dismissed the idea that his voting record, his race or his family would sink his candidacy. "My biggest problem is making sure I can touch enough voters ... to share with people why I'm running and what I want to do in the United States Senate," he said.
That's the reason for the bus tours, which also provide an interesting contrast with Mr. Kirk. Even some Democrats felt the former Dallas mayor was so fixated on raising money for television ads that he made too few personal appearances around Texas.
Mr. Kirk himself does not believe either the liberal label or his strategy caused his defeat.
"There's no question that was one of the strategies of the Cornyn campaign," he said. "But I still think that, more than anything, the overriding factor that defined my race was the country rallying to the president after 9-11."
The changed mood this year may help Mr. Ford's uphill fight. Even in rural Tennessee, both voters and politicians say, Mr. Bush and the Iraq war are unpopular.
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