Thursday, December 21, 2006

Harold Ford And Race   [Jonathan Martin]

This has been a bit of a hobby horse of mine, but I believe it's a deeply important issue to our politics.  In the current edition of Newsweek, Jonathan Alter's cover piece on HRC and Obama includes the below:

A sobering message for Obama is the example of Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford Jr. in the 2006 midterms. Ford ran a strong campaign for the Senate, but he lost by three points to Republican Bob Corker. The GOP sponsored an ad featuring a blonde cooing, "Call me, Harold," in reference to Ford's appearance at a Super Bowl party for Playboy. Ford's bachelorhood gave the Republicans the opening they needed to push age-old racist fears of miscegenation, but if that commercial hadn't worked, they would likely have found something else with racial overtones. (The producer of the ad now works for John McCain.)

I like Alter and I like Newsweek editor Jon Meacham even more.  But this characterization of the Ford race can't stand.  It can't because the lazy, simple storyline of "White Girl Ad Beats Ford" is becoming cemented into political lore just as Muskie's tears in the New Hampshire snow in '72 were, and as Bush 41's bungling of the supermarket scanner was in '92.  Just as with Muskie and Bush, the Ford story will get repeated so many times that it becomes true. 

But, as with much in politics, Ford's loss was much more complicated than "age-old racist fears of miscegenation."  For one thing, Tennessee is an increasingly GOP state in federal races.  They've not elected a Democrat to the Senate since Al Gore was re-elected in '90 and they chose Pres Bush over their native son in '00; Bush got even larger margins in the state in '04.  Then there is Ford's opponent.  Bob Corker is a wealthy businessman who spent millions of his own money to hammer Ford on the airwaves (the infamous ad was an RNC independent expenditure) and to dominate the last 10 days of the campaign.  What's more, Corker had a solid east Tennessee base in Chattanooga (not incidentally, Meacham's hometown) that enabled him to pile up huge numbers in this GOP-leaning region of the state. 

Which leads to the crux of the issue.  Nobody can seriously argue that Ford's race was not a factor.  Without question, there were some whites who voted against him based upon his skin color.  But race was part of a much more complicated stew that took out Ford.  He was also hampered by his bachelorhood, his family name and his hometown.

As I've said to friends, if Ford had been a black man named Harold Smith, Jr. who had grown up in, say, Nashville and been married with cute little children (see Obama, Barack), he may well have won this race.   Though 36, Ford can nearly pass for still being in his late-20s.  This youth (and a career largely confined to appointive and elected political jobs) was stark in contrast to the middle-aged and self-made, if stolid, Corker. Then there was the difference in family.   While Corker could trot out his admiring wife and daughters at public appearances and in commercials, Ford was in the position of constantly having to defend the transgressions of his kin.  The Ford's have dominated Memphis politics for years and some have had brushes with the law.   While Junior had not even a hint of corruption to his record, his surname is simply toxic in Tennessee politics.  Which gets to the third point.  To many nominally-political voters in the state, there was no difference between Junior and the rest of the family.  To them, the words "Ford" and "Memphis" were enough.  Ford's hometown is viewed by many Tennesseans as being culturally apart and even foreign to the rest of the state (some call it the capital of northern Mississippi).  Add to this a candidate from the city's notorious political family and Junior was just a non-starter — regardless of how much he moved to the middle or how pedestrian his opponent was.  

Is race tied up in this perception of the Ford's and heavily-black Memphis?  Of course.  But, as explained above, there were other factors at play — ones that have nothing to do with black man/white woman bugaboos; Ones, you see, that don't neatly fit into preconceived notions of the South and GOP campaign tactics.  

12/21 12:24 PMShare