Prince of Memphis, Ascending

Representative Harold Ford, Jr. of the 9th District of Tennessee – Memphis and the Shelby County area – has the gleaming, polished resume of a young politician on his way up quickly. The five-term Congressman was first sworn in at the age of 26. He received his law degree from the University of Michigan Law School and got an undergraduate degree in American History from the University of Pennsylvania, both prestigious schools – high quality, but not over the top hoity toity, though we are obliged to point out he did start down that path by attending St. Albans School for Boys. Ford just announced he will seek the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by the departing Majority Leader, Bill Frist, who has said he is not going to seek re-election, and who will inevitably run for President of the United States. Ford’s Senate campaign will be filled with potentially career-ending pitfalls, will be a tough, ugly battle, will be fought up a hill steeply, will likely be extremely divisive on both sides for a wide variety of reasons, and will ultimately be won by Ford. Here’s why.

It would be easy to say that Harold Ford, Jr. has politics in his blood, because it’s true. He is the heir to the Congressional seat held by his father, Harold Ford, Sr. Congressman Ford the Senior served in the United States House of Representatives from 1975 to 1997, representing what is now the 9th District of Tennessee. The Ford family is Memphis political royalty, leaders in the funeral industry and leaders in the African American community. It’s also clear the Ford’s value education – Representative Ford, Sr. earned an MBA from Howard University in 1982, the mid-point of his nearly twenty-five years of service.

The senior Ford was a delegate to the Democratic State Convention and the Democratic National Convention in 1972, after only two years of service in the Tennessee State Assembly. Ford quickly challenged an incumbent Republican for his seat in the House of Representatives. Thanks to redistricting that afforded him a large number of African American voters, and a virtually unprecedented get-out-the-vote campaign, Ford won. It was close – an initial vote count showed that the Republican incumbent had won. However, a number of ballot boxes were found in a trash receptacle near the Shelby County Election Commission (each Commissioner a white Republican). The ballots in those boxes made Harold Ford, Sr. the first African American U.S. Representative elected in the Southeastern United States in the 20th Century. Ford faced no serious challengers in his nearly quarter century of service after that.

Despite his father’s legacy, Harold Ford, Jr. seems to be very much his own man. He certainly is politically. Ford ran for the spot of House Minority Leader, and lost, badly, to Representative Nancy Pelosi. Still, his reputation as a middle-of-the-road dealmaker has remained unscathed. Ford has notable committee assignments, including a seat on the powerful Budget Committee as well as the equally powerful Committee on Financial Services. Nonetheless, the Memphis Commercial Appeal, the area’s paper of record, noted the Congressman has “exerted himself on issues beyond the reach of his committees.”

Ford is one of thirty-five moderate to conservative Members of Congress that make up the Blue Dog Coalition. The name “Blue Dog” is derived from the original notion of the yellow dog in the South – a person loyal to the party would vote for a yellow dog if it were on the ballot. The Blue Dogs got their name by claiming that, at the time, their moderately conservative views were being “choked blue” by the Democratic establishment in the years leading up to the 1994 elections. 1994, you’ll remember, was the year that New Gingrich and the “Republican Revolution” rolled in to town. Talk about being choked blue.

In this day and age of political extremism not everyone is a fan of the Blue Dog approach. But you can’t argue with their track record. According to the Blue Dog Coalition website (visit the site here: link), since 1996, eighteen Democrats who ran as Blue Dogs “won their seats by defeating a Republican incumbent.”

With a father who figures so prominently in American politics, it would be easy to suggest that the Congressman’s career began when he was born, in 1970 – indeed, the very year his father began his service to the Tennessee General Assembly. Ford told TIME Magazine’s Jack E. White after his defeat by Pelosi: “There were three things we had no choice about doing when we were growing up: our homework, going to church, and working in political campaigns.” Still, his official political career seems to have begun in 1992, when he was a young staff aide to the United States Senate Committee on the Budget. The seemingly random assignment, of course, couldn’t possibly be. The Chairman of the Committee at the time was no less than Tennessee Senator Jim Sasser, of Memphis. Surely the irony of who defeated Sasser in 1994 will not be lost on anyone: Bill Frist.

In 1993, Ford took another step in his political career: special assistant to the United States Department of Commerce. This, too, was not as random a placement as it might seem. The Commerce Secretary at the time was pioneering African American Ron Brown, who died in a plane crash in Croatia in 1996.

At this time, we must offer an extended personal aside. You have likely noticed that we are particular fans of Representative Ford and are excited about his run for the Senate. It’s true. The reason is we feel a special connection to Ford, though we are not African American, we are not from Tennessee, and we are not serving in Congress. We have no relatives who have served in Congress. We did not even attend the University of Pennsylvania. Or the University of Michigan. We’re not even lawyers.

The answers lie in the early service of Congressman Ford, as well as his age. Ford is a fellow member of Generation X, a label so overused it’s as overdone a cliché as “Baby Boomers.” The Greatest Generation (to continue with the overdone labeling) bid farewell to the bulk of their political influence in Washington, DC with the ill-fated presidential run of Bob Dole in 1996. Baby Boomers will no doubt dominate presidential politics for likely the next two presidential election cycles – until 2012 – and most probably beyond. Still, with the rise of Harold Ford, Jr. in the U.S. House, we are starting to see the first hints of the rise of political power from Generation X. And if he wins the Senate seat, he would be the first U.S. Senator to be born in the 1970s, though not the youngest.

We mentioned we are not from Tennessee – and that’s true. But Memphis remains a beloved stomping ground from our days as a college student in questionable standing at Arkansas State University. While young Harold Ford, Jr. was busy enriching his mind in Philadelphia, we were busy destroying ours on Beale Street. While the Ford Family ruled the Tennessee Banks of the Mississippi, we were busy passing out on them during Memphis in May, focusing in and out on Lynyrd Skynyrd and Blues Traveler. Memphis is a city that holds many good memories for us – from what we can remember, anyway.

Finally, Ford is a member of an elite club of which we, too, are members. Very few young men and women, now mostly in our early and mid-thirties, and who served in the legendary Clinton/Gore Campaign of 1992, the transition of 1993, and the first term of President Clinton and Vice President Gore, have made it as far as Harold Ford, Jr. has. After leaving Memphis and Jonesboro, Arkansas for Little Rock, we served in the 1992 campaign, the transition in to 1993, and in both terms of the Clinton Administration.

Ford remains a fine example of what young people who dedicated themselves to service early can do, of just how far we could go. While we have never met Ford (or at least don’t recall the meeting if we did – and we strongly suspect we would), we feel a special kinship with him based on our similar early political experiences. Ford has a tough fight in front of him, in some part because of his family as well. A number of indictments were recently handed down in Tennessee, mostly involving improper use of funds and political influence. His uncle, a state senator, was among those indicted. Congressman Ford has done a good job – as good a job as can be expected – of drawing a line between himself and his family problems. But this is the kind of mess that political opponents will exploit without shame.

The Congressman is also not a progressive, at least as defined by today’s standards. He is a conservative Democrat in the vein of, most notably, Bill Clinton. He supported the war in Iraq (something Democrats are going to have to work out much sooner rather than later). He did not support President Bush’s tax cuts. Ford told Beth Rucker of the Associated Press that his top issues in the campaign will be, interestingly, energy reform, national security, and education. We would have urged him to mention health care as well, but those three are excellent choices for him.

Count on Ford pointing out his leadership role in the Transformation Advisory Group, an appointment from the Department of Defenses’ Joint Forces Command. This group is a mix of political, military, and academic leaders gathered to advise the leadership of the Defense Department on how America’s armed forces can better meet the challenge of national security threats. In addition, Memphis is growing tourist city, and we’re sure Ford will somehow tie this in to energy reform issues (gas prices, and thus the cost of visiting tourist destinations like Memphis and Nashville, will almost undoubtedly remain high in the near- to far-future). Education is on every politician’s list, to be sure. But given the obvious importance education has played in the life of Ford himself, we will be interested to see how he frames it.

No matter what issue he talks about, Ford is going to have to draw heavily on his experience as a results-man in Congress to get ahead in the campaign. As he told TIME Magazine: “Democrats have to come up with some answers. Voters are tired of hearing us just say no, no, no, no all the time. Even when we’re right, they don’t want to hear it.” We suspect that Ford will come up with a few answers of his own. And it is likely, then, that the Prince of Memphis will outgrow that title for something more state-wide. ts