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No More Mr. Nice Guy But will it work?
Black leaders say Bob Clement’s attempts to brand Karl Dean as soft on crime could backfire with many African Americans, whose votes may prove decisive in the September mayoral runoff election. A.A. Birch, the retired chief justice of the state Supreme Court, is among those defending Dean, calling the attack “desperation” from Clement.
Clement is criticizing Dean for representing “the worst of the worst” criminal defendants as Metro public defender in the 1990s. It will hurt Clement, according to black leaders, if he is seen as trying to arouse racial fears à la the infamous Willie Horton ads used against Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential campaign. Even before last week’s city elections, the issue became racially charged when a Clement strategist told the Scene, “We’ll see how [Dean] likes campaigning with Willie Horton as his running mate.” In The City Paper, a Dean insider called the comment “racist” and “scandalous.”
“As a public defender, it was Karl Dean’s sworn duty to represent people who couldn’t afford to represent themselves,” says Birch, who was the first African American chief justice in state history. “How in the world could anyone in that position choose and pick who to represent and who not to represent? I think our city has grown beyond being able to be affected by a Willie Horton attack. The citizens of this county are more sophisticated than that. Desperation is what I’d call it. Nashville will reject such efforts whether it’s the black community, Jewish, white, Armenian, whatever.”
Another black leader, the Rev. Enoch Fuzz of Corinthian Missionary Baptist, tells the Scene, “Bob Clement’s negative campaigning is going to turn people off and that could catapult Dean into the mayor’s office. Would Clement do something as crazy as going the route of a Willie Horton campaign? That would be a plus for Karl Dean in the black community.”
Clement was the prohibitive favorite at the start of the campaign. One adviser was so confident he bragged to the Scene, “We’ll get 30 percent of the vote if we don’t do anything at all between now and the election.”
Instead, Clement had to spend $300,000 on TV advertising to limp into second place with 23 percent of the vote on Aug. 2 in the closest mayoral election in Metro history. True, he finished only 545 votes behind the first-place Dean. But Clement was also only 395 votes ahead of Vice Mayor Howard Gentry. If not for his 460-vote advantage over Gentry in absentee ballots, Clement would have fallen out of the runoff.
To the surprise of some, he started attacking Dean in a red-meat speech on election night and kept it up on the weekend talk shows.
Clement has yet to name any of the accused criminals he presumably thinks Dean should have refused to represent. But on WKRN-Channel 2’s This Week With Bob Mueller, he said, “While Karl Dean has been representing the worst of the worst criminals and being paid by the taxpayers to do that...while he’s represented the criminals, I’ve been fighting for the little guy. I’ve been fighting for people in Congress and the Public Service Commission and the TVA and making a difference in people’s lives. I think those distinctions are going to be pointed out loudly and clearly as the campaign progresses.”
Clement, who declined the Scene’s requests this week for an interview, is also hitting Dean for:
(a) Self-financing his campaign. Dean has spent nearly $1 million of his wife’s inherited wealth on TV advertising to make himself the new favorite in the campaign. “Our city is not for sale to the highest bidder,” Clement says. “I believe the people of Nashville want you to earn your way to victory…not buy it.” Asked by WTVF-Channel 5 analyst Pat Nolan whether Gov. Phil Bredesen, Sen. Bob Corker and former Sen. Bill Frist were also buying elections when they self-financed their campaigns, Clement replied, “These other candidates that you mention, that was their money. It’s not Karl Dean’s money. It’s his wife’s money that he’s using to buy all these TV spots.”
(b) Questioning the legality of a Metro charter amendment requiring voter approval of property tax increases. As Metro law director, Dean said that amendment, overwhelmingly approved in a referendum last fall, probably wouldn’t withstand legal challenge. “A lot of people, senior citizens living on fixed incomes, are having a very, very difficult time,” Clement told Channel 5. “Seventy-seven percent of the people say that you ought to at least have the right to vote on those issues, and Karl Dean says you don’t have that right. He’s totally out of step when he talks in those terms.”
In response, Dean says he’s proud of his work as public defender. (“I was elected to do a job, which is to be part of the criminal justice system, offering defense to poor people accused of committing crimes. That’s what I did, and I don’t see that as a negative.”) He sees nothing wrong with self-financing his campaign. (He promises not to hold fund-raisers to repay himself if he’s elected.) And he says he’d follow the charter tax amendment and wouldn’t himself challenge it in court. (“It’s what the people passed, and I will honor that.”)
Clement’s advisers apparently felt he had no choice but to go on the attack, given Dean’s rising popularity and ability to spend freely from his family wealth. Clement insists he’s not mudslinging but doing his civic duty as a candidate by critiquing his opponent’s record.
“It doesn’t have to be negative, but you ought to tell the truth because we do have some major differences on crime and taxes and other issues. It’s talking about his record,” he said on Channel 2.
Still, Clement risks coming across as unprincipled if people think his criticisms lack merit. By painting Dean as a tax-happy, criminal-coddling elitist, Clement is playing the populist and trying to make people angry. But multiple polls have shown the public is content with the city’s direction over the past 16 years under mayors Phil Bredesen and Bill Purcell, whose progressive leadership Dean is promising to continue.
With black votes comprising 20 percent of the electorate, Clement certainly can’t afford a public spat with Birch over the public defender issue. Most of the conservative Buck Dozier’s fourth-place votes probably will go to Clement, and most of last-place David Briley’s liberal supporters should convert to Dean. That leaves Clement and Dean fighting over Gentry’s support. Clement acknowledged their importance this week by opening a campaign office on Jefferson Street.
Clement has always thought he’d have the black vote sewn up once Gentry was eliminated. He benefits from years of constituent service to blacks as a congressman. And his father, Gov. Frank Clement, was beloved by blacks. But an influential black preacher, the Rev. James “Tex” Thomas, says many African Americans may vote for Dean. “You’ll be surprised how many blacks will go with Karl Dean,” Thomas told the Scene before last week’s election. “If I had to go somewhere, I’d probably go that way. Clement will get some of the older black voters, but the new crowd, he won’t get them.”
Thomas now says he hasn’t yet decided whom to support. Neither Birch nor Fuzz has endorsed anyone, either.
Dean isn’t rising to Clement’s bait so far. In an interview with the Scene, he declines to criticize his opponent. “I think the city benefited from having a positive campaign conducted up to the runoff election,” Dean says. “People by the end almost came to appreciate it as being refreshing and the way politics should be conducted. My intention is to run a positive campaign.”
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