A new book about Vice President Al Gore alleges that he enjoyed smoking marijuana at Harvard and used pot recreationally for a decade. But despite providing such occasional color about the usually rigid Tennessean, Gore: A Political Life is hardly being praised for offering insight into the vice president’s life.
A recent review in The New York Times, in fact, gave author Bob Zelnick, a former ABC News correspondent, what was at best a lukewarm critique. Much of the material in the book is recycled from old newspaper and magazine articles or from other already published materials, such as author Jim Squires’ Secrets of the Hopewell Box.
As The New York Times review pointed out, the book doesn’t include footnotes, making it difficult to determine what information is old and what information is actually revealing. Scene staffers noticed, too, that the book’s index is incomplete and that the chronicle managed to misspell marijuana (spelled “marajuana”).
As for Gore’s time in Nashville as a reporter for The Tennessean, Zelnick describes his work as having “little passion, humor, calculated irony or human insight.” Perhaps not all that much has changed.
Chump polling
A question included in a professional poll recently commissioned by a Metro Council candidate has raised considerable ire around town for its implication that a single, working mother may not be fit to represent voters.
Former Metro Council member John Summers, who’s running to succeed outgoing member Horace Johns in Metro Council District 24, recently commissioned a lengthy poll that included a question referring to one of Summers’ opponents in the race, 31-year-old Whitney McFalls, who is a legal aid social worker, a single mom, and the only woman in the contest for that Council seat. The question asked voters whether they would be “bothered” if their Council member was a “single mother” with a “demanding” job.
Supporters and other political watchers who’ve learned about the poll question say the offense they take is more than just a politically correct, knee-jerk response to standard political practice.
It is, they say, simply sexist. “He’s testing whether people think that it’s a negative to be a single, working mom,” one McFalls supporter says. “But what that says to me is that he thought it was a negative.”
Summers defends the question and the poll in general as being a normal part of a campaign. “We have conducted a poll that’s looked at a number of candidate profiles trying to see if those were positive or negative,” says Summers, who represented East Nashville in the Council from 1983 to 1991. “Part of the polling process is measuring negative things about myself. I’m 47 and a white male. Is that a positive or a negative?”
Summers argues that the question was a research tool and shouldn’t be considered part of his campaign. “The pollsters are going to go out and measure these things. That doesn’t mean you’re going to go out and base your campaign on it. I can tell you I’m running a positive campaign.”
One local political consultant not involved in that particular race but familiar with polling practices says a poll itself constitutes part of a campaign. “I mean, you obviously test negatives, but the reality of someone’s life is just that,” the consultant says. “It doesn’t diminish someone’s ability to hold office.”
McFalls, who lives just two doors down from Summers on Wyoming Avenue in Sylvan Park, says she thinks her opponent’s polling maneuver will work against him among those who got the call. “My response to it is that some of the things he was asking about I consider to be an asset.”
Summers, though, is the favorite to win the District 24 seat. As executive director of the Tennessee Trial Lawyers Association, Summers has ready access to political operatives—lobbyists, fund-raisers, legislators. What’s more, he has already served two terms in the Council for a different district and has the benefit of not having to court the same people he may have already alienated.
Summations
Nashville businessman Clayton McWhorter, who’s talking up an upcoming $1,000-per-couple campaign fundraiser at his home for Vice Mayor Jay West, has coined perhaps the most concise phrase yet to describe the three major mayoral candidates.
“I see this as a three-horse race...between an old horse, a show horse, and a workhorse,” he said recently, referring, in order, to former Mayor Dick Fulton, former state Rep. Bill Purcell, and West. “And I’m putting my money on the workhorse.”
Within the past week, the campaign to succeed Bredesen has become a full-time political contest. While Fulton has been spending most of his time running for mayor since the first of the year, West and Purcell have both held down full-time jobs. Effective May 1, West has resigned from his job as executive director of the Consulting Engineers of Tennessee and the Tennessee Society of Professional Engineers, and Purcell has taken a leave of absence from the Vanderbilt Institute for Public Policy Studies.
To reach Liz, call her at 244-7989, ext. 406, or e-mail her at liz@nashvillescene.com.
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