After All He Did
Posted on July 15, 2008 at 7:32 amBill Dries recounts the recent political history of the 9th Congressional District:
A Democrat has represented the 9th Congressional District since Harold Ford Sr. upset Republican incumbent Dan Kuykendall in 1974. No one is running in the Republican primary this year. The winner of the Democratic primary will face independent candidate Jake Ford in the November general election.
Ford, the brother of former U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., also ran as an independent in the anti-climactic general election two years ago, coming in second with 22 percent of the vote.
Jake Ford had the backing of his father two years ago. His brother, while not openly supportive, displayed a sufficient amount of hostility to Cohen to leave little doubt the Ford family wasn’t in the Cohen camp.
That branch of the Ford family wasn’t in the Cohen camp. Joe Ford Jr., son of Shelby County Board of Commissioners member Joe Ford Sr., was among the candidates in the Democratic primary and finished third with 12 percent of the primary vote. He later backed Cohen over his cousin in the general election.
Some of the hostility from the two Harold Fords was the result of Cohen’s bid for the congressional seat 10 years earlier. With the younger Ford vying for the seat his father was giving up, Cohen mounted a vocal and caustic primary challenge to the continuation of the Ford brand. Tinker was among the Ford campaign partisans in the spirited 1996 campaign that Ford Jr. won.
Cohen also was seeking re-election to the state Senate. To make his political future more interesting, the Fords backed Tommie Edwards, Cohen’s challenger in the state Senate Democratic primary, which Cohen won.
He quickly closed ranks after the primary and supported the younger Ford in a much easier congressional general election campaign against Republican nominee Rod Deberry. Ford Sr. and Jr. didn’t close ranks as readily.
