The Fall Of The Machine

By Kleinheider Posted on July 31, 2008 at 4:33 pm

Jackson Baker on why support from the Ford family for Nikki Tinker’s insurgent campaign against Rep Steve Cohen may not mean as much as it used to:

Ford Sr.’s power had always been based as much on keeping governmental channels open for influential whites in the larger community as on keeping the faith with his black constituents. His very legal predicament had stemmed from a long-term association with C.J. and Jake Butcher, the white East Tennessee bankers whose financial collapse and prosecution by the government had muddied Ford’s own waters.Tinker, who was the largely nominal campaign manager for Harold Ford Jr. in at least one of his uncontested election victories, no doubt hopes for some substantial intervention by the Fords on her behalf. And, in fact, one of the intriguing revelations of the second quarter’s financial disclosures was that Harold Ford Jr.’s wife had maxed out her contributions on Tinker’s behalf.

But the fact of the matter is that 9th District politics, like the Fords themselves, may have moved on to that post-racial world Wharton spoke of. Early voting totals in inner-city precincts have not thus far suggested anything like the saturation-style, directed voting of the past — perhaps because, in that part of the 9th District, as elsewhere, race may no longer be the single determinant factor it once was.

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Tags: Harold Ford, Nikki Tinker, racial politics, Steve Cohen  

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