The Real Nikki Tinker
Posted on August 17, 2008 at 11:33 pmDefeated Ninth District Congressional candidate Nikki Tinker strikes an apologetic tone over the religious and racially inflammatory ads her campaign ran against Steve Cohen — mostly because they didn’t work:
This is the real Nikki. You know Nikki is not into doing anything that would separate or divide our community,” she said.
But that’s exactly how some voters interpreted Tinker’s strategy, and in the end, hindsight is 20-20.
“If I’d had any idea that was the way it would have been interpreted, we never would have taken that approach,” she said.
SEE ALSO: Mediaverse
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What Do You Want, A Medal?
Posted on August 10, 2008 at 11:13 pmEMILY’s List may have condemned the racially and religiously inflammatory advertising of Nikki Tinker in the final days of the campaign but Congressman Steve Cohen will not forgive and does not forget where his opponent got the money to attack him:
“I said it’s going to get dirty, there’s going to be some things said at the end that are going to be unbelievable,” Cohen said. EMILY’s List condemned one of the advertisements in the campaign’s final days, a move Cohen said wasn’t enough. “Their money is what paid for these ads. They raised [Tinker’s] money.”
The group’s president, Ellen Malcolm, reached out after the primary, Cohen said. Malcolm “called me and she was trying to act like she’d done me some great favor by renouncing that [advertisement], and I said, ‘You know, the election was over. Your money that you got from your members who didn’t know what this race was about, didn’t know what my record was, didn’t know about this lady, you paid for those ads.’”
“The members of EMILY’s List are owed an apology from Ellen Malcolm for not having a better vetting process,” Cohen added.
Street Cred
Posted on at 10:02 pmThe Left Wing Cracker pens an open letter to defeated Ninth District Congressional candidate Nikki Tinker:
You COULD have had a future here. Had you chosen to run for City Council and shown you were willing to pay your dues and establish yourself, while you might not have beaten Cohen this year, you would have had a better shot.
However, you chose a different path. You ran the sleaziest type of campaign imaginable, earning the enmity not only of the city, and the state, but you made yourself a national joke, a figure of contempt. However, Ms. Tinker, worst of all, with that style of campaigning, you embarrassed and insulted the very people whose votes you sought: African-Americans of the 9th District.
You tried to run as a STREET Candidate? Really? Listen here, sister girl, I’m twice as gangsta as you’ll EVER be, and I’m a 50-year-old white guy who calls himself the Cracker.
RELATED:
FGF-Cohen Cage Match
Mitch Cohen
Jane Hamsher
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Cohen Reacts To His Late Arriving Cavalry
Posted on August 7, 2008 at 6:12 pmSteve Cohen reacts to the love shown him by Barack Obama and Harold Ford, Jr. in response to attacks by Nikki Tinker carrying racial and religious overtones:
Reached in his car this afternoon, Cohen said he had not asked Obama to intervene in the 9th District race.
“I think the national bloggers and the national media have focused in the extreme amount of negative campaigning that has gone on here, especially in the last three or four days,” Cohen said. “There’s been a lot of calls for Obama to state his distaste for this.”
Cohen said he expects to win today’s Democratic Party Primary.
“The Memphis voter is much more sophisticated than the Tinker camp thought,” he added. “They’re going to vote on issues and character and achievement, and not on race.”
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Escape From Memphis: Harold Ford, Jr. On The Nikki Tinker Ads
Posted on at 2:48 pmEmily’s List and Barack Obama beat him to it, but, better late than never, Harold Ford, Jr. comments on the “Nikki Tinker” situation:
“Whenever race, religion or gender is invoked in a political contest, it generally means the candidate has run out of legitimate arguments for why he/she should be elected. Communities and nations are always made weaker when political figures try to divide us for political advantage. It is my strong hope that lessons will be learned.”
This is significant for many reasons beyond the obvious necessity of condemning religious and racial bigotry.
Rep. Steve Cohen and the Ford family have a very contentious history.
It was Cohen, after all, who, back in 1996, attempted to deny young Harold Ford, Jr. the Congressional district his father was attempting to bequeath to him as birthright.
Cohen lost and expressed his frustration that he had been beaten by a twenty-six year old law student, likely on the basis of name and race quite publicly.
Fast forward ten years to 2006, Harold Ford, Jr. elects not to run for reelection to the Ninth District Congressional seat and instead runs for U.S. Senate.
Steve Cohen steps up again to run for the seat and this time manages, as a white man in a majority minority district, to emerge from the Democratic primary.
In any other year, a win in the Democratic primary would be tantamount to a victory. Not in 2006. That year, Harold Ford, Jr.’s brother Jake, a candidate of dubious qualifications, stood in the way of Cohen’s election in the general — again because of his name and his race.
Jake was helped not only by his father, Harold, Sr. but by his brother’s silent support of a candidate not of his party while heading that party’s ticker.
The point being, there is no love lost here.
Witness Nikki Tinker’s financial disclosures which show maxed out contributions for both the primary and the general from Harold Ford’s new bride Emily Threlkeld. The new Mrs. Ford is not a Tennessee native so one can, at the very least, assume that Harold Ford, Jr. helped inform the decision to contribute.
Junior has always seemed both above the racial and machine politics of Memphis yet strangely trapped by them. Today, as he did in a smaller way earlier this year, Harold Ford was able to escape from “the rules of Memphis.”
Many outside of Memphis and Tennessee may criticize the tardiness of his comments here but the fact that a statement was made at all was a very, very big step for Harold Ford, Jr. and a significant event in Tennessee politics.
SEE ALSO:
The Politico
Memphis Flyer
That Armenian Was A Republican
Posted on at 1:27 pmInteresting tidbit from the MyDD. It seems that Armenian activist Cohen had to get crazy with was a Republican operative as well as a documentary filmmaker:
Now, it turns out that filmmaker Peter Mursurlian is actually a Republican operative who used to work for former California Congressman Carlos Moorhead (R) of Pasadena. Also, none of the other Tennessee Democrats are co-sponsoring the resolution either, but none of them have been targeted the way Cohen has been.
Time To Turn The Page: Barack Obama Rebukes Nikki Tinker
Posted on at 12:31 pmSean Braisted posts up Barack Obama’s condemnation of the campaign tactics of Nikki Tinker:
“These incendiary and personal attacks have no place in our politics, and will do nothing to help the good people of Tennessee. It’s time to turn the page on a politics driven by negativity and division so that we can come together to lift up our communities and our country,” Obama said.
In light of this, I must ask again, where is Harold Ford, Jr. on this?
He rebuked his brother when he went off the reservation on the subject of race. Is what Nikki Tinker is doing somehow less offensive?
Does Harold Ford disagree with Barack Obama on Nikki Tinker — or not?
The Cardinal Sin: Tinker Removes Her Flirtation With Antisemitism
Posted on at 9:01 amWhile putting a progressive Congressman’s beside an image of Klansman with a burning cross would appear to be all in good fun, suggesting that same Congressman, a Jew, is an interloper in the Black community is not.
As of this posting, Democratic insurgent Congressional candidate Nikki Tinker’s infamous Nathan Bedford Forrest ad remains featured on her YouTube channel. An ad suggesting that Congressman Steve Cohen was preventing black children from practicing their faith, however, has been removed.
Keith Olbermann’s declaration of Tinker as “The Worst Person In The World” for her tactics probably didn’t help, but it was likely a rebuke from Emily’s List, her financial benefactor in both this and her 2006 race, that led to the video’s removal.
Post Politics has been unable to reach the Tinker campaign for comment at the time of posting.
PREVIOUSLY:
Waiting For Junior: Will Harold Ford Condemn The Tinker Toy Tactics?
OTHERS ON TINKER:
CQ Politics
Ilissa Gold
Skeptical Brotha
The Moderate Voice
The Nigh Seen Creeder
Cohen’s Castle: The Congressman Shows His Keitel Side
Posted on at 8:14 am“In my house! In my bedroom! Where my wife sleeps, where my children come to play with their toys. My home.”
~ Michael Corleone in Godfather Part II
While a press conference’s intended message, to denounce scurrilous religious and racial attacks by an opponent, went entirely off the rails for Congressman Steve Cohen yesterday, some think it might have been the best thing for him.
“I think it probably helped Cohen,” said John Ryder, a well-known local Republican and a GOP national committeeman. Like numerous other Memphians, Ryder saw the TV footage of the congressman physically ousting an uninvited Tinker supporter who, posing as a photo-journalist and documentarian, was attempting to infiltrate a group of newsmen convened at Cohen’s Midtown residence for a press conference.
“Maybe it’s a guy thing, and it goes beyond black and white,” said an admiring Ryder. “I think all of us around here realize that you can’t just meekly put up with the presence of a hostile invader in your own household.”
Waiting For Junior: Will Harold Ford Condemn The Tinker Toy Tactics In His Former Stomping Grounds?
Posted on August 6, 2008 at 11:00 pmAunt B. asks and answers her own questions on where Nikki Tinker’s money to create of those racially and religiously inflammatory ads comes from — but only partially. Yes, Tinker gets her money from Armenians. Republicans? I’m not so sure.
Regardless, one place we know Nikki Tinker did get her money from was Emily Threlkeld Ford, wife of Harold Ford, Jr. the former Congressman from the very district in question here.
In 2006, the year Cohen originally won his seat, Ford the U.S. Senate candidate was noticeably cold towards the candidate Cohen — and for good reason. His brother Jake, supported by Harold, Sr., was an independent candidate for the seat.
However, when his brother again filed to run against Cohen this year, again as an independent, declaring that the Ninth District should have a black Congressman, Harold Ford, Jr. condemned him in the harshest possible terms.
“It’s beyond concern. I want to make clear my brothers’ comments are not mine. I reject them. … I don’t believe any candidate’s fitness for office should be measured or determined by race or gender.”
Where is Harold Ford, Jr. now? This is not just one negative ad, it is a pattern. Nikki Tinker is attempting to divide Harold Ford’s former district along racial and religious lines. Where is the reprimand, the censure?
The blowback on Tinker has been significant. The rebukes are starting to roll in.
Post Politics has made its requests for comment formally to the office of Harold Ford and those requests have gone unanswered. I hate to get all Scenester on the issue but, in this case, I have to say, “Harold, call me.”
Questioning Whether Gray Has The Minerals
Posted on at 3:38 pmThe autoegocrat goes upside the head of Tennessee Democratic Party Chair Gray Sasser for his anemic response to the negative campaign tactics of Nikki Tinker:
The Nikki Tinker campaign and its surrogates have spent a few hundred thousand dollars and a tremendous amount of energy trying to portray an incumbent Democrat in good standing as a Jesus-killing atheist gay Jewish Klansman, and the chairman of the Tennessee Democratic Party interprets this as “a commitment to civil rights which transcends partisan labels and political attacks.”
If this is the Chairman’s take on the craziest shit to come down the pipe since, oh, I don’t know, a member of the TNDP Executive Committee accused the Democratic presidential nominee of ties to terrorism, it will be very revealing indeed when Mr. Sasser finally does find something that puts a fire in his belly.
SEE ALSO:
Vibinc
Down With Tyranny
Red State
Ben Smith
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Congressman Cohen To Come Back On Tinker
Posted on at 10:49 amFrom a campaign media advisory:
Congressman Steve Cohen will hold a press conference at his home at 349 Kenilworth at 11:30 AM to discuss the latest attack ad by Nikki Tinker’s congressional campaign.
Nikki Tinker, After Toe-Tapping Around Race, Moves On To Religion
Posted on at 8:03 amInsurgent Ninth District Democratic Congressional challenger Nikki Tinker, not content to sit back and reap the rewards from a racially divisive ad linking Rep. Steve Cohen to Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, is now attacking Cohen on another front: religion.
In the ad, a child’s voice is heard praying while the narrator, clearly meant to be a black woman but not Tinker, wonders who “the real Steve Cohen is anyway” while questioning one of Cohen votes on school prayer while in the state Senate.
While he’s is OUR churches clapping his hands and tapping his feet, he was the only Senator who thought OUR kids shouldn’t be allowed to pray in school.
With all the talk recently in the presidential race about coded language and messages in political pitches, Tinker’s new ad will surely lead some to see an attempt to paint the Jewish Cohen as an anti-Christian interloper in his majority black and majority Christian district.
You Did See The Burning Cross In There, Yeah?
Posted on August 5, 2008 at 5:28 pmThe ad has made national news and been denounced by both those on the right and the left.
When asked for comment, however, the Tennessee Democratic Party treads carefully on the controversy over the use of Klan imagery by Nikki Tinker to attack Congressman Steve Cohen. From TNDP Party Chair Gray Sasser:
I hope all the candidates remain focused on the issues rather than personal attacks during the last few hours of this hard-fought campaign. Congressman Cohen and all the candidates running for the Democratic nomination in the Ninth District share a commitment to civil rights which transcends partisan labels and political attacks.
Tinker Acolyte Says Incendiary Ad Has Nothing To With Race
Posted on at 7:59 amWell, of course, not. Silly us.
Former Shelby County Commissioner Walter Bailey said Monday that the Nikki Tinker ad featuring pictures of a Ku Klux Klan rally and denunciations of incumbent Congressman Steve Cohen’s vote not to remove the statue and remains of Nathan Bedford Forrest from a Memphis park “has nothing to do with race.”
Asked if injecting the incendiary television images into Thursday’s 9th Congressional District Democratic Primary contest would be seen as racially divisive, Bailey said: “That may be an ancillary side of it, but that’s not the main focus, and it’s not the intended focus.”
SEE ALSO: TNGW
Their Sheets Are Used For An Entirely Different Purpose
Posted on August 4, 2008 at 2:07 pmThe Hill reports on Nikki Tinker’s new negative ad attempting to imply that Rep. Steve Cohen harbors some neo-confederate sympathies:
“It’s just a desperation effort that’s hard to fathom — that somebody would suggest that, particularly a Jewish person, was in any way involved with the Ku Klux Klan,” Cohen told The Hill. “The Klan didn’t exactly have Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana services and invite us over for them.”
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Ku Klux Kohen: Tinker Goes To The Sheets
Posted on August 2, 2008 at 8:20 pmSupporters of Congressman Steve Cohen are outraged by a negative ad currently running on Memphis television criticising him for his refusal to vote for the excavation of the body of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest while a member of the Center City Commission:
Among the things that stuck in the craw of Cohen’s supporters, including several prominent ministers and public officials, was the ad’s juxtaposition of Cohen’s image next to those of Ku Klux Klansmen.
“For this ad to come up at the last minute is an attempt to divide this community racially. And this community isn’t going to be divided. We’re all in favor of our congressman, Steve Cohen,” said Myron Lowery, the longtime city councilman who, at the time off the most recent Forrest Park controversy, floated a compromise proposal for adding anti-slavery exhibits to the grounds of Forrest Park.
UPDATE:
Video of the ad in a TV news report
The Commercial Appeal
Mediaverse
The Fall Of The Machine
Posted on July 31, 2008 at 4:33 pmJackson 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.
Post Racial Politics
Posted on July 25, 2008 at 7:13 amShelby County Mayor thinks we are at the cusp of a new age:
”With Barack Obama, we have entered upon a post-racial world and a post-racial politics,” Shelby County Mayor A C Wharton said Wednesday, expressly agreeing with a conclusion of that kind offered by 9th District U.S. Representative Steve Cohen during the congressman’s recent televised debate with Democratic primary opponents Nikki Tinker and Joe Towns.
Wharton agreed with Cohen that his own two mayoral victories, Obama’s success in this year’s Democratic presidential-primary race, and Cohen’s congressional win in 2006 were all of a piece – each an instance of cross-racial voting. “He’s entitled to say that,” ventured the mayor, who said he took pride in such an analysis as applied to his own success.
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Tinkering With The Math
Posted on July 18, 2008 at 7:39 amJackson Baker gives the 9th District Democratic Congressional Primary his signature treatment:
Tinker’s decision to run again this year is probably influenced more by simple mathematics than anything else. Having finished only a few thousand votes back of Cohen in a field of 15, most of whom (including Cohen himself) competed with her for the district’s black vote, why should she not, two years later, try to go one-on-one?
She has been designated as a “consensus” black candidate this time around by several holdouts for the idea that a black, and only a black, should represent the 9th District in Congress. Perhaps foremost among those is the Rev. LaSimba Gray, who led a failed effort to settle on such a candidate two years ago but whose choice this time around was almost a matter of default.
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Emily Threlkeld Ford Maxes Out To Cohen Challenger
Posted on July 16, 2008 at 9:03 amAdam Groves has the news:
Harold Ford Jr. just got married late last year, but he’s wasted no time in taking advantage of one of the main political advantages of marriage - insulation from controversal political donations. Looks like Ford’s bride, Emily Threlkeld Ford, has maxed out contributions to Nikki Tinker, the primary opponent of 9th district Congressman Steve Cohen. That gives Ford the opportunity to say it was only his wife acting independently should the donation go south and Cohen get more popular. Among the other eye-raising contributions tallied by Tinker is a $5,000 one from the Congressional Black Caucus. That’s the caucus the white Cohen tried to join - and was rejected - upon becoming a US Senator.
A Matter Of Plumbing
Posted on May 30, 2008 at 2:12 pmEmily’s List has again endorsed incumbent Congressman Steve Cohen’s female opponent in the Democratic primary in District 9:
“This is a matter of plumbing. They don’t endorse males,” responded Cohen campaign manager Jerry Austin to the Emily’s List action. “They spent half a million dollars roughing up Steve in 2006 and couldn’t beat him.” Austin said numerous women supporting Cohen countered “in the best way possible; they stopped writing checks to Emily’s List.”
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