Tenn. Democrat faces lawyer who linked him to KKK
After a racially charged Democratic primary campaign that turned particularly ugly in its final days, voters will decide Thursday between a Jewish incumbent congressman and a black opponent who ran a television ad juxtaposing photos of him and a hooded Ku Klux Klan member.
Democrat Steve Cohen is the first white congressman from Memphis in more than three decades and one of only two white congressmen representing a majority black district.
The ad was run by his chief opponent, Nikki Tinker, a corporate lawyer whose supporters argue the 9th District in Memphis should be represented by a black candidate.
Low turnout was predicted for the primary, which will likely decide the next congressman in the heavily Democratic district that has returned incumbents to the House since 1974. The district is 60 percent black and 35 percent white, and Cohen won his first term after a 2006 primary in which a dozen black candidates, including Tinker, split the vote.
Tinker said her ad linking Cohen to the KKK for opposing a 2005 effort to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest from a downtown park “merely states the facts. I think the nation needs to know Steve Cohen’s complete record.”
The ad, which ran in the campaign’s final days, drew condemnation Thursday from Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. It juxtaposed pictures of a statue of Forrest, the founder of the KKK, and a hooded Klansman in front of a burning cross while asking, “Who is the real Steve Cohen?”
“These incendiary and personal attacks have no place in our politics, and will do nothing to help the good people of Tennessee,” Obama said in a statement.
Cohen, a former state senator with a long record as a civil rights supporter, led an effort last month to get the U.S. House to issue an unprecedented apology to black Americans for wrongs committed against them and their ancestors who suffered under slavery and Jim Crow segregation laws.
John Geer, a Vanderbilt University political science professor, said the KKK ad indicates Tinker knows her campaign is in trouble.
“Steve Cohen has been very conscious that he’s representing a black majority district, and he’s not a member of the KKK,” said Geer, who called such tactics risky. “Voters are not fools, and they can sort this out. They are savvy enough to figure out if the attack is credible or not. I’d be surprised if she wins.”
Another issue has been Cohen’s opposition to a House resolution labeling the killing of Armenians in World War I as genocide. The House Foreign Affairs Committee passed the nonbinding resolution last year despite arguments it would anger Turkey, which allows U.S. military shipments headed for Iraq to cross its borders.
During a news conference at Cohen’s home Wednesday to call Tinker’s ad an act of desperation, a cameraman who identified himself as working for an Armenian-American citizens’ group interrupted. Cohen pushed the man, Peter Musurlian of Glendale, Calif., out of his house and called police.
Musurlian said his group supports Tinker because of Cohen’s opposition to the genocide resolution. The district does not have a large Armenian population.
In other primary races Thursday, former state Democratic Party Chairman Bob Tuke and former Knox County Clerk Mike Padgett have been the most active candidates for the Democratic nomination to challenge Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander.
Neither has managed to drum up much campaign cash or public attention, and yet both argue that Alexander is out of touch with Tennesseans and ripe to be picked off.
In the state’s other major congressional primary, in the solidly Republican 1st District in northeastern Tennessee, Republican Rep. David Davis is being challenged by Johnson City Mayor Phil Roe. The campaign heated up toward the end, moving from joint stump appearances to negative ads.
Tennessee’s other four congressional incumbents faced no primary opposition — Republican John Duncan of the 2nd District, and Democrats Jim Cooper of the 5th, Bart Gordon of the 6th and John Tanner of the 8th.
Republican Marsha Blackburn faced challenger Tom Leatherwood in the 7th District, while Republican Zach Wamp in the 3rd District and Democrat Lincoln Davis in the 4th District faced only token opposition.