Firstly, Junior is already committed to running for the Senate, so his running for the House as well is out (as far as I understand, you can run for multiple offices at the same time in TN, so I believe he could run for both, but I'm unclear as to whether he could be NOMINATED for more than one office at the same time. John Jay Hooker does this in every election, often running for multiple nominations).
However, if he did run and win both the House and Senate races at the same time, setting up a special election, you'd still have the exact same situation we have now... a total free-for-all on the Democrat side with the likely recipient being Sen. Cohen, the strongest White candidate, and a very fractured situation amongst Black candidates. There has not been a special election in TN for a Congressional seat since here in the 5th when Bill Boner vacated to become Nashville Mayor in 1987. Each party holds a special primary (of course, all the action being on the Dem side), and you could get nominated as long as you got 1 more vote than your opponent. The '87 special primary featured 3 main players, Bob Clement, who had moved into the district after 5 years earlier nearly winning the GOP 7th district against Scumquist; Phil Bredesen, then a business exec just on the heels of a loss to Boner for Mayor; and Jane Eskind, a former Yankee liberal RINO carpetbagger-turned-'Rat who had been a political fixture and candidate for office since the '70s. Eskind and Bredesen spent over a million each destroying one another, allowing Clement (ostensibly the most Conservative of the bunch) to sneak past Bredesen, winning a surprising 40%. Clement easily won over a Republican businessman in the early '88 special-general.
In any event, as you can see, Ford would only serve to delay the inevitable primary mess that will probably see Cohen win (and, Ford's stunt would also cost the state taxpayers a fortune to fund that primary - which would really make him look bad were he to try it, you see how that "hedging your bets" stunt worked for Lieberman in '00, who realized he probably wasn't going to win for VP but didn't want to be out the Senate seat, which might've helped booster the GOP ticket).
The real interesting event will be in '08, because unless Cohen somehow becomes canonized within the Black community in the interim, Junior might try to come back and get his seat (or if he doesn't, another group of Black pols fighting one another). If Cohen can get to 35-40% in a fractured field this year and in '08 (in the absence of Junior or Junior and a lot of others), he is golden. Another interesting thing, if Cohen vacates his state Senate seat mid-term, take a guess which party gets to appoint his successor ? Having a White Republican in Auntie Ophelia's seat and perhaps even a Black Republican in Cohen's would just be like pennies from heaven. ;-D
"I'm unclear as to whether he could be NOMINATED for more than one office at the same time. . . .
However, if he did run and win both the House and Senate races at the same time, setting up a special election, you'd still have the exact same situation we have now... a total free-for-all on the Democrat side with the likely recipient being Sen. Cohen, the strongest White candidate, and a very fractured situation amongst Black candidates."