Right of center-center, or right of Democrat-center aka left fringe?
The assertion that Ford is a "right of center" has been repeated so often in the mainstream (i.e., liberal) media that even some conservative writers now accept it as fact.
Ford is NOT right of center. He's a liberal Democrat. He represents a black majority district in Memphis where any member of the Ford family can get elected easily.
He also has higher aspirations. He'd love to be a U.S. Senator and perhaps even run on a national ticket someday. Being a smart guy, he's looked at the success of southern politicians like Bill Clinton across the river in Arkansas, Doug Wilder (black governor of Virginia elected back in 1989), and Al Gore & Jim Sasser (two long-serving Senators from Tennessee). All those guys were liberals, but they successfully hid it from the voters well enough to get elected. Ford is copying their formula for success.
That formula consists of lots of handshaking, appearances at churches and other family type functions, speaking with sort of a southern drawl, and talking about "values", without ever being specific about what that means.
Jim Sasser is probably the politician Ford seems to emulate the most. Sasser was elected to the U.S. Senate from Tennessee in 1976, defeating incumbent Republican Bill Brock. Sasser's TV ads never mentioned any national issues, they just showed him patting an old farmer on the back, shaking hands with a factory worker, or kissing a baby at a grocery store checkout. His campaign speeches centered on "fighting for Tennessee values", without specifying what that meant. He'd roll up his shirt sleeves and in a southern drawl talk about going up to Washington and "fightin' against them career politicians". Of course, he declared himself to be a champion of us common folks.
He got elected, and turned out to be a flaming liberal. He supported abortion, gun control, forced busing, high taxes, defense cuts, giving away the Panama Canal...you name it. But when he came up for re-election in 1982, he suddenly began talking like a Tennessee boy again, worrying that the Democrats were too far to the left. Why, the voters simply had to re-elect him so that a conservative voice like him could remain prominent in the Democratic Party.
He pulled the same scam in 1988 (helped by a weak GOP opponent), but by 1994 the act was running thin. He got voted out, losing to Bill Frist.
Ford's no conservative. He's a black Jim Sasser.