Ford has more baggage (mostly family connections) than a tramp steamer. He will do well in Shelby county Tennessee, but can never win a state wide election.
I actually like junior and think fairly highly of him as a congressman. I don't think there's anything that I would be likely to agree with him on, politically, but he does know how to do his job of representing his constituents and seeing that the bureaucrats don't screw them. My wife is a travel agent who arranges a lot of the stuff for his office and has direct knowledge of several times that he has intervened to rescue folks from the district who have fallen victim of foreign "hell holes," including some nasty incidents in places like Cancun.
As to Shelby County, if Ed Bryant is the GOP nominee (which I hope) he will even cut into Ford's power base (but not the black vote) there and I think he'll mop up the floor with him in the rest of the state.
I want Harold to stay in the House and take another run at Nancy Pelosi, like he did last time. He would be a formidable minority leader, but I think he would be someone that we could get things done with. Wow, what a novel concept.