11th-hour messages delivered by land and air
By Richard Locker, locker@gomemphis.com
and James W. Brosnan, brosnanj@shns.com
November 5, 2002
NASHVILLE - Candidates for statewide office used planes, caravans and shoe leather to reach out to voters on election eve Monday and plan to keep at it until the polls close at 7 p.m. today.
Republican Senate candidate Lamar Alexander and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Phil Bredesen board ed small planes for traditional cross-state fly-arounds and airport press conferences - both ending with big rallies in Memphis.
Republican gubernatorial candidate Van Hilleary did an unconventional motor caravan that began Sunday in Mountain City and ended Monday night with a visit to the Ingram Micro Distribution Center in Millington, bypassing Tennessee's cities for stops in small towns and suburbs, one of the themes of his campaign.
And Democratic Senate candidate Bob Clement campaigned in Memphis all day, hitting the streets at 6:30 a.m. to crank up the Democratic vote in the state's biggest city.
Trying to sway last-minute undecided voters and urging their supporters to the polls on what was forecast as a rainy day statewide were the orders of the day.
Clement, a U.S. representative from Nashville, eschewed the usual East to West sweep. "I think Shelby County is going to deliver this thing," he said. (MY NOTE HE MEANS THE CORRUPT FORD/HERENTON machines in Memphis!)
After meeting with hundreds of city sanitation workers just after dawn at the Farrisview Boulevard Solid Waste Complex, Clement moved to MATA's transfer station where he met 100-year-old Haywood Gaines, on his way to pick up his medicine. Gaines told Clement he had already voted for him and had voted for Democrats "ever since I was 21 years old. There's no question they're for the working man," Gaines said.
Clement also met with county Mayor A C Wharton and pledged to try to help get federal Medicaid reimbursement for the indigent care The Med provides to Mississippi residents.
Bredesen, the former Nashville mayor, was welcomed at a Memphis airport hangar by more than 500 supporters in the afternoon. U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.) hosted the event, which Clement also attended. The congressman's father, former representative Harold Ford, ushered in the Westwood High School marching band.
Bredesen told the Democrats, "Our victory will come right here on the ground," saying that a big voter turnout will help him win, not television ads.
On a stage crowded with prominent Democrats, the younger Ford noted the presence of former Memphis mayor Dick Hackett as an example of Bredesen's "bipartisan support" in Shelby County.
Fifteen minutes later, Hackett was down Winchester Road waiting to greet Alexander as he arrived with U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.), the man Alexander and Clement hope to succeed, for an airport press conference.
Alexander said he wants to represent "all Memphians and Shelby Countians" as he said he did as governor. "I will try to do the same as senator, from Shelby Farms to Soulsville," he said before heading to a late-afternoon rally near the University of Memphis.
Earlier in Nashville, Alexander said he'd like "to be the same kind of senator that Howard Baker was and that Fred Thompson is. I'd like to serve and vote with conservative principles and with an independent attitude."
But the crux of the race, he said, is the balance of power in the Senate, where Democrats currently hold a one-vote majority. "I hope the people will give me a chance to make it one vote easier for President Bush to lead our country and represent our values. It's one vote easier for the President to pass a homeland security measure during a time of war, one vote easier to pass a permanent tax cut during a time when our economy needs some help and one vote easier to confirm judges who will enforce the law instead of making it up as they go along."
Hilleary, stopping to address about 40 workers in the lunchroom of Custom Packaging Co. in Lebanon at midday, said he's confident of victory "rain or shine" and promised the workers he would keep their taxes low.
A manager from the plant made a point of asking Hilleary his stance on the minimum wage - an issue in the campaign because of Hilleary's support as a U.S. representative of a measure that would allow states to opt out of the federal minimum wage. Hilleary responded that he voted twice to increase the federal minimum wage.
Contact Nashville Bureau chief Richard Locker at (615) 255-4923.
Contact Washington correspondent James W. Brosnan at (202) 408-2701.