Tenn. lawmaker hosts coon dinner

COVINGTON, Tenn. - The Naifeh family's annual "Coon Supper" started in 1945 as an informal gathering of 15 or so raccoon hunters and their friends.

This week, the supper hosted by state House Speaker Jimmy Naifeh and his brother Joe drew nearly 2,000 guests - including the governor and candidates for the state's top political offices - to mingle on the Covington Country Club lawn and feast on 75-80 barbecued raccoons.

"It's not bad," said Dick Ritchie of Cordova after taking a bite. "I'm not a fan of wild meat, but it's not gamey. They must do something to sweeten it."

But the main attraction of the annual supper isn't the coon. It's the politics.

"When Dad (the late Oney Naifeh) first started this, it gave people the opportunity to communicate with their congressman and legislators," Jimmy Naifeh said. "Today it's easy with e-mail, but back then it wasn't."

When his father and a brother died in 2000, the Naifehs almost ended the suppers. But pleas from those who had attended kept the tradition going.

So as children frolicked on a nearby putting green, candidates handed out stickers and talked about their campaigns.

Among them were former U.S. education secretary and Republican presidential hopeful Lamar Alexander and U.S. Rep. Bob Clement, both running for the U.S. Senate.

"I'm a regular," said Clement, a Nashville Democrat whose family has long been friends with the Naifehs. "I even eat coon. A lot of these people are Johnny-come-latelys. They don't know how to embrace coon or hold coon or eat coon."

Former Vice President Al Gore also has been to several coon suppers but had a conflict this year.

Although the area is traditionally Democratic, there were an equal number of Republicans at this week's supper.

"It's a nonpartisan thing. We have too many friends that are both," said Joe Naifeh, a local businessman.

For years, though, the event was off limits to females.

Rep. Lois DeBerry, the state House speaker pro tem, unintentionally broke the gender barrier about two decades ago.

She had hitched a ride home to Memphis from the capital with two other legislators who said they had to stop at the coon supper, bought her a Coke and bag of potato chips, and told her to stay in the car.

"So I sat in the back of that car and Jimmy's daddy came over," DeBerry recalled. "And Mr. Oney said, `You get out of that car.' And I said, `Oh, no, I can't do that.'"

But he and Ned McWherter, who was the state House speaker at the time and later became governor, made her come in, she said.

"There was no negative reaction. But I never did eat any coon because I figured there had to be something in the coon that does something to women," she said with a laugh.