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August 05, 2005
Fords Likely to Keep State Senate Seat
Absentee and Early Voters preferred Representative Henri E. Brooks, but last-minute pushes by the Ford campaign, including the disembodied voice of former Congressman Harold Ford, Sr making a mechanized appeal, must have worked. Ophelia Ford won the Democratic Primary in State Senate District 29 by 20 votes. She captured 30.91% [my math was on vacation today] to Brooks' 30.45%*. She's therefore the Democrats' choice to replace her ousted brother.
There's another way to look at this, though. I don't necessarily feel that election results where there is low voter turnout are a good indicator of how the general public's wishes are met. The extreme end of this line of thinking is "only 1,336* District 29 voters want Ophelia Ford to be their next Senator." (Well, if more had, why didn't they go say so?) I am not well-trained in statistics (uh, that was my earliest class that semester), so I won't go into all of the mitigating factors in between, but I wouldn't call Ms. Ford's a "solid" mandate.
*unofficial results
The Republican primary was won rather lopsidedly by Terry Roland. There will be one Independent candidate facing Roland and Ford on September 15. (Any candidate with "Prince Mongo" as part of his or her name in print is worth at least a cursory (or should that be "curiousory"?) investigation.)
In the other special primary election held yesterday, Gary Rowe won the District 87 House seat by default, since no Republican or Independent candidates qualified. (Geek alert: I'm disappointed that Kathryn Bowers hadn't resigned her District 33 Senate seat after being arrested in "Tennessee Waltz," because such would have predicated a special election in 2 positions that were both vacated by the same person.) The Commercial Appeal story says that Rowe's celebration was cooled somewhat by the 2.6% turnout for this race. No kidding!
I suppose the primary message here is that most voters or voting-age persons simply didn't care who should represent them. I'm tired of sitting over here "tsk"-ing, yet don't know how to turn up the volume on my PA. Less than 5% turnout is inexcusable, but how do we (Memphians, Chattanoogans, Tennesseans, Americans) change that?
Elections | By joe lance | 11:27 AM