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July 29, 2004

Tennessee lawmaker is rising star in Democratic party

Virgil Wright

Four years ago, U.S. Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr., boyish, bright, and self-assured, gave the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, a prime-time slot reserved for up-and-coming party stars.

As one big-foot Democrat joked last week, “And he was only 13.”

If so, Ford is still one of the busiest teenagers in America, setting his eyes on the Senate and perhaps even higher.

After less than eight years on Capitol Hill, the telegenic Tennessee congressman finds himself constantly in the spotlight — chatting up Don Imus, sitting down with Tim Russert on “Meet the Press,” and barnstorming around the country as co-chair of Sen. John Kerry’s presidential campaign.

During a Boston stop last week, the 34-year-old legislator found a receptive audience of old family friends, once-and-future contributors, and business leaders who were treated to some of the smoothest oratory the Democratic Party has to offer.

“Y’all go to the Vineyard,” says Ford to the sizeable Oak Bluffs set in the crowd at the John F. Kennedy Library, “and we go to the Tennessee River.”

“But being in Boston really feels like home, especially with my friend John Kerry being at the top of the ticket — I really feel at home.”

Looking around the room at the Partnership, Inc.’s forum on “The Changing Face of Boston,” the Memphis native seamlessly drops guests’ names into his argument to elect Kerry to the White House, making the political personal with practiced charm.

“In the House chamber, we Democrats tend to sit on one side, the left side, and when I look at the other side of the aisle — and I mean no disrespect — they all look the same.

“On our side, we are black and white and Latino and Asian, men and women. We look like America. But on the other side...”

Like any good speaker, Ford doesn’t have to finish the sentence to take the audience where he wants to go.

Every tailored suit and skirt in the crowd knows there’s not a single green-eyed black man with sculpted good looks and a salmon-colored tie on the Republican side of the aisle.

Ford’s argument for political diversity segues into an affirmation of the Partnership’s drive for corporate diversity, bringing change to the boardrooms and executive suites.

But politics, the obsession of the week with the Democratic National Convention in town, isn’t long off the table. He points out Ralph Martin to repeat the former prosecutor’s question about why he signed on with Kerry.

“I joined up with this tall lanky fellow last April, when, like an Internet stock, he was way up. Then, like an Internet stock, he went down and then, unlike an Internet stock, he went back up.”

Describing himself as a pro-business Democrat, Ford praises Kerry’s work for small business and his military and foreign policy experience as the right combination needed to create jobs and defend the nation without losing the backing of the international community.

If it sounds like Ford’s standard stump speech, that’s because it is — delivered before hundreds of audiences a month.

Ford grew up with speechifying. The 9th Congressional District seat he’s represented since age 26 once belonged to his father, Harold E. Ford Sr., who left Congress in favor of his son after a long career in the House.

Harold Jr.’s first political splash was in his dad’s 1974 campaign, when he cut an ad for his father, calling for “lower cookie prices.”

His slight Memphis drawl comes from his roots in the blues and barbeque South, but his polish comes from distinctly establishment credentials — the tony St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., where his classmates included such fellow scions of the black political elite like Jesse Jackson’s son, followed by the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan Law School.

On Capitol Hill, Ford has carved out a more moderate profile than his father or other members of the Black Caucus, flirting with membership in the National Rifle Association, for example, as a way of broadening his appeal beyond his urban base to the wider Tennessee electorate.

Ford, who routinely runs up victory margins in the eye-popping range of close to 80 percent, has twice eyed running for the Senate, first in 2000 when he explored a run against current Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, and then in 2002, when Sen. Fred Thompson decided not to run for re-election.

Ford backed down when senior party officials in Tennessee advised him to back down in favor of another, more seasoned Democrat, telling Ford, “Don’t worry, your turn will come.”

That looks like 2006, when Frist will likely retire from the Senate, leaving the seat up for grabs.

Fletcher Wiley, a Ford family friend and the emcee of last week’s Partnership forum, outlined in his introduction what many are thinking about the ambitious congressman.

“As we watched him stir the soul of America as the keynote speaker of the 2000 Democratic convention, who among us didn’t think that we were seeing the future president of the United States?”

Ford smiles at the flattery.

“The focus now,” he says, “is to elect John Kerry.”

 

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