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Black Lawyer's Loss Was Not a Surprise

By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 10, 2008; A08

For Nikki Tinker, Tennessee's 9th Congressional District hung as sweetly as a plum in the state's Democratic primary. It has a black majority, is full of churchgoing African American women like herself, and includes the hallowed ground where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a white man.

But in an election season in which racial appeals may be losing their power, Tinker discovered that looks can be deceiving. On Election Day, she was crushed by her white opponent, Rep. Stephen I. Cohen, whom Tinker labeled as anti-prayer in one campaign ad and tried to link to the Ku Klux Klan in another.

"It was the first time in a state election where race could have been a factor and wasn't," said Larry Moore, an associate professor at the University of Memphis. "She fit the demographic perfectly. She was active in the churches. The majority of voters are female. And she got blown out."

The loss was not a major surprise. Early polling showed that Cohen, 59, maintained a sizable lead over Tinker, 37. But the margin -- 79 percent to 19 percent -- was stunning to many. In racially tense Memphis, conventional wisdom held that the young, gifted and black lawyer would run close to the white veteran politician who once was defeated in a primary by former congressman Harold Ford Jr.

Cohen called his victory "a bellwether for post-racial politics," in which voters cross racial lines to cast ballots, as they often did in the Democratic presidential primary contest between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"I think it's special that it happened in Memphis, because this is where Dr. King died," Cohen said. "Whites have voted for blacks and blacks have voted for whites in this state, but never like this before. In the past, the only thing that brought us together like this was University of Memphis Tigers basketball, barbecues and music."

It helped that Cohen ran a masterful campaign, political experts in Memphis said. He stuck to his record on civil rights, health care and education, and he stayed positive when regarding Tinker. As the election neared, he succeeded in passing a resolution in which the House apologized for slavery.

"If you're a good representative, if you put forth substantive legislation, people will support you," said Heather Larsen-Price, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Memphis. "And [Cohen] does a good job."

Tinker, an Alabama native, had lived in Memphis for eight years. She had run for Congress once and finished second. On her Web site, she promised to promote economic development and education but did not explain how.

The contrast between the politically savvy Cohen and his less experienced challenger was on full display during a July debate, Moore said. As Cohen lauded his record and attacked Tinker's contention that she was a civil rights lawyer by noting that she represented an airline, Tinker hesitated, wavered and gave short answers to questions.

"She came across very poorly," Moore said. "She didn't seem to grasp the issues. She talked with minor details, as if she wasn't prepared. It was kind of like, 'What am I doing here?' "

"It was her Waterloo," Cohen said. Tinker's campaign did not respond to requests for an interview.

As her chances fell, Tinker ran a television ad criticizing Cohen, who is Jewish, for going into "our churches, clapping his hands and tapping his feet" while being the only congressman "who thought our kids shouldn't be allowed to pray in school."

The other TV ad was worse, observers said. In it, a former Shelby County commissioner, Walter Bailey, who is black, stood near a park statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, the pro-slavery Civil War general who helped organize the KKK.

"It is inconceivable to continue to honor such a despicable human being," Bailey said. "When I tried to change the name, the only person who voted no was Steve Cohen. This makes you wonder who is the real Steve Cohen."

A who's who of current and former black elected officials, including Obama and Ford, whom Cohen succeeded, condemned the ad. Cohen had already lined up significant black supporters, such as Maxine Smith, a local civil rights legend, and Isaac Hayes, the singing star from Memphis. Smith dismissed race.

"We need the best representative we can get," she said.

Facing defeat, Tinker threw out ads like desperate Hail Mary passes, Moore said, but racial politics could not save her in this election season.

"They were looking for something radical," Moore said. "But if you can't get black people riled up by the Ku Klux Klan, you can't get them riled up for anything."