[Chattanooga's new mayor, Ron Littlefield]
You heard about Hamilton County Dems last Saturday, now listen to what happened to Chattanooga this week. As if prelude of things to come, Chattanooga put a populist into the mayor's office this week. He wasn't supposed to win. His opponents had all the money--almost four times as much. His opponents had all the glitz and glamor, and they had the power. In fact, everyone said his opponents were supposed to win!
But populism was striking hot against a local plutocracy called RiverCity Co., a group of very wealthy developers who have used public/private money to control downtown development. But the underdog and Democrat, Ron Littlefield, generated such an earthquake in this quiet city that even I was astonished. I was there reporting on his victory at the Littlefield headquarters, April 12. We were crowded in a warehouse on 11th St. I've been reeling since, trying to figure why all of a sudden would Chattanooga and Hamilton County be the hotbed of populism Dean-style.
Not surprisingly, all economic indicators suggest an impending doom for Joe and Madge in Chattanooga. When almost half of an average Chattanoogan's hourly take-home wage ($4 - $6 per hour) is siphoned off by the cost of gas per gallon ($2.20 - $2.50), Joe and Madge have started worrying. Let me tell you, this city has done something it could never think of itself doing in many years--it has broken itself from the money cycle.
In the March 1 mayoral election, the frontrunner was Ann Coulter, the princess of RiverCity Co. (not the same right-wing Coulter polluting our airwaves). So why didn't the populist Littlefield win the March 1 election? It was a delayed reaction. And the runoff this week allowed for a sharpened focus on the clear division between a few oligarchs running the city and the rest of us. And that "rest" ain't doing well. Again, Chattanooga is one of the lowest wage cities in America.
For myself, a Coulter supporter in the first election, I had kept waiting for some message of hope for the blue-collar Chattanoogan from the oligarchs. Nothing doing. And so I had to come to the conclusion the hard way, namely that Littlefield was appealing to a wider coalition of people with one essential common feeling--money talks, and jobs mean money. Which is another way of saying that symbols won't feed and clothe my baby.
The South more than any other part of the country has been voting symbols for years rather than voting their pocketbooks. Not anymore. Whether Littlefield understands this point or not, he has tapped into a CLASS WAR that runs deeper than even he may realize. For as symbols (the flag, the bible, a tourist trap) continue to lose their power and resonance here in the South, sudden shifts in voting for jobs emerge.
Still, there's a real difference between loss of symbols and an anti-plutocratic mood. The feeling that the wealthy have oppressed the middle-class has the working class person wondering if the rich will care for them. Joe and Madge can hear not one or two but hundreds of howls outside the gate--as TennCare is cut, as their sons and daughters go off to war, as the wealthy erect buildings to themselves downtown. In a South that wants to be brought up several notches, it is not enough to provide symbols to power, although it is a start. Chattanoogans want, whether they will get it or not, consumer power. And that power comes from good paying jobs.
This was a week, I must admit, when democracy wanted to be counted--and not just by the IRS. For Joe and Madge the wolf seems too close to the door. If there is any doubt about this seemingly sudden movement into populist politics in Chattanooga, just recall the final score on April 12 ~ it was 54% Littlefield, 46% Coulter. That's a count for a KO.