Harold Ford and New York: An Issue of Attachment

I know that New York is traditionally open to “carpetbaggers” (in this context meaning a politician or would-be-politician who moves to his or her non-primary State with the intent of running for office in the new State) in a way that, say, the Southern States are not. New York's own Governor has pointed that out.

"Well generally speaking, I don't think carpetbaggers - I mean if the people of the state want them they can have them," Paterson said on WOR this morning in an interview with John Gambling (and listened to by the DN's Glenn Blain).

"New York did do this with Robert Kennedy in 1964 and Hillary Clinton in 2000, and I know Harold. If he wants to run for Senator in New York State, I'm sure that's an interesting idea."

Ok, fine. New York's experience is greatly informed by waves of immigrants, so maybe immigration from another State directly into New York's corridors of power isn't as odd as I might think off-hand.

Still, the idea of a failed Tennessee politician (he lost a U.S. Senate race in his home State of Tennessee, to a Republican, in 2006, during the buildup to the Democratic sweep of 2008), coming to New York, working on Wall Street for awhile, taking helicopter rides around the City, and then deciding he's qualified to run for U.S. Senate, is, I think, a tad much, even for New York.

I remember when Ford's name was first floated for the U.S. Senate, back in late 2009 or in the very first days of 2010. I hadn't heard of him at all. I located his own website which, back then, expressly described him as not living in New York State, but only working there. "Ford lives,” the site stated, “in Memphis and Nashville and has offices in New York and Nashville." I was surprised to see a 5 January 2010 article in the New York Times, describing Ford as having “moved to New York three years ago,” presumably meaning sometime in 2006 or very early 2007. The bloomberg.com article announcing Ford's Wall Street job, also linked to above, is from early 2007. Even assuming Ford moved to New York State immediately upon getting this job, despite his own website indicating otherwise, this basically means he left Tennessee within just a few months of losing the U.S. Senate election, a fact that I find interesting all by itself.

Yet, even after this New York Times article, Ford's own website continued to refer to him as “working,” but not living, in New York. The mainstream media eventually caught up with me a couple of days later. On 7 January 2010, Josh Robin, a political reporter for New York 1, “Twittered” about the seeming contradiction. Shortly afterwards, Ford's site was changed to reflect a dual residency, in New York and Tennessee.

I'd suggest that the very least this strange incident means is that Ford has displayed a lack of common sense diligence. I know that if I were contemplating a run for the U.S. Senate representing a State I hadn't moved to all that long ago, updating my website to reflect my residency there would be one of my first priorities. But maybe that's just me.

I also have to wonder, strongly, if Ford's strange error reflects a lack of attachment to New York State as much as it reflects a lack of diligence. Length of residency may or may not be an issue in a U.S. Senate election, but attachment, I strongly feel, should be.

Ford is sometimes spoken of in the same breath as Robert Kennedy and Hillary Clinton, because, it is argued, all three are subject to the “carpetbagger” label. Surely, New Yorkers had little problem being represented by carpetbaggers named Kennedy and Clinton. So why not one named Ford?

From what I can tell, though, Clinton and Kennedy both bothered to form, or already had, attachments to New York State before they ran.

Regarding Kennedy, note the following passage from Arthur Meier Schlesinger's book Robert Kennedy and His Times (first published in 1978, reissued in 2002):

In fact, Robert Kennedy was less of a carpetbagger than his older brother had been in Massachusetts in 1946. He had lived in New York from a few months after his birth until 1942, indeed, had lived nowhere longer. Except for schools and summers, he had never really lived in Massachusetts. (Page 668)

The Clintons purchased, and lived in, a home in Westchester County. Granted, it was merely the September prior to her Senate run. But, in fairness, before that she had a place to live: The White House. She wasn't going to live anyplace else until January 2000, when her husband's term as President was up. Bill Clinton also set up his firm, the Clinton Foundation, in New York State, specifically on 125th Street in Harlem.

And, as far as I can tell, the Clintons maintain that residence, and Bill Clinton maintains his Harlem office.

Contrast this with Harold Ford. He supposedly moved to New York sometime in late 2006 or early 2007, but he didn't so much as update his official website to reflect the move until early 2010, after his technically-still-undeclared Senate campaign was already underway, and after he was "caught" twice. Further, as I also pointed out above, assuming Ford really moved to New York when he says he did, he had to have done so almost immediately upon losing a U.S. Senate run from his home state.

Governor Paterson pointed out something similar in an article also linked to above.

"But what's kind of interesting about the way he's [Ford] doing it than the way they [Clinton and Kennedy] did it is that both of them traveled extensively around the state and were pretty familiar with what was going on before they ran," the governor continued.

"I honestly - and I know Harold - had no idea he was interested in running for the Senate until the last few weeks." [emphasis added]

Interesting.