Keynoter Harold E. Ford Jr. another Tennessee Son
— -- This year’s Democratic National Convention will spotlight more than one political son from Tennessee.
Like Al Gore, the convention’s keynote speaker is a centrist Tennessee New Democrat who attended the St. Albans prep school in Washington, grew up in part on Capitol Hill, and fills what was once his father’s seat in Congress.
But unlike Gore, Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. has never been accused of seeming “wooden.” He plays pickup basketball, listens to Mary J. Blige and Prince, and was voted one of America’s most eligible bachelors by Ebony magazine.
Ford, at 30 is the nation’s youngest member of Congress, and will give a 15-to-20- minute keynote speech during prime-time tonight, the second day of the Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles.
“It’s time for the younger generation to hear from one of their own in a prominent role,” Gore has said about his choice. “He’s a rising star. He has a bright future. And he’s from Tennessee.”
In Politics From BirthFord, whose district includes most of Memphis, was elected to replace his father, Rep. Harold Ford Sr., in 1996. At the time, he was 26 and fresh out of law school at the University of Michigan. As he later told a reporter, he had just gotten his braces removed.
But Ford was already no stranger to politics: born into a politically prominent Memphis family, he had been a special assistant to the Economic Development Administration in 1993 and worked on the Clinton-Gore transition team, serving as a special assistant to the Justice/CivilRights Cluster. He had coordinated the last two of his father’s 10 re-election campaigns, in 1992 and 1994. Three of his uncles held statewide office, and his mother, Dorothy Bowles Ford, had worked on improving school lunch programs through the Department of Agriculture.
“Politics was part of every conversation we had at home as I was growing up,” Ford says. “When I was 4, I cut Dad’s first radio commercial. I told voters if they wanted better housing, more jobs and lower cookie prices to vote for my dad for Congress.”
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