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.”

So while other new members of Congress took time to get oriented in 1996, Ford hit the ground running. He was elected president of his freshman class of representatives. He quickly aligned himself with President Clinton and his “New Democrats” on many issues, favoring free trade and pushing for more federal education aid. He supported home-schooling and wiring public schools to the Internet. He also came out forcefully against “social promotion,” which advances students whether they’re ready or not, and in favor of making post-secondary education the norm for every student. And he was one of a handful of lawmakers who pushed the Congressional Black Caucus toward a more moderate or centrist line.

Breaking Out of the MoldIn 1998 he was re-elected with more than 80 percent of the vote from his mostly black, solidly Democratic, district.

But Ford, who is expected to run for Senate soon, is “politically ambitious in the best sense,” says Bruce Oppenheimer, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University. “He clearly wants to go further than representing Memphis in the House of Representatives … He’s in a district in Memphis which is almost 60 percent black by population. He knows that if he wants to go further politically, then he will have to broaden that appeal.”

Like Gore, who got elected to Al Gore Sr.’s House seat at age 28, Ford is striving to define himself — and distinguish himself from his famous father.

“There are interesting parallels to Gore,” Oppenheimer says. “They both had fathers who were active in politics. They get elected at young age to their father’s seat … And both take advantage in office of who their fathers are. And then they both set out a different course for themselves.”

Representing a GenerationSo, perhaps unlike an earlier generation of African-American lawmakers, Ford has resisted being pigeonholed. He has cultivated a reputation as a moderate — strong on education and job training, but more fiscally conservative than his father.

And he has insisted more on his age, becoming the de facto spokesman for Generation X in Congress, than on his ethnicity. The only member of Congress born in the 1970s, he has turned his youthfulness from a potential liability into an asset.

Along with his congressional colleague, Illinois Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., 30, Ford says he has been mistaken for an intern. Some House Democrats have even jokingly asked him to pour them coffee, he says.

But when his opponent in the 1996 election took to mocking him as “Junior,” Ford built the intended insult into his campaign theme, “Jr.: A New Vision.” He also invited Patrick Kennedy and Jackson — two other prominent party “Juniors” — to campaign with him around Memphis.

And he speaks openly about his own “youthful energy,” referring to himself in interviews as “a voice for young America.”

The keynote speech is a chance to appeal to young voters and show them that this election matters to them, Ford says: “I’ll try my hardest not to let down my state, my vice president and my generation.”