"TRUST US

Their styles, demographics and charisma couldn't be starker, but the politics of Harold Ford Jr. and Bob Corker aren't that different


by William Dean Hinton


Nobody expected Bob Corker to win the battle of the shout-downs before the first debate of the U.S. Senate race, which was held at a television station in Memphis, home turf to Democratic Congressman Harold Ford Jr. With few Corker volunteers to jeer and rally against, Ford supporters bunched together on a dead-end street, next to his enormous tour bus, mingling among themselves and waiting for something to happen.

But it was a different story in Chattanooga, Corker's home turf, three days later. Several hundred Corker supporters turned out, holding banners and placards, singing fight songs and trying to outdo the surprisingly large number of Ford supporters, who were in an equally pugnacious mood. Minutes before Corker arrived, at the height of the caterwauling, Ford's side yelled in unison "Harold Ford" while Corker's people shouted "Bob Corker" so that, if you were standing down the street from the ruckus, all you could hear was a great, big "Harold Corker."

Inside an auditorium on the UT Chattanooga campus, where the second debate was held, Harold Corker turned out to be an apt description of the two candidates' ideologies. They spent a lot of time pointing out how different they were with little net effect. After all, for years both have plumbed the same side of the conservative political spectrum: they're both anti-abortion, anti-taxes, anti-immigrant, anti-gay marriage, pro-school prayer, pro-military spending, pro-education, pro-alternative fuels.

About the only difference between the two is that Corker is opposed to embryonic stem cell research, as opposed to adult stem cell research, which does not require the destruction of embryos (and potential human life). Ford, on the other hand, supports federal funding of both kinds of medical inquiry, calling a stem cell bill vetoed by President Bush last year a "pro-life" bill."

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