The Commercial Appeal, the local rag of a newspaper, had been ignoring this race in favor of some of the closely contested Shelby County elections (Assessor of Property, Circuit Court Clerk, and Trustee are all on the ballot tomorrow) as well as the TN-07 Republican race between Marsha Blackburn and Shelby Register of Deeds Tom Leatherwood (CA endorsed Leatherwood over Blackburn, whom they have always hated anyway but will still win easily).

Tinker playing the race card, however, pushed the other races off the front pages; this latest stunt will only intensify local coverage on the campaign. She has tacit support from the Ford family and racebaiters like Walter Bailey but Cohen has the endorsement of a lot of local papers and the large number of affluent white liberals who live in the Midtown area of the district.

I think Tinker’s support in the African-American community is overstated: I volunteered for the Blackburn campaign at an early voting place a couple of weeks ago and a young black girl was there for the Cohen campaign. She told me that she really liked Cohen and thought Tinker was just “too angry.” It may be anecdotal, but I think it puts a hole in her claim that the entire African-American community in the 9th district hates Cohen.

But there are few things like a contested political race in Memphis, so anything can happen…