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Seven Days

Thursday, March 7
Federal Environmental Protection Agency chief Christie Whitman promises to remove "millions of tons" of pollutants from the air over the next two decades, with the greatest improvement to be found in the Appalachian and Great Smoky Mountains, where visibility should improve, she says, by about 25 percent. She declined to speculate whether wheezability would also improve.

Friday, March 8
"Big Fred" Thompson announces his decision not to run for another term as senator from Tennessee. Look for a bargain on a red pickup truck on the eBay website.
Nashville lawyer Bob Lynch Jr., representing the doomed strip club in Knoxville's Old City, argues in Municipal Court here that a church's crucifix depicting a "topless" Jesus might be in violation of the city ordinance affecting the club. Wonder no more why the A.C.L.U. doesn't involve itself in every First Amendment case.

Sunday, March 10
It's disclosed that TVA has scrapped plans to erect a "wind farm" of more than a dozen huge windmills in the Smoky Mountains on the North Carolina border. The agency probably discovered that the equipment wouldn't be sufficient to move air pollution from coal-fired power plants near its Tennessee headquarters into the neighboring state.

Monday, March 11
It's been six months since the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Six of the longest, hardest months in U.S. history.

Tuesday, March 12
A Dallas developer is reportedly buying 14 residential lots in a gated community in West Knox County, for $3.8 million. You do the math. No, we'll do it for you. That's way more than a quarter-million dollars a lot!
City officials react angrily to a suit filed by Cherokee Country Club to try to thwart zoning protection for a historic mansion on Lyons View Pike, which the club wants to turn into additional parking for members. No indication if the city plans to countersue the club to allow the city to establish public greenways through the Cherokee golf course and a senior citizens' center in the clubhouse.

Knoxville Found

(Click photo for larger image)

What is this? Every week in "Knoxville Found," we'll print the photo of a local curiosity. If you're the first person to correctly identify this oddity, you'll win a special prize plucked from the desk of the editor (keep in mind that the editor hasn't cleaned his desk in five years). E-mail your guesses, or send 'em to "Knoxville Found" c/o Metro Pulse, 505 Market St., Suite 300, Knoxville, TN 37902.

Last Week's Photo:
Sometimes you have to look down to see what's up. That's the case with this curious stone installation in front of the Heuristic Workshop at 203 W. Jackson Ave. It is most easily viewed from the Gay Street viaduct that crosses the train yards; look to your right just as you start to cross the bridge. As for the formation itself, it is actually the former limestone foundation of the Workshop building. Workshop co-owner Eric Ohlgren says that in renovating the place, the old blocks were excavated and replaced with modern footers. "The ones we got whole—a lot of them were chipped or cracked—we put out there as courtyard art." The nine stones form a perfect 3-by-3 square. While we're at it, what does a Heuristic Workshop do? Woodworking, it turns out—cabinets, fixtures and the like for a variety of area companies. First correct answer this week came from civic activist, film production specialist and guy-around-town Jeff Talman. To help him decipher the mysterious stones, Jeff wins a copy of the indispensable book Runic Palmistry by local psychic and magician Jon Saint-Germain.

Meet Your City
A calendar of upcoming public meetings you should attend

METROPOLITAN PLANNING COMMISSION
Thursday March 14
1:30 p.m.
City County Bldg., Large Assembly Room
400 Main Ave.
The city's request for H1 Historic overlay status to protect the "Coughlin House" on Lyons View Pike from demolition is scheduled for consideration by MPC.

KNOXVILLE CITY COUNCIL
Thursday March 14
5 p.m.
City County Bldg., Small Assembly Room
400 Main Ave.
Workshop session to discuss the redevelopment potential of the Five Points area of East Knoxville.

KNOXVILLE CITY COUNCIL
Tuesday March 19
7 p.m.
City County Bldg., Large Assembly Room
400 Main Ave.
Regular meeting.

Quixotic Quest

Against the odds, Randy Nichols runs hard for governor

Somewhere in the gulf between impossible and improbable reside the hopes of Randy Nichols. Ask him about tilting at windmills, and you won't be the first to do so. You wouldn't be the first to call him crazy, either. Not that it'll bother him. Nichols is a happy warrior. His ruddy face glows a bright ruby red and his delivery takes on the cadence of a Pentecostal preacher when he talks about his campaign to become Tennessee's next governor. He believes.

Never mind that he's going up against Phil Bredesen, the multimillionaire former Nashville mayor and favorite, not only to take the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, but to win it all. Nichols knows he's got a long hill to climb. But he says he thinks he's going to win. Really. Lots of underdogs claim to harbor such beliefs, but this one seems to mean it:

"In one long day, campaigning hard as I can, I can talk to maybe 400 people. Bredesen spends a million, and he talks to 400,000. But I think the dynamics of this campaign have changed. Bredesen can't win. People don't like him."

He pauses a split second to draw a quick breath and leans forward in his chair.

"We need to talk about this money in politics—you've got to be rich and unemployed to run for governor—I told his people the other day —if he can't beat a poor little fat kid from Knoxville, how's he going to be elected governor?"

Nichols, a native of the West Tennessee town of Savannah, evidently knows something the pollsters don't. So far, the biggest discernible effect of his underdog campaign has been to cause a bit of heartburn among Knox County Democrats. The "situation" between County Clerk Mike Padgett and his son Mark is a case in point.

Mike Padgett has been a Nichols supporter. Mark Padgett, an up-and-coming young Democrat who is working on an MBA, is Bredesen's Knox County point person. Late in February, the elder Padgett held his annual fund-raiser at Central High School. Bredesen dropped in to shake and howdy with the crowd of 1,300; Nichols, who was campaigning in West Tennessee, did not. Mark Padgett says he admires Nichols, whom he counts a "close personal friend."

"He's done a great job in Knox County, and that's where I want to keep him." Both Mark Padgett and his father say they'll "come together" after the primary.

A political activist who wishes to remain anonymous explains the tough choice facing Knox County Democrats:

"There are two schools of thought—if you are a pure politico, the conventional wisdom is to hitch your wagon to the rising star as soon as possible, and people jockey around to be one of the contact people. And conversely, you have some people who have worked for a candidate for years, you are faced with flying in the face of friendship for the sake of party unity—that is the dilemma local Democrats are faced with. Do you turn your back on your own?"

Meanwhile, Nichols concedes that, moneywise, he's the guy who arrived at a gunfight armed with a knife.

"I've not even looked at the disclosures—I have read that he's raised a goodly sum—the most you can give me is $2,500 in the primary, $2,500 in the general. But there's no limit on what a candidate can give himself...He spent $6 million of his own money in '94 [when he ran for governor against Don Sundquist]. I want to win this nomination and I want to be elected governor. I've raised a little more than a quarter million, and that's not enough to run this campaign, I know. I think I have to have a couple of million."

There's a Nichols fund-raiser in Memphis next month, but so far, his biggest cash infusion came as a result of an event at Deane Conley's huge home on Lyon's View. Conley, a prominent Republican, hosted the $1,000-a-head gathering. Nichols was awed at his surroundings and grateful to Conley.

"We have a lot of friends in common, and it was a wonderful atmosphere. I saw a bunch of pictures of George Bush on the walls at her house—and it's just a breathtaking house. Some of them [Nichols' supporters] would give a thousand bucks just to see that house."

He tells of meeting with a political consultant who outlined the costs of potential media campaigns:

"He showed me several plans, with 'A' being a Yugo, 'C' being a Cadillac, and we're talking radio and TV only—no newspaper, no direct mail—in the five major media markets. The Cadillac would cost $890,000 per month; the Yugo, $610,000 per month."

Clearly, even the Yugo is out of reach.

Money issues permeate this race, and if there is a philosophical gap between Nichols and Bredesen, it is symbolized by one dreaded word: Taxes.

Bredesen used to talk about the need for tax reform, but now says he is opposed to the notion of a state income tax, and may well intend to follow the model set by Ned McWherter and Don Sundquist—oppose the income tax during the campaign, embrace it once re-elected to a second term. Nichols says he's willing to break the mold.

"That's generally the first question for old Randall," Nichols says. "And I'm going to campaign on the issue of a state income tax—I've had people close to me that are angry with me for taking that position. They say 'Why don't you just do like the rest of them do and lie to get elected?' I've spent a lot of time trying to educate myself on the tax structure."

He says he came to this decision after painful consideration:

"I woke up at 3:11 on a Saturday morning, sat straight up in bed and wondered 'What did I say in Chattanooga? What did I say in Rhea County?' And I decided this is foolish—I made a pledge to myself: I'm going to go campaign on the truth."

The decision to make this race is no spur-of-the-moment thing. He says he'd thought about running for governor for a long time: "...You know in your hidden dreams that it'd be a thrill. It's been a longstanding dream of mine to run for statewide office."

But in a way, Nichols' quixotic campaign really got started last year when he got his butt kicked in Nashville, where he was trying to shepherd a bill to require thumb prints on pawn tickets through the Legislature. He'd been pretty confident going in. It was being sponsored by a coalition of police chiefs, sheriffs and district attorney generals, so how hard could it be?

"It would have been a valuable tool in solving home burglaries and it wouldn't have cost the government one penny," Nichols says. He was part of the public safety coalition pushing the bill, and he got an up-close-and-personal look at the way things work in the General Assembly, where lobbyists, who are not allowed on the House or Senate floors, retreat to the gallery balconies and give hand-signaled instructions to compliant legislators.

"They'd look up in those galleries and see those high-dollar lobbyists doing thumbs up and thumbs down, so I started doing it myself," says Nichols, sticking his thumbs in the air and laughing at the memory of his amateurish efforts. "We got pushed around by some high dollar lobbyists—and when a corporate pawnbroker can push our sheriffs and police chiefs and D.A.s around, we've got us a problem, Houston.

"And it just infuriated me. Afterward, I was sitting around with some of my cronies pontificating about how unfair life is, and one of my friends says 'Why don't you do something about it, Nichols?' From that beginning, the little band of renegades has grown, although they won't have to construct a very big gallows to hang us."

Laura Nichols, whose impassioned "stand-by-my man" speech in her husband's behalf at the Conley fund-raiser late last year has stuck in the heads of many of his supporters, is riding shotgun with her husband, and she can vouch for the way he agonized over the decision to run.

"One minute he wanted to, the next minute he wasn't sure. He was going to Nashville quite a bit to work on the thumbprint/pawnbroker bill—he was working as hard on that as he did on stopping the downtown jail—and he knew it was something that was good for the people of the state. But he kept running up against a brick wall in those high-paid lobbyists, and he realized the regular citizens didn't have anybody representing them. He realized we needed leadership, and he said people need to believe in their government again—take their government back."

The Nicholses have been married nearly 24 years, and met when he was a prosecutor and she was a secretary in the AG's office. They have two children, Ross, 20; and LeeAnne, 18—both UT students—who plan to become actively involved in the campaign once school is out this spring. Laura has accompanied Nichols on campaign trips from Memphis to Mountain City, and has taken to keeping a journal of their travels. She calls it "Laura and Randy's Excellent Adventure," and she's on Volume 11.

"I've got 30-40 people on my email list now," she says. "I tell them about the things we're learning along the way, and talk about what prayers we need for safety. We're having a great time. We get tired, but we really have enjoyed meeting some nice people across the state. We've gotten to know people who will be our friends for a long time. I believe in Randy, but if for some reason, he doesn't win, I will never say I wish we hadn't done it. Who knows—I may even become a writer."

—Betty Bean