Long odds for challenger in 9th District, but Bergmanns resilience draws admirers Commercial Appeal//Peggy Burch//Oct 11, 2014 Ask Republican candidate Charlotte Bergmann about the daunting odds she faces in the 9th Congressional District, which has sent only Democrats to Washington for the past 40 years, and she leaps from her seat and heads to a district map on the wall of her Cordova campaign headquarters. Her hand floats south to hover over Whitehaven, where, she says, the people who voted for Ricky Wilkins Aug. 7 in his losing bid for the Democratic nomination are likely to vote for her on in the Nov. 4 general election. Then she touches north Shelby County: “There are over 20,000 people who can vote in the Millington area, a patriotic area; I’d say about three-fourths of them share my values.” Finally her hand drifts east, where she says “about half of the people in the Cordova area share my values.” Do shared values equal votes? Her campaign to defeat U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, who’s held the 9th District seat since 2007, is based on the hope that they will. Left untouched in Bergmann’s map survey was the substantial central area of the 9th District inside the Interstate 240 loop, as well as southeastern and southwestern Shelby County. Cohen won every precinct in the August primary. At an editorial board meeting at The Commercial Appeal last month, Cohen was asked if he would debate Bergmann. Earlier, he had mentioned attending a concert by New Orleans piano virtuoso Dr. John, and he made use of that reference to dismiss the possibility of a Bergmann debate. “Would Dr. John have a piano contest with you or me? I don’t think so,” Cohen said. “I don’t want to encourage her.” Shelby County Democratic Party chairman Bryan Carson adopted the same detached tone, noting what a solid territory the 9th is for Democrats. “I don’t see anything changing. Cohen will win the race by a substantial margin, and we’ll be moving forward with his initiatives,” he said. Supporters of the 61-year-old Bergmann admire her resilience: She got 25 percent of the vote in her first outing as a candidate in the 9th District race against Cohen in 2010. “After the election I went home and put my head under the covers and told myself I’d never do it again,” she said in a recent interview. But the 33,000 votes she got as an “unknown individual” in that race started to seem more substantial in retrospect, she said. She ran for the seat again in 2012, but got only 4,400 votes in the Republican primary, losing to George Flinn, who got 11,700. “Having been in that race before, it’s an uphill battle, but she’s not afraid of that,” said Flinn, who’s currently running for the District 30 state Senate seat. “Congressman Cohen has longevity, but with her name beginning with ‘B,’ she’ll be on the ballot ahead of him.” Flinn described Bergmann as charismatic, adding that, “She’s a force to be reckoned with. If she wins, that’s great; if she doesn’t, she’ll be back again.” A Christian Brothers University graduate, Bergmann said she currently helps to manage a small business with her sister to provide home care and living facilities for the elderly. After working at FedEx in information technology, Bergmann and several partners started a business that did not take off. She worked briefly in Nashville, then got a job as a contractor at Naval Support Activity Mid-South in Millington. That job was phased out, and Bergmann said she joined a career transition group, and began traveling to Washington to advocate for job creation. She used her severance pay from FedEx to finance her personal lobbying effort. She wrote letters to former President George W. Bush, whose signed photograph faces out from the desk at her headquarters, as well as members of Congress about jobs issues. “I became such a pest that I was invited to join George W. Bush’s president’s club,” she said. After a foreclosure in 2006, she was homeless for a time. “When the economy changed and I lost my home to foreclosure, I ended up living out of my car, moving from family to family, or just sleeping in my car,” she said. What made her decide to run for office in 2010? Bergmann paused, staring at her lap. “I’m sorry, I get emotional when I think about that. It stems back from when I lost my job,” adding after another long pause and apology, “Twenty-eight percent of the people now are still in that situation, and nobody was really stepping up to the plate to make a difference. I felt a strong spiritual calling to do that.” Bergmann is a parent of three, grandparent of 14, but said she hasn’t counted on her family for help in her campaign. “To be quite frank with you, my oldest son actually voted Republican for the first time in the primary, he and his wife did. The other son lives in another district, and my daughter doesn’t vote. My brothers and sisters are all strong Democrats and I probably would still be a Democrat if they promoted some of the values I believe in, entrepreneurial spirit, motivating people to work,” she said. “I have been kicked out of several Thanksgiving dinners, but that love for one another transcends those differences.” At a recent fundraiser for Bergmann held in the gated Southwind community home of Winston Wolfe, state Sen. Mark Norris praised her “stick-to-it-iveness” and called her “a unifier.” Her platform favors business — “bold” tax cuts to “free American entrepreneurs to invest and hire,” as well as “unleashing” energy production and replacing the Affordable Care Act with “doctor and patient power” — but her appeal is to “the average person who goes to work, raises their kids, pays their bills,” said her campaign manager, Brett Bernard. He acknowledged the contradiction of delivering that message while surrounded by the opulent furnishings of Wolfe’s home, which is called Loxley Hall. Bernard said the campaign needed money to get the word about Bergmann out to the “conservative Christian Democrats” the campaign is targeting. At the end of July, Federal Election Commission campaign finance disclosures showed Bergmann with $4,082 cash on hand — and Cohen with $839,877. ---------- Follow the candidates Bergmann: Site | Facebook | Twitter Cohen: Site | Facebook | Twitter Early voting for the Nov. 4 general election begins Wednesday. View a sample ballot here.
Posted on: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 03:10:40 +0000