Cybil Shepard throws kiss to Bill Clinton--star power in TN

[rodeodance]

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/us/politics/05diary.html?ref=todayspaper

KNOXVILLE, Tenn., Nov. 4 — Control of the Senate is at stake, and Cybill Shepherd is sitting in the front row at a church rally in Memphis, blowing a kiss to Bill Clinton.
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Mr. Clinton is about to say nice things about Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., the Democratic Senate candidate, but first he has to say how much he loves Ms. Shepherd’s movies and how he always looks for them when he is home alone at night, channel surfing.

Which has about as much to do with Tuesday’s election as cockfighting, and in northeast Tennessee that is what the burly welder is getting in Bob Corker’s face about. The man, arguing that the blood sport should be legalized, is cocksure about his love of cockfighting. Mr. Corker, a multimillionaire Republican running a small-government campaign against Mr. Ford, is less sure. People should be free from state regulation, but he is undecided about birds. He promises to learn more.

The final days of what may be the most captivating Senate race in the nation are a dizzying spectacle. The airwaves are ablur with hostile political advertisements. The candidates are wired and immersed, careering around the state, working rooms, doing the college football tailgate scene (as both did on Saturday before a University of Tennessee-Louisiana State University game in Knoxville) or bunkering in TV studios.

There are border-to-border boom mikes, international press throngs and a political celebrity cavalry: Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, is scheduled to stump for Mr. Ford on Sunday; Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, is penciled in Sunday and Monday for Mr. Corker; Laura Bush was in Tennessee last Tuesday for Mr. Corker.