Maverick Legislator a Lonely Voice in Tennessee Senate

NASHVILLE, Tenn. —  State Sen. Steve Cohen is usually on the other side of the door when Tennessee’s upper house starts its workday with a prayer.

Cohen often finds himself on the other side, whether during Senate prayers or votes on the Ten Commandments. And it’s not because he’s the only Jew among 33 senators, although that’s what leads him into the hallway when guest ministers preach about Jesus as the son of God.

Rather, it’s a belief that religion and government don’t mix, that Tennessee should have a lottery like its neighbors and that lawmakers have no business telling citizens to display the Ten Commandments.

All were losing causes in a legislature that, despite the state’s political history of moderates like Democrat Al Gore and Republican Lamar Alexander, is tending toward the right end of the spectrum.

“It is lonely,” said Cohen, who also defends abortion rights, civil rights for gays and, perhaps the biggest gamble for a state politician, an income tax.

It was never more lonely than on the Ten Commandment vote, when the liberal Democrat from Memphis cast the only nay on a bill urging Tennesseans to post the Ten Commandments in homes, businesses and schools.

“The Ten Commandments were given to us by God. God does not need the Tennessee General Assembly’s help in disseminating them,” said Cohen, whose wire-rimmed glasses and long, receding hair make him look younger than his 46 years.

The Ten Commandments bill may not emerge from the House, where representatives were also grappling with a bill to let school boards fire any teacher who presents evolution as fact.

“It makes us look like a backwoods state, a state that discourages educated thinking and science, a state that is fundamentalist in nature,” Cohen said. On Thursday, the senate killed a more liberal version of the evolution bill by a 20-13 vote.

Cohen’s refusal to “go along, get along,” as he describes his colleagues’ approach to lawmaking, sometimes makes fellow senators chafe.

“He’s very committed to the principles he speaks on, but sometimes he lets the intensity of that commitment override his better judgment,” said Sen. Bob Rochelle.

Rochelle entered the Senate with Cohen in 1982 and earned a reputation as a deal-maker. Cohen, on the other hand, has been known to tell colleagues their bills are stupid.

“He calls them like he sees them,” said Riley Darnell, a former senator who is now secretary of state. “That doesn’t always make him popular, but I admire him for it.”

So do his constituents. His diverse district--it is about 40% black--has reelected him by comfortable margins.

Stephen Ira Cohen was born in Memphis, the son of a psychiatrist whose own father came from Lithuania and created a nationwide chain of newsstands.

Growing up Jewish in the South and contracting polio at the age of 5 gave him an appreciation of what it’s like to be different. He also became sensitized to civil rights.

At 6, he went to an exhibition baseball game between the Chicago White Sox and St. Louis Cardinals. A White Sox player handed him a baseball. When Cohen tried to thank him, the player said the ball was from Minnie Minoso, a black player.

“He didn’t feel comfortable giving a baseball to a white person in Memphis in 1955. Even acts of kindness from human being to human being or from adult to child were prohibited or looked at askance,” Cohen said. “I was like, ‘Wow, what’s this about?’ ”

He spent his teens in Los Angeles and Miami, returning to Tennessee in 1967. He graduated from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, then got a law degree from Memphis State University.

Cohen lost his first campaign at age 21, for the state House. He held a variety of smaller offices--constitutional convention delegate, county commissioner--starting in 1976, and ran for governor in 1994.

Cohen gets inspiration from President John F. Kennedy, whose pictures decorate his office wall. One of his earliest political memories is seeing Kennedy on the cover of Time magazine in 1960, with the question: “Can a Catholic be elected?”

“And I had to think, what about a Jew?” Cohen said.