Psychic Sylvia Browne performed an over-the-phone ghost reading of the Orpheum to preview her Friday-night appearance.
“He hung himself. I think he was mentally deranged,” she said of one spectral theater-goer.
Get the full story in Fly-By.
After hearing of Alex Chilton’s passing Memphis musician and long time music scenester Harris Scheuner expected someone to announce a tribute concert. He assumed there would be an event like the one held for Jim Dickinson, which he describes as, “grand, and perfect.” Every day he posted a message to his Facebook page: “Whoever put on the Dickinson tribute, please put one on just like it for Alex.” But nothing happened.
“I heard about, and attended the memorial for Alex at Minglewood Hall, which caused me to tear up,” Sheuner says. “It was touching, and beautiful, but it was not a musical event.” After the Minglewood event he called Ross Johnson who played drums with Chilton in Tav Falco’s Panther Burns and told him that he had either a terrible idea or a great idea to put on a Chilton tribute concert. “He told me that he thought that a tribute show had to be done,” Scheuner says. “So I hung up the phone, and went straight to the computer.” Not knowing where or when it would be he posted a message on on his Facebook page announcing an event that would allow local musicians influenced by Chilton to pay their respects in song.
“When Jews die, other Jews sit Shiva,” Scheuner says. “When musicians die other musicians play their songs. That’s just how it is.
Throughout high school Scheuner thought of himself as a “rock-n-roll elitist.” He played the drums, had big hair, and was into Led Zeppelin, and Rush. When he started started college at MSU he found out about a whole world of music that he didn’t know existed: The Velvet Underground, The Soft Boys, The Dbs, and Alex Chilton.
“It was truly an epiphany,” he says. “I realized that I had been duped by the record industry,and that the real rock-n-roll, the true spirit of rock-n-roll was kept alive by musicians from underground. It not only opened my eyes about music but about culture in general, the difference between product and art.”
Scheuner & Greg Cartwright perform the Bell Notes hit “I’ve Had It” at the Antenna Club Reunion. The song also appears on Alex Chilton’s LIKE FLIES ON SHERBERT LP with vocals by Jim Dickinson.
In celebration of Earth Day today, Mayor A C Wharton’s office and the Memphis
Farmers Market are holding a special mini-market outside City Hall from 10
a.m.-2 p.m.
The backdrop for a potentially fateful Thursday morning press conference, concerning a “Clean Green Shelby Initiative” and called by interim Shelby County Mayor Joe Ford at the Shelby Farms Visitors Center was very likely a luncheon meeting held last week in the mayor’s 8th floor conference room at the county building.
One of the most significant acts of Ford’s five-month tenure, the luncheon (catered from organic sources, naturally) doubled as a forum for local environmental leaders, and ironically it took place at a time when Ford himself, sidelined by illness, was not able to be present.
Ford’s deputy Pamela Marshall presided in his stead, along with such attendant county officials as John Freeman and Matt Kuhn of the mayor’s office, Tom Moss of the county Land Bank, Public Works director Ted Fox, and Bob Rogers, superisor of pollution control efforts in Shelby County.
Present were representatives of numerous local organizations, including the Sierra Club, Greater Memphis Greenline, Friends of the Riverfront, various area conservancies, and numerous other groups — almost 30 articulate and keenly interested people altogether, mostly volunteers.
As Don Richardson of the Sierra Club, one of the organizers, put it, “You’re looking at a room of community problem solvers….The ‘E’ word doesn’t cover it. Everybody here is the tip of an iceberg.” Gathered in one room was “tens of thousands of dollars of free consulting,” and, Richardson said, “We need to finish unfinished business.”
That unfinished business included a dizzying variety of subjects: among them bike lanes, greenways, air quality control, protection of the city’s aquifer, community clean-ups, creation of new parklands, waste treatment, clean water — everything and anything, in short, which related to the whole ecology of Shelby County.
As the group found itself coming to a consensus — or at least perceiving that one might be possible — Joe Royer of Outdoors, Inc., summed up, “We’re not going to do this with brochures and website. We’ve got to clean the parks up. Out irrigation system is broken. We never have enough money…We’ve got to treat the waste, treat the air, support these agencies.” Royer looked about him in some wonder. “This is the first time I’ve seen this elevated to the mayor’s conference room.”
After some two and a half hours of animated discussion, those present had discussed numerous practical projects, but their crowning achievement was the epiphany that there should be a county environmental department as such, one concerned with pragmatic planning for a green revolution in Shelby County, step by step.
Maybe something comes of the initiative right away and maybe not, but at the very least an idea was born that, at some point later on, may, like last week’s summit meeting itself, come to seem historic.
Marshall had noted at several points of Friday’s luncheon discussion the prospect of some concerted activity to come, related perhaps to the Sustainable Shelby program initiated by A C Wharton during his tenure as county mayor and continued under Ford.
Whether it’s that or something closer to the new department sought by the luncheon participants, the chances seemed better than even that it would be discussed at Thursday’s press conference.
Downtown Memphis’ rooftop season has officially started.
Last Thursday night, the season opener for the Peabody hotel’s Rooftop Parties, the lobby was packed. Girls in sundresses and heels mingled with guys in polo shirts and shorts. And a crowd waited in a line 30-deep to catch an elevator to the roof where national recording artist Kevin Rudolf and aristocrunk rappers Lord T & Eloise were performing.
“Thursday night was one of the largest I’ve ever been to. They were turning people away at the elevator,” says downtown resident Brian Crider. “It was pretty packed by 7 p.m. I had a few friends that never made it up.”
About 1,500 people hit the Rooftop Party over the course of the evening, according to hotel staff.
Two years ago, that would not have been the case.
“In 2008, 700 people on the roof would have been a really good night,” says Kelly Earnest, the director of public relations for the Peabody. “Last year, 700 people would have been a really light crowd.”
The 2008 season was not good for the Peabody Rooftop Party. It rained 40 percent of the time, and attendance got so bad that the hotel even considered canceling the next season altogether.
“One night we had 150 people. [The event] was fizzling,” Earnest says. “We knew we had to make it work or cancel it. Nobody wanted to let a legacy event like the Peabody Rooftop die on our watch.”
Rooftop Parties have a long history at the hotel. Originally called Sunset Serenades, they started in 1939 after the Skyway Ballroom was added to the top floor. When the hotel was reopened in 1981, the Rooftop Parties started anew … and continued for the next 27 years.
Other than the weather in 2008, the hotel staff wasn’t able to attribute the lackluster season to any specific cause.
Instead of canceling the parties, however, they decided to look at the event from every angle. The first change they made was to front-load the line-up with larger-name acts.
“The idea is to build a buzz and a momentum that will see us through the season,” Earnest says. “Once people see that the Rooftop Party is the hottest in town, they’ll tell their friends.”
The hotel also decided to increase its initial marketing and advertising.
“We never want to be three or four weeks into the season and hear people say they had no idea the Rooftop Parties had started,” Earnest says.
They also brought in a new radio partner, Q107.5, that has enlisted more name acts, such as Rudolf. They increased their social media presence on Twitter and Facebook and added a rooftop cigar bar.
Whatever they did worked. During last year’s season opener, which also featured Lord T & Eloise, it was raining. Though the hotel moves the party into the ballroom when it rains, it could have been another disappointing night.
“We had 1,900 people attend and we went, wow. We did something right,” Earnest says.
This season, they’ve continued to tweak the formula: adding new bars as needed, getting rid of drink tickets, and offering a $50 season pass that includes VIP access and valet parking. They’ve also raised the admission price for the first time since 1981, but that now includes a drink.
“We wanted to be able to provide better entertainment,” Earnest says of the $10 cover charge. “Last night, we brought in the Beale Street Flippers just to have a little fun, and they brought a drum line with them.”
The changes haven’t gone unnoticed. Last year, they sold 50 season passes. In the first week of this season, they’ve already sold twice that many.
Frank Howell, an accountant at FedEx, says he tries to go to as many of the parties as possible, because he enjoys the atmosphere.
“It’s kind of a cross between a mini-club atmosphere and a concert atmosphere. It’s a big party, but they also make sure they bring big acts up there,” he says.
As someone who once walked up 13 flights of stairs to get to the party, Howell says better crowd control has made the party more accessible and fun.
“Adding the lines to the elevator makes it so much faster,” he says. “Before, there was no line for the elevator, and it was a free-for-all to get on the elevator to go up. It was the same thing coming down.
“Even though the crowds have grown, it’s a lot better.”
For more on this and other topics, visit Mary Cashiola’s “In the Bluff” blog at memphisflyer.com/blogs/InTheBluff/.
Memphis is a city with no middle-class families, no economic progress, and no upward mobility. If you are non-white, you are probably poor. If you start poor, you probably stay poor. You’re screwed, kids, but you’ll never have to buy a school lunch.
Memphis doesn’t have pockets of poverty. The whole city, except for a couple of pockets of East Memphis, is poor. That goes for Midtown, Whitehaven, Scenic Hills, Hickory Hill, and Raleigh. Shelby County, on the other hand, is not poor. That’s where you should go. Memphis is not a place where you would want to live or start a career or send your children to public school.
These racist and inaccurate generalizations are not the work of some anonymous commenter on the Internet, extremist political candidate, or Forbes magazine. This is the Memphis City Schools profile on the Tennessee Report Card. Nobody poor-mouths the city of Memphis and MCS more than MCS and the Tennessee Department of Education. Misery Is Us.
Public school students are about to take “the Gateway,” those make-or-break standardized tests that purport to measure their academic progress and fitness for advancement. The Memphis City Council should give its own exam to Superintendent Kriner Cash, who is asking the council to give MCS an additional $120 to $130 million or so over the next two years, plus $50 million to cover the “shortage” from last year.
All of that will likely mean a property tax increase for Memphis residents who already pay by far the highest property tax rate in Tennessee.
Memphis is already losing population and becoming increasingly isolated from the rest of Shelby County and Tennessee. A tax increase of a few hundred dollars a year isn’t going to break many people, but it will send a message about how the city and the school system respond to a real budget crisis.
MCS has a billion-dollar-a-year budget. But before approving the schools budget in the coming weeks, City Council members should ask Cash some questions:
• What is the MCS enrollment, and how do you know? In public education, more students means more dollars. The Tennessee Report Card and the MCS website say it is approximately 105,000. Why, then, did the state Court of Appeals use an MCS enrollment number that was too high by 7,000 in its 2009 decision on school funding? And why did you say last week that the enrollment is 111,000 in a column you wrote for The Commercial Appeal?
• If MCS, as appears to be the case, has overstated enrollment for several years by several thousand students, why doesn’t it owe the state and city a refund on the order of half a billion dollars?
• On the report card, enrollment is 104,829 in 2009 and 110,753 in 2007 and 116,528 in 2006. But there are more administrators (439 to 359), schools (199 to 194), teachers (7,259 to 6,438), and per-pupil spending ($10,394 to $9,254) now than there were three years ago. Why is that?
• The report card classifies 100,617 of the 104,829 students in MCS as “Title 1,” which is federal government-speak for “high-poverty schools.” Are you telling us that there is no middle class and no upward mobility in Memphis, a city that takes great pride in its entrepreneurship, flagship companies, and aspirations to become a “city of choice”?
No middle class? Members of AFSCME, the public employees union with deep Memphis roots, receive an average salary of $45,000 a year, according to union president Gerald McEntee. Many of those 7,259 MCS teachers and 6,700 city employees make more than that.
No upward mobility in a city where the mayors and most city and county division directors are black?
No way to get ahead in the home of the University of Memphis and the Superhub? FedEx doesn’t hire all those college students and part-timers to screw up the package sort. They hire them because they can do a demanding job. None of them went to MCS?
• While 90 percent of the public schools in Memphis are classified as “high poverty schools,” only 10 percent of the schools in Shelby County are high poverty. More than two-thirds of the students at Central and Ridgeway, both college-prep high schools in MCS, are considered “poor.”
But at Germantown High School in the Shelby County system, only 25 percent are so classified. Is MCS poor-mouthing itself in order to maximize federal funding? Has a city school ever gotten off the poverty list, the way schools go on and off the “low-performing” list?
• Approximately 86 percent of MCS students are classified as “economically disadvantaged” and eligible for free and reduced price lunches. Have you ever audited this number, and how and when does MCS ask kids or their parents to document their family income?
A full-price lunch in a school cafeteria costs $2 and includes an entrée, two vegetables, bread, and a beverage. That’s $10 a week, or less if you brown-bag it. If everyone is that poor, then why do you need a cell phone policy?
Imagine walking into a restaurant where the hostess greets you and says, “Hello, folks, I see you are non-white. Would you care to have a seat over here in our ‘Free’ section? Sit anywhere you want, but just make sure you all sit together.” Would you put up with that?
• How many schools are less than two-thirds full? How many are less than half-full? Are any of them almost new?
Parents and students are mobile, and MCS has an open-enrollment policy, so some schools are winners and some are losers in the choice game.
The three biggest high schools — White Station (2,142), Whitehaven (2,124), and Cordova (2,057) each has more students than the four smallest high schools combined — Douglass (366), Westwood (500), Treadwell (498), and Oakhaven (513). What are you doing about this?
• How many students graduated from MCS high schools last year? Why isn’t this number, which is the simplest indicator of student progress, readily available? Please spare us the complexities of the various ways of measuring the graduation rate and just provide the raw number of graduates for the last five years.
• MCS is scheduled to take over three-year-old Southwind High School, which is now a Shelby County school in an annexation area. Southwind is nearly all-black in a county system that is 37 percent black. Any idea what’s going on here?
• How will the upcoming vote on reinventing county government affect MCS funding?
• Tennessee was one of two states to win federal “Race to the Top” funds this year. The state’s share is roughly $500 million. How will the share of that coming to MCS be coordinated with the additional funding you are seeking from the City Council?
• Do you have bodyguards? If so, how many and why?
• You say you believe in openness, but your media staff requires reporters to submit Freedom of Information requests for the most basic information. And your idea of open seems to be public access cable TV, where you can talk about whatever you want for as long as you want. Why?
Asking questions about money for MCS inevitably provokes either legal challenges or passionate cries at City Hall and the school board to do right “for the sake of the children.” Fair enough, but how about giving students and the rest of us a fair shake first?
Making Memphis City Schools appear bigger and poorer than it is may help the system get more local, state, and federal money, but it’s killing the city and it’s unfair to the students.
The answer to this week’s Tiger Trivia Tuesday:
Last season, Elliot Williams became the fourth player in U of M history to score 600 points in his first season as a Tiger. Who are the other three?
• Omar Sneed: 605 points in 1997-98
• Dajuan Wagner: 762 points in 2001-02
• Tyreke Evans: 632 points in 2008-09
When the four members of the Dead Weather convened for their first session in 2008, they had no idea if they would create a light drizzle, a brief cloudburst, or a perfect storm. The band certainly had the potential for a deluge: Jack White of the White Stripes and Jack Lawrence of the Greenhornes were playing in their side project the Raconteurs with touring member Dean Fertita of Queens of the Stone Age, and they recruited Alison Mosshart of the Kills to sing lead. “We didn’t know what we had, so we didn’t know what to call it at first,” says Fertita, who plays keyboards and guitar. “We went in to record a 45, and three weeks later we had a record. There was no premeditation with any of it, really.”
The result of that session was last year’s hellacious Horehound, a skuzzy, swampy, sinister album that drew from the DNA of each of the members’ main bands without sounding like any of them. It’s aggressive and menacing without being especially heavy, moody without being morose. More goth than blues, it rocks harder than you might think possible for a band that relegates White to the drumkit. But he’s a fine drummer, restrained and precise, and Fertita metes out enormous, slashing guitar riffs in White’s place. As singers, White and Mosshart have an electric chemistry, their voices sounding abrasive and androgynous as they trade lines. White’s tense “I Cut Like a Buffalo” may be one of his most outrageous performances ever taped, his insistent yowl punctuated by loud choking sounds. “Is that you choking?” he demands. “Or are you just joking?”
Less than a year after unleashing Horehound, the Dead Weather already have a follow-up, Sea of Cowards, which Fertita describes as darker than the debut: “It’s a continuation of the last one. It’s bigger and a little more volatile. Some of the tones and performances are a bit more explosive sounding.”
It’s hard to believe, but many of the new songs were written during those first defining Horehound sessions and developed during the band’s first tour together. “The first record we made almost accidentally, but this one benefited from us being a band for a year,” Fertita says. “It felt inspired. We would have days off, and instead of going home, we wanted to go into the studio and work. We just took advantage of the time we had so that we could all be together. Time is a precious thing in this situation, so why don’t we make the most out of every chance we get?”
That’s tougher than it might sound. In addition to having other gigs, the members of the Dead Weather are geographically scattered: White and Lawrence recently moved to Nashville (where the band records at White’s Third Man Studios), but Fertita lives in Detroit and Mosshart in London. “It’s tough to get together, which is why it’s so cool that we were able to make the time and take advantage of the opportunity to do this record,” says Fertita, who adds that scheduling sessions tends to be an informal process. “We don’t plan that far ahead, actually. We just gauge how everybody’s feeling. One week we’ll all have a week off. Do you need to be here? Do you need to be there? No? Why don’t we go record? It’s really that spontaneous.”
That approach extends to the studio, where each of the band members has equal creative input (not always a given with such strong personalities). “It’s actually really collaborative,” Fertita says. “We throw ideas at each other, and in the end we have a song. But we don’t always remember how we got there. A couple of weeks ago, we were doing the writing credits for the new record, and we couldn’t remember what everybody did.” That may account for the songs’ sharp attack, which eschews traditional song structures in favor of odd repetitions and turns of phrase and emphasizes a pummeling dynamic. The Dead Weather, in other words, don’t sound like a side project but a tight outfit brimming with ideas and energy.
The band may write in the studio, but they develop their music on the road, which means the songs change significantly from the recorded versions. “We don’t want to give the same show every time,” Fertita says. “We’re all motivated by the idea of creating something and then destroying it every night. We try to take the songs further and further. You learn about the songs as you play them in front of people. You get inspired to try new things. I think it’s in our nature to always be working toward something new.”
In that regard, Fertita doesn’t see the short interval between Horehound and Sea of Cowards as a fluke. “We all grew up as fans of bands that were putting out more than one record every two years. I don’t think it’s great for creativity to dwell too long on anything. Part of the process is doing something, learning about it, and then moving forward. I still feel like we have unfinished business, so I wouldn’t be surprised if we’re making time to start working on another record very soon.”
The Dead Weather, with The Ettes
Minglewood Hall
Wednesday, April 28th
8 p.m., $30
American Idol it ain’t. But the Shelby County primary, already in progress via early voting and culminating on May 4th, the first Tuesday in May, bears certain resemblances to the singing competition familiar to TV watchers.
For most positions on the ballot, a number of contestants are competing — at this stage of the game merely for the right to go on against other survivors, with the countdown coming in August, when winners in each category are crowned.
Just as in the celebrated televised warbling match, the hopefuls have been strutting their stuff, week by week, hoping to catch the fancy of the folks at home and, having done that, to convince them to vote in their favor.
And, just as on the TV show, you can spot most of the likely winners early on, while a good many of the auditioners are manifestly wasting their time. It has to be said, however, that, just as on Idol every season, one or two contenders, wholly unforeseen, manage to come out of nowhere to make a run for it.
It remains to be seen, however, whether the audience for this first round of competition for Shelby County offices is as impressive as that which tunes in for installments of the television show. Going merely by the results of the first few days of early voting, the auguries weren’t all that hopeful.
On the first three days of early voting, culminating with the weekend, only 1,085 eligible voters — out of 545,036 — had cast their ballots, all at the Election Commission office downtown. Mathematically, that’s a pittance, one fifth of 1 percent. Of those 1,085 voters, 43.4 percent were African Americans; 30.9 percent were whites; and 25.7 percent were classified as “other.”
A fair number of that last category were of Asian ethnicity, Native American, or Hispanic, but the majority were probably blacks and whites who choose not to reveal their race on their voter registrations. The reported imbalance between blacks and whites roughly corresponds, however, to patterns that will have emerged when voting is completed — and to patterns from the election years 2002 and 2006 when the majority-black Democratic electorate came to the polls in county primary season in numbers significantly greater than did the predominantly white Republican electorate.
And that miniscule ratio of actual voters to eligible ones is certain to rise as returns from 20 satellite locations come in between now and Thursday, April 29th, when early voting ends.
As central as the issue of city/county consolidation is destined to be this election year and beyond, it is difficult to believe that city and county voters will easily let pass the opportunity to parse the current crowd of public suitors on their positions, yea or nay. (Oppositionists tend to be more up-front in their expressions on the subject, while sympathizers or supporters are considerably more veiled).
In any case, there has been evidence here and there that the public is not indifferent — as witness the turn-away crowd that showed up for the first forum, a League of Women Voters affair, featuring candidates for Shelby County mayor. In our run-through this week of races on the May 4th ballot (next week’s “Politics” column will add some finishing touches), the mayor’s race is as good a place to start as any.
SHELBY COUNTY MAYOR
Republican: Theoretically, both major parties have races, but the one on the GOP side of the ballot is strictly pro forma.
The Republican contest matches Sheriff Mark Luttrell, a respected officeholder and proven vote-getter whose greatest asset, besides his omnipresence at public events, is his serious mien and air of competence (one which, presumably, is well-earned, particularly with regard to correctional matters, his forte). His opponent, Ernest Lunati, is a convicted felon (on pornography charges) who lacks only a “c” on the end of his last name to certify a psychic disposition and public demeanor that is, genuinely and in every sense, off the wall.
Yes, of course, Luttrell has raised money and can raise more, much more. He’s holding on to most of it, pending the Democrats’ selection of a candidate. And he’s tilted against consolidation.
Democratic: The race here is tri-fold, with General Sessions court clerk Otis Jackson’s surprise last-minute entry upsetting an apple cart which was presumed to involve two vendors, and two only — interim mayor Joe Ford and Shelby County commissioner Deidre Malone. Those two are still the major contenders, and each has strengths.
Ford has the Ford name (for better or, here and there, for worse), the incumbency, and a general reputation as a congenial, well-intentioned public servant. He also has apparently genuine impulses to conservatism, especially on fiscal matters that — along with his out-and-out opposition to consolidation — have occasionally endeared him to the commission’s Republican right wing.
Where Ford loses ground is in a certain awkwardness on the stump and in the resentment of those who begrudge his having “changed his mind” about not running after getting the interim appointment from his then fellow commissioners. He either saved the financially hard-pressed Med or fell short of doing so, depending on whose analysis you believe.
Malone is something of a charmer, notwithstanding some serious give-no-quarter battles fought with fellow commissioners on issues like a second Juvenile Court judge, gained by majority vote but now judicially disallowed. And her pleasantness of personality is anchored in a history of taking firm positions and in-depth knowledge of the many disparate issues before the commission.
What she needed to challenge Ford was exposure. She got much of what she needed by funneling a goodly part of her resources into an effective TV ad featuring herself and her mother — a financial gamble that seems to have worked. The subsequent endorsement she got from The Commercial Appeal didn’t hurt, either. Though she professes a wait-and-see attitude on what the Metro Charter Commission comes up with, she was an early propagandist for the principle of consolidation.
Jackson is probably more spoiler than contender (though in which direction is hard to say). He, too, has a good-natured personality and some hero’s laurels from his days as a University of Memphis basketballer in the Dana Kirk ’80s. But his claims of financial success in upping his court’s revenues clash somewhat with recent disclosures of apparently haphazard bookkeeping. On consolidation, his position is “No schools, no consolidation; no support in other [non-Memphis] municipalities, no consolidation.” Pretty iron-clad.
SHERIFF
Here voters will find stout races in both parties and candidates in both primaries who seem unusually and almost uniformly well prepared for the job of being the county’s chief law enforcement officer. All of the chief contenders have ample — indeed, impressive — law enforcement credentials in and out of the Sheriff’s Department, and most of them are still active in command roles. All, too, for what it’s worth, are publicly leery of consolidation.
Republican: Here you find matched the current chief deputy (Bill Oldham), who also served as police director of Memphis; the current chief jailer (James Coleman); the current SWAT team commander (Dale Lane); and a 35-year veteran of the department who commanded virtually every unit there was to command and who has spent the last six years as a Bartlett alderman (Bobby Simmons).
Oldham was probably the early favorite, and he may be the late favorite, too — having finally gotten some visible signage and evidence of active campaigning to go with an endorsement by the CA. He was a bit reticent in the campaign’s middle phase, however, which gave, first, Simmons and then Lane a shot at gathering support. Both are still in it, too, and the outcome of Lane’s candidacy will prove something — either that a candidate can win with born-again rhetoric or that such overt Christian crusading risks turning off portions of the electorate.
Coleman, the lone African American in the GOP field, is a man of humane sentiment and serious accomplishment (it was he whose remedial labors apparently freed Shelby County’s jails from supervision by the federal judiciary), and, if there is justice in the world, he will get a decent vote.
Democratic: Here, too, are active commanders with respectable pedigrees. Bennie Cobb is in charge of the uniformed patrol division, having also been ranking supervisor in divisions relating to the jail and the courts. Larry Hill is also a distinguished veteran who is currently serving as operations manager of the Shelby County court division.
Both these officers fairly sparkle when they have a chance to display their expertise, as at Monday night’s League of Women Voters forum at the Germantown Municipal Center. Each will get ample votes from members of the law enforcement ranks.
The problem that each faces is the perception among Democrats and among African Americans in particular that the Democratic nominee will be either Randy Wade, the former deputy who was administrative assistant to the late former sheriff A.C. Gilless and is the current district director for 9th District congressman Steve Cohen, or Reginald French, who logged significant time in law enforcement before becoming one of former Memphis mayor Willie Herenton’s chief assistants.
Wade, who claims an artful diplomacy among his other devices, has been Cohen’s indispensable steward with the rank and file of the 9th District’s African-American community and is largely responsible for the congressman’s constituent service. He has both street cred and a talent for summitry, which has given him access to and support in high places. And, like Oldham, he, too, has the CA‘s nod.
French is running without benefit of the ex-mayor’s election network per se (no help from Sidney Chism, for example), but his many administrative jobs for Herenton have given him connections of his own, and therefore a shot. What hurts him most, ironically, is that his long association with Herenton smacked to critics of cronyism, and that, coupled with some episodes in his past (one involving his slashing the tires of an antagonist), undermines an otherwise credible, or at least arguable, claim for this sometime entrepreneur to be regarded seriously.
TRUSTEE
Both parties have at least the semblance of a contest, with the outcome of the Republican race, in fact, difficult to forecast.
Republican: David Lenoir, a financial services manager and investment counselor and a former all-SEC end for the University of Alabama, married with two children, a volunteer football coach at institutions as diverse as Manassas High School and St. George’s Independent School, is the very embodiment of the up-and-coming suburban professional and has endorsements from mayors of outlying Shelby County municipalities.
He is opposed by John Willingham, an avuncular Old Guarder of broad experience — ranging from engineering to the art of pork barbecue. He has patents for the former and awards for the latter and found room along the way for governmental involvement, having once served in the administration of President Richard Nixon. Willingham’s wholly idiosyncratic brilliance has never been questioned. Nor has his eccentricity. (As the late political reporter Terry Keeter once observed, in saltier terms, ask Willingham what time it is, and you have a conversation on your hand that will last for hours.)
Willingham is justly revered as a watchdog over the excesses of local government, having smelled out the fishier aspects of the FedExForum deal long before anyone else. On the strength of that, he won a term on the Shelby County Commission, but he flopped as a candidate for city and county mayor. There are races he can win, and races he can’t win. Trustee is one that his name identification gives him a chance for.
Democratic: The bottom line is that Regina Morrison Newman, appointed to serve as trustee by the County Commission following the deaths of two predecessors, Bob Patterson and Paul Mattila, is hard-working and well-liked, both as candidate and as officeholder. Among her other credentials, she worked as an assistant treasurer for the city of Memphis two decades ago and was assistant to the state commissioner of revenue during the administration of former governor Ned McWherter.
As a white Democrat, a woman, and a person of broad friendships across all sorts of lines, she will be hard to beat, and her opponent, entrepreneur M. LaTroy Williams, though evidently able to self-fund (as his impressive signage here and there would indicate) has yet to work himself into the mainstream. He cannot be faulted for lack of persistence, however, having run for the office four years ago and mounted ample litigation both to defend himself against a tax delinquency for property he owned and to counter criticism in the regular and irregular media. Williams has put out a sample ballot this year featuring himself and other candidates under the auspices of the old Memphis Democratic Club, which he has attempted to revive.
REGISTER OF DEEDS
Republican: Tom Leatherwood, unopposed for renomination, has been the incumbent since 2000, when, as a sitting state senator, he won a special election to succeed the late Guy Bates. He is generally given good marks for stewardship of this low-profile position, and he escaped what might have been retaliatory opposition this year from party elements scandalized by his quixotic challenge in 2008 to 7th District congresswoman Marsha Blackburn.
Democratic: Coleman Thompson was the Democratic nominee four years ago and was considered to have the inside track on the nomination this year, when county demographics manifestly tilted even more favorably to Democrats than in the party’s near-miss year of 2006. But political newcomer Carlton Orange, a lawyer, former Tennessee State track star, and ex-Air Force pilot, has come on to offer strong competition. Nor can the aptly named Lady J. Swift be disregarded as a challenger.
SHELBY COUNTY CLERK
Republican: Wayne Mashburn, son of the late former clerk “Sonny” Mashburn, is currently an administrator in the office he seeks to head. Heavily backed by the GOP establishment, he would seem to have an easy road to the nomination against the little-known Steve Moore.
Democratic: Longtime broadcaster, publicist, and man-about-town Corey Maclin, a veteran of the wrestling and entertainment worlds, has been running non-stop for at least a year and a half and has a full head of steam against two opponents: LaKeith Miller and Charlotte Draper, the latter of whom, a clerk’s office employee, has challenged Maclin’s ambitious plans to offer weekend service hours.
PROBATE COURT CLERK
Republican: County employee and Young Republican activist Paul Boyd, unopposed for nomination, is widely considered a sacrificial lamb, although his run now may build some name recognition for later on.
Democratic: Here’s where the sweepstakes is, with several energetic candidates running — including Sondra Becton, a clerk’s office employee well known from previous races; county administrator Clay Perry; Peggy J. Dobbins; Karen Tyler; and Annita Sawyer-Hamilton. But the most visible and active for upward of a year has been veteran labor figure and former county human services director Danny Kail, who may have earned enough across-the-board support to edge out the others.
CIRCUIT COURT CLERK
Republican: The veteran Jimmy Moore, an affable and ubiquitous figure at political events, is unopposed for renomination and has enough funding and political support to run well in the general election.
Democratic: Vying for the right to challenge Moore are Ricky Dixon, brother of the former state senator and Tennessee Waltz casualty Roscoe Dixon; Carmichael Johnson, husband of county assessor Cheyenne Johnson; and Steven Webster, a realtor and former assistant state Mental Health commissioner making yet another attempt at establishing himself in local elective office.
CRIMINAL COURT CLERK
Republican: Kevin Key, son of the retiring longtime clerk, Bill Key, is the favorite against Michael Porter, an ex-Marine and former lawman seeking to get a toehold in local politics.
Democratic: Former clerk Minerva Johnican’s signs and campaign literature ask for a vote to “re-elect” her, though she hasn’t held the position since 1994, when Bill Key defeated her. Nevertheless, she was a well-known public figure back in the day and should do well, especially with the older electorate. Bail bondsman Vernon Johnson Sr. and the Rev. Ralph White are both popular and well-known figures capable of making a race of it, though.
JUVENILE COURT CLERK
Republican: Joy Touliatos, chief administrator for outgoing clerk Steve Stamson, is unopposed.
Democratic: Former clerk Shep Wilbun is still riding a wave of sympathy for what many supporters regard as unjustified accusations against his former service, which contributed to his loss against Stamson eight years ago. His name recognition as a former city councilman and county commissioner also boosts him against relative unknowns Sylvester Bradley Jr. and Charles Marshall.
(See next week’s “Politics” for updates on these races and a complete rundown on County Commission races.)
Let me just get right to the burning question of the day: Who are you going to vote for in the May 4th primary contest for Shelby County register of deeds? I know. It’s a tough one. There’s ol’ what’s his name, the incumbent. But you can’t overlook who’s his face, the up-and-coming challenger. I foresee many sleepless nights ahead as I cogitate on this race.
Or not. Like most Shelby Countians, I don’t have a dog in that hunt. Hell, off the top of my head, I don’t even know the names of the dogs in that hunt. And if the prognosticators are correct, only 10 percent of Shelby Countians will bother to learn their names and vote in the primaries.
If Jay Leno can make a living baffling people on the street by asking them to name the vice president, I think it’s safe to say the vast majority of us would fail a quiz asking us to identify, say, the current Probate Court clerk. Most of us would be more likely to be able to name an American Idol judge. I can name three: Randy “Pitchy Dawg” Jackson, Ellen DeGeneres, and Simon Cowell. Then there’s that other chick.
Kara Dioguardi
But even though the lower-level officeholders may be on a par with the “other chick,” their jobs are important. They are paid significant taxpayer-funded salaries. We want court paperwork filed properly. We want our deed registered accurately. We don’t need a flashy politician to run, say, the Shelby County trustee’s office. We just need an honest, reasonably intelligent human being.
The stakes are a little higher for the two “glamour” races at the top of the ballot — county mayor and county sheriff. With some form of consolidation proposal slated for this fall’s ballot, it behooves us to pay attention to where the mayoral candidates stand on that issue and many others. Character and leadership qualities are also important.
Nor is managing the second-largest police force in the county a job for an amateur or someone with character issues. Shelby County suffered through two decades of cronyism, nepotism, and other malfeasances with former sheriffs A.C. Gilless and Jack Owens. With crime paramount in many voters’ minds, the office of county sheriff requires a thoughtful vote.
I would venture to say that most of us have some homework to catch up on in order to learn all we can about the candidates before May 4th rolls around. A good place to start is with Jackson Baker’s cover story on page 18.
See you at the polls.
Bruce VanWyngarden