As noted in this space last week, the current Memphis city election year is seemingly destined to become the most long-distance such event in the city’s history, with several mayoral candidates already declared and notably running months in advance of any actual voting.
To stress the point: No ballots will be cast until September 15th, when early voting begins for the election, which concludes for most purposes on October 5th. Should there be district council races in which there is no majority winner, runoffs will be held for those districts on November 16th.
Contestants for mayor and for city council positions will not even be able to pick up their qualifying petitions from the Election Commission until May 22nd, almost three months from now. And district lines for the 13 council positions are still under review.
All these facts indicate just how far off in time the election really is; though in key races, for city council as well as for mayor, there is a distinct flurry of activity as would-be candidates try to get their campaigns (and their fundraising needs) established and in order.
• Apropos long-distance campaigning, Monday night of this week saw a different application of the term. Memphis mayoral candidate James Harvey, speaking not in Memphis but before an audience in Germantown, held forth for an hour and a half. That’s the length of speaking time that occurs usually only for events like a presidential State of the Union address or an arena speech by Donald Trump to one of his devoted, cult-like audiences.
Harvey, a longtime FedEx administrator who now is proprietor of his own staffing service, is a former member of the Shelby County Commission and served a term as that body’s chairman. An African American, he was a Democrat in those days, but his party affiliation has become somewhat ambiguous. He has involved himself in several Republican races as a sponsor of other people’s events, but on Monday night he downplayed the issue of partisanship (appropriately enough for the Memphis city election, which is formally nonpartisan).
Monday night’s event, at the Perkins Restaurant & Bakery in Germantown, was sponsored by the Shelby County Republican Party’s outreach committee, and chaired by the indefatigable Naser Fazlullah, who advised attendees that Harvey had “the gift of gab.”
That’s one way of putting it. Another was voiced years ago by then County Commissioner Chris Thomas, who commented after one of colleague Harvey’s extended monologues, “I could have gone out and gotten a haircut during all of that.”
James Harvey does indeed love to talk, and, though several members of his audience Monday night had to leave before he finished, the body as a whole seemed to resonate with his remarks, which focused on public safety and crime and the value of strong authority. He declared himself in favor of age 15 as the outer limit for Juvenile Court supervision and fulminated against tinted car windows and the antisocial actions of wayward youths, whom he characterized by the terms “Li’l Billy and Li’l Pookie.” He also at one point singled out “Jay [sic] Morant,” the Grizzlies superstar who has recently been involved in a series of questionable incidents.
As a candidate, Harvey is something of an anomaly and would be well advised to limit his speaking time but, in the best of circumstances, could find appreciative audiences like the one Monday night.
• Businessman J.W. Gibson, who is able to self-fund if need be, formally announced his candidacy for Mayor at an event Monday at the Stax Museum, calling for a “different tune” in city government.
