Sheriff Floyd Bonner was the top vote-getter of all Shelby County candidates in 2018, the year he was elected to his first term. Running as a Democrat, he handily defeated Republican Dale Lane, a veteran deputy who has since become police chief of Collierville.
Bonner is certain to do well in 2022, as well. For one thing, he will have no opposition this year from a Republican candidate. The local GOP ICS has petitioned for primaries in all county races except that for sheriff.
Asked why, Cary Vaughn, current chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party, said, “We think he [Bonner] has done an exemplary job and deserves everybody’s support. We believe in leadership, and we think that’s what he’s offered.”
The GOP’s position recaps in a way the enthusiasm of former Sheriff Bill Oldham, Bonner’s predecessor and a Republican, who endorsed Democrat Bonner, rather than Lane, to succeed him in 2018.
Democrats might be entitled to feel pleased that one of their own is apparently guaranteed a conflict-free re-election contest. There is always the chance that a candidate or two will run independent campaigns for sheriff, but, lacking the backing of an organized partisan effort, any such candidate would have little chance of prevailing.
A factor mitigating Democrats’ pleasure in seeing Bonner go unopposed is, no doubt, the well-founded suspicion of an ulterior motive on the part of the Republicans. The “blue wave” county election of 2018, which saw Bonner and other Democratic candidates carried into office, was a confirmation of a demographic fact: The population of Shelby County — majority-Black and working-class — has finally begun to reflect that demographic reality in local elections as well as in presidential ones.
In the two or three county elections leading up to 2018, Republicans had managed to do well, but eventually the statistics began to tell, and GOP success in all-county balloting from now on will depend on (a) such superior organization as the party can manage, and (b) having candidates with clear crossover appeal.
In eschewing to nominate a rival candidate for sheriff, the Republicans simultaneously are hoping thereby to scale down Democrat campaign efforts generally and are husbanding their own resources for such races as that by District Attorney General Amy Weirich, seeking re-election against Democratic competition.
Ironically, there was a modest but unsuccessful effort by a few members last week in a meeting of the Shelby County Democratic Committee to seek a critical vote on Sheriff Bonner’s compliance with a federal decree on Covid protections for jail inmates.
• Like other elected political bodies elsewhere, the Shelby County Commission is working overtime in efforts to agree on a redistricting map for the next round of elections in 2022.
After several rounds of discussion, both with each other and with members of the Shelby County Schools board, also facing an election, commission members are seeking agreement on finished products for both their own election and that of SCS. A preliminary decision could come as early as Wednesday of next week, says Darrick Harris, the commission’s ex-officio assistant in the matter. Final decision is due by November.
So far, at least eight different maps have been chewed over by the participating commissioners (mainly the six incumbents who intend re-election bids: Amber Mills, District 1; David Bradford, District 2; Mick Wright, District 3; Michael Whaley, District 5; Mickell Lowery, District 8; Edmund Ford Jr., District 9; and Brandon Morrison, District 13).
