Author: Jackson Baker

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Taylor Resolution Limping

Young at Kiwanis: Leery of “BS” issues (Photo: Jackson Baker)

After a lengthy period of inaction on it, state Senator Brent Taylor’s much-vaunted legislative resolution to remove Shelby County DA Steve Mulroy from office was scheduled for a hearing in the state House Criminal Justice Subcommittee on Wednesday of this week.

Asked about the matter following his appearance before the Downtown Kiwanis Club last week, Mayor Paul Young had this to say: “I don’t think they should remove a duly elected individual. I told Brent that, but I opt not to get into all of the public back-and-forth on DA Mulroy or the school board because I believe that Memphis needs a leader that can stay above the fray. And I get so sick of the drama. It’s just nauseating. Every day is some BS that people want us to respond to that’s all personality-driven that does not help our people, so I stay out of it and let them figure it out.”

What the House subcommittee will try to figure out was expressed this way in Taylor’s original Senate resolution: “General Assembly, Statement of Intent or Position – Authorizes the Speaker of Senate to appoint a committee to meet with a like committee from the House of Representatives to consider the removal of Steven J. Mulroy from the office of District Attorney General for the Thirtieth Judicial District by the Tennessee General Assembly acting pursuant to Article VI, Section 6 of the Constitution of Tennessee.” 

The Senate resolution has not so far advanced. It is the House version, more or less identically worded and co-sponsored by state Representative Kevin Vaughn, that will be considered on Wednesday, to be regarded either (in Young’s phrase) as “BS” or, as Senator Taylor has argued, as an important element of his soi-disant “Make Memphis Matter” campaign.

Taylor has issued a lengthy, if somewhat sketchy, bill of particulars to justify his essential claim that Mulroy’s tenure is injurious to the prospects for crime control in Memphis. 

Word to this point has been that few members of the legislature’s leadership or its rank and file have shared Taylor’s sense of urgency or timing.

The issue will be vying for attention with such matters as a pending measure authorizing state takeover of the Memphis Shelby County School Board and Governor Bill Lee’s announcement this week of a supplement to his budget.

And both Mulroy and Young, in his remarks to Kiwanis last week, have cited figures showing dramatic recent decreases in the incidence of crime in the city.

The mayor presented figures showing a 13.3 percent decrease in crime overall since 2022, with reductions occurring in every ZIP code except two. Homicides were down 30 percent, and motor vehicle thefts were down 39 percent, he said.

He also cited figures demonstrating that crimes in the FedExForum area were substantially lower than equivalent areas in Downtown Nashville.

“Results,” he said when asked why the city council, which failed to approve his reappointment of Police Chief C.J. Davis in 2024, had unanimously approved her this year.

• The appointment of Circuit Court Judge Valerie Smith to replace the retiring Judge Arnold Goldin on the state  Court of Appeals was finalized by the legislature on Monday.

• Inspired by the ongoing series of angry popular protests of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) actions at congressional town halls nationwide, Shelby County Democrats made ready to organize a protest action last Saturday at a scheduled local appearance by 8th District Republican Congressman David Kustoff.

The action had to be called off, however, when Kustoff’s speech to the men’s club at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in Germantown was canceled because of what church officials called “safety concerns.” 

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Fallout

Pastor Ricky Floyd (Photo: Pursuit of God Church Memphis | Facebook)

In a scenario occasioned by the tragic shooting death this past week of revered pastor Ricky Floyd, two prominent members of the Memphis political community found themselves at loggerheads.

The two were Javier “Jay” Bailey, CAO in the office of Assessor Melvin Burgess and newly announced candidate for assessor to succeed his term-limited boss, and Antonio “Two-Shay” Parkinson, influential state representative from District 98 in North Memphis and longtime chair of the legislature’s Black Caucus.

There was already a certain amount of bad blood between the two as a result of what Parkinson felt was an innuendo from Bailey that he had sided with the Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) board in the firing of former schools Superintendent Marie Feagins. But the dispute rose to incendiary dimensions when Bailey chose to comment on the Floyd killing on his Facebook page.  

His commentary began with a seemingly uncontroversial sentiment: “Pastor Ricky Floyd was my friend. I am absolutely saddened by his death and this community will suffer the loss of a great man concerned about more than himself.”

Bailey would continue with an admonition for people to avoid passing judgment on Floyd’s accused slayer Samantha Marion, who was arrested for shooting Floyd after the two quarreled outside a South Memphis restaurant and bar in the early hours of Wednesday, March 12th.

“[L]et us take caution and not turn this sister into a villain or a demon,” Bailey wrote. “There are facts that most of you have not heard.” Although Bailey did not go on to divulge any “facts” per se, he seemed to Parkinson to be implying that the quarrel and the shooting stemmed from the existence of a prior relationship between Floyd and Marion, who was charged with manslaughter in his death. 

That was enough to enrage Parkinson, well-known to be close to the deceased minister and his partner in many a public activism. In a Facebook post of his own, Parkinson noted that follow-up investigation appeared to show that Floyd and Marion had not known each other and wrote: “Many people who claimed to be Ricky Floyd[’s] friend, like Javier Bailey and others, that was posting for clout, comments and likes are about to feel real stupid now.”

Between the two of them, these Facebook posts generated several hundred responses from Facebook perusers, who exploded with expletives, high emotion, and every conceivable surmise as to the fatal confrontation between Floyd and Marion — the cause of which remains mysterious as of this writing.

The killing of Floyd was mourned among every social stratum of his home city, and especially among the members of Memphis’ African-American population, where the reverend was increasingly regarded as someone between a hero and a saint.

Nor were the denizens of the state’s General Assembly unaffected when the late pastor was honored with a moment of silence on the House floor.

The heated interchange between Parkinson and Bailey was in a sense just another symptom of the toll and human dimensions of the drama. 

A commemoration of the Reverend Floyd, under the heading “Celebration Service,” will be held at Greater Imani Church on Austin Peay on the morning of Friday, March 28th, with visitation on the preceding date at R.S. Lewis & Sons Funeral Home. 

• The aforementioned Marie Feagins affair and this week’s showdown in the General Assembly on a proposed state takeover of the MSCS school board were footnoted during Monday’s meeting of the Shelby County Commission in a suggestion by Commissioner Shante Avant that the commission’s vote several weeks ago of “no confidence” in the board had been an influence in the introduction of the takeover legislation.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Cohen Still Goin’

Steve Cohen (Photo: U.S. House of Representatives, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

Insofar as some degree of suspense has attached to the question of Steve Cohen’s reelection plans for 2026, it can now apparently be dispelled.

In a telephone conversation on Monday, the 9th District congressman said it explicitly: “I’m running!”

The Democratic congressman said he is convinced that his party will recoup the losses it suffered in 2024 and will regain a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives in next year’s election.

“I’m looking forward to the change,” commented Cohen who, without specifying, said he looked forward to improved committee assignments and chairing opportunities. 

The congressman said he’d been checked out thoroughly by his personal physician, who pronounced him in good shape to keep running and to attend to his future duties.

In an oblique reference to a famous Mark Twain quote (“Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”), Cohen recalled a TV panel show of some years ago during which a local political figure, since deceased, claimed to have certain knowledge that Cohen, suffering from “post-polio” circumstances, would be resigning from his office, to be replaced by another local figure.

“My demise didn’t occur. Hers did,” Cohen deadpanned.

The congressman is indeed a survivor of poliomyelitis, a disease he suffered long ago as a child and which severely affected one leg but did not prevent a political career which has endured for numerous decades, including service on the Shelby County Commission, the Tennessee state Senate and, since 2006, the U.S. House.

Most recently, he has sponsored legislation to require training and integrity standards for income tax preparers.

Like several other observers and most elected Democrats, Cohen regrets President Trump’s choice of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as secretary of health and human services.

Kennedy has been conspicuous over the years as a skeptic about the advantages of vaccination and has been widely condemned for his views, even by other members of his renowned political family. Criticism of the secretary has been compounded by the fact of recent measles outbreaks among the nation’s unvaccinated population.  

“He’s made lots of money off his involvement in anti-vax organizations,” Cohen further charged.

• Cohen’s declaration of candidacy for 2026 does not, of course, preclude the possibility of his having opposition.

Among the local political figures most frequently mentioned as potential claimants to the 9th District congressional seat at some point are Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, state Senator Raumesh Akbari, and state Representative Justin J. Pearson — all Democrats.

Pearson received abundant national attention in 2023 as one of the “Tennessee Three” House members who incurred Republican wrath, including an expulsion effort, for protesting state government’s inaction on gun safety following a school shooting in Nashville.

Though still regarded as likely to be a long-term political eminence, Pearson has had a shaky, sparsely attended legislative session so far — one marked by, among other things, his inadvertent, apparently accidental, casting of an aye vote for Governor Bill Lee’s voucher legislation.

In delivering the 17th annual Murray Lecture at Vanderbilt University last month, Pearson touched on both his forebodings regarding the danger of firearms and the gun suicide in December of his brother, Timphrance Darnell Pearson — one obvious reason for his recent preoccupation.

Sharing the 988 suicide and crisis hotline number with his audience, Pearson said, “We have an epidemic of gun violence in our communities, and it is really imperative that we do everything that we can to help save anybody we can. I didn’t know what my brother was struggling with. We didn’t know about [the] mental illness that he had. You don’t know who’s struggling next to you or in your families.” 

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Trump Pardons Brian Kelsey

Brian Kelsey

Years ago, back when he was first indicted for campaign finance violations, then state Senator Brian Kelsey explained publicly that it was all a plot against him by the Biden administration.

A lot of people (us included) got a laugh out of that, and it wasn’t (necessarily) a case of schadenfreude, a German phrase meaning “the taking of pleasure at someone else’s misfortune.”

The general reaction, even from Kelsey’s friends and supporters, was a sense that the Germantown Republican, who’d gotten nailed for illegally channeling money from his state campaign treasury into his unsuccessful 2016 race for Congress, was inflating his own importance beyond belief.

I mean, what were the odds that Biden had even heard of an obscure small-fryTennessee state legislator, much less made a point of targeting him?

The joke, as it turns out, is on the doubters.

As the Nashville-based political newsletter The Tennessee Journal was the first to reveal on Tuesday evening, Donald J. Trump — Joe Biden’s successor as president of the United States, mind you — has expended one of his famous magic pardons on Kelsey, who for the last two weeks had been languishing in federal prison in Kentucky.

Here, verbatim and in toto, is Kelsey’s own Tweet concerning the miracle:

“God used Donald Trump to save me from the weaponized Biden DOJ. This afternoon I received a full and unconditional pardon from an act that even my chief accuser admitted I didn’t commit. Thank you for all your prayers! Praise the Lord most high! May God bless America, despite the prosecutorial sins it committed against me, President Trump, and others the past four years. And God bless Donald J. Trump for Making America Great Again!”

This is not a spoof.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

The Ed Ford Matter

Reginald Milton and mother last week (Photo: Courtesy Reginald Milton)

The news that came down late last week of the federal indictment of Shelby County Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr. on one count of alleged bribery and six counts of alleged tax fraud generated less public notice than might ordinarily have been expected.

After all, it somewhat reprises media attention from 2021, when Ford came under suspicion for alleged improprieties stemming from his computer company’s sale of laptops to the nonprofit organization Junior Achievement.

An article by then-Commercial Appeal reporter Katherine Burgess had led to an investigation of the transaction by a commission-appointed special ethics committee and a probe by a special investigator for former DA Amy Weirich. She reported that Ford, though the grant sponsor, had conspicuously absented himself from a 2019 commission vote on the outlay of some $450,000 to JA, then later sold them a supply of laptops at a profit. 

Last week’s indictment enumerates several transactions involving Ford and assorted other nonprofits between 2018 and 2022. He is accused of netting some $265,000 in kickbacks from taxpayer-funded grants in amounts totaling approximately $630,000.

County Mayor Lee Harris, with whom Ford has consistently feuded over the years, has called for Ford to be prohibited, so long as he is under federal charges, from further participation in the “Shelby County Milton Community Enhancement Grants,” named after the former commissioner who proposed them in 2019, Reginald Milton, who now serves as deputy administrator of the county’s Office of Educational and Youth Services.

Widely regarded as providing successful linkage between the commission’s 13 members and the constituencies they represent, these grants come from modest quadrennial allotments of $200,000 or less to each member for piecemeal allocation to entities in the districts they serve. The grants are initiated by individual commissioners and then voted on by the entire commission.

Since its creation, the program has proceeded without blemish, a circumstance underscored by Harris who in a statement Monday said, “While there is a presumption of innocence until proven guilty, [Ford’s] continued grant-making as a commissioner unnecessarily taints the process and undermines the credibility of this commission program and the nonprofits who participate.”

For his part, Republican Commissioner Mick Wright acknowledged his own participation in the grant program but suggested in an X post on Monday that there was “a need for greater transparency and accountability from Shelby County government.”

• Meanwhile, the aforementioned Reginald Milton, in a story as uplifting as the saga mentioned above is unsettling, gathered with an older brother and sister last week to celebrate the 105th birthday of their mother Ollie Mae Brown. 

Born in Mississippi in the second decade of the previous century, Ms. Brown was in her 50s when she bore the current county administrator (himself a more than sprightly 60-something today).

“My parents called me their god-child,” jests the former commissioner, “meaning, when they learned I was coming, they said to each other, ‘Oh my god!’”

His mother remains clear of mind and memory and is able to recall numerous former slaves from her own childhood. It all helps Milton realize that social deprivation is not a case of long ago, but, in effect, was just yesterday and indeed persists.

Beyond his county duties, Milton is a community organizer in the vein of former President Obama, heading the South Memphis Alliance, a consortium of 10 neighborhood organizations pooling self-help resources and offering foster services. And he provides a laundromat for his charges. He sees the enhancement grant program in that light — as a way for the government to assist underserved communities in moving themselves forward. And he welcomes any useful oversight of the process. 

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

An Improbable Man

Thaddeus Matthews (Photo: Wikimedia Commons via YouTube | Shawn Prez)

Perhaps the most surprising news to come from the revelation Monday of the death of the pastor/broadcaster/activist/firebrand Thaddeus Matthews was that Matthews had long had his own Wikipedia page, a mark of temporal renown that has eluded many another ambitious and outwardly more seemly Memphians.

In advance of his passing at the age of 66, the much-consulted online biography service had included Matthews as “‘The Cussing Pastor,’ … an American pastor and broadcaster, who gained popularity for using profanity in his preaching.” And it went on to cite several examples of Matthews’ notoriety in that regard, including an Instagram video entitled “I Don’t Give a Shit Saturday,” which ended up being sampled in a song by the rapper/DJ Madlib.

Anyone who followed the ups and downs of Matthews’ local activity would surely regard that as pretty tame stuff. In his various guises, including a self-produced streaming video service that was the guilty secret of many a local pol-watcher, Matthews forsook any and all niceties in his characterizations of whomever he happened to be feuding with — and that would include many an unlucky political celebrity, including W.W. Herenton, the city’s former mayor for almost two decades.  

For a lengthy spell, Matthews devoted himself to daily fulminations against the mayor and basically appointed himself unofficial chairman of a variety of madcap efforts to have Herenton impeached, recalled, tarred and feathered, or, one way or another, turned out of office. 

None of that had much relation to anything realistic, of course, but it surely had nuisance value and went on for quite a while until Mayor Herenton hit upon the remedy for all this vituperation: He took out paid advertising on Matthews’ show, and that was enough to change his profile overnight into that of a heroic champion of the people.

Much has been made in recent years of the prevalence of “bogus ballots,” broadsheets that would turn up in an election year, featuring endorsements of political candidates who had paid this or that publisher for the privilege.

Thaddeus Matthews, on his broadcast show, was that sort of thing, writ large. You paid up, or else.

And a select few of his declared enemies could count on being the subjects of a barrage of scatological and obscene accusations that knew no bounds.

For all that, and despite brushes with the law for such things as harassment of girlfriends and putting pornography on the air, Matthews developed something of a reputation in political circles as a scoop artist. He knew where a lot of bodies were buried.

He could even turn the tables on himself. Even after the onset of his final illness, he allegedly self-posted a video showing himself deep-throating a dildo.

Thaddeus Matthews was an American original, and Wikipedia didn’t know the half of it. 

• It is a well-worn fact that state Senator Brent Taylor took on two primary named adversaries in his self-serving vendetta against the local law enforcement establishment (aka “Make Memphis Matter”) — General Sessions Court Judge Bill Anderson and Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy.

It therefore becomes something of an irony that Anderson, who has been forced into early retirement at least partially due to Taylor’s nonstop attacks, will be succeeded on the bench by a Mulroy protege, his former University of Memphis law student Taylor Bachelor, who has been serving as an assistant DA and on Monday was named to Anderson’s former position by a vote of the Shelby County Commission.

Mulroy’s take: “We considered her quite the catch. She’s been on board for about six or eight months or so, working in the gangs-and-drug unit. I’m sorry to lose her, but I’m happy for her. It’s always nice when a former student makes good.”

• After years of attempting delays, former state Senator Brian Kelsey has surrendered and is serving a federal prison term for his conviction on campaign finance violations. 

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Catching Up

Protesters gathered on President’s Day to condemn President Donald Trump and his administration. (Photo: Chris Davis)

The Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility had good news last week for Shelby County DA Steve Mulroy regarding four distinct matters charged against him by his persistent adversary, state Senator Brent Taylor, who had included them in his proposed resolution to seek legislative removal of Mulroy. 

The board found Mulroy legally blameless in:

1) His decision to take the death penalty off the table in the murder case of Michael Sample, when two different experts concluded that the defendant was intellectually disabled and thus ineligible, under the law, for the death penalty.

2) His decision not to oppose a reduction of a 162-year sentence for a string of nonviolent forgeries in the case of Courtney Anderson. 

3) and 4) Two separate allegations that he had engaged in improper “ex parte” communication with a presiding judge outside the presence of opposing counsel. 

OUTMemphis placed third at the 12th Annual TEP Gumbo Contest. (Photo: Courtesy Jonathan Cole)

• The OUTMemphis organization, whose booth is pictured here, was one of several winners in the annual fundraising gumbo contest sponsored by the Tennessee Equality Project.

The 12th annual TEP event was held Sunday at the Memphis Sports and Events Center at Liberty Park, drawing a large crowd of entrants, attendees, and public figures who braved the frigid weather.

Proceeds from the event support a variety of projects which, in the words of TEP, “advance the well-being of LGBTQ people and their families here at home in Tennessee.”

Among the elected politicians on hand were state Senator Raumesh Akbari and state Representative Gabby Salinas. Senator Akbari served as one of five primary judges for the event.

This year’s event was held amid several pending developments in both state and national government of direct interest to the LGBTQ community and on the eve of hearings in the state General Assembly on HB 315/SB 0737, the “Tennessee Covenant Marriage Act.”

That legislation, as described by its chief sponsor, state Representative Gino Bulso (R-Williamson), would allow marital unions “between a man and a woman,” requiring compulsory counseling and excluding “irreconcilable differences” as reasons for divorce.

Bulso said the bill would also challenge the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that enabled same-sex marriages.

• President’s Day weekend was notable in other ways as well. On Monday, a sizeable crowd of protesters gathered Downtown to convey their sentiments regarding ongoing actions by the Trump administration.

Former Flyer staffer Chris Davis was there and took the photo below. 

(Photo: Chris Davis)
Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog Politics Feature

Political Dominoes

(left) Marsha Blackburn; (right) Bill Hagerty (Photos: United States Senate, Public domain | Wikimedia Commons)

To remind the faithful readers of this space: In our year-end issue, we offered forecasts about the shape of things to come in the political arena.

One circumstance noted for the record was the fact that both of Tennessee’s incumbent U.S. senators — Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty — would strongly consider running for governor in 2026.

That is what our pipeline said, and that is what we reported, even though it seemed passing strange, even to us. Why? Because the customary rites of passage flow in the opposite direction — with the gubernatorial office more often serving as a springboard for Senate, than vice versa.

That is definitely the pattern in our neighboring state of Arkansas, where such eminent recent members of the Senate as Dale Bumpers and David Pryor (both now deceased) served what amounted to apprenticeships as governor before going on to become senators.

To be sure, ambitions may figure differently in the Land of Opportunity than in the Volunteer State, but Lamar Alexander ran first for governor and then for senator. And one recalls the unhappy, arguably tragic fate of Democrat Frank Clement, who served several terms as the state’s governor before meeting his Waterloo in two successive failed runs for the Senate.

(Interestingly, Clement’s second and final failed try, in 1966, resulted in the election to the Senate of Republican Howard Baker — the forerunner of what, in the course of time, would become the wall-to-wall ubiquity of GOP state officials.)

In any case, both of Tennessee’s current Republican senators have floated unmistakable trial balloons regarding gubernatorial races in 2026, and both seem dead serious. It may be far-fetched to imagine a competitive race between the two, but, my, wouldn’t that be an attention-grabber!

More likely, forces in the Republican Establishment — most notably Donald Trump — would probably dictate the choice of one over the other. (Either could make a plausible claim of loyalty to the president and to the MAGA agenda.)

And, given the high probability of success for the ultimate GOP nominee, one can imagine a domino-like chain reaction of opportunities opening up for other upwardly mobile Tennessee Republicans.

If Hagerty makes a governor’s race, he could either run for both governor and re-election as senator simultaneously, or go ahead and shed his Senate seat (his term would expire in 2026, anyhow) while campaigning for governor. In that latter eventuality, a race for his departed seat would occur in 2026, with a high probability that 8th District Congressman David Kustoff would be a candidate.

Kustoff’s seat, in turn, might then well be targeted by, say, the preternaturally ambitious state Senator Brent Taylor, in which case his seat would open as well, with possible aspirants for it including former city councilmen Kemp Conrad and Frank Colvett, and maybe even state Rep. Mark White. (A White race would create yet another vacancy and another domino.)

If Blackburn runs and wins, she would keep her Senate seat until being sworn in, in which case either she or a lame-duck Bill Lee would appoint a temporary Senate successor, with a special election for a permanent senator to be held in 2028.

The same sort of sequence as mentioned above for a Hagerty win might then occur, involving the same or a similar cast of characters, though everything would happen at a later remove in time.

Got all that straight, gentle reader? Probably not, though it could be worse. There are other permutations and possible complications we’re sparing you from.

The bottom line is that some shock and awe seems certain for the state’s political calendar in 2026, along with a potentially dizzy round of dominoes.

And who knows? Maybe some as yet unknown Democrat comes out of nowhere to spoil the party at some point along the succession line. 

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Rumors and Reality

JB Smiley Jr. (Photo: Jackson Baker)

Okay, we are at that stage of political and public developments in which rumors, which have been flying fast and furious, are yielding to reality and tying disparate events together.

To start with what would be newsworthy on its own, the ambitions of various would-be candidates for the office of Shelby County mayor in 2026 are crystallizing into direct action.

As noted here several weeks ago, the list of likely aspirants includes city council member and recent chair JB Smiley Jr., entrepreneur/philanthropist J.W. Gibson, Shelby County commissioner and former chair Mickell Lowery, Assessor Melvin Burgess Jr., Criminal Court Clerk Heidi Kuhn, and county CAO Harold Collins.

Smiley, Gibson, and, reportedly, Lowery are basically declared and actively nibbling at potential donors. Smiley in particular has been soliciting funding and support in a barrage of text requests.

For better or worse, meanwhile, the erstwhile council chair finds himself also at the apex of events stemming from the ongoing showdown between now-deposed schools Superintendent Marie Feagins and the Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) board.

A suit against the board by Feagins quotes Smiley as having angrily responded to Feagins’ petition last summer for a legal order of protection against influential commodities trader and political donor Dow McVean, with whom Feagins had feuded.

The suit alleges that, in a phone call, Smiley “shouted at Dr. Feagins, ‘Don’t you ever file a f***ing police report in this city again without telling me first. … You don’t know these people. … My funders are on me now telling me she has to go because they know I supported you. … They are telling me to get rid of you.’”  

Smiley was also quoted in the suit as telling a third party, “We are coming after [Feagins].” 

• A bizarre sideline to the Feagins controversy: During a lull in last week’s proceedings of the local Republican Party’s chairmanship convention at New Hope Christian Church, a rumor spread in the church auditorium’s packed balcony that had astonishing implications.

It was that Feagins was the daughter of one of her predecessors and a well-known one at that — none other than Willie Herenton, who served a lengthy tenure as schools superintendent before serving an even longer time as the city’s mayor. 

A tall tale, indeed. As it turned out, the rumor was based on someone’s hasty reading of a line in The Commercial Appeal’s account of the heated school board meeting at which a MSCS board majority voted Feagins out.

The line read as follows: “Prior to reading off her prepared statements, Feagins acknowledged her father and former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, who were in the audience.”

The tell-tale word “were” is the key to the misreading. It indicates clearly that Feagins’ citation of the individuals was plural and not at all of the same person. But, coming late in the sentence, the verb seems to have been overpowered by the previous yoking of “her father and former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton.”

“Were” got read as “was.” And all of a sudden, a short-lived cause célèbre got birthed.

• For that matter, the conflict between schools superintendent and board in Memphis seems to have caused an equally over-excited reaction in the state capital of Nashville, where state House Speaker Cameron Sexton, well-known already for his frequent designs upon what remains of home rule in Shelby County, let loose with brand-new threats against the autonomy of the elected MSCS board.

As noted by various local media, Sexton announced his intention for a state-government takeover of the local schools system. Radio station KWAM, an ultra-conservative outlet, had Sexton on their air as saying, in a guest appearance, that “plans are being drawn up to declare the local school board ‘null and void’” and that “the state will take over the school board.” [Sexton’s emphasis.]

More of all this anon. 

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

State Party Transitions

Worth Morgan (Photo: Memphis City Council)

In the political sphere, both major political parties chose new leaders over the weekend. 

The executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party (TNDP), meeting in Nashville on Saturday, elected Rachel Campbell of Chattanooga the party’s new state chair. Campbell, currently chair of the Hamilton County Democratic Party, defeated state Representative Gloria Johnson, the party’s unsuccessful 2024 candidate for the U.S. Senate, and three other candidates.

The election required two ballots, with Campbell ultimately winning over runner-up Johnson by a margin of 43 to 22. One of the issues militating against Johnson was a concern that, as an elected state official, her direct involvement in fundraising campaigns would be limited by restrictions set by the state Election Registry.

The TNDP elected Nathan Higdon of Blount County as vice chair.

And in Shelby County, also on Saturday, a few hundred delegates turned out for the local Republican Party’s biennial convention at New Hope Christian Church in Bartlett, electing former Memphis city councilman Worth Morgan Shelby County Republican chair over party vice chair Naser Fazlullah.

The contest had generated a fair amount of friction in local Republican circles, some of it carrying over to the convention itself, largely on account of Fazlullah’s charge that Morgan had been insufficient in his support of President Donald Trump.

Fazlullah repeated the charge to the convention attendees on Saturday, and for his pains heard himself being hooted at from the floor by supporters of Morgan, one of whom hurled the deadly epithet “Rino” (for Republican in Name Only) at Fazlullah.

The tally results — 307 votes for Morgan, 100 for Fazlullah— indicated that the advance Sturm und Drang, which was considerable, had been wholly disproportionate to the actual alignment of forces in party ranks.

Morgan’s campaign, run under the rubric “25 [for 2025] to Revive,” had been well organized and clearly included in its ranks a lopsided majority of local GOP influencers.

Patti Possel, a veteran of the erstwhile deannexation-from-Memphis movement in the suburbs, was elected local GOP vice chair.

Jim Kyle (Photo: Tennessee Courts)

• Jim Kyle, the onetime Democratic leader in the state Senate, who gave up his legislative seat a decade ago to make a successful run for Shelby County chancellor, made his retirement from the bench formal last week. 

Some months ago, Kyle had been forced to step down from his judicial duties because of the debilitating effects of CIDP (chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy). Lawyer Jim Newsom was appointed special judge, a temporary successor to Kyle, by Governor Bill Lee. 

Kyle reports progress in what has been a difficult rehabilitation period, one which has severely restricted his movements and confined him to a wheelchair. He is looked after by his wife, state Senator Sara Kyle, by other family members, and by various ad hoc helpers.

Gamely, Kyle says he is greatly buoyed by the imminent birth of a grandchild to his son James Kyle Jr. and by devoted watching of the televised games — “good, bad, and ugly” —of the Grizzlies basketball team.