Category: Politics Beat Blog

A mid-December poll taken under the supervision of veteran political consultant John Bakker shows that Shelby County Public Defender A C Wharton, the Democratic candidate with whom Bakke is working, commanded a majority of the likely Democratic primary voters asked for a preference among party candidates for Shelby County mayor.

Wharton’s standing in the poll of 606 voters, surveyed between December 10th and 14th, was at 51 percent, as against 13 percent for Bartlett banker Harold Byrd and 11 percent for Midtown State Representative Carol Chumney.

The poll also showed that, when matched against Republican Larry Scroggs in this year’s general election, Wharton would enjoy a ratio in his favor of two to one, Bakke said.

Scroggs, a state representative from Germantown, is the only Republican to have announced for county mayor so far and the only one tested, although Bakke acknowledged that County Commissioner Clair VanderSchaaf, who has talked about running, would bge a figure to reckon with also, should he decide to make the race.

Isaac Ford, who has filed as an independent candidate, was not included in the survey, nor was radiologist/radio-station owner George Flinn, who filed as a Republican, then withdrew his petition, and is considering re-filing as an independent.

“I loved Ophelia…forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum.” – Hamlet, in the Shakespeare play of the same name.

There once was a popular superstition that the Ford family of Memphis had a monolithic hold on Democratic politics in the inner city. Despite some isolated election results that might have disproved this, some Memphians still believe it. The fact is, as the recent mayoral filing by 27-year-old Isaac Ford suggested, there is not even a single party line within the family itself. That fact was newly demonstrated at the Election Commission Wednesday by the picking up of a petition for the County Commission by Ophelia Ford.

Ophelia Ford is the sister of Harold Ford Sr., the family patriarch, and of several other Ford brothers who have been active politically – including former city councilman Joe Ford and current councilman Edmund Ford. In 1999, she was beat to the punch by brother Edmund, who filed to succeed brother Joe, who would run an unsuccessful race for mayor. For a while, they were both candidates, but eventually Ophelia yielded to her brother and withdrew.

Not this trip. Since the death last month of Dr. James Ford, a member of the Shelby County Commission, the supposition in the family – and in the political community at large — has been that Joe Ford would run to succeed his brother. Indeed, Commissioner Michael Hooks Sr. made a moving speech at the next commission meeting in which he said in effect that it had been one of Dr. Ford’s dying wishes that brother Joe Ford succeed him on the commission.

Sister Ophelia scoffs at that. “It was extremely poor judgment for Michael to go public talking about our deceased brother’s wishes. We don’t need Michael to tell our family what our wishes are.” So she picked up a petition to run for brother James’ District 3, Position 1 seat as soon as the commission had resolved all district boundaries and it was legal to do so. She thereby beat brother Joe to the punch this time, and that was no accident.

“I’m borrowing the style of my younger brothers,” explained the 51-year-old Ophelia, who said she had been trying to get into government since at least 1984 but had found herself — a jilted soul like her namesake in Shakespeare’s Hamlet — in the position of deferring to one brother after another, sometimes being taken by surprise after she had confided her ambitions. Brother Joe, for example, had picked up and filed his council petitionin 1995 after she had first expressed interest, she said.

“This time they can read in the paper,” said Ophelia, who quoted Joe as having informed her of his unexpected filing back then by saying, “Oh, you must not have read the paper!”

Reasoning that it was better to sandbag a sibling than to be sandbagged, Ophelia explained Wednesday, “I didn’t tell any of my family members I was going to pick up a petition.” She maintained,however, that “I had told most of my family members that I was going to go for the next ting available, especially after he [Joe]messed up his stuff with the mayor’s situation. I’ll be interested to see what reaction is.”

(Joe Ford might indeed have been taken by surprise; he was doubtless looking in the other direction, for a threatened primary challenge from family political rival Sidney Chism.)

Ophelia Ford’s decision to go for the Commission seat followed several months of waiting for another brother, State Senator James Ford, to abandon his own seat. Ophelia maintains that brother John had expressed a sense of weariness with continued service in the state Senate.

“If I don’t get in this time, I’ll probably relocate,” said Ophelia, who – ironically or not – had expressed chagrin at the recent decision of nephew Isaac, a son of of Harold Ford Sr. and brother of U.S. Rep. Harold Ford Jr., to run as an independent for mayor,thereby breaking an emerging family consensus for Democratic mayoral candidate A C Wharton.

Ophelia Ford has worked in the fields of public relations, communications, and product development with a variety of enterprises. She is a veteran of service with Blue Cross/Blue Shield, radio station WLOK, the Memphis Board of Education, Memphis Area Legal Services (where she was an aide to Wharton); and the family business, N.J. Ford Funeral Parlor, where she is an accredited undertaker.

Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, who many suggest could be Mayor for Life, indicated Tuesday that he might harbor some such notion as well, unveiling the general outlines of a “five-year plan,” adding as a sort of modest footnote “if I am reelected in 2003 — I don’t want to be presumptuous.”

The de facto announcement of reelection plans was but one highlight of Herenton’s annual speech at The Peabody to participants at city councilman Myron Lowery‘s New Year’s Prayer Breakfast. The mayor also hinted that he might choose to intervene in the forthcoming Shelby County Mayor’s race and reiterated his determination to push for city-county consolidation, with the important exception of city and county schools.

Consolidation was, in fact, the key component of the five-year plan (along with a stated intent to shore up education and the criminal justice system) and, Herenton seemed to suggest, the possible determinant in deciding whom he might support for county mayor.

The mayor proposed to begin immediate — but unspecified — measures to bring about consolidation in the realm of law enforcement but said he intended to “say No to the consolidation of city and county schools.” He proposed instead to “freeze school system boundaries” for the existing Memphis and Shelby County systems and to institute “single-source” funding for the two systems.

As an apparent response to continued complaints from county officials and suburbanites about the current method of routing state funding to the two systems through an average-daily-attendance (ADA) formula favoring the city schools by a 3 to 1 ratio, Herenton proposed “equalized expenditures,” so long as special provision was made for “at-risk youngsters.”

After his public remarks, the mayor would condemn as “divisive” a recent proposal for separate special school districts made to a state legislative committee in Nashville recently by county school board chairman David Pickler.

Though he did not target specific individuals in his speech, Herenton also professed to be outraged by the inability of officials at the state and county levels to solve looming financial problems and at the weaknesses in the Memphis school system revealed by the city system’s disproportionately poor showing in recent state testing.

After the mayor’s speech, various members of his audience, ranging from members of his own circle to participants in this or that mayoral campaign, indicated they thought Herenton’s prospective intervention in the 2002 county mayor’s race would not occur before the end of the primary process, which so far includes State Representative Larry Scroggs on the Republican side, and, on the Democratic side, Shelby County Public Defender A C Wharton; Bartlett banker Harold Byrd, and State Representative Carol Chumney.

Herenton said he would make no endorsement “at this time,” adding that, aside from his judging candidates on their integrity, experience, and ability — and on their commitment to consolidation — he would not be bound, in deciding on an ultimate endorsement, by restrictions of gender, race, or party.

Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, who many suggest could be Mayor for Life, indicated Tuesday that he might harbor some such notion as well, unveiling the general outlines of a “five-year plan,” adding as a sort of modest footnote “if I am reelected in 2003 — I don’t want to be presumptuous.”

The de facto announcement of reelection plans was but one highlight of Herenton’s annual speech at The Peabody to participants at city councilman Myron Lowery‘s New Year’s Prayer Breakfast. The mayor also hinted that he might choose to intervene in the forthcoming Shelby County Mayor’s race and reiterated his determination to push for city-county consolidation, with the important exception of city and county schools.

Consolidation was, in fact, the key component of the five-year plan (along with a stated intent to shore up education and the criminal justice system) and, Herenton seemed to suggest, the possible determinant in deciding whom he might support for county mayor.

The mayor proposed to begin immediate — but unspecified — measures to bring about consolidation in the realm of law enforcement but said he intended to “say No to the consolidation of city and county schools.” He proposed instead to “freeze school system boundaries” for the existing Memphis and Shelby County systems and to institute “single-source” funding for the two systems.

As an apparent response to continued complaints from county officials and suburbanites about the current method of routing state funding to the two systems through an average-daily-attendance (ADA) formula favoring the city schools by a 3 to 1 ratio, Herenton proposed “equalized expenditures,” so long as special provision was made for “at-risk youngsters.”

After his public remarks, the mayor would condemn as “divisive” a recent proposal for separate special school districts made to a state legislative committee in Nashville recently by county school board chairman David Pickler.

Though he did not target specific individuals in his speech, Herenton also professed to be outraged by the inability of officials at the state and county levels to solve looming financial problems and at the weaknesses in the Memphis school system revealed by the city system’s disproportionately poor showing in recent state testing.

After the mayor’s speech, various members of his audience, ranging from members of his own circle to participants in this or that mayoral campaign, indicated they thought Herenton’s prospective intervention in the 2002 county mayor’s race would not occur before the end of the primary process, which so far includes State Representative Larry Scroggs on the Republican side, and, on the Democratic side, Shelby County Public Defender A C Wharton; Bartlett banker Harold Byrd, and State Representative Carol Chumney.

Herenton said he would make no endorsement “at this time,” adding that, aside from his judging candidates on their integrity, experience, and ability — and on their commitment to consolidation — he would not be bound, in deciding on an ultimate endorsement, by restrictions of gender, race, or party.

Insisting that, a recent news report to the contrary notwithstanding, he was aware of a looming state budget crisis and had no intention of denying it, U.S. Rep. Van Hilleary (R-4th) said in Memphis Thursday that TennCare was the major cause of the shortfall, and, without naming incumbent Governor Don Sundquist directly, indicated strongly that the current administration was also to blame.

Addressing a small group of supporters at a meet-and-greet at the Lulu Grill in

East Memphis, GOP gubernatorial candidate Hilleary, who is opposed in the primary by former State Rep. Jim Henry of Kingston, said that state revenues had run ahead of inflation every year except the last one and that a “restructuring” of TennCare, the state-run insurance system for the indigent and uninsured, would do much to fix the problem.

“With TennCare, the state has been offering open-ended supply to go with open-ended demand. We can’t raise enough in taxes to keep up with that,” Hilleary said. He promised, if elected, to institute “two-way dialogue” and go beyond the “my way or the highway attitude” which he said had prevailed in recent years; he promised also to pursue economies like that of scaling TennCare benefits back to the level of surrounding states so that Tennessee ceased to be a “magnet” for patients.

Hilleary said the state had been hurt by the unchanging focus on an income tax during the last three years and added, “There’s been a certain amount of disgruntlement across the state in the last few years.” He said that he and the Democratic gubernatorial frontrunner, former Nashville Mayor Phil Bredesen, had run “neck-and-neck” in polls “even after I’ve absorbged the disgruntlement.”

Goveernor Sundquist’s staff picks may also have come in for indirect criticism in Hilleary’s promise to appoint individuals more experienced than himself in their areas of competence. “It doesn’t work if you try to surround yourself with people less knowledgeable than you are. That’s guaranteed to fail.”

In private conversation before his public remarks, Hilleary said he would “wait and see” how things developed in the GOP primary race before pronouncing on whether the governor was, openly or tacitly, aiding Henry, but added, “I have a pretty strong opinion on that.”

The congressman also used the expression “wait and see” on the issue of Gov. Sundquist’s proposed TennCare reforms, saying that it remained to be seen what kind of Medicaid waiver the federal government would issue and how the courts would rule. But he said the governor’s downsizing plan was “a good first step.”

On other matters, Hilleary promised to follow the model of President George W. Bush in making educational improvements his first priority, warned that Democrats — former Vice President Al Gore, in particular — were increasing their grass-roots activity across the state, and said the state should attempt economic leverage through the industrial and agricultural base it already possesses. “We don’t need to be Silicon Valley,” Hilleary said.

Insisting that, a recent news report to the contrary notwithstanding, he was aware of a looming state budget crisis and had no intention of denying it, U.S. Rep. Van Hilleary (R-4th) said in Memphis Thursday that TennCare was the major cause of the shortfall, and, without naming incumbent Governor Don Sundquist directly, indicated strongly that the current administration was also to blame.

Addressing a small group of supporters at a meet-and-greet at the Lulu Grill in

East Memphis, GOP gubernatorial candidate Hilleary, who is opposed in the primary by former State Rep. Jim Henry of Kingston, said that state revenues had run ahead of inflation every year except the last one and that a “restructuring” of TennCare, the state-run insurance system for the indigent and uninsured, would do much to fix the problem.

“With TennCare, the state has been offering open-ended supply to go with open-ended demand. We can’t raise enough in taxes to keep up with that,” Hilleary said. He promised, if elected, to institute “two-way dialogue” and go beyond the “my way or the highway attitude” which he said had prevailed in recent years; he promised also to pursue economies like that of scaling TennCare benefits back to the level of surrounding states so that Tennessee ceased to be a “magnet” for patients.

Hilleary said the state had been hurt by the unchanging focus on an income tax during the last three years and added, “There’s been a certain amount of disgruntlement across the state in the last few years.” He said that he and the Democratic gubernatorial frontrunner, former Nashville Mayor Phil Bredesen, had run “neck-and-neck” in polls “even after I’ve absorbged the disgruntlement.”

Goveernor Sundquist’s staff picks may also have come in for indirect criticism in Hilleary’s promise to appoint individuals more experienced than himself in their areas of competence. “It doesn’t work if you try to surround yourself with people less knowledgeable than you are. That’s guaranteed to fail.”

In private conversation before his public remarks, Hilleary said he would “wait and see” how things developed in the GOP primary race before pronouncing on whether the governor was, openly or tacitly, aiding Henry, but added, “I have a pretty strong opinion on that.”

The congressman also used the expression “wait and see” on the issue of Gov. Sundquist’s proposed TennCare reforms, saying that it remained to be seen what kind of Medicaid waiver the federal government would issue and how the courts would rule. But he said the governor’s downsizing plan was “a good first step.”

On other matters, Hilleary promised to follow the model of President George W. Bush in making educational improvements his first priority, warned that Democrats — former Vice President Al Gore, in particular — were increasing their grass-roots activity across the state, and said the state should attempt economic leverage through the industrial and agricultural base it already possesses. “We don’t need to be Silicon Valley,” Hilleary said.

State Senator Curtis Person (R-Memphis) is a big man in more than one way. Impressively sized physically, the amiable Person (whose father, the late Curtis Person Sr., was a well-known amateur golfing champion and entrepreneur ) has been unopposed in his reelection bids since 1966. He chairs the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, and exercises his considerable clout as quietly as he speaks.

Most recently, Person’s influence was felt in the redistricting process. He served as chairman of the GOP’s legislative redistricting committee, and, as he confided last week at the announcement for Shelby County Mayor of State Rep. Larry Scroggs (R-Germantown), whom he introduced), he was able to work out a formula whereby Shelby County would get to keep all six of its Senate seats after reapportionment. The deal, Person said then, had been signed off on by State Senator Jo Ann Graves (D-Gallatin),who chairs the full legislative redistricting committee, and Lt. Governor John Wilder (D-Somerville), the Senate’s longtime presiding officer and a close Person ally.

“I’ll be going further east,” acknowledged Person, whose base is in the Republican wards of East Memphis, “but Mark and I won’t be in together, and he can continue to present Shelby County.”

Which is to say, the long-presumed need to eliminate one of Shelby County’s six Senate seats, a circumstance that almost surely would have required freshman Sen. Mark Norris (R-Collierville) to run in the same district as Person, has evaporated. The lines will be drawn so as to allow Person’s district, as he indicated, to expand eastward, taking in part of Norris’s present one, while the Collierville Senator’s district, already representing parts of Fayette and Lauderdale counties, will expand even further into those reaches. But it will keep its anchor in east Shelby County.

The new Norris district, predominantly rural now, won’t be a slam-dunk for the suburban senator to win in, but his reelection task will be considerably easier than it would have been if required to run against the venerable Person.

To employ a modish metaphor, politics is a 24/7 process — going on all the time, even in the non-election years that come along every three years.

The year just passed, 2001, was one of those. In some ways, it lacked the focused drama of the two previous such years — 1993, which, among other things, saw the pivotal trial and acquittal of former congressman Harold Ford Sr. on bank-fraud charges; and 1997, much of which was taken up with Memphis mayor Willie Herenton‘s equally successful stand against “toy town” legislation from Nashville.

Victory in those respective endeavors gave each of these two titans a significant political boost for years to come. (In Ford’s case, much of that would be passed along to his heirs and assigns — notably Harold Ford Jr., his successor as U.S. representative from the 9th Congressional District and a hot political property on the statewide and national scenes.)

But 2001, the first election off-year of the new century, was marked by a series of events — some distant, some near — that may have more lasting aftershocks for more people over a longer time.

· Take the increasingly conflicted Tennessee legislature (please!). For the third straight year our state solons dissed the well-intentioned tax-reform efforts of Governor Don Sundquist and failed to produce a responsible budget that could pay for even basic state programs. As a result Tennessee is facing a half-billion-dollar shortfall for the next fiscal year and has already had to start pruning away at state parks and throttling initiatives in schooling, tourism, and economic development. Just for starters.

The state is now headed toward the bottom of the national rankings in categories ranging from basic and higher education (witness the increasingly unequipped laboratories and continued exodus of teaching staffs) to health expenditures (the once-promising TennCare system seemed on the verge of being abandoned).

None of this prevented the legislature from bowing to the frenzies of an enraged mob of anti-taxers which, on the memorable night of July 12th, besieged the state Capitol in Nashville, broke windows and shoved lawmakers, kept up a howling chorus, and prevented action on a compromise income-tax measure that would have required a statewide voter referendum to be fully enacted. Instead, the General Assembly voted to use up its share of national tobacco-settlement money just to pay its past-due bills then blew town, leaving the fiscal mess to worsen and fester.

On the high side, the state Senate finally passed legislation, promoted by Memphis’ Sen. Steve Cohen for the last 16 years, that would allow the people of Tennessee to vote on instituting a statewide lottery, the proceeds of which would benefit education. (That vote will come next year and will be one of the highlights of a general-election ballot that will also see a U.S. Senate seat and the state’s governorship open up.

· On the local scene, both the Memphis City Council and the Shelby County Commission spent much of their time, energies, and capital (both political and the other kind) on the issue of funding for a new sports arena to house the transplanted Vancouver Grizzlies of the National Basketball Association.

Here, too, protesters concerned about a new commitment of public-tax dollars forced second thoughts, but, unlike what happened in the case of the legislature, the differing factions on the council and, especially, on the commission worked hard to achieve a compromise and, in the end, were able to craft a measure that did not tie the construction issue to ad valorem (property-based) revenues.

Never mind that the future revenues finally pledged — rental-car taxes and the like — put the city and county in the position, Pollyanna-like, of betting on the come. Communities, like individuals, are entitled to wager on their futures, and polls indicated that a clear majority of local citizens were in favor of the Grizzlies/arena venture, which takes its place in what is, finally and indisputably, a bona fide redevelopment of downtown.

· Another major circumstance that presaged fundamental political change was statistical. Released in 2001 were the figures from the previous year’s U.S. census, which showed that the demographics of Shelby County, like those of the city of Memphis a decade earlier, had taken the long-prophesied turn toward African-American predominance.

As in the case of the city earlier, this fact would not automatically determine the outcome of local elections, which continued to depend on relative degrees of participation by voter blocs and on other factors. But by the end of the current year, the extant candidacies for various local offices up for grabs next year made it obvious that blacks, running as Democrats, would be in hot competition for all local offices with whites, who (in the general election, anyhow), would be running as Republicans.

But certain situations — the fact, for example, that various candidates for Shelby County mayor were making clear pitches to (or being pitched by) constituencies across racial and political lines — augured a different political and social future than what Memphis and Shelby County got used to in the confrontational last half of the 20th century.

· The city and county are on the ground floor of the edifice that a new century and new perspectives will see constructed. And that metaphor, in more than one sense, is a reminder of another term that we all got used to in the tragic last quarter of the year just ending.

· Ground Zero: The devastation in New York has its counterpart in all our imaginations and in the local Zeitgeist as well. We know now that nothing can be counted on to endure, that elemental forces and unresolved conflicts can destroy the most harmonious purpose and the most developed plan. But, all the same, we sense an irrepressible spirit in the community, one that looks past economic downturns and the threat of the Apocalypse itself and is willing and able to keep on trucking.

For all of its storms and circuses, politics is and will remain the theater of the normal. For better and for worse, it is who we are. ·

State Senator Curtis Person (R-Memphis) is a big man in more than one way. Impressively sized physically, the amiable Person (whose father, the late Curtis Person Sr., was a well-known amateur golfing champion and entrepreneur ) has been unopposed in his reelection bids since 1966. He chairs the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, and exercises his considerable clout as quietly as he speaks.

Most recently, Person’s influence was felt in the redistricting process. He served as chairman of the GOP’s legislative redistricting committee, and, as he confided last week at the announcement for Shelby County Mayor of State Rep. Larry Scroggs (R-Germantown), whom he introduced), he was able to work out a formula whereby Shelby County would get to keep all six of its Senate seats after reapportionment. The deal, Person said then, had been signed off on by State Senator Jo Ann Graves (D-Gallatin),who chairs the full legislative redistricting committee, and Lt. Governor John Wilder (D-Somerville), the Senate’s longtime presiding officer and a close Person ally.

“I’ll be going further east,” acknowledged Person, whose base is in the Republican wards of East Memphis, “but Mark and I won’t be in together, and he can continue to present Shelby County.”

Which is to say, the long-presumed need to eliminate one of Shelby County’s six Senate seats, a circumstance that almost surely would have required freshman Sen. Mark Norris (R-Collierville) to run in the same district as Person, has evaporated. The lines will be drawn so as to allow Person’s district, as he indicated, to expand eastward, taking in part of Norris’s present one, while the Collierville Senator’s district, already representing parts of Fayette and Lauderdale counties, will expand even further into those reaches. But it will keep its anchor in east Shelby County.

The new Norris district, predominantly rural now, won’t be a slam-dunk for the suburban senator to win in, but his reelection task will be considerably easier than it would have been if required to run against the venerable Person.

Well, at long last the era of uncertainty would seem to be over for Shelby County Republicans: After a long period of bashfulness and befuddlement, during which there was much more backing than filling, they’ve settled on a candidate for county mayor, State Representative Larry Scroggs of Germantown, who has a formal announcement scheduled for Thursday.

Or have they?

If it’s true, somebody needs to tell County Trustee Bob Patterson, county commissioner Clair VanderSchaaf, and radiologist/radio-station owner George Flinn, all of whom were still, at press time, considering active races for mayor in the GOP primary.

“I think there’s still a lot of play in this thing,” said Patterson on Monday, a day after local party chairman Alan Crone presented Scroggs as the party’s consensus candidate to Republicans gathered at Kirby Farms on Poplar Pike for the local GOP’s annual Christmas party. (Patterson has already filed for reelection as trustee but said he might reconsider and switch tracks.)

Another skeptic was VanderSchaaf, who announced last week he was a possible mayoral candidate and made a point of saying at mid-week that he was still thinking about it. And then there was Flinn, who has been talking up a mayoral race for some time and pronounced himself “amazed” at hearing Crone describe him to the GOP party-goers Sunday as a candidate for state representative.

“I never told him I was a candidate for state representaive. I guess he was trying to tell me,” said Flinn, who added he was grateful to restaurateur John Willingham, an anti-establishment activist who interrupted Crone’s introduction of party office-holders and candidates to declare, “Mr. Chairman, you’re wrong about that. I believe Mr. Flinn is still a candidate for mayor!”

Mr. Flinn thinks so, too, as it turns out.

“I know they want Larry to be the candidate, and they asked me to consider running for state rep, which I said I would,” Flinn says. “But I decided against that. What they’re doing is trying to make up my mind for me.”

Flinn’s complaint echoes a running one by such other Republicans as Willingham and longtime party dissenter Jerry Cobb, who feel that chairman Crone, incumbent (and outgoing) county mayor Jim Rout, party national committeeman John Ryder, and other perennially prominent party members try to dictate to other Republicans on policy matters.

Patterson concurs. “Until fairly recently, we had a candidate recruitment committee to work up a consensus on candidates. They’ve done away with that, unfortunately.” It has been no secret that Crone and Ryder, along with other Republican leaders like former chairman David Kustoff, have been trying for the last several months to find a name Republican to carry the party standard in next year’s general election.

District Attorney General Bill Gibbons, former city councilman John Bobango, and former Memphis Redbirds president Allie Prescott were three favored prospects, but all said no. Scroggs responded favorably to the group’s entreaties last week.

On the immediate matter of Flinn’s candidacy, Crone said Sunday he was under the impression, after having talked with the radiologist’s political advisier, former county commissioner Ed Williams, that Flinn had agreed to run for state representative rather than for mayor, but Flinn said no such answer had been given by either him or Williams.

“I don’t even know what district they want me to run in,” said Flinn, who noted that, with the exception of the Germantown district being vacated by Scroggs and which may be subject to virtual elimination, anyway (see separate item, this column), all Shelby County districts are filled with incumbents, either Republicans or Democrats.

“There are plenty Democrats he can run against,” shrugged Crone, suggesting as one possibility Henri Brooks , who represents a predominantly African-American inner-city district, which is likely, however, to be redistricted eastward, encompassing some traditional Republican turf in East Memphis.