Okay, the race for Shelby County sheriff may be considered
as good as begun. Consider:
The incumbent, Republican Mark
Luttrell, is already running hard for reelection, touching all the media
bases with personal visits and burnishing his vault with the occasional
well-attended fund-raiser. Adept at public presentations, the personable
Luttrell has, among current office-holders, a grasp of P.R. rivaled only by that
of District Attorney General Bill Gibbons (who last week was endorsed by
both of Shelby County’s ranking mayors.)
Given that the job of Shelby county mayor is probably a gimme for
Democrat A C Wharton next year, that makes Luttrell the county’s ranking
Republican, a reputation enhanced by the fact that the sheriff is a dependable
presence at most GOP outings held in the county – large, small, and in between –
and can be found at a goodly number of non-partisan public events as well.
So who is John Harvey, and
why is he bothering to compete so hard for the job of sheriff in next year’s
Republican primary?
Well, Harvey is, as he outlines on his
intricately itemized campaign Web site (http://www.shelbynet.com/dotnetnuke/), a
lieutenant in the Sheriff’s Department, and his case against incumbent Luttrell,
while detailed, can be summarized in one of Harvey’s statements: “It has become
clear to me that he [former county Corrections Center director Luttrell] doesn’t
have a basis of understanding of law enforcement. He has been a career warden,
and now occupies the position of Sheriff without the experience for the job.”
Harvey buttresses that case with a pageful of statistics and
anecdotes purporting to show that Shelby County is the second “most dangerous”
of 320 metropolitan localities. He represents a second front of sorts on the
jailer issue, attacking Luttrell from one side as preoccupied with the custody
issue vis-à-vis that of law enforcement per se.
Meanwhile, the sheriff has made enemies among the jailers by pruning
their ranks in the interests of economy. And, though he, like Wharton, has
backed off from what now seems an abortive effort to out-source the county’s
corrections system, that issue continues to simmer as well.
Luttrell will be the odds-on favorite to
prevail in the GOP primary against the little-known and under-financed Harvey –
though the latter has one interesting hole card. Harvey is best buds with the
Shelby County Republican Party’s latest public hero, erstwhile District 29 state
Senate candidate Terry Roland, with whose own campaign Web site Harvey’s
is indexed.
Roland, who continues to contest the
13-vote victory in that special election of Democrat Ophelia Ford, was
asked about Harvey on his return from a brief respite with his wife in Jamaica.
“He’s great,” Roland said unreservedly in a telephone conversation on Monday and
at first sounded determined to offer Harvey his full support.
Having reflected on things, however, Roland
called back later to say that, as a member and vice chair of the Shelby County
Republican steering committee, it would be inappropriate for him to take sides
in a party primary.
And Democratic sheriff’s candidates are sure to
be heard from. One of them, in fact, stepped forth this week. This was
Reginald French, a longtime aide to Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton,
who planned to file his official papers with the Election Commission on
Wednesday.
French, whose credits include a stint as
Herenton’s executive assistant and another as chairman of the Memphis Alcohol
Commission, has been talking up a sheriff’s race for some months. French has
been out of the public eye for some time, but, aside from his public jobs and
his service as a campaign aide to Herenton and other candidates, he has had his
share of controversy, too.
Some years ago French was involved in an
altercation with a neighbor which resulted in his being charged with slashing
her tires – a circumstance that was highlighted when she fell to her death
shortly thereafter in an unrelated accident. French also figured somewhat
mysteriously in an FBI investigation of corruption in Atlanta, wearing a wire to
record his conversations with city officials. He was also revealed to have been
a go-between in passing money from a lobbyist to one of those officials.
Still and all, French has been a key figure in
the Herenton era, and, failing a declaration of candidacy by other Democrats,
will have to be reckoned with.
Roland v. Ford (cont’d): Roland continues his
effort to offset the now officially certified results of his contest with
Ophelia Ford – both in a Chancery Court suit alleging irregularities in the
voting (including multiple voting by individuals and illegal enfranchisements of
felons), and in a challenge before the state Senate itself, which has final
authority over seating its members.
To deal with the matter, Lt. Gov. John
Wilder, the Senate speaker, appointed a blue-chip committee of leadership
members, three from each party. They are: Speaker Pro Tem Mike Williams
(R-Maynardville), chairman; Senate Democratic leader Jim Kyle
(D-Memphis); Senate Republican leader Ron Ramsey (R-Blountville);
Democratic Caucus chairman Joe Haynes (D-Nashville); Republican Caucus
chairman Jeff Miller (R-Cleveland); and Roy Herron (D-Dresden).
These senators will present recommendations to
the full body when the Senate convenes in January, and there has been some
speculation that, if enough circumstantial evidence and reasonable doubt accrue
to the process, a party-line vote could end with the now-majority Republicans
(17-16) forcing a new election.
But one key Republican, Judiciary chairman
Curtis Person (R-Memphis) said last week he would need to see hard evidence
of irregularities to overturn an officially certified election contest.
Ford was certified as the winner of the September 15 special
election by a 3-2 party-line vote of the Shelby County Election Commission, but
all five commissioners eventually signed the official election document, and
Ford was formally sworn in last week in Nashville.
Richard Fields, who is serving as
counsel to Roland, said this week that the final form of both the Chancery
complaint and the appeal to the state Senate has not yet been determined. “We’re
still gathering information,” he said. “It takes a while to sift through all the
particulars, but we had only a 10-day window to challenge the results.”
Gill et al vs. Fields (cont’d): Fields had a
challenge of his own to deal with, of course, with the Shelby County Democratic
Party scheduled to deal with a resolution concerning him at the regular monthly
meeting of its executive committee this Thursday night.
The resolution, presented by committee member
Del Gill, charges Fields, a committee member himself, with giving
improper aid to a Republican opponent of a Democratic candidate in violation of
local party bylaws. It proposed three remedies: (a) Fields’ resignation from the
Roland case; (b) his resignation from the committee; or (c) a vote on his
expulsion from the committee.
On the eve of the meeting, Fields was giving no quarter. “The state
party bylaws have no such provision, and they supercede local bylaws,” he said.
“Further, I am doing the party a service by making sure the election process was
fair. We’ve just had a chairman and a former chairman indicted, and three state
senators have been indicted.” Some of those supporting the challenge to his
credentials are “the people who have gotten the party in trouble,” he said.
Crossroad Politics (cont’d): Mutual opposition to
the Bush administration’s trade policies were on the factors that accounted for
an unusual meeting of the twain two weekends ago, when several members of the
local John Birch Society chapter attended a pizza party for Democratic state
Representative Mike Kernell at Garibaldi’s restaurant.
Percy Harvey, longtime attorney and lobbyist for the Memphis
school board died Monday night at Methodist Hospital in Germantown. Harvey,who
succumbed to the effects of cancer, stayed on the job till the very end,
handling dellicate school-construction negotiations both in Memphis and in
Nashville. Funeral services, to be held on Saturday, will be announced.