As was teased in this space last week, second-quarter financial disclosures of the Memphis mayoral candidates were expected to come due. And they did, roughly a day after last week’s issue went to print.
The contents of the disclosures have since been bruited about here and there and have been subjected to analysis. In many — perhaps most — ways, the numbers conform to advance expectations. The leaders now, in the vital metric of cash on hand, are the same two who led the field in first-quarter disclosures in January: Downtown Memphis Commission CEO Paul Young, with $432,434.97 cash on hand, and Sheriff Floyd Bonner, with $404,139.12.
Local NAACP president Van Turner was still very much in the game, with $154,633.46, as was the largely self-funding developer J.W. Gibson, with $254,015.55.
The real surprise was former Memphis-Shelby County Schools board chair Michelle McKissack, who raised $101,712.95 — in less than two months of a declared candidacy, she notes — and has $79,164.95 on hand.
Clearly, McKissack has some catching up to do but justly takes pride in her results, given her relatively late start. She and the other candidates have some time, given that candidate petitions cannot even be drawn until May 22nd. Election day is October 5th, some five months away.
In a video tweet last week, McKissack alleged about some of the media coverage that “there are those in the city who don’t want to acknowledge that it’s actually possible for a woman to be mayor of Memphis.” She focused on an unnamed article “that really touted, just, you know, highlighting the men in this race.”
Both the point of view and even some of the language in McKissack’s tweet were reminiscent of attitudes expressed by former female candidates for mayor — notably Carol Chumney, now a Circuit Court Judge, who ran for Memphis mayor twice, finishing a competitive second place to incumbent Willie Herenton in a three-way race in 2007.
Herenton, out of office now for 14 years, is a candidate again for his former office, where he served for 17 years. He and others — including City Councilman Frank Colvett, state House minority leader Karen Camper, former County Commissioner James Harvey, and former TV judge Joe Brown — will doubtless make some waves, one way or another.
• Another former mayoral candidate, Tami Sawyer, who had a singularly devoted following for her reform platform in 2019, is back on the scene after a work sojourn for Amazon in both D.C. and California. She tweeted, “Yes, I’m back in Memphis for good … I am not running for office in 2023. But y’all gonna still see me deep in this work.”
