As many readers may know, there is an ongoing cold-turning-hot war between Republican state Senator Brent Taylor and Shelby County DA Steve Mulroy over various matters of crime control.
Taylor has aimed several initiatives, rhetorical and otherwise, in Mulroy’s direction of late. Representing himself as a zealous advocate of strict law enforcement — a proponent of “aggressive” approaches as against “progressive” ones — Taylor has complained to the media and to Governor Bill Lee and other state officials and agencies, including the State Board of Professional Responsibility, that the Democratic DA has allowed the Memphis crime rate to skyrocket by undue emphasis on restorative justice concepts at the expense of law enforcement per se.
A fresh quote volunteered by the senator via text: “I am not trying to prove whose dick is bigger. But I am trying to show that more voters aligned themselves with my position of aggressive prosecutions.”
Whereupon he cited vote totals from his successful 2022 senate race versus his Democratic opponent — apparently unaware that his victory margin in that district race depended on fewer votes overall than were achieved by Mulroy in his defeat of Republican Amy Weirich in the DA’s race.
Similarly, the senator’s case against Mulroy on the law enforcement score is, to say the least, debatable. As is ever the case, some crime statistics are up; others are down. The senator acknowledges that the DA’s recently launched campaign against gang-led “smash-and-grab” assaults on local businesses has achieved some results. “We just need more arrests,” he says grudgingly.
Current points of contention between the two include the matter of bail-bond policy, which Taylor considers too lax, though current bail policy was arrived at jointly by Mulroy and Weirich, his Republican predecessor. Taylor also professes to be steamed by what he calls “collusion” between Mulroy and Criminal Court Judge Paula Skahan in a pair of cases involving the reduction or elimination of sentences imposed on defendants. The senator vows to impose correctives in the forthcoming session of the General Assembly, one of which involves expediting the transfer of juveniles charged with capital crimes to Criminal Court.
Interestingly, in the several months before Taylor and Mulroy acquired their current offices, they had enjoyed a warm, and even cozy, degree of collaboration with each other.
That was in the period of 2021-22 when Taylor, who was already eyeing a district Senate seat that was about to slip out from under the legally vulnerable GOP incumbent Brian Kelsey, was head of the Shelby County Election Commission (dominated 3-2 by Republicans though ostensibly neutral). Mulroy, an activist Democrat par excellence, was pursuing one of his favorite causes, that of local voting via paper ballots.
On several occasions, Taylor, whose party members tended (at that time, anyhow) not to favor that idea, nevertheless exercised what Mulroy considered exemplary fairness in presiding over discussions, in matters of scheduling, and in his parliamentary decisions. In the process, the two of them, quite simply, became buds.
At the moment, that relationship seems fractured — broken on the shoals of partisan differences, political ambition, and state-vs.-local considerations.
