ONE MORE FOR THE 5TH
The field of candidates for the 5th District city council seat being vacated by John Vergos has grown by one more well-known political name.
State Rep. Carol Chumney, who represents Midtown in the Tennessee legislature and who unsuccessfully sought the Democratic nomination for Shelby County mayor last year, picked up a petition for the race on Tuesday morning, making the trip downtown in the company of activist Mary Wilder, a close Chumney friend who had previously indicated her own intention to run.
After her stop at the Election Commission, Chumney then headed to Nashville, where the legislature is expected to adjourn this week
“here are a lot of good candidates in the race,” Chumney said Monday night, “but I’m the only one with experience in some of the most important issues the council will be dealing with.” Others who have declared for the seat include lawyer Jim Strickland, businessman/physician George Flinn, and frequent candidate Joe Cooper.
Chumney said that she felt her 13 years in the state House have been successful and that she wanted to “come home and work every day in the community,” applying her expertise. She said that she already represented “40 percent” of the council district as a legislator and knew the rest of the district well, having grown up in the East Memphis portion of it, where she now also maintains her law office.
She named child care, an issue on which she led reform efforts in Nashville, and “smart growth” as significant local issues.
If successful, Chumney said, she would finish out her legislative term but would not seek reelection to it next year. Meanwhile, any overlap in state pay would be donated to “neighborhood groups,” she said.
Chumney’s entry into the race — coupled with the presence of Cooper, who has run several times for various offices as a Democrat — became an instant red flag to the campaign of lawyer Jim Strickland, a former local Democratic chairman who has been actively running for several weeks and has a major fundraiser scheduled for early next month.
“She’s got more name recognition, but I’ll raise more money and I have broader support,” maintained Strickland, who said further, “I’m supported by Democrats, Republicans, independents, neighborhood leaders, and business leaders.” (The list of sponsors for his forthcoming fundraiser ranges from Democrats like Shelby County Commissioner Joe Ford and Bartlett banker Harold Byrd, a major Strickland ally, to former local Republican chairman Alan Crone.)
Strickland said his campaign would emphasize the issues of “good schools, safe streets, and strong neighborhoods.”
Both moments were commemorated Tuesday in a moving presentation before members of the downtown Memphis Rotary Club at the group’s weekly luncheon at the Convention Center.
Janann Sherman, who with the late Carol Yellin was a co-author of the 1998 book The Perfect 36: Tennessee Delivers Women’s Suffrage, and Paula Casey, a close friend of both authors who is widely credited withy being the moving force behind the publication, made the presentation.
“It was the greatest bloodless revolution in Tennessee history,” noted Casey, who added, tongue presumably in cheek, “The suffragists didn’t kill anybody — but they could have.”
Once again, Sherman and Casey relived the story of how the mother of a 24-year-old obscure Tennessean named Harry Burn wrote her son, advising him to be a “good boy” and do the right thing, in a letter received a Rep. Burn the very day of the vote, on August 18, 1920, that made Tennessee the 36th state to ratify the 19th amendment, giving women the vote.
Burn’s Aye vote made it 49-47, but, as Casey pointed out, much credit for the final result wad due to the preliminary work of Memphis’ Joe hanover, the floor leader who carefully shepherded the pro-suffrage votes. (Unmentioned from the dais Tuesday but amply credited in the book was the total support given the suffrage cdause by Ed “Boss” Crump, whose control of the Shelby County delegation was virtually complete.)
Casey told the Rotarians about the determination of herself and Sherman to make sure the book was published when it was, on May 21, 1998, so that Yellin, who would die in 1999 from the effects of breast cancer, would have a chance to see her handiwork received by the world.
“When Paula Casey makes up her mind, get out of the way,” said industrialist Jim Fri to his fellow Rotarians.
Amen to that, and to the efforts of Sherman and Yellin, and to the anniversary.
LaFon, who is a first cousin of former vice president Al Gore, used the grant — of some $240, awarded to her project on “Ancient Coins in Education” — to expand her students’ knowledge of Roman history, as she put it, “through all 400 years of the Empire.”
That, as someone noted, was enormously cost-efficient, at less than a dollar a year.
“I want to see if we can lower that 25 to Zero,” said Commissioner David Lillard, who was promptly seconded across the committee-room table by Commissioner Tom Moss, who made an ÔO’ with the thumb and fingers of his right hand.
The mood was bipartisan. Democrat Deidre Malone joined her Republican colleagues in the wish that such economies could be effected.
Whether they can or not remains to be seen. But, as Lillard pointed out, if cuts of that magnitude are to be found, they are most likely to be found in personnel lists. Confirmation of a sort came from General Sessions Court clerk Chris Turner, who was one of several clerks and judges to testify last week on behalf of holding on to as many of their prerogatives as possible.
“I’ve got some folks,” Turner said frankly, “that I wouldn’t miss if they stopped showing up.”
Ironically, Lillard defended the recent expansion of the commission’s own support staff, now consisting of director Grace Hutchinson and aides Clay Perry and Steve Summerall. “It’s going to take all those folks to really look behind the budget and see what we can cut out of it,” Lillard said.
Randle Catron, who has no relationship to that legal action, is involved in a challenge of another sort. He recently picked up a petition at the Election Commission to run for mayor of Memphis against incumbent Willie Herenton.
