With the
largest ballot Shelby County
has ever seen arriving in voting booths this August, the Coalition for a Better
Memphis wanted to help local citizens choose highly qualified candidates. The
coalition devised a ranking system for candidates and released its first set of
results — evaluating those running for County Commission
seats — just a few weeks ago. The results have caused perhaps an expected stir
among candidates: The winners think the system works; the losers see it as
flawed. The Flyer
recently spoke with Dean Deyo, one of the coalition’s organizers and the
chairman of the Leadership Academy.
— By Ben
Popper
Flyer: How did you
get the idea?
Deyo: We
would have to give credit to the Regional Chamber [of Commerce] in Memphis. They
do something called Best Practices, where they travel to other cities and try to
exchange ideas and steal whatever they do best. They looked at what they were
doing in Atlanta and said this would be fabulous for us.
How were the
criteria for the rankings developed?
In order to expedite the process we
hired the same consultant who was hired by Atlanta, a group called Civic
Strategies. They came to Memphis, interviewed our community leaders, and read
everything they could in the archives of
The Commercial Appeal
and the
Memphis Flyer.
They went and pulled copies of the Shelby County five-year plan. From that
research, they developed a list of qualities a County Commission candidate
should have and the issues they should know about.
We have also created a “transparent” system. You as
a voter may appreciate what we’re doing but feel that at the end of the day the
only issue that matters to you is ethics. That is why we posted the candidates’
individual scores on the Web site, as well as their written responses to each
question.
Who is in the
coalition?
We knew from the beginning that we needed a
diverse coalition. If you look at the enrollment online you will see we have
everything from AutoZone to neighborhood associations like the 35th Ward Civic
Club to 100 Black Men, the Urban League, and Memphis Tomorrow. So we had over
110 people with nothing in common, white and black, young and old, Democrat and
Republican.
Politicians have
always been elected on rhetoric. What’s wrong with that?
One example I used at our first meeting that
seemed to ring true to people is the District 29 election: Ophelia Ford and
Terry Roland. Ford won by 13 votes. Because it came off-cycle, we didn’t know
much about either of them. But perhaps a more important point is that there was
a third candidate in that election: Robert Hodges, better known as Prince Mongo.
He got 89 votes. Now there might have been some people who voted for him because
his name appears on nearly every ballot, and they assumed he was a credible
candidate. If information had been out there, maybe this election could have
been different from the beginning.
