As it does every eight years, the 2022 Shelby County election ballot will swell to more-than-usual proportions to make room for the myriad of judicial and quasi-judicial races to be voted on.
Unlike the case in Davidson County, home of the state capital and Memphis’ sister city Nashville, there will be no primaries for the judicial races, and candidates for judge are forbidden by judicial canon from declaring a party affiliation, making overtly political statements, or, as of this year, advertising their candidacies in tandem with those of partisan political candidates.
(In other words, a point scored, courtesy of the state Supreme Court, vis-a-vis the “bogus ballot” issue, which has been the focus in recent years of numerous litigations against the purveyors of sample ballots that fill their spaces with thumbnail portraits of candidates paying handsomely for the privilege.)
As the Daily Mempian’s Bill Dries pointed out nicely in a recent article, momentum in the manner of outside influence on judicial races may be passing to citizen activist groups interested in specific legal issues.
There is yet another way that candidates for judge can avail themselves of significant campaign aid from overtly partisan sources.
Call it the Buddy System, whereby public figures with their own well-established partisan identities (and with a voter base to match) can lend their shine, as it were, to the technically (and many times, actually) non-partisan candidate for judge.
Three current examples, all involving candidates managed by the resourceful consultant Liz Rincon:
— Sanjeev Memula, a newcomer to the ballot and a declared candidate for General Sessions criminal judge who hasn’t yet picked his specific slot, was the beneficiary of a fundraiser last weekend at which Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris and various other name Democrats made a public show on his behalf.
— Incumbent Circuit Court Judge Felicia Corbin Johnson, running for reelection, was publicly assisted at a fundraiser this week by the well-respected Democratic County Commissioner Reginald Milton and others.
— Erim Sarinoglu, another first-time candidate for judge, who, like Memula, has not yet picked a specific position, had made a point of hobnobbing with Democrats at recent events but is letting it be known that the guest speaker at a forthcoming fundraiser of his will be a Republican eminence with whom he has personal ties, City Council chairman Frank Colvett Jr.
There’ll be more of these highly visible public pairings as other judicial candidates rev up their candidacies, hoping to attract votes by implication as they are spoken for by personages with existing reputations and constituencies.
