Shelby County Democrats completed Phase One of their biennial reorganization on Saturday, conducting 13 separate caucuses via Zoom to elect delegates to this coming Saturday’s convention, which will complete the cycle with the selection of a new chair and other party officers.
Outgoing Chairman Michael Harris expressed satisfaction at the online turnout, which included some 550 registrants and 300 active participants, of whom roughly 100 were elected as members of the party’s Grassroots Council, along with 26 members to serve as SCDP’s executive committee.
Those elected to the two bodies will serve as the voting members at Saturday’s convention, which will take place on Zoom and will also be watchable on YouTube and on the website of the Shelby County Democratic Party.
The two declared contestants for the party chairmanship are Gabby Salinas and Corey Strong. Salinas is making her third try for a significant office, having in recent years won the Democratic nomination for two legislative seats, which she narrowly lost to Republicans in general election races. Despite these losses, she is in the unusual position, politically, of still being regarded as something of a face for the future. This is largely owing to her inspiring backstory as a dual survivor.
A native of Bolivia, Salinas came to this country with her family as a toddler to be treated for cancer at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. After successful treatments for the disease, she then survived a catastrophic automobile accident that took the lives of several family members. As an adult graduate of Christian Brothers College, Salinas would herself become a researcher with the St. Jude Department of Chemical Biology and Therapeutics.
Strong, too, has an interesting biography. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, he did active duty in Kabul, Afghanistan, and maintains his membership in the Navy Reserve with the rank of Commander. He possesses a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law and has an extensive history as a party activist.
After the Shelby County Democratic Party was recommissioned by the state party in 2017 after a period of being defunct, Strong was elected as chairman of the restored party and served until 2019. His term included the local party’s electoral “sweep” year of 2018.
• Former Senator Bob Corker, who was one of the few congressional Republicans (and one of the first) to have a public falling-out with the Trump administration, was quoted by the Nashville Tennessean as saying, apropos the current Afghanistan debacle, “It appeared to me that [President Joe] Biden basically continued the Trump policy.” Corker delivered similar sentiments in a weekend address at Monteagle to members of the Episcopal Churchmen of Tennessee.
As far back as 2011, Corker, who later became chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, expressed frustration with the American military effort in Afghanistan, seeing Pakistan to be the actual haven for Al Qaeda and other militant Islamic groups. “The fact is,” he told the Flyer at the time, “if you travel through Afghanistan, as I’ve done many times, and you talk to our military leaders, they’re unbelievably frustrated because they’re fighting a war in a country where our enemies are not.
“And on the other hand we’re providing aid to a country where our enemies are. To me — and this is what I really pressed hard in this last hearing — this is where our focus needs to be.”
