Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Shaking Things Up

Dems, GOP reorganize, while leaders in mayor’s race face the specter of disqualification.

A smallish crowd of 166 people showed up last Saturday at First Baptist Church on Broad to take part in the first round of balloting for the biennial Shelby County Democratic Party reorganization. Two delegates from each of the county’s 13 Shelby County Commission districts were selected to form the party’s executive committee.

Norma Lester, who presided over last Saturday’s Democratic event, lamented that fewer members attended than had been expected. She attributed that fact to the lingering effects of the pandemic, during which in-person party events were relatively rare.

The party’s bylaws require that the two committee members representing each district be of different genders, and in one district, that allowed for an unprecedented result. On Saturday, the voters of District 11 elected the first transgender committee member, Brandy Price, to serve.

Some 100-odd members were also named to the party’s grassroots council. Members of both groups will convene via Zoom on Saturday, April 1st, to name a chairman to succeed outgoing chair Gabby Salinas. The three known candidates are businessman Jesse Huseth, longtime activist Lexie Carter, and Alvin Crook, a former Young Democrats chair.

Meanwhile, on this coming Saturday, March 25th, the county’s Republicans will hold their party’s reorganization caucus at the YMCA corporate offices on Goodlett Farms Parkway. Current GOP chairman Cary Vaughn has indicated that he intends to seek a second term as chair in order to continue his ongoing fundraising plan for the party.

• To say that the 2023 Memphis mayor’s race is in something of an uproar is a classic understatement. It is still two full months before the first date (May 22nd) to pick up candidate petitions at the Election Commission, and three of the race’s putative leaders, as identified in a recent poll, may be disqualified from even picking one up. They are Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner, NAACP president and former County Commissioner Van Turner, and longtime former Mayor Willie Herenton.

Bonner and Turner have both raised substantial amounts of cash, and, while less is known about Herenton’s receipts, his background in city government and historical cachet are such as to guarantee him a substantial vote base to begin with.

What makes the position of these three candidates tenuous is that none of them would qualify under residency requirements just posted on the Election Commission website. In its instructions to would-be candidates, the commission links to a legal opinion written by former EC chairman Robert Meyers. That opinion states explicitly that a city-charter provision of 1895 is still in effect and requires candidates to have lived in Memphis for five years “next preceding” an election.

None of the three candidates would fit that precise language, and these happen to be the three contenders who just finished on top in a local poll conducted by the Caissa Public Strategy group. The poll gives Turner a minuscule edge over the other two. Although Caissa normally handles candidates of its own, it so far has no mayoral candidate on its roster, and, though there are skeptics here and there regarding the poll’s reliability, most observers give it a fair degree of credibility.

Candidate Bonner has filed suit against the commission’s published criteria, and Chancellor Jim Kyle will consider the litigation, probably at rush speed. Meanwhile, other candidates, notably Paul Young of the Downtown Memphis Commission and wealthy businessman J.W. Gibson, have to be pinching themselves at their apparent good luck.