Even as two rather well-qualified female candidates continue in pathways that they hope will make their current mayoral runs viable, women already in power are busy constructing models of parliamentary behavior that owe very little to tradition and nothing at all to the vintage tactic of go-along-to-get-along.
Britney Thornton, the Shelby County Commission’s first-term representative from Orange Mound, has her mind set on nothing less than overturning her legislative body’s history and practice of awarding county contracts. Last Monday, the commission’s regular session began with some 17-odd items in the “consent agenda,” these being items that have been previously examined in committee and have already been worked over and are now ready for final judgment.
As each of the 17 items was called to the floor, Thornton directed the same question: How many Black women, men, Asian, white, other were invited to bid on the contract? How many followed through and bid on the contract, and who got the contract?
Almost invariably a white bidder, one used to the jargon and handling of commission business, was awarded the contract.
At one point, the item under discussion was an inmate-feeding contract that has so long belonged to Aramark that it would seem to have the status of a legacy. To the tune of a million and half dollars. Needless to say, the management of Aramark is white.
The distinguished lawyer John Farris, who represents Aramark, offered his usual smooth guarantee that the company would continue to provide inmate meals in its usual skillful mode.
To which Commissioner Thornton threw a bomb. With no substitute agency in mind, she moved to cancel the contract.
“We have to disrupt” was her way of explaining how long-standing aspects of white dominance can be eradicated.
In the end, the commission was brought to a compromise. The Aramark contract will continue for two months with what amounts to a temporary lease on the contract, with the understanding that it will be rebid on in October with a full complement of MWBE requirements favoring a non-white bidder.
Thornton is no lone wolf. She gets frequent support from other commissioners, especially those of the women on this body of seven females and six males.
Her sponsored ordinance directed at the sheriff’s department, getting the department to shed special units and multi-unit alliances, failed, although another requiring the department and the commission to take measure of pretextual road stops was mandated.
• There is no reason to believe that mayoral contender Michelle McKissack has anything like the long aim that Thornton has. McKissack’s style is milder and more inclined to consensus, but she is nothing if not forthright, and her adoption of a headquarters on B.B. King Street last Saturday allows her entry into the forthcoming WMC-TV mayoral debate, in which she will have every opportunity to hold her own and then some.
• For those expecting a word here on the late Governor Don Sundquist, it would have been here but for a bad modem. Expect it soon, online.