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Democratic Blue Wave or GOP Firewall?

In truth, there are several elections on the August 2nd ballot in Shelby County. 

One is a county general election, featuring contests for Shelby County mayor, sheriff, and various other county official positions, as well as for members of the Shelby County Schools board and Shelby County Commission, special elections for three judgeships, as well as a referendum on pay raises for county officials. And, for roughly half the voters of Memphis, a contest for an open at-large position on the City Council. 

Another election, involving primaries for major statewide and federal offices, includes races for governor, U.S. senator, the U.S. House of Representatives, and legislative positions in the Tennessee General Assembly. 

The outcomes of the county general election and the state/federal primaries will not only be consequential in themselves but will have significant barometric relevance to ongoing political currents — local, statewide, and even national. In particular, the most closely watched races will indicate the extent to which the current century’s ramparts of Republican dominance in Tennessee and Shelby County are still at full strength or whether, conversely, the much-rumored “blue wave” of 2018 will signal a Democratic revival.

Certainly, a Democrat — Lee Harris — is regarded as having a fair chance to prevail as Shelby County mayor, the first to do so since two easy victories in 2002 and 2006 by former county and city Mayor A C Wharton. Harris is a former Memphis city councilman and, more recently, the elected leader of the Democrats’ five-member remnant in the state Senate. He is opposed by David Lenoir, a two-term county trustee, who won a three-cornered Republican primary over County Commissioner Terry Roland and Juvenile Court Clerk Joy Touliatos in May. 

GOP: Bill Lee, Diane Black, Randy Boyd, and Beth Harwell

The root fact is that the August 2nd county ballot will be the first real test this year of Democrats against Republicans, and might provide a measure of the respective prospects for either party in the months and even years to come.

As it happens, of course, balloting in the county general election, as well as in the state/federal primaries, is already underway, in an official early voting period that began last Friday, July 13th, and will continue through Saturday, July 28th. 

And, because of a controversy over the Shelby County Election Commission’s choice of voting sites that flared up in the couple of weeks before the process started [see Editorial, p. 8], public attention to the process of early voting was whetted to an unprecedented degree.

By the time the controversy was resolved in the courtroom of Chancellor JoeDae L. Jenkins, Democrats and Republicans had seen early voting sites added in pockets of the county dominated by their constituents. The final number of sites was 27, fairly evenly distributed, and five of those sites — also apportioned equably party-wise — were enabled to operate for an extra three days each.

When the Shelby County Democrats for Change PAC held a reception and rally for party candidates in the Serenity Events Center in East Memphis on Sunday, the organizers proudly claimed a 68 percent to 32 percent voting ratio in favor of the Democratic state/federal primary versus the Republican one for Friday’s first day of early voting. If that kind of differential should continue and be reflected in the voting results of the county general election, chances for the putative blue wave would be looking good.

DEM: Karl Dean and Craig Fitzhugh

The two mayoral contestants will have had several public one-on-one matchups by the time final voting ceases on Election Day. In the first one, held last month at a meeting of the Downtown Kiwanis Club, Republican Lenoir seemed to gain some traction by selectively using Democrat Harris’ legislative record to make a “soft-on-crime” attack.

In the candidates’ second major encounter, held last week by the NAACP and the ad hoc Voting is Power 901 activist group at the National Civil Rights Museum, Harris made pointed efforts to rebut Lenoir’s charge and clearly found the environment more hospitable to his own message of progressive social change. Score it one-to-one as the opponents prepared to square off again this week before the Downtown Rotary Club.

Though this potentially nip-and-tuck mayoral contest will have exposed the two parties’ contrasting attitudes, the real battle was taking place in the political center. 

Lenoir’s pitch, based essentially on his claim of demonstrated competence, was centrist enough, his supporters hoped, to give him the same shot at independents and Democratic crossovers that current GOP Mayor Mark Luttrell enjoyed in two elections. Similarly, Harris’ professional gloss as a Yale Law graduate and his record in office of simultaneously working across the political aisle, and pursuing cutting-edge Democratic goals gave him a good chance to activate his base, demographically presumed to be a majority, while discouraging crossovers the other way.

Even the race for sheriff, not normally one characterized by political extremes, has a discernibly ideological edge this year, as was demonstrated by another NAACP/VIP901 debate last week, this one between Chief Deputy Floyd Bonner, the Democrat, and county homeland security director Dale Lane, the Republican.

Phil Bredesen and Marsha Blackburn

Among other issues, Bonner’s declared disinclination to cooperate with the Trump administration’s roundups of undocumented immigrants, locally, contrasted with Lane’s professed willingness to assist the operatives of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officials as “fellow law officers.” (See Politics, p. 7,  for more.) 

Consistent with the blue wave theme, the August 2nd election ballot shows three Democrats running for the office of governor, and only one of them — political unknown Mezianne Vale Payne — has the look of a ringer. The other two Democrats — former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and outgoing Democratic state House Leader Craig Fitzhugh — are major league, all the way.

Most analysts see Dean as the clear favorite, on the basis of his financial edge and backing from traditionalists in the party network, though Fitzhugh has the declared support of party legislators, educators, state employees, and various other rank-and-file groups.

There are three Democrats vying in the party primary for the U.S. Senate, too, and one of them is former two-term Governor Phil Bredesen. His party rivals, for the record, are named Gary Davis and John Wolfe, but there is no mystery about who the Democratic nominee will be. Bredesen not only has wall-to-wall support from rank-and-file Democrats in Tennessee, he is counted on by national Democrats of all persuasions to contribute mightily to the party revival that Democratic optimists (and numerous media analysts) have been forecasting.

And, just as there is no mystery about Bredesen’s looming victory in the Democratic primary, the identity of his Republican adversary in November, U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee’s 7th Congressional district, is also a given, though one Aaron L. Pettigrew also has his name on the primary ballot. Blackburn, who occupies a position on the hard right of the Republican Party, was a Trumpian before there was a Trump, and her all-too-obvious intent to move on to the Senate was probably a major factor last year in convincing incumbent Senator Bob Corker, a Trump critic, that it was time to bow out.

There is something of a coin-toss situation among Republican gubernatorial candidates.. Considering the fact that three of the six GOP aspirants — entrepreneur and former state economic development Commissioner Randy Boyd, 6th District U.S. Representative Diane Black, and Williamson County businessman Bill Lee — are multi-millionaires, that metaphor is almost literal. The fourth serious candidate in the GOP primary, state House Speaker Beth Harwell, has been hampered by her relative lack of financial resources.

Though only Black has a political profile arguably close to Trump’s (she’s an advocate for building “the wall” on the nation’s southern border, and she veers hard right on most other issues), all of the Republicans call themselves “conservatives” and are at pains not to put too much public distance between themselves and the president.

Boyd, in particular, seems determined in that respect, running ads that seem designed to depict him as more rigidly conservative than Black, though in person he is soft-spoken and thoughtful, a near clone in his thinking to current Governor, Bill Haslam, for whom Boyd designed such arguably forward-looking programs as Drive to 55 and Tennessee Promise. 

Lee, a genial man who campaigns heavily on his Christian faith and his rebound from family tragedies, is clearly a generic conservative, though one with few hard and fast positions. By general consensus (and such reliable polling data as exists), he has been running third and hoping for a stumble by one or both of the acknowledged GOP front-runners, Boyd and Black.

There are those who see Lee’s real purpose as building a profile for some future race. Harwell’s is more a case of sink-or-swim in a possible last hurrah, though she is well-liked enough to be called upon for further public duty, possibly by someone’s appointment.

In any case, Bredesen vs. Blackburn and the eventual gubernatorial matchup in November will measure the contrary tides of political sentiment in Tennessee. Apropos prospects for a blue wave, a look at the legislative races on the ballot, with Democrats vying for every available position and there being numerous races for which no Republican is contending, would almost suggest that Shelby County has returned to the circumstances of the old Solid Democratic South of the pre-civil rights era, in which the GOP was an outlier party.

That, to say the least, would be misleading. What the dearth of Republican candidacies, almost entirely in predominantly black areas, does represent, however, is a continuing lack of indigenous support in the inner city of Memphis, as well as a serious downturn in the party’s outreach results, whether through lack of serious effort or simple failure. In theory at least, the party is still trying, as would be indicated by the presence on the GOP ballot once again of Charlotte Bergmann, an African-American activist and a perennial candidate, once again seeking the 9th District Congressional seat.

The omnipresence of Democratic legislative candidates, meanwhile, signals a rekindled zeal among rank-and-file Democrats as well as in the leadership of a local party which was reorganized in 2017, after internal disunion and chaos resulted in the state party’s lifting its charter in 2016. 

Longtime observers of local and state politics recall a time in the 1950s and 1960s when the Republican Party, then a definite minority organization in both Shelby County and Tennessee at large, began fielding candidates in established Democratic fiefdoms. Largely unsuccessful at first, the GOP efforts eventually bore fruit, and, when social changes (most of them national in origin) began to weaken ancestral voting habits, today’s wall-to-wall GOP state government emerged.

Locally, though, the situation is far from being static. It should be remembered that the Republican sweeps and near-sweeps in the county elections of the 21st century are counter-demographic, in that they have occurred at a time when Shelby County’s emergent non-white majority has been ever enlarging. If the new flood of Democratic candidates in the suburbs can stimulate a dormant activism there and meanwhile activate the party’s urban base, generally somnolent in non-presidential election years, the political power ratio could transform quickly.

Or, as Shelby County Republican chairman Lee Mills put it, in a cautionary message to his party-mates back in February: “Since 2010, we’ve been lucky in Shelby County. Thanks to the leadership we’ve had, we’ve had good organization and we’ve had good candidates. The Democrats, on the other hand, have had just the opposite. They haven’t had good candidates and they haven’t had good organization. But for the first time in a long time, they have both of those things. They have a good organization. They have a good leader. And they have decent candidates at the top that’ll drive all the way down to the bottom. So we have got to turn our voters out.”

There are three state Senate seats at risk in the primary, and there are interesting contests in all of them:

In State Senate District 29, Tom Stephens is a token Republican entry. The real race is in the Democratic primary, between outgoing County Commissioner Justin Ford, a member of urban Memphis’ best-known political clan, and current state Representative Raumesh Akbari, a rising legislative star who won her House seat in a 2013 special election over Ford’s cousin, Kemba Ford.

Three Democrats are on the ballot in Senate District 31, where David Weatherspoon, a chaplain at Le Bonheur Hospital, seeks the party nod over Gabby Salinas, a cancer survivor and scientific researcher. A third Democrat is M. Rodanial Ray Ransom.

Salinas’ history of personal triumph over difficult odds makes for a compelling backstory, but Weatherspoon has a serious financial edge and support across party lines. Both Weatherspoon and Salinas are committed to supporting Medicaid expansion, which Republican incumbent Brian Kelsey, unopposed in his primary, has stoutly resisted.

No Republican is running in Senate District 31, perhaps because Democratic incumbent Reginald Tate is well-known for his close cooperation with the GOP leadership in the legislature. That fact has also generated a stout challenge to Tate in the Democratic primary from nursing entrepreneur Katrina Robinson, who is supported by several name Democrats, including current state Senators Sara Kyle and Lee Harris.

Of Shelby County’s 13 seats in the House of Representatives, only five have races on the ballot, and all these races are between rival Democrats. In House District 85, there is a four-way contest involving Jesse Chism, Ricky Dixon, Brett N. Williams, and Lynette P. Williams. In House District 86, long-term Democratic incumbent Barbara Cooper has two primary opponents: Amber Huett-Garcia and Jesse Jeff. In House District 90, things begin to get truly interesting. Here incumbent John DeBerry — who, like the aforementioned Reginald Tate, is considered by many of his party-mates to be too cozy with Republicans — is challenged by Torrey Harris, a small-business owner. 

House District 91, vacated by Akbari, is being fought over by Democrats Doris DeBerry Bradshaw, Juliette Eskridge, and London P. Lamar, while House District 93 incumbent Democrat G.A. Hardaway has a contender in the Democratic primary, Eddie Neal. In House District 99, Antonio “Two-Shay” Parkinson,  is being challenged by fellow Democrat Johnnie Hatten.

House District 99 has a special distinction as a result of the recent untimely death of Republican incumbent Ron Lollar. It was too late to change the ballot; so Lollar’s name remains. Before the November election, the Shelby County Republican Party will be entitled to name a replacement. Some of the Republican names in play: county commission Chair Heidi Shafer, Shelby County GOP Chair Mills, Bartlett Alderman David Parsons, and County Commissioner David Reaves.

And David Cambron, the Democratic mainstay and ace recruiter who is as responsible as anyone for the stepped-up party showing, has a shot at winning a seat himself. He’s unopposed to be the Democratic nominee in House Disrict 99.See ‘Politics,’ , for more election preview.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

The Scramble for Position

CREDIT: JB

**The Shelby County Republicans’ Master Meal (this year re-christened as “Reagan Day Master Meal) went off as usual at the Great Hall of 

David Lillard at GOP Master Meal

Germantown on Thursday night, but this year, the event, which featured state treasurer David Lillard as keynoter, was characterized by an unusual omission. Despite the presence, at the front of the mammoth hall, near the dais, of two life-sized cutouts, one of the Great Communicator and another of the current president, the event featured no mention — that’s zero mention — of Donald J. Trump, the POTUS. Well, there was one mention, technically, when Lee Mills, chairman of the Republican Party of Shelby County, informed the several hundred arriving celebrants they could, if they chose, be photographed with either of the two cutouts, After that, nada — not from Lillard not from two prior speakers, state Senator Brian Kelsey or state Representative Mark White.

Considering that the Master Meal is an annual party event rivaling the RPSC’s annual Lincoln Day banquet, usually held in February, that was downright unusual. Keynoter Lillard did brag of the fiscal achievements of “state government” (which is to say the Treasurer’s office, assisted by the GOP-dominated legislature) but did no boasting whatsoever of Trump, nor, for that matter, of Republican Governor Bill Haslam.

Outgoing County Mayor Mark Luttrell came in for some praise and was granted a curtain call for a farewell speech, but most of the rhetoric of the affair went toward praising the pedigrees and boosting the chances of the many local Republican office-holders and GOP candidates for reelection against challenges from what Kelsey acknowledged was a newly invigorated Democratic Party. Mayhap an omen in all this? Or merely an oversight?

Chris Thomas

As usual, Shelby County Republicans turned out in force for their annual Master Meal at Germantown’s Great Hall.

**The Tennessee Nurses Association, local members of which gathered in Memphis at Coletta’s Restaurant in Bartlett earlier Friday evening to hear updates from Crystal Walker of the UT College of Nursing and TNA executive director Tina Gerardi, has been trying hard to have sit-downs with each of the six major candidates for governor, hoping, among other things, to get endorsements for state-authorized Independent Practice for nurse practitioners. The TNA remains hopeful, despite being stiffed by the GOP’s Randy Boyd, Diane Black, and Beth Harwell, who have failed so far to arrange a rendezvous with TNA officials. The two Democratic candidates, Karl Dean and Craig Fitzhugh, have each indicated support for Independent Practice authority, however, and hopes were high at the Friday dinner for a positive encounter on Saturday with Republican candidate Bill Lee, who had responded eagerly to an invitation to meet with TNA members during his planned “Super Saturday” event on Saturday at his Shelby County headquarters on Poplar Avenue. Meanwhile, all the candidates have received copies of a TNA questionnaire, the results from which will at some point be publicized by the nurses’ organization.

Another guest of honor at the Tennessee Nurses Association bash on Thursday night was Sara Kyle, the District 30 state senator who, along with her Senate colleague Lee Harris (now a candidate for Shelby County Mayor), is on what can only be called a crusade to cast out yet another Shelby County senator, Reginald Tate of District 33, in favor of Democratic challenger Katrina Robinson. Tate’s sins are those of incessant collaboration with the Republican powers-that-be in Nashville, the fact of using important committee memberships — Education, Health & Welfare, Finance, Ways & Means, Judiciary — not for the aims and purposes of his constituents or party-mates but to advance Republican goals often regarded as antithetical to his District 33 base. In an effort to propitiate the ire of his fellow Democrats, Tate resigned his long-term affiliation with ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council), the Koch-brothers-funded source of arch-Republican legislation, but allowed himself to be captured, on-mic, at a recent TV appearance as calling himself a “black Republican” and denouncing Democrats as “full of shit.”

Worst of all, Tate made no effort to oppose the legislative action to withdraw a previous $250,000 grant to Memphis for its 2019 bicentennial celebration as punishment for the city’s taking down Confederate statues in time for this year’s April 4th commemoration of Martin Luther King events, just as he had made no effort to oppose the Norris-Todd bill of 2011 that resulted in the sundering of a merged city/county school system and the creation of breakaway school districts in each of Shelby County’s suburban municipalities.
Jim McCarter

State Senator Sara Kyle with TNA members

  Ironically, Tate had scheduled his headquarters opening at 3556 Mendenhall for Saturday afternoon, at the same time that Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Lee was having a “Super Saturday” bash at his headquarters at 5576 Poplar.

Though the word “Democrat” does not appear on the senator’s signage at his new headquarters, neither does the word “Republican.” Tate did, in fact, have some identifiable Democrats at the opening, and, when he was asked about the public disaffection from him of fellow Senate Democrats Kyle and Lee Harris, he handed out a flyer listing various benefits to Shelby County which he said were results of his Senate tenure, and he suggested that the coolness to his candidacy of various Democrats owed more to their envy of his achievements (alternatively, of his legislative committee assignments) than to any partisan apostasy on his part.

JB

Reginald Tate (2nd from right) with friends atSaturday headquarters opening. Flanking are County Commissioner Willie Brooks and Young Democrat Alvin Crook, with former City Clerk Thomas Long nearby.

**As for the aforementioned gubernatorial candidate Lee, he had several members of the TNA at his “Super Saturday” affair (which was to have included some door-to-door campaigning in nearby locations, that had to be postponed, pending a break in some sudden rain showers).

Neither his questionnaire nor those of his gubernatorial opponents have as yet been received and tabulated by the TNA, but candidate Lee made a point of acknowledging his support for one of the key wish-list items wanted by the nurses’ association, legislation enabling independent practicing authority for nurse practitioners. One of his auditors on Saturday was TNA stalwart Connie McCarter, who pronounced herself pleased.
Another candidate for governor, U.S. Representative Diane Black, has invited members of the association to meet with her during the course of a CPAC event at FedExForum on Monday.

JB

Gubernatorial candidate Bill Lee with friends at Lee’s ‘Super Saturday’ event.

**Even as most local political attention is fixed on the races to be decided in the state and federal primaries and county general election August 2nd, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland made a major move to ready his reelection campaign for the city election of 2019. Strickland, who has been steadily been holding campaign fund-raisers, scheduled his most recent one for Tuesday of this week at the Beale Street Museum and Studio of the late Ernest Withers, the late revered photographic chronicler of the Civil Rights Revolution.

The crowded affair, at a minimum of $150 a head, drew a Who’s Who of influential black businessman and civil eminences, and suggested good tidings in 2019 for Strickland, whose 20915 upset victory over then Mayor A C Wharton, involved the draining away of significant African-American votes from Wharton. In his remarks to the group, Strickland did not fail to note that he had put himself on the line in the successful effort to buck state resistance in the removal of Confederate memorials downtown, that he had geometrically increased the amount of city contracts with black-owned businesses, and that he had addressed black voters’ concerns in numerous other ways.

It remains uncertain who Strickland’s opponents will be in 2919, though a former mayor, Willie Herenton, has proclaimed a wish to run, and Mike Williams, head of the Memphis Police Union, a fourth-place finisher in 2015, has already basically declared. Both are African-American. Strickland’s aim is clearly to stay a step ahead, and holding on to his impressive share of the black base is a key part of his strategy. JB

No, Elvis and BB, as famously pictured by Ernest Withers, are not quite life-size, but even if they were, they’d have had to defer, size-wise, to Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, who held a successful fund-raiser in the Withers Museum and Studio on Thursday night.

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Politics Politics Feature

Tennessee’s Gubernatorial Candidates Make the Rounds in Memphis

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

With the coming of bona fide summer weather, the governor’s race has heated up accordingly. Last week in Shelby County saw numerous comings and goings of candidates. On Friday, Republican candidates Bill Lee and Beth Harwell checked in, Lee with a “town hall” at the newish Houston Levee Community Center, Harwell with a fund-raiser/meet-and-greet at the Holiday Inn Express in Millington.

Franklin businessman Lee, who has been running, in effect, as a fallback alternative to the heated race going on now in the GOP primary between poll leaders Randy Boyd, the former state Commissioner of Economic Development, and U.S. Representative Diane Black, is so far avoiding making precise policy commitments. But at his Friday appearance in Shelby County, Lee left little doubt that he is to be numbered among the conservatives on the Republican ballot, responding to a question about how to solve the gun-violence problem by touting the Second Amendment itself as the solution.

Harwell, whose slow start in the race has left her needing to be a late bloomer and a sort of fallback candidate herself, is, like Lee, taking overtly conservative positions — opposing in-state tuition privileges, for example — but her general demeanor tilts somewhat more toward the moderate side than does Lee’s.

Meanwhile, candidate Boyd took his 95-county bus tour to Millington on Monday for an early-morning meet-and-greet and then launched out on a round of stops eastward, beginning in Fayette County.

Friday saw Democratic gubernatorial candidate Craig Fitzhugh receive the endorsement of the Legislative Black Caucus at Fitzhugh’s Poplar Avenue headquarters, and the candidate from Ripley, who is retiring from his position as Democratic leader in the state House of Representatives, was back again on Monday for a fund-raiser at the East Memphis residence of well-known activist Jocelyn Wurzburg.

In addition to the Black Caucus boosting, Fitzhugh has also received endorsements of late from the Tennessee State Employees Association and the Tennessee Education Association. His Democratic rival, former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, meanwhile, got an endorsement from the Win Back Your State PAC of former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley that carries with it a commitment from the erstwhile also-ran in the Democratic presidential primaries of 2016 to campaign in Tennessee for Dean, who has raised far more money than has Fitzhugh.

Another campaigner this week was state Representative Dwayne Thompson, who held his own town hall at the Houston Levee center on Saturday, a day after Lee. An audience member at the affair was Patricia Possel, who is vying with Scott McCormick in the Republican primary for the right to challenge Democrat Thompson, an upset winner in 2016 over then GOP incumbent Steve McManus. Possel, an advocate of measures easing the process of suburban deannexation from Memphis, grilled Thompson on the issue but seemed not to succeed in establishing much distance between her own positions and his.

• M. LaTroy Alexandria-Williams, a frequent and so far unsuccessful candidate for public office, won a signal victory last week in the courtroom of Chancellor Walter Evans, who ruled that Williams was improperly prohibited by the state Democratic Party from running as a Democrat in his planned primary race against 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen. The controversy had been accompanied by accusations of racism against Cohen and state Democratic chair Mary Mancini from such backers of Williams as Lexie Carter, chair of the Shelby County Democratic Party’s primary board. Resolution of the case restores Alexandria-Williams’ name to the ballot.

UPDATE: Carter argues convincingly that she did not make the indicated adverse comments about Rep. Cohen, though she acknowledges being critical of Mancini and Dave Cambron, president of the Germantown Democrats..

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

“X Factor” Bill Lee Takes Gubernatorial Campaign to Cordova

CREDIT: JB

JB

Lee at Houston Levee Community Center in Cordova on Thursday

Bill Lee is in many ways the image of a successful political candidate — square-jawed, polished, personally agreeable, possessor of a successful business and one of the great smiles, to boot. The Republican gubernatorial candidate from Williamson County in Middle Tennessee also has a backstory that is both touching and, here and there, inspiring.

As he has related countless times in various appearances around the state the past year, and as he spells out in detail in a self-published autobiographical volume he passes out on the stump, This Road I’m On, Lee suffered the loss of his first wife in a tragic equestrian accident some years ago. Through reliance on a Christian faith he obviously takes quite seriously, coupled with his immersion in various acts of personal ministration to others, Lee says he has emerged stronger, with a determination to perform public service.

Lee has made that clear. What is less clear is what he intends to do and how he’ll go about it. Last year, early in his race for governor, Lee issued, with a good deal of fanfare, something called a “Commitment to Memphis and Shelby County,” a list, he said, of “ten commitments I’m making to Memphis and Shelby County that I’ll keep when I become governor of Tennessee.”

Examples from the list were commitments “that Memphis and Shelby County will play a significant role in our efforts to improve education, economic development, and enhancing public safety across West Tennessee,” to “working with local leaders to find tailored solutions for the challenges of Memphis and Shelby County,” and “to give law enforcement and prosecutors the support and resources they need to protect public safety.”

That that there was a certain lack of specificity to those and other points in the list did not cancel out a sense that Lee had sincerity and good intentions. Certainly, his frequent visits to Memphis since then — often in the company of his engaging second wife Maria — are a vindication of his commitment to “being present in Shelby County and to make Shelby County a focus of my administration’s vision for our state.”

But the question remains: What in particular would Bill Lee do for Memphis and Shelby County — or for other parts of Tennessee, for that matter? The matter is hardly academic, since various polls indicate that the outlier from Franklin, though lacking the indicators from previous governmental service that his GOP rivals possess, is right up there with the leaders in the pack.

Nor did Lee’s latest local appearance, at a “town hall” in Cordova on Thursday morning, shed much light on his purposes, other than to underscore the importance of his personal faith and his plan to create a new state office focusing on faith-based approaches to governance.

After the audience at the Houston Levee Community Center (in a building gifted by the adjacent Calvary Church of the Nazarene) had seen a brief video provided by the Lee campaign, followed by brief remarks by the candidate, Lee engaged in a Q-and-A session.
One exchange was typical. Asked to propose an initiative “” for curtailing gun violence consistent with the Second Amendment’s guarantee of the right to gun ownership,” Lee answered: “I believe the ‘initiative’ would be to protect our constitutional rights … to protect them and defend them.” To curtail ownership rights, Lee said, would be to penalize ordinary citizens for the actions of criminals.

In the same way, Lee’s assertion that “teachers are not supported in the way they ought to be” and his promise to remedy that omission faded into vagueness when he was asked afterward about his means for doing so. He was emphatic that he was “not an advocate for expanding teachers’ unions” but for creating “an environment in which they [the teachers] can thrive,” along with providing them with pay equivalent to the most generous communities around — the modus for which was not spelled out.

Still, it would be disingenuous not to acknowledge Lee’s point of view — conservative, traditional, but turned a bit on the angle-of-vision axis, and decidedly unsentimental.
Two weeks ago, during a gubernatorial forum at Nashville’s Lipscomb College, he was the only one of five participating candidates (two Democrats and three Republicans, including himself) to answer in the negative a lightning-round question about whether the proselytizing effect of the Parkland, Florida high school students, post-gun massacre, had been a good thing or a bad thing.

He has a ready supply of right-tilting obiter dicta that suggest more than they say, although what they say seems clear enough. Examples: “Hope is not a strategy. It fuels a strategy;” “Sanctuary cities are, by definition, lawlessness;” “The taste of bittersweet is better than sweet.”

The interesting thing about Lee’s candidacy is that the verbal markers he throws down — which is the best way, perhaps, of describing his views — are every bit as conservative as, say, Diane Black’s, but lack the edge of what she says. It is a fact, too, that, as Lee frequently mentions to audiences, he has mentored at-risk children and done hands-on work in transitioning back to society people just released from prison.

He is, in short, still something of an X factor, his point of view dogmatically hardening a bit in the public consciousness but still ambivalent enough to keep alive his potential status as a fallback candidate, at least for Republicans.

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Politics Politics Feature

Taking Turns in Tennessee and Shelby County Politics

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Among other outcomes desired by Republican gubernatorial candidate Bill Lee was the voucher legislation long proposed by Germantown state Senator Brian Kelsey but now dropped in light of opposition from suburban school advocates.

But Lee, whom a recent Whit Ayers poll shows to be running a strong third in the ongoing GOP primary to U.S. Representative Diane Black and former state Economic Development Commissioner Randy Boyd, is still a strong believer in partnerships between government and the faith-based community. It’s the premise of his current statewide tour, the third so far in the campaign of the Williamson County businessman and farmer. Monday saw Lee and his wife Maria at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and the Life Choices pregnancy care center in Memphis.

Lee was preceded to town by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Karl Dean, the former Nashville mayor, who was hosted at a Friday luncheon by another faith-based group, the Memphis Baptist Ministerial Association, at Mt. Moriah Baptist Church on Wellington. Noting that in recent times Republicans and Democrats have taken turns with two-term incumbencies as governor, Dean said “It’s our turn” to occupy the governor’s chair. And he also noted in a conversation with reporters after his public remarks that Phil Bredesen and Bill Haslam, the two governors preceding whoever is elected this year, had both, like himself, served previously as mayors. 

Jackson Baker

Bill and Maria Lee in Memphis

Dean deemed his service as mayor, a nonpartisan position, to be good preparation for the task of presiding over a state like Tennessee, with a population that stretches ideologically from left to right but has, for most of its history, kept a political balance.

All’s Well That Ends Well: The Shelby County Commission, with a light and theoretically non-controversial agenda to deal with on Monday, saw a bit of drama.

One audience member, District 13 Commission candidate Charlie Belenky, took issue with the body’s setting a relatively quick April 2nd date to appoint a successor to departing General Sessions Judge Larry Potter. Belenky’s point was that any appointee would have a running start and an advantage over potential election rivals. The commission’s retort was that the traffic in Potter’s court was so brisk as to permit no delay.

JB

Dr Yahweh, a.k.a. Lance ‘Sweet Willie Wine,’ at the dock during Monday’s Commission meeting

Another audience member quarreled in vain with the commission’s long-established practice of awarding grants to local nonprofit charitable organizations, the case in point being one to Memphis Inner City Rugby.

And a final audience speaker, the ubiquitous activist Dr. Yahweh, delivered a long philippic against what he deemed the poisonous evil of fluoridaton in local water. Against all expectations, he ended up earning an ovation as a hero, not for his anti-fluoride message, but for his proud history, 50 years ago, when, as Lance “Sweet Willie Wine” Watson, a member of the Invaders, he was associated with the cause of the sanitation workers striking that year and with the memory of the slain martyr Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

 

All’s Well That Ends Well II: Ed Ford Jr., a two-term city councilman, now one of eight candidates (7 Democrats and 1 Republican) seeking Position 9 on the Shelby County Commission, drew a slew of heavy hitters to a Monday evening fund-raiser at Alchemy restaurant. On hand were such as realtor Bobbi Gillis, Cooper-Young mogul Charlie Ryan, Grizzlies exec Jason Wexler, several sitting commissioners and fellow council members, businessman/political broker Karl Schledwitz, and former Mayor AC Wharton.

A grateful Ford delivered himself of some lengthy remarks in which he extolled the current council and remembered being the seventh or decisive vote in several controversial council measures, notably including a controversial one that altered the benefits package of Memphis poilicemen in the interests of the city’s solvency.

Wharton, whose election loss in 2015 may have owed something to that moment, responded with a reminiscence of his own, backing up Ford’s view. And, as an incidental part of the general kumbaya, the former mayor co-existed jovially with Schledwitz, a 2015 supporter whose inadvertently leaked election-day prophecy of a Wharton loss to Jim Strickland had been the source of tension at the time. 

For further political news and pictures, see also the slideshow An Eye on Politics at memphisflyer.com.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Filling in the Blanks

CREDIT: JB

JB

GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Lee laid out his ‘Commitment to Memphis and Shelby County ‘ at the opening of his local headquarters on Poplar Avenue. on Wednesday. Among those present were (l to r) Geoff Diaz. Will Patterson, and Lang Wiseman. Wiseman is Lee’s local campaign chaiurnan.

Some weeks ago, the gubernatorial campaign of Nashville businessman/farmer Bill Lee sent out to local media — and presumably to some households and relevant institutions — a list detailing his plans for this area under the heading “Commitment to Memphis and Shelby County.”

This was before Lee had held any major public events locally and before the completion of his 95-day tractor ride, which occurred roughly at the time of last month’s gubernatorial forum here sponsored by the Federation of Republican Women and featuring Lee and the five other GOP candidates for Governor. At that event and at an earlier informal meeting with local citizens at a Millington pizza parlor, Lee demonstrated an easy way with voters and a persuasive manner on the stump.

What he didn’t do then — and still hadn’t fully done as of Wednesday, when he held a Memphis headquarters opening on Poplar Avenue across from Memorial Park — was dot all the ‘i’s” and cross the “t’s” on his platform for Memphis. He has made a start on it, however.

What the Commitment does contain (and printed copies of it were available at the newly opened headquarters) was promises of gubernatorial action beneficial to the local area in 10 specific categories. What it doesn’t do, in most of the indicated areas,  is spell out exactly what that action will be.

The nearest parallel to Lee’s itemized list was one made by then gubernatorial candidate Phil Bredesen at a meeting of the Memphis Kiwanis Club in the Skyway of The Peabody. Bredesen, at the time still serving as Nashville’s mayor, was explicit about his intentions. Among his pledges were one to create an independent Board of Trustees for the University of Memphis (something accomplished only recently by Governor Bill Haslam), another to develop the riverfront, and another to aggressively seek NFL status for Memphis. The rest of his list contained concrete proposals, too — sometimes in depth.

Bredesen would not carry Shelby County in that year’s Democratic primary — not with County Mayor Bill Morrisk, a local favorite,  as an opponent — and he also lost the county in the general election to another homeboy, then 7th District congressman Don Sundquist, running as a Republican. But he impressed a lot of people that day at The Peabody and won attention that stayed in people’s memory for eight years later, when he did get elected Governor. (With Governor Sundquist’s help, he had meanwhile landed that NFL franchise — for Nashville.)

It is not a slam on Lee to point out that his list deals mainly with abstract concepts and lacks Bredesen-style specifics. It is, after all, what it says it is: a commitment, and presumably he will have the opportunity later on to fill in the blanks. Meanwhile, his suggestions for action in buffing up law enforcement, attacking the opioid-addiction problem, and expanding workforce development and local infrastructure are certainly headed in the direction of concrete action. (For those interested, the “Commitment to Memphis and Shelby County” is reprinted at the bottom of this article.)

What Lee did do quite specifically on Wednesday was indicate something about the kind of support he will command in Memphis. Among the people playing key roles for him locally will be attorney Lang Wiseman, a former Shelby County Republican Chairman. Others will be Horace Tipton as Shelby County field director. “County captains” will include well-known activists Karyn Dunavant, Elaine Ervins, and Rieta Selberg. It is an impressive group, and one augmented at Wednesday’s meeting by former Tennessee Republican chairman Chris Devaney, who will serve as a campaign manager.

Considering the credentials of his helpers and and some other clear signs of professionalism in his campaign, Lee is clearly going to be a serious contender for the Republican nomination. He promised on Wednesday that he would be a frequent visitor to these parts, and almost certainly he will choose to flesh out more of his ideas for Memphis and Shelby County in the course of visits here over the next few months.

Here is the text of his “Commitment to Memphis and Shelby County”:

My vision is for Tennessee to be a leader in this nation, and in order to do that we need every part of our state to fully realize its potential.

Memphis and Shelby County are a critical and vital part of our state and a major asset to this country’s economy. Accelerated and transformative growth must be an absolute priority for the next Governor, because what happens in Memphis and Shelby County impacts everyone in our state.

Our next Governor must make a demonstrated commitment to ensuring the success of the entire West Tennessee region, and in order to do that we need a strong, vibrant and growing Shelby County. While Memphis and Shelby County face their own unique set of challenges, I am deeply impressed by the commitment, energy and vision of a broad range of community, business, and civic leaders I have been privileged to meet. Those leaders and all of the citizens there are working tirelessly to lift up their community, and they deserve a Governor who will be a true partner in their efforts. I will be that Governor.

Here are ten commitments I’m making to Memphis and Shelby County that I’ll keep when I become governor of Tennessee. Please let me know what you think here.

1)  commit that Memphis and Shelby County will play a significant role in our efforts to improve education, economic development, and enhancing public safety across West Tennessee.
We know there are unique challenges in Memphis and Shelby County, but also significant opportunity. As your Governor, I would treat all Tennesseans as equal shareholders in our state’s future and ensure that Shelby County is a key part in our vision for Tennessee.

2) I commit to being present in Shelby County and to make Shelby County a focus of my administration’s vision for our state.
I’ve visited Memphis and Shelby County dozens of times in the last year as I sought to more deeply understand the unique opportunities and challenges of the region. As a CEO, I know that you learn more outside of the office than you do at your desk. That’s why being present, available, and ready to listen in Shelby County will be a key priority for my administration.

3)I commit to working with local leaders to find tailored solutions for the challenges of Memphis and Shelby County.

No one knows Memphis like Memphians. Whether it’s education or economic development, there are no one-size-fits-all fixes, and my administration will understand that just because some things work for Nashville or Knoxville does not mean they are the right fit for Memphis. The state must support and align itself to the local vision, not supplant it. As Governor, my goal will be to support and enhance the local efforts that are working.

4) I commit to a regional approach for economic development that ensures West Tennessee is competitive with Arkansas & Mississippi.

We must make sure Shelby County is a key part of our plan for the West Tennessee region. As a border county, Shelby County suffers greatly from a burdensome tax code that makes it harder for businesses to stay. Businesses that move from Shelby County to Mississippi can see a substantial reduction in their franchise and excise tax-rate, of which Tennessee’s is the highest in the region. We will renew our focus on improving the environment for businesses in this state, recognizing that keeping and growing a business here is just as valuable as recruiting a business in from out-of-state.

5) I commit to supporting the comprehensive education reform efforts taking place and will continue to invest in ideas that work.

Shelby County has been a leader in locally-driven innovations to provide teachers with more flexibility, principals with greater autonomy, and students with more quality options. We will support and accelerate local efforts, working towards a system that will provide high-quality options for every parent in Shelby County.

6) I commit to true workforce development, making vocational, technical, and agricultural training a priority in public schools across Tennessee.

I employ 1,200 skilled tradesmen in my company, and we had to create our own training school to fill a dire need for vocational education as a state. The fact is, as a nation, we have neglected vocational education, leaving out a crucial ingredient for a healthy economy. If we want to keep jobs from leaving Shelby County, we’ll need to ensure that every student has the opportunity to explore and achieve their productive potential.

To do that, I will work with our private sector allies to provide training opportunities for more vocational education instructors, expanded apprenticeship opportunities for students, and invest in the critical technology our schools need to prepare for 21st century jobs.

7) I commit to engaging the faith community to bring their strengths to the public square to help address our state’s most important challenges.

Shelby County has a rich tradition of faith-based and non-profit charitable institutions leading community efforts. Our state government shouldn’t attempt to replace or dictate solutions without them. Instead, we should acknowledge the important role of faith and non-profit leaders and give them a seat at the table. So whether it’s a prison ministry, such as Men of Valor helping adults become leaders in their community, or a private-public partnership such as ARISE2Read supporting the next generation of literacy, we can and we should work with our faith leaders to deliver real results.

8) I commit to give law enforcement and prosecutors the support and resources they need to protect public safety.

A 600 officer shortage and an increased caseload for prosecutors makes the mission of law enforcement in Shelby County much harder than it should be. But in facing this challenge, Memphis and Shelby County leaders have managed to come together and do more with less, developing technologies and expertise that have helped in times of crisis. I will commit to making the investments necessary to ensure our law enforcement professionals have the tools they need to keep Tennesseans safe.

9) I commit to fighting the opioid epidemic with every tool at my disposal, including addiction treatment where appropriate and harsh punishments for drug dealers.

As we continue to rein in a system that allows for the over-prescription of opioid drugs, we are facing a new threat: New synthetic opioids that are exponentially more fatal than any prescription painkiller. Drug traffickers that come through Shelby County put the whole state at risk and bring crime and death with them. We will get behind our law enforcement and make Tennessee a state that drug traffickers fear, doing everything in our power to keep them out of Shelby County and our state.

10) I commit to help Memphis and Shelby County continue to build a world-class infrastructure that supports its economy and maintains its status as a national distribution hub.

From increasing the number of routes at Memphis International to executing the long-term vision for the Port of Memphis, we must continue to support infrastructure in Memphis as Tennessee’s gateway to the world. We can lead the nation in logistics and distribution, creating job opportunities and efficiencies for every Tennessean, but to do so we must continue to invest and build on the strategic assets of Memphis.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Dogs and Ponies

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

It is still 2017, which means that candidates for election in 2018 see their task as introducing themselves to the electorate and, when gathered together on the same stage with their declared primary opponents, are still making nice with each other, more or less.

Such was the case this past Friday night at a gubernatorial forum arranged for GOP hopefuls during the annual convention of the Tennessee Federation of Republican Women, a weekend affair held at the University of Memphis Holiday Inn.

There are six declared Republican candidates to date, and they all sat together in a row on stage, ready to be evaluated by several hundred women from Republican clubs across the state. Although a few of them may have appeared together on ad hoc occasions before, this was evidently one of the first times they were all assembled en masse, and the semiotics of the affair were such as to put them all — four women and two men — on an artificially equal footing.

In fact, three of the female candidates — 6th District Congressman (she prefers the term) Diane Black, state Senator Mae Beavers, and state House Speaker Beth Harwell — all wore nearly identical shades of red. The fourth, Kay White, a Johnson City activist, wore a dun-colored outfit, and that shade of difference, no doubt a happenstance, happened to coincide with her status as an outlier of sorts, with nothing like the name recognition or advance ballyhoo of the others.

The two men — former state Commissioner of Economic Development Randy Boyd and Franklin businessman/farmer Bill Lee — both wore standard blue jackets, though Boyd’s belonged to a suit and Lee’s to an informal outfit that included khaki pants and an open-collared shirt.

Jackson Baker

Karl Dean waits turn to speak at a Democratic meeting

Here, too, in a way, medium was message: Boyd, the earliest declared candidate, looked like what he was, a key member of Governor Bill Haslam‘s state government, the deviser of Tennessee Promise, Drive to 55, and numerous other Haslam initiatives. Lee, by contrast, sported a folksier look consistent with his professed persona as a non-politician type, a Cincinnatus ready to put down his plow and come to the aid of the commonwealth.

Interestingly, both men are doing idiosyncratic turns on a venerable Tennessee tradition — the solitary cross-Tennessee trek, whereby a candidate goes from place to place, starting at one end of the state, usually East Tennessee, meeting and greeting all the way, and ends up with a ceremonial final splash in Memphis. That was the literal finale for then-gubernatorial candidate Lamar Alexander in 1978, who walked his way across Tennessee in a plaid shirt and took a tentative dip in the Mississippi River at the very end.

Lee, in fact, had formally arrived in town only the previous day, via tractor (though he is basically a cattle farmer), concluding a “95-Counties-in-95-Days” pilgrimage begun in Mountain City on the North Carolina border. He got here in time for a Thursday night riverboat ride sponsored for the GOP rank-and-file by the Shelby County Republican Party, then met up with some local folks in Millington on Friday at a pizza cafe.

Boyd, who has been in Memphis a multitude of times already, is theoretically still on his way here. A veteran marathoner, he is about mid-way on a run across the state, doing eight miles a day and then holing up in this or that township, making a point of greeting as many local folks as he can before moving on. He went back to his route after Saturday’s forum, though he is liable to be in town a few more times for fund-raisers and such before he technically concludes his trip.

At this stage, the differences between candidates on issues can largely be divined by reading between the lines. On Friday night, all were professed conservatives (as, indeed, all Republicans describe themselves, even the few bona fide moderates in today’s right-tilting GOP), all are four-square for traditional values, all are budget hawks, all want government to create a climate propitious for business.

The most zealous partisans seemed to be Black, who began her political career as a state legislator opposed to TennCare; Beavers, a self-styled “Christian constitutional conservative” with low tolerance for taxes or diversity on social issues, and White, a veteran Tea Partier and former Trump campaign official (who, paradoxically, had kind words for Democratic icons JFK and Harry Truman).

The closest thing to a one-on-one clash was Black’s questioning of optimistic Tennessee employment figures immediately after Boyd had enumerated them, though she did not call him out by name.

The forum was what cynics might call a dog-and-pony show, in that there was more show than substance, though there were ample opportunities for seasoned members of the audience to let their imaginations do some divining. 

The GOP gubernatorial primary will be a hard-fought affair, with several of the candidates able to boast both personal wealth and significant financial support, and the eventual nominee will no doubt win by a plurality, probably a narrow one. In such circumstances, major disagreements are inevitable, and the polite relations of Friday night almost certainly will be just a memory.

• Meanwhile, former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, one of two declared Democratic candidates for governor (the other is state House minority leader Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley) turned up at a well-attended district meeting of the Shelby County Democratic Party in Collierville, touting three issues in a brief speech: education, jobs, and health care.

Unlike the Republicans, who tended to talk up their opposition to Common Core, Dean emphasized a need to raise teachers’ salaries. And he won tumultuous applause with a promise to pursue Medicaid expansion, something no GOP candidate is likely to entertain.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Tennessee GOP Hopefuls Aim at Governor’s Office

The process of giving elective birth to Tennessee’s 50th governor got underway this week, with the first filings of campaign financial disclosures. At this embryonic stage of the race, Randy Boyd, Knoxville multi-millionaire businessman and former commissioner of the state Department of Economic and Community Development (ECD), shapes up as the gubernatorial frontrunner among Republicans — which means frontrunner generally, in our red state.

Governor Bill Haslam is a Boyd buddy and appointed him to the ECD, providing a statewide stage to perform to the general applause from the state’s politically astute business leaders.

Randy Boyd

Boyd has hired veteran political operative Chip Saltsman to run the campaign, has lined up public support from a bunch of mayors and a few legislators (mostly East Tennesseans), is working hard and can self-finance — putting in $2 million in direct funding rather than the traditional loan — while collecting another $2.3 million from other donors.

The lame duck governor, of course, isn’t publicly endorsing anyone in the primary, but many of his best political friends see the election of Boyd, who’s already facing attacks from arch conservatives, as the next best thing to a third term for the mild-mannered and moderate incumbent.  

At the other end of the spectrum, politically and financially, is Republican state Senator Mae Beavers of Mount Juliet, who has the strongest right-wing credentials in the field and a small corps of devout followers. Theoretically, if she can maintain that status, Beavers might have at least a long shot at winning the nomination. But she’s not known statewide and reported just $56,721 raised in her first disclosure, including $20,000 transferred from her state Senate fund.

U.S. Representative Diane Black of Gallatin, the House Budget Committee chair, has told a lot of folks she wants to run but is hesitant while serving as moderator in federal funding fights among Washington GOP factions. The delay in a campaign kickoff has already hurt her prospects, and a budget blowup could hurt more — or help, if everything falls into place. She and her husband, David, are multi-millionaires and reportedly ready to spend whatever it takes in playing hard-ball catchup. Black is a formidable campaigner who has a past that includes surviving bitter political clashes and overcoming personal problems. Her overall prospects in a governor’s race are something of a mystery at this point.

Senator Mae Beavers

House Speaker Beth Harwell has already earned a note in state political history by becoming the first woman elected to lead a chamber of the General Assembly. She touted two decades of political experience in announcing her candidacy, having toyed with the idea since at least 2009. That experience, though, has brought negatives as well as positives as Harwell — usually rather reluctantly while striving for some middle-ground stance — chose sides in GOP super-majority squabbling.

In January, she came within 10 votes of losing reelection as speaker, and another roll of the dice at that table would be risky. To the gubernatorial table, she brings about $1 million in seed money available in existing accounts, some self-funding capability, and a long list of potential donors — enough for a respectable run to wind up a political career one way or the other.

Bill Lee, a multi-millionaire Franklin businessman and cattle farmer, is generally regarded as an extreme underdog in making his first run for political office, despite almost matching Boyd in money matters with about $1.4 million collected from friends and a matching amount loaned to his campaign. Lacking an established political base, Lee has been making a pitch to evangelical Christians and presents himself as to the right of Boyd, though not nearly as much in that direction as Beavers — so far. His candidacy threatens to drain some votes from others, but probably not enough to do more than gain experience for another run somewhere down the road.

President Trump’s move to put Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris on the U.S. District Court bench, rather than leave him to follow through with talk of running for governor, means no major candidate from West Tennessee to enjoy that geographic loyalty Boyd seems to be developing in the eastern part of the state. So Boyd enters the western arena on equally unknown footing with the others, all from Middle Tennessee, and maybe benefits a bit.

Arguably, Harwell does, too, since the two legislators run in the same legislative political circles.

Tom Humphrey, formerly with the Knoxville News Sentinel, is a contributing editor of the Tennessee Journal. See Politics, p. 8, for his musings on Democratic gubernatorial candidates.