All members of the Memphis Area Transit Authority’s(MATA) board of commissioners have been replaced following the recommendation of a consulting firm.
Mayor Paul Young announced Friday he was starting a “clean slate” on MATA’s leadership after a draft report from the consulting agency TransPro was released. TransPro said the previous board failed to “provide reasonable oversight.”
The previous board consisted of Michael Fulton, Angus Blair, Sara Burnett, Janice Holder, Anton Mack, Ed Stephens III, Shelia Williams, Martin Lipinski, and Courtney McNeal. It will be replaced with Brandon Arrindale, Cynthia Bailey, Emily Greer, Sandi Klink, Brian Marflak, Jackson McNeil, Anna McQuiston, Dana Pointer, and Maya Siggers.
Young told the council that replacing the board is an “aggressive action” and showed that this is not indicative of one person. His replacements include bus advocates, logistic, financial and legal experts, and more.
“[The MATA Board] has served nobly over the years and this is not an indication of them or their integrity,” Young said. “This is a hard reset.”
TransPro reviewed MATA from August 19 to October 11. During that time the board had passed a budget that not only included service cuts, but prompted the layoff of more than 200 employees. Board members said these cuts were made to ensure the viability of the agency, as officials had announced a $60 million deficit this summer.
During Tuesday’s council meeting, Young said they wanted an external analysis on how they were doing on an operational level, which is why they turned to TransPro.
“[The] existing MATA board fails to provide reasonable oversight,” the report said. “Just a month ago the MATA board unanimously adopted a budget with no questions…for a fiscal year that started more than 100 days prior.”
Councilwoman Jerri Green called the report “nothing short of scathing.”
“It talked specifically about how the board failed over and over again in finances,” Green said.
John Lewis, principal at TransPro, said public transportation’s purpose is to give the community reliable service, and MATA has failed to do so. Lewis said the company has worked with the agency previously, however MATA failed to address their recommendations. As a result, TransPro “severed their agreement.”
“We find ourselves not surprised [by] the situation the agency finds itself in at this moment,” Lewis said.
Memphis City Councilwoman Yolanda Cooper-Sutton said that the Memphis Area Transit Authority’s (MATA) interim CEO Bacarra Mauldin had been “gifted an issue” and criticized the agency for not asking for help in their budget crisis.
These comments came after officials noted that the agency had been operating in an unrestricted budget deficit for the last 10 years.
“To hear that this is a 10-year-long thing that you all have known about — that you didn’t have enough money and never said anything to anyone is very disturbing,” Cooper-Sutton said. “I don’t think you would run your household for 10 years and no one would say anything.”
Cooper-Sutton went on to call out the organization’s Board of Commissioners for not speaking up as well, and that they should share in accountability for the agency’s financial burdens.
“No one knew there was a deficiency coming down the pipeline? No one?” Cooper-Sutton said. “I’m going to tell you what my spirit is discerning — someone is lying and not telling the truth. You’re not going to tell me that the educated board with all those alphabets behind their name that no one knew and saw this coming for 10 years? It’s unbelievable.”
Mauldin responded saying she remembers being two doors down from her predecessor and had no idea that the agency was facing financial hardship.
“The board didn’t know,” Mauldin said. “From the moment that we gave full visibility over what was happening with the finances, I shared that information with the board and we have as governance partners to try to right this ship. I know that it’s unbelievable, I know that it’s unacceptable but we have done everything in our power to bring this in-line so that we could provide the service this city needs and deserves.”
Today’s meeting follows the passage of the transit authority’s budget for Fiscal Year 2025 which resulted in more than 200 layoffs and the suspension of routes. Riders and community members have openly called on the council to intervene in the agency’s problems. The council had also requested that MATA appear before them every two weeks to provide updates in hopes of increasing transparency.
Mauldin said that her team was “beaten down” and that all they want is to make things right.
“Our goal is to develop a robust transit system that positions Memphis to compete nationally,” Mauldin said. “The city deserves that and we want to give it to the city. We’re committed to providing insights and context necessary to be a part of the solution and help drive the city towards a successful future.”
MATA’s presentation covered their financials, staff optimization, and the steps they plan to take moving forward. Mauldin was joined by external chief financial officer Hamish Davidson, chief of strategic partnerships and programs Erik Stevenson, and chief development officer John Lancaster.
Davidson highlighted that MATAs debt has grown over time due to increased costs and a decrease in ridership and flat funding. He added that the budget affects on-time performance and they are currently operating at a $85 million budget, with a proposed balanced budget of $67.8 million.
“This is not something that occurred in one year,” Davidson said. “This is something that has been continuing for many years.”
According to Davidson, this is something that the media and others had been “lambasting” the agency about, and wanted to note that their deficit wasn’t an annual loss.
The approved budget shows that a majority of MATA’s funding comes through grant revenue ($64 million) with the City of Memphis being its primary funding source at $30 million. The rest of their budget is supplemented by their operating revenue of $3.7 million from passenger fares, advertising, and charters.
Councilwoman Pearl Eva Walker noted that the council’s assessment of MATA’s troubles stemmed from lack of on-going information and updates, as opposed to understanding of finances.
In hopes of adding context to the operational side, Lancaster explained that their problems also stem from their density and size of their service area. MATA covers nearly 300 square miles with a fleet of less than 100 buses. For comparison, Lancaster said they operated more than 300 buses in a little over 100 square miles in the 1970s.
Stevenson said they had to reduce their workforce in order to stay in line with their budget. As a result 18 trolley workers, 29 administrative personnel, and 52 unionized personnel were laid off with 75 eliminated positions.
While the agency presented a PowerPoint in hopes of providing answers, the council was still not pleased with their presentation, prompting several questions and comments from council members. Walker noted that the presentation was very “general.”
Councilwoman Rhonda Logan questioned if employee perks such as employee vehicles had been reduced as the company works to cut down on spending. Mauldin said she would provide the council with a detailed list of these things, including the context in which they exist.
It is no accident that many savants in the legal/political universe regard the 1962 Baker v. Carr decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to be second to none among landmark judicial decisions.
This decision was brought on by a suit from Charles Baker, chairman of what was then the Shelby County Court, precursor of the present Shelby County Commission. On behalf of Shelby County, rapidly urbanizing at the time, as was the nation as a whole, Baker sought relief from un-democratic districting guidelines imposed by the state of Tennessee that unduly favored the state’s rural population.
The court held in essence that the Fourteenth Amendment required that the principle of one person-one vote be applied in the determination of legislative district lines.
While the decision had immediate and lasting repercussions on determining matters of voter eligibility, both in Tennessee and elsewhere in the nation, it has by no means eliminated gerrymandering based on partisan politics (e.g. witness the Republican legislative supermajority’s strip-mining away of Democratic Party rights in Nashville’s Fifth Congressional District), nor has it much diminished the edgy relationship between urban and rural interests in policy-making.
The latter issue has flared up again in the quarrel over whether Memphis voters should be allowed to vote their preference on several gun-control measures embedded in a referendum proposed by the city council but now endangered by the action of the county Election Commission in removing it from the November ballot.
In so acting, the Election Commission — dominated 3-2 by GOP members according to state mandate — has clearly responded to overt threats from the state’s Republican leadership to withhold from the city some $78 million in state revenues, if the referendum should go through as scheduled.
This was some of the “stiff resistance” promised by House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who articulated things this way: “Local governments who want to be progressive and evade state laws will lose shared sales tax funding.” The speaker likened the city’s referendum plans to “subversive attempts to adopt sanctuary cities [and] allow boys in girls’ sports.”
Some Memphians were expressing concern that the state’s retribution could also be visited on various large local projects dependent on previously pledged state subsidies, like those involving the zoo, FedExForum, and Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium.
It is worth recalling the actual import of the endangered referendum, authorized earlier by the council’s unanimous vote. In the words of its chief sponsor Councilman Jeff Warren, “Memphis voters will be asked whether they approve amending the city’s charter to require a handgun permit, restrict the storage of guns in vehicles in many cases, ban assault weapons sales after January 1, 2025, and enact extreme risk protection orders, sometimes called Red Flag Laws.”
All the referendum would do is solicit voter opinion, it would seem. Sexton chooses to see it otherwise, as a direct challenge to state authority.
Whichever interpretation is correct, the ongoing confrontation between city and state over a host of policy matters, of which gun safety is only one, is rising to fever pitch, as evidenced the rhetoric employed last week by Council Chair JB Smiley and various supportive council members, who announced their intent to sue the Election Commission to reinstate the ballot measure.
“Memphis has been shot and is bleeding out,” said Councilwoman Jerri Green. “We won’t back down, and we damn sure won’t be bullied,” proclaimed Smiley.
Memphis Mayor Paul Young meanwhile seemed to be trying to position himself at the nonexistent calm center, saying he understood the council’s “frustration” but expressing the view that the referendum ultimately would be “futile.”
The original “One Memphis” logo on a vintage souvenir umbrella from an A C Wharton mayoral campaign. (Photo: Jackson Baker)
Talk about déjà vu!
When Memphis Mayor Paul Young — still, some 50-odd days into his new administration, working on organizational matters — brought forth his latest innovation, involving the slogan “One Memphis” to denote a series of community meetings to come, echoes were generated in the minds and memories of numerous Memphians.
After all, it was only 15 years ago that A C Wharton used the identical phrase “One Memphis” as a campaign slogan in the 2009 special election that first landed Wharton in the mayor’s office to succeed the retiring Willie Herenton.
“There is absolutely nothing we cannot overcome if we work toward that goal as One Memphis,” Wharton would intone in his speeches, reinforcing the idea in an ad campaign that would sign off with the initials “A C” (familiar to his audiences then and later as the preferred shorthand for his uniquely accessible persona), followed by the words “One Memphis.”
It was Wharton’s way of distinguishing himself from the more volatile and divisive 16-year tenure of his predecessor.
No doubt Paul Young means something similarly comforting, coupling the two-word slogan with the phrase “Empowering Voices/Building Bridges” in a published logo announcing his forthcoming “One Memphis Tour,” which was to have its inaugural session at Whitehaven High School this week.
Another new venture by Young was embodied in his recent announcement of his intent to appoint someone to a newly created office, that of public safety director, which would have hierarchical dibs over that of police chief.
Overall, the idea was greeted with a positive public reaction, particularly in those circles where there is a desire to locate the duties of law enforcement within a larger, more holistic context of social reform.
That would seem to be Young’s purpose, though this is one of those cases where the devil (the angel, rather?) will be in the details.
Young, who has experienced some difficulty in getting off the mark, might have fared even better, reception-wise, had he been able to make the announcement of the new office in January, when his cabinet was first being assembled, and better still if he could have had the appointment in hand of some credibly credentialed appointee.
That might well have obviated the awkwardness and still unresolved discord which arose from his reappointment of C.J. Davis as police chief (as of now an interim position). Her continuation in office as a clear subordinate would have raised fewer hackles, if any at all, with the city council and with the general public.
Better late than never, even if the sequence seems a bit backwards.
• Gale Jones Carson, a longtime presence in the community as spokesperson for MLGW, was named last week as interim CEO of the local chapter of Urban League.
Carson’s successor as MLGW’S vice president of corporate communications, Ursula Madden Lund, meanwhile is having to wait for a reluctant city council to approve her $200,000 salary. The matter is up for discussion again next week.
• A proposed measure to provide lifetime healthcare benefits to veterans of at least two city council terms took an abrupt nosedive last week, being rejected on third reading virtually unanimously by the new city council after the previous council had approved it without a dissenting vote.
Maura Black Sullivan (Photo: Courtesy Maura Black Sullivan)
The Memphis Flyer has confirmed that Mayor Paul Young and a veteran public official now serving in Nashville are in continuing conversations about her possible employment here. This would be Maura Black Sullivan, a native Memphian who now holds the position of chief operating officer of Nashville Public Schools.
Sullivan, who previously served as COO for former Memphis Mayor AC Wharton and later for former Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke, confirmed that conversations with Young are ongoing for the position of his chief administrative officer.
On Tuesday of this week, the city council was prepared to deal with some unfinished business — including a controversial healthcare allowance for council members of two terms’ service or more, and a decision on yet another mayoral appointment — this one of public works director Robert Knecht.
A vote on Knecht, whom Mayor Paul Young submitted for renomination week before last, was deferred after council chairman JB Smiley publicly criticized Knecht for “attitude” issues and asked for the deferral.
Several of Young’s cabinet choices were viewed negatively by Smiley and other council members — notably Police Chief CJ Davis, whose reappointment the council narrowly rejected via a 7-6 vote. (She was later given an interim appointment by Young, pending a later reexamination by the council.)
Another issue with several council members has been unease at the mayor’s inability so far to complete his team with credentialed new appointees in other positions. He has not yet named permanent appointees for the key positions of chief operating officer and chief financial officer, for example.
That circumstance could change soon. Sullivan is frank to say that she has not been in a job search, enjoys her present circumstances in Nashville, and has made no decision to leave them, but acknowledges that a possible return to Memphis would be attractive as well.
Sullivan is the daughter of the late Dave Black, a featured radio broadcaster of many years in Memphis, and the late Kay Pittman Black, who was a well-known journalist and government employee here.
• With Governor Bill Lee’s appointment this week of Mary L. Wagner to the Tennessee Supreme Court, the state’s high court continues with an unmistakably red hue politically.
As a judicial candidate in her two elections as a Circuit Court judge in Shelby County, Wagner campaigned without ideological inflection and enjoyed relatively diverse support, and there was no hint of political bias in her judgments. But her background was that of a Republican activist, and she both was a member of the right-leaning Federalist Society and served a term as chair of the Shelby County Republican Party.
In appointing Wagner, Lee said, “Her understanding and respect for the rule of law and commitment to the conservative principles of judicial restraint make her well-suited for the state’s highest court, and I am proud to appoint her to this position.”
Technically, Wagner is a justice-designate. The justice she was named to succeed, Roger Page,will keep his position for some months.
• District Attorney Steve Mulroy was in a celebratory mood last Monday evening after the Shelby County Commission voted unanimously — except for three abstentions — to pass an ordinance imposing guidelines ensuring that all members of his office, whether their technical employment is by the county or by the state, are paid according to the same pay scale.
As a county official, Mulroy had recently trimmed his own pay according to the lower county rate. He has now restored the voluntary pay cut.
Update: After our print deadline, Mayor Young clarified to the Flyer: “I can confirm that we had early talks with Maura Sullivan about a different position with the Young administration, not the COO/CAO position. We have a strong leader currently acting in the COO role who has my full faith and confidence.”
The mayor’s spokesperson/CCO, Penelope Huston, added: “The role we initially discussed was a high level position on the Mayor’s cabinet. And while talks about that position haven’t continued, we do have an ongoing dialogue with her and many others who we consider allies in the work of creating a stronger Memphis.”
When Judge Jayne Chandler (r) swore in Councilman Jeff Warren in early January, host and witness for the special ceremony was the iconic late former school board member Sara Lewis. It was her final official act. (Photo: Courtesy Jeff Warren)
The forced reaction of Mayor Paul Young in his interim appointment of Memphis Police Chief CJ Davis, coupled with the city council’s action this past Tuesday to defer action on reappointing Public Works Director Robert Knecht, suggests an emergent balkanization of power in the affairs of the newly installed city government.
Council chair JB Smiley has made it clear that he intends to position the council — and himself — as a counterbalance to mayoral authority. Smiley, who had taken the lead in the first deferral of action on Davis three weeks ago, reinforced his assertiveness last Tuesday in dressing down Knecht for “attitude” and alleged insularity and leading the council to postpone a vote on Knecht’s reappointment for two more weeks.
“Make sure you respond when we come calling on you,” was the thrust of Smiley’s message to Knecht. The contrast between Smiley’s firmness and Knecht’s docility was instructive.
And individual council members have their own axes to grind.
Councilman Jeff Warren, sponsor of the imminent council resolution that Young had to preempt and emulate in his interim appointment of Davis, has affirmed his position at the nexus of authority. Newcomer Jerri Green’s strong questioning of Davis underscored her determination to be a voice to reckon with.
Another new council member, previously seen as an unknown quantity, is Yolanda Cooper-Sutton, who has made a point of her intention to base her votes on her own independent researches. Yet another first-termed, Pearl Eva Walker, has to be regarded as a potential exponent of an abundant number of activist causes, including a reexamination of Memphis’ issues with TVA.
And so forth and so on. As the old saw goes: All have won, and all must have prizes. Young, who has yet to get his legs fully down, will be hard put to maintain the strong-mayor authority the city charter entitles him to — especially given a belated air of pushback against the relatively free hand enjoyed by former mayor Jim Strickland.
Not to be ignored, either, is the likely enhancement of self-interested power groups in the community. A key moment in the (temporary) resolution of the Davis matter was a come-to-Jesus meeting between Mayor Young and members of the Memphis Police Association on the Monday before the last council session.
The gathered police folk made it clear that they wanted more attention to their concerns that they had been used to in law-enforcement matters.
The bottom line is that rosy rhetoric does not apply to Davis’ case. Nor to her boss’. One noted pundit has hailed the interim appointment as a salvific opportunity for all the sides to get together in constructive kumbaya. The fact is, to employ the right existential terminology, Davis is in a form of purgatory and has, at best, an opportunity to expurgate herself. Meanwhile, she has to bear the ill-defined stigmata of public doubt. And so, sadly, must the mayor, as he still struggles to launch his mayoralty.
Some are already suggesting that Chief Davis might make her best contribution to the city’s welfare — and to her boss’ and to her own — by arranging for a graceful, voluntary withdrawal.
It isn’t necessarily momentous that Mayor Paul Young will face a delay in having his newly announced appointments approved by the city council. But it isn’t incidental or meaningless, either.
As the week began, it had become common knowledge that, upon their formal presentation to the council last Tuesday, the courtesy of “same-night minutes” was likely to be denied to some — if not all — of the appointees.
“Same-night minutes” is the shorthand for a parliamentary process whereby actions taken by the council in a given session are approved by an immediate second vote by the council to become instantly effective and to avoid follow-up action at the group’s next regular meeting, when the minutes of the preceding meeting would normally get formal approval. It’s a “hurry-up” process, as a means of hastening the effective date of a council action, making it, in effect, instantaneous. It is employed when the avoidance of any delay is considered a paramount factor.
The process is also invoked, as previously suggested, as a courtesy of sorts — as in the case of most mayoral appointments.
CJ Davis (Photo: City of Memphis)
As it happens, the Young appointees were to be presented to the council almost a year to the day from that awful moment in January 2023 when Tyre Nichols was beaten to death by an out-of-control unit of the SCORPION task force, which had been created by Memphis Police Chief CJ Davis as a would-be elite enforcement element of the Memphis Police Department.
That fact, along with the well-known circumstance of an increased rate of violent crime in Memphis during the last year and the MPD’s status under a Department of Justice investigation, is enough to have flagged Davis’ reappointment for special attention.
It was clear when Davis spoke to the Rotary Club in November that she — and her mayoral sponsor — wanted to regard her appointment as a certainty. She prescribed a year’s worth of policy points with the air of one who could speak to their achievement. Yet there was something vague, tentative, and not quite jelled about her presentation — as there was when she recapped her intentions again last week at a crime summit called by Young.
Meanwhile, there was head-scratching at City Hall as to Young’s inability — or indecision — regarding his naming of a COO and a CFO, though he had reportedly scoured the city governments of Nashville and Chattanooga for prospects.
The resultant highlighting of Davis’ appointment against a backdrop of Strickland-era retainees left his cabinet-level choices looking somehow incomplete and provisional.
JB Smiley (Photo: City of Memphis)
Pointedly, council chairman JB Smiley, determined, it would seem, to assert council prerogatives, began running a poll on X to gauge public acceptability of Davis’ appointment, and no council members have seemed anything but resolute when sounding out on the issue.
None of this augurs well for a new administration which is still seen — at best — as enveloped with an aura of the unknown and untested.
It remains to be seen whether the situation reflects more of a sense of unreadiness on the part of the new regime or an aroused determination on the council’s part to assert its own authority.
Either way, it certainly amounts to a rough start.
Scott McCormick and
Jerri Green (Photos: Courtesy Scott McCormick/Jerri Green)
In the emailed responses below, the District 2 council candidates outline their plans and priorities.
Scott McCormick: As a district representative on the Memphis City Council, my main priority is to advocate for the district I am elected to represent, District 2.
Germantown Parkway is a bit like the Wild West. Just last week two banks were robbed. Car break-ins occur in the various parking lots along the parkway and some businesses have been forced to close due to criminal activity. People want to feel safe. Wives, mothers, and daughters all want to get their gas without looking over their shoulders. I want to sit down with the police director and discuss how law enforcement resources are allocated to District 2.
“Out-of-town landlords’’ neglect their properties when vacant. Weeds are allowed to take over yards and visible disrepair is noticeable with many of these houses. One example is a house I pass almost every day. The windows are boarded up and the garage door is barely hanging [by] its rails. It is an eyesore and a nuisance. Another example was a new[s] story about a Cordova woman who moved in only to find the house was infested with rats. The landlord ignored her until the news station became involved. The council needs to address this issue, as it not only affects District 2 but all the districts. These real estate companies, which own 400-plus homes, need to be held accountable to maintain their properties.
Cordova is a part of the city that contracts its garbage service through a private company. The service is unreliable. I personally experience missed trash or recycle pick-up at least once a month. Yard waste will sit on the curb for months at a time before being picked up. Yard waste is supposed to be picked up every other week. This is another issue that is a nuisance for the citizens of District 2.
Jerri Green: I have been out knocking on doors and talking to my neighbors in District 2. From the grandmother concerned about the skyrocketing MLGW bills and frequent power outages to the funeral director concerned about the gun deaths he sees each week to the parent wondering about opportunities for their children in a city that is in a crime crisis, each voter is looking for leadership to take action.
The theme running through it all, District 2 is ready for change. And they want someone who not only has a record of success, but has proven they are tough enough to lean in on these hard issues and make a real difference. On the city council, I plan to focus on innovative strategies to tackle crime, improve infrastructure, and support youth.
As senior policy advisor for Mayor Lee Harris, I have started the nation’s first free gun lock by mail program by a local government to keep guns out of the wrong hands. I’ve supported our law enforcement officers with increased benefits and in-precinct youth counselors. I also started a jobs site for ex-offenders because if you’re too busy working, you’re too busy to go back to a life of crime. These are solutions with proven results.
All my plans start with data. I will use data to make sure MLGW has a robust tree trimming program that targets the areas most susceptible to power outages. I will also make sure proposed improvements align with the costs being charged to customers. It is time to hold the leadership accountable.
I would also be the first woman — and mother — to hold this seat. That means I will not just bring change, but also common sense and compassion to my work, especially as it relates to the next generation. You can count on me to always show up for my children and yours.
Fatigue clearly shows on the faces of these mayoral candidates
at a late forum — (l to r) Floyd Bonner, J.W. Gibson, James Harvey,
Michelle McKissack, and Paul Young. (Photo: Jackson Baker)
As would be indicated by the collaborative content shared by the Flyer and MLK50 in this joint issue, public safety has clearly been the predominant topic in the 2023 Memphis mayoral race.
The four leading mayoral candidates have been quoted at length on the matter, but all the candidates have weighed in repeatedly on crime, its consequences, and methods for dealing with it.
Proposals have ranged from the obvious — more community policing and upgrading the MPD — to an ambitious call for a “crime summit” to a somewhat fringey proposal by one candidate to negotiate directly with gangs, presumably so as to cut deals with them.
Uniquely, this is the first mayoral contest in Memphis history in which all of the 17 candidates, including those acknowledged to be serious prospects for winning, are African-American.
That fact — which reflects the demographic nature of Memphis itself — coupled with what several polls have indicated is an extremely close contest, suggests that a revision may be overdue for the judicial settlement of 1991, which prohibited runoff voting in the mayor’s race. At the time, it was feared that a runoff would invite stacked opposition from whites to preclude a Black from winning.
In what amounted that year to a two-man winner-take-all race with a token third opponent, former schools superintendent Willie Herenton won a hairs-breadth victory over incumbent Dick Hackett, inaugurating a new era of Black prominence in city government.
Since then, only a plurality — like the one achieved by white councilman Jim Strickland in a multi-candidate race in 2015 — has been necessary for one to be elected mayor. (Strickland would be reelected with a majority over two opponents in 2019.)
But if racial factors in citywide elections (and countrywide ones, for that matter) have largely become irrelevant, the unspoken barrier to female candidates — the so-called “glass ceiling” — remains unbroken. The 2023 mayoral field includes two well-credentialed women, state House Democratic leader Karen Camper and Memphis-Shelby City Schools board member Michelle McKissack. Both have had their moments, particularly in a pair of televised forums last week, but neither ranks high in the latest mayoral polls.
All the polls anyone has seen so far are unofficial, of course, but all have shown former Mayor Herenton either the leader outright or in the near vicinity of the lead.
Some of Herenton’s potential vote derives from the historical memory of Memphians, especially inner-city ones, but he may also be gaining adherents because of his hard-line position on crime, the theme of the day, and his stated resolve to bring back the data-based policing methods of Blue CRUSH, instituted during his own last couple of terms.
The public-safety issue is paramount also in the mayoral campaign of Sheriff Floyd Bonner, who boasts a 42-year record in law enforcement and his ability to deal with the issue “from Day One” of his inauguration.
Most reckonings by political observers see a hotly contested three-way race between Herenton, Bonner, and Paul Young, the Downtown Memphis Commission CEO, who hasn’t been off the clock, campaign-wise, since he announced his intention to run roughly a year ago. Young has accomplished some impressive fundraising and leads all other candidates in that respect, with Bonner a reasonably close second.
Former County Commissioner Van Turner, a former Democratic chairman who led the local NAACP in recent years and was prominent in the effort to remove Confederate statues from Downtown, had some early stumbles but has come on somewhat of late, especially in the wake of recent endorsements from labor organizations and from County Mayor Lee Harris, DA Steve Mulroy, Congressman Steve Cohen, and the current political star of stars, state Representative Justin Pearson, who received international attention for his prominence in anti-gun protests during the spring legislative session.
Reportedly, Pearson, via independent expenditures licensed by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, is about to endow the cause with $100,000 for a last-minute ad blitz aimed at rousing local Democrats.
Like candidates Camper and McKissack, self-funding businessman/philanthropist J.W. Gibson did well in public forums last week, but in his case, as in theirs, it could be a case of too little, too late.
District 5 candidate Meggan Kiel at a meet and greet (Photo: Jackson Baker)
If female candidates are struggling in the mayoral race, they are more than holding their own in city council races. Indeed, it is theoretically possible for the council races to end with a female majority of one serving. And in tight multi-candidate races in districts one through seven, a runoff provision will mandate a majority winner and provide a second chance for some.
In council District One, incumbent Rhonda Logan is heavily favored over opponent Kymberly Kelley.
There are six candidates vying in council District Two, including Jerri Green, a former legislative candidate and current policy advisor to County Mayor Harris; ex-councilman and former Plough Foundation director Scott McCormick; and business consultant Marvin White.
District 2 council candidate Jerri Green campaigning for the legislature in 2021 (Photo: Jackson Baker)Jerri Green (Photo: Kelly Roberts)
There are no fewer than three female candidates in council District Three — longtime activist Pearl Eva Walker, Kawanias “Kaye” McNeary, and Towanna C. Murphy — contending with veteran political figure Ricky Dixon and the Rev. James Kirkwood, a former ranking officer in the Memphis Police Department.
District 3 council candidate Pearl Walker at Sidney Chism’s summer picnic event (Photo: Jackson Baker)
The two candidates in council District Four are not only both women, but both are also veterans of prior service on the council. Teri Dockery served as an interim council member during a vacancy, and Jana Swearengen-Washington is the incumbent.
District Five boasts a trio of candidates, one of whom, Luke Hatler, is still a student at White Station High School. The other two candidates — Meggan Wurzburg Kiel and Philip Spinosa — are locked into a serious and costly mano-a-mano in which each candidate has raised resources of more than $100,000.
Seeking return to council is Scott McCormick (r), here with state Representative Mark White and campaign treasurer Nick Scully. (Photo: Jackson Baker)
Kiel, though a novice candidate for office, is no stranger to civic affairs. She was one of the founders of the progressive activist group MICAH (Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope). Her opponent, Spinosa, is no newcomer, either. Elected to the council in 2015, he served part of a term and resigned to head up the Chairman’s Circle on the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce. He now works in logistics.
In one sense, the contest is a battle of initialized groups: MICAH vs. CAISSA, the latter being a PR group catering to centrist and right-of-center candidacies. There have been no direct encounters between the two candidates, and potentially volatile issues have largely been on the back burner, but Spinosa in a TV ad has accused Kiel of wanting to defund the police, a charge she has vehemently denied.
District Six is currently being served by incumbent Councilman Edmund Ford Sr., who is heavily favored over opponents Keith D. Austin II and Larry Hunter.
Anyone looking at the crowded roster of District Seven candidates might assume it to be an available open seat, but, in fact, incumbent Michalyn Easter-Thomas is in good shape to repeat. The superfluity of challengers owes mainly to what was a lingering prospect that her status as an employee of the Memphis River Parks Partnership, an adjunct of city government, might cause her to be declared ineligible. Among those taking a shot at the seat are Edward Douglas, Jimmy Hassan, Jarrett “JP” Parks, Dee Reed, Austin Rowe, and Larry Springfield.
All of the candidates in the council district races just discussed, even those who are distinct underdogs, might be nursing hopes of winning in the runoff stage of the election, which does not exist for the mayor’s race nor for the Super District 8 and Super District 9 seats.
These are winner-take-all, and there are no second chances for second-place finishers.
In two of them — 8-1, held by JB Smiley, and 9-3, occupied by Jeff Warren — there are no other candidates besides the incumbent. And in two others, the incumbents — Chase Carlisle in 9-1 and Ford Canale in 9-2 — have opponents, newcomers Benji Smith in 9-1 and Brandon Washington in 9-2, with only remote chances of winning.
Super District 8, Position 2, is actually an open seat, though Marion LaTroy A-Williams is a perennial, and Davin D. Clemons is considered something of a fringe candidate. Janika White, who was runner-up to Steve Mulroy in the 2023 Democratic primary for district attorney general, is virtually a sure winner, having been hand-picked essentially by current incumbent Cheyenne Johnson, who opted out of a reelection effort.
The other Super District seat, for Position 3, is an open seat as well and boasts a genuine contest involving six contenders — the foremost ones being entertainer-activist Jerred Price, former District 7 incumbent Berlin Boyd, and consultant Brian Harris. Also in the race are Lucille Catron, Yolanda Cooper-Sutton, Damon Curry Morris, and Paul Randolph Jr.
Prospective council candidate Jerri Green (Photo: Community Legal Center)
As of last week, the City Council — after lengthy deliberations that ran way past the May 22nd date for pulling candidate petitions — finally mustered enough votes to declare district lines for the forthcoming city election.
And, basically, it’s a case of Meet the New Lines, Same as the Old Lines.
Which is to say, the council districts for the October 5th election conform to the same map that was redrawn for a special election in District 4 last November. Then-incumbent Councilwoman Jamita Swearengen had resigned the District 4 seat after winning election as Shelby County Circuit Court Clerk. She was succeeded by her sister, Jana Swearengen-Washington, who won the special election.
Shot down during the council’s regular meeting last week was a proposed new map that had garnered significant support and would have made major alterations, especially on the city’s eastern perimeter, where District 5, an area largely white in population that bridges Midtown and East Memphis, would have been reshaped to become even more accommodating to whites, including conservatives, while adjoining District 2 would have become Cordova-based and majority-Black.
The new plan was put forth by Darrick Harris, a community member of the council’s ad hoc reapportionment committee. A late-breaking shift of previously undecided council members against it left the old map in place when Councilman Chase Carlisle subsequently moved for “same night minutes,” a parliamentary device which sped up the process of formalizing the vote.
Some supporters of the defeated new map were outraged by the outcome. One of them was Lexie Carter, chair of the Shelby County Democratic Party. Carter had anticipated the creation of a specifically Cordova district in the manner of last year’s County Commission reapportionment. She indicated that she intended to file a protest at the council’s meeting next week, when, reportedly, the body will consider a final tweaking of boundaries.
Carter also defended her action and that of the local Democratic executive committee in recently withdrawing from what had been the party’s long-running litigation against several proprietors of sample ballots at election time, especially those who used the word “Democratic” or party images on their products.
“Let’s face it, that has always been part of the process,” she said of the balloters, who traditionally have charged fees of candidates wishing positions on their sample ballots, which were widely distributed, especially in the inner city.
• Meanwhile, the list of claimants to the District 2 seat continues to grow. Former Councilman Scott McCormick has drawn a petition for it, and Jerri Green, senior policy advisor to County Mayor Lee Harris, has confirmed her interest in the seat. Green, a Democrat, gave Republican state Representative Mark White a close run in 2020 for the District 83 state House seat.
Davin Clemons, a former Memphis policeman and the co-founder of Tri-State Black Pride, will apparently once again be an opponent of incumbent Councilman Edmund Ford Sr., having drawn a petition for Ford’s District 6 seat. Clemons ran against Ford in 2019 with the endorsement of Harris and said this week he hopes to have the county mayor’s support again this year.
As was the case four years ago, that race will likely reflect to some degree the ever-simmering antagonism between Mayor Harris and County Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr., the councilman’s son.
