Tag: David Bradford

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Politics Politics Feature

The County Commission’s New Map

Source: Shelby County Government

Although various rules of parliamentary order caused Monday’s special called meeting of the Shelby County Commission to open by fits and starts, the needed result, a final vote on commission redistricting, was achieved with relative dispatch. But that was after — in order — a commission meeting, an adjournment, a meeting of the general government committee, another adjournment, and a final commission meeting.

Still and all, it got done, and on the November 9th deadline set by the Election Commission. Accommodations were made via amendment to oblige commissioners from Germantown and Collierville. Some precincts were shifted around in the area of East Memphis and western Germantown so as to keep incumbents Brandon Morrison, a Republican, and Michael Whaley, a Democrat, from having to run in the same district.

Morrison has a district to herself, though it is fundamentally changed from the old District 13 she has represented — a conglomerate of largely East Memphis precincts. She objected last week that too many precincts from her original district were being shifted to District 4, essentially the Germantown district.

In the amended version, those precincts are still moved east. But at least her own home precinct, the one she lives in, has moved along with them. District 4, containing a reliably Republican voting base, is now her district to run in, for better or for worse.

District 5, Whaley’s designation in the old configuration, has become a brand-new district consisting essentially of Cordova (the creation of a Cordova district being one of the stated aims of Commissioner Van Turner and other members of the Commission majority).

The district Whaley inhabits, meanwhile, renumbered as District 13, is still situated at the junction, more or less, of East Memphis, Midtown, and Binghampton, and its population is presumed to be majority-Democratic, as his old district was.

If the interested parties did not get all of what they wanted, they may have gotten the best of what was possible.

Among the several parliamentary maneuvers pursued during this important but relatively brief commission meeting was a last-ditch effort by Morrison to get a previously discarded map (known for its original sponsor, District 2 Republican David Bradford of Collierville, as “the Bradford map”) up for a vote.

In the amended map, Bradford had gotten the return of the Collierville High School precinct from its earlier proposed relocation in District 12. But he and Morrison evidently felt obliged, for the record, to get a more idealized version of their hopes up for a vote.

They did, but “Map 4,” as it was entitled, unsupported by any precinct data, went down to defeat predictably, with only 5 votes, only those of the commission’s Republicans, supporting it. (In the debate over Map 4, Democrat Tami Sawyer charged that the map had been shaped by Brian Stephens of Caissa Public Strategy, a conservative-oriented consulting firm.)

The final vote for the amended redistricting map, a version of the CC4A3 map voted on last week, was 8-5, with Democrat Edmund Ford Jr. joining four Republicans as naysayers. The approved map will probably yield nine Democrats and four Republicans in the next elected commission.

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Politics Politics Feature

Out of the Past: Joe Cooper Mulls a Re-emergence

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Joe Cooper is a name from the political past: He called this past week to suggest that he was thinking seriously of running for the Shelby County Commission next year. Most of us, myself included, had lost track of Cooper, who was a squire on the old Shelby County Court back in the 1970s, and once considered a player.

That was before a run of bad luck and/or bad conduct that would see him bereft of his first wife and his office and, temporarily, of his freedom. At that time, Cooper received the first of two felony convictions, this one for acquiring bank loans circuitously, in the names of influential friends. That mischance, arguably, may have owed something to simple politics. Cooper, then a nominal Republican when the GOP controlled the Justice Department, had ostentatiously tried to do some impolitic public brokering on behalf of Democrats.

Jackson Baker

Joe Cooper in 2012

Though he thereafter attempted to regain his equilibrium in politics (this time as a Democrat) and as a businessman, Cooper never quite got back on his feet, though he maintained enough connections and savoir faire to be an advisor and back-room wheeler-dealer on behalf of other public figures.

If you needed an autographed photo of Grover Cleveland by 3 p.m. tomorrow, Cooper could get it for you. He proved useful in an administrative position here and there, and for years arranged an annual Thanksgiving turkey giveaway on Beale Street for the homeless and indigent.

As the late state senator and Juvenile Court Judge Curtis Person Jr., one of several prominent Memphians who had a soft spot for Cooper, used to say, “Joe has a good heart.” In recent years, he partnered with Jerry “the King” Lawler in several valid commercial ventures.

But there were lapses. Cooper got nailed by the FBI in a money-laundering scheme and ended up having to shill for a federal sting against city politicians in order to reduce his own time in a new conviction. As he said in 2012, when he was mulling over a commission race: “I know I’ve got some baggage, but I also know how to get things done.” If he follows through this time around, Cooper would likely be seeking the East Memphis commission seat now held by Republican member Brandon Morrison.

• In an online post last week, I noted that Shelby County Commissioner David Bradford of Collierville has the habit, which has been contagious to other members, of voting “yes” instead of the venerable “aye” in answering roll calls.

This week comes Bradford’s explanation of the practice, which is worth repeating:

“I was wondering if anyone had picked up on my ‘yeses,'” he wrote. “It was a conscious choice to use ‘yes’ instead of ‘aye,’ and honestly I thought I might get reprimanded by the parliamentarian the first time I used it. I’ve strived to stay with the ‘yeses’ throughout my term. I wish I could say my ‘yeses’ were some sort of stand against 16th century [parliamentary precedent], but, alas, they are not. 

“The reason I chose ‘yes’ over ‘aye’ is three-fold:

“1) About 20 percent of it is that I prefer the less formal. I think using ‘aye’ makes the whole system seem more complex, when the simple ‘yes’ conveys the same meaning. I hope less formal and less complex provides a system that is more approachable and understandable to all.

“2) About 75 percent has to do with clear communication. The buttons on our screens that we use to vote don’t say ‘aye.’ They say ‘yes’ and ‘no.’ So the engineer in me that likes everything to be orderly, drives me to say what’s on the screen before me. 

“3) That last 5 percent is just to see who’s listening and who catches on. Bravo to you, sir!”

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

County Commission: Do the Ayes Still Have It?

The formal vocabulary of Shelby County Commission meetings is slowly gravitating from the antique and ornamental to current and ordinary forms of speech.

Until recently, as an example, meetings used to be opened by invocations by the sergeant-at-arms of the venerable Anglo-Norman phrase “oyez, oyez,” (except that the uniformed county officer serving in that role would pronounce the phrase “Oh yes, oh yes.”) These days, the officer says instead, “Hear ye, hear ye,” which happens to be what the archaic phrase “oyez, oyez,” still used in the U.S. Supreme Court and by numerous other tribunals, actually means.

A parallel phenomenon has been the attrition undergone by the archaic term “aye” as the traditional signifier of an affirmative vote. At some point in the early days of the Commission that was elected and installed in 2018, new Commissioner David Bradford, who represents Collierville and other suburban areas in east Shelby County, began saying simply “yes” when, in a roll call of Commissioners’ vote, he gave his okay to this or that measure.

The other members voting on his side of the issue would continue saying “aye,” an Anglo-Scottich term dating from the 16th century which has got itself lodged in parliamentary idiom ever since. Slowly, though, Bradford’s usage began catching on with other commissioners — fellow Republicans Mark Billingsley and Mick Wright, especially — who are now apt to say “yes” as often as “aye” when they vote in favor.

Though the dominion of the traditional term is slipping on the Commission, the ayes still have it, for the most part, as the word continues its general prevalence in roll calls. Oddly, the symmetrical equivalent to it, “nay,” goes totally unspoken in normal circumstances, except in the occasional summing up of a negative vote outcome, as in “the nays have it.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Commission Tackles Issues With State Legislature

The March 3rd Super Tuesday vote, with presidential preference primaries favoring Democrat Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, and nominating Joe Brown and Paul Boyd, respectively, as the Democratic and Republican candidates for General Sessions Court clerk, has come and gone.

But there was still politics to be found locally. In a lengthy, oddly contentious meeting of the Shelby County Commission on Monday, political factors weighed heavily on several controversial issues, most of which were resolved either unanimously or via one-sided votes. A pair of hot-button issues were addressed in the form of late add-on resolutions at the close of Monday’s meeting, which had already generated significant steam via the regular agenda.

One of the add-on resolutions opposed Republican Governor Bill Lee‘s proposal for open-carry legislation, at least for Shelby County, and passed the Commission by a bipartisan 10-1 vote, the lone vote in opposition coming from GOP Commissioner Mick Wright, who chose to let his dissent speak for itself.

The resolution was co-sponsored by Republican David Bradford and Democrat Tami Sawyer. The minimal discussion of the measure was itself bipartisan, with, for example, Democrat Reginald Milton and Republican Amber Mills making similar declarations of being pro-Second Amendment but citing opposition to the open-carry measure from law enforcement officials.

Specifically, the resolution’s enacting clause asks that any open-carry measure exclude Shelby County: “Now, therefore, be it resolved the Board of County Commissioners of Shelby County Tennessee be carved out of any and all permitless gun carry legislation.”

It should be noted that in a separate action over the weekend, the Shelby County Democratic Executive Committee unanimously passed its own resolution condemning Senate Bill 2671/House Bill 2817, the permitless-carry legislation, citing similar objections — noting that, for example, “the Memphis Mayor, Memphis Police Director, and the Shelby County Sheriff have already spoken out against the bill.”

Another late add-on resolution at Monday’s commission meeting was introduced by Sawyer. It would have repeated the commission’s previous stand in favor of voter-marked paper ballot machines in Shelby County and included an exhortation to the General Assembly to “support legislation for paper ballot on-demand options,” thereby tying into specific ongoing legislation to that end.

Further, and importantly, the resolution provides an alternative to holding a public referendum authorizing new voting machines, as apparently required under a newly unearthed provision of state law. It underscores the authority of the county commission itself, “as the governing body of Shelby County” to purchase new voting machines, and notes the subsequent reallocation last month by the commission of capital improvement funds as a means of doing so. The resolution would not be acted on directly but was by unanimous consent referred to the next meeting of the commission’s general government committee.

Commissioner Sawyer appended to the resolution a copy of a letter signed by five Republican legislators representing Shelby County and addressed to the three Republican members of the Shelby County Election Commission.

The letter, on the official letterhead of state Senator Brian Kelsey, carried two specific “recommendations” to the GOP SCEC members. One directly opposes voter-marked ballots, stating that “[a]llowing voters to handle and mark paper inevitably opens the election process to numerous unnecessary human errors” and that “reverting back to technology from the 1990s would be a huge mistake.”

A second “recommendation” needs  to be quoted in its entirely: “Second, in order to ensure that everyone has the same opportunity to vote and to limit the financial strains on the taxpayers, we recommend seven days of early voting be conducted at all satellite voting locations in Shelby County, preceded by eight days of early voting at the Shelby County Election Commission office. Opening only one early voting location in the Agricenter, as was done in 2018, was wrong and in violation of state law. The solution we propose will fix this problem.”

Buried in this somewhat disingenuous language is the idea of cutting back the amount of time devoted to satellite early voting from two weeks to a single week.

Sawyer was pointed and defiant in the citation of the Kelsey letter, saying that its recommendations and circumlocutions alike, as well as the confinement of the communication to Republican members of the SCEC, constituted an affront to the commission and to the process of resolving the voting-machine issue in an orderly, conscientious manner.

“The letter undermines this board,” she declared, insisting that her condemnation of the letter be given maximum public exposure.

The voting-machine issue was not the only matter to invoke the possibility of cross-purposes between county and state authorities. An unexpected controversy arose over a proposal, advanced by Commissioners Milton and Van Turner at the behest of County Mayor Lee Harris, to allocate $33,799 for a Veterans Service Officer in Shelby County. Commissioner Mills, who with colleague Edmund Ford, had been to Nashville last week to discuss county-government needs with state officials, asked for a postponement of the action, insisting that she had been promised the prospect of not one, but five such officers for Shelby County via state action, and that county action on the matter could scuttle the state effort.

An argument ensued between Mills and Harris, with the mayor, backed by several members of the commission, expressing disbelief that county action on the matter would provoke a punitive reaction in Nashville. But in the end a narrow vote approved a deferral of the issue to the commission meeting of April 20th.

Modest controversy arose, too, over the commission’s action in approving  a paid parental leave policy for county employees. The annual price tag of the proposal, $830,000, to be paid for by internet sales tax revenues, was objected to by Republican Commissioners Mills and Brandon Morrison, who cited a looming $85 million county deficit, and abstained from an otherwise unanimous vote of approval.

Democrats at the Ready

Jackson Baker

Among those gathered Saturday morning at Kirby High School for preliminary party caucuses before this summer’s Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee were (l to r) Rick Maynard, U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, and David Upton.