Tag: Deirdre Malone

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Politics Politics Feature

Round One: The County Primaries

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

As the race for the Democratic nomination for Shelby County mayor entered this week, the last full one before next Tuesday’s May 6th primary, the three-way contest for the right to oppose Republican incumbent Mayor Mark Luttrell had largely settled, as expected, into a two-way affair between current County Commissioner Steve Mulroy, who had more cash on hand, and former Commissioner Deidre Malone, who could claim deep roots among the party’s rank and file.

This is not to minimize the third contestant, the Rev. Kenneth Whalum Jr., the controversial former school board member whose rhetorical fire and  populist image are an X factor in the election. It is merely to recognize that Whalum’s financial resources, which are virtually nonexistent, were not such as to grant him the full county-wide attention that his Memphis-centric message requires for maximum effect.

As of March 31st, when financial disclosures for the first quarter were due, Mulroy claimed receipts for the period of $35,021, with $20,000 on hand. Malone’s comparable figures were $36,405, with $17,972 on hand. For the record, Whalum had raised $1,000 and had all of $740 on hand.

Another disclosure was due Tuesday, and it will almost certainly show that considerable new sums were raised by both main contenders since the last disclosure and that a fair amount of money has been spent by each in the interim since March 31st.

More is yet to come. Early voting, which began on the 25th, was due to end on Thursday of this week, May 1st, and Mulroy and Malone were going all out.

From the beginning, an endorsement battle has been underway. Mulroy pulled off an early coup by netting the endorsement of former Criminal Court Judge Joe Brown, who is now the Democrats’ uncontested nominee for district attorney general and whose considerable fame as TV’s “Judge Joe Brown” has earned him major influence in local Democratic affairs.

Mulroy has been boosted as well by endorsements from nine major unions and from such inner-city political figures as former commissioner and interim County Mayor Joe Ford and current Commissioner Justin Ford, along with City Councilmember Janis Fullilove.

For her part, Malone has scored a laundry list of endorsements from other Democratic figures. This past week, in particular, has been good to her in this respect. Although Mayor A C Wharton was not exactly loud and vocal about it (and absent from an impressive ceremony Malone staged last week with other influential endorsers), she did get a statement of support from the mayor that allowed her to include him at the top of her endorsement list.

That was followed up by this week’s endorsement of Malone by The Commercial Appeal, giving her a stout one-two punch and a real boost for the last stage of the primary.

Mulroy’s contention, as he expressed it in a recent debate with Malone and Whalum sponsored by the Shelby County Democratic Party, is that Democrats should not attempt to fuzz the distinctions between themselves and Shelby County Republicans, but rather to present an “aggressive contrast.”

Malone has been a down-the-line exponent of traditional party causes, and her lead role on the County Commission in attempting to broaden the structure of Juvenile Court both complemented, and in some ways, anticipated the militant reform efforts of current Commissioner (and Juvenile Court clerk candidate) Henri Brooks.

Even Whalum (a bold and dedicated soul who will surely object to that “even”) sees the mathematical necessity to build bridges across a county divide that is part political, part racial, and part geographical, and, in a recent speech to a meeting of the Germantown Democrats, he made it a point to court not only the suburban party-mates in his audience but even members of the opposite party.

“It’s a foolish loser who says he doesn’t want Republican votes. I’m not going to limit myself,” Whalum said on that occasion, during which he redefined the thrust of his adamant opposition, as a member of the Memphis City Schools (MCS) board, to the December 2010 surrender by the board of the MCS charter.

“I was the only Memphis official who fought for the suburbs to have their own schools,” Whalum said. “I have a very good working relationship with all the municipal mayors. I stood with them on their school systems.”

Up to this point, a certain comity has been practiced by the competing  Democratic candidates — one which had them describing each other as “nice people” in the course of a party-sponsored mayoral forum in early April.

But of late, Mulroy and Malone have exchanged some serious shots.

Among several charges in a Mulroy mailer this week is an allegation that Malone “contibuted financially JUST LAST MONTH to the campaign of an opponent seeking to defeat Representative Steve Cohen.”

And, indeed, financial disclosure records show that Malone, on March 27th, contributed $250 to the primary campaign of Ricky Wilkins, Cohen’s primary opponent this year.

Clearly, the charge is meant to shake Malone’s support among supporters of a Democratic congressman who has won a progressively greater hold of his party’s voters with each successive election since his first one in 2006.

Cohen, who made it clear last week that he would not endorse anyone in the mayoral primary, pleading that he had “too many friends” in the race, was not moved to alter his technical neutrality by this circumstance — nor by a parallel charge from the Mulroy camp that Malone had supported Tomeka Hart against Cohen in the 2012 primary.

But it did lead him to redefine his definition of “friends” to mean more specifically Mulroy and Whalum, both consistent supporters of Cohen’s election bids, and to describe Malone’s position as “certainly unusual,” one that, “politically … makes no sense.”

For her part, Malone has begun to exploit what she regards as a Mulroy weak point, his vote in 2011 with a commission majority to support Luttrell’s decision to award Christ Community Health Services (CCHS) a county contract to administer federal Title X funds for women’s health services, rather than Planned Parenthood, the traditional grantee and the clear favorite of pro-choice Democrats.

Mulroy has explained that vote as one made in order to barter with what was already a bipartisan majority for CCHS so as to impose strict and measurable compliance standards. And in recent weeks, he charged CCHS with falling short of those standards and made a conspicuous — if ultimately unsuccessful — effort on behalf a rebidding the Title X contract.

Although Malone herself has publicly soft-pedaled the point somewhat, on the occasion of her endorsement ceremony last week, she vigorously seconded allegations by state Representative G.A. Hardaway, a supporter, that Mulroy had made “a back-room deal with Republicans,” which he was now trying to put forth, Hardaway said, as being in the best interest of women’s rights.

After next Tuesday, all this unpleasantness will be forgotten, and each of the three Democrats has pledged to support the one survivor against the formidable Luttrell, who is opposed only by the hapless perennial Ernest Lunati in the GOP primary.

 

Other Contested Races:

County Commission, District 2 (Republican primary): In a battle between two east Shelby County members of the finance industry, newcomer David Bradford, assisted by former Luttrell insider Dan Springer, is running neck-and-neck with George Chism, son of a former longtime county school board member and a familiar figure in Republican circles. Both are well funded.

County Commission, District 3 (Republican primary): It’s a four-way race in the Bartlett area between businessman Naser Fazlullah, consultant and military veteran Kelly Price, school board member David Reaves, and educator and longtime Republican activist Sherry Simmons, wife of Bartlett alderman Bobby Simmons. Reaves and Simmons, both well-financed, are the main contenders, with Price hoping to break through as the GOP’s latest exemplar among African Americans.

County Commission, District 4 (Republican primary): Foundation executive and current Commission incumbent Mark Billingsley is seemingly much too well-financed and supported for retired lawman Ron Fittes, who is, however, running hard.  

County Commission, District 6 (Democratic primary): The contenders are Karl L. Bond, Willie Brooks, Edith Ann Moore, and Kendrick D. Sneed. Former School Board member Brooks would seem to have an edge over former interim County Commissioner Moore. Both have money to run on.

County Commission, District 7 (Democratic primary): Incumbent Commissioner Melvin Burgess, son of a widely admired former Memphis police director, has too much support and name recognition for gallant newcomer Brandon Echols to overcome

County Commission, District 8 (Democratic primary): Longtime Commissioner Walter Bailey is presumably strong enough to fend off a spirited challenge from former interim City Councilman Berlin F. Boyd. David Vinciarelli is also running.

County Commission, District 9 (Democratic primary): Commissioner Justin Ford is hoping his incumbency and family name are enough to hold off former school board member Patrice Robinson, who has money and serious endorsements, and Memphis Education Association head Keith Williams, who also has a network and good funding.

County Commission, District 10 (Democratic primary): The third time’s the charm for community organizer Reginald Milton, who has impressive across-the-board support against former school board eminence Martavius Jones (who’s running a stealth campaign), and newcomer Jake Brown, who does have Joe Brown’s backing.

County Commission, District 11 (Democratic primary): In a five-way race between Curtis Byrd, Donnell Cobbins, Eddie Jones, Hendrell Remus, and Claude Talford, the main contenders would seem to be Cobbins, Jones, and Talford.

County Commisson, District 12 (Democratic primary): Well-financed attorney and former Democratic Party Chairman Van Turner is a slam dunk over the little-known Bryant Boone.

Assessor (Republican primary): Mary Peters Royko may have a slight edge over Keith Alexander.

Assessor (Democratic primary): Incumbent Cheyenne Johnson should prevail easily over challenger Lorie Ingram.

Trustee (Republican primary): Incumbent David Lenoir is an easy win over Jeff Jacobs.

Trustee (Democratic primary): Derrick Bennett is considered to be leading frequent candidate M. LaTroy Williams, who, however, seems to have funding.

Circuit Court Clerk (Republican primary): The ever-popular Jimmy Moore in a walk over GOP newcomer Michael Finney.

Circuit Court Clerk (Democratic primary): Veteran Democrat Del Gill should win over Rhonda Banks.

Criminal Court Clerk (Democratic primary): Hard-running City Councilmember Wanda Halbert, current City Court Clerk Thomas Long, and prosecutor Michael R. McCusker are in a spirited three-way race. Once again, the deserving perennial Ralph White seems out of the running. 

Juvenile Court Clerk (Democratic primary): With her prominence as a Juvenile Court watchdog overriding her reputation for abrasiveness, County Commissioner Henri Brooks should prevail over former City Administrator Kenneth Moody, whose campaign never quite got started.  

Probate Court Clerk (Democratic primary): The seven candidates are Regina Beale, Jennings Bernard, William Chism, Jr., Darnell Gatewood, Sr., Cynthia A. Gentry, Aaron Hall, and Heidi Kuhn. The well-known Bernard, respected probate attorney Hall, and the hard-working Kuhn, wife of prominent consultant and former Democratic chairman, Matt Kuhn, are the best bets.

County Clerk (Democratic primary): Respected longtime Democratic figure John H. Freeman, supported by Mayor A C Wharton, is well positioned against Yolanda Kight and Charlotte B. Draper.

Register (Democratic primary): Coleman Thompson, who has run before, should prevail over the lesser-known Stephen Christian.

Incumbents Bill Oldham (Republican) and Bennie Cobb (Democrat) have no primary opponents in the race for Shelby County Sheriff. Also unopposed in the Republican primary are Richard L. DeSaussure III for Criminal Court clerk and incumbents Joy Touliatos, Paul Boyd, Wayne Mashburn, and Tom Leatherwood for Juvenile Court clerk, Probate Court clerk, Shelby County clerk, and Shelby County register, respectively.

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Opinion Viewpoint

Big Ballot, Single Choice

Every eight years comes a “big ballot” year, with the August county-wide general election containing choices for the full panoply of Shelby County offices, as well as primaries for federal and state offices, the latter including a veritable myriad of state judgeships.

A largely unnoted effect of the move toward partisan county elections in Shelby County — beginning in 1992 with Republicans, and proceeding with both major parties as of 1994 — has been the winnowing down of the big ballot to more or less manageable proportions.

In that sense, next Tuesday’s Democratic and Republican primaries for county-wide offices (excluding judicial races, which remain non-partisan) amount to a first stage, or prescreening of ambitious local office-seekers.

Choices that as recently as 1990 were so numerous for each position as to stupefy voters will have been reduced to a de facto either/or — one Democrat and one Republican —for each county office. To be sure, there will be independent candidates on the August general election ballot, but none of these has ever been elected, or even been a factor, since the advent of local primaries.

The reason for that is obvious. Single candidates, however able and pure of purpose, do not win elections. Their networks do — those combinations of supporters who can lick the stamps, make the phone calls, do the door-to-door canvassing, and pay for the campaigns, which have become increasingly more expensive.

The two major political parties, Democratic and Republican, are the networks of choice, in Shelby County as in most other places in America.

In one sense, that fact of political life would seem unfairly restrictive, even polarizing. But in another sense, the bifurcating of political choices, besides achieving the aforementioned ballot simplification, also becomes a means of clarifying the larger electorate’s sense of direction.

In Shelby County, as in the nation at large, general elections are basically won in the political center, and election outcomes that shift control from one party to the other are often the result of extraneous factors of the sort to which political scientist would assign the prefix “macro.”

It is a fact, for example, that the demographics of Shelby County, preponderantly working class and now majority black, should allow for domination of county elections by the Democratic Party.

But it also a fact that the Republican Party’s county-wide slate won every contested countywide position in 2010 — a clean sweep that could partly be explained by local factors but was more likely due to that year’s stoutly contested Republican primary race for governor.

That gubernatorial race — waged by well-heeled candidates Bill Haslam, Zach Wamp, and Ron Ramsey — poured money and resources into Shelby County and generated a sizeable GOP turnout.

Meanwhile, the Democrats had quietly settled, long before an August primary that doubled as the date for the county’s general election, on a consensus candidate, Mike McWherter of Dresden. No fuss, no bother, no turnout.

There is no such godsend for the Republicans this year, although the turnout of both parties in August could well be mobilized by a race or two on the general election ballot — especially that of incumbent Republican District Attorney General Amy Weirich versus a well-known and controversial Democrat — former Criminal Court Clerk Joe Brown, better known to most voters as TV’s “Judge Joe Brown” and, as such, a macro factor in his own presence.

In any case, Democratic core activists are more than usually conscious of the need to field a competitive slate in August, and that means, in practice, one that has at least some crossover potential. That factor will influence a few outcomes in down-ballot Democratic primary races, and it definitely plays a role in the race for county mayor.

Despite earnest efforts by the Democratic mayoral aspirants — Kenneth Whalum, Steve Mulroy, and Deidre Malone — to paint incumbent Republican Mayor Mark Luttrell as a doctrinaire Republican, indifferent to the concerns of working-class voters, the fact is that Luttrell, in his prior races for sheriff and county mayor, has been far more successful than most GOP candidates in presenting himself as above the partisan battle, thereby capturing significant crossover votes.

Which is why, already, well in advance of the August general election, all three Democratic mayoral candidates — Malone, Mulroy, and Whalum — are conspicuously broadening the reach of their rhetoric.

E Pluribus Unum, “One from Many,” is the Latin motto affixed to our coinage. It also has relevance to a political process whereby a multitude of choices end up pointing in a single direction.

Jackson Baker is a senior editor of the Flyer.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Cold Comfort

CREDIT: Casada from capitol.tn.gov; Malone by Jackson Baker

By all reports, it was as frosty and weather-worn in Nashville on Monday as it was here in Memphis, but there was enough of a quorum in both the Senate and the House to finish up some pending legislation.

What got the most attention statewide was the final Senate passage of a compromise wine-in-grocery-stores bill, SB 837, which — local referenda permitting — allows wine sales by grocery retailers and whichever convenience stores meet the 1,200-square-foot area requirement, in most cases as early as July 1, 2016. Liquor stores, meanwhile, will be allowed to sell beer and other sundries as early as July 1st of this year.

As Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey, a prime mover of the bill, noted, it “allows for the expansion of consumer choice while protecting small businesses that took risks and invested capital under the old system.” In other words, a lot of trade-offs entered into the bill, which now goes to Governor Bill Haslam for signing.

Over in the House on Monday, there was a curious dialogue between state Representative G.A. Hardaway (D-Memphis) and state Representative Glen Casada (R-Franklin) over the meaning of an innocuous bill (HB 394 by Hardaway) that allows community gardens in Memphis to flourish independently of sales-tax levies and control by the state Department of Agriculture.

Casada, a well-known advocate and author of bills imposing state authority over local matters, as in his notorious legislation two years ago striking down local anti-discrimination ordinances, went disingenuous on Hardaway.

“Are we in any way telling local government what they can and cannot do? … Are we in any way dictating actions to local government at our state level?” Casada asked, all innocence.

Realizing he was about to be fenced with semantically, Hardaway responded just as disingenuously: “You and I share that concern, that we not dictate to local government, and I’m proud that you’re joining me on this bill, where we are making it clear that local government has the options to proceed on these community gardening efforts, sir.”

A few back-and-forths later, Casada said, “I just want to be clear. So we are, in a few instances, telling these local governments how they will handle these parcels for their gardening projects. Am I correct?”

Hardaway would have none of it. “Quite the opposite. We are telling state government that we want local government to conduct the business of local gardening instead of the state Department of Agriculture.”

Casada insisted on drawing the moral of the story another way, defining Hardaway’s bill not as the sponsor himself saw it — as a measure freeing local vegetable gardens from state control — but as yet another case in which the state can tell localities “how they will or will not” do things. “From time to time we do dictate to local government … and this is a good bill,” he concluded.

That prompted Democratic Caucus Chairman Mike Turner of Nashville to confer mock praise on Casada for his consistency in wanting to “bring big government to press down on local government.”

In any case, the bill passed with near unanimity, something of a unique instance in which, depending on who’s describing it, a bill is said to be both a defense of local autonomy and the very opposite of that concept, a reinforcement of overriding state control.

That’s Nashville for you.   

   

• When Shelby County Commission Chairman James Harvey dropped out of the race for county mayor at last week’s withdrawal deadline, saving his marbles (and his long-shot candidacy) for a run at city mayor in 2015, he left behind what is going to be a seriously contested three-way Democratic primary for the leadership of county government:

County Commissioner/U of M Law Professor Steve Mulroy, aided by experienced and connected campaign adviser David Upton, will be everywhere at once with a carefully articulated message for rank-and-file Democrats. The Rev. Kenneth Whalum may not be as ubiquitous, but he has a potentially potent fan base developed during years of a highly visible ministry and an outspoken school board presence.

Both will have to make their case against a seasoned candidate who has earned a large and loyal cadre of supporters from her years in public life and from campaigns in years past. This is Deidre Malone, a well-known public relations consultant and former two-term county commissioner who ran hard in the Democratic primary for county mayor four years ago, losing out to Joe Ford, a former commission colleague who had the advantage of running from a position as interim mayor.

Appearing on Wednesday of last week before a packed meeting of the Germantown Democratic Club at Coletta’s on Stage Road, Malone cited a detailed list of mainstream Democratic positions on issues and looked past her Democratic rivals to voice a resounding challenge to incumbent Republican Mayor Mark Luttrell, challenging his bona fides as a crossover politician and as a leader.

Making an effort to debunk the incumbent mayor’s mainstream status, Malone disparaged Luttrell’s claims to have been a regular participant in meetings of the post-school-merger Transition Planning Commission (“Leadership is not sitting in a meeting”) and to have supported pre-K efforts (“When he had an opportunity for the first county pre-K initiative … he came out against it.”).

Leadership, said Malone, means, among other things, having an opinion: “Sometimes it’s comfortable, sometimes it’s not, but leadership is making that opinion known, so people will know where you stand. So I’m going to ask you today, Democrats here in Germantown and across Shelby County, for your vote. … I’m excited about the primary, but more excited about the opportunity to represent the Democratic Party in general, because he [Luttrell] knows that I’m coming, and he knows that I’m going to be nothing nice.”

Before she spoke, her campaign manager, Randa Spears, took a straw vote of the attendees, an exercise Spears repeated after Malone’s speech. The results in both cases showed Malone hovering around the number 20, with her opponents in single digits — the chief difference between the two votes being that significant numbers of votes for Mulroy (whom Malone seemingly regards as her chief opponent) had — according to the tabulation, at least — shifted over to “undecided.”

Granted, Malone’s cadres were out for the event, and those of Mulroy and Whalum, for the most part, were not, and the ad hoc poll could by no means be regarded as scientific. The fact remains that Malone, a well-known African-American public figure going into her second run for county mayor, was able to demonstrate some core support among a group of predominantly white Democrats meeting out east, and that fact should tell some kind of tale to her opponents.

• Another change in the May 6th primary picture for countywide offices was the Shelby County Election Commission’s decision last week to overrule the previous disqualification of Martavius Jones, a candidate in the Democratic primary for the new District 10 county commission seat, because of a disallowed signature on his filing petition.

That creates a legitimate two-way race between Reginald Milton and Jones, with political newcomer Jake Brown likely to function as a spoiler (though Brown may have a rosier outlook, seeing a split between Milton and Jones as giving him a real chance).