Democratic National Committee

DNC chair Tom Perez at the National Civil Rights Museum on Saturday.

Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, paid a stop in Memphis on Saturday, at the National Civil Rights Museum for an installment of the DNC’s “Seat at the Table” tour, designed to galvanize the involvement of African-American women in the party.

In his farewell message to attendees, Perez took note of one of the major issues on the November 6th ballot — the referendum for Memphis voters on repeal of Ranked Choice Voting, a method for determining winners, sans runoffs, in multi-candidate races in which no candidate has a majority.

“I’ve spent a lot of time on that issue,” said Perez, after giving a hat-tip to Steve Mulroy, the University of Memphis law professor and former county commissioner who has been a major proponent of RCV (aka Instant Runoff Voting), scheduled to be employed in the 2019 city election, unless repealed.

Perez suggested that “the Republicans” were “trying to take it away,” though in fact it was incumbents of the nonpartisan Memphis City Council who implanted the repeal referendum on the ballot.

“If I were living here, I’d vote no on that referendum, because you’ve already voted for it,” said Perez, who referred to a previous referendum, in 2008, when Memphis voters approved the process by a 70 percent majority. “It forces candidates to talk to everyone, instead of just that one base. It fosters civility because you can’t ignore 70 percent of the people.

Perez went on: “Talk to them! What a radical concept. That’s why y’all voted for it, and that’s why they don’t want it.”

Sharing a laugh at Thursday night’s Democratic/AFSCME meet ‘n greet were (l to r) David Weatherspoon, who is eyeing a race for state Senate District 31; Allan Creasy, candidate for state House district 97, and John Boatner Jr., candidate for U.S. Congressional District 8.

For local Democrats, the timing worked out pretty well for Thursday night’s well-attended party Meet ‘n Greet at the Association Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees union building on Beale. This was the week, after all, when Democrats on the national level won important elections in states like Virginia and New Jersey.

And the presence at the event, which was co-sponsored by AFSCME AND the Tennessee Democratic Party, of ranking party officials at the local, state, and federal levels could not fail to reinforce the sense of a renascent political organization (the Shelby County Democratic Party was reborn recently after a year of enforced decertification).

On hand to address the troops were SCDP chairman Corey Strong, TNDP chair Mary Mancini, and special guest Jaime Harrison, associate chair of the Democratic National Committee.

All the speakers, clearly encouraged by the week’s electoral successes, were, in the lexicon of the Obama era, fired up and ready to go. Harrison paid tribute to Shelby County as “the heart of the Tennessee Democratic Party,” but, as he also noted, in candid acknowledgement of past under-achievements and setbacks, “there have been some problems with the heart.”

All that could change, Harrison said, echoing previous upbeat remarks by Strong and Mancini. Like them, he foresaw an energized party effort behind a new crop of Democratic candidates for major offices like Governor and Senator, as well as for legislative races and key local offices like Sheriff and Shelby County Mayor.

Reinforcing that prospect were a goodly number of local candidates in attendance, including Chief Deputy Sheriff Floyd Bonner (now aiming for the top job with an endorsement from current Sheriff Bill Oldham) and state Senate Minority Leader Lee Harris, who now seeks the office of County Mayor.

There were enough local officials and candidates fora variety of offices on hand that listing them all would incur the same difficulty that afflicts Academy Award winners at thank-you time on stage. The impressive thing about the turnout was that, besides the candidates running in the inner city for seats customarily held by Democrats, there were an unusual number of political newcomers on hand seeking to displace Republican incumbents in the suburbs — a la state Rep. Dwayne Thompson of District 96, who turned out an over-confident GOP predecessor last year.

Not bad as a warm-up event for the political battles of 2018.