Tag: Diane Black

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Editorial Opinion

Bill Lee’s Surprise

During the 2018 governor’s race in Tennessee, the leading candidates were thought to be Diane Black, the ultra-conservative Congresswoman from the state’s Sixth District, and Randy Boyd, the affable social engineer and idea man behind many of then-Governor Bill Haslam’s governmental innovations.

Black had no trouble presenting herself as the right-wing politician and outright Trumpian that she was — supporting huge tax cuts for the wealthy, bashing immigrants, and expressing desires to curtail the EPA. Boyd was almost necessarily a moderate, given the progressive nature of the institutions he created — Tennessee Promise, Drive to 55, etc. — and their modest but real claim on the state’s exchequer.

But a strange thing began occurring during the gubernatorial race that year. Under pressure from his campaign advisors, Boyd began releasing ads and campaign bromides — loaded with hard-edged innuendo about the Second Amendment, potential welfare cheats, and illegal immigrants — that cast him in an altogether new light as some kind of hard-edged reactionary, determined to out-Black Black, or even to out-Trump Trump.

Meanwhile, on the stump, Boyd continued to talk reasonably about such subjects as education, health care, technology, immigration, workforce development, transportation, and urban strategies. Asked about his newly adopted public persona, Boyd said, “If I’m running to be the Republican nominee in Tennessee, I want Republican voters to see that I’m one of them.”

In the end, Republican voters failed to see either Black or the redesigned Boyd as “one of them,” opting instead for political newcomer Bill Lee, a Middle Tennessee industrialist/rancher who smiled winningly, avoided ideological abrasiveness in his speech, talked up his faith, and remained difficult to pin down on specific issues. A third-place candidate for most of the race, Lee became an obvious option to the mud-slinging match between Black and Boyd and ended up an easy winner, triumphing as well in the general election over Democrat Karl Dean.

So here we are in the second year of Governor Lee, no longer the Great Unknown. It turns out he has a few ideas, but most of those he has are far to the right of the spectrum — pushing school vouchers, vowing to end abortion, renouncing Medicaid expansion, denouncing “socialism,” rejecting adoption rights for LGBTQ parents, and — most recently — calling for “open carry” gun legislation, or “constitutional carry,” as advocates of unrestricted weaponry call it.

Cry your eyes out, Diane Black and Randy Boyd! Bill Lee out-Trumped both of you, even if it seems he did so by stealth. In a time when random gun violence increases apace, Tennessee’s governor has basically just called for more guns and the de facto elimination of curbs on their presence in the public sphere. Almost immediately, law enforcement officials, both locally in Shelby County and elsewhere in the state, expressed opposition to the proposed new legislation, and we fully support them. It will require serious effort in the legislature and luck, besides, to overcome this new threat. And let us hope, a la some famous musical advice, we don’t get fooled again.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Bill Lee Closes Fast in GOP Primary

CREDIT: JB

JB

Gubernatorial candidate Lee works the room at Arlington’s Legacy Grill.

Is Bill Lee the new frontrunner among Tennessee’s Republican gubernatorial candidates? A recent poll says that he is, and the Williamson County businessman is now promoting that assumption on a last, pre-primary tour of the state at “100 town halls” (two of them in Shelby County on Thursday, a week before final voting on August 2nd).

Given the lingering consensus that, Democratic blue wave or no blue wave, Republicans are still the majority party in Tennessee, does the prospect that — with less than a week to go — Lee has taken over the GOP lead from the duo long at the top, Diane Black and Randy Boyd, mean that he is the state’s likely new governor?

“Maybe” is the right answer to all those questions. The poll reflecting a sudden come-from-behind lunge from Lee is by JMC Analytics and Polling, a Louisiana firm that is new to the headlines in Tennessee. So, make allowance for a degree of skepticism. It is certainly true, however, from an aggregate of various other polls over the last several months, that Lee had been maintaining a reasonably close third-place position behind Black and Boyd and was theoretically within striking distance of the Black and Boyd, should either or both of them falter.

And it is widely believed that both Black and Boyd, whose campaigns had largely become mere mechanisms for attacking each other, had indeed faltered, especially since their attacks had become progressively meaner-spirited and less connected to reality — accusing each other of being swamp creatures secretly disloyal to President Trump, as well as mad taxers intent upon robbing Tennesseans blind while gaming the financial system to enrich themselves. At no time has there been a reasoned dialogue between the two contrasting Black’s hard-shell Trump-style conservatism with the progressive governmental ideas of Boyd, an entrepreneur and former idea man for current Governor Bill Haslam who prefers now to be called “Conservative Randy Boyd,” as if that were the name on his birth certificate.

Meanwhile, Lee — a multi-millionaire like his two main rivals — has been steadily touring the state in the supportive company of his wife, Maria, stressing his religious faith and his rebound from previous family tragedies that included the death of his first wife from a horseback fall. Looking like a casually composed latter-day Marlboro Man, Lee has eschewed desperate attacks upon his opponents in favor of promises to help build a ‘better life” for all Tennesseans. Steering clear of ideology as such, and lacking a political record of any sort, he styles himself as a “conservative” and an outsider.

His current pre-election tour of Tennessee, in the same 14-year-old RV he has been using for the past year or so, made two stops in Shelby County on Thursday — one at noon at the Kooky Canuck eatery downtown, another at mid-afternoon at The Legacy Grill in Arlington, he greeted supporters, schmoozed with diners, and in general acted like a low-key Man of the Hour.

The restaurant at Arlington was filled with people, who were first treated to a stock campaign video, which recapped moments from the life and times of Lee, who was seen describing his first wife’s fatal horse-riding accident in a subdued but straightforward voice.

“Over time, we healed, we grew, we started laughing again,” Lee said on the video, explaining that he had made it his mission to “ work to change others, to make life better for other people,” not just the “1,200 hard-working pipe-fitters, electricians, plumbers of the Lee Company,” but others, including the inner-city child he mentored and the “guy from prison” he helped make a transition back to society at large.

“I started to think, What if I could do that for everyone in Tennessee? I believe I can. I’m sure going to try.

A local pastor then introduced the flesh-and-blood Lee to the crowd as “a man’s man, “farmer, husband, father, grandfather … not a career politician — in fact, he’s never run for office before — a passionate lover and follower of Jesus Christ.”

Lee came up to the front, dressed in casual shirt and chinos, suggesting that people were looking for a “conservative man of faith” and offering that as a description of himself. Hailing some Memphis-area cousins that were in the crowd, Lee cited the “transformational” nature of his family tragedy and in short order was joined at the front of the room by Maria, “God’s gift to me.”

He promised to take better care of the state’s teachers. “We test too much, and we may be testing for the wrong things.” He spoke of his wish to reform criminal justice and reduce “the revolving door” of recidivism, lamented that 15 Tennessee counties, all rural, were officially designated as in poverty, and got an extended round of applause when he rounded on the “dishonest, deceptive attack ads” that, he implied, his major GOP opponents were committed to.

“It’s everything that’s wrong with politics,” he said. “There’s a lot more truth you can find in the person behind those ads than in the person in those ads.”

There was more in that vein, and a nod to his independence and the fact that he was “not beholden to anybody,” donors, lobbyists, or legislators. He likened his “outsider” status to that of President Trump. “That’s why he’s been so effective.”

After his remarks, he and his wife greeted an impressive number of well-wishers who approached them.

He was asked if really had taken the lead. “We certainly know there’s a surge, and the momentum is there. I don’t rely on polls, but I do rely on the momentum and the electricity I see. In today’s world, people want a conservative and an outsider, and that’s me.”

Asked to define what he meant by the term “conservative,” he said it denotes a “playbook for the fundamental approach to governing, that limited government and small government is better, that fiscal governmency includes not allowing government to grow beyond what it should, and understanding there are conservative social values like being 100 percent pro-life.”

Some might think of all that as boilerplate, but Lee makes such statements with a seeming frankness and a confident if modest attitude. He is not one for hard and fast policy points, but in a contest where image counts for much, he certainly looks the part, and, after several months of trailing frontrunners Black and Boyd for first-place honors in the Republican gubernatorial primary, he may indeed be peaking at the right time.

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Cover Feature News

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.

Categories
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.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Remains a Beehive of Political Activity

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The pending visit to The Orpheum on Friday by former Vice President (and possible 2020 presidential candidate) Joe Biden for his “American Promise” tour highlights what continues to be a busy election season.

Republican gubernatorial candidate  Randy Boyd last week underscored the importance of Shelby County in his election campaign by making the county the site of two different stops on his current 95-county bus tour of the state.
Boyd kicked off his bus tour in Millington on Monday, and after making several stops elsewhere in West Tennessee, returned to Shelby County on Saturday for a meet-and-greet lunch in the Collierville town square. Among the several Shelby County officials at the affair, either as backers for Boyd or as courtesy visitors, were County Commissioner David Reaves of Bartlett, Mayor Mike Palazzolo of Germantown, Germantown Alderman Mary Ann Gibson, trustee and county mayor candidate David Lenoir, former county Mayor Jim Rout, state Representative Mark White, and, serving as master of ceremonies for the occasion, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell.

Boyd, who went on to make a day of it in Shelby County, attending the FedEx St. Jude golf tournament and the Germantown Horse Show, noted that he had taken no salary while serving as director for economic development under Governor Bill Haslam. Boyd promised not to do so as governor, either, unless, as he jested, “some of you who have Invisible Fence stop purchasing new batteries, in which case I may need to renegotiate.”
Boyd, one of several independently wealthy candidates for governor, made his fortune as the inventor and vendor of Invisible Fence, which establishes electronic barriers for domestic pets. 
David Weatherspoon, who held the latest version of his “listening tour” at Cheffie’s Restaurant on High Point Terrace on Monday, is expecting to get an earful — and maybe a bagful — of support from members of Shelby County’s health-care community at a June 26th fund-raiser scheduled for Germantown Country Club.

Among the hosts for the affair are Gary and Glenda Shorb, Meri Armour, Ed Barnett, Richard Glassman and Susan Lawless-Glassman, David and Julie Richardson, Nadeem Shafi, Kip and Martha Frizzell, Charles and Kalyna Hanover, Melody Cunningham, and Michael Rohrer.

Weatherspoon, whose campaign treasurer is Ed Roberson, the erstwhile director of Christ Community Health Centers, has made support for Medicaid expansion (“a no-brainer decision”) a key point in his campaign for the District 31 state Senate seat now held by Republican Brian Kelsey (as, for that matter, has Gabby Salinas, the other Democrat running in the forthcoming Democratic primary of August 2nd).

Kelsey is a sworn opponent of former President Obama’s Affordable Care Act and its Medicare-expansion component, and was the sponsor of legislation requiring approval by both chambers of the General Assembly’s Republican super-majority before expansion could take place, dooming Insure Tennessee, the state’s variant of the plan. The rejection, according to Weatherspoon, has cost Tennessee $4 billion in federal funding and contributed to the closure of 10 community hospitals.

• Headquarters Openings: Two candidates drew large crowds for opening new headquarters last week. Democratic county mayor nominee Lee Harris set up at 2127 Central Avenue on Friday, and a Memphis headquarters was established at in the Highland Strip by the campaign of former Governor Phil Bredesen, now a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate.

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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.

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Politics Politics Feature

Forums Forth

A definitive public exposure of candidates for office in 2018 still remains to be accomplished. But several preliminary efforts in that direction took place during the past week or so — a Thursday morning showcase of Democratic women candidates at the City & State coffee house on Broad; a Thursday night forum that attracted a decent-sized crowd and two Republican mayoral opponents at Mt. Moriah East Baptist Church; and a massive turnout on Saturday at the University of Memphis for candidates for virtually every position on the ballot.

At the Thursday night forum, WMC-TV anchor Kontji Anthony moderated a guarded discussion of issues by the two candidates for Shelby County Mayor — Terry Roland and Joy Touliatos — who answered an invitation to debate from Diversity Memphis. And on Saturday those two candidates and scores of others — most of those running for election this year — joined a throng of campaign supporters and attendees at large in the ballroom auditorium of the University of Memphis for a meet-and-greet affair co-sponsored by the Tennessee Nurses Association and the League of Women Voters.

Touliatos and Roland at forum

The latter affair was basically a schmooze-fest that culminated in a parade of candidates across the UM stage as their names were called by moderator Greg Hurst of WREG-TV. Nobody got to speak to the entire assembly, but there was ample conversational opportunity out on the jam-packed floor. And the mere fact of showing up and being seen surely paid dividends — pointedly so for GOP gubernatorial candidate Diane Black, who arrived somewhat late but, to all appearances, unflustered, after her car was involved in a collision caused by an errant vehicle operated by the Tennessee Department of Transportation at mile marker 24 of I-40.

At the Thursday night forum, Roland, currently a Shelby County commissioner, and Touliatos, who serves as Juvenile Court clerk, are both candidates for the Republican nomination for county mayor, and while neither of them broke any new ground or made any waves in their remarks, they had the opportunity to present coherent profiles of themselves as they fielded questions put by Anthony and audience members.

Touliatos stressed what she said would be her ability to “build relationships” within county government and with other governmental entities, while Roland emphasized his experience as a “full-time commissioner with part-time pay” for the last eight years.

Both boasted of their roots with ordinary citizens, and both expressed a determination to buttress education and industrial expansion. Touliatos stressed a need to lay a strong foundation in pre-K education. Roland made his usual case for tax increment financing (TIFs) as an alternative to payments-in-lieu-of taxes (PILOTs). He got the most animated response from the crowd when he attacked what he called “a culture of corruption” in Shelby County, in which “the same 10 people have been getting all the sweet milk.”

Anthony asked, “Why do Black Lives Matter?” And both candidates responded with variations on the statement that “all lives matter” — a generalized response that drew a buzz of disapproval from the predominantly African-American crowd and a precursor to a possible issue in the general election, when either Lee Harris or Sidney Chism, both African Americans, will be the Democratic opposition to the Republican nominee.

Further forums and debates are to be expected in the next few weeks, especially for countywide candidates, whose moment of reckoning with the voters will culminate in the May 1st party primaries, less than two months away.

(See also memphisflyer.com for slideshow of TNA-LWV forum.)

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Politics Politics Feature

Two Approaches to Political Advertising

Anybody who’s been raised since the advent of television (which is everybody now alive) knows the importance of TV ads in political races. The advertising phase of several campaigns is just now coming into prominence. In the case of Shelby County political races, there are but two months to go before the May 1st election day in the Republican and Democratic primaries. Statewide races, which culminate in August, have a bit more lead time.  

Two new ads that are just now getting to be seen by the public indicate wholly different strategies. One is on behalf of Shelby County Trustee and GOP county mayor candidate David Lenoir. The other is for gubernatorial candidate Randy Boyd of Knoxville, the former state Commissioner of Economic Development.

Though Lenoir is well known in local government circles, he is not exactly a household name. Accordingly, his new 30-second TV spot attempts to fill a name-ID gap between himself and primary opponent Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland, a firebrand who is adept at gathering free media coverage for himself.

Lenoir’s spot begins with an image of a football helmet, which fades into a shot of the candidate as a young man, wearing the crimson uniform of the University of Alabama, and clearly game-ready. A voice-over then explains, “When an injury ended his dreams to play in the NFL, David Lenoir refused to stand on the sidelines.”

In fact, Lenoir, whose athletic career ended prematurely due to injury, was once a highly touted defensive end for the fearsome Crimson Tide. The duration of the ad shows images of Lenoir at work and on the campaign stump, looking both accessible and able, while the voice-over speaks of his “reduc[ing] county debt and saving taxpayers millions.” The ad promises that Lanier will “fight to protect our neighborhoods and strengthen our schools” and contends that Shelby Countians “need a mayor with drive and determination.” 

Lenoir has ample funding and will be able to play that ad, and subsequent ones, abundantly in the face of Roland’s newsmaking skills and hot-button pushing, and his other GOP opponent, Joy Touliatos, whose pleasant countenance is displayed on several well-placed billboards on county roadways. No doubt each of them has a TV campaign in mind as well.

Meanwhile, Boyd, a pleasant, mild-mannered man who was a highly successful businessman (Invisible Fences) before his service in state government, where he was known as a moderate, is up against a primary opponent in U.S. Rep. Diane Black who is as well-funded as he is and has a strong hold on her party’s ultra-right constituency.

So Boyd, who has run a couple of TV ads already, stressing his business success, his grit as a distance runner, and his ambitions on behalf of economic development and education, has belatedly decided to contest Black (one of whose ads boasts her readiness to “stand up to the weak-kneed people in my own party”) on her own ground.

Accordingly, while the images in Boyd’s new ad are similar to those in his previous ones, a voice-over intones that the candidate “believes that the right to life comes from God, not the government,” and that people “who can work should work and not permanently live on welfare,” while a subscript on the screen blasts the notion of sanctuary cities. The ad concludes, “What really matters is faith, families, and a good-paying job. A conservative businessman, not a politician.”

Asked about the ad over the weekend in Memphis, where he attended the GOP’s Lincoln Day banquet, Boyd said, “If I’m asking Republicans for their votes, I need to assure them that I share their values.”

The ad, an effort to co-opt an opponent’s issues, is clearly a gamble, and it remains to be seen whether it serves the candidate’s purposes or, alternatively, could backfire with GOP voters looking for a moderate candidate.