Tag: district

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Politics Politics Feature

The Final Four Council Winners: Morrison, Boyd, Collins, Ford

CREDIT: jb (w/Ron Williams)

The fat lady of legend has sung her song. The 2007 Memphis
city election is over – a fact that’s music to the ears of newly elected council
members Bill Morrison in District 1, Bill Boyd in District 2,
Harold Collins in District 3, and Edmund Ford Jr., in District 6.

The three latter races were relatively close, with Boyd
beating Brian Stephens by 54 percent to 46 percent; Collins defeating
Ike Griffith by the same percentage, and Ford prevailing over James
Catchings by 53 percent to 47 percent.

The only real blowout occurred in District 1 with the
unexpectedly lopsided victory of Morrison, one of the spunkiest, sunniest, and
most determined new faces of recent political history, who beat school board member
Stephanie Gatewood, no slouch herself, by a margin of almost two to one.

Morrison had help from a talented and seasoned corps of
Democratic activists, many of whom were also active in Stephens’ District 2
candidacy. Aside from former assessor Boyd’s longtime political history, what
may have made the difference for him was the fact of last-minute robo-calls from
former political eminences Bill Morris and Dick Hackett.

Griffith, who has neighborhood cachet in District 3, ran
Collins close, but the latter’s support from established political figures,
including mayors Willie Herenton and A C Wharton, was enough to
give Collins his first leg up as an active candidate in his own right.

Similarly, Ford’s victory, entitling him to succeed his
father, retiring councilman Edmund Ford Sr. in District 6, owed much to
legacy considerations related to his extended family’s prominence in local
politics.

The well-liked Boyd, who is in his 60s, is the anomaly in
the new council, which is overwhelmingly youth-oriented.

With all 122 affected precincts reported, unofficial totals
in the four races were:

DISTRICT 1
(31 Precincts )

  • Morrison
    – 1479 Votes
  • Gatewood – 816 Votes

DISTRICT 2(31 Precinct)


  • Boyd- 2337 Votes
  • Stephens- 1958 Votes

DISTRICT 3(26 Precincts)


  • Collins- 865 Votes
  • Griffith- 741 Votes

DISTRICT 6(34
Precincts)

  • Ford
    – 1751 Votes

Catchings – 1556 Votes

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

POLITICS: The Final Four

Say this for the 2007 incarnation of the Shelby County
Election Commission. Its members are trying.

Right or wrong, that’s something that various critics
doubted about the 2006 version of the commission, plagued by late and lost
returns, ineffective software, erratic machines, incorrect election screens, and
post-election printouts whose totals were entered in some kind of unintelligible
Martian algebra.

“We got started on a rough, rough road,” acknowledged then
chairman Greg Duckett at a post-mortem following an August election cycle
that was sabotaged by all of the above gremlins and more.

Duckett has moved on since then, to the state Election
Commission. Another Democratic commissioner, Maura Black Sullivan, was
not reappointed by her party’s General Assembly contingent. The Democratic
legislators opted to fill the two vacancies with two Democrats who,
coincidentally or not, had past grievances related to the commission.

One was Shep Wilbun, a defeated candidate for
Juvenile Court clerk who had unsuccessfully challenged the 2006 election
results. The other was former longtime commissioner Myra Styles,
returning after being purged four years earlier.

Completing the cycle of reconstruction, Styles was promptly
named chairman. The third Democrat on the commission was yet another vindicated
retread, O.C. Pleasant, who had been replaced as chairman a term earlier
by the now departed Duckett.

The two Republican members – Rich Holden and
Nancye Hines – were holdovers.

Whether because of improved oversight or simple good luck,
the new commission seems to have had better results than their snake-bit
predecessors. Though Mayor Willie Herenton made a point of challenging
the accuracy of the Diebold machines being used in this year’s city elections,
he ultimately was unable to deliver convincing examples.

As for last year’s hieroglyphic-like, analysis-defying
election returns, some hope of improvement has been kindled of late by an omen
of sorts. Concise, easy-to-read reports have been regularly circulated to the
media concerning early voting for the four city-council positions that are at
stake in Thursday’s runoff elections.

Cumulatively, these reports have yielded the information
that, after a sluggish start on October 19th, certain of the 27 early-voting
locations had late spurts.

Leading all locations as of Saturday, when early voting
ended, was Cordova’s Bert Ferguson Community Center, with 952 voters. Coupled
with the fact that a fair amount of voting (282) also occurred at Anointed
Temple of Praise, a southeasterly suburban location, that suggested reasonably
organized voting in the District 2 contest between Bill Boyd and Brian
Stephens.

Heading into Thursday, Stephens, a
businessman/lawyer/neighborhood activist with Republican affiliations, was
getting a surprising amount of support from influential local Democrats, while
longtime political figure Boyd, endorsed by the Shelby County GOP, boasted
endorsements from most of the seven other candidates eliminated in
general-election voting on October 4th.

Relatively stout voting at Pyramid Recovery Center (544)
and Bishop Byrne School (674) indicated the level of voter interest in District
6 (riverfront, south Memphis) and District 3 (Whitehaven), respectively.

The District 6 race was between Edmund Ford Jr. and
James O. Catchings, the former a beneficiary of legacy voting habits, the
latter depending on support from declared reformists. The District 3 contestants
were youngish governmental veteran Harold Collins, who was favored,and educator Ike Griffith.

A turnout of 453 at Raleigh United Methodist Church
documented the tight race expected in District 1 between school board member
Stephanie Gatewood and teacher Bill Morrison. This is the only
runoff race in which demographics could have played a part, though both Gatewood,
an African American, and Morrison, who is white, made a point of pitching voters
across the board.

Gatewood, the only female candidate in the runoff roster,
stood to benefit if gender voting patterns, 60 percent female and 40 percent
male in early voting, continued on Thursday. Participation in early voting by
acknowledged African Americans was at the same level (47.1 percent) as their
percentage in the available voting pool.

Apparent white participation in early voting was at the
level of 37.6 percent, compared to the corresponding figure of 26.3 percent in
the pool of registered voters for the four districts.

What made precise demographic reckoning difficult, however,
was general confusion as to just who made up the category of voters
self-described as “other.,” a grouping that accounts for 26.6 percent of the
registered-voter pool but only 15.3 percent of early voters.

And what made
predictions of any kind difficult was the fact that only 1.5 percent of
available registered voters took part in early voting. As always in the case of
special elections or runoffs, final victory would belong to whichever candidates
mounted the most effective Get-Out-the-Vote efforts.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

POLITICS: Something for Everybody

CREDIT: jb

Let’s be optimistic. The new city council may turn out to
be ideally balanced between Memphis’ disparate races, social groups, and special
interests.

Among the outright winners last Thursday night were:

District 4: Wanda Halbert, an African
American and a seasoned school board member whose inner-city concerns will be
balanced with knowledge of mainstream issues;

District 5: Jim Strickland, a lawyer whose
whopping 73 percent total over five opponents gave some indication of the
widespread appeal enjoyed by this white former Democratic chairman (whose law
partner is U.S. attorney David Kustoff, a former GOP chairman).

District 7: Barbara Swearengen Holt-Ware, a
black veteran and firm ally of Mayor Willie Herenton who easily turned
aside an energetic challenge from four opponents.

Super District 8, Position 1: Whether he’s profiting
from the cachet of the former Criminal Court judge and current TV jurist who has
the same name as himself or, alternatively, is just well liked for his stout
attention to inner-city neighborhood concerns, Joe Brown made it back
easily over two opponents.

Super District 8, Position 2: More moderate than her
reputation in some quarters, Janis Fullilove has been a fixture on the
airwaves for almost two decades, and her name ID by itself was enough to
overpower seven well-qualified opponents, including interim incumbent Henry
Hooper.

Super District 8, Position 3: Myron Lowery, a
hard-working fixture on the council for a generation and a pillar of both
mainstream and minority concerns, had no problem with his two opponents.

Super District 9, Position 1: Scott McCormick,
the likely new chairman, outpolled all other council candidates and prevailed
easily in a battle in which his ex-military opponent made few public
appearances.

Super District 9, Position 2: Shea Flinn,
Democratic son of a Republican county commissioner, outpointed runner-up Kemp
Conrad, who had GOP support, thanks to his big-bucks campaign, his own
appeal, and an impressive run from “Memphis Watchdog” Joe Saino, who
harvested liberally from Conrad’s conservative base.

Super District 9, Position 3: The winner here was
developer Reid Hedgepeth, whose campaign spent bigtime and had so many
yard signs that Hedgepeth’s campaign manager, retiring councilman Jack
Sammons, wryly suggested recycling some of them at a late fundraiser.

Though he may have lost some votes to challenger Lester
Lit, Hedgepeth saw his main competitor, lawyer Desi Franklin, sharing
enough crucial votes with fellow Democrat Mary Wilder to have to
settle for runner-up status.

Still to be determined:

There will be runoffs on November 8 in four district races.

District 1: School board member Stefanie Gatewood,
an M.O.R. black, vies with teacher Bill Morrison in a northern-suburb
district whose demographics now tilt African American. Educators won’t lose
either way.

District 2: The survivors from a multi-candidate
field in this eastern-edge district are, as expected, former assessor and
veteran civic figure Bill Boyd and hard-charging well-supported lawyer
Brian Stephens, who had the early head start. A tossup.

District 3: Though still youthful, Harold Collins
is a veteran of public service and has much influential support, while teacher
Ike Griffith has some grass-roots strength of his own. Collins is
considered the favorite.

District 6: Another teacher, Edmund Ford
Jr., now a graduate student, had a sizeable election-day lead over runner-up
James O. Catchings, himself a well-known educator. It remains to be seen
whether the current legal predicament of Ford pere, who is leaving the
seat, will be a help or a hindrance in the runoff.

  • Wasting no time: Three of the newly elected
    council members – Strickland, Hedgepeth, and Flinn – met Monday for a working
    lunch at The Little Tea Shop, a downtown restaurant.

    The trio compared notes on the campaign and discussed
    issues, agreeing that crime control would be the dominant issue for the newly
    configured council.

    Hedgepeth, a 30-year-old developer and political newcomer,
    took criticism during the campaign for avoiding all the scheduled candidate
    forums. He acknowledged he had relied heavily on the advice of Sammons and
    co-campaign manager Nathan Green. But he quipped, “I’ll be at all the forums
    from now on!”

    Those, he was
    reminded, will be scheduled on Tuesday at regular two-week intervals.

    • Categories
    Politics Politics Feature

    Early Voting Ends — and So Does the Early-Voting Reality Show

    CREDIT: jb

    Phase One of the 2007 Memphis municipal election – early
    voting – is over, as of Saturday. The final head-count of voters at the
    Election Commission and at 14 satellite locations was nearly 75,000 – a huge
    number — despite an alarm sounded week before last by incumbent mayor Willie
    Herenton that the Diebold machines being employed for the vote were unreliable.

    The mayor’s reaction was interpreted by his main
    adversaries – councilwoman Carol Chumney and former MLGW head Herman Morris – as
    a red herring and as what Morris called a “desperate” act. Whatever the case,
    the record volume of responses during this year’s early voting attests to the
    widespread public interest in both the mayor’s race and the 13 races for city
    council.

    And so crucial was the two-week period regarded that some
    candidates – notably Reid Hedgepeth, running for the District 9, Position 3
    seat; and Cecil Hale, vying for the District 9, Position 1 seat – devoted almost
    all their time and energies to long stints of greeting voters at early-voting
    sites (Hale taking pains always, both verbally and with signs, to remind
    arriving voters that he was “U.S. Army, Retired”).

    Even those hopefuls who varied their campaign activities to
    include attendance at other events, including candidate forums, made a point of
    logging considerable time at several of the early-site locations.

    One of the East Memphis locations that was especially
    favored was at White Station Church of Christ on Colonial Rd. There so many of
    the District 9, District 5, and District 2 candidates gathered on a daily basis
    that they often developed relationships transcending their rivalry for this or
    that position.

    That wasn’t inevitably the case, though. A distinct
    coolness governed encounters between Hedgepeth and his supporters (prominent
    among whom was his close friend Richard Smith, son of FedEx founder Fred Smith)
    on one side and opponent Lester Lit, who had been critical of the political
    newcomer — early, often, and explicitly — on the other. (It should be said that the Hedgepeth
    crew, which also at various times and various locations included the candidate’s
    mother and mother-in-law, were generally patient and gracious to an extreme.)

    And, once in a while, cool turned into hot, as it did at
    the Bert Ferguson Community Center location in Cordova, where competing District
    2 candidates Brian Stephens and Todd Gilreath got into each other’s space one
    too many times, leading to a heated verbal exchange between the two.

    But mostly all was sweetness and light. Opponents stood
    shoulder to shoulder with each other as they handed out literature to voters,
    asked about each others’ families, and traded jokes and gossip in the manner of
    ad hoc comrades in arms.

    Entirely good-natured was the teasing that District 9,
    Position 2 candidate Kemp Conrad took from his rivals for his habit of running
    after new arrivals to be the first candidate they encountered. And, in the wake
    of a now famous Commercial Appeal article outlining various
    office-seekers’ financial and legal misfortunes, those who, like District 2
    candidate Scott Pearce, took bigger-than-usual hits, got friendly (and maybe
    even sincere) commiseration from other candidates.

    Rarely, it should be said, was discussion of issues the
    dominant leitmotif of exchanges between candidates and their respective
    entourages – or, for that matter, in their conversations with prospective
    voters.

    Overall, as indicated, the atmosphere at White Station and
    at other heavily frequented sites begat a kind of apolitical camaraderie among the
    various competing hopefuls that one might associate with TV reality shows like
    American Idol.

    It remains to be seen what that might portend, for
    better and for worse, in election years yet to come. But there is no
    doubting that early voting is now a permanent part of the election culture in
    these parts.