Tag: ga-hardaway

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Politics Politics Feature

The Virus and the Vote

Tennessee has come in for criticism for its responses to the coronavirus pandemic, but at least one organization, having surveyed 50 states, rates the Volunteer State as not having done all that shabby. The personal finance website WalletHub ranks Tennessee fourth-best overall in how well its health infrastructure was prepared going into the pandemic.

In specific areas, WalletHub rates Tennessee as follows:

• 20th – Public Healthcare Spending per Capita

• 14th – Number of Hospital Beds per Capita

• 30th – Epidemiology Workforce per Capita

• 11th – Emergency Centers and Services per Capita

• 2nd – Intensive Care Unit (ICU) Beds per Capita

That’s the (relatively) good news. A pair of ongoing lawsuits, each of which was scheduled for a key moment in court this week, suggests that other issues are not nearly so salutary.

A preliminary hearing was set for this Wednesday in the courtroom of federal District Judge Sheryl Lipman on a new suit filed against the office of the Shelby County sheriff, seeking emergency action on behalf of inmates currently infected or under threat of “severe injury or death” as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Filed last week jointly by the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee; the American Civil Liberties Union; Just City; Paul, Weiss, Rifkind; Wharton & Garrison LLP; and attorneys Brice Timmons and Steve Mulroy, the suit is a federal class action that seeks the release of those prisoners deemed non-dangerous.

The suit “asks for identification of medically vulnerable individuals held at the jail and the immediate release of vulnerable people, most immediately those who are detained solely on the basis of their inability to satisfy a financial condition of pretrial release, or solely on the basis of a technical violation of probation or parole unless the county demonstrates that an individual poses a flight or safety risk.”

The suit alleges that, “as of April 30, 192 people at the jail had tested positive for COVID-19, and one jail employee had died.” It further notes that “[s]tatewide, the greatest number of deaths from the virus have occurred in Shelby County” and that, according to the latest reports, “86 percent of inmates at the Shelby County Jail were there pretrial.”

Alleging that the sheriff’s office is violating the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution as well as the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Rehabilitation Act, the suit cautions that “an outbreak at the jail would spread widely in the community, draining the Memphis area of limited resources to fight the pandemic.” 

G.A. Hardaway

See Viewpoint at memphisflyer.com by State Representative G.A. Hardaway (D-Memphis), chair of the Tennessee Caucus of Black Legislators, for more perspective on the jail as a “petri dish” for the COVID virus.

• The coronavirus outbreak is the main reason also for another suit, due for a hearing Thursday in the court of Chancellor Ellen Lyle in Nashville. This one, filed recently by Memphis lawyers Steve Mulroy and Jake Brown for the ad hoc group Up the Vote 901, cites the pandemic as a reason to extend the right of absentee voting to all registered Tennessee voters — a request so far denied by state officials. A parallel suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee may, at Judge Lyle’s discretion, be folded into the original suit, and yet a third suit to the same end has been filed by the NAACP in another jurisdiction.

In a brief presented to the Court, State Attorney General Herb Slatery made several arguments against the proposed action, citing “numerous barriers” to rapid implementation of statewide absentee voting, including alleged costs of millions of dollars and “opportunities for error” indicated in the experiences of other states.

Tennessee is not the only arena where the right to vote by mail is at stake. After Michigan and Nevada sent applications for absentee voting to all registered voters, President Trump threatened those states with the loss of federal funding. The president claims the process of widespread voting by mail invites open fraud, though he himself recently voted absentee in Florida, and Republican states like Ohio have conducted elections by mail without incident. In any case, evidence of such fraud through absentee voting has proved hard to come by.

In the face of the pandemic, 11 of the 16 states that limit who can vote by absentee ballot have eased their election rules this year to permit expanded absentee voting in upcoming elections.

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Politics Politics Feature

Council Switch; New House Speaker; Legislative Alteration

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

A decision by the presiding officials of the local AFL-CIO on Sunday to prohibit speeches by political candidates at their annual picnic at AFSCME headquarters downtown — even by those whom the union has chosen to endorse — has stirred some disquiet. Jackson Baker

Charley Burch (l) with K.C. and Jeff Warren

It has also prompted some action on the city-council-candidate front. Charley Burch reacted to the unprecedented acton by arranging a press conference for Monday afternoon involving himself, state Representative G.A. Hardaway, and fellow council candidate Jeff Warren. The purpose of the press conference?

Said Burch: “It’s to make the point that couldn’t get made at the picnic because we didn’t have the opportunity to say it — that those of us friendly to labor have to bond together in support of common goals.”

In Burch’s case, those common goals would be served by his using the Monday press conference to endorse Warren, who, along with Burch, Cody Fletcher, and Tyrone Romeo Franklin, is on the ballot for Position 3 in Council Super District 9. Presumably Burch would have availed himself on this option on Sunday if allowed to.

Eighth District Congressman David Kustoff addressed a National Federation of Small Business group at Regions Bank on Poplar last week and, as he has in the past, made a point of backing as many of President Trump’s initiatives as possible, including one that has been somewhat overlooked in the crescendo of recent political developments.

Said Kustoff: “An issue that I’m going to continue to fight on is the U.S., Mexico, Canada Agreement (CAFTA), which will replace the old NAFTA. The president renegotiated NAFTA, I think, to the betterment of the United States. Mexico’s ratified it. Canada’s ratified it. So we need Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi to put it on the floor. And the challenge that I see right now — should we go back on September 9th in Washington — is that we’ve got 41 legislative days or something like that.

“You’ve  got some Democrats who say they want to do it. But some who don’t, who say it’d be a win for Donald Trump. It’d be a win for the United States of America.  But that’s the mentality. That’s the mindset. And I’m concerned that with the presidential election, which is already in gear, that the longer she waits, the tougher it’s going to be to to get it to get it done.”

At the same NFIB meeting, state Representatives Ron Gant (R-Rossville) and Tom Leatherwood (R-Arlington) both attested to their belief that Representative Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville), newly nominated by the majority Republican caucus to be speaker of the state House of Representatives, will be a positive antidote to the confusion and mistrust that accompanied the one year-reign as speaker of Glen Casada (R-Franklin), who lost a vote of confidence in his caucus to remain in that position of leadership.

Gant told an affecting story about how Casada called him to the front of the assembled House in the last session and tried unsuccessfully to get him to change his No vote on the issue of private-school vouchers. Eventually, the then-speaker did manage to get another representative to change his vote, breaking the tie and allowing the voucher measure to progress.

As it happens, new Speaker Sexton was a No voter on the issue and has expressed a desire to postpone implementation of the new voucher law, which, as written, applies only to Shelby and Davidson counties. Gant allowed as how he thought some “tweaking” on the law might occur in the 2020 legislative session, which begins in January.

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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).