Tag: James harvey

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Politics Politics Feature

In the Picture

Michelle McKissack (Photo: Michelle McKissack | Facebook)

As was teased in this space last week, second-quarter financial disclosures of the Memphis mayoral candidates were expected to come due. And they did, roughly a day after last week’s issue went to print.

The contents of the disclosures have since been bruited about here and there and have been subjected to analysis. In many — perhaps most — ways, the numbers conform to advance expectations. The leaders now, in the vital metric of cash on hand, are the same two who led the field in first-quarter disclosures in January: Downtown Memphis Commission CEO Paul Young, with $432,434.97 cash on hand, and Sheriff Floyd Bonner, with $404,139.12.

Local NAACP president Van Turner was still very much in the game, with $154,633.46, as was the largely self-funding developer J.W. Gibson, with $254,015.55.

The real surprise was former Memphis-Shelby County Schools board chair Michelle McKissack, who raised $101,712.95 — in less than two months of a declared candidacy, she notes — and has $79,164.95 on hand.

Clearly, McKissack has some catching up to do but justly takes pride in her results, given her relatively late start. She and the other candidates have some time, given that candidate petitions cannot even be drawn until May 22nd. Election day is October 5th, some five months away.

In a video tweet last week, McKissack alleged about some of the media coverage that “there are those in the city who don’t want to acknowledge that it’s actually possible for a woman to be mayor of Memphis.” She focused on an unnamed article “that really touted, just, you know, highlighting the men in this race.”

Both the point of view and even some of the language in McKissack’s tweet were reminiscent of attitudes expressed by former female candidates for mayor — notably Carol Chumney, now a Circuit Court Judge, who ran for Memphis mayor twice, finishing a competitive second place to incumbent Willie Herenton in a three-way race in 2007.

Herenton, out of office now for 14 years, is a candidate again for his former office, where he served for 17 years. He and others — including City Councilman Frank Colvett, state House minority leader Karen Camper, former County Commissioner James Harvey, and former TV judge Joe Brown — will doubtless make some waves, one way or another.

Tami Sawyer (Photo: Tami Sawyer | Facebook)

• Another former mayoral candidate, Tami Sawyer, who had a singularly devoted following for her reform platform in 2019, is back on the scene after a work sojourn for Amazon in both D.C. and California. She tweeted, “Yes, I’m back in Memphis for good … I am not running for office in 2023. But y’all gonna still see me deep in this work.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Going the Distance

James Harvey in Germantown (Photo: Jackson Baker)

As noted in this space last week, the current Memphis city election year is seemingly destined to become the most long-distance such event in the city’s history, with several mayoral candidates already declared and notably running months in advance of any actual voting.

To stress the point: No ballots will be cast until September 15th, when early voting begins for the election, which concludes for most purposes on October 5th. Should there be district council races in which there is no majority winner, runoffs will be held for those districts on November 16th.

Contestants for mayor and for city council positions will not even be able to pick up their qualifying petitions from the Election Commission until May 22nd, almost three months from now. And district lines for the 13 council positions are still under review.

All these facts indicate just how far off in time the election really is; though in key races, for city council as well as for mayor, there is a distinct flurry of activity as would-be candidates try to get their campaigns (and their fundraising needs) established and in order.

• Apropos long-distance campaigning, Monday night of this week saw a different application of the term. Memphis mayoral candidate James Harvey, speaking not in Memphis but before an audience in Germantown, held forth for an hour and a half. That’s the length of speaking time that occurs usually only for events like a presidential State of the Union address or an arena speech by Donald Trump to one of his devoted, cult-like audiences.

Harvey, a longtime FedEx administrator who now is proprietor of his own staffing service, is a former member of the Shelby County Commission and served a term as that body’s chairman. An African American, he was a Democrat in those days, but his party affiliation has become somewhat ambiguous. He has involved himself in several Republican races as a sponsor of other people’s events, but on Monday night he downplayed the issue of partisanship (appropriately enough for the Memphis city election, which is formally nonpartisan).

Monday night’s event, at the Perkins Restaurant & Bakery in Germantown, was sponsored by the Shelby County Republican Party’s outreach committee, and chaired by the indefatigable Naser Fazlullah, who advised attendees that Harvey had “the gift of gab.”

That’s one way of putting it. Another was voiced years ago by then County Commissioner Chris Thomas, who commented after one of colleague Harvey’s extended monologues, “I could have gone out and gotten a haircut during all of that.”

James Harvey does indeed love to talk, and, though several members of his audience Monday night had to leave before he finished, the body as a whole seemed to resonate with his remarks, which focused on public safety and crime and the value of strong authority. He declared himself in favor of age 15 as the outer limit for Juvenile Court supervision and fulminated against tinted car windows and the antisocial actions of wayward youths, whom he characterized by the terms “Li’l Billy and Li’l Pookie.” He also at one point singled out “Jay [sic] Morant,” the Grizzlies superstar who has recently been involved in a series of questionable incidents.

As a candidate, Harvey is something of an anomaly and would be well advised to limit his speaking time but, in the best of circumstances, could find appreciative audiences like the one Monday night.

• Businessman J.W. Gibson, who is able to self-fund if need be, formally announced his candidacy for Mayor at an event Monday at the Stax Museum, calling for a “different tune” in city government.

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Politics Politics Feature

County Commission Election Next Week

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Even as candidates for city office gird for an October 8th election, which is still weeks away from its stretch drive, another election of some possible consequence is just around the corner.

On Monday, the Shelby County Commission will elect a chairman to serve  for the 2015-16 period, and, while other commissioners are quite likely considering their options in case of deadlock, at least two members of the commission — Steve Basar and Terry Roland — are more or less publicly running.

Both, interestingly enough, on a 13-member body which has a Democratic majority of one, are Republicans. Basar, however, is a de facto Democratic candidate, hoping to gain through an active coalition with members of the other party an office which he believes himself to have been unfairly deprived of by members of his own party.

A year ago, Basar, an East Memphis Republican who was then serving as commission vice chair, confidently expected elevation to the chairmanship as a matter of course.

For the first several years after the commission became subject to partisan elections in the mid-1990s, the tradition was to elect a chairman from one party in a given year, along with a vice chairman from the other. At the end of that year, the vice chair would be formally elected to become chair for the next year, in a routine whereby the succession to chairman was essentially foreordained, and the commission’s chairmanship was, by what was termed a “gentlemen’s agreement,” rotated by party annually.

That was the format which Basar expected to apply to his own case when a newly elected commission met to select a chairman after the conclusion of the August 2014 county election.

But Basar encountered a body which contained five new members, and the once-predictable rites of succession to the chairmanship had been jimmied and could no longer be depended on.

That all began with the election for chairman in 2011, when then Republican vice chair Mike Carpenter, who had angered his GOP colleagues by what they considered too close a collaboration with the commission’s Democrats, failed to get Republican votes, and Democratic chairman Sidney Chism parlayed the resulting deadlock into reelection for a second consecutive term.

From that point on, even as the principle of rotating chairmanships seemed to have reasserted itself to some degree, there was always an element of suspense in the matter of electing a chair, as well as a fair amount of intrigue.

When Republican Mike Ritz succeeded Democrat Chism as chair in 2012, he in effect became chief strategist for the Democratic majority’s opposition to independent suburban school districts and ran afoul of his GOP colleagues, as Carpenter had done previously.

In 2013, as Chism had done before him, Ritz sought a second consecutive term, but once again the Republican minority coalesced around what they considered a sympathetic Democrat, James Harvey, who won with their support. And, in 2014, GOP members continued with what had seemingly become a strategy of supporting a compliant Democrat over a fellow Republican, backing eventual winner Justin Ford over a stunned Basar.

In the wake of his defeat, Basar entered into a coalition with the commission’s Democrats on key vote after key vote, beginning with their efforts to limit Ford’s chairmanship powers last fall, and continuing through this year’s budget negotiations.

Basar still wants to be commission chairman, though he has also offered himself as a possible successor to Paul Morris, who is stepping down as chairman of the Downtown Memphis Commission.

Meanwhile, Roland makes no bones about it: He wants to be Shelby County Mayor, is essentially already running for that office, which is up again in 2018, and clearly believes that becoming commission chairman would give him a leg up on that race.

Roland hails from Millington, was elected to the commission as a GOP firebrand, and can still comport himself that way, depending on the issue. But he has made an obvious effort to mute his partisanship and work across party lines. He led the effort to put the commission on record as supporting Governor Bill Haslam‘s Insure Tennessee proposal, and the successful resolution to rename the Shelby County Courthose for the late civil rights icon D’Army Bailey was proposed by Roland.

• Meanwhile, on the Wednesday agenda of the commission’s general government committee is the still simmering issue of the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue and Forrest graves in what was formerly Forrest Park (Health Sciences Park).

Again before the commission is a resolution sponsored by Commissioner Walter Bailey that would put the commission on record as supporting the Memphis City Council’s ordinance to remove the statue, which was due for a second reading at this week’s council meeting. The commission’s resolution supporting the council’s intent was deferred from the committee’s July 22nd meeting.

Any action by the commission would be purely symbolic, inasmuch as only the council has authority regarding disposition of the statue. But whatever the commission does would definitely have an effect on public opinion during what is expected to be a lengthy course of litigation over the issue.

The city council’s sentiment has so far remained unanimous for removal, but indications are that reservations by suburban members of the county commission could make for controversy.

The commission’s budget committee is likely to get into something of a thicket, too. Budget chair Heidi Shafer wants the commission to take up the issue of establishing a staff or hiring an individual to perform for the commission the same kind of independent vetting service over financial matters that the Congressional Budget Office does for members of Congress.

Shafer and other members of the commission, on both sides of the party line, were plainly vexed by seemingly disparate accountings issued by the administration of Mayor Mark Luttrell and County Trustee David Lenoir, respectively, on the actual amount of an end-of-fiscal-year surplus.

There is a strong and bipartisan sentiment on the commission to assert the body’s independence vis-à-vis the administration, as was also indicated recently by the commission’s open exploration of the prospect of hiring its own attorney, at least for ad hoc matters.

• It was neither the most surprising action nor the most momentous one of the 2015 Memphis election season, but the joint endorsement of Councilman Harold Collins‘ mayoral campaign on Monday by the Memphis Fire Fighters Association and an independent firefighters’ group was another sign of an apparent recent surge of support for Collins.

The councilman from Whitehaven was fairly universally judged to have acquitted himself well in a four-way mayoral forum last week put on by several local women’s groups at First Congregational Church.

And, though Collins’ financial receipts still lag behind those of Mayor A C Wharton and Councilman Jim Strickland, they have been significant enough to suggest the possibility that talk of a two-man mayoral race between Wharton and Strickland may have been overdone — or, at any rate, premature.

The opening by Mayor Wharton on Sunday of a Whitehaven-based headquarters on Elvis Presley Boulevard, to complement another headquarters on Poplar Avenue (to be inaugurated this coming Sunday), is a clear indication that the mayor has a two-front war on his hands.

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Politics Politics Feature

Election Year 2015 is Upon Us

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Even as time was running out on the elections of 2014, with early voting ending this week in the election process that ends Tuesday, November 4th, the stirrings of Election Year 2015 were at hand. 

Among those in attendance at a Monday morning rally for Democratic candidates at the IBEW building on Madison were Kenneth Whalum and his wife Sheila. And while neither was quite ready to commit to a candidacy for Memphis mayor by the New Olivet Baptist Church pastor and former school board member, both seemed to relish the thought of a follow-up race to the Rev. Whalum’s surprisingly close second-place finish to Deidre Malone in last May’s Democratic primary for Shelby County mayor.

“Maybe it’s time for another tour of India,” joked the reverend, who had been absent on that East Asian sub-continent for a prolonged period just before election day but who finished strong, a fact indicating either that 1) absence made the hearts of voters grow fonder; or that 2) a more vigorous late effort on Shelby County soil might have put him over.

Either scenario, coupled with the fact that his appeal of a 2012 school board race narrowly lost to Kevin Woods had been finally disallowed by the courts, clearly left the irrepressible Whalum available for combat.

Who else is thinking about it? The proper question might be: Who isn’t?

Also present at the IBEW rally was former Shelby County Commission Chairman James Harvey, who is already committed to a race for Memphis mayor to the point of passing out calling cards advertising the fact.

“Changing parties again?” a passer-by jested to Harvey, a nominal Democrat who, in the past year or so on the commission, often made common cause with the body’s Republicans.

“I need ’em now!” responded Harvey, good-naturedly, about his attendance with other Democrats at the IBEW rally, which featured Gordon Ball, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senator, at the climax of his statewide “No Show Lamar” bus tour; District 30 state Senate candidate Sara Kyle; and District 96 state House of Representatives candidate Dwayne Thompson.

Not so sunny was another attendee, Memphis City Councilman Myron Lowery, who, when asked if he was considering another mayoral race (he ran unsuccessfully in the special election of 2009 while serving as interim city mayor) answered calmly, “No,” but became non-committal, to the point of truculence, at the follow-up question, “So, are you closing the door?”

Lowery has confided to acquaintances, however, that he is indeed once again measuring the prospect of a mayoral race, while simultaneously contemplating a race by his son, management consultant Mickell Lowery, for his council seat should he choose to vacate it.

Another council member, Harold Collins, has formed an exploratory committee and is contemplating a mayoral race based largely on the theme that the current administration of Mayor A C Wharton is acting insufficiently in a number of spheres, including those of dealing with employee benefits and coping with recent outbreaks of mob violence.

Another councilman considered likely to make a bid for mayor is current council Chairman Jim Strickland, who has built up a decently sized following over the years by dint of his highly public crusades for budgetary reform. He, too, has often been critical of the incumbent mayor.

In accordance with assurances, public and private, he has made over the past year, Wharton himself is still considered to be a candidate for reelection, though there are those who speculate he may have second thoughts, given his advancing years and the increasing gravity of fiscal and social problems confronting the city.

The mayor’s supporters tend to pooh-pooh such speculation and suggest that only Wharton is capable of achieving across-the-boards support from the city’s various demographic components.

Others known or thought to be considering a mayoral race are former state legislator and ex-councilmember Carol Chumney (who has run twice previously); current county Commissioner Steve Basar; and Memphis Police Association President Mike Williams.

The list of potential mayoral candidates is a roster that may grow larger quickly.

• In introducing Ball at the IBEW rally, state Democratic Chairman Roy Herron contended that incumbent Republican Senator Lamar Alexander‘s poll numbers were “going down and down and down and Gordon Ball’s are going up and up and up, and those lines are going to intersect.”

In his own remarks, Ball charged that “my opponent has spent millions of dollars trying to smear and discredit us” and cited that as evidence of how seriously Alexander was taking the threat to his reelection.

The Democratic nominee spent considerable time addressing the recent publicity about a suit brought against him by one Barry Kraselsky, an Alabama resident who recently purchased a Florida condo from Ball and is accusing Ball and his wife, Happy, of having “duped” him by removing items from the property.

Ball said he was being sued for $5,300, even though he had posted an escrow account of $5,000, which was available to Kraselsky, whom he said was a “charlatan” and a major Republican donor. “We’re going to take care of him after November 4th.”

In remarks to reporters after his formal speech, Ball, who opposes the proposed Common Core educational standards, contended that Alexander, who has mainly been opaque on the subject, was a supporter of Common Core, which is opposed by many classroom teachers. Ball noted that Alexander had bragged on well-known teachers’ advocate Diane Ravitch, who is now a Common Core opponent, in Lamar Alexander’s Little Plaid Book, which the senator published years ago.

“He doesn’t mention her anymore,” said Ball. “He and [state Education Commissioner] Kevin Huffman and [educational reformer and Common Core supporter] Michelle Rhee are in this together.”

Also taking part in the IBEW rally were Whalum and Ashley Coffield, CEO of Memphis Planned Parenthood, who passed out to all the candidates T-shirts opposing Constitutional Amendment 1 on the November 4th ballot. Amendment 1 would in effect nullify a 2000 decision by the state Supreme Court that granted more protection to abortion rights than have the federal courts, as well as empower the General Assembly to legislate on a variety of potential new restrictions to abortion.

• The Shelby County Commission, which was unable on Monday to come to a decision on proposed changes in County Mayor Mark Luttrell‘s amended health-care plan for county employees (see this week’s Editorial) also was somewhat riven on another – more explicitly political – issue.

This was a suit filed by seven commissioners in Chancery Court against current Chairman Justin Ford challenging his right to arbitrarily keep items off the body’s agenda.

The plaintiffs are the commission’s six Democrats and one Republican, former vice Chairman Steve Basar, who previously voted with the Democrats to stall the committee appointments by Ford, who was elected in this fall’s first organizational session by a combination of his own vote with that of the commission’s five Republicans. As the GOP’s Heidi Shafer explained at the time, the outnumbered Republicans had a choice between Ford, who has fairly consistently voted their way in previous years, and Bailey, who rarely has.

Basar was aggrieved by having been denied votes for the chairmanship, which he believed himself to be in line for, by most of his Republican colleagues.

Subsequent attempts to place items on the commission agenda proposing rules changes that would threaten Ford’s authority have been arbitrarily removed by the chairman.

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Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Commission’s Last Go-Round

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The final meeting of the version of the county commission that was elected four years ago began on Monday with a show of harmony, with mutual compliments, and some last commemorative poetry by limerick-writing Commissioner Steve Mulroy, and expired with a last sputter of disputation. In between, it advanced on two fronts and retreated on another.

Though it might not have appeared so to those unversed in the habits and ways of the county legislative body, this culminating session of the Class of 2010 also offered a symbolic forecast of better times ahead economically. It was during the heyday of the housing boom that went bust in the late aughts — leaving the county, the state, and the nation in financial doldrums — that ace zoning lawyers Ron Harkavy and Homer “Scrappy” Brannan were omnipresent figures in the Vasco Smith County Administration Building.

It seemed like years, and probably was, when the two of them had last appeared at the same commission meeting, each serving as attorneys for clients seeking commissioners’ approval for ambitious building plans. But there they were on Monday, reprising their joint presence at last week’s committee meetings — Harkavy representing the Belz Investment Company on behalf of a new residential development in southeast Shelby County; Brannan representing the Bank of Bartlett in upholding another development further north.

Both were successful, and it was a reminder of old times — say, the early 2000s, when the building boom so dominated commission meetings that worried commissioners actually had to propose a moratorium to slow down the proliferation of sprawl.

The matter of residence was, in yet another way, a major focus of Monday’s meeting, in its overwhelming approval of a resolution on residency requirements for commission members proposed by Mulroy, a Democrat and the body’s leading liberal, and amended by Republican Commissioners Heidi Shafer and Terry Roland. The commission thereby wrote the final chapter of the Henri Brooks saga and set precedents for the future.

The resolution, which provides a checklist of items to satisfy the county charter’s existing residency requirements, was strongly resisted by senior Democrat Walter Bailey, who had been the commission’s major defender of Brooks in her successful effort to stave off legal eviction from the commission after the apparent discovery that she no longer lived in the district she was elected to serve.

Bailey, who has called the Brooks affair a “witch hunt,” has continued to maintain that the commission has no authority to impose or enforce such rules, citing a decision last month by Chancellor Kenny Armstrong upholding Brooks’ appeal of a finding by County Attorney Marcy Ingram that vacated Brooks’ seat in conformity with the county charter. Other commissioners pointed out that Armstrong had actually ruled that it was the commission, rather than the county attorney, that could decide on the matter, thereby affirming the body’s authority.

In any case, Bailey said the commission should operate on the principle of “good faith” and not pursue vendettas. He was backed up in that by Commissioner Sidney Chism, who went so far as to suggest that his colleagues were out to “kill” Brooks.

Most commissioners, though, clearly felt such thinking was over-protective and counter not only to the county charter but to the same traditions of residency enforcement that governs the placement of school children and the right to vote in a given precinct.

Moreover, they had just as clearly soured on Brooks. Commissioner Mark Billingsley said his constituents had concluded that some members of the commission were “not trustworthy.” And according to Mike Ritz, Brooks had “cheated” her constituents by not attending any commission meetings since her attorneys had managed to ensure that she could remain on the body until the end of her term this month. “She’s been cheating them for years,” he added. Shafer said pointedly that the rules up for adoption were meant to prevent efforts “to defraud the voters.”

Jackson Baker

Back on the scene Monday were zoning lawyers Ron Harkavy (top, with Commissioner Heidi Shafer), and “Scrappy” Branan (bottom, left, with Bank of Bartlett president Harold Byrd and Commissioner Terry Roland);

Essentially, the amended resolution provided 10 different items to determine a challenged commissioner’s residency — ranging from utility bills to drivers licenses to documents certifying public assistance or government benefits — and required that only three of them be produced. The resolution passed 8-to-3, though it was understood that it might be met down the line with court challenges.

The commission took another important concrete step in approving a third and final reading of an ordinance proposed by Commissioner Ritz raising the pay of Shelby County Schools board members to $15,000, with the board chairman to receive $16,000. Though that amount was roughly only half the compensation received by county commission members and should be regarded as a “stipend” rather than a salary, it was still a three-fold increase for school board members.

In evident agreement with Ritz that such an increase was overdue, particularly in a “post-controversy” (meaning post-merger) environment, the commission approved the ordinance by the lopsided margin of 10-to-1.

But if comity was to be had in most ways Monday, it fell short on the last item of the day — and of this commission’s tenure. Despite the presence of numerous citizens and clergy members testifying on its behalf, a resolution co-sponsored by Mulroy and Bailey “amending and clarifying the personnel policy of Shelby County regarding nondiscrimination,” fell short by one vote of the seven votes required for passage. 

The same resolution, which specifically added language safeguarding county government employment rights for gay and transgendered persons, had been given preliminary approval by the commission’s general government committee last week. A highlight of the often tempestuous debate on Monday was an angry exchange between Democrat Chism, a supporter of the resolution, and Millington Republican Roland, who opposed it.

The specific language of the resolution was needed in the same way that specific language had been needed in civil rights legislation to end discrimination against blacks, said Chism, an African American. Discrimination, said Chism, “happened to me all of my life. Nobody saw it until the law changed.” Roland shouted back that the resolution was but the vanguard of a homosexual agenda. “It’s an agenda!” he repeated.

In the aftermath of the resolution’s near-miss, a disappointed Mulroy, who had authored the original nondiscrimination resolution of 2009, noted that Brooks, had she been there, would likely have been the necessary seventh vote, and that Chairman James Harvey, who abstained from voting, had proclaimed on multiple occasions, in front of numerous witnesses, that the resolution should be passed but that he, Harvey, who aspires to run for Memphis mayor next year, might have to abstain for “political” reasons.

Another term-limited commissioner, Ritz, may be a principal in the city election, as well. The former commission chairman, who has moved from Germantown into Memphis, said he is eying a possible Memphis City Council race. There is, it would seem, life after county commission service.

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Politics Politics Feature

Good News, Bad News for Shelby County Democrats

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The week leading up to the Memorial Day weekend highlighted both the hopes and the perils facing Democrats in Shelby County and in Tennessee at large.

Locally, the issue of what to do about Henri Brooks still festers in party ranks but is likely to end indecisively, inasmuch as all the available options regarding the volatile county commissioner who is her party’s nominee for Juvenile Court Clerk seem to be of the no-win variety.

In the immediate aftermath of Brooks’ verbal attack on a Hispanic witness and two of her colleagues at the commission meeting on Monday, May 12th, Commission Chairman James Harvey made some resolute statements about backing a possible censure action against Brooks, but Harvey — long famous, in both speech and action, for a tendency to consider multiple options, tentatively adopting and discarding each in turn — seems to have backed off the idea.

With the Commission preparing to meet this week in committee and next Monday in full session, no action is likely unless pressed by a fellow African-American commission member or called for by a prominent Democratic nominee on the August 7th countywide ballot. “It would take a ‘Sister Souljah’ moment,” said one Democrat, evoking the memory of presidential candidate Bill Clinton‘s venturing to criticize racially abrasive comments by a prominent black activist in 1992.

Such an action might well exacerbate intra-party tensions among Democrats, but the lack of such an action leaves the party open to actual or implied Republican criticism regarding Democratic toleration of bigotry.

When the Shelby County Democratic Party Executive Committee met last Thursday for a “unity” gathering, much lip service was paid to the concept of party loyalty and much suspicion was vented of possible GOP skullduggery, but not a single thing was said about Brooks or the May 12th Commission meeting or community reaction to it.

Statewide, the predicament of Democrats as a minority party at the mercy of Republican officials was underscored by the arrival in Memphis on Thursday of three Democratic appointed state Supreme Court justices — Chief Justice Gary Wade, Cornelia Clark, and Sharon Lee.

The three justices, all up for Yes/No retention votes on August 7th, have been targeted for rejection in a campaign led by Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey, the presiding officer of the state Senate. Two other justices, including Janice Holder of Memphis, have already announced their retirement in lieu of standing for retention. State Appeals Court Judge Holly Kirby, also of Memphis, was appointed by Governor Bill Haslam to succeed Holder.

Wade, Clark, and Lee drew a supportive crowd of fellow lawyers and other supporters at a fund-raiser in their behalf at the Racquet Club on Thursday night, and Memphis Mayor A C Wharton held a joint press conference with them on Friday, endorsing them for retention.

Haslam, who would have the responsibility of naming replacements for the three justices, should they not win retention, has kept a discreet and neutral distance from the matter.

On the statewide front, the good news for Democrats is that three candidates in the Democratic primary are vying for the right to oppose incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander in November. The three are Larry Crim of Nashville, CEO of Christian Counseling Centers of America, Inc., and two Knoxville attorneys, Terry Adams, and Gordon Ball.

Crim ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination in a 2012 race for the Senate seat held (and retained) by Bob Corker. Most party attention has focused on Adams and Ball.

Ball, a respected trial lawyer who has won huge judgments against corporations for malfeasance (and can largely self-finance a campaign) was the guest of a meet-and-greet affair in Memphis co-hosted last Thursday night by Jocelyn Wurzburg and Kemba Ford. Under attack in some party quarters for his past support of Republican candidates in East Tennessee (where, as he pointed out, Republicans are often the only choices on the ballot) and for his espousal of a flat tax, Ball endorsed consensus Democratic positions on social issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.

Adams was in Memphis on Friday for an evening hosted by the Rincon Strategy Group at Bar DKDC at Cooper and Young. Featuring an attack on economic inequality as a major theme (a fact he demonstrates by carrying the text of Thomas Piketty‘s currently modish Capital in the 21st Century on his cell phone), Adams seems to have the support of young Democrats calling themselves progressives.

Again, the good news for Democrats is that both Ball and Adams seemingly represent viable and credentialed alternatives to Alexander. The bad news is that Alexander, who has a well-stocked campaign war chest, is considered to have an enormous, even a prohibitive, lead over any Democrat.

The incumbent senator is now engaged in a primary campaign of his own against challengers including Republican State Representative Joe Carr of Lascasses, who hopes for Tea Party support, and George Flinn of Memphis, whose aim seems mainly that of popularizing his own approach to a national health-care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act.

Another Democrat venturing to run statewide is gubernatorial candidate John McKamey, a retired coach from Kingsport in East Tennessee, who has the formal support of the AFL-CIO. McKamey was headed to Memphis for an appearance before the Germantown Democrats this Wednesday night at Coletta’s on Highway 64.

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Editorial Opinion

Commission Needs to Address Issues on Equal Opportunity Mandates

A heated discussion at the Shelby County Commission’s Monday meeting this week indicated that, despite all the strides that have been made in race relations locally and in the provisions of equal rights and opportunities, there

remain obstacles — some of them based on adherence to formulas that were previously advanced as solutions to the problems of racial discord.

A case in point was a controversy in the Commission meeting about something that, once upon a time, would have been regarded as a harmless and routine matter. This was the matter of building a new roof over a facility at the county’s Mullins Station complex in East Memphis. It was the second time around for this item on the Commission agenda. When it surfaced at a committee meeting some weeks ago, it drew hostile questioning from two commissioners — Henri Brooks and Walter Bailey — who make it their business to look out for the interests of Shelby County’s African-American population.

Brooks had begun the questioning that time around, asking, as is her wont in dealing with any kind of employment situation involving public funds, how many “minority” members were employed by the company, which had gained the construction contract. She was told that 29 “minority” workers would be employed, a clear majority of the work force. So far, so good, and in compliance with Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines mandated for county hiring. But Brooks probed further: How many of those were blacks? None, she was told. They were all Hispanic. In the hurly-burly of discussion that followed, it was explained by Public Works administrators that Hispanics comprised the brunt of the work force for all three firms that bid for the project.

That is surely no surprise to anyone who has seen a homebuilding project in Shelby County in recent years, and especially not to anyone who remembers the boom years in new home construction leading up to the bursting of the housing bubble by the Great Crash of 2008/9. Whether directly imported or merely exploited once they got here, Mexican migrant workers were the veritable core of the home construction industry. It may or may not be true, as County Commission Chairman James Harvey maintained in the course of that first Commission debate on the matter, that both blacks and whites were less inclined to do hard labor “under the sun.” It is certainly true that homebuilders relied heavily on migrant workers for their construction projects.

They still do, though the drastic decline in home construction since the Crash, leaving a large surplus of unemployed workers, is certifiably one of the exacerbating factors in the debate over illegal immigration.

When the issue came up again on Monday, Brooks and Bailey continued to press their case that the word “minority” was being applied in so literal a context by employers — and equal-opportunity compliance monitors, as well — that blacks, legally still defined as a minority but in fact a majority of the county’s population now, are being excluded from employment opportunities.

After a lot of fuss and bother on Monday, the roofing contract got let, but the two outspoken African-American commissioners have a serious issue on their hands. There may in fact be a need to fix some leaks in the protective structure of equal-opportunity mandates.

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Letters To The Editor Opinion

Letters to the Editor

Just Say No

Kudos to the Flyer for its record of opposing the United States’ disastrous 21st-century military adventures (Editorial, September 19th issue).

The evening that George W. Bush told America that we were invading Iraq, my two sons, my brother, and I were attending a Grizzlies game at the Pyramid. The term “Orwellian” is frequently and superficially applied, but that night it chillingly fit. The game was abruptly stopped, and we were treated to the image of NBA commissioner David Stern on a giant screen telling us to stay tuned for an address from President Bush. Our leader’s face then appeared, and I recall Bush, with what seemed to me a feeble attempt to ape Churchill, announcing the impending attack.

The crowd reacted with a standing ovation. My brother and I refused to stand and offered no applause. My sons, then 15 and 13, followed our example. Thousands of otherwise sober citizens were cheering on a war with an enthusiasm properly suited for a Grizzlies NBA title victory.

I am proud of the example that we set for my sons. War, for any reason, should never be cause for celebration. In this case, the decision to invade revealed an arrogance and incompetence still shaping much of U.S. foreign policy.

Steven Howard Smith

Germantown

James Harvey

I kept staring at the Flyer cover photo of James Harvey (“Meet the New Boss,” September 19th issue). He certainly dresses well, has a lot of bling, and seems to have a flexible brain, but I couldn’t tell if he was looking heavenward for guidance or just rolling his eyes. I’m leaning toward the latter.

Roger Smallwood

Memphis

Newspaper Negotiations

Alexandra Pusateri’s story on the ongoing labor negotiations between The Commercial Appeal and the Memphis Newspaper Guild union was like reading about a fight between Chuck Norris and a baby seal (“Mass Appeal,” September 19th issue). I especially love that the MNG has agreed to keep the names of any member who is laid off “confidential.” Holy crap. Really? That is just sad and embarrassing for all parties but especially for those laboring under the delusion that they are still journalists.

In their defense, I guess it’s just not “news” when you lose your job at a daily paper these days.

J.K. McPhee

Memphis

Time for Tea

Just look at what House speaker John Boehner, the Tea Party, and the rest of the tagalong Republicans have in store for America this fall. It’s a repeat of the same old movie — Let’s Shut It Down! — we’ve seen too many times before.

‘Tis the season for the loud minority of Republicans to threaten to shut down the government if they don’t get their way and get the majority in Congress to give in and defund the Affordable Care Act, or as they love to call it, Obamacare.

Boehner has fallen into a deep rabbit hole by pandering to the Tea Party hatemongers. They will do anything in their power (or not in their power, in this case) to crucify the president. They’re willing to shut down the U.S. government by refusing to raise the debt ceiling. They’d rather the world think we’ll default on our debts than give in to majority rule. They’d rather put the economy of the country in jeopardy than face the fact that they don’t have the numbers in Congress to do what they want.

The country has seen it all before, and until the Republican majority (I’m talking to you, Boehner) gets the cojones to stand up to its whack-job fringe, the whole party will continue sliding into the abyss of history.

W.B. Ford

Memphis

Literature

You’ll have to look a very long time to find anything in The Commercial Appeal like Bruce VanWyngarden’s column in the September 12th issue. It was very refreshing to read something that reminds us that literature is still available to all of us.

Steve Haley

Memphis

Correction: The Music Feature on Gonerfest contains an incorrect date. It should read Saturday, September 28th.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Meet the New Boss

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

It is often said that this or that politician is unique, one of a kind, like nobody else. In most cases, this is so much hooey. Scratch most of the so-called mavericks and you will find the same old-same old political template, embedded with a given set of issues or loyalties or a party platform.

James Harvey, the new chairman of the Shelby County Commission, believes he’s different, and he may be.

Among other things, Harvey is unique (there’s that word again) among public officials in that, time after countless time in commission debate, he has begun a speech apparently underwriting one point of view as solidly and sincerely as can be, and, several rambling minutes later, has ended up espousing the other side of the case.

It is as if he is thinking out loud and manages to change his mind by listening to his own, often apparently disjointed, stream of consciousness.

Harvey acknowledges that he seems to be doing this, but he says it’s so much smoke and mirrors. “Contrary to what the media says, I don’t waver. The media says that, because they can’t keep up with me. And they can’t keep up with me, because those are my intentions. I don’t like people to keep up with me. I like to get my point across.”

So he’s not really thinking out loud, as in fact his colleagues, not just the media, often are convinced. “It’s just my style, because I plan to drag you along. Every time an issue comes up, I know where I am. I leave room for adjustment if need be, but I generally know where I am.”

Whatever.

In any case, Harvey caused a serious kerfuffle recently by reversing course on the question of the Shelby County tax rate. Having voted with his fellow Democrats on both the budget increase and tax-rate increase desired by county mayor Mark Luttrell back in June, Harvey then did a turnabout and voted with the Republicans to reject the tax-rate increase, from $4.02 to $4.38, on the crucial third vote in July.

Here was the moment of transition, or of “adjustment,” in a longish Harvey speech as the commission prepared for the key vote:

“I’m not sure where I am with the tax rate. … I don’t want to vote for the tax rate, but I don’t want services cut or employees laid off. … If I had to vote today, I would vote not for the tax rate, to be honest with you. … I don’t think line-item services have been reduced. … We ought to be able to see some other reductions. …

“The county commission needs a budget analyst. … We can’t watch all the shenanigans of the departments. … I’m in a hell of a position, and that’s very uncomfortable for me. … I don’t know where I am, but I’m still pondering. At this point, I’m a little fuzzy.”

When Harvey was through, GOP commissioner Chris Thomas, an opponent of the Luttrell request, observed, “I should have gone to get a haircut during all of that.”

In fairness, a fairly consistent point of view can be parsed amid this foreshadowing verbiage. As Harvey elaborated in an interview this week: “My argument has always been about government waste. I think we’ve got too much money.” His original inclination was for a tax increase, but “only for the sake of the schools.” And that, as he noted, equaled to about $10 million. “It didn’t make sense to increase everybody’s costs forever just to amass $10 million. It was very regressive — all those omnibus interests that were included in that resolution, camouflaged by funding the schools!”

So he had gone along with the Luttrell request and with his fellow Democrats on the first reading only: “I tried to toe the line, but my heart was never there. And, thereafter, I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t switch back and forth.”  

The tax rate would eventually be passed on a second try at a third reading, but Harvey had meanwhile cast his lot with a hard core of suburban Republicans who wanted no part of it.

Between his aye vote on the first reading and his nay vote on third reading of the tax-rate ordinance, and not one but two or three speeches outlining his revised attitude toward the issue, there was a chairmanship election. Harvey, a true dark horse, had defeated both incumbent chairman Mike Ritz, a moderate Republican who was often at the head of a basically Democratic coalition, and Democrat Steve Mulroy.

Early in the voting, most members of the commission’s suburban hard core had given their votes to Mulroy. Aggrieved by what they regarded as Ritz’s ongoing political apostasy, they had settled on the liberal Mulroy as part of an “anybody but Ritz” strategy.

But as a deadlock between the two main contenders wore on, it finally dawned on these conservatives that Harvey was not only not Ritz but, unlike Mulroy, had come to the same conclusions as they had on the tax-rate question.

And so, on the basis of some last-minute vote-switching, Harvey won commission chair, not without suspicion among some of his Democratic colleagues that he had vote-traded his way into the chairmanship.

…

A biographical digression: Harvey has often, in debate, cast himself as a businessman, complete with the fiscally conservative views that come with that description.

And the word “businessman” seems to be a fair description of what Harvey is. As he cataloged the elements of his curriculum vitae in a conversation with the Flyer this week, the 51-year-old Harvey said he has owned a security service (“Guards Unlimited”), a mortgage company, a tax service, and various real estate investments, and he has had jobs with any number of legitimate corporations — for example, the Bank of America, which employed him to review loans and foreclosures in the wake of the bursting of the housing bubble that came near to wrecking the American economy in 2007-2008.

That particular catastrophe also caused Harvey to close down his mortgage business, and he boasts, “I had no debt; I never filed bankruptcy, never foreclosed on a property, never had a business loan in my life. I did everything with my own money.”

Nevertheless, he had a tight moment or two in the wake of the recent recession, and the BOA job was something of a makeshift solution that kept him absent from much commission business and numerous meetings, especially in 2011. Eventually, earlier this year, he landed a position as a vice president of Memphis-based Tri-State Bank, and it was that serendipity that allowed him to turn his attention back to politics and government and, ultimately, to the idea of being chairman.

As Harvey tells it, his personal story sounds like an installment of the Horatio Alger saga. He was one of nine children raised on Memphis’ south side, never knowing his father. For roughly 10 years of his growing up, he had a stepfather, and “that’s where ‘Harvey’ came from.”

For all the family’s privations, his homemaker mother made sure that Harvey and all his siblings got college degrees. His own itinerary took him through South Side High School, Southwest Community College, Memphis State University, and the course-work of the University of Phoenix, an online institution, which awarded him a B.S. in business management.

“I was the only one who went into the military, the Army. I was the only one who started a business. I was the one that always took the risk. I was the seventh child,” Harvey says.

He has a 25-year-old son named James Harvey Jr., whom he also describes as a “businessman” and with whom, in fact, he is engaged in several investments and enterprises. As commission chairman, he has dibs on a largish office in a back corner of the commission’s office suite and two pictures of himself with his son — one a cutout poster of the two that promotes a brief career as a motivational speaker.

There is a tenderness in the cutout that is in clear contrast to the admittedly regretful way he speaks of his two marriages, both of which ended in divorce. “I was hot-headed. If it wasn’t my way, I’d just pay to get rid of you,” he says bluntly.

Prior to his political career, most Memphians who got to know Harvey outside his business circles encountered him a couple of decades back when he became a featured player in the annual Gridiron shows presided over by the late Terry Keeter and Larry Williams. These were musical revues that satirized the world of local government and politics and for some time used to draw huge crowds.

Harvey’s introduction to public life came from his burlesques of local African-American eminences. Harold and John Ford, Willie Herenton, Michael Hooks, or Rickey Peete: Harvey was cast as whoever was black and was being sent up in skit.

“I couldn’t dance, but I could sing,” declared Harvey during the Flyer interview, and he demonstrated the latter prowess before a small group of onlookers, doing several impromptu lines from the Showboat classic “Ol’ Man River” in what he called a “heavy baritone,” actually a deep basso.

After the retirement of the late James Hyter from doing riverside versions of the song as the finale of the annual Sunset Symphony extravaganzas, Harvey wanted to be Hyter’s successor but couldn’t sell the idea to the Memphis in May management. He saw the issue as having to do with his lack of clout at that time. “I’m not in the clique, I won’t be in the clique. There wouldn’t have been a debt to repay,” he says.

Partly, he saw politics as a way to remedy that. He saw it as a way of “giving back.” His first race, with support from outside the usual circuits, was in a special Democratic primary election for the state Senate in 2005. He finished second, ahead of Michael Hooks and behind Kathryn Bowers.

Harvey tried again in 2006, running for the District 3, Position 1 seat on the commission and winning. He was reelected in 2010, though he speaks edgily of the support he says his primary opponent in that race, James Catchings, got from “some of my colleagues [who] were very hopeful that I would be defeated.”

As a commission member, Harvey has always been sort of an outlier, and he likes it like that. His idiosyncratic verbal adventures, his sampling out loud of contrasting positions, his standing apart from factions — all that has characterized his tenure.

…

Still, Harvey has been a Democrat and, up until recently, a member of the majority that bitter online commenters from the suburbs have taken to shorthanding as “the CC8” in the 8-to-5 votes that have pitted the county commission as a litigant against municipal-school efforts in the county’s six outlying municipalities — Germantown, Collierville, Bartlett, Lakeland, Arlington, and Millington.

All that may change now. Asked if he would continue to back the position of the the commission majority on school issues, Harvey answered, “Probably not. I want the lawsuit to go away. I want a resolution among all the suburban cities, based on agreement realized. Once we get out of the middle of that, the school issue will probably form itself the way it’ll end up anyway.”

If that sounds oblique, Harvey can cite particulars. The commission majority — the body’s seven Democrats plus former chairman Ritz — has consistently taken the position that the proposed new suburban school systems should not acquire existing school buildings, technically the property of the Unified School System’s board, for anything less than “fair market value.”

Harvey now sees it otherwise. “Honestly, I think we should give them the schools.” Provided, he adds, that the suburbs do not use their educational independence to reinstate anything like segregation.

The new chairman bristles at any suggestion that his current positions have anything to do with political quid pro quos. He was censured recently by the executive committee of the Shelby County Democratic Party for his committee assignments, notably the substitution of Republican fiscal conservative Heidi Shafer for Democrat Melvin Burgess, the Unified School System’s audit director, as budget chairman.

“I like Burgess, think he’s a sharp guy, but I think it was a conflict of interest for him to work with the budget for the schools when he’s working on the [county] budget.” He brushes off the suggestion that he has adopted the position of firebrand Terry Roland, the Millington Republican who has brought conflict-of-interest charges against both Burgess and Sidney Chism (the latter stemming from Chism’s ownership of a day-care center that received some Head Start wraparound funds).

As for his appointments at large, Harvey muses frankly, “They may say that I cut a deal with the Republicans after they elected me. I don’t care what they think. I believe in rewarding people that believe in standing on principle.”

The state Democratic Party’s executive committee recently deferred action on underwriting the local party’s censure of Harvey, basically blowing it off. That may owe something to Harvey’s making a point of contacting state party chairman Roy Herron and members of the state committee to convey his views about the matter.

But the whole party thing is now a sore point with Harvey. Term-limited on the commission, he has ambitions to run for something else — “city or county mayor or Congress.” But his thinking about the party label is now iffy. “You’ve got a small group of people that have ruined the [Democratic] party. I don’t like bullshit. I’ll run as a Democrat unless they kick me out, and [then] I’ll run as a Republican.”

Calling himself “a Democrat at heart,” Harvey nevertheless underscores the fact that he has options. As for the local Democrats’ attempt to get him censured at the state level, he says, “Woe to the party if they had succeeded. I would have been a tyrant on their asses. If I could change parties and hold my support I would change tomorrow. I like the Democratic Party. I am a Democrat. But if they get to doing some funny business, I’ve got a party to go to.”

That’s a shot across the bow. While making no secret of his political ambitions, Harvey is prepared, he says, to be fatalistic. “I’m one of those guys they can’t push around. If I was kicked out of politics today, I’d just say f–k it and keep going.”

…

But the new commission chairman has a vision. Presiding at his first commission meeting last week, he began proceedings by reading aloud a manifesto, here reproduced in its entirety:

“To the commissioners, administration, staff, constituents, family, friends, and guests:

Thank you for being a part of today’s political and business process. As the new chairman, I would request that you conduct a behavior of orderliness relative to your participation, perceptions, persuasions, and response.

A chairman is one who manages and provides leadership to the body of this board on behalf of our constituents.

I believe in leadership at any risk. I am first man, father, community activist, business leader, then political leader.

Leadership is the capacity to care, and, in caring, to liberate the ideas, energy, and capacities of others.

Leadership is the integration of heart, head, and soul.

Leadership is seeing the possibilities in a situation while others are seeing limitations.

Leaders are always dissatisfied with current realities whenever or wherever they may apply, particularly when against the constitutional freedoms of our existence.

As your new chairman, I pledge to never engage in destructive actions with anyone within this body of leadership against another member of this commission.

I will avoid biased, selfish and narrow thinking that could be camouflaged by the term “Democrat” or “Republican.”

I serve at the pleasure of the majority commissioners, but I am committed to honor all of you equally and/or according to your needs and expectations of me — parallel, however, with the limitations and constraints of the chairmanship responsibilities.

I pledge to this body the assistance and resources to solve problems by relying on collective reasoning, rather than list them with the attitude of negativity. I will leave that to the media.

Woe to those who call evil good, for you have abused power and called it politics.

As your chairman, I declare this day to plant a new garden of leadership: peas, squash, lettuce, turnips.

First plant three rows of peas: patience, promptness, and prayer.

Next plant three rows of squash: squash gossip, squash indifference, squash unconstructive criticism.

Then plant five rows of lettuce: Let us obey God, let us be loyal, let us be true to our obligations, let us be unselfish.

Finish with four rows of turnip: turn up when necessary, turn up with a smile, turn up with a vision, turn up with determination.

Commissioners:

Watch your thoughts, they become your words.

Watch your words, they become your actions.

Watch your actions, they become your habits.

Watch your habits, they become your character.

Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.

Commissioners and community, I appreciate the opportunity to serve as your chairman.

It’s going to be an interesting year in the Vasco Smith County Administration Building.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

New Directions

NASHVILLE — When U.S. senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) was announced as the keynote speaker for this year’s Jackson Day dinner in Nashville, a staple of the Tennessee Democratic Party’s annual calendar, there was initially not much enthusiasm in party ranks.

A somewhat tentative official party response by Kaine, then a Virginia governor, to one of George W. Bush‘s State of the Union addresses was well remembered, and it seemed unlikely that he could kindle much enthusiasm among cadres of a Tennessee Democratic Party that in recent years had seen Republicans gain control of the General Assembly and hold the governorship, Tennessee’s two U.S. Senate seats, and a majority of the state’s congressional delegation.

But there had clearly been good advance planning for the Jackson Day dinner, held this year in the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum, a venue whose moderate rental fee allowed the Democrats to clear an impressive $350,000 for the state party coffers.

State party chairman Roy Herron proved adept at pumping up enthusiasm from the dais, noting that the party’s current doldrums resembled those of the early ’70s when Democrats had lost most major offices but were able to launch a comeback and regain power.

Roy Herron

The message was reinforced by a parade of Democratic mayors from the state’s four largest cities — notably Memphis’ A C Wharton, who compared the party’s capacity for “backin’ up and getting’ ready” to the billy goat which, in his youth, had seemingly been ensnared in a wire fence but had given him an unexpected and powerful head butt in a sensitive part of his anatomy.

Said the mayor: “Ruby tells me I got a bunch of boys at home, but, after where that billy goat hit me, I don’t know whether that’s true or not. … [But] that’s what we’re getting ready to do. Y’all remember that old billy goat. We’ve been backing up, but we’re gettin’ ready!”

Other Democrats, including 5th District congressman Jim Cooper, honored by the state party at an earlier ceremony, delivered similar — if more prosaic — forecasts. And Kaine, in fact, did connect — with an animated address that reprised the “democratization” efforts of Presidents Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson and praised President Obama for his reaction to the use of chemical weapons in Syria and his decision to involve Congress in the run-up to possible military action there.

A standout cameo at the event was that of Sara Kyle of Memphis, the wife of state Senate Democratic leader Jim Kyle and a longtime member of the now sunsetted Tennessee Regulatory Authority. Kyle was hailed by Herron and others as a probable gubernatorial candidate in 2014 and responded to the crowd’s chant of “Run, Sara, Run” with a smile and broad waves. In a later conversation with the Flyer and other media, she would acknowledge a clear interest in running but would stop just short of declaring. • Prior to the Democrats’ big evening in Nashville, the state Democratic executive committee had met and considered a number of matters, including a resolution brought by Memphis committee member Jay Bailey seeking an official censure by the state party of new Shelby County Commission chairman James Harvey.

The premise of Bailey’s resolution was that Harvey had acted against party interests by choosing not to reappoint fellow Democrat Melvin Burgess as the commission’s budget chair, instead naming Republican Heidi Shafer, a fiscal conservative who had opposed county mayor Mark Luttrell‘s recent budget and tax-rate increases and a self-proclaimed watchdog against county spending.

On its own tack, the executive committee of the Shelby County Democratic Party had voted to censure Harvey last week and had wanted the state party to reciprocate. However, after what amounted to a pro forma discussion late in its morning deliberations, the state committee declined to act, asked for more details on the matter, and deferred action on it until its next meeting in November.

The delay and deferral are for obvious reasons likely to defuse the issue.

• Back in Shelby County, those mad (as in angry) suburbanites who have been railing about the county commission’s “8-to-5” voting ratio for the last two or three years might have to lighten up and adjust their arithmetic. On the evidence of Monday’s commission meeting, the numbers appear revised — to the point that, a year from now, people on the other, city side of various issues might be grumbling about the “same old seven and six.”

For, on the basis of the two key votes on Monday — the commission’s naming of Shante Avant to fill a vacancy on the Unified School System board and its vote of approval for new chairman Harvey’s appointment of Shafer as the body’s budget chairman — the commission may now have not only adopted some new math but reversed philosophic direction.

Two members of the long-standing coalition of seven Democrats and one Republican that has determined commission policy on school-merger issues and the budget, among other matters, have shown clear signs of defection. They are Democrats Harvey and Justin Ford.

It was the latter who cast the decisive vote Monday to defeat a motion by Democratic commissioner Walter Bailey (father of Jay Bailey) that would have rejected Shafer and retained instead Democrat Burgess as budget chair.

Harvey’s appointment of Shafer to replace Burgess had been a red flag to Bailey and other Democratic commissioners, who saw it as a quid-pro-quo concession to the suburban Republican commissioners who had swung their votes to Harvey late in last July’s three-way chairmanship contest involving Harvey; former chair Mike Ritz, a breakaway Republican; and liberal Democrat Steve Mulroy.

Contributing to the suspicions of Bailey et al. was the fact that the GOP vote switch back had been preceded by Harvey’s announcement reversing his prior support of the budget and tax-rate increases sought by Luttrell and aligning himself with objections to those increases by the suburban GOP commissioners.

Ford, himself a frequent ally of the Republicans on disputed issues, had also gone from favoring the Luttrell proposals to opposing them but, unlike Harvey, had reverted to his original support in a final commission vote that had enabled their passage.

But on Monday, Ford joined Harvey and the GOP contingent in backing Shafer and opposing Bailey’s motion to reject her budget chairmanship. Supporting Bailey were three Democrats — Burgess, Sidney Chism, and Henri Brooks — along with Republican Ritz. Mulroy abstained, but, if Ford had voted with Bailey, he, too, would likely have concurred and become the 7th vote for the Bailey motion.

Instead, the finally tally was 7 against, 5 for, and 1 abstaining — a reprise of sorts of last July’s circumstances and further indication of a possible realignment of voting sentiment on the commission.

A further omen of that sort had been the earlier election of Avant to fill the school board District 6 seat vacated by Reginald Porter, who resigned it to become the Unified System’s chief of staff.

Avant, the deputy director of the Women’s Foundation for a Greater Memphis, had always been regarded as a chief contender for the vacancy, but her victory over four other applicants who received nominations from the commission may have owed something to her relatively circumspect response to questioning by Mulroy, who tried to pin her and the other applicants down regarding three issues confronting the school board.

They were: whether “fair market value” considerations should be attached to the relinquishing of board-owned school properties to prospective new municipal school districts in the suburbs; whether an “interlocal” agreement between the commission and the board should have precedence in such matters over legislation by the General Assembly; and the degree to which memorandums-of-understanding with local teachers’ associations should be respected by the board.

Avant’s responses were sufficiently open-ended to gain her support from both Democrats and Republicans to occupy what many believe will be the swing seat on a board balanced between inner-city and suburban interests. Avant received a clear majority of 8 on the first ballot, triumphing over the other four nominees: Cherry Davis, Rosalyn Nichols, David Page, and Rhoda Stigall.