Some weeks ago in a year-end article in the Flyer we speculated on the unlikelihood of there being a white Republican candidate for Memphis mayor. At the time a few names in that category had been floated — those of former Sheriff and County Mayor Mark Luttrell and City Councilman Frank Colvett prominent among them.
As of this writing, there is little reason to believe that either one of those personages will become a candidate, but a new name has surfaced — that of John Bobango, who served a term on the Memphis City Council and is well-known as a lawyer of some eminence and as a donor and broker of numerous successful political campaigns on the part of others.
Bobango is known to have been making numerous phone calls of late, notifying friends and potential supporters of his potential availability to make a mayoral race. And, given his own past and current immersion in the political sphere, he has to be taken seriously as a possible entrant.
Should he become a candidate, Bobango’s name would not be as fresh with Memphis voters as either of the aforementioned names. His term of active political service ended in 2001; whereas, Luttrell’s term as county mayor was as recent as 2018, and Colvett is still serving on the council, having served a term as its chair.
What Bobango has in spades is financial resourcefulness, stemming from his own hugely successful career as a lawyer and investor, and from his presumed high potential to raise additional money from his extensive network of associates.
What he lacks, like all other potential white candidates, is membership in the city’s demographic majority. In theory, American politics is color-blind. In actuality, it is not, given the clear tendency of voters, in Memphis as elsewhere, to vote within the confines of their own ethnic connections.
The chances of any white mayoral candidate would be problematic. A white Republican like Bobango would face another disadvantage, that of belonging to a political party that clearly has minority status locally.
It is obviously meaningful that, in last year’s Shelby County election, Democrats prevailed so totally that not a single Republican was able to win a countywide race. And the Democratic base of Memphis is proportionally even larger — a fact that is relevant even in what will be a technically nonpartisan city election.
To be sure, a white candidate in this year’s mayoral race would be running against several African-American candidates and in theory would benefit from a voter-base split among them. The current incumbent mayor, Jim Strickland, undoubtedly benefited from such a split in his initial 2015 victory, and, to go with his identity as a Democrat, he had the kind of support from the city’s Republican voters that Bobango would hope to have.
But Strickland, at the time, was an active office-holder on the city council, and his mayoral ambitions had been known for years. Bobango’s active service in office was a generation ago.
But he was a factor in the city’s politics then, and, should he run, it would be instructive to see what he can make of the long-odds challenge that would confront him.
• Meanwhile, stop the presses! Another Republican, this one an African American, is apparently ready to join a mayoral field that is already rife with entries. This would be former County Commissioner James Harvey, who changed party affiliations some years back and has long meditated on a mayoral race, whether of the county or the city kind.
Harvey has sent out a notice under the letterhead “James Harvey – Mayor 2023” announcing a “Call to Action Campaign Meeting” scheduled for Friday evening of this week at the Southwind country club.
JB