Tag: Karen Camper

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Tennessee Legislators Hold Public Hearing On DEI Initiatives

Photo Credit: Tennessee Senate Democratic Caucus


As opponents of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)  initiatives are working to erase these practices from the workplace, state political leaders are working to emphasize their importance and effectiveness.

“In recent years, state Republican officials have cheered the Supreme Court ruling overturning affirmative action, passed several ‘divisive concepts’ laws targeting speech at K-12 public schools and colleges, proposed legislation to ban DEI policies at public universities, established a process to ban books, and threatened lawsuits against companies that employ DEI tactics,” the Tennessee Senate Democratic Caucus said in a statement.

Tennessee Senate Minority Leader Raumesh Akbari (D-Memphis) and House Minority Leader Karen Camper (D-Memphis) held a field hearing in Memphis on Monday at the National Civil Rights Museum. Akbari and Camper were joined by Representatives Justin J. Pearson (D-Memphis), Jesse Chism (D-Memphis), and Senator Sara Kyle (D-Memphis). During this hearing, legislators were able to hear from community and state advocates about the importance of DEI practices in their respective work.

Akbari said Memphis was the first stop on their “Freedom to Be Heard” tour and will head towards Nashville, and possibly a location in East Tennessee.

During the hearing Akbari said there are threats to DEI policies on the local and national level, and she and other lawmakers wanted to hear community input on programs and policies currently in place.

Veda Ajamu, chief DEI programs and community engagement officer at the National Civil Rights Museum said a major component of the museum’s success and vision is their ability to facilitate “tough conservations.” Ajamu said this includes “inequities that affect society,” and they address these by way of the Corporate Equity Center and community engagement programming.

Ajamu explained that the Corporate Equity Center uses the historical significance of the museum through “strategic programming” that seeks to “transform workplace environments.” The Corporate Equity Center currently has two programs to promote equitable decision-making — the C-Suite Initiative and the Unpacking Racism For Action program.

“The ongoing importance of this work lies in the transformative potential to challenge biases, promote equity, and foster a more inclusive and just society for generations to come,” Ajamu said. “It’s not just about honoring the past, but also about shaping a better future grounded in truth, justice, and respect for diverse histories and experiences.”

Michelle Taylor, director of the Shelby County Health Department said racial disparities are also apparent in healthcare, and that these disparities are the result of systemic inequities as well. For context, she told an anecdote about how the health department had historically used unequal practices for vital record keeping for Black and white patients. 

“Elected officials understand how important vital records are,” Taylor said. “Vital records are used by local, state, and federal officials to make decisions about funding … If they [health department] were color categorizing between 1901 and 1971, we also know those funding decisions were different based on race.” 

Taylor said the amount of health issues and disparities apparent in the community are a result of an “uphill  battle” that started years ago. She added that this is also evident in geographical inequities, where Black residents are disproportionately affected by certain health epidemics such as lead poisoning, infant mortality, and life expectancy.

Others explained the importance of DEI outreach in their programs and businesses such as FedEx and the Mid-South Minority Business Council Continuum. The Tennessee Education Association (TEA) also gave insight into the education sector.

TEA executive director Terrance J. Gibson said they are currently suing the state education department and school board regarding the “Prohibited Concepts Ban,” which “prohibits the inclusion or promotion of 14 ‘prohibited concepts’ dealing with race.”

“Curriculum should not be legislated by individuals who are not in the classroom,” Gibson added. He said these “divisive concepts” cause educators to not teach with “integrity and honesty.” 

Latrell Bryant, an English as a second language instructor at Treadwell Elementary school, urged  lawmakers to fight to make Black history education accessible after sharing her personal experience in a “neighboring school district,” where the “politics and racial makeup” were “quite different from what Shelby County is.”

Bryant was able to teach African American history, however her tenure coincided with the implementation of the Divisive Concepts Law, which made it harder for her to teach her students. She decided to leave the school in a decision to not constantly have to battle people with “differing politics.”

“There are students out there in the state of Tennessee in remote areas — not just the urban areas — who want to learn about Black history voluntarily,” Bryant said. “If there is anything you [legislators] can do to make sure we are able to continue to do that please do so.”

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State and Local

Karen Camper (Photo: capitol.tn.gov)

When Karen Camper, the Democrats’ leader in the state House, ran for Memphis mayor last year, she discovered that, her impressive credentials notwithstanding, she lacked the citywide name recognition of locally based officials.

Consequently, she never developed enough traction to compete effectively for the mayoralty. And her name recognition problem was exacerbated further by the fact that members of the General Assembly are prohibited from active fundraising during the course of a legislative session.

The reality, especially in the case of the minority party statewide, is that state legislators, however much they may shine in the environs of Nashville, simply lack enough day-to-day connection with local voters to become household names on their home front.

A possible exception to that rule may arise in the case of a legislator whose public activities impinge directly on a festering local issue — as in the case of Republican state Senator Brent Taylor, whose nonstop efforts as the sponsor of bills to affect the status of local law enforcement have doubtless earned him a certain local notoriety.

Taylor’s party cohort John Gillespie, equally active on similar issues in the state House of Representatives, is on the fall ballot as a candidate for re-election and has attracted similar attention, for better or for worse.

The aforementioned Rep. Camper, meanwhile, is attempting to familiarize her constituents in House District 87 with the activities of state government by means of an innovation she calls “State to the Streets,” an event she will unveil on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. at New Direction Christian Church.

She calls it “a unique opportunity” for residents of District 87 to engage with more than 20 state and local government agencies, ask questions, voice concerns, and receive assistance on a wide range of topics, including healthcare, education, employment, and social services.

Among the services that will be spoken on by representatives of the affected state agencies are:

• Job search opportunities from the TN Department of Labor and Workforce Development

• SNAP benefits and Families First assistance from the TN Department of Human Services

• Help processing REAL IDs from The TN Department of Safety & Homeland Security

• Mental health, addiction, and substance abuse counseling from the TN Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services and the TN Sports Wagering Council

• Legal advice from the Memphis Bar Association

• Expungement and Drive While You Pay assistance from the General Sessions Court Clerk’s Office

• Help searching unclaimed property listings from the TN Department of the Treasury

• Voter registration and information from the TN Secretary of State’s office and the Shelby County Voter Registrar

“This is a great chance for me to talk with my constituents and hear their thoughts about the recently concluded legislative session and the direction of the state,” says Camper, and she may have something there.

• With the fiscal-year deadline approaching, Monday’s regular meeting of the Shelby County Commission saw action on many matters — including the county’s proposed tax rate and numerous budgetary items — deferred for further discussion at the commission’s June 12th committee sessions, but one long-standing uncertainty was finally dealt with.

This was the question of $2.7 million in funding from opioid-settlement funds that had been embedded in the sheriff’s department budget, pending the commission’s decision on where to route them — whether to a proposed program for remedial medical treatment of inmates deemed incompetent to stand trial, or elsewhere.

Elsewhere was the answer, with $5 million going to CAAP (Cocaine and Alcohol Awareness Program), and another $18 million to juvenile court, where it will pay for a variety of wraparound services for youthful wards of the court.

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Camper Blasts GOP Letter Backing Pentagon Delays On Abortion

House Minority Leader Karen Camper of Memphis, photographed on Aug. 21, 2023. (Photo: John Partipilo)

Tennessee House Minority Leader Karen Camper (D-Memphis) is criticizing state Rep. John Ragan’s (R-Oak Ridge) letter backing delays in key military appointments until the Pentagon relents on abortion policy.

Camper, who is also a Memphis mayoral candidate, issued a statement Monday saying she is “shocked by the level of vitriol and carelessness for the men and women in uniform expressed” in the letter by Ragan, an Oak Ridge Republican.

Ragan’s letter to U.S. Senators Bill Hagerty and Marsha Blackburn, both Republicans, urges them to support Senator Tommy Tuberville in blocking appointments to top military leadership posts and also asks them to “remove wokeness” from the military.

Camper, a retired intelligence officer from the U.S. Army, contends it is “outrageous” for Ragan, a retired Air Force fighter pilot, to “insert his personal beliefs” into Pentagon policies.

I am shocked by the level of vitriol and carelessness for the men and women in uniform expressed in this letter. As a woman, as a veteran, and as a member of this General Assembly for many years, I have seen harmful and dangerous political posturing, but this is beyond the pale.

– Karen Camper, Tennessee House Miniority Leader

Ragan’s letter, sent on September 11th, backs elimination of military funding for travel and expenses for military members to obtain abortions and uses the Tennessee Constitution as support, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs to let states decide abortion care. The General Assembly outlawed abortion services, making only a narrow exception this year to deal with the health of the mother in dangerous pregnancies.

Ragan argues in his letter that military members “resent” their tax dollars going toward elective abortions “in violation of their personal religious beliefs” and anecdotally calls the Pentagon’s “arrogant directive” another form of a “worthless woke-ism.”

In addition, he claims service members perceive the military policy as part of “woke” ultimatums, such as on-base “drag queen” shows and story hours, accommodations for “transexuals,” despite religious objections, saying they are among the “onerous demands that waste resources, cripple morale, and hurt readiness.”

Camper, however, points out that Tuberville, a former football coach who has no military experience, is jeopardizing the nation’s security and military preparedness by refusing to allow nearly 300 positions to be filled, including the Marine Corps commandant position.

“Our military is at an all-time low level for recruitment. Our young people are not choosing the military as a career. It has nothing to do with ‘wokeness,’” she said in her statement.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and Twitter.

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Of Shows and No-Shows

Monday night’s venue (Photo: Halloran Centre | Facebook)

By now, the much-ballyhooed first of two mayoral forums to be conducted by the Daily Memphian has come and gone. The five billed participants at Monday night’s event at the Halloran Centre were Paul Young, Michelle McKissack, J.W. Gibson, Frank Colvett, and Karen Camper.

The fact is, only one of these participants can be ranked among the leaders at this early pre-petition stage of the mayoral race. That would be Downtown Memphis Commission CEO Young, who is indisputably the most successful fundraiser among all the candidates.

Young reported $432,434.97 on hand in his second-quarter financial disclosure, just outdoing Sheriff Floyd Bonner, who reported $400,139.12. Young is also known to have significant support among the city’s business and civic social elite, who make up a large percentage of the donor class.

At this juncture, the main disadvantage facing Young vis-à-vis rival Bonner is a fairly enormous name-recognition gap favoring the sheriff, who has out-polled every other contestant for whatever position in each of the last two Shelby County elections.

Clearly, the need to narrow this gap is one reason, along with his undoubted public-spiritedness, that impels Young to take part, along with other relatively unknown candidates, in every public forum that comes along.

Keeping their distance from such events so far are Bonner and Willie Herenton, the even better-known former longtime mayor. Almost as hesitant to appear at such affairs has been local NAACP president and former County Commissioner Van Turner, who, like the other two, was absent Monday night, as he had been at a recent mayoral forum at First Congregational Church.

Turner, also, can claim a respectable degree of prior name recognition, and he brought into the mayoral race a fairly well-honed constituency among the city’s center to center-left voters.

The relevance of all this to this week’s forum, and to other such opportunities for exposure that may come along before petitions can be drawn on May 22nd, should be obvious. Those who need to enhance their share of public attention are likely to be attendees; those who feel more secure in their familiarity to the electorate may not be.

To be sure, both Bonner and Turner pleaded the fact of previously scheduled fundraising events as reasons for their absence on Monday night. A reliable rule of thumb in politics is that the existence of “prior commitments” can always be adduced to explain nonparticipation in a particular event.

Still, to win, it is necessary to be an active competitor, and Bonner, Herenton, and Turner, who — not coincidentally — topped the results in the only poll that has been made public so far, can be expected to rev things up in fairly short order. Bonner and Turner have been stalled somewhat by their ongoing litigation against a five-year residency requirement posited by the Election Commission.

That matter may be effectively resolved in Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins’ court at a scheduled May 1st hearing.

Herenton, meanwhile, has habitually stonewalled multi-candidate appearances throughout his long public career — out of apparent pride as much as anything else.

None of the foregoing is meant to suggest that other candidates, including the five involved Monday night, can’t break out of the pack. Politics is notoriously unpredictable.

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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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Young, Bonner Lead Mayoral Candidates in Cash on Hand

Photo by cottonbro studio / Pixels.

The first financial disclosures from the 2023 candidates for Memphis Mayor are now available.

As of January 15, the two leaders in the vital “Cash on Hand” category are Downtown Memphis president/CEO Paul Young, with a reported $312,699.12, followed closely by Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner, with $310,482.88:

Businessman J.W. Gibson reports the $300,000 he has loaned to himself as a campaign starter. NAACP president and former County Commissioner Van Turner reports cash on hand in the amount of $121,747.29.

State House Democratic Leader Karen Camper reports $33,862. (She has the disadvantage of not being able to raise money during the ongoing legislative session).

School Board chair Michelle McKissick has so far not filed a disclosure statement.

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Seasonal Circumstances

Brian Kelsey in happier times. (Photo: Brian Kelsey | Facebook)

To vary that old TV shibboleth about the thrill of victory vs. the agony of defeat, sometimes there are a fair number of agonies associated with victory. As one example, many a victorious politician has had to grapple with resultant financial difficulties. Often enough, the pay the winner receives for his newly acquired public responsibility is less than the income source he left behind.

This is true, for example, in the case of newly installed DA Steve Mulroy, who upon assuming office basically had to take a pay cut from his former job as the Bredesen Professor of Law at the University of Memphis. And, like numerous other electoral winners, Mulroy finds himself saddled with a sizable campaign debt. Fundraisers during the course of a campaign are fundamental to the process of election. Equally commonplace these days is the post-election fundraiser designed to help retire the aforesaid campaign debt.

One was scheduled for Mulroy on Monday night of this week at the Tennessee Brewery by helpful angels Billy Orgel and Craig Weiss. And, as is typical when the beneficiary is a new office-holder, the number of good-willed benefactors can constitute something of a Who’s Who, political-wise. The co-hosts for the Mulroy affair included 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, state Senator Raumesh Akbari, former Shelby County Mayor Bill Morris, the several Byrd brothers of longtime Democratic provenance and the Bank of Bartlett, and J.W. and Kathy Gibson.

• ’Tis the season for feasts aplenty, but for some in the political world, the menu is replete with humble pie and side dishes of crow. One such unfortunate is former state Senator Brian Kelsey, who, as was noted last week in the Flyer, had his law license suspended by the Tennessee Supreme Court as a consequence of his having pleaded guilty in November to two felony charges stemming from a campaign finance case. Further action on the law license could be forthcoming from the Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility, the state’s formal disciplinary body for such matters.

After asking for and receiving several postponements of a pending trial, Kelsey had resolved upon a plea agreement in the wake of co-defendant Josh Smith’s entering a plea of guilty. The offense involved essentially a conspiracy to illegally recycle funds from the state senator’s state-government campaign fund into a fund to fuel a federal campaign — what turned out to be an unsuccessful race for the District 8 congressional seat in 2016. Both Smith and Kelsey face sentencing on June 9th. According to the Tennessee Journal, “Kelsey would face at least 18 to 24 months in prison under calculations included in the plea agreement. His penalties are enhanced because he was the ‘organizer, leader, manager, or supervisor’ of the criminal activity.”

Kelsey could be eligible for a reduction upon a proper assumption of responsibility for his actions. But prosecutors have indicated that if Kelsey is insufficiently contrite in his allocution and other conduct before he is sentenced, they would seek to tack on an additional nine months in prison.

Interestingly enough, the American Conservative Union, which was involved in the channeling of Kelsey’s campaign funds but was not itself subject to indictment, recently rated the Tennessee legislature as the second-most conservative in the nation and Kelsey, while still in office, as the third most conservative member of the state Senate.

• Karen Camper, an announced candidate for Memphis mayor in 2023, has evidently decided not to relinquish her duties as state House Democratic leader next year, having accepted a vote of reelection to that post from her Democratic caucus members.

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Karen Camper’s Race

Karen Camper as a freshman legislator in 2008 (Photo: Jackson Baker)

Depending on how one interprets the recent announcement by Michelle McKissack as to her political intentions, there are either one or two women in the running for Memphis mayor. There are still those who regard McKissack, the school board chair and former TV anchor, as having been equivocal or hypothetical in her formal announcement. Did she say she was running or merely indicate she was thinking about it?

There was no such ambiguity about Karen Camper’s intentions. The minority leader, declaring her candidacy from a position next to her grandmother’s front porch in South Memphis, proclaimed herself “ready” and reinforced the immediacy of her candidacy with some striking words: “From the front porch, we can see the conditions of our streets. We can see whether it is littered with potholes. We can hear the engines of cars roaring out of control. We can hear street racing. We can hear gunshots.”

She declared, “Memphis needs a mayor that’s willing to meet with you on your front porch.”

In so dramatizing her effort, positioning herself as having sprung right from the grassroots of inner city Memphis, Camper was ingeniously minimizing one of the potential shortcomings of her position — that her basic governmental experience, however renowned, has taken place at something of a remove from home.

Camper’s race can usefully be compared to that of a previous mayoral aspirant, Carol Chumney, who sought the office in 2007, against then incumbent Mayor Willie Herenton and MLGW CEO Herman Morris.

Like Camper, Chumney, now a Civil Court judge, had served for many years in the Tennessee state House. She did not become her party’s leader, as has Camper, but Chumney was an influential legislator, particularly in the field of children’s services, which she turned into a major public concern, and she held several leadership positions in the Democratic hierarchy, which in those days actually controlled the House.

Chumney had credentials, but they were, like those of Camper today, amassed primarily in an environment, Capitol Hill in Nashville, that was physically distant from the constituency of greater Memphis and not nearly as familiar to its voters as the governmental arenas for those public officials who had served closer to home.

Had Chumney chanced a mayoral race on the basis of her legislative qualifications, she would likely have had far greater difficulty than she did in the 2007 race, where she was a major contender from beginning to end. Indeed, she had made a Democratic primary race for Shelby County mayor in 2002, while still a legislator, and had run respectably, but well behind, against eventual winner AC Wharton, then the county’s public defender.

In 2003, though, Chumney had said goodbye to the General Assembly and run for a seat on the Memphis City Council against fellow hopefuls George Flinn and Jim Strickland. She won that race and wasted no time in broadening her acquaintance with the city’s voters and theirs with her.

In the four years leading up to the 2007 mayor’s race, Chumney was the most visible member of the council, posing challenge after challenge not only to the more questionable actions of Mayor Willie Herenton but to the good-ol’-boy presumptions of a council where pork was ladled about by members like so many reciprocated scratchings of each other’s back.

In so doing, Chumney ruffled some feathers in city hall, but she got the attention of the voters, enough so that she finished a close second to Herenton in the three-cornered mayor’s race, leading to speculation that she might have won in a one-on-one.

Karen Camper doesn’t have the advantage that Chumney had of recent and close-up tangles with the powers-that-be, but, to judge by her unusual mode of announcement, she has good grassroots instincts. And, of all the contestants, she may be most familiar with the ongoing threats to home rule posed by today’s state government. Which may be more of an issue than it may seem.

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Mayor Floyd Bonner?

Floyd Bonner electioneering this year (Photo: Jackson Baker)

There is, it would seem, a different Name of the Week in generalized speculation about the 2023 Memphis mayor’s race. Confessedly, there have certainly been different figures to talk about in successive weeks of this column.

Previously mentioned as likely mayoral candidates next year have been: NAACP head Van Turner, who is finishing up his second and final term of the County Commission this week; Paul Young, the president/CEO of the Downtown Memphis Commission; Karen Camper, caucus leader of the state House of Representatives Democrats; and Joe Brown, the onetime Criminal Court judge and former TV celebrity judge.

Brown’s intentions, though he has certainly promoted a possible race, may be more fanciful than real. The others are, one way or another, making tangible plans to run. Turner has basically already announced, Young is reportedly lining up some serious financing for a campaign, and Camper is expected to make an announcement any week now.

Other names that are getting some mention are those of the Rev. Keith Norman of First Baptist Church-Broad, a chief lobbyist for Baptist Memorial Hospital and a former Democratic Party chair; Beverly Robertson, president/CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber; Patrice Robinson, City Council member and former Council chair; and Worth Morgan, City Council member and defeated Republican candidate for county mayor this year.

This week’s most mentioned mayoral prospect? Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner, who in two successive county elections has led all other candidates for office and has a decent-sized campaign account left over to start a mayoral campaign with.

Bonner’s popularity with the voters as a Democratic candidate has been such that Shelby County Republicans did not even bother to nominate an opponent for him this year and themselves endorsed him.

His interest in running for the nonpartisan office of mayor is a very real thing, and he has definitely had preliminary discussions about mounting a campaign next year. Bonner’s status on the eve of the Memphis city election has been likened by more than one observer to that of AC Wharton in the first decade of this century, when Wharton was considered an inevitable candidate for, successively, Shelby County mayor and Memphis mayor, both of which offices he would win.

Jason Martin (Photo: Jackson Baker)

• Jason Martin, the Nashville critical-care physician who emerged as the winner of the Democrats’ three-way gubernatorial primary, was the speaker at last week’s Germantown Democratic Club meeting.

Addressing an audience of 70-odd attendees at the Coletta’s restaurant in East Shelby County, Martin deplored GOP Governor Bill Lee’s policies on several counts, including Lee’s restrictive posture toward abortion rights, his refusal to countenance Medicaid expansion and the annual federal outlays of $1 billion that would come with it, his striking away of gun regulations, and his moves toward privatizing public education.

Said Martin: “The other side is so radical on these issues that most people are like, ‘That’s not me.’ And that’s why we’re getting traction.”

• As first reported last week on memphisflyer.com, outgoing District Attorney General Amy Weirich will be taking a position as assistant DA with the office of Mark Davidson, district attorney for the adjoining 25th Judicial District, which serves the counties of Tipton, Fayette, Lauderdale, McNairy, and Hardeman.

A press release from Davidson’s office on Monday confirmed that Weirich will be sworn in as special counsel to his office on September 1st, a day after the swearing-in of Steve Mulroy, who defeated Weirich in the August 4th county election, to replace her as Shelby DA.

• The ever-worsening situation of Shelby County Clerk Wanda Halbert, under fire for mishandling license-plate distribution and her office affairs in general, almost got even bleaker Monday when the Shelby County Commission, in its final meeting as currently composed, failed by one vote to appoint a special counsel to begin ouster proceedings.

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More to Come

Back in 2009, Joe Brown (right), then the star of a syndicated TV show and now a self-declared mayoral candidate, hobnobbed on a visit home with newly installed Memphis Mayor A C Wharton, state Representative G.A. Hardaway, and the late state Senator Reginald Tate. (Photo: Jackson Baker)

With outgoing County Commissioner Van Turner’s announcement last week of a pending run for Memphis mayor in 2023, another political season is on its way.

Actually, Turner did not announce as such; he told the Flyer, and subsequently the world, that he would be making his formal announcement at month’s end, about the time he leaves his present office.

If advance gossip can be trusted, Turner, whom many observers reckon as the favorite, can expect to be joined in the contest by Downtown Memphis Commission President Paul Young, who has a key speech to the Kiwanis Club scheduled this week, and Karen Camper, minority leader in the state House of Representatives.

Meanwhile, local NAACP head Turner is actually the second declared candidate for the office, which is likely to be the object of spirited competition now that the voters have taken incumbent Mayor Jim Strickland out of the running by voting in the August 4th election not to allow a third term for mayor and council members.

The first declared candidate? None other than Joe Brown — not the General Sessions Court clerk and former councilman but the other Joe Brown, who played a judge on TV for some years after being one for real in Shelby County back in the ’90s. You might have missed it, but Brown’s announcement was made via YouTube last fall, and if he follows through, it will be his second major non-judicial run for office in these parts.

Brown’s last electoral effort, a race for district attorney in 2014, began with abundant ballyhoo and a sense among some local Democrats that his celebrity and presumed healthy bank account would allow the party to achieve a generalized success at the polls. Instead he belly-flopped, badly. Coincidentally or not, so did the party.

Among other things, the bankroll — for whatever reason — didn’t exist, nor did Brown’s actions and public positions during the campaign exactly square with many people’s ideas of political leadership.

As part of his rollout, Brown had been the keynote speaker at an official Democratic Party tribute to former Mayor Willie Herenton. He used the occasion to denounce “promiscuous” women and make homophobic remarks.

One of his next acts was to get himself arrested on a contempt of court charge for insulting a Juvenile Court magistrate in the process of a pro bono child support case Brown was handling. (Brown thereupon posted a Facebook entry in which he likened his ordeal to that of Dr. Martin Luther King’s historic confinement in the Birmingham jail.)

All this was just a lead-in to Brown’s culminating campaign act, a speech in which — sans any evidence or pretense of same, or any relevance to anything, for that matter — he accused his opponent, incumbent DA Amy Weirich, of having a lesbian affair with her next-door neighbor. Weirich won with 65 percent of the vote.

• Weirich’s luck ran out this year in another reelection campaign, this time against an opponent, Steve Mulroy, not pre-ordained to fantasize or self-destruct.

The two of them took turns last week in the well of the Shelby County auditorium, arguing this time for the same goal — the creation of a new bail hearing courtroom. A resolution to that end, requiring that bail issues for new county prisoners be hashed out in a hearing before a judge and with representation from both arrestee and victim of an alleged crime, was passed unanimously by the 13 members of the commission. As Mulroy noted, this was the one thing the two erstwhile adversaries had been able to agree on during this campaign year.