Tag: Karl Dean

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Politics Politics Feature

Post-Mortem, Pre-Birth

CREDIT: Laura Jean Hocking

A week and more since the election, the dust has settled, as they say, and the earth on which it rests looks, superficially, amazingly the same as it was before.

The landscape of Tennessee is still red-tinted, as it has been since the statewide elections of 2010 and 2014 and the post-census reapportionment of legislative seats, in-between. The state’s two Senate seats belong to the Republicans, as does the governorship, and a GOP supermajority will still be reigning in Nashville when the General Assembly reconvenes.  

But there are clear and obvious signs of change.

Politically speaking, there are two Nashvilles. The capital city’s name, used as a synecdoche for state government, or, alternatively, for the oft retrograde doings of the legislature, connotes all kinds of red-hued things. The actual city of Nashville, based on the voting habits of its electorate and the official acts of its public figures, is the most consistently blue spot in Tennessee; indeed, it is probably the last refuge on Planet Earth of the once-upon-a-time Solid Democratic South.

Laura Jean Hocking

Scene from Weekend Rally at Civic Center Plaza

Nashville is where not just blacks, who amount to 27 percent of the population, but politically ambitious whites find it worth their while to run as Democrats. Nashville’s legislators are still predominantly Democratic; the Congressman representing the city, Jim Cooper, is a Democrat, and so are its mayors; former Mayors Karl Dean, this year’s Democratic nominee for Governor and Phil Bredesen, the two-term Governor who carried the party’s banner in the 2018 U.S. Senate race being cases in point.

The cautious Micawber-like conservatism of Bredesen was on full display in the Senate race, as it had been during his gubernatorial tenure, and it was a source of continuing annoyance to a good many Democratic activists, who bridled at their nominee’s implicit and sometimes overt affinities for Trumpism, as when Bredesen, post-Senate hearings, embraced the Supreme Court candidacy of Brett Kavanaugh, or when, in a TV commercial, he seemed to relish the idea of working in tandem with the president (“a skilled negotiator”) to get pharmaceutical prices down.  

While these overtures might have seemed ill-considered cave-ins to many of Bredesen’s Democratic supporters, they might very well have represented the candidate’s actual views. Bredesen is, after all, the governor who drastically pruned the rolls of TennCare and, in his first year in office in 2003, imposed across-the-board budget cuts of 9 percent in state spending. (By comparison, his victorious ultra-right-wing Republican opponent in 2018, Marsha Blackburn, had only demanded an 8 percent omnibus cut back then, as a state senator.)

The root fact may be that Bredesen, an import from the Northeast who made a fortune in Nashville as a health-care entrepreneur, is, politically, the exception who proves the rule about Nashville — someone who, upon entering politics, branded himself a Democrat because that was the “right” label for someone running for office in Nashville.

Whatever the case, Bredesen got 71 percent of the votes this year in Nashville as compared to 66 percent in Memphis. The rest of the state went for Blackburn by a 70 to 30 ratio, percentage-wise.

It is difficult to imagine James Mackler, the youngish Nashville lawyer and Iraq War vet who was talked into bowing out of the race to accommodate Bredesen’s race, doing much worse, statewide. And the progressive ideas Mackler unfolded during his brief candidacy might well have proved as rousing as Beto O’Rourke’s similar approach did in Texas, making the Lone Star congressman’s race there a close-run thing and elevating him into national prominence. We’ll never know. It was assumed, probably correctly, that only Bredesen could raise the requisite amount of cash for a competitive statewide race in Tennessee.

Similar reasoning underlay the nice-try but no-cigar race by Karl Dean against the GOP’s new-look gubernatorial winner, Bill Lee.

The state Democratic Party, incidentally, did what it could financially to augment several of the legislative races in play on last week’s ballot, including races mounted in Shelby County’s most suburban corners against long-term Republicans thought to have an unbreakable hold on power.

There was Gabby Salinas, the Bolivian-born cancer survivor and research scientist who, running as a Democrat, pleaded the cause of Medicaid expansion against its chief antagonist, the supposedly entrenched Republican state senator and state Senate Judiciary Chairman Brian Kelsey, in District 31, a sprawling land mass extending from Midtown and East Memphis into the suburban hinterland of Bartlett, Germantown, and Collierville. Gabby, as she was everywhere known, came within 2 percent of ousting Kelsey, who squeaked out a win of 40,313 to 38,793.

Democrat Danielle Schonbaum made things look relatively close in her contest with the veteran Mark White in House District 83, another East Memphis-Germantown-Collierville amalgam where she polled 11,336 votes to White’s 15,129. Even closer was fellow Democratic newcomer Allan Creasy, who won 10,073 votes against incumbent Jim Coley‘s 12,298 in District 97, a somewhat gerrymandered slice of Bartlett and Eads.

And, of course, there was District 96 (Cordova, Germantown), where Democrat Dwayne Thompson, who managed to upset Republican incumbent Steve McManus in the Trump year of 2016, expanded his margin of victory from 14,710 to 10,493 over Republican warhorse Scott McCormick in a reelection bid.

If those outcomes on the suburban rim look familiar, they are the contemporary Democratic equivalents of the kinds of gains Republicans made in the period of the GOP’s ascendancy, beginning in the late 1960s. Just as the GOP did in its rise to power, the refurbished Democratic Party, led by Corey Strong, made a point of challenging every available position, an effort that Republicans could not or would not match.

Unmistakably, Shelby County’s Democratic totals were swelled enormously by the African-American voters who are the essence of the party’s base here. But this year the effort made by white Democrats, focused in the Germantown Democratic Party, whose president Dave Cambron doubled as the party’s chief recruiter of candidates, and by millennial-dominated groups like Indivisible and Future 90 and new leaders, like Emily Fulmer, was intensified to a point of fever pitch.

Fulmer and others were galvanized into action again on Saturday, in a rally on Civic Center Plaza of hundreds who braved cold weather to protest the prospect of a post-election move against the Robert Mueller investigation by President Trump.

Unmistakably, Democratic sentiment in Memphis and Shelby County is again on the rise, after a decade or two of slumber.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Election 2018: Winners, Losers, and Close Calls

CREDIT: JB

JB

The thrill of victory was experienced by (l to r) Aaron Fowles, Steve Mulroy, and Racquel Collins, opponents of the losing referendum to repeal Instranr Runoff Voting.

Note: For reasons that remain obscure, the following text, published in the early morning of November 7, vanished from online, to be replaced by an earlier election-highlights brief that was posted on election night itself. I am happy to see the longer piece, like Lazarus, freed from untimely interment and restored. — jb

When the final report was done, the last round poured, the surviving hors-d’oeuvres wilted, the election results locally mirrored those nationally. There were lots of near misses, college tries, and moral victories — mainly among Democrats who had aspired to overturn the verdict of 2016 (or, in many ways, of the last few decades).

But the inherent limitations of the near miss, the college try, and the moral victory would rapidly become obvious as the reality of defeat and the resilience of the status quo sunk in.

The purest and most unsullied triumph locally was enjoyed by the band of activists in Save IRV Memphis and their sympathizers, who resisted a concentrated effort by the Memphis City Council on behalf of three ballot referenda that, the activists contended, were designed to protect the incumbency of Council members.

To start there, the count was 62,316 for and 104,431 against in the case of Ordinance No. 5669, which would have repealed the prior 2008 referendum authorizing IRV (a method of vote -counting that successively redistributes runner-up votes in a given race until a majority winner emerges). The vote was 67,220 for and 101,607 against for Ordinance No. 5676, which (via language that was ambivalent, to say the least) would have lengthened term limits for mayor and Council members from two to three four-year terms. And Ordinance No. 5677, which would have abolished runoff elections altogether, lost out by a vote of 77,223 for and 91,184 against.
The Democratic candidates, all first-time candidates, who attempted to oust Republican state legislators in the suburbs, made a good run of it, but fell short. In the most avidly watched race, Gabby Salinas, the three-time cancer survivor and budding scientist lost to incumbent District 31 state Senator Brian Kelsey by the relatively narrow margin of 40,313 for Kelsey to 38,793 for Salinas.

Republican incumbent Mark White turned back Democrat Danielle Schonbaum in the District 83 House of Representatives race, 15,129 to 11,376. And incumbent GOP state Representative Jim Coley defeated Democrat Allan Creasy by a vote of 12,298 to 10,073 in District 97.

More decisive victories were won by Republican incumbent Kevin Vaughan over Democear Sanjeev Memula in House District 95 and by the GOP’s Tom Leatherwood (a ballot replacement for the late Ron Lollar) over Democrat Dave Cambron in District 99.

Democratic state Rep. Dwayne Thompson, an upset winner in 2016 in House District 96, retained his seat by a vote of 14,710 over 10,493 for Republican challenger Scorr McCormick.

In the races for Governor and the U.S. Senate, local totals were:

For Governor: Democrat Karl Dean, 173,699; Republican Bill Lee, 105,369
For U.S. Senator: Democrat Phil Bredesen, 188,923; Republican Marsha Blackburn, 95,351.

Those local totals were almost diametrically opposite the statewide ones, which showed resounding victories for Lee over Dean, 1,291,458 (59.3 percent) to 846,186 (38.8 percent); and for Blackburn over Bredesen, 1,224,042 (54.7 percent) to 981,667 (43.9 percent).

Though arguments on the point can and will rage indecisively, the statewide results possibly reflected the natural dispositions of red-state Tennessee in cases where the Democratic challenge is muted by politesse. Dean and Lee reciprocated their gentlemanly approaches to each other, while Bredesen’s acknowledgement of partisan differences was minimal to the point of non-existence.

Bredesen surely qualifies for the 2018 “Oh, Yeah?” award for his mid-race statement to Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: “I’m in the fortunate position that people on the left are enraged enough that they will find almost anything I do, with the D after my name, acceptable.”
Count that as arrogance or as self-deception. It was demonstrably incorrect.

Bredesen’s public embrace of President Trump’s Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh and his suggestion in a late ad that he and Trump (“a skilled negotiator”) could blissfully work together to lower drug prices were downers to his base, whereas Democrat Beto O’Rourke’s throwdown of the gauntlet to Republican incumbent Ted Cruz in the Texas Senate race almost brought him a victory. Texas is clearly no more liberal a place than Tennessee.

The local difference in the gubernatorial and Senate races manifestly arose from the demographics of Shelby County, where Democratic turnout was at levels approximating those of presidential years. The stout showing of the Democratic challengers in legislative races was also buoyed by the turnout, a continuation of sorts of the blue wave that crested so strong in the august election.

The turnout factor was also prominent in the blowout win of 9th District Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen over GOP perennial Charlotte Bergmann, 143,690 to 34,710, though it was not too much help to Democratic challenger Erika Stotts Pearson in the wider West Tennessee expanse of the 8th Congressional District, where Republican incumbent David Kustoff triumphed, 66,889 to 32,578.

More to Come:

There were races in most of Shelby County’s suburban municipalities, too — the most dramatic being those in Germantown and Lakeland, where the issues of city spending and economic development loomed large.

In Germantown, Mayor Mike Palazzolo apparently won reelection by the razor-thin margin of 10,240 to 10,113 for challenger John Barzizza, who declined to concede, pending a final certification of results. The main issue in the mayoral contest was Palazzolo’s backing of Thornwood, a mixed-use development on Germantown Parkway.

Meanwhile, Palazzo’s coattails proved unavailing for two candidates he endorsed for city positions: Scott Sanders, a Barzizza endorsee, defeated Brian White in an alderman’s race, while Robyn Rey Rudisill lost a School Board race to angela Rickman Griff. Two other mayoral endorsees, Alderman Mary Anne Gibson and School Board member Betsy Landers triumphed over Jeff Brown and Brian Curry, respectively.

In Lakeland, where the primary issue was Mayor Wyatt Bunker’s development plans, including those for a new high school, Bunker was upset by challenger Mike Cunningham, 2,648 to 2,324.
Apparent winners for the city Commission were Richard Gonzales and Michelle Dial, while School Board winners were Kevin Floyd, Laura Harrison, and Deborah Thomas.

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Cover Feature News

Last Call! Voters’ Final Chance to Set a New Course

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Glitches as Usual

To the victor belong the spoils, goes the saying, and in electoral terms in Tennessee, that means that, in contested partisan races, the name of the “governing party’s” candidate goes first on the ballot. Inasmuch as the governing state party these days is indisputably the Republicans, that means that the first name listed on the gubernatorial portion of the November 6th ballot is GOP nominee Bill Lee.

The second name on the ballot is supposed to be the candidate of the minority party. In the case of the gubernatorial race, that would be Democrat Karl Dean — followed by a list of independent candidates.

That being the case, there were probably very few people going to one of Shelby County’s 27 early voting locations who expected to find Dean’s name bumped to the second page of the ballot, at the other end of a lengthy sandwich made up of the names of 26 independent candidates. But that was exactly the case for those voters who chose to “enlarge type” on the voting machines.

While state law may have ordained that Lee, as the representative of the majority party, should be listed first, there was apparently no reason for jamming the names of independent candidates between his name and Dean’s other than the whim of state Election Coordinator Mark Goins, the Republican appointee who is the ultimate authority on how ballots should be arranged for Tennessee elections.

Election officials claimed that the unusual placement of Dean’s name via “enlarge type” magnification was due to built-in insufficiencies of the machinery in use — an explanation that is of little consequence to local activists who have campaigned for years for the elimination of the election machines used in local elections and their replacement by newer machines equipped with the capacity to make simultaneous paper records to facilitate accuracy in vote-checking.

Jackson Baker

Election officials facing off with the media.

Whether by caprice or conspiracy or simple coincidence, the election ending on the official election day of November 6th will have been marked by several other instances of presumably avoidable confusion. 

Examples abound: Three referenda of some importance to the future of Memphis (whose registered voters are the only ones entitled to vote on them) are worded like something translated loosely from oral sources in Uzbekistan. And in this case, suspicion is strong that the confusion is intentional.

One is a referendum on City Ordinance #5676, which would prohibit someone from election as mayor or council member “if any such person has served at any time more than three (3) consecutive four-year terms, except that service by persons elected or appointed to fill an unexpired four-year term shall not be counted as full four-year term.” All clear?

The language would seem to be imposing a three-terms limit requirement. And it does, except that it conveniently omits that a two-term-limits requirement has already been passed by voters.

To be clear to voters, the ordinance should have specified that what it does is extend the current limitation by another four-year term. Hmmm. Anyone care to guess why the incumbent council members voted unanimously in favor of such misleading language?

Moreover, another problem with the referendum as worded in the ballot was pointed out by the most lengthily-tenured of all Memphis chief executives, Willie Herenton, who served from 1991 until his retirement in 2009 and was elected five times. 

At a press conference last week, Herenton and his attorney Robert Spence pointed out that the referendum language, as approved by the council, applied to electoral service  “at any time after December 31, 2011” — an exemption that would allow Herenton to pursue an announced mayoral race in 2019, whereas the language on the ballot seemingly would not.

In response, Council Chair Berlin Boyd summoned up all his formidable dudgeon to pronounce allegations by Herenton of fraud and conspiracy to be “fictitious” and dismissed the ballot language as due to a “drafting error” by council attorney Allan Wade. While he and Wade spoke vaguely of there being a possible “remedy” in Herenton’s case, the ballot will continue to read as it reads.

Another referendum, to establish City Ordinance #5669, repeals an amendment approved by the voters in a 2008 referendum that allowed “instant runoff voting,” a process involving the redistribution of runner-up ballots so as to declare majority winners without runoff elections, and would “restore the election procedure existing prior to the 2008 Amendment for all City offices,” while “expressly retaining the 1991 federal ruling for persons elected to the Memphis City Council single districts.”

IRV, also known as “Ranked Choice Voting,” is slated to be employed for the first time, unless repealed, in the 2019 city election. Though county Election Administrator Linda Phillips has pronounced the method eminently viable, incumbent council members and council attorney Allan Wade have possibly gone beyond their official wherewithal to oppose it.

During the 2018 legislative session, Wade dispatched city lobbyists to Nashville to lobby for a bill that would ban IRV statewide. More recently, Boyd used his chairman’s recap email to publicly argue for passage of the anti-IRV referendum and the other two.

The 2008 referendum enabling IRV, also known as “Ranked Choice Voting,” is scheduled, unless repealed, to be employed for the 2019 city election. In 2008, the ordinance bore a required “fiscal note” estimating savings for the city of $250,000, to be gained from making costly runoff elections unnecessary.

Presumably, Ordinance #5669 should also carry a fiscal note, in this case specifying a cost to the city for restoring runoffs of at least $250,000, amended for inflation. But no sum is specified, the city finance director having claimed an inability to estimate one. 

Should Ordinance #5669 pass, its clause calling for the restoration of runoff elections would clash directly with the language of the third referendum on the ballot, for Ordinance #5677, which would eliminate runoff elections altogether. Passage of both referenda would occasion legal confusion.

Some measure of confusion also could result from the fact that the ballot language asks citizens to cast their votes “for” or “against” the three referenda, whereas the language originally approved by the council and incorporated in the Election Commission’s official sample ballot seeks “yes” or “no” votes. This change, like the order of listing of candidates’ names, was apparently mandated by state Election Coordinator Goins.

All of the above by itself is sufficient to rattle the equilibrium of voters. But there’s more. Even before voting got under way, the Election Commission had to call a press conference to announce that not all of the voters’ registration applications that were completed by the official deadline had been processed and that some voters, once validated by registration records, would have to have their information channeled into the voting machines when they arrived to vote. 

Some early voters reported that they were given paper ballots instead, but election officials stoutly denied that — except in the case of isolated voters arriving at the polls without verifiable credentials. These voters were given “provisional ballots” to be checked against records at the end of the vote-counting process. These ballots are paper, but identifiable by a specific color code.

On top of a mounting propaganda campaign against early voting and what many see as the vote-discouraging effects of a state photo-ID law that requires working-class voters and impoverished citizens to furnish these badges of middle-class identity at the polls, this pattern of miscues suggests that the democratic process has become something of an obstacle course.

(left to right) Phil Bredesen, Democrat; Marsha Blackburn, Republican; Karl Dean, Democrat; Bill Lee, Republican

On the Cusp of Decision

As noted above, the seeds of mystery, doubt, and confusion have been sown a-plenty in the runup to the November election, the last of several electoral showdowns this year. Not to mention enough boilerplate and talking points and attack ads to exhaust the patience and menace the stability of the voting public.

Yet there is still a sense that this concluding election of 2018 could mark a real difference, perhaps even a decisive shift, in the direction not only of local events but in the developing destinies of the state of Tennessee and of the nation at large. This is evident both in the tenor of the two major statewide races on the ballot — for governor and for U.S. senator — but also in the incidentals of local races and of the three key referenda confronting Memphis voters.

In comparison to the issues on the Memphis ballot, the contests for governor and U.S. senator would seem to be relatively simple matters. The race for governor, between Franklin businessman Bill Lee, the Republican, and former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, the Democrat, has actually hewed fairly closely to the democratic concepts the forefathers may have had in mind. In their public statements, including those made in the course of two debates televised statewide, Lee and Dean have behaved with commendable courtesy and apparent respect toward each other, outlining their views without rancor or mystification.

Jackson Baker

Bill Lee (above) and Karl Dean (below) behave with “commendable courtesy.”

Karl Dean

Lee emphasizes his faith and allows for faith-based approaches, while, in keeping with his professed conservatism, espousing a preference for marketplace solutions. Dean, who stresses his track record as a mayor, has a greater affinity for governmental activism. The chief disagreement between the two is over the efficacy of Medicaid expansion, which Dean strongly favors, arguing that the state has been forfeiting $1 billion and a half annually in federal funds under the Affordable Care Act, money that could keep Tennessee’s struggling rural hospitals afloat. Lee counters that participation in the ACA bounty would amount to pouring such funding into a “fundamentally flawed system.”

It is generally acknowledged that Lee, a political newcomer, won his nomination by keeping free of the animosities and name-calling that early GOP gubernatorial frontrunners Diane Black and Randy Boyd hurled at each other. In like manner, Dean and his primary opponent, Democratic House Leader Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley, kept the peace with each other for the most part.

But the general election showdown for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the GOP’s Bob Corker has been a slugfest in which former Governor Phil Bredesen, the Democrat, and 7th District Congressman Marsha Blackburn, the Republican, have thrown nonstop haymakers at each other, and in this case there is no sweet-natured Marlboro Man for grossed-out voters to turn to as an alternative. One of them — either Bredesen or Blackburn — will win in what started out as a neck-and-neck race but has shifted ever so gradually, if the polls can be trusted, in Blackburn’s direction.

Jackson Baker

Marsh Blackburn

Jackson Baker

Congressman Marsha Blackburn (above); former Governor Phil Bredesen (below)

Bredesen started out well enough, running on the common-sense notion that he should represent the people of his entire constituency, working across the aisle in Congress as, demonstrably, he did as governor. It may well be that he is a Democrat because in Nashville, perhaps the last remaining outpost of the onetime solid Democratic South, conditions still favor white Democrats running for office.

A case in point that illustrates the real Bredesen: In 2001, the year before Bredesen’s election as governor, then state Senator Marsha Blackburn advocated a Draconian eight percent spending cut across the entire state budget; Bredesen came to power, instituted a nine percent cut and began to radically downsize TennCare, the state health-care program that his well-intentioned Republican predecessor Don Sundquist had tried valiantly to maintain. Even the arch-conservative Blackburn praised him at the time.

So much for the GOP’s current campaign fiction that Bredesen, a former Nashville mayor who came into politics after making a fortune as a health-care entrepreneur, would be the tool of radical tax-and-spend Democratic taskmasters in Congress. His rhetorical throwing of Democratic Senate Leader Chuck Schumer under the bus or his pubic praise of Trump Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh may have looked like craven cave-ins to Blackburn at the time, but those actions probably were true representations of Bredesen’s mind. 

Such criticism as Bredesen makes of the Trump administration, and it is minimal, is directed mainly at presidential gambles that might ultimately jeopardize the business climate, like Trump’s tariff wars.

Even so, the Bredesen-Blackburn race is one of crucial importance to the political balance of power, nationally. If Bredesen’s political stance is only modestly Democratic, Blackburn’s Republicanism is Trumpian brinkmanship to the max. Largely indifferent to social safety-net measures, she is a zealous advocate of the corporate tax-cut measures favored by congressional Republicans, wants to see Trump’s Great Wall built on the nation’s southern border, and is so much a champion of the profit motive that she, perhaps unwittingly, became the sponsor of a laissez-faire initiative that 60 Minutes highlighted as having opened the door to unregulated proliferation of opioid medications.

As a synecdoche, the Bredesen-Blackburn Senate race could well be the decisive one in determining whether the Democratic blue wave that flowed so vigorously for most of the year remains strong enough to accomplish the party’s return to power in Congress and its regeneration as a national force. It is no exaggeration to say that the eyes of the nation are upon us. (Local political races are dealt with in “Politics.”)

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News News Blog

Election Machines Can Bump Dean’s Name to Second Page of Ballot

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

JB

Dean at Railgarten

When voters opt to “enlarge type” button on polling machines in Shelby County, gubernatorial candidate Karl Dean’s name gets pushed from the top of the first page of gubernatorial candidates to the second page of candidates, after the many independents also running for the seat. 

Shelby County Election Commission officials said the official order of the listing of candidates’ names comes from the state. Tennessee election law says nominees on ballots here “shall be listed in the following order: majority party, minority party, and recognized minor party, if any.”

That Dean’s name is kicked to a second page, after independents, (when “enlarge type” is pressed) is simply a characteristic of Shelby County voting machines, election officials here said.

They decided to format the ballot that way, they said, because they thought it’d be better to have Dean’s name appear at the top of a page than at the bottom.
[pullquote-1] Dean’s campaign did not immediately respond to questions about the situation, and has not, so far, said anything public about it.

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen did take the matter to social media, saying “this should not have happened.”

Election Machines Can Bump Dean’s Name to Second Page of Ballot

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Politics Politics Feature

Nonpartisan Event Stirs Partisans

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

In politics, as in everything else (maybe more so in politics!), no good deed goes unpunished. When state Representative Mark White (R-Memphis) and Senator John Stephens (R-Huntington), co-chairs of the Tennessee legislature’s West Tennessee Economic Development Caucus (WTEDC), decided to schedule four nonpartisan events in the weeks prior to the November 6th election, they seem not to have anticipated negative feedback.

But they got some. Big-time.

When White aide Paul Marsh, on behalf of the two co-chairs, recently sent out a letter to a network of civic and governmental leaders announcing a series of four regional meetings of the WTEDC with the candidates for governor and U.S. senator, he conscientiously specified that all four — gubernatorial candidates Karl Dean (Democrat) and Bill Lee (Republican) would take part, sequentially. Ditto with the two candidates for Senate — Phil Bredesen (Democrat) and Marsha Blackburn (Republican).

Jackson Baker

GOP’s White and Democrat Craig Fitzhugh at WTEDC event

As planned, the schedule called for Dean on Monday of this week in Jackson; Bredesen on October 18th, also in Jackson; Lee on October 22nd in Martin; and Blackburn, back in Jackson on October 23rd. Monday’s meeting with Dean, the former mayor of Nashville, took place as scheduled at the offices of the Southwest Tennessee Economic District, which will be the site for the other Jackson meetings as well.

Members of both political parties and presumably some independents as well were on hand Monday, as, with White presiding, Dean and others discussed the status of the West Tennessee Megasite in Haywood County and other ongoing or potential development projects in the region. The group conversation was collegial, focused, and nonpartisan, a veritable object lesson in civic responsibiliity.

It remains to be seen, however, if that kind of comity holds up for the next go-round — the meeting with Bredesen. Upon receipt of Marsh’s original letter, at least two recipients — both Republicans — responded with curt and identical refusals: “No, thank you” regarding the Bredesen meeting. And it became clear that both decliners, Bartlett Mayor Keith McDonald and state Representative Jim Coley, represented the tip of an iceberg. Several other Republicans found ways of conveying their displeasure, apparently seeing the planned occasion as some sort of partisan disloyalty.

Undiscouraged, White took pains to reassure his party brethren that no such treason was afoot, that the series of meetings with contenders for statewide office were part of no political agenda but were merely intended to be disinterested occasions for sharing ideas and information.

On Wednesday of last week, however, The Tennessean of Nashville carried a report of a hostile reaction to the scheduled Bredesen appearance from the famously partisan and unbashful state Representative Andy Holt (R-Dresden), a legislator famous (or infamous) for such capers as an anti-whistleblower bill that Governor Bill Haslam vetoed as unconstitutional and for dumping hog waste into fresh-water streams, an offense that earned him a fine from the EPA.

Holt vaunts his position on the rightward fringe of the Republican Party, too, and was quoted by the Tennessean as denouncing the WTEDC’s plans to meet with Bredesen.

Said Holt: “I’m a member of this Caucus, but I want it to be VERY CLEAR, that I am not, and have no intention of EVER hosting Phil Bredesen at any event with which I’m associated!” Holt wondered, “Who’s [sic] idea was this?” He called the Bredesen scheduling and the public invitation to it  “egregious political miscalculations” and threatened to resign from the caucus. 

Several of the Republicans present at Monday’s WTEDC meeting with Dean expressed dismay at Holt’s attitude. State Representative Jimmy Eldridge, currently a candidate for mayor of Jackson, was particularly vexed. “Can you believe that? We’re trying to have a meeting of minds here. This is completely nonpartisan!” And Eldridge was seconded by several others.

Count it as a healthy omen, even a sign of potential redemption for state government, that such was the prevailing reaction toward a nonpartisan event in a highly charged political year among the Democrats and Republicans gathered in Jackson, all of whom practiced the most elaborate courtesies toward each other.

• As it happens, Bredesen has been the focus of attention in numerous other ways of late. The former governor, whose innate centrism and willingness to reach out across the political aisle had previously been serving him well, took a good deal of flack last week from his fellow Democrats, who judged him to be overdoing it.

Many Democrats expressed displeasure that Bredesen had reacted to taunts from GOP opponent Blackburn by publicly disowning Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer of New York during the two Senate candidates’ recent televised debate. But that reaction was nothing compared to the outrage that greeted Bredesen’s statement endorsing President Donald Trump‘s designation of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court after an abbreviated FBI investigation of Kavanaugh for alleged sexual misconduct and before the final party-line vote in his favor in the Senate.

Meanwhile, whatever the reason for it, the polls, which had been showing Bredesen with a significant single-digit lead reversed course, and Blackburn began to top such samplings as were made public.

No doubt compounding the Democratic candidate’s discomfort was a series of hard-hitting TV attack ads from the Blackburn camp. Some of these were patently misleading — notably one which attempted to connect the former governor with the current opioid-addiction problem (apparently based on the fact that, among other things, his stock portfolio includes some shares of the Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical group). That approach is a blatant attempt to do a turn-around on the fact that Blackburn was the author of Pharma-friendly legislation that 60 Minutes identified as a major factor in inhibiting the DEA’s ability to control the proliferation of opioids.

• The campaign of Democrat Gabby Salinas for the District 31 state Senate seat is calling foul on a mailer sent out by her opponent, Republican incumbent Brian Kelsey. Headed by a picture of Kelsey and his wife, Amanda, with a family dog and replete with other domestic themes and references, the mailer states, “Brian Kelsey’s Family Has Called Shelby County Home for Seven Generations. He’s From Here. He’s One of Us.”

Salinas is a cancer survivor whose family emigrated here from Colombia during her childhood to pursue treatment for her at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. A spokesman for her campaign maintains that the “nasty” mailer, a “not-so-subtle dog whistle” is “attempting to raise the question of Gabby’s heritage and background as an immigrant and naturalized citizen.”

Kelsey’s response (via Kelsey’s campaign manager, Jackson Darr): “It’s very simple. It means that Brian lives in Shelby County. Senator Kelsey has deep roots here. … Brian participates daily in Shelby County life. That’s what it means to be one of us.”

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

It’s Raining Politics II: High Visibility and Hard Choices

CREDIT: JB

This was the Week of Coin Flips for serious followers of politics locally. On Tuesday evening, one night after Donald Trump had held one of his patented rallies in Johnson City, some 500 miles away, the President came all the way to suburban Southaven for a sequel. But simultaneously, the two major-party candidates for Governor — Democrat Karl Dean and Republican Bill Lee — were holding their one and only West Tennessee debate at the University of Memphis.

It was a dilemma: Which event to go to?

For the deep-of-pocket types, especially those whose political sympathies can run in more than one direction, there was an even more challenging choice on Wednesday, the next night. Of the four candidates running in the top statewide races, three (count ‘em, 3) held big-ticket fundraisers in Memphis.  JB

Dean at Railgarten

The aforesaid Dean was feted by a group of lawyers at the Crescent Club, Democratic Senate candidate Phil Bredesen was the beneficiary of an event at the home of Ron Belz, and GOP Senate candidate Marsha Blackburn had a fundraiser not three blocks away at what her invitation referred to as “the historic home of Dr. George Nichopoulos” on Cottingham Place.

Dr. George Nichopoulos, it will be remembered, was the personal physician of the iconic late singer Elvis Presley. Deceased himself since 2016, “Dr. Nick” was at the center of serious controversy, stemming from his role in prescribing uppers and downers to the King, and ultimately was stripped of his medical credentials. That fact made the location of Wednesday night’s fundraiser the subject of gibes from Bredesen supporters who note that legislation sponsored by Blackburn may have contributed to the over-supply of opioids in society at large during the last few years.

Dean vs Lee

Of the two Tuesday night events, the more sedate by far was gubernatorial debate at the UM, sponsored by The Commercial Appeal, WMC-TV, and the League of Women Voters, among others. Both Dean and Lee were in good form, and the choice of a winner for most observers probably hewed fairly closely to their partisan loyalties.

Rhodes College political science professor Michael Nelson had a take on the debate that reasonably well described the difference between the two contenders. It was a case of Agenda (Dean) vs. Personality (Lee), said Nelson, who maintains (correctly) that, inasmuch as ultimately you vote for a person, the two factors tend to balance out in any fair metric.

Unsurprisingly, the go-to guy for issues per se was former Nashville Mayor Dean, whose answer to the first question of the night, about Medicaid expansion, was a resolute call for the state’s acceptance of the annual $1.5 billion offered by the federal government under the Affordable Care Act and an unequivocal statement that the Republican-controlled state government has committed a major mistake in blocking Tennessee’s participation in the Act so far.

Failure to accept the proffered aid, 
JB

Lee with reporters

 said Dean, had left 300 thousand Tennesseans needlessly uninsured, had turned away by now some $4 billion in funding due Tennessee without saving the state’s taxpayers a penny and had resulted in financial hard times and instances of closing for the state’s hospitals.

Lee has an undoubted ability to suggest a solid character through both word and deed. That fact, plus an agreeable square-jawed look and a reassuring manner, was a key to his come-from-behind victory over more highly touted candidates in the Republican primary, and it came through again both on stage and to a watching television audience. He demurred on the value of Medicaid expansion, contending on the basis of his own experience as the owner of a construction and equipment company employing some 1200 people that the state’s existing medical-insurance system was “fundamentally flawed,” and said he would “execute a different plan.”

Though he would provide a bit more reasoning during a Q-and-A with reporters after the debate, Lee has never quite articulated a definitive remedy of his own for the shortcomings of medical coverage for the masses of Tennesseans. In this respect, as in most others, he seems content to offer his own evident sincerity and good intentions as alternatives to sketched-out specifics.

Aside from the issue of Medicaid Expansion, there were few dramatic differences between the two candidates,though Dean posited the lack of Medicaid expansion as a major factor retarding progress in several other spheres — including industrial recruitment and educational achievement — and implicated it as a problem exacerbating the state’s unresolved transit issues.

The two candidates agreed that TNReady in its present form was failing , that there should be more emphasis on
JB

Blackbun at Owen Brennan’s on Wednesday

vocational education, and that alternatives to the state’s ASD handling of “priority” (i.e., failing) schools like Shelby County Schools’ home-grown IZone schools are promising.

There was one moment of exuberant reaction from the audience following the two candidates’ discussion of MeToo and gender issues in general. Lee worried about the prospect of divisiveness, but Dean went full tilt for equalizing incentives and opportunities for women and for making Tennessee the friendliest and best state for women.”

Although Dean followed up his good showing with the previously mentioned fundraiser on Wednesday, followed by a meet-and-greet at Railgarten, he is regarded at this point as sill behind in the polls to Lee, who has the Red-State factor in his favor.

Trump at Southaven

Although, as usual, the President’s Tuesday night rally at the Landers Center in Southaven, ostensibly to lobby for Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-White’s reelection, was a parade of his Greatest Hits talking points, one moment in particular would strike the entire nation’s attention.

That was Trump’s employment of verbal mockery to question the bona fides of Dr.Christine Blasey Ford, whose accusations of sexual assault against Trump Supreme Court designate Brett Kavanaugh would throw that nomination into doubt.

Riffing on the weak points of Ford’s memory of the 36-year-old incident, Trump reeked with sarasm, doing his obvious best to make Ford appear to be not only an unreliable but a dishonest accuser. He characterized the Senate Democrats contesting Kavanaugh’s nomination as practicing a strategy of “resist, demolish, destroy, and delay.”

The capacity crowd at Landers responded with cries of “Kavanaugh, Kavanaugh, Kavanaugh!” and “We Want Kavanaugh!”

Those were not the only chants to be heard from the assembly at Southaven. There were such blasts from the past as “Lock Her Up!” in relation to Trump’s erstwhile Democratic presidential opponent. And there were numerous refrains of “Trump! Trump! Trump!” and “Build That Wall!” (the latter a reference to the President’s dogged insistence on erecting a 2000-mile barrier on the nation’s southern border.

It was a typical Trump performance — not so much a speech as a performance in which he aroused and stroked the emotions of his base. Along the way he boasted a litany of claimed achievements — including tax cuts, a booming economy,rising employment, his new trade deal with Mexico and Canada, his opening to North Korea, and the opening of an American embassy in Jerusalem. He blasted such adversaries as the aforementioned Hillary Clinton, Senator Richard Blumenthal, the lawyer Michael Avenatti, and Democrats in general.

The President went so far as to suggest that the Democratic Party (or “Democrat Party,” as he says it) is a threat to the future of Medicare, although Democrats by and large seem committed to the expansion of Medicare, the creation of Democratic President Lyndon Johnson. And Trump tried to link Republicans as a whole to the continuation of insurance coverage for people with previous medical conditions, though there is serious sentiment among GOP opponents of Obamacare to forgo that aspect of the Affordable Care Act.
As usual in the case of a Trump rally, truth was not the essential agreement. Rather, it was raw emotion, stoked by preambles of patriotic music and fueled by multiple helpings of impassioned rhetoric from the President.
Hifh
There was no doubting, however, that Trump can wow a crowd like few others. He concluded, as usual, with a promise that, under his policies, America would be “wealthy again…strong again…safe again…great again.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Bredesen and Dean Hoping to Ride the Wave

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

With six weeks to go before the November 6th election, the question on most minds — certainly on the minds of Democrats — is whether the blue wave that was so evident locally on August 2nd exists in enough strength statewide to affect the outcome of the races for governor and senator.

Former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and former Governor Phil Bredesen, the Democratic candidates for governor and senator respectively, certainly hope so. And so far their efforts to swell that wave have made them more evident in the Memphis area than their Republican opponents, Franklin businessman Bill Lee, the GOP gubernatorial nominee, and 7th District Congressman Marsha Blackburn, the party’s candidate for senator.

Jackson Baker

fund-raiser in a Memphis home.

When Blackburn opted out of an invitation for a senatorial debate at Rhodes College last Thursday, Bredesen turned up anyhow, converting the aborted showdown with his opponent into a “‘Memphis Matters’ Ideas Forum” before a nearly full house in Rhodes’ McNeil Concert Hall.

A questioner in the audience suggested that, if 80 percent of succeeding at something consisted of just showing up, the former two-term governor might get 80 percent of the votes from those who turned out. Bredesen upped the ante a bit, suggesting hopefully that he might get as much as 82 percent of the audience vote. Given the strongly partisan cast of the attendees, that didn’t seem terribly far-fetched.

The more objective polls taken to date of the population at large have see-sawed, with Bredesen and Blackburn trading small leads back and forth.

Dean’s situation is a bit more challenging. In his latest Memphis appearance, at a Monday afternoon fund-raiser at the Central Avenue home of Cynthia and Mark Grawemeyer, the Democratic nominee for governor noted the progession from a Fox News poll showing him 20 points behind Lee to a “newer and bigger and more accurate” poll by CNN cutting the gap to a mere nine percentage points.

“Nine points is fantastic!” said Dean, who told his sizeable crowd of well-wishers that he’d expected to come out of the primary-election period something like 12 points down, with the opportunity to chip away at his GOP opponent’s lead on the strength of vigorous campaigning and persuasive issues like the state’s need for Medicaid expansion, which he favors and Lee does not.

Dean described other “clear differences” with Lee: “He’s for arming teachers. I’m for security officers. I’m for the Second Amendment but want some sensible background checks. He’s for permitless carry, not a good thing.”

Decrying the local poverty rate of “46 or 47 percent” as “simply not tolerable,” Dean promised help in what he described as Memphis’ “existential battle” with the neighboring states of Mississippi and Arkansas in the competition for economic growth. “It’s time to win some of those battles,” he said.

There’s no doubting that Memphis will figure large in Dean’s own battle with Lee, who narrowly lost Shelby County to Diane Black in the GOP primary but had made considerable gains here late in that campaign, as he did elsewhere in the state — mainly, it would seem, on the basis of a compelling personality. But Dean professes confidence. “If we vote, we win,” he said Monday, predicting, “There’s going to be a blue wave of some sort.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Fallout From the August Election and Predictions for November

Here we go again. The voting round that concluded on August 2nd with a virtual Democratic sweep is the second local election in a row in which a resurgent Democratic Party has demonstrated quantifiable strength at the polls, just as it did in the May 1st county primary election, when the Democrats totaled 44,768 votes against 30,208 for the Republicans. 
And here again, too, comes some of the skeptical second-guessing that followed that outcome, the tenor of which is that an apt reading of the numbers actually proves the opposite of what the election results seemed to indicate.

My resourceful and distinguished friend John Ryder, the former general counsel of the Republican National Committee and as eminent a Republican as can be found in these parts, assayed forth in The Commercial Appeal last weekend with an analysis of the August 2nd election that mirrored his conclusions about the previous one. 

On the prior occasion, Ryder juggled some numbers from past elections in order to demonstrate that, as he insisted, the voting curve actually favored Republicans and that Democrats would discover on the then-far-off date of August 2nd, that conditions boded ill for their party.

But, just as the Ides of March inexorably came for Caesar, the 2nd of August would come in for Ryder and other GOP optimists — with the aforementioned result, a sweep for Democratic candidates in countywide races and a measurable gain for them in other positions.

Predictably, however, Ryder managed to find solace in the numbers. More Republicans across the state of Tennessee voted for governor in their primary than statewide Democrats did in theirs, he noted, a finding that led him to conclude: “This does not bode well for the Democrats in the November election.” Considering the difficulties incurred by Ryder since his similar prophecies in May, it may just be that his bod-o-meter is out of order and needs to be serviced.

Or he may be right, of course, in implicitly predicting a victory for Republican gubernatorial nominee Bill Lee, who certainly emerged from the GOP primary as a likeable new face, and who, perhaps conveniently, lacked any political record and thus was immune to the knife-throwing tactics of his chief Republican opponents, Randy Boyd and Diane Black, who managed to slash each other into irrelevance.

Or maybe the problem was that Boyd and Black were engaged in a desperate contest to see who could more accurately pose as a loyal minion to President Donald Trump. Trump deigned not to confer his official favor on either, for better or for worse.

In any case, the Republicans’ four-way gubernatorial race (which included also state House Speaker Beth Harwell) certainly generated more press attention than did the Democratic race between former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and the woefully underfunded House Democratic Leader Craig Fitzhugh. That could be one explanation for the numbers differential of the two parties’ gubernatorial votes — which Ryder cites as gospel, despite declining to accept the Democrats’ edge in mayoral-primary voting as an indicator back in May.

Whatever the  reasons for his thinking, Ryder seems implicitly to be predicting that 7th District Congressman Marsha Blackburn, an outspoken Trumpian with The Donald’s full endorsement, will triumph over her Democratic opponent for the U.S. Senate. That would be former Governor Phil Bredesen, a middle-of-the-road veteran whose two gubernatorial terms were won with significant crossover votes from Republicans and independents, and who has been faring well so far in competitive polling against Blackburn.

Trump’s coattails or more blue wave? Which bodes well — and for whom — in the November general election? It remains to be seen.

• If Jesse Jackson has his way, the blue wave will keep on rolling. The iconic civil rights veteran and former Democratic presidential candidate was in Memphis early this week on behalf of his Rainbow PUSH coalition’s effort to encourage more voter participation in this year’s election process.

Jackson spoke Monday 

morning to students at Booker T. Washington High School, urging them to register to vote and to stand against violence in their neighborhoods. Afterward, asked his reaction to the Democratic sweep in the county election here, Jackson said he was pleased to see “blacks and whites voting together” in recognition of their “common interest” in “a very difficult season of our lives as Americans.”

Jackson said it was too early for him to get behind a specific presidential candidate in 2020. “We don’t know who’s running. It’s too early.” But he took the occasion to inveigh against the current electoral-college winner-take-all system of voting by states.

“The last time around, the loser won, and the winner lost,” Jackson said, noting Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 3 million popular vote edge. “We need a one-person, one-vote democracy,” he said. “Let the winner win, and the loser lose, to be fair.” 

As for the Electoral College, “we never could apply to it,” he said in a bit of wordplay. What the country needs is “universal rights, not states’ rights.”  

 

• Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, a former local Democratic Party chairman who keeps a low partisan profile as a nonpartisan political official, was invited to deliver the opening statement Saturday at a “Hot Dogs in the Park” event in Overton Park celebrating recent Democratic election victories.

Strickland complied and launched into a congratulatory message to the sponsoring organization, the Democratic Women of Shelby County, and continued with several citations by him of progress on his mayoral watch, which he attributed in part to inspiration by the DWSC.

Commissioner-elect Tami Sawyer, a Democrat, is welcomed by GOP Commissioner Mark Billingsley.

A group of four or five protesters, led by activist Hunter Demster, began heckling the mayor’s brief remarks, yelling things like “Where’s Tami?” (an apparent reference to the absence from the event of County Commissioner-elect Tami Sawyer) and “How many African Americans?” in answer to Strickland’s claims of increased city contracting with firms owned by women or minority members.

In response to the heckling, event organizer Norma Lester called for a police presence, and a few squad cars pulled up, though the officers never entered the pavilion where the event was taking place and stood quietly, as observers on the periphery. After the initial heckling, there was no further interruption, and various newly elected Democratic officials contributed brief statements to the celebration.

• “Changing of the guard” was a largely unspoken theme Monday at what was the next-to-last full meeting of the Shelby County Commission before its newly elected  members are sworn in at the end of the month. Such Commissioners-elect as Democrat Sawyer and Republican Amber Mills sat onstage on the periphery of the meeting, as outgoing members struggled to complete a lengthy agenda of unfinished business. Most got processed, but two key items — one levying a new tax on Airbnb domiciles and another involving a proposed new housing development in Collierville — were kicked back to committee, with but one public meeting left to consider them. 

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Politics Politics Feature

Most Shelby County Election Results Were Predictable

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Republicans were not the only ones dismayed at the results of the August 2nd election. To be sure, the GOP took a licking in races for countywide positions, and they lost a swing district on the Shelby County Commission, giving Democrats a decisive 8-5 majority for the next four years.
But, with the exception of Democrat Michael Whaley‘s win in District 5, a city swing district, Shelby County Republicans held their own in localized one-on-one competition. On a countywide scale, though, the GOP fared less well, even in nonpartisan races. Two judicial candidates bearing Republican endorsements — David Rudolph and Jennifer S. Nichols — went down in defeat, despite having the advantage of being incumbents, albeit as recent interim appointees.

In a general way, the law of averages is what determined the outcomes. Yes, there are in theory more Democrats than Republicans in Shelby County; this year, unlike the case in 2010 and 2014, there was a general consensus in both parties that, quality-wise, Democratic candidates were as good as — if not better than — than their Republican counterparts, and, for a change, adequately funded. Crossover voting in the GOP’s direction, a factor in the previous two elections, was virtually non-existent this year. 

Similarly, there is the related fact that there are more African Americans in Shelby County than whites, and, while post-racial results have been known to occur in local elections (think Steve Cohen or, when he still had a bloom on, A C Wharton), it would seem to be human nature that, all else being equal, people will vote for their racial group-mates. Accordingly, in relatively close races between blacks and whites, the racial factor tilted toward African Americans.

Finally, in local politics as in state and national elections, women have steadily become a more active force, and people, including other women, who in the binary sense are yet another majority, have no compunction in voting for women.

Taking those three factors into account — party, race, and gender — a fairly reliable rule-of-thumb can be stated that, where any two are present, they can be decisive for the candidate on the majority side of the ledger. 

Thus, Democrat John Boatner Jr., a white candidate in the primary for Congress in the 8th Congressional District, was at a disadvantage in his contest with Erika Stotts Pearson, an African American. And, while Boatner had more money and was clearly the more active of the two candidates (omnipresent at campaign events, and with several large yard signs bearing his name on upscale sections of Walnut Grove Road), he was a first-time candidate, and, as a white male contending with an African American female, was on the wrong side of the arithmetic. (In his case, too, the power of the city vote, where Democrats are numerous, out-did the party’s rather scanty presence these days in the West Tennessee counties that comprise the rest of the district.)

A few other upsets reflect various versions of the Democratic/black/female tilt.

Circuit court Judge Rudolph had, by general consent, performed well after his 2017 appointment by Governor Haslam to fill the vacancy left by the retirement of Judge Robert L. “Butch” Childers, and his diligence as a candidate, often in the company of his personable wife, Elizabeth, an administrator at the University of Memphis Law School, could not be faulted. The scion of an East Memphis family, educated at MUS and Vanderbilt, he was well-financed, to boot.

But he was felled by Yolanda Kight, an equally impressive and diligent young black woman from a humble background in South Memphis, who had risen very much by her own efforts to attain the lesser judicial rank of magistrate. Aided also by the “upset” factor which can generate sympathy in an electorate, she ended with a narrow win over Rudolph. 

Another such case was the victory in a Democratic state Senate primary race of Gabby Salinas, whose Bolivian family had immigrated to Memphis so that young Gabby could be treated for childhood cancer at St. Jude. On the threshold of being a scientist in her own right, she survived three different bouts with the disease, and, though she was faced with a better-financed opponent, the able and equally appealing Le Bonheur chaplain David Weatherspoon, her backstory may have made the difference. Her next challenge will be, as an advocate of Medicaid expansion, against Republican state Senator Brian Kelsey.

There were other unexpected outcomes. The victories of Joyce Dorse-Coleman and Michelle McKissack over Shelby County Schools Board incumbents Mike Kernell and Chris Caldwell conformed to the above-mentioned formula, though McKissack’s in particular also owed much to her support from charter-school advocates. Though hardly a novice in politics, the oft-controversial city Councilwoman Janis Fullilove, victorious as a Democrat over Republican Bobby Simmons for Juvenile Court Clerk, was expected to be shut out of the white vote entirely. Further analysis will determine whether she wasn’t or whether she was but was able to prevail anyhow.

Most outcomes on August 2nd conformed to the form sheet. It was a Democratic year, not so much because of a better-than-usual turnout but because their candidates were measurably better than in previous years, staving off the customary flow of crossover Democratic voters to Republican candidates that had marked prior elections. 

In the marquee local races, State Senator Lee Harris for county mayor was clearly an able political figure, as was Chief Deputy Floyd Bonner for sheriff, both of them sufficiently so to attract crossovers of their own to augment what was already their majority standing.  

The Democratic blue wave was no surprise. In the vernacular, this was how it was ‘sposed to be.

Ford Canale‘s win for a a vacant city council position was due to his maintaining establishment support against a field of several candidates breaking up the dissident vote. In the statewide contests, Republican Bill Lee won his gubernatorial primary by being himself; Democrat Karl Dean won his through superior resources and fidelity to a centrist party message. The U.S. Senate primary wins of Democrat Phil Bredesen and Republican Marsha Blackburn were no-brainers.

The final win of the mid-summer election season occurred Monday night at Shelby County Republican headquarters, where a small caucus of steering committee members from the state House District 99 of late state Representative Ron Lollar elected onetime state Senator Tom Leatherwood, outgoing as register and a loser in his race for Circuit Court Clerk, as a compromise choice to run against Democratic nominee Dave Cambron in November.

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News News Blog

Election Results: Harris, Dean, Blackburn, Lee, Bredesen, Kustoff, Cohen Win

CREDIT: Ward Archer

Ward Archer

County mayor victor, Lee Harris, talks with reporters at his victory party.

Yes, Virginia, there was a blue wave in Shelby County, Tennessee — at least it appeared so when all the votes were counted for the August 2nd election, which included a county general election, primaries for state and federal offices, and isolated other ballot matters. From Mayor-elect Lee Harris on down the ballot, Democrats swept all the races for county offices, and even picked up an extra seat on the County Commission, giving their party an 8 to 5 majority going into the next four years.

Though Diane Black barely carried Shelby county in the Republican primary race for governor, the winner statewide was Franklin businessman Bill Lee, with former state Economic Development Commissioner Randy Boyd finishing second, Black finishing third, and state House Speaker Beth Harwell coming in fourth.

The Democratic gubernatorial primary was won, in Shelby County and statewide, by former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean over state House Democratic Leader Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley. Former Governor Phil Bredesen and 7th district Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn easily won nominations for U.S. senator in the Democratic and Republican primaries, respectively.

U.S. Reps. Steve Cohen (D) and David Kustoff (R) handily won their primary races for reelection, Kustoff having to head off a well-funded intra-party challenge from perennial candidate George Flinn. Cohen will oppose Republican Charlotte Bergman in the fall, while Kustoff’s opponent will be Erika Stotts Pearson, who edged out John Boatner Jr. in the Democratic primary.

The other news of the night was that, not for the first time, a glitch of some sort at the Shelby County Election Commission marred reporting of the results. A sizeable crowd had gathered early on in The Columns downtown (the old Union Planters headquarters building) hoping to cheer a victory for county mayor by the Democratic nominee Lee Harris, but was frustrated for nearly two hours after the polls closed without seeing any results.

When the numbers finally came in, though, there was tumult among the well-wishers in the large room, followed, moments later, by the happy mayor-elect himself. Harris addressed the crowd from a stage that came to include, besides family and campaign staff, 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen and former Mayor A C Wharton.

A gracious Harris extended thanks to one and all and even asked for some appreciative applause for his vanquished Republican foe, County Trustee David Lenoir.

Final vote for Mayor, with all 166 precincts reporting, was Harris, 84,956; Lenoir, 68,491.

Chief Deputy Floyd Bonner, running as a Democrat for Sheriff, solidly beat local Homeland Security director Dale Lane, running as a Republican. Vote was 91,370 to 60,433, giving Bonner the election’s highest total number of votes.

Other county results:

Assessor of Property— Melvin Burgess (D), 81, 815: Robert “Chip” Trouy, 61,707; Katherine Culverhaus (I), 614.

County Trustee— Regina Morrison Newman (D), 84,712; George Barnes Chism, 62,194.

Circuit Court Clerk — Democrat Temiika Gipson over Republican Tom Leatherwood, 81,573 to 68,806.

Criminal Court Clerk — Democrat Heidi Kuhn, 85,492; Republican Richard De Saussure, 60,917.

Juvenile Court Clerk — Janis Fullilove (D), 75,031; Bobby Simmons 74,030.

Probate Court Clerk — Bill Morrison (D), 81,057; Chris Thomas ( R), 61,862; Jennings Bernard (I), 6,333.

County Clerk — Wanda Halbert (D), 86,327; Donna Creson ( R), 63,017.

Register of Deeds — Shelandra Ford (D), 75,260; Wayne Mashburn R), 70, 575

Other notable results:

SHELBY COUNTY COMMISSION: Democrat Michael Whaley’s victory in County Commission District 5, over Republican Richard Morton, increased the existing Democratic majority by one, to 8 to 5. Other winners: Republican Amber Mills over Democrat Racquel Collins, District 1; Republican David Bradford over Democrat Tom Carpenter, District 2; Republican Mick Wright over Democrat Monica Timmerman, District 3; Republican Mark Billingsley over Democrat Kevin Haley, District 4; Democrat Willie Brooks, District 6; Democrat Tami Sawyer over Republican Sam Goff, District 7; Democrat Mickell Lowery, District 8; Democrat Edmund Ford Jr. over Republican Sharon Webb, District 9; Democrat Reginald Milton over independent Vontyna Durham, District 10; Democrat Eddie Jones, District 11; Democrat Van Turner, District 12; Republican Brandon Morrison over Democrat George Monger, District 13.

In closely-watched legislative races:
Democratic challenger Katrina Robinson ousted incumbent Democrat Reginald Tate in state Senate District 33.

State Rep. Raumesh Akbari defeated County Commissioner Justin Ford in the Democratic primary in state Senate District 29 and will oppose Republican Tom Stephens in November.

Gabby Salinas defeated David Weatherspoon in the Democratic primary for state Senate District 31 and will compete against incumbent Republican Brian Kelsey in the fall.

Incumbent Republican Mark White defeated challenger Doyle Silliman in the GOP primary for state House District 83.

Scott McCormick defeated Patricia Possel in the GOP primary for state House District 96 and will oppose incumbent Democrat Dwayne Thompson in November.

Jesse Chism won out over fellow Democrats Ricky Dixon and Lynette Williams in state House District 85.

Incumbent Democrat Barbara Cooper defeated Amber Huett-Garcia and Jesse Jeff in state House District 86.

Incumbent John DeBerry defeated challenger Torrey Harris in the Democratic primary for House District 90.

London Lamar beat fellow Democrats Doris DeBerry Bradshaw and Juliette Eskridge in the Democratic primary for House District 91.

Incumbent Democrat G.A. Hardaway turned back challenger Eddie Neal in House District 93.

Incumbent Antonio Parkinson beat Johnnie Hatten in the Democratic primary for House District 98.

JUDICIAL RACES:

Circuit Court, Division 7: Incumbent Mary Wagner over Michael Floyd.

Circuit Court, Division 9: Yolanda Kight over incumbent David Rudolph.

Criminal Court, Division 10: Jennifer J. Mitchell over incumbent Jennifer S. Nicho
Environmental Court, Division 14: Incumbent Patrick Dandridge over Price Harris.

SCHOOL BOARD RACES:

Shelby County Schools Board, District 1: Michelle McKissack over incumbent Chris Caldwell, Michael Scruggs, and Kate Ayers;

Shelby County Schools, District 6: Incumbent Shante Avant over Percy Hunter, Minnie Hunter, and R.S. Ford;

Shelby County Schools, District 8: Incumbent William Orgel over Jerry Cunninghan;

Shelby County Schools, District 9: Joyce Dorse-Coleman over incumbent Mike Kernell, Alvin Crook, Rhonnie Brewer, and Kori Hamner.

SPECIAL ELECTION, MEMPHIS CITY COUNCIL, SUPER DISTRICT 9, POSITION 2: Interim incumbent J. Ford Canale over Lisa Moore, Charley Burch, Erika Sugarmon, Tim Ware, David Franklin, and Tyrone R. Franklin.

Complete election results and vote totals from the Shelby County Election Commission.