Tag: Karl Dean

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Karl Dean in Memphis Next Week

Karl Dean

On Thursday, July 13, of next week, a group of Memphis Democrats will host a fundraising event in honor of former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, the sole Democrat so far to have announced a candidacy for Governor in 2018.

The proceeds from the event will go to the sponsoring organization, the Tennessee Voter Project PAC, and the event will take place in the law offices of Glassman, Wyatt, Tuttle & Cox at 26 N. Second St., Memphis, from 5 to 6:30 p.m.

Appearing along with Dean, and given parallel billing on the invitation for the event, will be Diane Cambron, the 2017 Volunteer of the Year, as selected by the Tennessee Senate Democratic Caucus; and Danielle Inez, president of the Shelby County Young Democrats.

The “suggested contribution” for the event is “$40 for those under 40 years old and $100 for everyone else.”

As the fine print on the invitation explains, the Tennessee Voter Project PAC is “a special political action committee formed by Lee Harris that is dedicated to growing the number of registered Democrats.” Harris, of course, is the University of Memphis law professor, former City Councilman, and current District 29 state Senator who is leader of the five Democrats who form the state Senate’s minority caucus.

As the fine print further elaborates: “The last major election saw Tennessee place virtually dead last in voter turnout. We can try to change that through a campaign to register as many democratic voters in Tennessee BEFORE the 2018 election. The time is now to spread democracy and increase political engagement for progressives across the state.”

Hosts for the event are listed as: “Jake Brown, Dawn Campbell, Dr. Davin Clemons, Jeremy Gray, Dan Harper, Lee Harris, Isaac Kimes, Esq., London Lamar, Gavin Mosley, Tami Sawyer, Anthony Siracusa, Bryan Smith, Esq., Thurston Smith, Van Turner, Esq., and Michael Whaley.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Looking Ahead: The Electoral Picture

Nature, rather famously, abhors a vacuum. And, for better or worse, few vacuums exist, year by year, in the calendar of elections for Memphis and Shelby County.  

Leap years occupy a special space on the election calendar by reason of their being the occasion for presidential elections. In recent years, however, including the whole of the 21st century, Tennessee’s ever-increasing reliability as a red state has significantly eroded the excitement that used to go with its former status as a bellwether state, partisan-wise.

Once in a while, a fair amount of drama might attach to a Super Tuesday presidential primary in Tennessee, as it did, for example, in 2008, when Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton each had significant statewide campaigns going on the Democratic side. But normally there is an anti-climactic sense to those preferential primaries here, generally held in late February or March, the balance in both parties having already been tipped elsewhere — in Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina.

State senator and gubernatorial candidate Mae Beavers

The same steady process of Republicanization (how’s that for a coinage?) has increasingly applied to the rest of the electoral menu — including the races in even-numbered years for governor, U.S. Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, and the Tennessee legislature — though some suspense is often generated in primary elections.

Such is likely to be the case next year, in what is shaping up to be a hotly contested (and well-financed) GOP primary for governor — with former state Commissioner of Economic Development Randy Boyd and Nashville businessman Bill Lee, both well-heeled, already running, ultra-rightist state Senator Mae Beavers of Mt. Juliet just declared, and 4th District U.S. Representative Diane Black, also wealthy, expected to jump in, along with presumed Shelby County favorite Mark Norris of Collierville, the state Senate majority leader.

Democrats, too, will likely have a primary choice, with popular ex-Nashville Mayor Karl Dean already campaigning and another party favorite, state House minority leader Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley, seemingly sure to throw his hat in. (And hark!: Even so well-grounded a judge of the state political scene as the Tennessee Journal‘s Ed Cromer suggests this week that 2018 could be a comeback time for Democrats in the gubernatorial race.)

On the local election scene, next year’s Republican primary for Shelby County mayor is set for a showdown between Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland and County Trustee David Lenoir. On the Democratic side, former commissioner and longtime political broker Sidney Chism is one certain candidate. Others may emerge, with former commissioner and assistant University of Memphis law dean Steve Mulroy, who sought the office in 2014, being one possibility.

The identity of the latest primary challenger to 9th District Democratic congressman Steve Cohen, who has fairly easily knocked off several in a row, is uncertain, and 8th District GOP congressman David Kustoff would seem to be home free at this juncture.

Looking ahead into 2019, rumored possibilities to challenge Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland include former Democratic chair Keith Norman, pastor of First Baptist Church on Broad; Memphis Police Association president Mike Williams, who ran for the office in 2015; and Terrence Patterson, president and CEO of the Downtown Memphis Commission.

Meanwhile, in the current electoral “off year” of 2017, there is a special election in state House District 95 (Collierville, Germantown, Eads) for the seat vacated in February by former Representative Mark Lovell amid allegations of sexual harassment.

Though two independents, Robert Schutt and Jim Tomasik, are on the ballot, the race — to be decided next Thursday, June 15th — is considered to be between Republican nominee Kevin Vaughan, an engineer and real estate developer, and lawyer Julia Byrd Ashworth, the Democratic nominee.

The odds would seem to heavily favor Vaughan in a district that normally votes overwhelmingly Republican, but several factors at least theoretically give Ashcroft a fighting chance.

Among them: Vaughan’s involvement in a controversial local shopping-mall project; the unpredictability of turnout characteristic of all special elections (and amply demonstrated for this one by skimpy early-voting totals); and energetic under-the-radar efforts by Ashworth, who hopes to build on the success enjoyed last year by state Rep. Dwayne Thompson, a fellow Democrat who pulled off an upset win in adjacent District 96.

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Politics Politics Feature

GOP’s Lee Puts His Hat In

Shelby County got a look on Tuesday at Franklin businessman Bill Lee, who formally announced his run for the 2018 governor’s race over the weekend and embarked on what he called a “95-county, 95-day RV tour” of the state.

Lee had acknowledged the likelihood of his candidacy when he appeared, along with other gubernatorial propects, at the Shelby County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day banquet in February. While in Memphis, he met with reporters and pursued a schedule that included a stop at the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission and a visit with Shelby County Schools superintendent Dorsey Hopson, among other local meetings.

“Basically, I’m on a listening tour,” Lee said. His personal bio includes lifetime residence on a cattle farm and management of a company that deals in heating, air conditioning, plumbing, and home improvements. He says he wants to focus on growing jobs and paying attention to overdue rural needs, all while avoiding the expedient of raising taxes.

So far, only Lee and former state director of economic development Randy Boyd, among Republicans, have made official announcements, but other likely GOP gubernatorial candidates are state Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris of Collierville, state House Speaker Beth Harwell of Nashville, and Congresswoman Diane Black of Gallatin.

So far, former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean is the only declared Democratic candidate, though state House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley is considered a probable entry.

• This week’s Flyer editorial, (p. 10), makes reference to a press conference scheduled for Thursday at the National Civil Rights Museum on behalf of the Lynching Sites Project of Memphis, a nonprofit group whose efforts are coordinated with those of the Equal Justice Initiative, a national organization.

In tandem with the press conference, which relates to the project’s plans to create memorials for victims of lynching (numbering in the neighborhood of 40, according to publicist Howard Robertson), the project has announced a memorial event for one of the victims, Ell Persons, “a 49-year-old black man accused without evidence of murdering Antoinette Rappel, a 16-year-old white girl.”

That event, an “interfaith prayer ceremony,” will take place on May 21st at 3 p.m., “near the site of Summer Avenue and the Wolf River,” where the lynching, not a hanging but a burning at the stake, took place exactly 100 years earlier.

Participants will include representatives of white and black churches, the NAACP, and other individuals and institutions. The public is invited, said Robertson.

• The first of six “community forums” scheduled as part of the effort to re-establish an official Shelby County Democratic Party will take place on Saturday at noon at Black Market Strategies at 5146 Stage Road. The host for that event will be state Representative Antonio Parkinson.

A second event, at 6 p.m. on May 3rd, will be held at the Gallery at 1819 Madison, co-hosted by the Shelby County Young Democrats and the College Democrats. There will be a third forum at the Pickering Center in Germantown on Tuesday, May 9th, hosted by the Germantown Democrats, and a final forum will be held at 6 p.m. on May 15th, at Abyssinian Baptist Church, 3890 Millbranch, under the sponsorship of the Democratic Women of Shelby County.

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Politics Politics Feature

Tennessee, Shelby Parties Organizing for 2018

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Jackson Baker

Retiring Blue Cross-Blue shield exec Calvin Anderson, here at a ceremony naming a street for him, will be a cog in the 2018 Democratic gubernatorial campaign.

Last week was a time for members of both local political parties to gather and take stock. The Shelby County Republicans did so with their annual Lincoln Day banquet at the East Memphis Hilton on Saturday night — the highlight of which was an address by former Bush-era U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who, while contending that “we need Donald Trump to be strong,” cautiously but firmly took issue with the president’s immigration policies. (For a full account of Gonzales’ remarks and the evening at large, see “Politics Beat Blog” on the Flyer website.)

The Lincoln Day event drew an extensive field of GOP gubernatorial hopefuls for 2018: U.S. Representative Diane Black (R-6th District); state Senator Mark Green (R-Clarksdale); State Senate majority leader Mark Norris (R-District 32); entrepreneur and former state Economic Development director Randy Boyd; and Nashville-area businessman Bill Lee.

• Even as Shelby County Republicans were gathered at the Hilton to hear Gonzales’ sober-sided hedge to all-out Trumpism, some 150 Democrats were making moves to reassert some vision and presence of their own, celebrating “Obama Day” at the Madison Gallery under the auspices of the Shelby County Young Democrats, with Mayor Kelvin Buck of Holly Springs, Mississippi, as official host and Mayor Megan Barry of Nashville serving as keynoter.

The emphasis there was altogether on moving forward afresh, with a new national party chairman, former U.S. Labor Secretary Tom Perez, having been elected in Atlanta earlier Saturday and with visions of stronger candidate efforts for Democrats in the forthcoming off-year election year of 2018.

After months of making appearances up and down the length of Tennessee, former Mayor Karl Dean of Nashville, Barry’s immediate predecessor, issued a formal statement making it official: He’s a candidate for governor in 2018. Dean will apparently have some good local help from newly appointed campaign treasurer Calvin Anderson, a longtime aide to former U.S. Senator Jim Sasser. Anderson has just retired from several years as a Blue Cross Blue Shield executive (with a street newly named for him adjacent to the insurance giant’s Memphis headquarters) and remains well-connected.

And, even though Nashville real estate entrepreneur and mega-donor Bill Freeman, who had been touching the state’s bases in an exploratory bid of his own, decided over the weekend not to run, the state’s Democrats will apparently still have a respectable gubernatorial primary in 2018, just as in their now vanished years of ascendancy.

State Representative Craig Fitzhugh, the well-liked Democratic House leader from Ripley, has been making it clear for months to any and all who have asked (including ourselves) that he intends to run for governor, and he repeated that resolve for the record on Monday. Though General Assembly rules preclude Fitzhugh’s taking formal organizational steps before the current legislative sessions ends in April, he, like Dean, has been out and about, appearing both at the Memphis YD event and a meeting last week of the Tipton County Democrats.

And, yes, Virginia, as previously indicated in this space, soon there will be a new bona fide Shelby County Democratic Party that will try to make good on the local party’s revivalist hopes.

State Democratic chairman Mary Mancini of Nashville, who recently appointed 13 Shelby County Democrats to serve as an ad hoc committee to plan a restructuring of the currently decertified local party, arranged for the group’s first meeting on Tuesday night of this week in the law office of David Cocke, a vintage Democrat and member of the ad hoc group.

The now completed membership of that core group is comprised of: Cocke, Dave Cambron, Corey Strong, Jeanne Johnson, Van Turner, George Monger, Jolie Grace Wareham, Danielle Inez, Deborah Reed, Emma Meskovic, Clarissa Shaw, Cordell Orrin, and Keith Norman.

• As the General Assembly prepares for the likely return of the Draconian de-annexation measure sponsored last year by state Representative Mike Carter (R-Ooltewah) and state Senator Bo Watson (R-Hixson), the voluntary “right-sizing” plan which the Strickland administration hopes to offer as an alternative may be in for trouble on the City Council.

Asked about its prospects following his speech last Wednesday to the downtown Kiwanis Club, current City Council chair Berlin Boyd repeated his determined opposition to the plan, asserting that the city was in no position to give up the $7 million in tax revenues it would lose in the short term. And Boyd said, “There are lots of others on the Council who feel the same way.”

• As Congress takes a brief break, the wave of well-attended and often high-tempered congressional town meetings on health care and other issues is likely to continue, in Tennessee as elsewhere, but U.S. Representative David Kustoff (R-8th) has seemingly adopted a strategy that, to some degree, will sidestep them.

Kustoff explained things in the aftermath of his address to a Chamber breakfast at the Crescent Club last Thursday. Pleading the large “footprint” of his sprawling district, Kustoff said he had opted for relatively limited group sessions in sites like Brownsville, Covington, and Jackson, with a pre-arranged cap on the number of subjects to be discussed.

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Politics Politics Feature

Key Political Moves Underway in Memphis and Nashville (UPDATED)

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

A statement made by state Senator Mark Norris (R-Collierville) in Nashville last week all but put the Senate Majority Leader in the running for the governorship in 2018.

Norris, who for years has made no secret of his gubernatorial ambitions, told reporters that he was “more than mulling” about a race and was actively making plans, though he emphasized that he still had a job to attend to in the legislature. He later told the Flyer that he had discussed organizational plans with a local campaign consultant but had not yet finalized a deal.

Norris, as a sitting state legislator, is prohibited from active fund-raising for the duration of the current session of the General Assembly, just convened. So are two potential rivals for the Republican nomination, state Senator Mark Green (R-Clarksville), who has declared his intentions of running, and Beth Harwell (R-Nashville), speaker of the state House of Representatives, who held a recent pre-session fund-raiser at $2,500 a head.

Other Republicans known to be considering a race are Nashville industrialist Bill Lee and Randy Boyd, who just announced that on February 1st he would take leave of his current position as state commissioner of Community and Economic Development. 

Though most attention has so far been focused on the possible GOP candidates, there are no fewer than four Democrats who are considered possible entrants in the governor’s race, as well.

One is wealthy real estate tycoon Bill Freeman of Nashville, who has served as the state Democratic Party’s treasurer and for years has been a major donor to numerous Democratic campaigns and causes. Freeman, who ran unsuccessfully for Nashville mayor in 2015, made a trip to Memphis last year on behalf of Hillary Clinton‘s presidential campaign that doubled as a fund-raiser for state Senator Lee Harris (D-Memphis) and functioned also as a scouting expedition for a governor’s race.

Former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean has traveled widely in the state after leaving office and is thought to be serious about a governor’s race. 

Two other Democrats frequently mentioned as possibilities are state House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh (D-Ripley), a highly regarded party figure who would also have to vacate his legislative seat to make the race, and Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke, a former state senator who is now running for reelection.

• Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland, who has taken the lead in trying to create a seat for suburban Shelby County on the MLGW board, has switched tracks on that initiative. Confronted by city of Memphis resistance and stymied by a split between city and county members from including the matter in the county commission’s official legislative request package, Roland wants to put the matter before the Tennessee Regulatory Authority.

Meanwhile, state senators Norris and Ron Lollar (R-Bartlett) are studying the option of taking the matter up legislatively.

Commissioner Heidi Shafer, a supporter of Roland’s initiative, said the matter wasn’t dead but was sure to surface again, “when the weather for it is right.” (See Editorial, p. 10.)

Even if the issue of county participation on the MLGW board ended up not being a part of the official county wish list approved by the county commission for its legislative package, other once controversial matters have apparently made the package.

Foremost among them is a call for a limited but profound change in the status of marijuana. In the language of the final commission resolution: “The Shelby County Board of Commissioners urges the Tennessee General Assembly, Governor Bill Haslam, and the federal government to authorize medical marijuana in Tennessee.” There are at least two bills to that effect already introduced in the General Assembly, both from mainstream members of the Republican super-majority.

A concomitant resolution by the commission reads: “The Shelby County Board of Commissioners urges the Tennessee General Assembly and Governor Bill Haslam to implement or expand a second-chance program for individuals using less than half an ounce of marijuana.”

These are first steps, to be sure, but meaningful ones that could not have been anticipated even a few short years ago.

[UPDATE: The words “have apparently made the package”in the paragraphs about the Commission’s attitude toward medical marijuana and second-chance legislation were, as it turms out, premature. In committee action on Wednesday, sponsor Terry Roland successfully moved for a deferral on voting for those parts of the legislative package.]

 

• Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen joined civil rights icon John Lewis (D-GA) and what may be a substantial number of other political figures in announcing Monday that he will not attend the Friday inauguration of Donald Trump as President.

Cohen, who has represented the 9th District since 2006, made the announcement Monday morning at Mason Temple of God in Christ during a commemorative celebration on MLK Day.

Telling the Flyer that a series of insulting tweets from Trump about Lewis became “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Cohen praised the Georgia congressman as someone who had “risked his life” for human rights, adding that Trump’s attacks on Lewis were particularly egregious coming on the eve of the Martin Luther King weekend. Cohen cited “an accumulation of distressing remarks, actions, and appointments” on Trump’s part, including “his questioning President Obama’s birth, the racist, misogynistic statements he made during the campaign, his inability to tell the truth, and his mocking of a disabled person,” as well as the President-elect’s attacks on Senator John McCain and actress Meryl Streep.

“This is a president who does not act presidential.” Cohen said. Cohen said further he had attended confidential briefings about Trump’s compromised behavior and circumstances and said that “there’s more to it than Russia.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Suburban Showdowns in Germantown and District 96

Dwayne Thompson on the stump. Photo: Jackson Baker

Even if, as is currently being assumed by observers in both major political parties, Democrat Hillary Clinton should win the presidency over Republican nominee Donald Trump, and win in a landslide, how might that affect down-ballot races in Tennessee, where the GOP, almost everywhere, remains in the ascendant?

One test case might be the race in District 96 of the state House of Representatives between incumbent Republican Steve McManus and Democratic challenger Dwayne Thompson. The district, a suburban one incorporating parts of Cordova and Germantown, is considered safely Republican by most observers.

Thompson, a self-described “human resources professional,” disputes that, citing what he says are significant turnouts for Democrats in past statewide and presidential races in the district, as well as  a mix of upscale, middle-class, and working-class populations that he thinks is ready for change.

Among other things, Thompson hopes for a backlash against legislative Republicans for their opposition to Governor Bill Haslam‘s Insure Tennessee proposal for Medicaid expansion. At a recent forum sponsored by the Tennessee Nurses Association, Thompson accused opponent McManus, an investment counselor and chairman of the House Insurance and Banking Committee, of having “bottled up” consideration of Insure Tennessee in the special legislative session of 2015.

McManus’ committee, which did hold an abbreviated hearing on Insure Tennessee in which McManus’ skeptical views on the proposal were obvious, did not administer the proposal’s coup de gras, however; that came from the Senate Health Committee, which had been specially expanded for the purpose by GOP Speaker Ron Ramsey.

McManus subsequently was named by Republican House Speaker Beth Harwell to a special task force on health-care which met several times this year and emerged with a scaled-down health insurance proposal, called the “3-Star Health Insurance Pilot,” that would expand TennCare for uninsured veterans and mental health patients as a prelude to possible general expansion in the future.

Thompson dismisses that plan as too little, too late, and says he will, if elected, continue to push for Insure Tennessee or some close variant.

McManus has more financial resources at his command, by far — $155,7543.59 in campaign cash as of the third-quarter filing, compared to a mere $5,088.20 for Thompson. But Thompson, whose ads — stressing that he is both a veteran and a cancer survivor — have begun to appear here and there, especially online, with a frequency unusual for a Democrat running in the Memphis suburbs.

And, in fact, Thompson’s campaign expenditures for the third quarter of 2016 come close to matching McManus’, with outlays of $9,524.83, compared to $11,871.61 for the incumbent. He is also working hard at outreach to independent voters, like members of the nonpartisan Asian-Americans for Tennessee, who showed up en masse last week at a meet-and-greet for Thompson sponsored by state Representative Raumesh Akbari (D-District 91) at her family’s hair research facilities in East Memphis.

JB

Dwayne Thompson on the stump

Thompson is giving McManus  a run for his money, but the GOP incumbent, no slouch himself at campaigning and possessed of those aforesaid financial advantages as well as help from the Shelby County Republican Party’s vaunted Get-Out-the-Vote network, is sure to be heard from in the campaign’s home stretch.

• Apropos that home stretch: As of Tuesday morning, turnout in Shelby County had been higher than usual for early voting, which began last Wednesday and will end on Thursday, November 3rd. Much of the increase was due to the fact of the ongoing presidential election, of course, but, even allowing for that fact, voter interest seems to be unusually high.

Totals for Wednesday were 16,655; for Thursday, 14,892; for Friday, 15,249; and for Saturday, 9,819. In all cases, the turnout outstripped previous early-voting records, set in 2008, the year of President Barack Obama’s first election.

• Several of the Shelby County suburbs are having spirited local campaigns. In Germantown, there are races for the city’s board of aldermen as well as its school board, which, in both cases, come down to pitched battles between organized slates of incumbents and challengers — the Ins versus the Outs, as it were.

Three alderman seats are up in Germantown. Incumbents Dave Klevan (Position 3) and Rocky Janda (Position 5) are opposed by Dean Massey and David Nischwitz, respectively, while incumbent Forrest Owens has a free ride in Position 4.

Three of the seven school board seats are also on the ballot. Incumbents Linda Fisher (Position 1) and Natalie Williams (Position 3) are opposed by Laura Meanwell and Suzanne Jones, respectively, while Amy Eoff and Mindy Fischer are vying for the Position 5 seat vacated by outgoing member Ken Hoover.

All five incumbents, as well as Fischer, are being supported by current Germantown Mayor Mike Palazzolo, who spoke on their behalf at a meet-and-greet affair on Sunday at the home of Naser and Shila Fazlullah.

• For the first time since the Democratic gubernatorial field melted down in 2010 to a single serious candidate, Mike McWherter of Dresden, the state’s Democrats seem able and determined to up the ante and make a valid run for governor in 2018 against the now-dominant Tennessee Republican Party.  

• Bill Freeman, well-known Nashville businessman, former mayoral candidate, and prominent donor and activist in Democratic circles, will be the special guest and principal speaker at what is being billed as a “Reception for Senator Lee Harris & Rally for Our West Tennessee Candidates,” to be held in Memphis at the home of Democrat Linda Sowell on November 3rd.

The current co-chair of Hillary for Tennessee and a member of Democratic presidential candidate Clinton’s national finance committee, Freeman is scouting support for a possible race for governor in 2018. Former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean has also been criss-crossing the state as a prelude to a governor’s race.

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Memphis Gaydar News

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean Announces Support of Same-Sex Marriage

Karl Dean

  • Karl Dean

Tennessee may have the distinction of having the first judge to rule in favor of a same-sex marriage ban, but it also now has the mayor from its capital city announcing support for same-sex marriage.

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean became the state’s first mayor to join the Mayors for the Freedom to Marry campaign, a coalition of around 500 mayors “who are making the case for marriage for same-sex couples in their communities,” according to a release from the campaign earlier today.

The campaign now boasts at least one mayor from every Southern state.

“I believe that all people should be treated fairly and equally and that their individual dignity should be respected,” said Nashville Mayor Karl Dean in a statement. “Embracing and celebrating our growing diversity makes our city stronger. Nashville needs to continue in that direction, and it’s my hope that joining this effort will help us do that.”

The Flyer has contacted Mayor A C Wharton’s office to determine whether or not he will also sign on to the campaign. We’ll keep you posted. (UPDATE: One day after the contact with Wharton’s office, there has been no response.)

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News The Fly-By

Nashville Mayor To Speak In Memphis

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

When Karl Dean, mayor of Nashville, comes to Memphis next week in answer to the second annual “Summons to Memphis,” he’ll be following in the footsteps not only of New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, the inaugural invitee at the Memphis Magazine-sponsored event last year, but of Dean’s son Rascoe, who was a Teach for America volunteer at East High School for two years.

“He loved the city, he loved living on Mud Island, and he loved teaching those kids at East High. He goes back regularly to see them,” said the elder Dean who, like Landrieu before him, will be sharing his insights about urban management in the 21st century to a blue-ribbon Memphis luncheon audience at the Grand Ballroom of the Holiday Inn at the University of Memphis on June 6th.

Dean hasn’t settled on a theme for his address yet, but he’s eager to talk about his own affection for Memphis, which he sees not as a rival but as a genuine sister city with a shared music tradition and a history that in many ways overlaps with that of his own city.

It did so recently and tragically, in the case of Nashville police officer and Memphis native Michael Petrina, who was killed while directing traffic.

“Nashvillians were deeply hurt by that event,” Dean said. “I was in Memphis for the service, and the city and both mayors could not have been more helpful.”

Dean and Memphis Mayor
A C Wharton have been friends and comrades-at-arms for decades. Dean recalled a time when he was in Memphis for a ceremony celebrating the revival of steamboat traffic here and “A C was giving me a hard time” about the difference between the mighty Mississippi and the Cumberland, joking good-naturedly that there wasn’t enough room on the latter “for a boat to even turn around.”

That was the same Cumberland, however, that in May 2010 overflowed its banks, causing an estimated $1.5 billion in damage in Nashville and putting such major venues as Opryland and LP Field, home of the NFL Titans, temporarily underwater.

But if Nashville, which had also suffered major tornado damage downtown in 1998, has had to withstand significant natural setbacks, it has undeniably been one of the nation’s boom cities during the last few decades. Dean has been a major architect of his city’s rise, notably as the moving force behind the building of Music City Center, a state-of-the-art Taj Mahal-sized edifice that opened last year and occupies 16 acres and several city blocks south of the bustling Broadway area.

“It may not be the biggest, but we think it’s the best,” Dean said of his city’s new convention center. But he’s equally proud of Nashville’s “honky-tonks,” his term for the numerous music-entertainment locales in Nashville, a city already world-famous for country music but now, as he noted, a haven for such rock artists as Kings of Leon, Kesha, Jack White, and the Black Keys. As Dean said, Nashville is the site of a full-fledged music industry comparable to New York and Los Angeles.

But Nashville is also a center of the health-care industry, the home of Vanderbilt and other universities, and a place, Dean said, where economic development is on continual display.

Tickets to “Summons to Memphis” are $50 per person, and a table for 10 people may be reserved for $450. They can be purchased at summonstomemphis.com

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Opinion

Charter School Diversity: The Battle of Nashville

Kevin Huffman

  • Kevin Huffman

Memphis and Shelby County are not the only school systems making lots of news as they combine. Nashville has a battle that has the school board clashing with Tennessee Education Commissioner Kevin Huffman and Mayor Karl Dean.

As described by The Tennessean, Huffman made good on a pledge to withhold $3.4 million in funding from Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools because the school board would not allow Great Hearts Academies to open a charter school in prosperous West Nashville. Charter schools typically serve low-income and minority students in urban areas. Memphis is the state’s leading charter school incubator.

The ongoing story of charter school diversity and expansion is likely to spread to Shelby County and school restructuring. The Nashville news has been picked up by, among others, The Wall Street Journal, one of the nation’s leading champions of charter schools and bashers of teachers’ unions.

Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, whose son taught in Memphis public schools as a member of Teach For America, sided with Huffman.

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Opinion

Weekend Report: Harahan Bridge, Contract Bridge, Good Signs, Hamer, and Big Money

CREDIT: JB

n._parkway.JPG

A Bridge Too Far? I think so. The Harahan Project is exciting, sure, if wishing could make it so, but that estimated $30 million price turns me off, along with the estimated 18-month waiting time. And both estimates could be optimistic. Connecting Main Street to Broadway in West Memphis is aimed, let’s face it, at enlisting a second city and state in the cause. And I say that as someone who used to freelance for the Crittenden County Chamber of Commerce and write glowing magazine copy about Broadway. And as someone who has enjoyed walking or biking over the Brooklyn Bridge, Golden Gate Bridge, Walnut Street Bridge in Chattanooga, Eads Bridge in St. Louis, and Mackinac Bridge in upper Michigan. There are simply too many needy projects — the Overton Park Conservancy to name one — with more modest fundraising goals, and too many alternative ways to increase bike traffic along the river and through downtown without spending a lot of time and money. A “Five Parks Bike Tour” modeled after the “Five Boro Bike Tour” in New York City in May is one of them. Include Greenbelt Park, Overton Park, Tom Lee Park, Mud Island Park, and Martyr’s Park, with Court Square and AutoZone Park as throw-ins. Last week the city and Parks Department put up a temporary sign on North Parkway. It was made out of plywood by an art student and probably cost a few hundred bucks. But it brands the boulevard, which has been nicely planted in buttercups and flowering trees, and draws favorable attention to Midtown. Grooming our showcase streets and gateways has an immedediate payoff at a reasonable price. I’m reserving judgment on the North Parkway bikes lanes, but note that with excellent weather and near-$4 a gallon gas, there are very, very few weekday riders.

Deputy Superintendent Irving Hamer had to go. But I would not count out Superintendent Kriner Cash as a possible choice for the future consolidated school system. He has friends in high places, knows the Memphis system, there are no unanimously popular superintendents, and I can’t see candidates lining up for the job in 2013. Personally, I think Cash should be counted out for several reasons including making it as hard as possible for reporters covering education to do their jobs. ON a related note, I see where Nashville Mayor Karl Dean wants Metro Schools Superintendent Jesse Register to disclose more financial information in the wake of a newspaper investigation of consulting contracts and payments. Excellent idea for Memphis and Shelby County to imitate with all the outside money being thrown at schools. Register, previously superintendent of the consolidated Chattanooga and Hamilton County school system, visited Memphis a few months ago at the invitation of the Transition Planning Commission.

Thousands of bridge players are in town for a big national convention. Good for them, nice boost for downtown. I practically majored in bridge in college, and there are ways to make it entertaining that involve cold beer, music, and penny-a-point scoring. Great game, struggling to become more popular with “younger” people, whatever that means. But a spectator sport it ain’t. Of course, I would have said the same thing about poker 25 years ago. And earlier this week I wrote 1000 words about the obscure sport of squash. To each his own.

Page One, Top of the Fold in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal: “SEC Cracks Down On Pre-IPO Trading.” The SEC is the Securities and Exchange Commission, and it’s about time. Ten years ago, New York Times reporter Gretchen Morgenson, who ought to be running the SEC, was writing about abuses of insider trading in private shares of companies about to go public in IPOs, or initial public offerings of stock. Then and now, as I wrote in a Memphis magazine article several years ago, I firmly believed that Morgan Keegan dodged a bullet. Or should I say, the SEC failed to pull the trigger on the kind of investigation it is now undertaking. The case in point was a company called Crossroads Systems, which was a hot IPO. Morgan Keegan insiders got some private shares, the house analyst plugged the stock, and away it went. Except a company sorehead who didn’t get any private stock thought it stunk and became my secret whistleblower. Harbinger of things to come with the Kelsoe funds. If President Obama is smart, he’ll keep the dogs of the SEC on a long leash and keep generating headlines in the wake of that tell-all op-ed column in the New York Times from the insider at Goldman Sachs this week.