Tag: Kenneth Whalum

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Politics Politics Feature

Money vs. Grit ‘n Grind

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

If, as so many people declaim, money is the “mother’s milk” of politics, the fact is, there are some determined candidates who are virtually lactose-free and decline to be poor-mouthing about it. Others are letting their gross receipts and checkbooks speak for them.

As a sample case of such contrasts, consider the five-candidate race for Super District 9, Position 2. It is, like the races for mayor and City Court clerk, an at-large race. The two Super Districts, 8 and 9, represent a compromise dating from a 1991 judicial settlement, when the city’s electorate was roughly half white and half black.

In blunt terms, District 9 was the white half, more or less, while District 8 was predominantly African-American. Population shifts since then have altered the makeup of both districts, but the rough division still holds.

And there are clear distinctions between how candidates might run in an at-large race and how they can run in district races.

As Shea Flinn, the former councilman from 9, 2, and now an executive with the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce, put it, “You can walk a district race.” (That is, go door-to-door.) “You can’t do that to nearly the same degree in an at-large race. The territory is too large.”

That fact would seem to militate against an at-large candidate without a budget big enough to do radio, TV, and newspaper advertising. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the candidate with the most money wins in an at-large race, but ample funding certainly conveys an advantage.

On the other hand, the same judicial settlement that created the current district structure ordained that, unlike the case in district races, there would be no runoffs in any of the at-large races. That fact gives even cash-poor candidates the hope of winning a plurality, if they can bring some other advantage to the winner-take-all scramble.

Stephanie Gatewood, for example, a former Memphis School Board member who now aspires to the Super District 9, Positon 2, seat, reported exactly $671.45 on hand in her second-quarter financial disclosure, covering the period April 1st to June 30th. She listed two contributions, each for $500.

Gatewood’s expenditures for the period totaled $338.95, which she laid out to Perkins Productions for some “4 x 6” wallet cards.

At a recent meet-and-greet/fund-raising affair held at Acre Restaurant (after the last reporting deadline), Gatewood boasted that her election to the old Memphis City Schools board had been achieved by grass-roots and word-of-mouth efforts without much of a budget and, after engaging with attendees in a kind of quiz-’em-on-the-issues dialogue, she asked those present to notify their Twitter or Facebook networks where they were and whom they were listening to.

Clearly, Gatewood hopes that her former school board incumbency, and the contacts that came with it, can generate some turnout.

That prospect may loom even larger with another name candidate and former school board member in the same race, Kenneth Whalum Jr. Whalum, who is something of a master at using social media and attracting press coverage, has made it clear, too, that his efforts will not depend on raising a huge amount of campaign cash.

In addition to his considerable name-recognition, gained most recently from a good showing at the 2014 Democratic primary for Shelby County mayor, Whalum intends to engage in serious networking — emphasizing the theme of education and coordinating his own efforts with those of like-minded candidates for other council positions.

As a late entry, Whalum was not required to post a financial disclosure for the second quarter.

Another entry in the 9, 2, race is Lynn Moss, a novice candidate with no prior incumbencies and no name-recognition factor. Her financial receipts are also lacking — with second-quarter receipts of $1,745, mainly from personal friends, and cash-on-hand of $1,173.48.

Moss would seem to be unusually handicapped against her opponents, but she has one ace-in-the-hole, affiliation with a group of grass-roots activists who meet frequently to challenge the precepts of various civic establishments. In particular, she is running on a ticket of sorts (with Robin Spielberger in Super District 9, Position 1, and Jim Tomasik in District 1) that advocates de-annexation from Memphis of relatively recently annexed suburbs such as Cordova. To the extent that she and others can make that issue prominent, she has prospects.

The campaign of Paul Shaffer, longtime business manager for the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers), is intermediate between the position of determined do-it-yourself campaigns and those that are backed by numerous and significant donations.

Shaffer has benefited from large donations from union-oriented Political Action Committees (PACs). His cash-on-hand amount of $11,735.22 in his second-quarter report derives almost entirely from such sources, which are, however, relatively limited in number. They run the gamut from $500 to $5,000.

Shaffer can depend also on voluntary grass-roots support from union members and from the Democratic Party rank-and-file activists who have known Shaffer for years (many of them, as candidates, having benefited from IBEW’s own financial generosity).

And then there is Philip Spinosa, a new name to most Memphians, including the majority of voters residing in Super District 9, 2, but one not destined to stay that way for long. Already motorists along several of the city’s major thoroughfares — Walnut Grove being a case in point — are seeing Spinosa’s yard signs in great quantity, often in tandem with those of Reid Hedgepeth, the incumbent council member in Super District 9, Position 3, and Worth Morgan, a candidate in District 5, a Midtown-East Memphis enclave.

Like Hedgepeth and Morgan, Spinosa, a sales executive with FedEx, has the kind of youthful image that is made-to-order for television advertising, and his connections with influential members of the city’s business elite are similar to theirs as well. His second-quarter receipts were a whopping $164,940, and his cash balance was $149,133.75.

Resources like that (Morgan is similarly fixed, by the way) are almost on a par with those of the two mayoral-race titans, Mayor A C Wharton and Councilman Jim Strickland, and, over the long haul, obviously give Spinosa the potential to close and overcome the name-ID factor currently owned by a couple of his opponents.

Jackson Baker

The family of late civil rights icon and National Civil Rights Museum founder D’Army Bailey acknowldged the Shelby County Commission’s vote on Monday to rename the Shelby County Courthouse in his honor. From left: son Merritt Bailey, wife Adrienne Bailey, Commission chair Justin Ford, son Justin Bailey. At right is Commissioner Terry Roland, sponsor of the re-naming resolution.

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Politics Politics Feature

On the Cusp

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Let the record show that Harold Collins, the city council member whose mayoral candidacy is one of the key variables of the 2015 election season, was able to sport the first prominent campaign signs around town.

And Collins’ reported second-quarter financial receipts of $48,812, giving him a total on hand of $61,405, support the idea that his candidacy is feasible, depending on developments in the roughly two-and-a-half months remaining in the city election period. (That’s when, as conventional wisdom has it, people actually start paying attention.)

As will be seen, Collins’ financial assets don’t begin to compare to those of the two presumed mayoral frontrunners (incumbent Mayor A C Wharton and Collins’ council colleague Jim Strickland) or to a couple of unusually well-endowed council candidates, for that matter. His candidacy, of necessity, will focus more on grass-roots activity, especially on his home ground of Whitehaven, one of the areas with a voter population large enough to be one candidate’s base (or the source of another’s swing vote).

From that standpoint, the early campaign signs are a good omen.

And let it be said that Kenneth Whalum, Jr., the New Olivet pastor and former school board member whose will-he or won’t-he attitude toward a mayoral race has made him the great unknown quantity of 2015, had scheduled to announce his plans for 2015 on Tuesday night at Church Park, well after this column must deadline for the week. We’ll catch with up the news online.

In April, Whalum drew petitions for mayor, for city council District 5 seat, and for the council’s Super District 9, Position 2 seat. The fact that he finished a close second in the 2014 Democratic primary for Shelby County mayor, even while being out of the country during the final weeks, has given his announcement a certain suspense value.

Memphis Police Association’s Mike Williams, who filed last week, has, at the very least, a niche following among aggrieved city employees, and especially among fire and police employees. He has a tight but active support group, but his reported second-quarter receipts of $6,204 make his race an uphill battle.   

County Commission chairman Justin Ford has also filed, as has James Harvey, his predecessor, but it remains to be seen how serious their candidacies are.

There is no doubting that Wharton and Strickland are still the big dogs in the race, certainly financially. Strickland raised $140,521 in the second quarter, while Wharton raised $129,700. Each appears to have $400,000 on hand, and their campaign treasuries are still growing. One possible caveat regarding those figures: The mayor has committed more money to date than has Strickland.

The possible relevance of that fact became obvious on Saturday, as Strickland and an aide braved 100-degree weather to go door-knocking on Walnut Grove, looking in particular for places to locate yard signs on that highly visible thoroughfare. Strickland got reasonably good feedback from the homeowners, but he won’t have the signs ready for delivery until August 1st.

Wharton continued last week with a series of modest-sized fund-raisers, located in upscale areas where he faces competition from Strickland. One of these was at Waterford Plaza, where he spoke to a group of women supporters and delivered one of those point-by-point surveys of city projects at which the mayor is both glib and convincing. He also addressed his concern that opponents portray him as “the Grinch” for having to impose austerity measures in response to intractable budget problems.

Thursday is filing deadline for city positions, with the withdrawal deadline a week later. Then we’ll know for sure what we’re dealing with.

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Politics Politics Feature

County Commission Power Surge

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Monday’s public meeting of the Shelby County Commission saw the commission, as a whole, still trying to forge a new, more independent role for itself but experiencing a bit of erosion in its resolve.

The meeting began with Chairman Justin Ford continuing in his new mode of permitting audience statements on the front end of proceedings rather than, as was long customary, at the conclusion of business. Commissioners got an earful of complaints about its budgetary provision of $1.3 million to be divided equally between the 13 members of the commission for purposes of making grants within their districts.

“Charity” grants, the critical audience members were calling them, in a bit of a misnomer, inasmuch as the money — amounting to $100,000 per district — had been defined during the course of several recent commission debates as applicable to a district’s infrastructure needs as well as to this or that community organization with a civic or charitable purpose.   

Indeed, Commissioner Terry Roland, of Millington, who had been among a contingent of Republican commissioners who had lobbied hard but without success for a one-cent reduction in the county’s property-tax rate, was able to use that setback to respond to one of the critics, telling her that his share of the grant money would go, at least partly, to “fix your roads.”

Since there hadn’t been enough votes during the budget process to allocate at least some of county Mayor Mark Luttrell‘s $6 million budget surplus to a property-tax cut, the commission could at least use the back-door route of district grants to take care of district needs, Roland said. It was an agile argument and one not without irony, inasmuch as part of Luttrell’s argument against the proposed one-cent tax reduction had been that funding needed to be reserved for infrastructure repairs.

Even so, the audience complaints — apparently the tip of an iceberg that had included numerous phone calls, emails, texts, and personal intercessions from citizens — induced a change of mind in two previous supporters of the grants: budget chair Heidi Shafer and David Reaves, both Republicans. They joined fellow GOP member Mark Billingsley of Germantown — formerly the lone holdout against the grants, as he reminded the audience — in casting a nay vote.

The process was too “subjective,” Billingsley argued. Reaves and Shafer acknowledged that, and while they still thought the district-grant formula was a good idea, they were bowing to the will of their constituents.

Democrat Reginald Milton, author of the grant idea, held firm, insisting that government had “a role and responsibility to serve all its citizens.” Fellow Democrat Melvin Burgess told the two defecting Republicans, “We don’t represent the same districts. I represent District 7. Mine is a poor district.”

The ultimate vote, 10-3 in favor of the grants, indicated that there was still a fair degree of solidarity among the commissioners regarding the issue of self-assertion.

There had been an expected party-line division on the issue of third and final approval of the $4.37 county tax rate, same as the current one, with five Republicans — Shafer, Roland, Billingsley, Reaves, and George Chism — voting no in an 8-5 outcome, but most other issues saw the same degree of unity as was demonstrated on committee day last Wednesday, when the commission took on the Luttrell administration on two issues — an administration switch from Nationwide Insurance to Prudential as administrator of a county deferred-compensation plan for employees and an insistence that the commission had a right to its own attorney.

On Wednesday, commissioners went back and forth with spokespersons for the administration on the attorney matter. After a prolonged executive session, closed to the media, it was agreed that, while the county charter forbade the commission’s having a full-time attorney of its own, it permitted the commission to engage separate counsel for specific ad-hoc purposes, as, for example, during the late school-merger controversy, when the commission hired an outside law firm to litigate for its position.

Otherwise, the charter empowered the county attorney’s staff, headed by Ross Dyer, to represent county government in general, the commission, as well as the administration.

As a final add-on item to Monday’s agenda, Democratic Commissioner Van Turner introduced what was, in effect, a reprise of last Wednesday’s two controversies by proposing that the commission engage an attorney to look into the Nationwide-Prudential matter. The fat was back in the fire.

“It’s hard to serve two masters. It says that in the Bible” was how Roland posed the issue.

As might have been expected, the Turner proposal generated yet another extended back-and-forth, with Dyer and assistant county attorney Kim Koratsky insisting that they needed time to research the matter, which included the side issue of who would pay for an additional attorney. On that latter point, a consensus seemed to develop that the commission’s contingency fund would be the appropriate source.

Any possible solution to the controversy may have been sidetracked when Turner’s resolution, already a two-in-one, became a de-facto three-in-one, with his suggestion that former Commissioner Julian Bolton could serve as the ad-hoc attorney on the Nationwide-Prudential matter.

That brought on an explosion from Reaves, who pronounced himself “sick and tired” of the whole controversy. “I’ll support the school lawsuit, not this,” he said, referencing a possible action in support of Shelby County Schools’ ongoing effort to challenge alleged underfunding by the state.

And Reaves was especially scornful that Turner’s resolution included the offer of a job to Bolton.

“I can help the commission resolve this impasse. I’m not looking for a job. I just want to help,” responded Bolton.

“Will you serve for free?” shouted Reaves. “You’re asking for money.”

Eventually, that flare-up ended, with other commissioners endorsing Bolton’s ability and integrity. Bolton and Reaves shared a relatively polite tête-à-tête after the meeting.

Meanwhile, though, Turner’s resolution was sidetracked, referred back to the general government committee, which Turner chairs and which had been the starting point of last week’s twin controversy. Dyer and company had gained the leave they sought to research the relevant issues, and the whole thing had bogged down into a truce of sorts.

• Next Thursday, July 16th, is filing deadline for the 2015 Memphis city election — which means that some long-unanswered questions will finally be resolved.

How complete is the field for city mayor? That’s one general question that needs answering. And, in particular, will Kenneth Whalum Jr. run for mayor? And, if not, will he seek one of the other offices — Council District 5 and Council Super District 9, Position 2 — for which he drew petitions last April?

One question involving former school board member and New Olivet pastor Whalum was long ago resolved, with the fraying away of any semblance of an arrangement with Memphis Police Association head Mike Williams, whereby only one of them would be a mayoral candidate. Both Williams, directly, and Whalum, indirectly, have since debunked that idea.

Meanwhile, spiffy new electronic roadside signs have begun to appear advertising the candidacy for the Super District 9, Position 2, seat of Joe Cooper — remember him? — who has also said he will offer free bus transportation to the polls for anyone needing it.

Cooper’s signs pledge his vote to restore the lost benefits of police and fire employees, and he credits Williams with being his authority on the matter.

Another Cooper idea for dealing with fiscal scarcities in city government is to sell naming rights to City Hall, and he cites as precedents the corporate titles adorning football stadiums in Nashville and elsewhere. Er, any potential bidders out there?

By next week, we should also have a fairly complete reckoning of what various candidates’ financial disclosures for the second quarter were. Stay tuned.

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Politics Politics Feature

Commission Plays 52-Pickup

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Early on in Monday’s regular business session of the Shelby County Commission, Commissioner  Melvin Burgess, a Democrat, moved to defer for two weeks a vote on appointing someone to fill a Judicial Commission vacancy, on the grounds that a discussion on the matter would crowd out some necessary and potentially lengthy deliberations on the county budget and tax rate for fiscal 2015-16.

That was either a face-value statement, as Burgess insisted, or a political maneuver, as the Republican members of the commission — or most of them — suspected, and very shortly the provisional consensus on a budget/tax rate combination that had apparently been reached in a lengthy commission session on May 20th began to come asunder.

Several of the GOP members — conspicuously excluding Steve Basar, who supported Burgess’ motion — objected that most of the 15 applicants for Judicial Commissioner were sitting in the commission audience and had cleared their personal slates in order to be present for the scheduled vote.

; Privately, they began to sense that some deal had been made that involved trade-offs of various kinds, and Basar’s support of the Burgess motion convinced some of them, at least, of something that Commissioner David Reaves, a GOP member from Bartlett, was willing to voice later on:

“It all goes back to the chairmanship vote,” Reaves said, referring to a reorganizational vote of the newly elected commission last fall. Basar, who had been vice chair of the previous commission, had expected to be elected chairman but was stunned to find that most of his fellow Republicans were committed to other candidates. In the end, a majority of Republicans united behind Democrat Justin Ford, who had often voted with the GOP contingent during his first term.

Whatever the reason for that reversal — and they were probably as much personal as political — it made for a commission divided along clearly partisan lines, with the body’s Democrats, plus Basar, on one side, and the Republicans, plus Ford, on the other.

For weeks last fall, the two factions waged procedural warfare, with the Democratic/Basar coalition seeking either to unseat Ford as chairman or to drastically limit his authority. In the end, Ford survived, though with modestly curtailed prerogatives, and the showdown eased up. It, indeed, had been largely forgotten, until Monday, when Burgess made his motion. 

Ford, as chairman, attempted to disallow any deferral, but in the resultant vote, Burgess’ fellow Democrats, plus Basar, prevailed.

“Basar tipped his hand,” Reaves said. “He’s looking toward September, for the next chairman’s vote and trying to gain some leverage. Why else would he vote that way? It allowed us to figure out quickly that he had flopped.”

Basar denied any such motive, but he agreed that the Republicans began to shift, more or less in unison, to a common strategy, “once they saw me voting again with the Democrats.”

One consequence was a defeat for a long-pending ordinance proposed by Basar to apply pedestrian safety laws to unincorporated areas of Shelby County. Basar needed nine votes, but Republicans Reaves and Terry Roland, who had agreed to help him meet his quota, withdrew their support.

Subsequently, the old arithmetic of Democrats-plus-Basar versus Republicans-plus-Ford reasserted itself on vote after vote, preventing agreement on matters that, as of the marathon commission meeting of May 20th, had seemed either settled or within easy reach. 

The commissioners had then seemed to agree on a formula dividing some $1.8 million equally between each of the 13 commissioners for them to distribute to non-profit organizations in their districts. That matter, now involving a lesser sum of $1.3 million and altered to include other services and recipients beyond non-profits, was referred back to committee on Monday.

More importantly, a sense of distrust had arisen among the commission Republicans regarding what they thought had been a common commitment to use part of a $6 million surplus claimed by the administration of Mayor Mark Luttrell to lower the county tax rate one cent, from $4.37 to $4.36. 

The GOP members now began to suspect behind-the-scenes collusion between the administration, which had never been sold on the tax decrease, preferring to use any left-over differential on infrastructure, and Democratic members, who, now supported by Basar, were proposing to raise several sums apparently agreed upon on May 20th — notably for the Sheriff’s Department and Juvenile Court, each of which were seeking significant increases.

Consequently, Roland proposed a 4-cent reduction in the tax rate (“as a way of getting one cent,” he would later acknowledge).That went down, by the same quasi-party line vote as before, as did a follow-up vote for the 1-cent reduction.

In the end, a “flat” or stable tax rate at the current level of $4.37 received the same 7-6 vote distribution for the first of three required votes, and all budget items were deferred or referred back to committee.

In a true sense, nothing got resolved on Monday, though several commission meetings, both scheduled and ad hoc, are sure to revisit the budget/tax rate matters between now and the July 1st fiscal-year deadline. And several members, seeing the prospect of consensus slipping further way, are foreseeing that an official arbitration process will need to be invoked.

“Irresponsible,” was Chairman Ford’s verdict on Monday’s meeting.

• On the mayoral-race front, most observers are now betting that the Rev. Kenneth Whalum Jr., the New Olivet Baptist Church pastor and former school board member, will run for mayor, despite his insistence that he will defer to Memphis Police Association President Mike Williams, a declared candidate.

“He’s making noise like he is,” said Williams last week at Broadway Pizza, after one in a series of what will be several organizational meetings, noting that “I have never asked Whalum about not running. …  I’m just moving at my pace. Even if he runs, we’re still going to be friends. … My destiny has nothing to do with his destiny.”


•Oh, and make room for Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges on your tout sheet. The Zambodian prince, a frequent mayoral candidate in the past, says he’ll pull a petition for mayor next week.


• And, almost unnoticed, Joe Cooper (yes, that Joe Cooper) has put together a potentially effective campaign team in his latest quest for a political comeback as a candidate for the City Council Super District 9, Position 2 seat.

Cooper says he expects to spend $100,000 on his race and has engaged the professional consulting team of Matt Kuhn and Mike Lipe to help him do it. Gene Buehler and Karla Willingham Templeton are Cooper’s campaign co-chairs.

Cooper, who serves wrestling legend Jerry Lawler as an agent and manager, says that Thursday of this week will be officially recognized as “Jerry Lawler Day” in both Memphis and Jackson, Tennessee, with Mayor A C Wharton said to be ready to issue a proclamation in his City Hall office on Thursday and Jackson Mayor Jerry Gist honoring Lawler similarly on Thursday night.


• So, guess who else is being touted for Mayor. Yep, Harold Ford Jr.

But not of Memphis, Ford’s erstwhile home base. No, the transplanted former 9th District congressman and 2006 U.S. Senate candidate, is apparently being talked up for mayor of New York, his current abode — the most recent hints of such a prospect coming from Bloomberg Business, which reported last week on a Lincoln Center “American Songbook” gala that, according to the periodical, honored Ford for his fund-raising efforts on behalf of the center.

Said the article: “‘Mayor’ was on the lips of some guests, though not Ford’s. Asked about his interest in leading the city, Ford, who once considered a run for a U.S. Senate seat from New York and has endorsed Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race, said ‘I’m a new father for the second time, that’s what I’m focused on.'” 

The next mayoral race in New York will occur in 2017. Current Mayor Bill de Blasio, an avowed liberal, is in some quarters considered vulnerable to a challenge from the center or right.

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Politics Politics Feature

As the Memphis election process moves ahead slowly, dramatic events may be brewing on the County Commission.

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

It is a strange and frustrating time for followers of local politics.

Strange, in that the rosters seem fairly complete for all the races to be run this year in the Memphis city election and seemed so even before it became possible for candidates to draw petitions from the Shelby County Election Commission on April 17.

And frustrating because, while there are surely surprises yet to come between now and July 17, the filing deadline for city races (the question of former School Board member’s Kenneth Whalum’s mayoral plans, for instance, or the status of his either-me-or-you agreement with declared mayoral candidate Mike Williams), the pace of change is agonizingly slow, almost glacial.

Oh, there are hot rumors to melt some of that ice (reports that Randy Wade, former Sheriff’s candidate and ex-aide to Congressman Steve Cohen, resume active politics as a candidate for City Council, for example), but for the most part, the sides seem to have been drawn, and we’ll just have to wait out the results, which won’t be final until all the votes are counted on October 8.

That’s anachronistically called “election day,” although active walk-in votes, probably amounting to at least half the total number, will be occurring in the early voting period, stretching from September 18 to September 29).

And, in the case of several of the Council’s seriously contested district races, there’s a whole new election to be had, involving runoffs likely to be completed on November 3.

•This-Just-In Department: An intriguing new development is the likelihood that Scott McCormick, currently executive director of Memphis Botanic Garden, a member of the Shelby County Schools Board, and a former Council member, will seek the Super District 9, Position 2 seat vacated by former member Shea Flinn, who resigned two weeks ago to become a Chamber of Commerce executive.

McCormick confided on Monday, after he and other proposed members of the Shelby County Health Care Corporation’s board of directors were approved by the County Commission, that he intended to draw a petition this week to run for the vacant Position 2 seat. If elected, McCormick would be required to resign from the School Board as of Next January 1, creating a vacancy there.

•And, hark! If the city election as a whole suffers just now from a case of the slows, there is one significant winner-take-all City Council “election” that will be resolved next week. This is the choice to be made on Tuesday, May 19, by the 12 remaining Council members of an interim Council member to replace Flinn.

Deadline for aspirants to that interim position to submit applications to the Council office is noon of Thursday, May 14, this week. And, though several of the candidates who intend also to be on the October 8 regular ballot will be seeking the interim position as well, it is beginning to seem likely that one of several candidates who profess themselves interested in the interim positon only have a better shot at being chosen.<
Among the more prominent of the interim-only candidates to have declared their interest so far are lawyer Alan Crone, a well-connected former chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party, and Fran Triplett, who won recognition over the past year as a citizen advocate for the retention of city employees’ benefits guarantees. Also said to be contemplating a try for the seat is businessman Lester Litt, who previously sought a Council seat in the election of 2007.

•Although the agenda for Monday’s regular meeting of the Shelby County Commission seemed almost harmlessly bland, several matters of fairly serious import developed during discussion.

One such concerned, in the language of Monday’s agenda package, an “Amendment to the existing Planned Development to allow for one payday loan establishment in Parcel 1.” What that turned out to involve was a proposal for continuing to allow “Cash Now,” an existing payday loan company operated by a company called Financial One in Cordova at the intersection of Macon and Houston Levee Rds.

The “Cash Now” site has become the focus of controversy, in that several residents of the area, as well as the Land Use Control Board, contend that its very existence is in violation of previously adopted code applying to Gray’s Creek Area Plan. Specifically, the code would seem to prohibit such an enterprise “within 1,320 feet of a residential property.

What critics of the “Cash Now” establishment maintain is that Financial One’s original application, approved by the Office of Planning and Development and the Commission in 2013, misrepresented the nature of the establishment’s business as one related to financial planning or to investments rather than to payday loans.

Some Commission members allege that the issue goes deeper. Heidi Shafer, the Commission’s budget chair, said the process that resulted in the current location of “Cash Now” (which has announced plans to expand its premises) may not be the result of a mere misrepresentation or a bureaucratic oversight but instead “has an unpleasant odor of commissions past.”

She suggested that the Commission was in danger of being “gamed” and invoked the phrase “Tennessee Waltz,” seemingly implying that some sort of backroom arrangement had been responsible for the original approval of “Cash Now” at the location.

The property lies within the Commission district of George Chism, who also objected to the process that led to “Cash Now” being where it is, and is the proverbial stone’s throw from Shafer’s district.

In the end, the Commission voted to defer a vote on the matter until its next regular business meeting of June 1.
There has also been a bit of a blowback from last week’s budget session, in which Commission members seemed so supportive of Shelby County Schools’ request for a $14.9 budget increase that some observers were calling the meeting a love-fest.

Jackson Baker

Bev Shelley makes her appeal

Budget chair Shafer is taking the lead in walking back that enthusiasm. She has announced that she will be scheduling an additional “education-only” budget session “as soon as we can before we vote on the 20th” to discuss the ramifications for local school funding of the state’s Basic Education Plan, as well as future maintenance-of-effort and OPEB (Other Post-Employment Benefits) obligations.

•After Monday’s meeting, members of the Commission had a dinner meeting with staffers of the non-profit organization JIFF (Juvenile Intervention and Faith-Based Follow-Up), which attempts to rehabilitate hard-core offenders in the Juvenile Court System, those with seemingly intractable records involving five or more offenses.

The Commission members were clearly affected by evidence of JIFF’s successes presented by executive director Richard Graham and the organization’s board chair, Lauren Young, and most of all by hearty recommendations of the organization by Juvenile Court Judge Dan Michael and by JIFF board member Bev Shelley, whose husband John in 2013was robbed and then shot and killed by youthful gang members while he was appraising a house in the Parkway Village area for potential renovation.

Bev Shelley has since become a crusader for rehabilitation efforts like those provided by JIFF and made a moving appeal on behalf of “intervening these children’s lives” and giving them “the help that they need” to move away from criminality and into the social mainstream.

The upshot Monday was an apparent consensus among the attending Commissioners to include JIFF’s request for a $150,000 annual funding contract to supplement its limited resources within the budget for Judge Michael’s office.

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Politics Politics Feature

Spring Training

It’s still a little less than two months — April 17th, to be exact — before candidates for city offices can even pull a qualifying petition from the Election Commission. And it’s nearly five months after that until the November 3rd election itself — seven month total.

For emphasis, let’s put that last figure in Arabic numerals: 7 months before Memphis voters can finish signaling their intentions on city offices — encompassing the lengthy span from now, when major league baseball teams are beginning spring training, to a date when the World Series is likely to still be happening.

And yet the roster is rapidly filling up for the most important race on this year’s election calendar — that for Memphis mayor. With the formal announcement of candidacy on Monday of this week by Memphis Police Association President Mike Williams, the number of well-known names still expected to be on the mayoral ballot has shrunk to two — City Councilman Harold Collins, who appointed an exploratory committee last fall and former Memphis School Board member and New Olivet Baptist church pastor Kenneth Whalum Jr.

[IMAGE-1]Whalum is forthright about his own plans, which to a great extent are based on an understanding with Williams, whose views on city matters overlap with his own. It boils down to this: “If Mike follows through and picks up a petition when the time comes and files, I won’t run,” says Whalum. “If he doesn’t, it’s 100-percent certain that I will.”

Already declared, besides Williams, are incumbent Mayor A C Wharton, City Councilman Jim Strickland, former County Commission Chairman James Harvey, current commission Chairman Justin Ford, and former University of Memphis basketball player Detric Golden.

And, while Ford, who has commission business to attend to, has not yet finished stockpiling his artillery, and Harvey has not yet begun to fight, the others are already doing battle. Strickland is speaking lots and firing away at Wharton on an almost daily basis via Facebook and Twitter; Williams and his supporters are active on the same social media; and the mayor is playing his bully pulpit for all it’s worth, materializing in numerous speech appearances and press conference formats that allow him to do double duty as city official and candidate for reelection.

And Golden, who has yet to demonstrate what his political base is, is turning up at public events, including those held by other candidates, and for well over a year has been conspicuous by driving around town in a car that is tricked-out with signs advertising his candidacy.

The mayoral-campaign activity so far is a form of spring training, and, like its baseball equivalent, it is a way of working the kinks out, finding a groove, and getting the jump on the competition. For that reason, Collins and Whalum won’t be able to procrastinate much longer on revealing their own intentions, and an announcement from one or both of them may well beat this issue to the printer.

There’s another reason why time is of the essence: money, which is a finite resource, especially here in hard-pressed Memphis, and won’t stretch far enough to cover every candidate’s needs. In a certain sense, it’s a matter of first come, first served, and the most accomplished self-servers so far are Wharton and Strickland. Both of them have been at it for a while — with receipts through January 15th showing a campaign balance for Wharton of $201,088 and for Strickland of $181,595.

The others have some catching up to do.

• As one of the first commenters to the Flyer‘s online coverage of the event said, “A very sad day, indeed, for the Shelby County Democratic Party in more ways than one.”

The event in question was the forced resignation on Saturday of Shelby County Democratic Party Chairman Bryan Carson, well-liked in his own right and the son of the widely admired Gale Jones Carson, a former local party chair herself and the longtime secretary of the state Democratic Party.

In a nutshell, the younger Carson had, on the fateful Saturday, faced a no-holds-barred interrogation into his oversight of party finances by the party’s executive committee — 76 strong, at peak, with roughly 50 on hand for the occasion, which was closed to the press and public. Saturday’s meeting followed two prior closed-door meetings with Carson last week by the party’s smaller 11-member steering committee, the second of which had resulted in a unanimous vote of “no confidence.”

All three meetings had been called out of a sense of crisis that developed from Carson’s repeated failure either to address party members’ concerns about the state of party finances or to deal satisfactorily with ominous promptings for an accounting from the Tennessee Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance. The bureau had already levied three $500 fines on the local party for late or incomplete submissions of financial disclosure statements and threatened another of $10,000, along with a showdown meeting in Nashville in March.

There were two immediate issues: The first was a disclosure statement that had been overdue since October 28th. Carson would hurriedly prepare one and submit it, such as it was, to the bureau on Wednesday, February 18th, the same day as his second meeting with the party steering committee and their vote of no confidence.

The other issue was even more troubling. It concerned an ad hoc audit, prepared at the request of the steering committee by Diane Cambron, wife of David Cambron, the local party’s first vice chair, and Dick Klenz, longtime president of the Germantown Democratic Club — both with unimpeachable reputations for fair-mindedness.

The audit showed that, since last September, Carson had made 63 withdrawals from the party’s bank account, in an amount totaling $8,437.89, and could produce no receipts for what he contended had been cash payments on behalf of the party. Even allowing for figures submitted in what Carson called a “self audit” (again, unaccompanied by receipts and made difficult to trace by virtue of the chairman’s having arbitrarily switched the party banking account), there seemed to be an amount of $6,091.16, which the Cambron-Klenz audit referred to as “unsubstantiated.”

Carson maintained in all three meetings with party committees that he had done nothing wrong and that the apparent discrepancies were the result of an overload of activity during the 2014 campaign year, coupled with the fact that he had been compelled, he said, to try to function as his own party treasurer.

That last was another fact that confounded committee members, who had thought that party member Jonathan Lewis was functioning as party treasurer. It turned out during the week’s discussions that Lewis had shied away from the service and had not registered with the state after being given a glimpse by Carson into the actual state of party finances.

In any case, the predominant mood of the party executive committee on Saturday was to reject Carson’s explanations, as well as his expressed wish to maintain at least a titular hold on the office of chairman (while handing over actual control to first Vice Chair David Cambron) through the party’s scheduled March caucus-convention rounds that are scheduled to produce a new executive committee and chairman on March 28th.

Vice Chair Cambron has been named acting chair, and he announced that one of his first acts would be to open a new party banking account this week, so as to provide a revised and reliable financing accounting from the ground up.

Beyond that, there has been no word from anyone speaking for the party to take further action or pursue legal remedies and no apparent appetite for doing so.

Various online commenters on the matter have made a point of noting that the Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office has issued a warrant of “theft over $500” against Axl David, former treasurer of the Young Republicans in that Middle Tennessee county, for what Sheriff Robert Arnold called “several discrepancies in the management of Club funds.” But no one has demonstrated any analogy between that situation and the one in Shelby County.

Bryan Carson, meanwhile, apparently still intends to seek the open District 7 City Council seat in this year’s city election. In January, he finished one vote behind Berlin Boyd in a council vote to name an interim District 7 councilman to succeed Lee Harris, who had resigned to assume his new duties as a state Senator.

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News The Fly-By

Second Line Funeral Held to Mourn Passage of Amendment 1

CREDIT: Alexandra Pusateri

There may not have been a body to bury, but last weekend, a “second line funeral” allowed many to mourn how the passage of Amendment 1 may affect their bodies.

Accompanied by musicians on drums and brass, a crowd paraded through Midtown from Overton Park, circling to Madison and walking directly through Overton Square. The mourners also made a stop at CHOICES on Poplar. Honks and cheers came from passersby as marchers danced, sang, and twirled.

“This is not a protest,” said Sarah Ledbetter, one of the organizers for the event. “This is a second line funeral, which is a very specific cultural tradition meant to honor loss and regather the energies of that thing in a new direction. A protest is a statement of what you’re against. This is a demonstrative act of emotional and energetic loss.”

Alexandra Pusateri

Marchers in the second line displayed signs.

The second line parade — based on New Orleans tradition — may not have been a traditional one, but the symbolism remained. Organizers’ portrayal of a jazz funeral was executed well as mourners appeared with parasols, umbrellas, and signs. Some wore black to further drive home the point.

Planning for the event spawned immediately after it was revealed that Amendment 1 had passed.

“I went to all my friends who I encouraged to vote and said, ‘I just want you all to feel proud that you voted today,'” Ledbetter said. “From there, the grief and the emotion that was swimming just in this text [message] chain, it was just like an engine that needed to go. In that very text chain, I was like, ‘We are going to take to the streets. What day are you free?'”

While the amendment to the state’s Constitution itself may not limit access to abortion, nine days after it passed, Rep. Rick Womick (R-Rockvale) filed a bill that would require an ultrasound of the fetus to be offered to the patient two days before a scheduled abortion, unless there’s a medical emergency.

If the patient declines, the medical provider would be required to give “a simultaneous verbal explanation of the results of the live, real-time ultrasound images, including a medical description of the dimensions of the embryo or fetus, the presence of cardiac activity, and the presence of arms, legs, external members and internal organs, and provide a copy of the ultrasound image to the woman,” according to the bill. The patient would also be required to hear the heartbeat of the fetus.

A federal lawsuit has been filed by some opponents of Amendment 1, including Rev. Kenneth T. Whalum, Jr., who claims some voters for the amendment were manipulating votes by not also voting for governor, which they say is against the state Constitution’s Article IX, Section 3.  The “Yes on 1” campaign called for voters to sit out the governor’s race — as it was “doubling” the vote for the amendment.

Shelby County and Hardeman County, along with the counties that house Nashville, Chattanooga, Knoxville, and other pockets of rural areas across the state, voted against the amendment.

“So many of our sister cities in Tennessee voted the same way as we did,” Ledbetter said. “The only thing that makes me sad is that Shelby County doesn’t vote in the numbers that it really should be.”

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Politics Politics Feature

No Rest for the Weary

CREDIT: Kyle and Norris photos courtesy of Jackson Baker

Shelby Countians have figured in several post-election moves:

The Rev.  Kenneth Whalum Jr., a possible candidate for Memphis mayor next year, isn’t waiting until then to make some waves. Whalum is one of eight plaintiffs from across the state in a suit in federal court designed to invalidate the ‘Yes’ vote seemingly conferred by a majority of voters on Amendment 1, which grants the General Assembly considerable new authority in legislating on abortion matters.

The basis of the suit, which was filed Friday in Nashville, is the language of Article XI, Section 3, of the state Constitution, which states that voters “approve and ratify such amendment or amendments by a majority of all the citizens of the state voting for governor, voting in their favor.”

The plaintiffs, all of whom opposed Amendment 1 and all of whom aver that they cast votes in the governor’s race, say that the constitutional language should be taken literally and that the state has a duty to determine and count only those votes on an amendment question that were cast by persons who also cast votes for governor.

Records compiled by the office of Secretary of State Tre Hargett showed that 32,570 more votes were cast on Amendment 1 than for governor, 1,385,178 as against 1,352,608. The plaintiffs alleged that the disproportion was the direct result of what their attorney Bill Harbison of Nashville, president-elect of the Tennessee Bar Association, said was a strategy by proponents of the amendment of “intentionally abstaining from the governor’s race in an effort to manipulate the numbers in order to pass an amendment” and “a clear violation of [others’] 14th Amendment rights.”

It seems anything but clear to Hargett, a former state representative from Bartlett and a nominal defendant in the suit, along with Governor Bill Haslam, new state Attorney General Herb Slatery, and the seven members of the state Election Commission.

Hargett notes that state election officials have never tried to match votes on amendment questions with ballots cast by the same voters for governor but have measured amendment votes, more abstractly, against a threshold of 50-percent-plus-one of the total votes cast in the governor’s race. “It does not make sense any other way,” he has said.

Also weighing in was Brian Harris, president of Tennessee Right to Life and a coordinator for the Yes on 1 campaign. “Even if you wrongly discount those who may have voted for Amendment 1 but not in the governor’s race, there is still a margin of almost 20,000 votes in favor of the amendment,” said Harris.

Aside from legalities, some complicated mathematical reckonings may figure in this case, due for a first hearing in U.S. District Court in Nashville on January 12th. Meanwhile, legislative advocates of new restrictions on abortion are known to be readying bills in time for the new session of the General Assembly, opening up the same month.

• And speaking of enabling legislation, Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris (R-Collierville) issued a press release on Monday, the eve of Veterans Day, announcing that he and state Representative Rusty Crowe (R-Johnson City) were drafting legislation to allow veterans’ organizations to conduct raffles and games of chance for fund-raising purposes, in accordance with the provisions of Amendment 4, which passed handily in the election.

The amendment expressly grants to 501(c)(19) organizations (veterans’ groups) the same ability to hold such fund-raising affairs as are currently permitted to 501(c)(3) organizations, so long as the veterans’ groups observe the same deadlines for submitting applications to do so — January 31st of a given year for an event scheduled to occur between July 1st  of that year and June 30th of the next. 

A technical point, even a housekeeping matter, but a necessary one. 

Norris, who doubles as chairman of the veterans subcommittee of the Senate State and Local Government Committee, said in the release: “Our legislation will allow this process to move forward and will ensure that the deadline affords these organizations enough time to get their applications in.”

            

• Hargett and Norris, along with state Senator Brian Kelsey of Germantown, were among Republicans cited this week by The Commercial Appeal‘s veteran Capitol Hill reporter Rick Locker as likely candidates for governor in 2016. Though their ranks have progressively been thinned in recent years by an accelerating statewide shift of political power to the GOP, there are Democratic names involved in gubernatorial speculation as well.

One of them is that of Gordon Ball, who was recently defeated by Republican incumbent Lamar Alexander in this year’s U.S. Senate race.

The wealthy Knoxville lawyer, who made his legal reputation and his fortune suing big-ticket corporations, is meanwhile going through some significant personal changes.

On the plus side, Ball, a graduate of the University of Memphis Law School whose son Tanner is now a student here, told the Flyer last week that he plans to transition at year’s end from his life-long residence in East Tennessee to a residence on Memphis’ Mud Island. 

On the down side, Ball also saw his marriage of less than a year to wife Happy Hayes Ball, who accompanied him on his first several campaign trips to Memphis, come to an apparent end. He filed divorce papers last Friday, listing a variety of complaints, including his wife’s alleged unauthorized use of funds from his business account.

Ball’s estranged wife also figured in another possibly unauthorized action that became a campaign issue. It was her removal of a television set and several other furnishings from the couple’s condo in Destin, Florida, that prompted Alabaman Barry Kraselsky, who had purchased the condo from Ball, to sue for breach of contract over the missing items.

That dispute is yet to be adjudicated. Meanwhile, Ball, who has resumed his law practice, says he intends to play golf and take a post-election vacation in Naples.

• An uneasy truce that settled over the Shelby County Commission following a hearing on the body’s rules last week by Chancellor Jim Kyle was in danger of erupting into discord again in this week’s committee sessions.

In a hearing on Thursday, Kyle opted not to rule in the matter of a suit brought against commission Chairman Justin Ford by a group of commission plaintiffs — six Democratic members plus Republican Steve Basar — who allege that Ford violated the body’s rules in arbitrarily keeping a proposed rules change off the commission agenda.

The chancellor told both sides that the commission, in essence, had no rules to break, inasmuch as each elected version of the commission is obliged to set its own rules, and the body elected in August has not yet done so.

Both sides to the dispute had assumed that the commission was bound by rules inherited from previous commissions. The rules change sought by the plaintiffs would have lowered the threshold necessary to enact further rules changes from a two-thirds majority to a simple majority. 

Democratic Commissioner Van Turner, one of the plaintiffs in the suit and chairman of the body’s general government committee, which was scheduled to meet on Wednesday, said he intended to bring up the whole matter of commission rules. Meanwhile, said Turner, Kyle’s ruling apparently left the county charter, which calls for a simple majority to decide such matters, as the commission’s sole authority.

Behind all the legal complications is a simple power struggle, pitting the commission’s Democrats and Basar, who was vice-chair in the commission’s last session but lost his bid to become chairman in the current session, versus the other five Republicans plus Ford, a Democrat who gained the chairmanship with GOP support.

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Politics Politics Feature

Election Year 2015 is Upon Us

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

With Election Less Than a Month Away, Patterns Are Taking Shape

CREDIT: Jackson baker

We are now less than a month away from August 7th, when the final votes in the Shelby County general election and state and federal primaries will be counted, and distinct patterns are taking shape.

Those races that were expected to be the most closely watched ones at the beginning of the election season — for the 9th District congressional seat, for Shelby County Mayor, for District Attorney General, for the District 29 state Senate seat, and for Juvenile Court Judge and Juvenile Court Clerk, among others — continue to command attention.

Although several circumstances — including charges and counter-charges, endorsements, demographics, and the like — are potentially influencing voter reactions, one factor that cannot be overlooked is the perennial one of money. Some candidates have it in spades, while others are struggling.

A word of caution: Lest it be forgotten, two candidates in the May 6th primaries for county offices — Kenneth Whalum, running for the Democratic nomination for County Mayor, and Martavius Jones, a candidate in the Democratic primary for the District 10 County Commission seat — nearly won races against highly favored opponents with more visible campaigns and vastly more funding.

Credit those outcomes to the power of name recognition, which remains a major factor in the current scene.

For what it’s worth, however, here are three examples:

• City Councilman Lee Harris, who is campaigning aggressively in his Democratic primary effort to unseat District 29 state Senator Ophelia Ford, garnering endorsements by the bushel and across the political board, is also raising disproportionate amounts of money — he boasts a 10-to-1 ratio over Ford’s in the reporting quarter ending June 30th. (His edge in money on hand is somewhat lesser — $28,646.29 to $11,549.66, a shade less than 3-to-1).

• Incumbent Republican County Mayor Mark Luttrell, whose ads have been omnipresent on TV of late, has a marked financial advantage over Democratic nominee Deidre Malone, with a reported $132,417 on hand as of the June 30th report, against $38,915.

• Rather famously, the Democrats’ nominee for District Attorney General, Joe Brown, whose colleagues on the party ticket were counting on him for help, both from the luster of his “Judge Joe Brown” TV fame and from his bankroll, has hit snags in both respects and reports only $745 on hand as of June 30th, compared to $269,227 for his opponent, Republican incumbent D.A. Amy Weirich.

In all three of these cases, the financial underdog is seeking a tactical edge elsewhere.

Ford had her first public event last week, a fund raiser/meet-and-greet at the funeral home of brother Edmond Ford on Elvis Presley Boulevard, gathering around her not only numerous members of the still powerful Ford extended family but supporters from elsewhere on the political spectrum, notably GOP County Commissioner Terry Roland, her former opponent in a 2005 special election.

Malone continued with a series of events targeting various components of the Shelby County body politic — meeting, for example, with a group of women’s rights advocates on Saturday at Pyro’s Pizza on Union, and contrasting her strong pro-choice stance with what she described as positions on Luttrell’s part that were ambivalent at best, particularly in his having chosen to disenfranchise Planned Parenthood in 2011 as the county’s partner in employed Title X federal funding for women’s health.

Brown, meanwhile, was working the grass roots, especially in the inner city, with his “Law and Order Tour” with sidekick Bennie Cobb, the Democratic nominee for Sheriff. He presided over an event last week at the Central Train Station downtown and made appearances at forums, like one held at St. Augustine’s Catholic Church on Sunday, where he continued to levy attacks on Weirich, blaming her for negligence in the matter of the much-discussed rape-kit backlog and questioning her use of federal and state funding.

• Early voting for the August 7th elections begins this Friday, July 18th, at the Shelby County Election Commission’s downtown location, and will continue there and, from Monday, July 21st, at 21 satellite voting sites until Saturday, August 2nd. (The locations of the satellite sites will be posted at memphisflyer.com.)

• In the wake of several meetings of the Shelby County Democratic Executive Committee hashing out disputes over the party’s endorsement of judicial candidates but leaving them intact, a group of Democratic lawyers, including former party chairmen David Cocke and Van Turner, is issuing its own ballot — including judges left off the party endorsement list whom they deem deserving.

These include Probate Court Judge Kathleen Gomes, Criminal Court Judge Mark Ward, and General Sessions Judges Bill Anderson, Phyllis Gardner, and John Donald, among others.

• The first fully separate cattle call for Board candidates took place Monday night at the First Baptist Church on Broad under the joint sponsorship of several ad hoc education organizations.

Present and accounted for were Chris Caldwell and Freda Garner-Williams in District 1; Stephanie Love in District 3; David Winston in District 5; Shante K. Avant in District 6; Miska Clay Bibbs in District 7; and Roshun Austin, Mike Kernell, and Damon Curry Morris in District 9.

Absent from the event, which took place during an off-and-on thunderstorm, were Teddy King and Anthony D. Lockhart in District 3; Scott McCormick in District 5; Jimmy L. Warren in District 6; and William E. Orgel in District 8.

The format called for each candidate to make an introductory statement and field one question from the moderator, Daarel Burnette II of the education periodical Chalkbeat Tennessee subbing for Keith Norman, the church pastor, who was absent. Though Burnette’s question was the same for each candidate, having to do with the candidate’s foremost objective as a prospective board member, there was a fair amount of variety in the answers elicited, most of them sensible and well informed, concerning issues ranging from curriculum to parent-teacher relations.

A final round of questions was solicited from the audience. Fielding a question about the desirability of separating “politics” from education, Kernell, a longtime state representative from southeast Memphis, was unique in embracing that inevitable pairing, saying that his experience and entrée with the state legislature could have positive results for his district and Shelby County Schools (SCS).

The nine-member SCS board being elected in this year’s school board elections from the city of Memphis and unincorporated areas of Shelby County replaces the provisional seven-member board, which was elected from the whole of Shelby County.

One of the members of the outgoing seven-member board, David Reaves of Bartlett, was an interested spectator Monday night, chatting amiably before the event with several of his current Board colleagues who were taking part in the forum. Reaves is now a County Commissioner-elect and will be swapping chairs in September.

Monday night’s event took place under the auspices of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. Ad hoc co-sponsors included representatives of Students First, Stand for Children, and the aforesaid Chalkbeat Tennessee.