Lee Harris with friend at
last week’s DNC (Photo: Courtesy David Upton)
Politics is like any professional sport you could name in that new rosters, new seasons, and new players are undergoing formation and preparation even as current contests are grinding to a conclusion.
To be specific, there is a ferment of activity in Shelby County right now, aimed at the elections of 2026. Two positions in particular already have potential candidates looking at them seriously and making plans.
The positions are those for Shelby County mayor, where current Mayor Lee Harris will be completing his term-limited time in office, and the 9th District congressional seat, held against all comers by incumbent Democrat Steve Cohen since his election there in 2006.
County mayor: At least six Democrats are looking seriously at the idea of seeking what will be an open seat. (Note: There may well be Republicans eyeing it as well, but, the county’s demographic imbalance being what it is, the GOP is as fundamentally handicapped in seeking local office as Democrats are in attempting to crack the Republican supermajority statewide.)
Melvin Burgess, the current assessor, is known to be contemplating a run for county mayor. He’s been thinking out loud about it since his time serving on the county commission from 2010 to 2018.
His experience in office and genial personality, coupled with the lingering resonance with voters of his father, Melvin Burgess Sr., an erstwhile police chief, give him a leg up.
Harold Collins, the current CAO for Shelby County Government and former city councilman and candidate for city mayor, has acknowledged the likelihood of a race for county mayor and is all but announced.
J.W. Gibson, the mega-developer and former county commissioner who ran for Memphis mayor last year, is holding meet-and-greets with an eye toward a county mayor’s race.
JB Smiley Jr., the erstwhile gubernatorial hopeful now serving as chair of the Memphis City Council, is being somewhat coy about it but has convinced friends he’ll seek the county mayor’s job as a logical stepping-stone from his present power position.
Mickell Lowery is the son of Myron Lowery, a former well-known local city councilman who served a temporary term as Memphis mayor. Having successfully acquitted a term as county commission chair, the younger Lowery is considered ripe for advancement.
Heidi Kuhn, the current Criminal Court clerk, is known to be actively preparing a race for county mayor, one based both on her activist conduct of her present job and her highly saleable personal qualities.
• The outlook for the 9th District congressional seat is somewhat different, in that the seat won’t be open unless the present long-term incumbent, Democrat Steve Cohen, chooses to vacate it.
There is no current indication that Cohen is so minded, and his record of responsiveness to this majority-Black district, along with his unbroken string of successes against a string of name challengers make a direct challenge to Cohen almost prohibitively difficult.
Yet potential candidates are in the wings. Most obvious is current County Mayor Harris, whose prior legislative service on the city council and in the state Senate, where he was Democratic leader, whetted his appetite for such a job. His credentials have meanwhile been enhanced by strong service as an activist mayor.
Another prospect is District 86 state Representative Justin J. Pearson, whose strong activism and oratorical prowess, freshly demonstrated at the just concluded DNC, suit him for a rise in the political ranks.
And yet another prospect, if an open race should develop, is state Senator Raumesh Akbari, unique as a Democratic legislator who enjoys wide respect across political lines and has something of a national reputation as well.
Editor’s note: Our political columnist Jackson Baker and former Flyer writer Chris Davis traveled to Chicago, Illinois, last week for the Democratic National Convention from Monday, August 19th, to Thursday, August 22nd. For this story, Baker and Davis reflect on their experiences, giving light to the ever-changing political landscape.
CHICAGO — Let the record show that the second major-party convention of 2024 ended as the first one had — with a firm conviction on the part of its cadres that victory in the November general election was, if not inevitable, then likely. And if not that, at least possible.
That circumstance, ideal from the vantage point of a suspenseful showdown and a spirited turnout, depended largely on events that occurred between the two, the Republican gathering in Milwaukee in mid-July and the Democrats’ a month later.
Those events began with the withdrawal from the race of Democratic President Joe Biden, whose evident infirmities had been amply signaled in an early debate with former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee.
Kamala Harris after acceptance address (Photo: David Upton)
They continued with the substitution of Democratic nominee of Vice President Kamala Harris, as close to her party’s line as Biden had been and vastly more dynamic and appealing in espousing it.
In between these events had come what appeared to be an emotional unraveling of contestant Trump, who was largely reduced to unloosing poorly formulated insults at his new opponent, including one which, manifestly absurdly, claimed he was the better-looking of the two.
Harris had, with impressive speed and efficiency, managed to still most doubts about herself as campaigner and party avatar within her party ranks, and she had bolstered her position with her choice of a running mate, the unassuming but engagingly folksy governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, a former high-school football coach progressive enough to have been faculty advisor for a “gay-straight alliance” at his school.
The Democrats’ changing of the guard would be relatively seamless. On night one of the convention, Biden, transparently grieving, would take his demotion with gravel-voiced acceptance and would be rewarded with prearranged chants of “We love Joe” and ritual hugs from wife, family, and Kamala. All would liken him to George Washington, obscuring the look of archetypal sacrifice.
Thereafter the money rolled in, the polls responded, and it was all a rush to celebrate Kamala as the first Black woman, first Asian, first woman of color (pick one) to be nominated for president of the United States, the consecrators came forth — the old Lion Bill in his subdued approving wheeze, the Obamas, “Do something,” “Tell Trump this is one of those Black jobs,” and the formal roll call to nominate her became a collage of carnivals, all more Dionysian than Apollonian. Coach Walz came in with gridiron metaphors: “A field goal down in the fourth quarter,” “Let’s roll.”
Kamala had every reason to smile, and her ever-beaming face became mask, then masque. It was on. The entertainers arrived, Stevie Wonder sighting higher ground and Oprah Winfrey flinging her arms in wide embrace.
On the last night, it was all Kamala. And she delivered, lashing the fundamentally unserious Trump as the serious threat he was, tying him to the retrograde Project 2025 with its rolling back of American freedoms and vowing, “We’ll never go back!”
She would go on to touch all the bases: a woman’s right to bodily autonomy, tax cuts for the middle class, freedom to read, solidarity with our NATO allies, confronting Big Pharma, retarding pursuing inflation, and overhauling immigration policy, protecting the border while creating a path to citizenship.
There was one less developed point — just what to do about the Israel-Gaza war, other than to seek a ceasefire and the return of hostages taken by Hamas.
The much-ballyhooed protest of Gaza war policy — seriously overseen by squadrons of Chicago’s finest — turned out to be more pro forma than profound. Passing through the midst of the chanters of an evening, I heard one voice out on its periphery, more prevalent than the rest, and that turned out to belong to a solitary sentinel denouncing things of this world.
A Christian soldier, as it were, passing out literature extolling a world to come — one even more remote than one in which Palestinians might achieve what they and their supporters could regard as full justice.
If there was a serious issue that never made it to the rostrum of either convention in 2024, it was anything resembling a major re-evaluation of the nation’s Middle East policy.
Kamala, it seemed, was able to finesse the issue on a talking point pledging support for Israel’s right to defend itself coupled with hopes for eventual self-determination for Palestinians.
That this might be seen as progress was a statement in and of itself.
Among the Democrats taking part one day in a rooftop celebration for the Tennessee delegation atop one of Chicago’s several new Downtown skyscrapers were Joseph Walters and Brenda Speer of Speerit Hill Farm of Lynnville. A second-marriage couple, they were, in retirement age, looking to the Harris-Walz team and its attempted evocation of joy as a revival of their political hopes.
These had been lapsed now for a near-generation, since, Walters remembers, the time of Obama, when a presidential victory in the nation at large became, paradoxically, a signal for the white South, including Tennessee, to forswear its Democratic Party heritage.
These were the years when Memphis’ Jim Kyle, now a Shelby County chancellor and then the Democrats’ leader in the Tennessee state Senate and a potential heir to the mantle of lieutenant governor, began a campaign for governor in 2010, only to discover that “all the yellow-dog Democrats had become yellow-dog Republicans”
“I was so disappointed,” Speer, still a mainstay of party activity in rural Middle Tennessee, such as it is, says of that time, when her neighbors began deserting the Democratic legacy in droves.
It may be impossible now, and for some time yet, for Democrats to challenge the Republican supermajority in Tennessee for power in the state at large.
Yet the building blocks would seem to be emerging in the ranks of determined Democrats like Sarah Freeman of the Germantown Democratic Club, a candidate this year for the 8th District congressional seat now held by Republican David Kustoff. Freeman won out in what was an old-fashioned multi-candidate free-for-all in the Democratic primary, and she was accompanied at the convention by her own videographer documentarian.
There was Lee Harris, the Shelby County mayor who was on hand for ongoing policy talks with peers from local governments elsewhere, and there was first-term Memphis Mayor Paul Young, who declared to his fellow Tennesseans, “People in the hood … don’t care about our conventions. They just want things to change. And so as we leave here, I want us to take this energy and turn it into action.”
Justin J. Pearson with the Tennessee delegation (Photo: Jackson Baker)
And there was Justin J. Pearson, the oracle of change to come, the galvanizing figure of the campaign to save South Memphis from a potentially hazardous oil pipeline and later a key member of the Tennessee Three, who shamed the state’s GOP leadership for its inaction on gun safety. And still later Pearson, the District 86 state representative, would become an accomplished fundraiser and all-purpose benefactor of progressive causes he deemed meritorious or necessary. And their apostle, as in the following words delivered to the Tennessee delegation on the last morning of the convention:
“We’ve got to be fired up when we have somebody who’s been convicted of 34 felonies running against the most qualified person ever to run for president of these United States, Vice President Kamala D. Harris.
“We’ve got to be fired up for such a time and moment as this, where we are seeing the rights of women being taken. We’ve got to be fired up when the gun violence epidemic continues to plague our communities because the Tennessee Firearms Association and the National Rifle Association seem to have bought our politicians into a level of complacency and cowardice that is demeaning and degrading and hurting us.
“We’ve got to be fired up when our civil rights are being attacked on every side, and this Supreme Court acts much more like a MAGA-extremist Republican Party than it should.
“We have to be fired up in this moment to preserve and protect and defend the democratic constitutional experiment that our ancestors marched for, that our ancestors died for, that our ancestors built through many dangers, toils, and snares. We’ve got to be fired up in this moment. In Tennessee and in America, we’ve got to be fired up. …
“We are Democrats. We are Democrats.”
Pearson’s oratory was confined to the Tennessee delegation. The nation at large has not yet heard him. But they will. They will.
Meanwhile, there is the following: a priceless musing on the subject at hand from my colleague on this mission and a strong right arm indeed, Chris Davis. — Jackson Baker
……………
A new audacity: Hopeful Democrats leave Chicago full of fight, but questions linger
The rebellion started, like they do, with a normal request from the back of the bus: “Can we please just get off and walk to United Center?” The question, voiced by some unidentified patriot, who only wanted to get to the Democratic National Convention in time to hear President Joe Biden speak, set off a rumble of interest. Problem was, a small but determined group of demonstrators had broken away from the bulk of Monday’s pro-Palestinian protests in Union Park and breached the DNC’s security perimeter.
The occupation was brief and peaceful but it ended in arrests, confusion, and a lengthy lockdown of the perimeter that stranded a mile-long convoy of buses, carrying DNC guests from their Downtown hotels to the venue. The stuck Democrats were getting restless, but they weren’t getting mad; they were ready to do something.
Pro-Palestine protestors marched in Chicago. (Photo: Chris Davis)
A genial police officer, assigned to guard the shuttle carrying delegates and guests to the venue in Chicago’s Near West Side neighborhood, didn’t want anybody taking any unnecessary risks: Stick to the plan and the bus will get everybody there, eventually. Ex-military and petite, the officer was wrapped in Kevlar, strapped with tactical gear, and gifted with an evident flair for theatrical performance.
She told riders they needed to stay on the bus because modern protesters wear gloves treated with caustic chemicals so they can burn cops just by grabbing them. The officer said she thought other guests from other buses had already attempted to walk and they’d gotten into fights with protesters or something like that. She said it was better for everybody to stay on a bus that wasn’t going anywhere than risk running into any of that.
Before the smiling officer could finish her cautionary fairytales, somebody in the middle of the bus found footage of the breach on TikTok. “I think I’m gonna walk,” they said. “The protesters aren’t wrong,” someone else said to a buzz of general agreement, and people began to stand up and move toward the front of the bus. By this time doors to the other stalled buses were swinging open and Democrats poured out into the street: evidence of similar, simultaneous rebellions within the stalled convoy.
The protestors called for action not just for Palestine but for other nations, like the Philippines, whose leader is in effigy above with Harris and Biden. (Photo: Chris Davis)
“If you really want to get off the bus, I can’t stop you,” the officer said, as Democrats started getting off the bus en masse and trudging like a well-dressed zombie horde toward the fenced perimeter. Only those with mobility issues, and people who despise walking were left to ride. They would, as the police officer assured, arrive in time to see the president speak. Three-and-a-half hours later the last of the stuck passengers disembarked at the United Center.
This feels like a metaphor for something. Maybe a metaphor for everything. In any case, I got off the bus and walked to a happy hour event hosted by Grow Progress, an organization who “use[s] science and empathy” to build more persuasive political messages. They persuaded me to enjoy several drinks, and I arrived in the arena somewhat later than the stranded bus riders, but in a much better mood.
Hillary Clinton was speaking. I could see her on the hallway monitors, as I made my way to a media-friendly space, and I could hear the crowd chanting, “Lock him up.”
It was a beautiful first day for the DNC. The sun was high and bright but a steady wind turned larger, handmade signs into sails, billowing and blowing around some of the protesters gathering in Union Park to demonstrate on behalf of the people of Palestine.
These random acts of slapstick were a stark counterpoint to an event more sincere than sizable. Organizers had predicted a turnout of 20,000 or more and a credulous media, convinced 2024 was the new 1968, transformed those hopeful numbers into big, scary headlines. But taking every lazy argument into account, 2024 only resembles 1968 the way a cloud might resemble Grandma. You can see her sweet smile and that weird growth on her neck so clearly up there in the sky, but no matter how much that Grandma-shaped cloud reminds you of a simpler, happier time, it’s a cloud and won’t be baking cookies for your birthday. By the 2 p.m. start time, hundreds of pre-printed picket signs remained spread across the lawn, uncollected. It seemed unlikely that the protest would attract even a quarter of its projected numbers.
The protests were more sincere than sizable. (Photo: Chris Davis)
A big reason 2024 wasn’t like 1968 is the fact that Democrats weren’t engaged in a contentious fight to choose their candidate. This certainly could have happened and even typically level-headed pundits like Ezra Klein fantasized an open or brokered convention, rationalizing that the Democratic Party could only be perfected and purified by walking through a fire certain to burn bridges and destroy alliances. But that never happened. Biden selected his Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him, just as she would should he ever become unable to fulfill the duties of office, and to everybody’s surprise, the Democrats, a coalition party rarely able to agree on anything, got fully on board with a candidate voters hadn’t much liked the one time she ran for the nomination.
’68 was a rough ride for America. We lost MLK and Bobby Kennedy to assassins who didn’t miss. Conscripted American soldiers were dying in Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement and American youth counterculture were in their fullest blossom, and the angry, young protesters who made their stand in Chicago truly believed the pressure they built there might determine who’d be picked to lead the Democratic ticket. Inside the convention, things were equally fraught with many delegates shouting, “No! No!” when Hubert Humphrey, who’d backed Johnson’s escalation of conflict in Vietnam, secured the party’s nomination.
’68 is also the year when Alabama Governor George Wallace, a right-wing extremist hellbent on denying either party an electoral majority, broke with the Democratic Party to make his own run at the White House, taking a big chunk of the “forget Hell!” South with him. Outside of President Biden choosing not to seek reelection and American involvement in a foreign civil war, 1968 and 2024 couldn’t be more dissimilar.
Even President Biden, in his emotional address to the DNC said, without reservation, “Those protesters out in the street have a point.” Only, he didn’t stop there, while he was ahead. “A lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides,” he concluded, glossing over the disproportionate carnage that’s led to charges of war crimes and accusations of genocide against Israel, and to normal complaints from the back of the bus.
In 2004 America held its first post-9/11 political conventions, and as it’s so frequently stated, after that infamous date, “everything changed.” Manhattan locked down when the Republican National Convention landed in town.
The National Guard greeted the bridge-and-tunnel crowd with barricades and heavier arms, while a militarized police force took to the streets, throwing up barricades faster than protesters could pour into the city. New York arrested more than 1,800 people over four days, including kids, media, and bystanders. Detainees were taken to a makeshift detention camp called Pier 57, but described as, “Guantanamo on the Hudson.” More than 300 protesters were arrested by militarized police in St. Paul, Minnesota, on the first day of the RNC in 2008, and similar numbers were arrested each subsequent day during that convention. America’s misadventures in Iraq were still on the ballot and the whole world was experiencing massive economic collapse. Protest was heavy and the police response was disproportionate.
America was still at war during the 2016 conventions, but the public wasn’t activated to the same degree. Protest diminished and, for the Democrats, it was almost exclusively an internal squabble. Although senator and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders was giving Clinton his full-throated support, his disappointed supporters refused to let go of his lost candidacy. They turned out in force to protest by taping their mouths shut, and slamming against the perimeter barricades, where they were summarily arrested by militarized police.
I mention all of this protest history because one of the notable changes in both Milwaukee and Chicago compared to past conventions is how differently they were policed. Recent police raids clearing pro-Palestine encampments in Chicago encouraged our talking heads to dream harder about the ghost of Mayor Daley and a 1968 redux. But Chicago’s old-school head-busting police aren’t who showed up to serve and protect at the DNC. Bicycle cops and police wearing their everyday uniforms circled Union Park, where the bulk of the convention’s protests originated, to observe like an audience prepared for something other than the very worst.
Riot cops did get busy for a short time on Tuesday, when a fringe protest led by groups like Behind Enemy Lines and Samidoun (vocally supportive of Hamas’ October 7th attack against Israel) got out of hand. During that one action, police made 50 of 74 total arrests spread across four days of mostly peaceful public demonstration. It’s not a perfect example, but this is progress.
So what year is it again, if not 1968? When I heard the chants of “Lock him up,” I was rocketed back to the 2016 RNC, when Hillary’s emails were big news and chants of “Lock her up” shook Cleveland’s Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse.
Now that Trump’s a convicted felon 34 times over, the irony is too delicious, and I wanted to enjoy watching the former senator from New York and failed presidential contender enjoy her moment. But no matter how perfectly poetic, or deserved, hearing a mob calling for the incarceration of their immediate political rival is somehow no less chilling now than it was eight years ago.
But what do I know? Nielsen ratings for the DNC’s first night demolished the RNC’s opening by a margin of 29 percent and, against the usual trend, the Democrats increased viewership each night. It’s interesting to consider how only a month ago serious commentators watching the RNC’s opening night contemplated the possibility of a once-in-a-generation political realignment favoring the GOP. It’s helpful to remember how the Democrats’ increased viewership, though in the millions, might be accounted for within the biggest blue areas and reflect no electoral college advantage whatsoever. It’s important to know that almost four times as many people tuned in to watch the DNC in 1968, when real Americans watched TV, goddammit.
Critics of the 2024 convention have astutely recognized that it was largely about feelings, and feelings aren’t a plan. True enough, but politics is made out of feelings. In recent cycles, anger, fear, hope, grief, grievance, and a host of other feelings have driven voters to the polls, why not bet on joy, for a change? Policy is key, but as Al Gore will surely tell you, if you lead with it, they put you in a lockbox.
What else can I say about the Democrats’ superb execution at the United Center that won’t have been said a thousand times already by the time anybody reads this article? Has anybody else noted how even the venue’s name seemed to announce party goals every time it was spoken? A united center is literally what I saw in Chicago. The only thing that might bring normie America together harder than the unrehearsed display of love Tim Walz’s son Gus showed for his dad is the near-universal revulsion evinced when the weirdo tried to mock him for it. The 2024 convention was a credible, joyful attempt by Democrats to reclaim ideas long ago hijacked by the right: ideas like family values, patriotism, and … well … “normal.”
In the fight against Trump, J.D. Vance, and the whole Project 2025 gang, it currently looks like the only thing still dividing Democrats is Palestine. Vice President Harris’ near-flawless closing night speech promised a different approach. With its rhetoric about Palestinian self-determination, she also promised to give Israel everything it needs in the meantime.
Activists demanding disinvestment and an arms embargo remain unconvinced and uncommitted. For them, the D-bus is stalled, all they are hearing from the cop up front is fairytales, and the threat of getting off and walking is real. So the big question going into the homestretch of this, the latest most important election of our lifetime: Will the Center hold, or will we elect Nixon? — Chris Davis
Anyone who has been paying attention to hot-button issues in law enforcement is aware that the matter of incarcerated inmates with mental illnesses is one of them — and one of the most complex as well.
Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris’ ongoing proposal to build an expansive new facility to house and treat those prisoners is one response — and the mayor has come in for much praise for it, especially since he intends to proceed without asking for a tax increase, by accessing federal ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds received by the county at the height of the Covid epidemic.
And Sheriff Floyd Bonner had indicated lately that he was on the verge of issuing an RFP (request for proposal) to local medical facilities for establishing an inpatient treatment program for the most severely impaired, those inmates who have been formally adjudged by the courts to be incompetent to stand trial.
It is such inmates, languishing in jail as a de facto permanent population, who have been the source of numerous disturbances and highly publicized unsanitary behavior noted by the news media and would-be reformers alike. And they are a primary reason for Bonner’s recent decision to back away from supervising youthful offenders to focus on hard-core issues among adult offenders.
As it happens, Bonner is the custodian not only of such issues but of some $2.7 million in allocated and unspent funds for dealing with them, and in testimony last week at the county commission’s committee sessions had floated the idea of the aforementioned RFP.
That money, largely derived from a settlement from drug companies and manufacturers involved in the proliferation of opioids, was set aside by the county as a replacement of sorts for a similar sum originally budgeted in 2022 at the behest of former County Commissioner Van Turner for treatment of those inmates deemed incompetent to stand trial by reason of their impairment.
Much of that original outlay ended up, however, being routed into the coffers of the county’s specialty courts (tribunals focused on drugs, veterans, and, in the most general sense, those with mental health conditions). Some of it was destined for CAAP (Cocaine and Alcohol Awareness Program), where it could be put to useful ends, but not for the original purpose of inpatient treatment of the most seriously incapacitated inmates.
Meanwhile County Commissioner Erika Sugarmon sponsored a resolution that became a core part of the agenda at this commission’s regular public meeting Monday night. She apparently proposed routing another $500,000 to CAAP from the currently available funding stock of $2,700,000.
David Upton, a spokesperson for the original funding plan, which envisioned an inpatient program, made an impassioned plea to retain the $500,000 in the sheriff’s budget.
At one point in the commission’s discussion of the resolution, Commissioner Mick Wright allowed as how he was doing his best to comprehend the overriding issue but was having trouble understanding what funds were available and for what purpose.
He doubtless spoke for many who had difficulty following the money and the competing claimants for it. Ultimately the commission deferred voting on the resolution and will try to unravel the complications of the matter at its next meeting.
For many of us, chasing down the total eclipse of the sun on Monday was a bucket-list thing, and, like all such now-or-never matters, it exacted a cost.
Coming back to Memphis from Hardy, Arkansas, where my son Marcus and I went early on Monday to rendezvous with daughter Julia and friends to see the natural much-ballyhooed natural spectacle firsthand, turned into an eight-hour drive, beginning at 3 p.m. after a delightful Thai lunch at Hardy and ending at close to 11 p.m. at home.
I bring this up because it occurs to me that this is how it always goes with bucket-list things. Putting it simply, you pay a price for them.
For those in government, public progress is a bucket-list matter, it dawned on me, and I suddenly saw a speech I’d heard the previous week in exactly that light.
This was Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris addressing a group of Germantown Democrats about the things he is determined to accomplish in this, his second and final term in office. He was first elected in 2018, and the first term was something of a wrangle. As is so often the case, it takes a while to get the hang of the people and the problems.
Harris told the Democrats: “I’m going to show [that the] county mayor’s office and Shelby County government is a huge organization. And it does a variety of things. You know, it’s a $1.6 billion budget, thousands of employees, so many, many, many programs.”
Announcing he would focus on three areas — public safety, healthcare, and education — the mayor did a little recapping and quickly swung to his main point of the evening.
“One of the things that is important that I’m working on right now is a residential mental health facility. And so it’s the idea that we have a problem in Memphis and Shelby County. And the problem is, there’s not enough access to mental health care.
“One of the key problems right now is [that there are] about 2,000 people in detention right now. And more than half of them have a mental health care need. The DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] might want to move those cases; the judges might want to move those cases forward. But a lot of those cases can’t be moved forward until the individuals have 14 days of stabilization. So they’ve got to get access to healthcare; they’ve got to get their prescriptions. They’ve got to see a healthcare provider. … And so we’re a little bit behind in some ways, right?”
Harris went on to propose a new 60-bed facility for Shelby County. “And we will be able, upon arrest, to move individuals that need those services immediately to the mental health facility, and away from the traditional jail detention facility. One of the benefits of that is that it creates a lot of opportunities for collaboration among our criminal justice stakeholders.
“So the cost of doing all this is probably about $400 a day, right? Right now as a person in our jail or detention facilities it’s about $100 a day. By contrast, the cost for this kind of specialized care is dramatically more. But a portion of those individuals would be better served by getting treatment, and having their cases in advance, you move a few of those 508 cases. Our expectation is that over time, the county will save money.”
The bottom line: “So it costs us at least $20 million. But people have been talking about this for a very long time.“
So far, Mayor Harris has enjoyed a resourceful second term, working for the most part with a same-minded county commission. He has arranged for a long-needed expansion of the Regional One Health facility and the equally overdue creation of two new public schools.
The proposed new mental health facility, which he has since asked the commission to engage with, would raise things to the level of a perfecta.
Just to let you know he’s got that and more on his political bucket list, and he’s working on them.
Mayors from Tennessee’s four biggest cities asked state leaders to implement new “common sense” gun laws in a letter Wednesday.
Gun safety has has been a dominant topic during the latter half of the Tennessee General Assembly’s legislative session this year, pushed to the top of debate by a deadly shooting at a Nashville school in March. Republicans in the legislature have shown little urgency on the matter, even passing a measure Wednesday to protect gun companies from lawsuits.
Meanwhile, mayors from the state’s most-populous areas called for action Wednesday. A letter to the governor and Speakers of the state House and Senate was sent by Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, Nashville Mayor John Cooper, Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly, and Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon. Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland did not sign onto the letter.
Credit: Mayor John Cooper/Twitter
In it, the group said Tennessee has the 12th-highest rate of gun deaths in the country over the last four years, citing data from the National Center for Health Statistics. They said nationwide data shows a clear correlation between the strength of a state’s gun laws and the rate of gun violence, but they did not cite a source for the information.
“Now is the moment to turn statements of support and sympathy into action,” reads the letter, referring to the March shooting at Nashville’s Covenant School that left dead three students and three teachers.
The group laid out 10 “common sense” proposals they want state officials to consider to ensure gun safety.
They include:
• background checks for all gun purchases
• extreme risk protection orders
• changes to the state’s concealed carry laws
• a minimum age of 21 to buy firearms
• new laws on gun storage
• limiting gun thefts from cars
• banning high-capacity magazines
• prohibiting convicted stalker from owning guns
• providing funds for school threat assessments
• mandatory reporting of lost or stolen guns
“We can incorporate these policies into legislation immediately,“ reads the letter. “Working together, we can keep guns away from people who shouldn’t have them, and out of circumstances that are likely to result in more dead Tennesseans.”
Governor Bill Lee urged Assembly leaders Wednesday to bring legislation on his “Order of Protection” proposal that would limit gun sales to those who might hurt themselves or others. However, no GOP bill to carry the idea to law has been filed.
Sen. Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville) tweeted Wednesday night that he planned to bring to a bill that “would enact Extreme Risk Protection Orders” to the Senate floor Thursday.
Tomorrow I’m going to bring SB 1029 up for a vote on the Senate floor. There is an amendment filed to SB 1029, which would enact Extreme Risk Protection Orders. With votes from 17 of 33 senators, we could consider & pass this legislation.
Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris and the Shelby County Health Department invited community-based organizations to form the HIV Equity Coalition (HIVE Coalition) in response to the state of Tennessee cutting HIV funding.
According to a statement from the mayor’s office, the HIVE Coalition “will engage area stakeholders to discuss the current problems facing people with HIV and how Governor Bill Lee, the State of Tennessee, and Health Commissioner Ralph Alvarado’s refusal to accept nearly $10 million in federal funds for HIV care and prevention will impact patients and vulnerable populations.”
“The HIVE Coalition will also discuss ways for the community and local officials to help support organizations following the state’s destructive decision,” said the statement.
Mayor Harris was joined by representatives from the Shelby County Health Department, Friends for Life, OUTMemphis, Hope House, and the Elizabeth Taylor AIDS foundation to host a panel discussion on Zoom to not only discuss the work they are doing to help those impacted by HIV, but to share how cutting funds will disrupt their efforts.
“This is the start of our efforts, which we are committed to sustaining until our vulnerable HIV population has the level of healthcare access that we know is needed,” said Harris.
According to Jerri Green, senior policy advisor for Shelby County, there are 19,000 Tennesseans living with HIV. Green added that Shelby County ranked number three in “incidence rates of new HIV infections in the United States,” and the disease disproportionately affects those in minority populations.
“What we’re really talking about is creating equity in a space where this funding being cut is going to jeopardize that equity,” said Michelle Taylor, director of the Shelby County Health Department. “The fact that this funding is being cut is going to be devastating to the community.”
Taylor also explained that community-based organizations help the Shelby County Health Department’s outreach efforts in not only the treatment space but the prevention space as well.
Molly Quinn serves as the executive director of OUTMemphis, which launched its HIV prevention campaign 12 years ago. While the organization focuses most of its programs and services on the LGBTQ community, its HIV prevention services are open to all.
“We feel very strongly about the importance of LGBTQ experiences in our public health outcomes, which are so severely negative in this part of the country, in this part of the world,” said Quinn. “We really look forward to a time when politics are no longer a part of our public health.”
Hope House serves families that have been affected by HIV. They also have a full service social services house that provides support services and more to those living with HIV.
“Prevention is so incredibly important,” said Melissa Farrar, director of social services at Hope House. “We have babies that are not living with HIV because of prevention efforts in our community, so the prevention funding is so important for everyone in the community. It’s so important that everyone has equitable access to prevention services.”
Diane Duke, CEO of Friends For Life, explained that they initially started out as a “group of people who helped their friends die with dignity,” but her organization has come a long way thanks to prevention efforts.
“We are dependent on funds from the federal government in order for us to be successful in our mission,” said Duke.
Duke explained that they received a grant for $463,000. However, funding from the CDC qualified them for the 340B Drug Pricing Program, which according to their website, “enables covered entities to stretch scarce federal resources as far as possible, reaching more eligible patients and providing more comprehensive services.” According to Duke, that would result in losses of $1.7 million in funding annually.
While Republicans in Nashville were still smarting from the defeat — early in the week — of their hopes to host the 2024 Republican National Convention in the state capital, Democrats in Shelby County were rejoicing over their second straight sweep of countywide positions in the August 4th election.
To start with the most closely followed of all the races, the one for Shelby County District Attorney General: early voting totals, coupled with mail-ins, showed Democrat Steve Mulroy well ahead of incumbent Republican DA Amy Weirich, 76,280 to 59,364. As Mulroy correctly told his delirious election-night crowd at his Poplar Avenue headquarters, barring a statistical improbability, he had become the first Democratic DA in Shelby County history.
Fellow Democrat Lee Harris, operating out of the same HQ, was comfortably ahead of Republican challenger Worth Morgan, 78,552 to 56,789, thereby winning a second four-year term as Shelby County Mayor for his own reformist mission.
Completing a trifecta of sorts, Memphis Municipal Judge Tarik B. Sugarmon had apparently won out in a four-candidate race over Republican incumbent Dan Michael for the position of Juvenile Court Judge, with 53,267 votes to Michael’s 40,720. William Ray Glasgo and Dee Shawn Peoples were also-rans.
Though his was a non-partisan race, Sugarmon, who had lost to Michael eight years earlier, campaigned at times with Mulroy and Harris. The three of them had made a ceremonial visit, late on election day, to the statue of Ida B. Wells on Beale Street, where they had issued a call for late voters to turn out.
In other results, who would have thought that Charlotte Bergmann, largely written off as a perennial candidate for the Republican nomination for Congress in the 9th District, would dust off a new face, entrepreneur Brown Dudley, who had lots of money and the apparent ability to make a real race in the fall against 9th District Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen (the odds-on favorite to win again)?
Bergmann prevailed over Dudley, 9,382 to 7,811, a win for long-term party fidelity. All bets are on Cohen, though, in November. The 9th District is wall-to-wall Democratic, the last such in Tennessee after ruthless GOP gerrymandering.
8th District Republican incumbent Congressman David Kustoff easily won out in a four-candidate race to seal his renomination and will take on Democrat Lynnette Williams in the fall.
GOP Governor Bill Lee will compete in the fall with Democratic nominee Jason Martin of Nashville, winner of a three-way Democratic primary with Memphians JB Smiley and Carnita Atwater. Smiley won in Shelby County.
Sheriff Floyd Bonner, the Democratic nominee and the Republican endorsee, finished with 96,289, blowing away two independent candidates.
Assessor Melvin Burgess, a Democrat, had fairly easy going over Republican challenger Steve Cross, 51,517.
Incumbent Trustee Regina Newman, also a Democrat, had similar ease over the GOP’s Steve Basar, 80,327 to 51,746.
Incumbent Criminal Court Clerk Heidi Kuhn won 81,223, over the GOP’s Paul Houston, 49,772.
Democrat Janeen Gordon was unopposed for Juvenile Court Clerk.
Democratic incumbent Wanda Halbert survived a scare from Republican Jeff Jacobs, with 65,520 votes to Jacobs’ 54,519. Harold Smith had 13,699 in third place.
As expected, Democrat Willie Brooks won Register of Deeds, 76,801 to Bryan Edmiston’s 50,191. George “Dempsey” Summers had 4,896.
Unofficial early indications were that all Shelby County legislative incumbents won their primary races. More details to come soon on vote totals and matchups for the fall.
As anticipated, there will be 9 Democratic members of the 13-member Shelby County Commission. Winners are Amber Mills, R, District 1; David C. Bradford Jr., R, District 2; Mick Wright, R, District 3; Brandon Morrison, R, District 4; Shante Avant, D, District 5; Charlie Caswell, D, District 6; Henri Brooks, D, District 7; Mickell Lowery, D, District 8; Edmund Ford Jr., D, District 9; Britney Thornton, D, District 10; Miska Clay Bibbs, D, District 11; Erika Sugarmon, D, District 12; Michalel Wehaley, d, District 13.
The most competitive Commission race was between Whaley, with 7,036 votes, and Republican Ed Apple, 6,702.
Judicial Results:
Circuit court Judge Division I, Felicia Corbin-Johnson
Circuit Court Judge, Division II, Carol J. Chumney
Circuit Court, Division III, Valerie L. Smith
Circuit Court Judge, Division IV, Gina Carol Higgins
Circuit Court Judge, Division V, Rhynette N. Hurd
Circuit Court Judge, division VI, Cedrick D. Wooten
“Well,” said one woman as she left The Bluff restaurant on Highland following a Tuesday Rotary club luncheon debate between county mayor candidates Lee Harris and Worth Morgan, “that was a case of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm versus Mack the Knife!”
She didn’t specify which was which,and there was abundant antagonism on both sides of the match, but presumably she was assigning the attacker’s role to Harris, the Democratic incumbent who seeks a second four-year term from the voters.
Having won the coin toss supervised by moderator Otis Sanford, Harris opted to go first on the program, and for several detailed minutes, he dismissed his Republican challenger as a neophyte and a lightweight who had shunned positions of leadership and key votes during his seven years so far on the Memphis City Council..
The youthful-looking Morgan responded not in visible anger but with a show of forbearance toward what he said was Harris’ mischaracterization of his record. “Personally, it doesn’t bother me,” he said. “And I know my heart. I know my positions, and so it doesn’t shake or bother me, but professionally, it is disappointing.” That turned out to be a prelude to his own attack on Harris.
“Some of that disappointment that I see today is something that I’ve also seen over the last several years, [when] I’ve been disappointed with Shelby County’s response, especially the mayor’s office response … to the pandemic … to economic development. The community depends on the Shelby County mayor to be a leader on so many of these issues. My hope is that this is a fast-paced moving world and we haven’t been left behind. There’s still opportunity.”
Morgan continued: “We’ve got a great story to tell here in Shelby County. We’ve got to have somebody out there to tell it; you’ve got to have a pitchman speaking on behalf of people, speaking on behalf of the community, for Shelby County. And we haven’t had that. We haven’t had the leadership that we needed.”
His ingenue appearance notwithstanding, Morgan proved to be every bit the aggressor that Harris was. He enumerated important issues, such as crime, economic development, jobs, education, and poverty. With “the chief among those,” he said, being public safety. As he has before on the stump, Morgan suggested Harris had failed to work in harmony with other divisions of county government, with the courts, the state, and Shelby County’s seven municipalities.
Morgan cited in particular the county’s problems on rolling out vaccines to counter the Covid epidemic. “Was he responsible for the response from the health department for the vaccine distribution that had to be taken over by the state? Absolutely. When you look at our numbers compared to other major counties, where we still don’t have the vaccine rate that you see in Davidson County. … We’ve had close to 3,400 deaths in Shelby County.”
Responded Harris: “There’s only been one investigative report about the handling of the vaccine scandal, and it was performed by Memphis Business Journal, and the Memphis Business Journal after doing their investigation concluded, without equivocation, that the whole scandal was made up — that there was a fiction invented by representatives from the state. … I’m proud that during the COVID-19 [pandemic], our county outperformed all 95 counties regularly. When it came to transmission rates per capita, Shelby County was the best-performing county in our state regularly. Now that is unprecedented.”
Harris continued: “There were hundreds of meetings around COVID response, hundreds of opportunities for my opponent to make his presence known. Councilmember Morgan could not be found during the last two years of the pandemic.”
Morgan replied that Councilman Dr. Jeff Warren, not himself, had been the council’s speaker-designate on Covid issues, and, after lauding Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s follow-up success in dealing with vaccine distribution, he said “the only statistic that really matters is that we have had 3,400 deaths as a result of the pandemic. Davidson County has about 1,700. Our population is 34 percent higher, and the death rate was 97 percent higher.”
Morgan waffled somewhat when moderator Sanford asked him directly about state interference with Shelby County’s decisions on mask mandates and school openings. Morgan: “We are still in a little bit of Monday morning quarterbacking, trying to understand did we lose more in our school system by having kids out than we protected them by having them in place? There’s a lot of national debate that’s going on about that.”
Harris saw his opening and took it. “I don’t know Mr. Morgan. I only met him recently, as per this process, in the last few days. So I’ve never seen him in the community. I’ve never shaken hands with him or anything like that before. But what I know about him from the last few days of getting to know him, is that when it comes to leadership opportunities, he has a whole encyclopedia of excuses of why he couldn’t attend hundreds of COVID response meetings for two years. And we have a member of the Memphis City Council that says, ‘Wait, somebody else do it. I can’t go.’ Leadership requires courage.”
Morgan’s response: “If you’re ever leaving a meeting and you feel like my voice is missing from the discussion, feel free to pick up the phone and call me. I’ll be there in a heartbeat.”
Sanford asked the contenders for their position on Governor Bill Lee’s ongoing voucher program for private schools — which is confined to Memphis and Nashville — and the governor’s intent to import charter schools from right-wing Hillsdale College. Harris was unreservedly against both. Morgan had an arguably equivocal answer: “This is a program that’s going forward. How can we make sure the kids in our public school system, the kids that are in the private school system, the kids that are in voucher programs, the kids that are in charter schools, how could they be successful, and make sure that they all have a path and opportunity to that next level?”
The candidates disagreed on the extent to which local politics should concern itself, at least symbolically, with national issues. Said Harris: “When it came to one of the darkest moments in our community’s history, members of the city council decided to condemn the January 6th insurrection. Except for Councilman Morgan. He said, I can’t vote. I can’t work on that issue. I can’t lead in this moment. When it came time to celebrate one of the proudest moments in our country’s history, the elevation of Ketanji Brown Jackson as the first black woman Supreme Court justice, every city council member wanted to do it. Every county commissioner wanted to do it. Except Council-member Morgan.’”
Said Morgan: “We have a lot of resolutions that get introduced to the city council that I call sky-is-blue resolutions, or the resolutions that council members are grandstanding on, getting repetitive-stress injury for just how far they’re patting themselves on the back. In my opinion, a resolution that is outside the scope and authority of Memphis City Council in terms of what we have power and control to do, is not one of the things that we need to be spending time on, considering the issues of crime, potholes, economic development — all the obligations that we have. “
Harris and Morgan differed on the merits of the state’s new “Truth-in-Sentencing” bill, which would in effect abolish parole for offenders convicted of certain violent crime. Morgan saw it as “one tool in the chest” and Harris objected that “you have to have conditions upon release from prison. You’ve got to have drug-screening requirements, and you’ve got to have job search requirements. That’s how you make folks who are released from prison reintegrate successfully back into the community,”
Harris went further, criticizing Morgan for publicly celebrating passage of the bill “because he’s publicly declared he invested in Tennessee prison companies, and investors in Tennessee prison companies stand to make profits off of incarceration. I think it is a cruel and a bad way to make a buck. And I think celebrating [something that] stands to grow our prison industry is unwise.”
Morgan responded that his investment in prison stock had been part of a blind trust that he was unaware of, and that he disposed of it as soon as he was.
Harris was skeptical. “You have to declare under penalty of perjury, that you know what is going on in your life and know what your investments are. This is just not that hard. This is repeatedly why we can’t know what’s going on or why we can’t vote or we can’t go to meetings. This is the absence of leadership. And it is frustrating.”
There were other issues discussed and many more back-and-forths, but for all intents and purposes, the rest of the debate conformed to the recurrent pattern of charge and countercharge — Morgan trying to assert variants of his campaign slogan that “We Deserve Better” and Harris doing his best to indict his opponent’s lack of experience and essential commitment.
In reality, neither contender was Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, and both proved able and willing to use the scalpel. Next week’s election totals will indicate who left the most marks.
Tuning it Up: GOP state Senate candidate Brent Taylor at campaign kickoff last week with country singer John Rich (Photo: Jackson Baker)
As the August 4th countywide election cycle winds down, the marquee race is still, as before, that for district attorney general between Republican incumbent Amy Weirich and Democratic challenger Steve Mulroy. The race remains the focus of attention in local politics. It has also engendered significant statewide and national attention.
A quiet moment in a turbulent campaign (Photo: Jackson Baker)
The Tennessee Journal, a weekly which is the preeminent statewide source for political news across Tennessee, featured the race in its lead story for the July 15th issue. Editor Erik Schelzig recaps some of the significant charges and other back-and-forths of the contest, highlighting the two candidates’ major differences regarding the state’s new “truth-in-sentencing” law, which eliminates parole in several major violent-crime categories.
Weirich, who boasts her years-long efforts on behalf of passing the law, points with pride. Mulroy sees it as a case of vastly increasing state incarceration expenses while blunting possible rehabilitation efforts.
In the several recent debates between the two candidates, the challenger notes that his skepticism puts him on the same page regarding “truth-in-sentencing” as opponents like the American Conservative Union and GOP Governor Bill Lee, who declined to sign the bill, letting it become law without his signature. Weirich seizes upon Mulroy’s mentions of that fact as an opportunity to advertise her purported independent-mindedness, noting that she also disagrees with Lee (and the Republican supermajority) on such issues as open-carry gun legislation. “I don’t care what the American Conservative Union says,” she adds.
All that being said (and it’s consistent with her would-be crossover slogan, “Our DA”), the race as a whole is between Weirich’s right-of-center hard line and Mulroy’s highly reform-conscious point of view. Mulroy wants cash-bail reform and systematic post-conviction reviews, the latter including DNA testing. Weirich is open to modifications in those areas but not to major changes.
The two have battled over the matter of alleged racial disparity issues in the DA’s office, with Mulroy charging, among other things, that Weirich has an 85-percent white staff of attorneys prosecuting a defendant population that is 95 percent Black. Weirich says she’s trying to alter the ratio but cites the difficulty of competing with better-paying private law firms in efforts to acquire African-American legal talent.
Both contenders have seemingly forsworn the Marquis of Queensberry rules regarding the etiquette of competition. With no real evidence to base her claim on, Weirich’s ads consistently try to saddle Mulroy with the onus of being a “Defund the Police” enthusiast. He answers that he would like to see more police hired, and at higher salaries, and given “better training.” His ads portray Weirich as being a Trumpian (a stretch) and the “worst” district attorney in Tennessee, one saddled with several citations for misconduct from state overseeing bodies and with an ever-rising violent-crime rate during her 11-year tenure that is the worst in the nation.
The two candidates took turns in verbally pummeling each other in a series of almost daily formal debates the week before last. The venues were the Rotary Club of Memphis, the Memphis Kiwanis Club, and an Orange Mound citizens’ association. Neither gave any quarter, each attacking the other along lines indicated above.
Much of the aforementioned Tennessee Journal article is dedicated to the two candidates’ fundraising and campaign spending. In the second quarterly disclosure of the year (April through June), Weirich reported raising $130,400 and spending $240,400 — much of it on the Memphis consulting firm of Sutton Reid, where her blistering TV and radio ads are prepared. She began the quarter with nearly half a million dollars on hand and ended it with $361,00 remaining.
Mulroy raised $279,000 in the period, a sum which included a loan from him to his own campaign of $15,000. He spent $194,000 and had a remainder on hand of $159,000.
As noted by the Journal, Weirich has gotten almost all her funding from within Tennessee, all but $1,600. Mulroy, who has the avowed support of such celebrities as singer John Legend and author John Grisham, is also boosted by several national groups with a professed interest in criminal-justice reform. Some 35 percent of his funding has come from out of state.
One key venue for Mulroy is New York, where he has traveled twice recently, attending public occasions in tandem with such supporters as criminologist Barry Scheck, mega-lawyer Ben Crump, and entertainer Charlamagne Tha God. Mulroy’s travels and his funding sources are reportedly the target of a new Weirich TV spot which begins this week. It should be noted that the vast majority of Mulroy’s trips out of town during the campaign — all unpublicized until now — have been to Pensacola, where he drives down regularly to look in on his elderly mother.
With early voting about to expire and a week to go before the judgment day of August 4th, polling information is being held close to the vest by both principals, though Mulroy publicized an early one showing him with a 12-point lead.
A fact that looms large to all observers and to both participants and their parties: The position of district attorney general, is, as of now, the only major countywide position held by a Republican. Early voting statistics gave evidence of serious turnout efforts by both parties.
• There are other key races, to be sure. The race for county mayor, between Democratic incumbent Lee Harris and Republican challenger Worth Morgan has been something of a back-burner affair, with neither candidate turning on the jets full-blast in the manner of the DA race. Harris basically is resting on what he sees as a high productive record, and Morgan, though he challenges that, saying the county “deserves better,” has not featured many specifics beyond Morgan’s ill-based claim that Harris has — wait for it — defunded the police (strictly speaking, the Sheriff’s Department).
A recent TV ad shows Morgan in interview mode, chatting about his life and outlook and looking and sounding likable. Given Harris’ edge in incumbency and party base, that is probably not enough for now, but it does bolster Morgan’s name and image for later on.
In the race for Juvenile Court judge, Dan Michael’s incumbency works for him, while his opponent, city Judge Tarik Sugarmon, has a well-known local name and an active Democratic party base working on his behalf. Michael is heavily backed by the GOP in what is technically a nonpartisan race.
Few surprises are expected elsewhere on the ballot, though Democratic County Clerk Wanda Halbert, who has fumbled the issuance of new automobile plates, may get a scare (or worse) from Republican opponent Jeff Jacobs.
County DA candidates Amy Weirich and Steve Mulroy. (Photos by Jackson Baker)
Yes, “Defund the Police” was a terrible idea and a genuinely stupid slogan. Any true believers in it are deserving of whatever comeuppance they get.
But the fact is, the unjust linking of the term to political adversaries has turned into the latest political smear. It’s McCarthyism on steroids — right up there with a previous era’s “Soft on Communism.”
A solid piece of fact-checking by The Commercial Appeal’s Katherine Burgess conclusively made the case against County Mayor candidate Worth Morgan’s allegation that incumbent County Mayor Lee Harris, whom he opposes, defunded Sheriff Floyd Bonner’s budget, to the tune of some $4½ million. The accusation turned out to be so much jiggling of budget numbers, and Morgan has since owned up to having made an “error.” The clincher is that the Sheriff himself disowns any such complaint.
The “defund-the-police” smear has meanwhile become an increasingly prominent aspect of incumbent District Attorney Amy Weirich’s campaign against her Democratic challenger, Steve Mulroy.
It is the linchpin of a currently playing TV commercial on Weirich’s behalf, one in which Mulroy is not only accused of having advocated defunding the police — something which he denies and for which no credible record exists — but is represented, through a highly creative juxtaposition of images, as having marched in a parade with activists carrying “Defund the Police” signs.
Fact: a still photo of Mulroy holding a picket sign (but obscuring what the sign says) quickly segues into a video of the aforesaid defunders’ march. The reality is that his sign (and his march) belonged not to that affair but to a wholly different one, on behalf of Starbucks employees’ efforts, ultimately successful, to unionize their workplace.
Similarly, the same commercial misrepresents Mulroy’s support, during a severe phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, of ongoing litigation to secure improved safety precautions for at-risk jail inmates. The ad would have us believe the suit, by Mulroy himself as the litigant of record, was against Bonner for the simple purpose of releasing criminals — any and all criminals, it would seem — from jail.
This is not to suggest that Mulroy himself, or his own ad-makers, are wholly innocent of misrepresentation. An ad on his behalf yoked Weirich together with Donald Trump and the ex-president’s “mobs” on the occasion of Trump’s recent appearance in nearby Southaven. Yes, Weirich is running for reelection as the Republican nominee, but there is little in her record to suggest that she is a party-line Republican, much less a Trumpian fanatic.
The balance of Mulroy’s ad is more defensible. He alleges, correctly, that violent crime has risen during Weirich’s tenure as D.A., and viewers of the ad can decide for themselves whether that upsurge has occurred because of, or in spite of, her crime-fighting techniques. It is also true, as the ad suggests, that Weirich has been accused by official tribunals more than once of professional misconduct.
On a recent prime-time evening, the two ads ran back-to-back on local television — Weirich’s first, followed without a break by Mulroy’s. To say the least, the combined effect did not add up to an ideal instance of the Socratic method at work. (Not that TV advertising of any kind is totemic with regard to truth.) And, in fairness to the two candidates, head-banging distortions of the sort described here seem to be the rule, not the exception, for political advertising in particular.
POSTSCRIPT: Despite the fact-checking in the CA, a TV ad continues to push Morgan’s claim that County Mayor Harris “defunded the police.” The “defunding the police” claim put forth by Weirich against Mulroy is still extant as well. Meanwhile, the Mulroy ad mentioned above continues to appear, though both he and Morgan have aired new commercials.
