Tag: Lee Harris

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Politics Politics Feature

A Funding Perplex

Commissioner Erika Sugarmon (Photo: shelbycountytn.gov | Skipworth)

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.

To be continued.

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Politics Politics Feature

Lee Harris’ Bucket List

Lee Harris (Photo: Jackson Baker)

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.

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News News Blog News Feature

Mayors from Tennessee Cities Ask State Leaders for Tighter Gun Laws

Photo by Max Kleinen on Unsplash

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. 

“With votes from 17 of 33 senators, we could consider & pass this legislation,” he said. “There’s a way. But is there the will?”

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Community-Based Organizations Discuss Impact of HIV Funding Being Cut

(Credit: Testalize.me on Unsplash)

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.

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Politics Beat Blog

Harris, Mulroy, Sugarmon Win the Big Ones

Steve Mulroy. Photo by Jackson Baker.

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.

Democrat Jamita Swearengen, 79,329,  defeated Republican Soheila Kail, 51,801, for Circuit Court Clerk.

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

Circuit Court Judge Division VII, Mary L. Wagner

Circuit Court Judge, Division VIII, Damita Dandridge

Circuit Court Judge, Division IX, Yolanda Kight Brown

Chancellor, Part I, Melanie Taylor Jeffe

Chancellor, Part II, Jim Kyle

Chancellor, Part III, Joe Jenkins

Probate Court Judge Division I, Kathleen N. Gomes

Probate Court Judge Division II, Joe Townsend

Criminal Court Judge Division I Paula Skahan

Criminal Court Judge Division II Jennifer Fitzgerald

Criminal Court Judge Division III, James Jones

Criminal Court Judge, Division IV, Carolyn Blackett

Criminal court Judge Division V, Carlyn Addison

Criminal Court Judge Division VI, David Pool

Criminal court Judge Division VII, Lee V. Coffee

Criminal Court Judge, Division VIII, Chris Craft

Criminal court Judge, Division IX, A. Melissa Boyd

Criminal Court Judge, Division X, Jennifer J. Mitchell

General Sessions Civil Court, Division 1, Lynn C obb

General Sessions Civil Court, Division 2, Phyllis B. Gardner

General Sessions Civil Court, Division 3, Danielle M. Sims

General ESessions Civil Court, Division 4, Deborah Henderson

General Sessions Civil court, Division 5, Betty Thomas Moore

General Sessions Civil Court, Division 6, Lonnie Thompson

General Sessions Criminal Court, Division 7, Bill Anderson

General Sessions Criminal Court, Division 8, Lee Wilson

General Sessions Criminal court, Division 9, Sheila Bruce-Renfroe

General Sessions, Criminal court, Division 10, Greg Gilbert

General Sessions Criminal court, Division 11, Karen L. Massey

General Sessions, Criminal Court, Division 12, Ronald Lucchesi

General Sessions Criminal Court, Division 13, Louis Montesi

Environmental  Court Division 14, Patrick M. Dandridge

General Sessions Criminal Court, Division 15, Christian Johnson

These judicial results, preliminary only, are subject to appeal and possible recount. Several races are very  close.

County School Board District 1: Michelle McKissack

County School board, District 6, Keith Williams

County School Board, District 8, Amber Huett-Garcia

County School  Board, district 9, Joyce Dorse-Coleman

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Politics Beat Blog

County Mayor Candidates Skirmish

“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.

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Politics Politics Feature

Down to the Wire

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.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Political Ads Gone Awry — Cases in Point

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.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

A Second Juvenile Court Judge?

D.A. candidate Steve Mulroy, Judge Tarik Sugarmon, and County Mayor Lee Harris at a press conference. (Photo: Jackson Baker)

Should there be more than one Juvenile Court judge in Shelby County?

It’s a question that first came up in the wake of the 2006 county election when a newly installed Democratic contingent on the County Commission proposed the establishment of a second judge and voted to create one. 

After a drawn-out legal process that effort was disallowed, it’s now baaack! Maybe. It comes via the suggestion of Tarik Sugarmon, a candidate for what is still a solitary position of Juvenile Court Judge.

That original  move to double the number of judges was stoutly resisted by the Republican minority on the Commission and, most importantly, by Juvenile Court Judge Curtis Person, a former state Senator and longtime Court referee who was himself fresh from an election victory in 2006. Person sued to block it.

The issue was argued over back and forth, subjected to a court stay and a lifting of the stay by a Shelby County Chancellor, until, finally,  a state Court of Appeals decision in 2007 ruled invalid the Tennessee statute empowering such an action on separation-of-powers grounds. The state Supreme Court declined to review the matter back then.

What may revive it was a statement made at a press conference on Friday by Sugarmon, one of the two candidates for Juvenile Court Judge (the other being incumbent Judge Dan Michael). The point of the press conference at a park adjoining Cummings Elementary School, was for County Mayor Lee Harris and Democratic D.A. candidate Steve Mulroy to endorse Sugarmon’s candidacy.

Once that was duly done, a brief Q-and-A session with reporters ensued, at which Mulroy was reminded of the second judge issue, which took place when he was a member of the Commission and a leading proponent. 

Mulroy said on Friday  said he still liked the idea. “I’ve thought for a long time that the current system we have where there’s one person that is sort of in charge of this whole fiefdom and appoints all these judicial commissioners, is probably not the best model. It’s not even the most common model around the country. Multiple judges and juvenile courts are really the norm. And we’re the exception.”

But the courts had ruled against it, Mulroy conceded, and “that is currently the law.”

But is it? Sugarmon didn’t think so. “If I’m not mistaken,” he said, “according to the Charter now, and the court records, one of them [a Juvenile Court judge] can be appointed by the County Commission. So I think that could be permission for upgrading the office. No one in the original ruling of the Court said they had to go back to the state legislature. So hopefully, with the legislative way, that can occur because we do need more judges on the Court.”

“So you support the proposal?” Sugarmon was asked.

“Certainly,” he said.

“That’s news. Welcome news,” a surprised Mulroy said.

Note that Sugarmon cited the Shelby County charter, not the state law invalidated in 2007 by the state Court of Appeals.

And consider the possibility that a newly empaneled County Commission might act on what Sugarmon says is by the authority of the Charter and vote again for a second Juvenile Court judge. If Sugarmon, now on record as advocating a second judge, were to be elected, he would obviously decline to claim a legal standing to oppose such an action, unlike  Person in 2007.

There could be more legal bridges to cross, of course.

As of this writing, Judge Michael has not expressed an opinion on the value of a second Juvenile Court Judge.

In endorsing Sugarmon, currently a city judge, for election as Juvenile Court Judge, Mulroy had recounted his own concerns about alleged outmoded procedures in the D.A.’s office and said, among other things, “We need a new approach. We need change. And real change is only going to happen if we have change at the top. Now, the situation I described accurately describes my race for District Attorney. But it also accurately describes the situation at Juvenile Court, which is why I am very pleased to be here today to say that I am endorsing Tarik Sugarmon for Juvenile Court Judge. That is one reason why I’m doing it.”

In his turn, Mayor Harris commented on an incident at nearby Cummings Elementary in which a child was discovered to have brought a gun to school. “Behind us, of course, you see Cummings Elementary School, the site of such tragedy. But that doesn’t mean that this is a site … where we’re gonna throw away our kids. We know that no matter what happens in the lives of young people in Memphis and Shelby County, they all have potential, and we all have to remind them that their future is bright and there is opportunity ahead of them. So I’m pleased to support Judge Sugarmon, because he’s the right kind of candidate for this moment.”

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News News Blog

DeAndre Brown Appointed Director of Office of Reentry

DeAndre Brown (Credit: Shelby County Office of Reentry)

Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris announced today that DeAndre Brown has been promoted to permanent executive director of the Shelby County Office of Reentry. Brown has served as interim executive director since August of 2021. Brown and his wife, Vinessa Brown, founded Lifeline to Success, a nonprofit organization for ex-offenders, after his own incarceration and reentry.

According to a press release from Harris’ office, Brown has expanded programming focused on the mental health of returning citizens since joining the Office of Reentry, including hosting a job fair and block party that drew hundreds. Brown has also extended the FOCUSED program to include inmates with the Division of Corrections. FOCUSED combines job training with other assistance such as family reconnection, financial literacy, and voting rights restoration. In addition, Brown has also established in-prison training programs for janitorial work and the care of natural African American hair.

“DeAndre Brown has shown that he is devoted to helping the formerly incarcerated turn their lives around,” said Harris. “We had hoped his experience and connections to the community would help to grow the reentry programming, and, we were right.”

“I still don’t believe this is happening,” said Brown. “I am actually living the dream. I promise the citizens of Shelby County to use everything in me to make sure the men and women in this program have an opportunity to be successful when they return from prison.”