Tag: Lee Harris

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Opinion The BruceV Blog

Election Results Give Reason for Optimism

It’s been a long time since I woke on the day after an election in Shelby County feeling as optimistic and grateful as I do today. Let me count the ways:

First, my state senator, the mentally and physically impaired embarrassment, Ophelia Ford, was soundly defeated in the Democratic primary by Lee Harris, a smart, young law school professor with, I suspect, a bright political future hereabouts. This was the result I wanted most from this election cycle. Win.

Across the state in Knoxville, GOP primary voters turned out in droves to demolish the re-election bid of lunatic state senator Stacey Campfield, aka “Mr. Don’t Say Gay.” Thanks, Knoxville. Love ya. For grins, check out Campfield’s reaction to his defeat on his blog.

Perhaps the result that surprised me most was the defeat, statewide, of Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey’s attempted purge of three Tennessee Supreme Court justices. The upshot: Ron spent a few hundred thousand dollars to let Tennesseans know the names of three Supreme Court justices. Epic fail. Couldn’t happen to a sleazier jackass. This vote, and Lamar Alexander’s victory over anti-immigration nut Joe Carr, gave me some real hope that the Tea Party tide may have finally turned in Tennessee. I hope so, anyway.

Joe Brown and Henri Brooks were resoundingly trounced in their races for attorney general and Juvenile Court clerk, respectively. I’ve had my issues with Brown’s opponent, Amy Weirich, but Brown, like Brooks, simply self-destructed, making Weirich the winner by default, and by a landslide.

To recount, Memphis purged itself of Ophelia Ford, and along with other Shelby County voters, soundly rejected two potential lightning rods/potential embarrassments for public office.

On the other hand, Germantown and Collierville re-elected self-promoting loon Brian Kelsay and public drunk Curry Todd to the state legislature — without opposition. Shades of Ophelia Ford. The next time you hear some suburbanite snarking on Memphis politicians, remind them to check their own backyard.

And I was glad to see Steve Cohen retain his 9th District Congressional seat. Some advice: If local Democrats want to win county-wide races, they would do well to figure out how to organize behind Cohen and his presidential support and national clout, instead of lobbing a futile and divisive primary challenge at him every two years. The muddle-headedness of the SCDP is self-defeating.

There also needs to be serious state legislation passed to crack down on the illicit fake “official ballot” business hereabouts. It’s scandalous. But, all in all, not bad results to wake up to, IMO.

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Politics Politics Feature

No “Down Ballot” in Shelby County This Year

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

In most elections, there is something called a “down ballot,” consisting of races that, for one reason or another, do not draw media or public attention to the same degree as a few widely noticed marquee races.

The August 7th election ballot in Shelby County is the kind of lengthy one that invites such potential lacunae, but be advised: Some of those potentially overlooked ballot matters are crucial indeed.

The best example is the ballot’s final section, headed “Statewide General Election” and consisting of several “retention” choices in which voters are asked to decide whether to retain or to replace members of the state’s appellate judicial core.

At the very top of this list is the most crucial section, featuring the names of three of the five members of the state Supreme Court — Chief Justice Gary Wade and Justices Cornelia A. Clark and Sharon Gail Lee. These three justices, all appointees of former Governor Phil Bredesen, a Democrat, have been targeted for replacement by Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey and other members of the state Republican establishment.

A serious and financially well-endowed campaign has been mounted against the three justices by Ramsey et al., abetted by Tea Party backers and other major donors from around the nation. Supporters of the justices, who are enjoined by the canon of judicial ethics from saying very much in their own defense, have organized a counter-campaign, and the fat, as they say, is in the fire.

Should any or all members of the beleaguered trio fail to receive a majority for retention, Governor Bill Haslam has the duty of naming their replacements. Haslam, who has already had the opportunity to name replacements for two retiring judges, has adopted a hands-off position toward the judicial purge campaign, though members of his traditional support group are said to be working against it.

Former members of the state judiciary are opposing the purge campaign more overtly — notably former Chief Justice Mickey Barker of Chattanooga, a Republican, who has appeared in TV ads urging voters to retain the three justices, who have journeyed to Memphis as an ensemble more than once this year and were the guests at a Memphis Bar Association reception last Friday.

Jackson Baker

Justice Sharon Lee addressing Memphis group at Rendezvous

Justice Lee even stayed behind over the weekend to go door-to-door asking voters to vote for retention.

Almost as far down on the ballot as the judicial retention section is a portion listing candidates for seven of the nine Shelby County Schools (SCS) board positions. Most of the races are considered to be tight, notably one for District 1, pitting incumbent Chris Caldwell against his former colleague on the erstwhile 23-member transitional city/county board, Freda Garner-William. They ran against each other once before, in the 2012 election for the original seven-member post-merger SCS board, with Caldwell coming out ahead.

Other contests feature Teddy King, Anthony D. Lockhart, and Stephanie Love in District 2; Scott McCormick and David Winston in District 3; Shante K. Avant (incumbent) and Jimmy L. Warren in District 6; and Roshun Austin, Mike Kernell, and Damon Curry Morris in District 9.

The election is for a new nine-member SCS board, representing only Memphis and unincorporated areas of outer Shelby County, to replace the former SCS board, which covered the entire county. New districts were drawn by the County Commission in the wake of Shelby County’s six suburban municipalities forming their own districts.

Presumably only party activists will be drawn to the section of the ballot consisting of choices for the state executive committee of the Republican and Democratic parties. Suffice it to say that there are a surprising number of contests on both sides of the party line, and, of course, a voter must choose either the Republican slate or the Democratic one. You can’t do both.

The same choice is necessary in deciding on nominees for governor and United States senator, and for the 8th and 9th Congressional Districts.

Though perhaps they should have been, Dana Matheny and John Mills, Republican candidates in the 8th District to oppose incumbent congressman Stephen Fincher were not mentioned in this week’s cover story, nor were Wes Bradley, Rickey Hobson, Lawrence A. Pivnick, and Tom Reasons, Democratic candidates in that race.

That omission is repaired here. Nobody imagines that any of the above have a chance to win, but most of them have been putting themselves, their energy, and their convictions on the line, and they are entitled to recognition of the fact, as is Isaac Richmond, the also-ran in the 9th District Democratic primary.

(Richmond got his unexpected due two weeks ago when incumbent Steve Cohen was asked what he knew of the position his “opponent” had taken on this or that matter. “I don’t know what Isaac Richmond has done,” Cohen answered straight-facedly.)

Voters will also have to choose whether to vote Democratic or Republican on a few contested primary races for the state legislature.

In the Democratic primary for the 84th District of the House of Representatives, longtime incumbent Joe Towns is opposed by Kenneth L. Wells. In the 91st House District, both Republicans and Democrats have choices. Samuel A. Arthur Watkins and Orrden Williams Jr. are the GOP contenders, and incumbent Raumesh A. Akbari, winner of a special election for the seat last year, is opposed by another contender in that 2013 race, Doris Deberry-Bradshaw.

A more closely observed race is taking place for the right to represent District 29 of the state Senate. Two Republicans are running, James R. “Jim” Finney and Anthony D. Herron Jr. but the real contest is on the other side of the party line in this heavily Democratic south-side district.

Jackson Baker

Ophelia Ford with supporters

Ophelia Ford, a member of the extended Ford political family, has held sway in the 29th since eking out a win in a 2005 special election to replace her brother, former state Senator John Ford, in the wake of the Tennessee Waltz scandal.

That race, against Republican Terry Roland, produced scandals of its own, notably when it was confirmed that a pair of dead people had somehow managed to vote for winner Ford. The seat was declared vacant, and Ford won the revote with room to spare.

But her tenure has been plagued with long absences and with Ford’s occasionally bizarre behavior, both in and out of the Senate chamber. All of this presented City Council member Lee Harris with an opportunity, and Harris is running hard to unseat Ford in the District 2 Senate primary. He takes care not to impugn the Ford family or tradition, even conferring occasional praise on both, but he stints no words in pointing out his opponent’s notorious absentee record, one which he says ill serves the district.

Should he win, Harris would become the first person to unseat a Ford-family member running for reelection, and it is undoubtedly in recognition of that fact that members of the Ford clan turned out en masse for a rare recent public event of the Senator’s. Also present, surprisingly, was erstwhile GOP foe Roland.

Finally, in addition to the judicial retention races late in the ballot, there are contested races for trial judges listed further up. There are some 81 candidates in all vying for positions in Circuit and Criminal Court, Probate Court, Chancery Court, and the civil and criminal divisions of General Sessions Court.

A good deal of controversy has arisen regarding the plethora of endorsements made in the judicial races by this or that self-serving group, including the local Republican and Democratic parties. Both political parties laid primary stress on the real or imagined political loyalties of potential endorsees, and the Democrats in particular found themselves engaged in mutual recriminations over alleged lapses and misjudgment in their final endorsee list.

Even more questionable are the several endorsement “ballots” being circulated by private individuals, who customarily charge candidates substantial sums for the right to be included (or, alternatively, to have their opponents excluded).

Once again this week, readers will find on page 18 of the Flyer a race-by-race evaluation of the contenders by members of the Memphis Bar Association, whose members presumably have the best and most objective vantage points in sorting out the candidates from one another.

For a look at what the August 7th ballot looks like, try this online link: http://shelbyvote.com/DocumentCenter/View/9863.

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Politics Politics Feature

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

CREDIT: Jackson baker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Politics Politics Feature

Henri Brooks and Joe Brown: Beyond the Storm

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

If, for partisans of the Shelby County Democratic Party, the period just before the current month got under way was the calm before the storm, what has happened since has been the storm.

Believe it or not, there are several Democratic candidates on the county general election ballot — including Deidre Malone, the party’s candidate for Shelby county mayor, who is running an intelligent, well-conceived campaign involving several ad hoc support groups; and Cheyenne Johnson, the incumbent Shelby County assessor, who is widely regarded as having served effectively, and who proved her appeal to a general public with an impressive reelection win just two years ago.

But two other Democrats on the ballot have monopolized all the attention of late, effectively drawing it away from Malone, Johnson, and other Democratic nominees. Worse, most of the publicity attracted by those candidates — Henri Brooks, candidate for Juvenile Court clerk, and Joe Brown, candidate for district attorney general — has been negative.

To be sure, both Brooks and Brown have seen a closing of the ranks behind them of core supporters — backers of Brooks, especially, have been active, filling the County Commission’s interim meeting room on Monday, making it S.R.O. for yet another showdown on her residential status — but general elections in Shelby County are not won solely on the basis of partisan support.

And both Brooks and Brown seem to have burned more bridges than they have built to swing voters, despite what had initially seemed good prospects for expanding their bases.

Brooks, a term-limited county commissioner, began the election year on a wave of relative acclaim, having almost single-handedly forced the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate conditions at Juvenile Court and subsequently to mandate reforms in the court’s procedure. Really, all Brooks had to do to sustain good election chances was to make nice in the way of most candidates, doing at least minimal outreach beyond her African-American inner-city constituency.

Instead, she managed to alienate considerable numbers of white and Hispanic voters in the course of a stormy commission debate about minority contracting on county construction projects (one in which her rhetoric undercut the tenable logic of her case); incurred a misdemeanor assault charge in a needless wrangle over a parking-lot space; and, finally, was discovered not to be inhabiting her listed residence, leading to serious efforts by fellow commissioners to declare her ineligible to serve and to vacate her seat.

Brooks has so far come out ahead in a series of skirmishes on the residential matter. She won a declaratory judgment last week from Chancellor Kenny Armstrong invalidating County Attorney Marcy Ingram’s finding that Brooks’ seat should be vacated. Armstrong ruled that only the commission could make such a finding.

And when the commission took up the matter on Monday, in the aforementioned jam-packed meeting room, no agreement on going forward could be reached by Brooks’ 12 colleagues. After a lengthy and contentious session, the commission concurred on a resolution to meet again on a still undefined date later this month, but there was a general consensus, at least privately, that Brooks would be able to run out the clock — on the basis of her attorneys’ appeals, if by no other means — and will be able to finish her term of office.

But that tactical victory, and the ongoing fuss about Brooks, could turn out to be Pyrrhic for her election chances.

As for Judge Joe Brown (as the former Criminal Court judge was billed during the 15 years of his nationally syndicated TV arbitration show), the aura of de facto ticket booster that his celebrity had initially gained him had already sagged due to an extended period of inactivity during May and June.

Brown had let it be known that, as of July 1st, things would be different. And he was right about that, if wildly wrong about which direction the difference would take. Speaking to a group of supporters last week, he responded grumpily to a TV station’s prodding him about the deleterious effect of an ongoing divorce on his surprisingly scanty campaign finances.

A supporter filmed and posted online Brown’s angry, rambling suggestion that the media should turn its attention instead to the matter of what he called the “down low” sexuality of his opponent, incumbent District Attorney General Amy Weirich, whose lifestyle is regarded as that of a conventional wife and mother. 

Brown’s unsubstantiated remarks generated a predictable and virtually universal outrage, but he declined to disavow them, calling himself an “entertainer” running for office.

Doubtful as it is that swing voters will be amused, they were “summoned” by the newly visible Brown to a meet-and-greet this Wednesday night at the Central Train Station on Main.

• Interestingly enough, County Commissioner Justin Ford was scheduled to be the host for another meet-and-greet on Wednesday — this one for aunt Ophelia Ford‘s reelection campaign in state Senate District 29. 

It will be remembered that Commissioner Ford won his primary race in the new Commission District 9 in something of a stealth manner against two highly active opponents, former school board member Patrice Robinson and Memphis Education Association President Keith Williams. During most of the spring primary campaign, there was talk in both of those two campaigns that the race was between the two of them, that Ford had been redistricted away from his main source of support in the South Memphis environs of N. J. Ford Funeral Home, and so forth.

When votes were counted on the evening of May 6th, however, it was Justin Ford who came out ahead, having put on something of a late rush and, perhaps as importantly, riding the residual cachet that belongs to the Ford name.

Reports of a decline in the Ford political dynasty have been somewhat exaggerated. Take a look: There is a Ford on the County Commission, another (Edmund Ford) on the City Council, and, however battered by bad publicity, adverse revelations about her attendance (more of which is likely to come) and doubts about her competence, Ophelia has so far managed to remain in the state Senate.

There is no doubt that City Councilman Lee Harris, is running a smart, vigorous, and apparently well-supported and financed campaign to unseat Senator Ford, and he has the further advantage of the free media that comes from being in the public eye as a highly active member of the council.

But there is a rule of thumb about incumbents having the edge in three-way races, and the fact is that the Democratic primary race in state Senate District 29 is a three-way — a four-way, really, inasmuch as Ricky Dixon and Herman Sawyer are on the ballot along with Ford and Harris.

Either Dixon or Sawyer could siphon anti-incumbent votes away from challenger Harris, but Dixon is a threat in his own right. Brother of former state Senator Roscoe Dixon, also a Tennessee Waltz figure, candidate Dixon has run before, most recently as the Democratic nominee in 2010 for Circuit Court clerk, netting 44 percent of the votes in that race.

What happens in the remaining month or so before election day on August 7th will be crucial. If Harris can translate his endorsements and campaign appearances into visible evidence of support during early voting, which begins on Friday, July 18th, he could be on his way to a new political venue.

If so, Harris will have accomplished something not yet done by anybody — defeating a Ford for reelection. Even with someone so visibly tarnished as Ophelia Ford, that might not be so easy.