Tag: Lee Harris

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Politics Politics Feature

Most Shelby County Election Results Were Predictable

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Republicans were not the only ones dismayed at the results of the August 2nd election. To be sure, the GOP took a licking in races for countywide positions, and they lost a swing district on the Shelby County Commission, giving Democrats a decisive 8-5 majority for the next four years.
But, with the exception of Democrat Michael Whaley‘s win in District 5, a city swing district, Shelby County Republicans held their own in localized one-on-one competition. On a countywide scale, though, the GOP fared less well, even in nonpartisan races. Two judicial candidates bearing Republican endorsements — David Rudolph and Jennifer S. Nichols — went down in defeat, despite having the advantage of being incumbents, albeit as recent interim appointees.

In a general way, the law of averages is what determined the outcomes. Yes, there are in theory more Democrats than Republicans in Shelby County; this year, unlike the case in 2010 and 2014, there was a general consensus in both parties that, quality-wise, Democratic candidates were as good as — if not better than — than their Republican counterparts, and, for a change, adequately funded. Crossover voting in the GOP’s direction, a factor in the previous two elections, was virtually non-existent this year. 

Similarly, there is the related fact that there are more African Americans in Shelby County than whites, and, while post-racial results have been known to occur in local elections (think Steve Cohen or, when he still had a bloom on, A C Wharton), it would seem to be human nature that, all else being equal, people will vote for their racial group-mates. Accordingly, in relatively close races between blacks and whites, the racial factor tilted toward African Americans.

Finally, in local politics as in state and national elections, women have steadily become a more active force, and people, including other women, who in the binary sense are yet another majority, have no compunction in voting for women.

Taking those three factors into account — party, race, and gender — a fairly reliable rule-of-thumb can be stated that, where any two are present, they can be decisive for the candidate on the majority side of the ledger. 

Thus, Democrat John Boatner Jr., a white candidate in the primary for Congress in the 8th Congressional District, was at a disadvantage in his contest with Erika Stotts Pearson, an African American. And, while Boatner had more money and was clearly the more active of the two candidates (omnipresent at campaign events, and with several large yard signs bearing his name on upscale sections of Walnut Grove Road), he was a first-time candidate, and, as a white male contending with an African American female, was on the wrong side of the arithmetic. (In his case, too, the power of the city vote, where Democrats are numerous, out-did the party’s rather scanty presence these days in the West Tennessee counties that comprise the rest of the district.)

A few other upsets reflect various versions of the Democratic/black/female tilt.

Circuit court Judge Rudolph had, by general consent, performed well after his 2017 appointment by Governor Haslam to fill the vacancy left by the retirement of Judge Robert L. “Butch” Childers, and his diligence as a candidate, often in the company of his personable wife, Elizabeth, an administrator at the University of Memphis Law School, could not be faulted. The scion of an East Memphis family, educated at MUS and Vanderbilt, he was well-financed, to boot.

But he was felled by Yolanda Kight, an equally impressive and diligent young black woman from a humble background in South Memphis, who had risen very much by her own efforts to attain the lesser judicial rank of magistrate. Aided also by the “upset” factor which can generate sympathy in an electorate, she ended with a narrow win over Rudolph. 

Another such case was the victory in a Democratic state Senate primary race of Gabby Salinas, whose Bolivian family had immigrated to Memphis so that young Gabby could be treated for childhood cancer at St. Jude. On the threshold of being a scientist in her own right, she survived three different bouts with the disease, and, though she was faced with a better-financed opponent, the able and equally appealing Le Bonheur chaplain David Weatherspoon, her backstory may have made the difference. Her next challenge will be, as an advocate of Medicaid expansion, against Republican state Senator Brian Kelsey.

There were other unexpected outcomes. The victories of Joyce Dorse-Coleman and Michelle McKissack over Shelby County Schools Board incumbents Mike Kernell and Chris Caldwell conformed to the above-mentioned formula, though McKissack’s in particular also owed much to her support from charter-school advocates. Though hardly a novice in politics, the oft-controversial city Councilwoman Janis Fullilove, victorious as a Democrat over Republican Bobby Simmons for Juvenile Court Clerk, was expected to be shut out of the white vote entirely. Further analysis will determine whether she wasn’t or whether she was but was able to prevail anyhow.

Most outcomes on August 2nd conformed to the form sheet. It was a Democratic year, not so much because of a better-than-usual turnout but because their candidates were measurably better than in previous years, staving off the customary flow of crossover Democratic voters to Republican candidates that had marked prior elections. 

In the marquee local races, State Senator Lee Harris for county mayor was clearly an able political figure, as was Chief Deputy Floyd Bonner for sheriff, both of them sufficiently so to attract crossovers of their own to augment what was already their majority standing.  

The Democratic blue wave was no surprise. In the vernacular, this was how it was ‘sposed to be.

Ford Canale‘s win for a a vacant city council position was due to his maintaining establishment support against a field of several candidates breaking up the dissident vote. In the statewide contests, Republican Bill Lee won his gubernatorial primary by being himself; Democrat Karl Dean won his through superior resources and fidelity to a centrist party message. The U.S. Senate primary wins of Democrat Phil Bredesen and Republican Marsha Blackburn were no-brainers.

The final win of the mid-summer election season occurred Monday night at Shelby County Republican headquarters, where a small caucus of steering committee members from the state House District 99 of late state Representative Ron Lollar elected onetime state Senator Tom Leatherwood, outgoing as register and a loser in his race for Circuit Court Clerk, as a compromise choice to run against Democratic nominee Dave Cambron in November.

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Election Results: Harris, Dean, Blackburn, Lee, Bredesen, Kustoff, Cohen Win

CREDIT: Ward Archer

Ward Archer

County mayor victor, Lee Harris, talks with reporters at his victory party.

Yes, Virginia, there was a blue wave in Shelby County, Tennessee — at least it appeared so when all the votes were counted for the August 2nd election, which included a county general election, primaries for state and federal offices, and isolated other ballot matters. From Mayor-elect Lee Harris on down the ballot, Democrats swept all the races for county offices, and even picked up an extra seat on the County Commission, giving their party an 8 to 5 majority going into the next four years.

Though Diane Black barely carried Shelby county in the Republican primary race for governor, the winner statewide was Franklin businessman Bill Lee, with former state Economic Development Commissioner Randy Boyd finishing second, Black finishing third, and state House Speaker Beth Harwell coming in fourth.

The Democratic gubernatorial primary was won, in Shelby County and statewide, by former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean over state House Democratic Leader Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley. Former Governor Phil Bredesen and 7th district Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn easily won nominations for U.S. senator in the Democratic and Republican primaries, respectively.

U.S. Reps. Steve Cohen (D) and David Kustoff (R) handily won their primary races for reelection, Kustoff having to head off a well-funded intra-party challenge from perennial candidate George Flinn. Cohen will oppose Republican Charlotte Bergman in the fall, while Kustoff’s opponent will be Erika Stotts Pearson, who edged out John Boatner Jr. in the Democratic primary.

The other news of the night was that, not for the first time, a glitch of some sort at the Shelby County Election Commission marred reporting of the results. A sizeable crowd had gathered early on in The Columns downtown (the old Union Planters headquarters building) hoping to cheer a victory for county mayor by the Democratic nominee Lee Harris, but was frustrated for nearly two hours after the polls closed without seeing any results.

When the numbers finally came in, though, there was tumult among the well-wishers in the large room, followed, moments later, by the happy mayor-elect himself. Harris addressed the crowd from a stage that came to include, besides family and campaign staff, 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen and former Mayor A C Wharton.

A gracious Harris extended thanks to one and all and even asked for some appreciative applause for his vanquished Republican foe, County Trustee David Lenoir.

Final vote for Mayor, with all 166 precincts reporting, was Harris, 84,956; Lenoir, 68,491.

Chief Deputy Floyd Bonner, running as a Democrat for Sheriff, solidly beat local Homeland Security director Dale Lane, running as a Republican. Vote was 91,370 to 60,433, giving Bonner the election’s highest total number of votes.

Other county results:

Assessor of Property— Melvin Burgess (D), 81, 815: Robert “Chip” Trouy, 61,707; Katherine Culverhaus (I), 614.

County Trustee— Regina Morrison Newman (D), 84,712; George Barnes Chism, 62,194.

Circuit Court Clerk — Democrat Temiika Gipson over Republican Tom Leatherwood, 81,573 to 68,806.

Criminal Court Clerk — Democrat Heidi Kuhn, 85,492; Republican Richard De Saussure, 60,917.

Juvenile Court Clerk — Janis Fullilove (D), 75,031; Bobby Simmons 74,030.

Probate Court Clerk — Bill Morrison (D), 81,057; Chris Thomas ( R), 61,862; Jennings Bernard (I), 6,333.

County Clerk — Wanda Halbert (D), 86,327; Donna Creson ( R), 63,017.

Register of Deeds — Shelandra Ford (D), 75,260; Wayne Mashburn R), 70, 575

Other notable results:

SHELBY COUNTY COMMISSION: Democrat Michael Whaley’s victory in County Commission District 5, over Republican Richard Morton, increased the existing Democratic majority by one, to 8 to 5. Other winners: Republican Amber Mills over Democrat Racquel Collins, District 1; Republican David Bradford over Democrat Tom Carpenter, District 2; Republican Mick Wright over Democrat Monica Timmerman, District 3; Republican Mark Billingsley over Democrat Kevin Haley, District 4; Democrat Willie Brooks, District 6; Democrat Tami Sawyer over Republican Sam Goff, District 7; Democrat Mickell Lowery, District 8; Democrat Edmund Ford Jr. over Republican Sharon Webb, District 9; Democrat Reginald Milton over independent Vontyna Durham, District 10; Democrat Eddie Jones, District 11; Democrat Van Turner, District 12; Republican Brandon Morrison over Democrat George Monger, District 13.

In closely-watched legislative races:
Democratic challenger Katrina Robinson ousted incumbent Democrat Reginald Tate in state Senate District 33.

State Rep. Raumesh Akbari defeated County Commissioner Justin Ford in the Democratic primary in state Senate District 29 and will oppose Republican Tom Stephens in November.

Gabby Salinas defeated David Weatherspoon in the Democratic primary for state Senate District 31 and will compete against incumbent Republican Brian Kelsey in the fall.

Incumbent Republican Mark White defeated challenger Doyle Silliman in the GOP primary for state House District 83.

Scott McCormick defeated Patricia Possel in the GOP primary for state House District 96 and will oppose incumbent Democrat Dwayne Thompson in November.

Jesse Chism won out over fellow Democrats Ricky Dixon and Lynette Williams in state House District 85.

Incumbent Democrat Barbara Cooper defeated Amber Huett-Garcia and Jesse Jeff in state House District 86.

Incumbent John DeBerry defeated challenger Torrey Harris in the Democratic primary for House District 90.

London Lamar beat fellow Democrats Doris DeBerry Bradshaw and Juliette Eskridge in the Democratic primary for House District 91.

Incumbent Democrat G.A. Hardaway turned back challenger Eddie Neal in House District 93.

Incumbent Antonio Parkinson beat Johnnie Hatten in the Democratic primary for House District 98.

JUDICIAL RACES:

Circuit Court, Division 7: Incumbent Mary Wagner over Michael Floyd.

Circuit Court, Division 9: Yolanda Kight over incumbent David Rudolph.

Criminal Court, Division 10: Jennifer J. Mitchell over incumbent Jennifer S. Nicho
Environmental Court, Division 14: Incumbent Patrick Dandridge over Price Harris.

SCHOOL BOARD RACES:

Shelby County Schools Board, District 1: Michelle McKissack over incumbent Chris Caldwell, Michael Scruggs, and Kate Ayers;

Shelby County Schools, District 6: Incumbent Shante Avant over Percy Hunter, Minnie Hunter, and R.S. Ford;

Shelby County Schools, District 8: Incumbent William Orgel over Jerry Cunninghan;

Shelby County Schools, District 9: Joyce Dorse-Coleman over incumbent Mike Kernell, Alvin Crook, Rhonnie Brewer, and Kori Hamner.

SPECIAL ELECTION, MEMPHIS CITY COUNCIL, SUPER DISTRICT 9, POSITION 2: Interim incumbent J. Ford Canale over Lisa Moore, Charley Burch, Erika Sugarmon, Tim Ware, David Franklin, and Tyrone R. Franklin.

Complete election results and vote totals from the Shelby County Election Commission.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Both Mayoral Candidates Wearing Well as Debates Continue

There are several factors that make the contest for Shelby County mayor hard to predict — not least the apparent parity demonstrated by the two candidates — Republican David Lenoir and Democrat Lee Harris — in the several public encounters they have had together.

The first two major debates between the two probably added up to a draw.

In the first one, at a Kiwanis Club meeting in June that was live-streamed on WREG-TV, Lenoir probably outshone his opponent by 1) being more clearly in sync with his immediate audience, composed of predominantly middle-of-

Harris (l) and Lenoir at Rotary…

the-road business types; and 2) being willing to take on the role of aggressor, attacking Harris three times on what he perceived as one of Harris’s weak points, public safety, each time without any kind of response from the Democrat.

In the second debate, co-sponsored by the NAACP and the ad hoc Voting is Power901 (VIP901) group and held at the National Civil Rights Museum, Harris probably took the honors on the strength of having a playing field more congenial to his left-center views and on a new readiness to defend his positions and to mix it up with Lenoir on the attack front.

In a general sense, Lenoir carried into the general election race the kind of edge in financing that Republican nominees normally enjoy, while Harris has at his disposal the theoretical fact of a Democratic majority, based on the demographics of Shelby County. Inasmuch as the first of these advantages, the bounty of the GOP purse, is a consistent given in local elections, the election could hinge on the degree to which the county’s Democrats actually do manage to cohere and get their vote out — as, conspicuously, they have had trouble doing, except in presidential elections.

Hard to Call
As it happens, there does indeed seem to be a more defined and organized degree of focus among Shelby County Democrats this year, and more than a few Republicans worry about the prospect of misplaced complacency in local GOP ranks. But the fact remains: The mayoral race, like other one-on-ones on the August 2nd ballot, is hard to call, and two additional debates between Harris and Lenoir, held this past week, did little to resolve the matter.

Not that the candidates failed to measure up. Both performed well, and both, especially in the second of the two events — a forum focusing on neighborhood issues at Circuit Playhouse — indicated a familiarity with the issues and a developed sense of what to do about them.

The initial encounter of the week — a Tuesday debate before a Rotary Club luncheon at Clayborn Temple — set the tone and reaffirmed the precepts of the two mayoral campaigns.

The first question called for — and got — a self-definition from each of  the candidates.
JB

…and at Circuit Playhouse

Lenoir, who has spent the last eight years as Shelby County trustee, a job requiring that he collect and manage the county’s fiscal assets, cast himself as “a problem-solver first and a public servant second.” Noting that he came to office in late 2010, in the middle of a still-raging recession, Lenoir claimed to have “made Shelby County stronger,” citing a reduction in the county’s debt, a rise in its savings, and a lower tax rate.

For his part, state Senator Harris declared his ability to “bring people together” and “work with anyone” and claimed to have “passed more bills than any Democrat in the state” — most of these measures sponsored or co-sponsored by the General Assembly’s dominant Republicans — all the while keeping the Democratic faith by striving to extend the benefits of health care and quality education.

When asked about specific issues, the two candidates responded with solutions and proposals that matched the character of their self-descriptions. For example, Harris not only called for the county to devote oversight and funding to the improvement of MATA, he maintained that developing a better mass transit system was “the easiest way to get people out of poverty.”

Lenoir cautioned about “double taxation,” noting that MATA’s purview was, for the most part, restricted to the area of Memphis proper and that city government was essentially responsible for its funding and management. Moderator Otis Sanford put enough of a finger on the scales to point out that specific bus routes extended beyond the city limits.

Differing Approaches
On the general question of how best to establish equality and social justice, the candidates also differed. Lenoir touted what he said had been his efforts as trustee to educate the public on fiscal issues, including an educational effort inside Juvenile Court to tap the entrepreneurial instincts of youthful offenders. He proposed “wealth creation, not wealth transfer” or “a radical, new wave, new agenda campaign” as the key to progress.

For his part, Harris said the problem required a “perspective that is social justice-oriented,” and recommended that, in replacing the current, outmoded facilities for juvenile detentions, provision be made for fewer, not more confinements. He supported the continuation of the federal oversight that was imposed on Juvenile Court in 2012, whereas Lenoir said he would defer to the opinions of current Mayor Mark Luttrell and Juvenile Court Judge Dan Michael, who have sought to have the oversight terminated.

Both candidates paid homage to the principle of frugality, with Lenoir boasting the efforts of Shelby County government during his tenure to lower the county debt and Harris noting that he slept in his Senate office, “on the floor,” during overnights in Nashville.

Lenoir cited two occasions from Harris’ governmental record to refute Harris’ claims, as City Councilman and state senator, never to have voted for a tax increase, to which Harris retorted, “At least I have a record,” contrasting his hands-on involvement in budgetary and taxation matters in health care and in other areas with what he said was Lenoir’s total lack of such experience.

Harris stressed his active role in efforts that led up to the removal of Confederate statues from downtown parks, and Lenoir cited documentation to establish that rumors of his having opposed that process were ill-founded. Both candidates gave President Trump’s ongoing “zero tolerance” approach to immigration a wide berth.

In general, each candidate depicted his own background — Lenoir’s in the private financial sector and as “the county’s banker,” Harris’ as active legislator and as “leader” in public solutions — as better suited to guide county government for the foreseeable future. Lenoir got two late jabs in, suggesting that Harris, who had moved from the Memphis City Council to the legislature and was now ready to move on again, had a disinclination to finish the terms he was elected to, and he repeated allegations that specific votes by Harris indicated he was “soft on crime.”

Harris, who has in fact moved quickly through governmental ranks, disputed the first matter and made credible explanations of his voting record, converting the two allegations into proofs of his detailed — and more nuanced — experience with the range of public issues.

Two nights later, the argument was continued on the stage of Circuit Playhouse, where, for roughly an hour and a half, moderator Marc Fleischer and representatives of various neighborhood associations subjected the two contenders to what was probably their most detailed grilling yet on the issues.

Speaking in a sense for them both, Harris said the ordeal of campaigning was something like “drinking water out of a fire hose” and jested that in doing a recent sweep from Collierville to Cordova to downtown he had found himself “kissing a hand and shaking a baby.”

The proportion of ad hominem exchanges in the Thursday night encounter was considerably diminished, as Lenoir and Harris set out to demonstrate their familiarity with the several subject areas they were asked about and their ability to suggest hands-on solutions.

Hands-On Answers
The candidates were asked not just about MATA in the abstract, for example, but whether they had ridden the bus themselves, when they had, and what the routes were. Similarly, they were asked to detail what their associations with neighborhood associations had been. Lenoir got to drop the names of well-known activists like Janet Boscarini and Charlie Caswell that he had worked “shoulder-to-shoulder” with, removing blight or clearing property, and Harris alluded to his watchdog efforts, in tandem with Republican legislator Brian Kelsey, to put an end to TVA drilling at the Memphis aquifer that threatened to contaminate Memphis’ pristine drinking water.

Mere days before the current weekend’s “Roundhouse Revival” activities at the Fairgrounds site of the long-dormant Coliseum, both candidates waxed nostalgic and put themselves on record as lamenting the terms of the contract of the Grizzlies that kept the facility from serving as an arena.

Both weighed in on subjects as diverse as EDGE, Land Banks, Victorian Village, a proposed Juvenile Assessment Center, agreeing here, disagreeing there, but creating a sense that each was aware of the myriad issues confronting the county and each had some detailed and precise and often original notion of how to deal with it all. All in all, the debate served as something of a symposium, as a classroom of sorts for the audience.

There was something of a partisan divide, to be sure, both in the audience and between the two candidates themselves, but nothing like the unbridgeable chasms of our national politics at the moment. Each side might — and did — claim victory, but from an audience perspective, it was something of a win/win, generating a sense that, however this thing comes out on August 2nd, whoever wins will be adequately prepared and not closed off from the ideas of the opposition.

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Democratic Blue Wave or GOP Firewall?

In truth, there are several elections on the August 2nd ballot in Shelby County. 

One is a county general election, featuring contests for Shelby County mayor, sheriff, and various other county official positions, as well as for members of the Shelby County Schools board and Shelby County Commission, special elections for three judgeships, as well as a referendum on pay raises for county officials. And, for roughly half the voters of Memphis, a contest for an open at-large position on the City Council. 

Another election, involving primaries for major statewide and federal offices, includes races for governor, U.S. senator, the U.S. House of Representatives, and legislative positions in the Tennessee General Assembly. 

The outcomes of the county general election and the state/federal primaries will not only be consequential in themselves but will have significant barometric relevance to ongoing political currents — local, statewide, and even national. In particular, the most closely watched races will indicate the extent to which the current century’s ramparts of Republican dominance in Tennessee and Shelby County are still at full strength or whether, conversely, the much-rumored “blue wave” of 2018 will signal a Democratic revival.

Certainly, a Democrat — Lee Harris — is regarded as having a fair chance to prevail as Shelby County mayor, the first to do so since two easy victories in 2002 and 2006 by former county and city Mayor A C Wharton. Harris is a former Memphis city councilman and, more recently, the elected leader of the Democrats’ five-member remnant in the state Senate. He is opposed by David Lenoir, a two-term county trustee, who won a three-cornered Republican primary over County Commissioner Terry Roland and Juvenile Court Clerk Joy Touliatos in May. 

GOP: Bill Lee, Diane Black, Randy Boyd, and Beth Harwell

The root fact is that the August 2nd county ballot will be the first real test this year of Democrats against Republicans, and might provide a measure of the respective prospects for either party in the months and even years to come.

As it happens, of course, balloting in the county general election, as well as in the state/federal primaries, is already underway, in an official early voting period that began last Friday, July 13th, and will continue through Saturday, July 28th. 

And, because of a controversy over the Shelby County Election Commission’s choice of voting sites that flared up in the couple of weeks before the process started [see Editorial, p. 8], public attention to the process of early voting was whetted to an unprecedented degree.

By the time the controversy was resolved in the courtroom of Chancellor JoeDae L. Jenkins, Democrats and Republicans had seen early voting sites added in pockets of the county dominated by their constituents. The final number of sites was 27, fairly evenly distributed, and five of those sites — also apportioned equably party-wise — were enabled to operate for an extra three days each.

When the Shelby County Democrats for Change PAC held a reception and rally for party candidates in the Serenity Events Center in East Memphis on Sunday, the organizers proudly claimed a 68 percent to 32 percent voting ratio in favor of the Democratic state/federal primary versus the Republican one for Friday’s first day of early voting. If that kind of differential should continue and be reflected in the voting results of the county general election, chances for the putative blue wave would be looking good.

DEM: Karl Dean and Craig Fitzhugh

The two mayoral contestants will have had several public one-on-one matchups by the time final voting ceases on Election Day. In the first one, held last month at a meeting of the Downtown Kiwanis Club, Republican Lenoir seemed to gain some traction by selectively using Democrat Harris’ legislative record to make a “soft-on-crime” attack.

In the candidates’ second major encounter, held last week by the NAACP and the ad hoc Voting is Power 901 activist group at the National Civil Rights Museum, Harris made pointed efforts to rebut Lenoir’s charge and clearly found the environment more hospitable to his own message of progressive social change. Score it one-to-one as the opponents prepared to square off again this week before the Downtown Rotary Club.

Though this potentially nip-and-tuck mayoral contest will have exposed the two parties’ contrasting attitudes, the real battle was taking place in the political center. 

Lenoir’s pitch, based essentially on his claim of demonstrated competence, was centrist enough, his supporters hoped, to give him the same shot at independents and Democratic crossovers that current GOP Mayor Mark Luttrell enjoyed in two elections. Similarly, Harris’ professional gloss as a Yale Law graduate and his record in office of simultaneously working across the political aisle, and pursuing cutting-edge Democratic goals gave him a good chance to activate his base, demographically presumed to be a majority, while discouraging crossovers the other way.

Even the race for sheriff, not normally one characterized by political extremes, has a discernibly ideological edge this year, as was demonstrated by another NAACP/VIP901 debate last week, this one between Chief Deputy Floyd Bonner, the Democrat, and county homeland security director Dale Lane, the Republican.

Phil Bredesen and Marsha Blackburn

Among other issues, Bonner’s declared disinclination to cooperate with the Trump administration’s roundups of undocumented immigrants, locally, contrasted with Lane’s professed willingness to assist the operatives of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officials as “fellow law officers.” (See Politics, p. 7,  for more.) 

Consistent with the blue wave theme, the August 2nd election ballot shows three Democrats running for the office of governor, and only one of them — political unknown Mezianne Vale Payne — has the look of a ringer. The other two Democrats — former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and outgoing Democratic state House Leader Craig Fitzhugh — are major league, all the way.

Most analysts see Dean as the clear favorite, on the basis of his financial edge and backing from traditionalists in the party network, though Fitzhugh has the declared support of party legislators, educators, state employees, and various other rank-and-file groups.

There are three Democrats vying in the party primary for the U.S. Senate, too, and one of them is former two-term Governor Phil Bredesen. His party rivals, for the record, are named Gary Davis and John Wolfe, but there is no mystery about who the Democratic nominee will be. Bredesen not only has wall-to-wall support from rank-and-file Democrats in Tennessee, he is counted on by national Democrats of all persuasions to contribute mightily to the party revival that Democratic optimists (and numerous media analysts) have been forecasting.

And, just as there is no mystery about Bredesen’s looming victory in the Democratic primary, the identity of his Republican adversary in November, U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee’s 7th Congressional district, is also a given, though one Aaron L. Pettigrew also has his name on the primary ballot. Blackburn, who occupies a position on the hard right of the Republican Party, was a Trumpian before there was a Trump, and her all-too-obvious intent to move on to the Senate was probably a major factor last year in convincing incumbent Senator Bob Corker, a Trump critic, that it was time to bow out.

There is something of a coin-toss situation among Republican gubernatorial candidates.. Considering the fact that three of the six GOP aspirants — entrepreneur and former state economic development Commissioner Randy Boyd, 6th District U.S. Representative Diane Black, and Williamson County businessman Bill Lee — are multi-millionaires, that metaphor is almost literal. The fourth serious candidate in the GOP primary, state House Speaker Beth Harwell, has been hampered by her relative lack of financial resources.

Though only Black has a political profile arguably close to Trump’s (she’s an advocate for building “the wall” on the nation’s southern border, and she veers hard right on most other issues), all of the Republicans call themselves “conservatives” and are at pains not to put too much public distance between themselves and the president.

Boyd, in particular, seems determined in that respect, running ads that seem designed to depict him as more rigidly conservative than Black, though in person he is soft-spoken and thoughtful, a near clone in his thinking to current Governor, Bill Haslam, for whom Boyd designed such arguably forward-looking programs as Drive to 55 and Tennessee Promise. 

Lee, a genial man who campaigns heavily on his Christian faith and his rebound from family tragedies, is clearly a generic conservative, though one with few hard and fast positions. By general consensus (and such reliable polling data as exists), he has been running third and hoping for a stumble by one or both of the acknowledged GOP front-runners, Boyd and Black.

There are those who see Lee’s real purpose as building a profile for some future race. Harwell’s is more a case of sink-or-swim in a possible last hurrah, though she is well-liked enough to be called upon for further public duty, possibly by someone’s appointment.

In any case, Bredesen vs. Blackburn and the eventual gubernatorial matchup in November will measure the contrary tides of political sentiment in Tennessee. Apropos prospects for a blue wave, a look at the legislative races on the ballot, with Democrats vying for every available position and there being numerous races for which no Republican is contending, would almost suggest that Shelby County has returned to the circumstances of the old Solid Democratic South of the pre-civil rights era, in which the GOP was an outlier party.

That, to say the least, would be misleading. What the dearth of Republican candidacies, almost entirely in predominantly black areas, does represent, however, is a continuing lack of indigenous support in the inner city of Memphis, as well as a serious downturn in the party’s outreach results, whether through lack of serious effort or simple failure. In theory at least, the party is still trying, as would be indicated by the presence on the GOP ballot once again of Charlotte Bergmann, an African-American activist and a perennial candidate, once again seeking the 9th District Congressional seat.

The omnipresence of Democratic legislative candidates, meanwhile, signals a rekindled zeal among rank-and-file Democrats as well as in the leadership of a local party which was reorganized in 2017, after internal disunion and chaos resulted in the state party’s lifting its charter in 2016. 

Longtime observers of local and state politics recall a time in the 1950s and 1960s when the Republican Party, then a definite minority organization in both Shelby County and Tennessee at large, began fielding candidates in established Democratic fiefdoms. Largely unsuccessful at first, the GOP efforts eventually bore fruit, and, when social changes (most of them national in origin) began to weaken ancestral voting habits, today’s wall-to-wall GOP state government emerged.

Locally, though, the situation is far from being static. It should be remembered that the Republican sweeps and near-sweeps in the county elections of the 21st century are counter-demographic, in that they have occurred at a time when Shelby County’s emergent non-white majority has been ever enlarging. If the new flood of Democratic candidates in the suburbs can stimulate a dormant activism there and meanwhile activate the party’s urban base, generally somnolent in non-presidential election years, the political power ratio could transform quickly.

Or, as Shelby County Republican chairman Lee Mills put it, in a cautionary message to his party-mates back in February: “Since 2010, we’ve been lucky in Shelby County. Thanks to the leadership we’ve had, we’ve had good organization and we’ve had good candidates. The Democrats, on the other hand, have had just the opposite. They haven’t had good candidates and they haven’t had good organization. But for the first time in a long time, they have both of those things. They have a good organization. They have a good leader. And they have decent candidates at the top that’ll drive all the way down to the bottom. So we have got to turn our voters out.”

There are three state Senate seats at risk in the primary, and there are interesting contests in all of them:

In State Senate District 29, Tom Stephens is a token Republican entry. The real race is in the Democratic primary, between outgoing County Commissioner Justin Ford, a member of urban Memphis’ best-known political clan, and current state Representative Raumesh Akbari, a rising legislative star who won her House seat in a 2013 special election over Ford’s cousin, Kemba Ford.

Three Democrats are on the ballot in Senate District 31, where David Weatherspoon, a chaplain at Le Bonheur Hospital, seeks the party nod over Gabby Salinas, a cancer survivor and scientific researcher. A third Democrat is M. Rodanial Ray Ransom.

Salinas’ history of personal triumph over difficult odds makes for a compelling backstory, but Weatherspoon has a serious financial edge and support across party lines. Both Weatherspoon and Salinas are committed to supporting Medicaid expansion, which Republican incumbent Brian Kelsey, unopposed in his primary, has stoutly resisted.

No Republican is running in Senate District 31, perhaps because Democratic incumbent Reginald Tate is well-known for his close cooperation with the GOP leadership in the legislature. That fact has also generated a stout challenge to Tate in the Democratic primary from nursing entrepreneur Katrina Robinson, who is supported by several name Democrats, including current state Senators Sara Kyle and Lee Harris.

Of Shelby County’s 13 seats in the House of Representatives, only five have races on the ballot, and all these races are between rival Democrats. In House District 85, there is a four-way contest involving Jesse Chism, Ricky Dixon, Brett N. Williams, and Lynette P. Williams. In House District 86, long-term Democratic incumbent Barbara Cooper has two primary opponents: Amber Huett-Garcia and Jesse Jeff. In House District 90, things begin to get truly interesting. Here incumbent John DeBerry — who, like the aforementioned Reginald Tate, is considered by many of his party-mates to be too cozy with Republicans — is challenged by Torrey Harris, a small-business owner. 

House District 91, vacated by Akbari, is being fought over by Democrats Doris DeBerry Bradshaw, Juliette Eskridge, and London P. Lamar, while House District 93 incumbent Democrat G.A. Hardaway has a contender in the Democratic primary, Eddie Neal. In House District 99, Antonio “Two-Shay” Parkinson,  is being challenged by fellow Democrat Johnnie Hatten.

House District 99 has a special distinction as a result of the recent untimely death of Republican incumbent Ron Lollar. It was too late to change the ballot; so Lollar’s name remains. Before the November election, the Shelby County Republican Party will be entitled to name a replacement. Some of the Republican names in play: county commission Chair Heidi Shafer, Shelby County GOP Chair Mills, Bartlett Alderman David Parsons, and County Commissioner David Reaves.

And David Cambron, the Democratic mainstay and ace recruiter who is as responsible as anyone for the stepped-up party showing, has a shot at winning a seat himself. He’s unopposed to be the Democratic nominee in House Disrict 99.See ‘Politics,’ , for more election preview.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Grading the NAACP’s Mayoral Debate

CREDIT: JB

JB

Moderator Ajanaku (l) and debaters Harris and Lenoir at Civil Rights Museum

So how did Tuesday night’s debate between candidates for Shelby County mayor go? The answer is: Well enough for both Trustee David Lenoir, the Republican nominee, and state Senator Lee Harris, the Democratic nominee, to claim victory for themselves. Others may have seen it one way or the other, depending on their partisanship. And it was theoretically possible to call it a draw.

In the Beginning: The debate kicked off, as is customary, with brief opening statements. Harris went first, maintaining, as he has before, that “poverty” is the biggest issue of the campaign, elaborating that county government had achieved “not enough progress fast enough.” Given that this was an NAACP-sponsored debate, in the National Civil Rights Museum, Harris’ contention was well attuned to his audience — much more so than when he named poverty and “segregation” as predominant issues in his June 13th debate with Lenoir before a predominantly white, middle-class group of Kiwanians.

Lenoir wasted no time dealing with the elephant in the room, which was the fact, obvious to attendees, that the originally scheduled moderator, veteran journalist Wendi Thomas, had been replaced by the Tri-State Defender editor Karanja Ajanaku. It was well known that Lenoir had originally balked at taking part if Thomas participated, on account of what he said (though he did not specifically identify) were Thomas’ “biased public statements” on social media.

The NAACP then planned to have the debate with only Harris in attendance, before Thomas offered to step aside. Lenoir then changed his mind again and agreed to participate. He spun the situation by congratulating the NAACP and the other sponsors for being willing to make the change. Some subdued murmuring in the audience suggested the explanation was not a crowd-pleaser.

Aside from its underscoring what had been a Lenoir power play, the basic fact of this opening exchange was that it defined who was home and who was having to play an away game. Advantage Harris.

Definition of Aims: Early on, without stirring much reaction one way or another, Lenoir espoused his usual goals of “great schools, great jobs, and safe streets,” hailing the prospect of “growing the economy and building a bigger pot” for the sake of “women and minorities” and boasting his actions as Trustee in making large deposits at the black-owned Tri-State Bank.

JB

State Senator Lee Harris

Harris responded that “we’ve got to be watchful of the language,” that “growth is important,” but “sometimes at the expense of the folks at the bottom.” In other words, said Harris, “growth still means that we will continue with inequality. Those at the top get wealthier, and those at the bottom get a little bit of wealth.”

Both got to make their essential points, with Harris earning a bit of extra applause — both for the faintly incendiary nature of his allegation and in appreciation of its hint of originality. Lenoir would get a chance later on to expound on his “courage” and his purported successes in building up the county treasury for public purposes.

Education: Both candidates stood four-square for improvements in education, with Harris noting that he had endorsements from teachers’ groups and Stand for Children.
Lenoir got to repeat his plan for “an educational liaison” official and received some healthy applause for his plan to allocate capital construction carefully.

Clout in Nashville and Past Public Service: Lenoir boasted his connections in Nashville and his experience as an administrator and made a point of saying that he had “finished every term I was elected to.” That was a not-so-veiled shot at the upwardly mobile Harris, who, critics charge, is always sighting new jobs other than the one he has been elected to.

Harris quickly responded: “I served for three years on the Memphis City Council, and I ran for the state Senate because I was not satisfied with the incumbent [Ophelia Ford], and nobody else would run against her….God bless her heart; she was not doing a good job at that time, and I ran against her because it needed to be done. I’m serving my fourth and final year in the state Senate, and I’m giving up my seat so that new talent can come through door.”

So far, so good, and then Harris delivered the clencher to resounding applause that even forced an admiring smile from Lenoir: “And the problem is not that our politicians do not stay long enough. It is that they stay too long!” Several voices in the crowd mouthed those last two words along with him. Lenoir made an effort to recoup by once again stressing his experience as an administrator vis-a-vis an opponent who had “never run an operation.”

Crime: Harris drew an interesting parallel between the prospect of improved transportation as lever to create opportunities and dampen the prospect of crime. In his turn, Lenoir went for the gold, repeating a charge that had worked for him three times in their earlier Kiwanis debate, and had gone un-rebutted then by Harris. “My opponent is soft on violent crimes. He voted against a bill in Nashville that would toughen the sentencing for criminals with guns.” Further: “He wrote legislation that would reverse Representative Lois DeBerry’s drugs-around-our-schools bill.”

Harris replied, “It’s easy to criticize my record of leadership because I have a record of leadership. I have been on the forefront … on every issue we have talked about so far, for the last seven years.” He described himself as being in favor of criminal justice reform and made an effort to characterize the bill that Lenoir had spoken of as being aimed at non-violent offenders who happened to have guns. More important, said Harris, were “the rapists, the murderers — and let’s stop giving these domestic abusers slaps on the wrists.”

It wasn’t perfect, but it was far more effective than had been Harris’ choosing to ignore the charge at the earlier debate. Lenoir would return to the “soft-on-violent-crime” theme and made a point of having the endorsements of the Deputy Sheriffs Association and the Memphis Police Association’s, “because they understand my position on crime, and they understand my opponent’s position, as well.”

Both made the case for the joint city/county Office of ReEntry for ex-offenders, but Lenoir charged that Harris, on the council, had voted against funding a Second Chance program that had similar aims. Both made much of their past cooperation with DeAndre Brown, whose “Lifeline to Success” program had eased ex-felons back into the mainstream of society.

Both candidates also made a point of questioning the credibility of the federal immigration agency I.C.E., Harris going a step further and suggesting the the county’s Public Defender should consider defending undocumented immigrants.

Redirects: Lenoir, in general, had kept pace with Harris in matters that obviously resonated with the audience in the Civil Rights Museum. He stumbled somewhat when, in speaking of the bridge shutdown protest two years ago, he suggested that emergency vehicles had been unable on that occasion to use the blocked span across the Mississippi. That drew shouts of denial from the audience, the one and only time there was heckling of sorts during the debate.

County Trustee David Lenoir

But Lenoir was able to use another question about a notable public controversy to redress a charge that has lingered against him since his appearance with two other Republicans in a GOP primary debate back in April. He and they — County Commissioner Terry Roland and Juvenile court clerk Joy Touliatos — had been asked about the city’s action in arranging the takedown of Confederate statues from parks downtown and the state legislature’s resultant punitive action in withdrawing a $250,000 grant for Memphis’ bicentennial celebrations next year.

Back then, all three Republican candidates had been dubious about the exact manner of the city’s manner of removing the statues (by selling the parks to a non-profit and then providing equipment and personnel to remove the statues from the parks at the non-profit’s request).

Roland, who had spoken first, seemed undisturbed by the state’s punitive attitude. “Until people quit thumbing their nose at Nashville, there’s nothing we an do,” he said, alleging that the city had acted “like a thief in the night.” Touliatos, too, had been accepting of the state’s reaction: “The statues were handled inappropriately…. If you’re going to go against state law, there are going to be repercussions.”

Lenoir, who had spoken second then, just after Roland, addressed the matter this way: ““First of all, I believe in limited government and local control. So in terms of decision-making, it should happen at the local level. I would agree with my colleague [Roland] with the way, specifically on the statues, with the way it occurred, late at night on a Friday night [it was actually a Wednesday night], under the cloak of darkness, it no doubt sent the wrong message — not only to many that lived in Shelby County but also in Nashville. But in terms of how to mitigate that, I believe that things ought to happen on a local level. In many ways we need less of Nashville in Shelby County business. That would be my response on that.”

The Trustee’s statement in April had been somewhat shaded against what the city had done, but technically he had not endorsed the state’s adverse reaction, and just as technically (and, to be sure, modestly) he had gone on record as favoring local prerogatives.

Hence, Lenoir was more or less within his rights to say, on Tuesday night at the Civil Rights Museum, “I’m happy to tackle this one, because local control, local decisions, the decision needs to be made at a local level. It was made at a local level. It was passed unanimously by the City Council. It was a decision that was made, and I’m glad I can clear the record, ‘cause there’s folks out there — it’s politics; I get it; I understand — but you will not find me on the record as saying that I thought it was a state issue. All the lies that are going on out there are just that — they’re lies. It’s a local decision, local control as far as the removal of those statues, and I think that’s the way it should have happened.”

That answer somewhat overstated Lenoir’s position back in April, but it was not inconsistent with it, and Lenoir probably gained from the opportunity to address the matter again, in much the way that Harris had gained from the chance to deal again with Lenoir’s charge about his alleged opposition to an anti-crime control vote in Nashville.

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Politics Politics Feature

Big Week for Shelby County Politics Features Joe Biden

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

What a week! What a weekend! Local political junkies of every stripe had plenty of occasions to nourish their activism. In addition to several fund-raisers and meet-and-greets for specific candidates in this year’s elections, there were debates, forums, and other kinds of smorgasbords featuring several at once.

The highlight of local Democrats’ week was surely the appearance on Friday night of former Vice President Joe Biden, who brought his “American Promise Tour” to the Orpheum. Biden’s visit, a ticketed affair, was part revival and part book-tour stop (for Biden’s new volume, Promise Me, Dad: a Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose, about his son Beau’s illness and ultimate death from brain cancer.)

With his regular-guy persona and tell-it-like-it-is style, Biden inarguably kindled the kind of political enthusiasm that Hillary Clinton could have used in 2016 and that Biden seems eager to deploy in 2020 against Donald J. Trump.

Not that Biden talked up a race; in fact, he got one of his most animated reactions when he complained about the unnamed Washington scribe who suggested that his book was a calculated bid for sympathy prior to a presidential run. The crowd’s murmur of outrage morphed into delighted laughter when Biden muttered something about administering a personal corrective to “the sonofabitch.”

Biden’s appeal is based partly on that kind of plain talk and partly, too, on his ability to revivify a kind of unpretentious patriotism that is either left unsaid these days or is more often obscured by the gaslight of insincere platitudes.

When host Terri Lee Freeman of the National Civil Rights Museum asked Biden what he had meant by writing that he was nostalgic for the American future, the author of that seemingly oxymoronic sentiment furrowed his brow as if wondering himself what he had meant by the line. But what followed was a wonderfully developed disquisition on the process of regaining the forefathers’ democratic dream of a just and honest realm that resolved the paradox perfectly.

On Saturday morning, Republicans turned out en masse for the opening of the party’s 2018 campaign headquarters in the Trinity Commons shopping center. Shelby County party chair Lee Mills introduced GOP candidates in the forthcoming county general election and federal and state primaries on August 2nd.
Partisans of both political parties got close-up looks at the rival candidates for Shelby County mayor and Tennessee governor when Republican mayoral candidate David Lenoir and Democratic candidate Lee Harris squared away on Wednesday at the Kiwanis Club. And four candidates for governor appeared on Thursday at a forum on legal issues before members of the Tennessee Bar Association.
At the mayoral event, moderated by WREG-TV anchor Stephanie Scurlock at the University Club, Lenoir put forth his standard goals of “great jobs, great schools, and safe streets” while boasting his achievements in managing Shelby county’s financial assets as trustee for the last eight years. Harris said he intended to focus on the themes of poverty, injustice, and residual segregation, and recounted occasions when he took the lead in resolving difficult issues as a city councilman and as state Senate Democratic leader.

Participating in the bar association event at The Peabody were Democrats Karl Dean and Craig Fitzhugh, as well as Republicans Beth Harwell and Randy Boyd. The candidates were interviewed sequentially by Commercial Appeal editor Mark Russell on such issues as criminal justice reform, judicial redistricting, and the desirability of changes in school-zone drug laws.

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Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Remains a Beehive of Political Activity

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The pending visit to The Orpheum on Friday by former Vice President (and possible 2020 presidential candidate) Joe Biden for his “American Promise” tour highlights what continues to be a busy election season.

Republican gubernatorial candidate  Randy Boyd last week underscored the importance of Shelby County in his election campaign by making the county the site of two different stops on his current 95-county bus tour of the state.
Boyd kicked off his bus tour in Millington on Monday, and after making several stops elsewhere in West Tennessee, returned to Shelby County on Saturday for a meet-and-greet lunch in the Collierville town square. Among the several Shelby County officials at the affair, either as backers for Boyd or as courtesy visitors, were County Commissioner David Reaves of Bartlett, Mayor Mike Palazzolo of Germantown, Germantown Alderman Mary Ann Gibson, trustee and county mayor candidate David Lenoir, former county Mayor Jim Rout, state Representative Mark White, and, serving as master of ceremonies for the occasion, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell.

Boyd, who went on to make a day of it in Shelby County, attending the FedEx St. Jude golf tournament and the Germantown Horse Show, noted that he had taken no salary while serving as director for economic development under Governor Bill Haslam. Boyd promised not to do so as governor, either, unless, as he jested, “some of you who have Invisible Fence stop purchasing new batteries, in which case I may need to renegotiate.”
Boyd, one of several independently wealthy candidates for governor, made his fortune as the inventor and vendor of Invisible Fence, which establishes electronic barriers for domestic pets. 
David Weatherspoon, who held the latest version of his “listening tour” at Cheffie’s Restaurant on High Point Terrace on Monday, is expecting to get an earful — and maybe a bagful — of support from members of Shelby County’s health-care community at a June 26th fund-raiser scheduled for Germantown Country Club.

Among the hosts for the affair are Gary and Glenda Shorb, Meri Armour, Ed Barnett, Richard Glassman and Susan Lawless-Glassman, David and Julie Richardson, Nadeem Shafi, Kip and Martha Frizzell, Charles and Kalyna Hanover, Melody Cunningham, and Michael Rohrer.

Weatherspoon, whose campaign treasurer is Ed Roberson, the erstwhile director of Christ Community Health Centers, has made support for Medicaid expansion (“a no-brainer decision”) a key point in his campaign for the District 31 state Senate seat now held by Republican Brian Kelsey (as, for that matter, has Gabby Salinas, the other Democrat running in the forthcoming Democratic primary of August 2nd).

Kelsey is a sworn opponent of former President Obama’s Affordable Care Act and its Medicare-expansion component, and was the sponsor of legislation requiring approval by both chambers of the General Assembly’s Republican super-majority before expansion could take place, dooming Insure Tennessee, the state’s variant of the plan. The rejection, according to Weatherspoon, has cost Tennessee $4 billion in federal funding and contributed to the closure of 10 community hospitals.

• Headquarters Openings: Two candidates drew large crowds for opening new headquarters last week. Democratic county mayor nominee Lee Harris set up at 2127 Central Avenue on Friday, and a Memphis headquarters was established at in the Highland Strip by the campaign of former Governor Phil Bredesen, now a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate.

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Politics Politics Feature

In reading the May 1st election totals, it depends on what your eyes are letting you see.

Quite innocently, but with a fair amount of confidence, I opined over the weekend in an online column at memphisflyer.com that turnout numbers in the just-concluded countywide primaries had, along with other factors, indicated that the much-discussed national “blue wave” favoring Democrats might be paying a visit in Shelby County in August when the county general election and state and federal primaries are held.

On the turnout score, there were 44,768 votes in the Democratic primary for Shelby County Mayor, and 30, 208 in the Republican primary. That’s a difference of 14,000 in the marquee race, and — no offense meant to the gallant and underfunded warhorse Sidney Chism — he wasn’t able to put up much of a fight against the well-supported ultimate Democratic nominee, state Senator Lee Harris.

Meanwhile, there had seemed to be a legitimate three-way race for much of the way in the hotly contested and well-financed GOP mayoral primary, involving Trustee David Lenoir, the eventual winner; County Commissioner Terry Roland; and Juvenile Court Clerk Joy Touliatos.

A non-race versus a battle royal, as it were. Yet 14,000 more voters turned out for the former than for the latter. A fact which suggested — but did not guarantee — a positive turn in Democratic fortunes for the next round, on August 2nd.

Yet a dissent to that idea was soon to come from several sources, including my good friends Steven Reid, a highly successful political consultant, and John Ryder, a bona fide GOP luminary, as well as from Ken Taylor, another consultant and a self-professed “kingmaker.” All of them made much of the fact that the increase in primary voting over the turnout in the 2014 county primaries was larger for Republicans than it was for Democrats.

None of them pointed out the obvious: that four years ago there was a hot three-way race between Democratic mayoral contenders Deidre Malone, Steve Mulroy, and Kenneth Whalum (all “name” candidates), whereas, on the Republican side, incumbent Republican County Mayor Mark Luttrell was opposed by Ernest Lunati, a prototypical non-entity best known, if at all, for a prior pornography conviction. No contest on the GOP side, in other words. Nothing to stimulate turnout.

Honestly, the GOP primary-turnout figures of 2014 would have no direction to go but up in 2018. But in the general election of 2014, Mayor Luttrell unsurprisingly generated enough votes, including significant Democratic crossovers, to win out over Democratic nominee Malone. On that reversal of fortune from primary to general, do Messrs. Reid, Ryder, and Taylor stake their case — and never mind the other factors I mentioned in my wrap-up piece, including the far larger number of Democratic candidates on the August ballot — a possible clue as to relatively greater commitment this year among Democratic Party activists.

We’ll see what we’ll see in August, and certainly local Republicans have a shot at closing the voter gap revealed on May 1st. They’ll have a vigorous GOP governor’s race to generate turnout, for one thing. Their candidates are likely to have more money, for another, and it was disproportionately greater financing, for example, that may have allowed the primary victory of promising newcomer Brandon Morrison over incumbent District 13 Republican Commissioner Steve Basar — not necessarily the superior but unspecified “campaigning” attributed to her (and yes, Morrison, largely unknown previously, is a “her”) by pundit Ryder.

It is hard to disregard the warning given his troops, at the very beginning of the current political season by Shelby County Republican chairman Lee Mills: “For years, we’ve been lucky. Since 2010, we’ve been lucky in Shelby County. Thanks to the leadership we’ve had in the past, we’ve had good organization, and we’ve had good candidates. The Democrats, on the other hand, have had just the opposite. They haven’t had good candidates, and they haven’t had good organization. But for the first time in a long time they have both of those things, okay? They have a good organization. They have a good leader. And they have decent candidates at the top that’ll drive all the way down to the bottom. So we have got to turn our voters out. There’s no getting around it.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Forums Forth

A definitive public exposure of candidates for office in 2018 still remains to be accomplished. But several preliminary efforts in that direction took place during the past week or so — a Thursday morning showcase of Democratic women candidates at the City & State coffee house on Broad; a Thursday night forum that attracted a decent-sized crowd and two Republican mayoral opponents at Mt. Moriah East Baptist Church; and a massive turnout on Saturday at the University of Memphis for candidates for virtually every position on the ballot.

At the Thursday night forum, WMC-TV anchor Kontji Anthony moderated a guarded discussion of issues by the two candidates for Shelby County Mayor — Terry Roland and Joy Touliatos — who answered an invitation to debate from Diversity Memphis. And on Saturday those two candidates and scores of others — most of those running for election this year — joined a throng of campaign supporters and attendees at large in the ballroom auditorium of the University of Memphis for a meet-and-greet affair co-sponsored by the Tennessee Nurses Association and the League of Women Voters.

Touliatos and Roland at forum

The latter affair was basically a schmooze-fest that culminated in a parade of candidates across the UM stage as their names were called by moderator Greg Hurst of WREG-TV. Nobody got to speak to the entire assembly, but there was ample conversational opportunity out on the jam-packed floor. And the mere fact of showing up and being seen surely paid dividends — pointedly so for GOP gubernatorial candidate Diane Black, who arrived somewhat late but, to all appearances, unflustered, after her car was involved in a collision caused by an errant vehicle operated by the Tennessee Department of Transportation at mile marker 24 of I-40.

At the Thursday night forum, Roland, currently a Shelby County commissioner, and Touliatos, who serves as Juvenile Court clerk, are both candidates for the Republican nomination for county mayor, and while neither of them broke any new ground or made any waves in their remarks, they had the opportunity to present coherent profiles of themselves as they fielded questions put by Anthony and audience members.

Touliatos stressed what she said would be her ability to “build relationships” within county government and with other governmental entities, while Roland emphasized his experience as a “full-time commissioner with part-time pay” for the last eight years.

Both boasted of their roots with ordinary citizens, and both expressed a determination to buttress education and industrial expansion. Touliatos stressed a need to lay a strong foundation in pre-K education. Roland made his usual case for tax increment financing (TIFs) as an alternative to payments-in-lieu-of taxes (PILOTs). He got the most animated response from the crowd when he attacked what he called “a culture of corruption” in Shelby County, in which “the same 10 people have been getting all the sweet milk.”

Anthony asked, “Why do Black Lives Matter?” And both candidates responded with variations on the statement that “all lives matter” — a generalized response that drew a buzz of disapproval from the predominantly African-American crowd and a precursor to a possible issue in the general election, when either Lee Harris or Sidney Chism, both African Americans, will be the Democratic opposition to the Republican nominee.

Further forums and debates are to be expected in the next few weeks, especially for countywide candidates, whose moment of reckoning with the voters will culminate in the May 1st party primaries, less than two months away.

(See also memphisflyer.com for slideshow of TNA-LWV forum.)

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Petition-Signing Parties Proliferate as Filing Deadline Nears

CREDIT: JB

JB

Congressional candidate John Boatner (r) beams as Jesse Huseth signs his qualifying petition at Owen Brennan’s Restaurant, while Tom Richgels waits his turn.

 

JB

Mayoral candidate Lee Harris, having just got a signature from voter Cedric Brooks (l), has handed over his petition to Michael Stewart.

With the filing deadiine of noon, February 15, bearing down on them, candidates in  various races of the 2018 political season are doubling down on getting their qualifying petitions signed by potential voters, In some cases, the candidates have long since amassed enough signatures to satisfy the Election Commission’s requirements of 25 bona fide voters, living in th candidate’s district… They continue because the petition-signing party, something of a novelty on the political scene, is yet another way to engage a group of voters, spread the candidate’s message, and press the flesh. Other candidates are just trying to fill their quota of 25 before it gets too late.

Two such events were going on Thursday night in Shelby County. Lee Harris, candidate for Shelby County Mayor, was having a petition-signing party at the Burning Desire Cigar Emporium on Highway 64 in Lakeland. And John Boatner, who seeks the Democratic nomination and a chance to unseat GOP 8th District Congressman David Kustoff held one at the bar of Owen Brennan’s Restraurant on Poplar Avenue.

Harris, currently serving as a state Senator and as the Democrats’ Senate leader, has found it convenient to schedule such events for Thursday evenings. They become a first stop on his way home from a work week in Nashville. And both Harris, whose would-be constituency is the entire county population, and Boatner, who is running in a sprawling multi-county district, find it convenient to create an ad hoc space for petition signing as an alternative to (or addition to) door-to-door knocking to find potential voters.

Vive la mode!