Tag: Lee Harris

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Politics Politics Feature

Democrats Doubling Up in Primary Races

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Tennessee may be a certifiably red (i.e., Republican) state, and, indeed election results in recent years, even in Shelby County, which has a theoretical Democratic majority, have generally been disappointments to the once-dominant Democratic Party.

And the official Party itself has only been reconstituted in the county for a few months after various internal fissures and dissensions caused it to be decertified by the state party in mid-2016.

But none of that has stopped a veritable flood of would-be Democratic office-holders from declaring their candidacies for election year 2018 as the filing season gets going in earnest. Most unusually for a minority party, in fact, many of the races on the ballot this year are being contested by multiple Democratic entries.

That starts at the top of the ballot, as two name Democrats — former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and current state House minority leader Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley — are vying for the office of governor. (Even more Republicans are running: six gubernatorial candidates in all, most of them with serious networks and campaign funding at their disposal.)

Jackson Baker

Forrest fan Jenna Bernstein taking her leave

It seemed for a while that there might be a Democratic primary contest for U.S. Senator as well, until the well-backed entry of former two-term Governor Phil Bredesen convinced a promising newcomer, Nashville lawyer James Mackler, to withdraw in favor of Bredesen, whose second gubernatorial win in 2006 was his party’s most recent statewide hurrah. (At least two name Republicans — 7th District U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn and former 8th District congressman Stephen Fincher are vying for the GOP nomination.)

In any case, Democrats are also doubling up — and not just in the marquee races. There are competitive Democratic primary races at virtually every election level.

Take the case of state Senator Brian Kelsey‘s reelection bid in Senate District 31. The long-serving Germantown Republican sent out several S.O.S. emails to supporters this week informing them that he has a Democratic challenger and asking for campaign donations.

The opponent Kelsey had in mind was Democratic activist Gabriela “Gabby” Salinas, who did indeed announce her availability last week as a Democratic candidate in District 31. And she has a backstory that gives Kelsey reason for his concern. Salinas, who survived childhood cancer as a patient at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and went on to do research work herself at St. Jude, was also a survivor later on of an automobile accident that took the lives of family members.

Nor is Salinas the only Democrat seeking to unseat Kelsey. Another declared candidate for the seat is David Weatherspoon, one of several first-time office-seekers on the Democratic side.

On Monday, one of the Democratic Party’s recognized stars in Nashville, state Representative Raumesh Akbari, announced she would seek to fill the state Senate seat left vacant by Lee Harris, who is running for Shelby County mayor. And Akbari has a Democratic opponent in the primary, her House colleague, Joe Towns.

There are numerous other races on the ballot in which Democrats are competing with each other for the honor or capturing an open seat or one currently held by a Republican. One such case is the Shelby County Commission District 13 seat, a swing seat now occupied by Republican Steve Basar.

Both former Election Commissioner George Monger and political newcomer Charles Belenky are competing for that one. Monger, a former boy wonder who became a music manager at 15 and ran for the City Council at 18, declared his candidacy over the weekend, while Belenky turned up as a citizen critic of a purchasing contract at the commission’s regular public meeting.

And where a seat is traditionally considered Democratic, the infighting can be brisk indeed; two Democrats — Eric Dunn and Tami Sawyer — are vying for the Commission District 7 seat; four seek the seat in Commission District 8: David Vinciarelli, Daryl Lewis, J.B. Smiley Jr., and Mickell Lowery; while Commission District 9, vacated this year by the term-limited Justin Ford, is being sought by no fewer than five Democrats — Edmund Ford Jr., Ian Jeffries, Jonathan L. Smith, Jonathan M. Lewis, and Rosalyn R. Nichols.

• Monday’s first county commission meeting of the year was an abbreviated affair, starting at the late hour of 4 p.m. to accommodate attendees at the well-attended funeral at Idlewild Presbyterian church of the late public figure, Lewis Donelson.

On a day when the city was visited by groups of protesters partial to the now-removed statue of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, the commission was the site of one such protest — from one Jenna Bernstein of Tampa, who said she had come all the way from Florida to call for the expulsion from the commission of Van Turner, head of Memphis Greenspace Inc., which purchased two parks from the city prior to removing their Confederate monuments.

Bernstein’s mission received fairly short shrift, resulting only in a brief debate between Commission chair Heidi Shafer (nay) and Commissioner Walter Bailey (yea) as to the right of a non-resident to be heard. Shafer’s view prevailed.

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Roland, Harris Celebrate Veterans Day Together in Millington

CREDIT: JB

JB

County Commissioner Terry Roland (seated, left) and state Senator Lee Harris (seated, right, behind flag on table), candidates for County Mayor and co-sponsors of an annual Veterans Town Hall and Luncheon in Millington, listen as Millington Mayor Terry Jones, dressed in his Naval reservist’s uniform, speaks to the occasion.

One of the several Veterans Day events going on Saturday was the third annual edition of the Veterans Day Town Hall and Luncheon, held at the Hampton Inn in Millington. As always, the event featured a color guard, patriotic recitations and songs (some of the latter enacted by some energetic high school students from Rosemark), fried chicken and fixings, and tributes to the armed services, as well as to specific military veterans from the area.

Perhaps uniquely this year, it also featured two serious candidates for Shelby County mayor. Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland and state Senator Lee Harris, both of whom represent the Millington area, are the normal sponsors of the Town Hall and Luncheon. The fact that they both happen now to be announced candidates for mayor (and, in some reckonings, possible opponents in the 2018 general election) was either a coincidence or a serendipity, or both.

In any case, Republican Roland and Democrat Harris — along with Millington alderman Frankie Dakin, a Harris campaign aide — were sponsors once again and were all intent upon describing Saturday’s event as “beyond politics.”

As Harris put it, formally convening the program, “We all believe that this is a special day and, although we are not all the same political party, we think honoring our veterans is one issue where party doesn’t matter.”

The senator also paid tribute to the event’s regular partner organization, Alpha Omega Veterans Services, and to several dignitaries on hand: Matt Van Epps, the Assistant Commissioner at Tennessee Department of Veterans Services; Lt. Commander David Mowbray, chaplain at Naval Support Activity, Mid-South; and NSA Mid-South Commander Captain Michael Wathen.

For the most part, the Town Hall and Luncheon did, as all the principals promised, steer clear of politics, with one, probably inadvertent, exception. That was when Millington Mayor Terry Jones, dressed in Navy dress blues to commemorate his 24 years of active plus reserve service, was conveying his gratitude to Harris, Roland, and Dakin for putting on the event.

The first two acknowledgments went this way, verbatim: “Senator, I appreciate you putting this on every year. It’s our third year in public. Commissioner Roland, thank you, can we call you mayor yet?”

That last statement, which drew a nervous chuckle or two from the attendees, was surely unintentional, a case of what the textbooks call a Freudian slip

In any case, Roland did not seem displeased. It was his duty to close out the affair, and he did that with his patented mix of humility, good humor, and roughneck directness.

After telling a few tales about his own involvement with the military tradition, including one reminiscence of his father’s “pushing an ice cream wagon” at the old Naval training base at Millington and another of taking a pilgrimage with his Dad to the ancestral home of Sergeant Alvin York, a famed World War I hero from Tennessee, Roland made a point of professing himself “so grateful to Senator Lee Harris and alderman Frankie Dakin,” his event co-sponsors.

He unabashedly added, “Senator, I love you; Frankie, I love you.”

But, given the patriotic nature of the occasion, Roland could not resist (in any case, did not resist) recalling out loud his passionate resentment of a an official statement from Shelby County Schools, made in the wake of the controversy surrounding NFL athletes kneeling rather than standing for the national anthem.

The SCS statement evidently expressed a willingness to permit that form of expression from students. Roland recapped for the attendees his angry reaction, a threat to “take away every bit of funding” from the school system, easing up to say with a wink, “knowing I couldn’t do it.”

The commissioner said that people had “a right to protest but not during that national anthem and not on that flag.” and ended by saying that the anthem and the flag were “two things that we must stand for and stand behind.”

That might or might not be regarded as a case of allowing politics into the event, depending on one’s point of view. In any case, the muffled shout or two of assent from the audience during the heated part of Roland’s statement indicated that nobody who was there on Saturday had much complaint about it.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Chism Formally Announces for County Mayor, Comes Out Firing at Harris

CREDIT: JB

JB

Sidney Chism and friends

Although he has been a known candidate for Shelby County Mayor for upwards of a year, familiar Democratic figure Sidney Chism didn’t make it official until Thursday night at the Links of Whitehaven clubhouse on Holmes Road, where he formally launched his campaign in the company of longtime labor and political allies.

But, while the basis of his support is clearly among African Americans, the county’s majority population — and heavily concentrated in his Whitehaven/South Memphis bailiwick — Chism made a pointed appeal in his announcement remarks to members of the county’s ethnic enclaves: Hispanic, Indian, and Asian.

Chism, a well-known Teamster leader and political broker before winning political office, most prominently as a two-term county commissioner, promised, if elected, to name members of all these groups to prominent leadership positions, along with “black folks that’s been here for a number of years and still begs for things every day.”

“Together, we’re gonna win this campaign!” Chism said. Promising to “change the paradigm of this town,” he underscored the fact that “70 percent of our population are living in poverty,” and he singled out for special attention “an educational system that I think we need to revisit,” one that has not provided “enough to take our kids to the next level.”

Much of Chism’s speech, to a crowd that included numerous members of a women’s auxiliary, clad in pink campaign T-shirts, amounted to a denunciation of what he characterized as the county’s long dominant social and economic class, a group, he said, that was lining up behind an opponent of his in the Democratic primary for county mayor.

“That opponent was not chosen by the people of Memphis,” he said. “He was chosen by the fat boys that make the decisions for this town.” That candidate, described by Chism more through invective than by biographical particulars, was clearly state Senator Lee Harris, though he was never named as such.

“I refuse to call his name,” said Chism, “but I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I’m gonna beat up on him, morning, noon, and night!” — a vow that drew resounding cheers from his support group.

“We don’t need somebody to sit behind a desk and tell us what our leadership is going to be,” Chism said. “This county is 59 percent Democratic, and 51 percent black, and here we’re not running anything. We don’t run nothing , and they don’t want us to run nothing!”

Bearing down on the unnamed Harris, who the night before had been the beneficiary of fundraising cocktail party (billed as such), Chism expounded with near fury: “They’re running this person now who says he’s a leading candidate, a front-runner! My God, I’ve been in politics all my life, and they’ve made this guy a frontrunner. I can’t think of nothing he’s ever done!”

Chism said his opponent had been on the City council for two years before abruptly quitting and going to the state Senate. “He was in there for two years and talking about quitting that.” Chism offered a comparison of his own tenure as an interim state Senator to what he said was Harris’. “I was in the Senate for four months and passed or helped pass or signed on to 64 bills that passed. I’ll betcha he hasn’t signed on to six bills in his two years, and he had not one bill in the City Council…” (presumably, Chism meant “ordinance”) “…that was of benefit to the city of Memphis!”

In a brief interview afterward, Chism was asked about the developing likelihood that Bartlett banker Harold Byrd, a close ally of his through the years, might also become a candidate for county mayor in the Democratic primary.

“I wish he had talked to me before doing something like that,” Chism said. But he acknowledged that in a three-way primary, Byrd’s entry could actually help him.

Indeed, a three-way Democratic primary featuring Chism, Harris, and Byrd could see a variety of splits occurring among voter blocs, with most obvious vulnerability to Harris’ would-be mainstream campaign. The state senator would clearly have to share a considerable number of black votes with Chism and traditional white votes with Byrd, who may have significant support among African Americans as well.

In any case, Sidney Chism served notice on Thursday night that he’s definitely to be reckoned with.

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Politics Politics Feature

Waiting for Shoes to Drop

Though competitive races for governor and senator in both major parties will dominate public attention in 2018, the other marquee race on the local ballot for 2018 remains that for Shelby County mayor.

As of now, it’s a three-way on the Republican side, with the contenders being Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland, County Trustee David Lenoir, and Juvenile Court Clerk Joy Touliatos. Democrats running include state Senate Majority Leader Lee Harris and former County Commissioner Sidney Chism.

But, conspicuously, not all the shoes have dropped. Two major figures are on the cusp of decision: former City councilman and current Chamber of Commerce vice president Shea Flinn, and Harold Byrd, president of the Bank of Bartlett and a well-known former public official.

If Flinn runs — and that’s still a serious prospect — it will not be as a Democrat, though he served a brief interim term as a Democrat in the Tennessee state Senate, where, among other things, he broke away from orthodoxy by introducing the first serious measure to legalize marijuana.

He would run as an independent because he believes that partisanship is ruining American politics, that a combination of gerrymandering and low turnouts has ensured that a politics built upon genuine debate and constructive compromise is increasingly impossible, and that the two-party system itself has become unfeasible.

If Flinn runs, it will be a way of asking, as he has expressed it, “Have moderates had enough?” His thinking is that party nominees these days, in local elections as well as statewide and national ones, are determined by the most militant and committed members of both the Democratic and Republican parties, and that, consequently, winning candidates are beholden to relatively extreme views that are bound to be resisted by militant elements in the opposition party, and that governmental gridlock is the inevitable consequence.

His views on these matters are no secret; he has expressed them in radio interviews, and he holds them intensely enough to be on the verge of making an independent run for county mayor as an act of defiance against the intrinsic negativity of  partisan politics.

There have been previous quasi-independent or third-party electoral efforts at the national level — Ross Perot‘s 1992 candidacy for president against Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican George H.W. Bush being a case in point — but these have ultimately come to naught, Flinn believes, because, as he sees it, these have been trickle-down movements lacking real grass-roots involvement. He thinks that reformation of the current two-party system can only begin to happen at the most basic, local level.

In other words, Flinn as a candidate would see himself as someone pursuing a reformist mission against a two-party politics that is endangering the country, but he also believes that he could win — particularly if the two major local parties nominate candidates from their militant wings.

To put that in concrete terms: a race in which the Republican nominee would be, say, Roland, the self-styled populist from Millington, versus Democrat Harris, a legislator from his party’s progressive wing.

But Flinn, who is confident of having significant financial backing, would see his independent mission still being relevant, and viable, if the party nominees turn out otherwise — that is, if the GOP nominee ends up being either Trustee Lenoir or Juvenile Court Clerk Touliatos, both regarded as mainstream Republicans, and if the Democratic nominee should become either Chism, a well-known political broker who has been a declared candidate longer than anyone else, or Byrd, whose intentions are still a matter of speculation.

At the moment, Byrd’s intentions remain, along with Flinn’s, the most significant unknown element in the developing mayoral picture.

As mentioned before in this space, Byrd has uncooked seeds remaining from his prior political experience. He was a longtime state Representative who thought long and hard about running for Congress and finally took the plunge in 1994, winning the Democratic primary for the 7th District seat fairly easily but coming up short against Republican Ed Bryant, the victor in a year which saw a Republican sweep and a GOP takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Thereafter, Byrd’s home bailiwick of Bartlett became progressively more Republican, though he and other members of his family remained pillars both of the Bartlett community, through their ownership of the Bank of Bartlett and prominence in numerous civic endeavors, and in the Democratic Party, where brother Dan Byrd had continued to represent Bartlett well into the 1990s.

Harold Byrd first prepared to mount a serious race for county mayor prior to the race of 2002, organizing a coalition that included basic elements of the urban Democratic constituency along with suburban supporters in a campaign that would draw on significant IOUs, both political and financial, owed Byrd from decades of his involvement in public life. In a sense, that 2002 campaign, though Byrd would have been run as a Democrat, was aimed at being the kind of omnium gatherum of political opposites that Flinn may be contemplating for the campaign year of 2018. But it was forced to a halt mid-way by the unexpected entrance of then Public Defender A C Wharton, who was also able to draw on similar bipartisan sources of political and financial support.

For a variety of reasons that seemed practical to Byrd at the time, he withdrew, if reluctantly, and Wharton went on to win and serve one term and the better part of another before ascending to the mayorship of Memphis via a special election in 2009.

By general consent, the county mayor’s job might have been Byrd’s for the asking in the election of 2010, when the other major likely claimant, then Sheriff Mark Luttrell, a Republican, let it be known that he would defer and not run if Democrat Byrd chose to. But by then Byrd, a well-known fitness advocate, was recovering from a bout with cancer, and the bank he administered was having to deal with the aftershock of the Great Recession of 2008-2009.

Both factors kept Byrd from being a candidate that year, and Luttrell went on to run and defeat Democratic nominee Joe Ford.

But here it is, late 2017, and Byrd is once again looking seriously at running for county mayor. He has formed a Political Action Committee (Friends of Harold Byrd) for the purpose, and he has been steadily reaching out for assurances of support from well-known Democrats, both urban and suburban, who are either in office now or likely candidates for various positions next year.  

Moreover, Byrd believes he still has, uniquely for a Democrat, significant support in areas of Shelby County where Republicans are used to dominating. And he is confident that he, more than any other Democrat, can raise the money necessary to run a fully empowered mayoral campaign.

The question remains: Will either Shea Flinn or Harold Byrd actually run for county mayor? Though nothing is absolutely certain, the likelihood is that both will — Byrd as a Democrat and Flinn as an independent.

Flinn had come very close to making an announcement this week, the Flyer has learned, and the odds — once rated by him as 70-30 in favor — still tilt toward his making the race. For his part, Byrd has set the end of the year as a personal deadline for decision, with the likelihood, he says, that one will come even sooner.

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Politics Politics Feature

Filling in the Blanks

If Rip Van Winkle happened to be not a fictional character from a previous century but  a current resident of Shelby County, Tennessee, he would not have had to nod off for a full score of years to wake up to a drastically changed landscape.
If he’d just blinked his eyes about midway through last week, he might have missed significant doings in the race for Shelby County mayor and that for United States senator.

State Senator Lee Harris

The first major change in the projected 2018 political lineup occurred on Wednesday with the carefully stage-managed entry into the county mayor’s race of Lee Harris, a Democratic state senator and former Memphis City Council member whose ambitions to keep on moving up in the political hierarchy were clearly signaled back in 2016 when he flirted with the idea of challenging 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen in that year’s Democratic primary but thought better of it.

As the senator confided in a recent conversation, “I can serve anywhere” — the choice of a particular political office being something of a pure variable.
Harris’ interests in running for county mayor had been obvious for most of the current year but were screened somewhat by an elaborate Alphonse-Gaston scenario in which he appeared to be deliberating along with close friend and University of Memphis law faculty colleague Steve Mulroy, a former county commissioner and a mayoral candidate in 2014, as to which of them would actually make the 2018 race.

The veil was dropped abruptly on Wednesday via an interview in The Commercial Appeal, a venue choice made after scouting out the possible advantages of announcing in other media.

Harris has a reputation as a progressive but one adept at working across the aisle, a fact indicated by his partnership with Republican lawmakers on criminal justice issues and with GOP state Senator Brian Kelsey in seeking to safeguard the Memphis Sand aquifer.
As of now, Harris would appear to be the likely Democratic nominee against the winner of the three-way Republican mayoral primary between County Commissioner Terry Roland, County Trustee David Lenoir, and Juvenile Court Clerk Joy Touliatos.

But two other eminences with credentials both with Shelby County Democrats and with the civic and social universe at large are still meditating on a possible mayoral entry. Bank of Bartlett president Harold Byrd holds numerous political IOUs as a political donor and broker, a holdover following from his past as a Democratic state representative and two previous near-runs for mayor, and ample access to financial support.

Equally well-positioned is Shea Flinn, currently an influential Memphis Chamber of Commerce vice president and a former progressive spark-plug on the city council. Flinn’s access to funding, too, would be considerable, and, in a political environment not over-stocked with charisma, he has more than his share.
Either one of these figures, running in the Democratic primary or even as an independent, would have a dramatic effect on the outcome.
The other major development last week was in the race for the seat being vacated by Republican U.S. Senator Bob Corker, whose decision not to seek reelection did not prevent him from continuing to make political waves. (See Editorial, p. 8) To no one’s surprise, 7th District U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn, an arch-conservative, quickly announced as a GOP candidate, though she withheld her announcement until Governor Bill Haslam, a favorite of moderate Republicans, publicly opted out.

Another conservative GOP prospect is former 8th District Congressman Stephen Fincher. And the party’s centrist wing still hopes to convince Memphis philanthropist and longtime party eminence Brad Martin to make the race.

The state’s Democrats may end up fielding a serious candidate, as well. Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke is seriously contemplating a Senate race, while Nashville lawyer and Iraq war vet James Mackler is already in the field.

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On the “Mr. Drysdale Effect” and Other Political Doings

In the same way that subtle changes in the color of leaves signal the onset of a new physical season, the increased number of fund-raisers in Shelby County — several each week and sometimes overlapping — are a reliable harbinger of the approaching 2018 election season.

A case in point was the fact that Shelby County Republican rank-and-filers had to choose Thursday of the week before last between paying homage to county sheriff candidate Dale Lane, beneficiary of a fund-raiser in Whitehaven, and rendering an ear (plus coin of the realm) to mayoral candidate Terry Roland at Southwind Country Club.

To be sure, neither candidate is yet assured of being the Republican nominee next year, although the chances of Lane, who has no name GOP opponent on the horizon yet, are better in that respect than those of Roland, who knows he has a serious race for county mayor, with fellow Republicans David Lenoir and Joy Touliatos as primary opponents, and very likely a name Democrat if he gets to the general.

But there are some card-carrying Republicans who want to support both Lane and Roland, and, unless they could clone themselves on Thursday, there was no way they could do both — not in person, anyhow. Both are looking not just for an audience and a vote, but for the fund-raising dollar.

As Roland said in his pitch to the crowd at Southwind: “I need the money, the money to get our message out. The people I’m running against are some very wealthy people.”

And, lest that appeal come off as too abject, Roland rephrased it with a cultural allusion: “I didn’t know I was going to be running against Mr. Drysdale, but I guess I am.”  

The “Mr. Drysdale” in question would be the wealthy banker/bankroller played by actor Raymond Bailey in the vintage ’60s TV sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies. That many members of Roland’s fund-raiser crowd guffawed in appreciation is some indication perhaps of one of the demographics he is counting on for support.

County Trustee Lenoir was being cast by Roland as someone in league with the county’s political/financial establishment. Nor did the commissioner overlook his other GOP opponent, Juvenile Court Clerk Touliatos, about whom he said this, clearly tailoring his remarks to a suburban constituency:

“The other one that I’m running against, if you look at the people that’s supporting her, it’s the people you’re fighting right now; it’s the pro-consolidation people, okay? And Jim Strickland is one of her lead dogs. Let me tell you this: If she gets to be the mayor, then you might as well say that Jim Strickland will have free run of the whole county.”

This attempt at drawing a connection between city Mayor Strickland and a candidate running for county mayor foreshadows what could become a serious leitmotif in the politics of 2018. On Monday of this week, Roland, in his guise as county commissioner, had no difficulty persuading fellow commissioners to hold off on approving an interlocal agreement with the city on financing a new sports arena.

Right now, as it happens, the city and county are at loggerheads on several issues — that of de-annexation, for one (a co-speaker at the Roland fund-raiser was Patty Possel, an activist in that movement and a forthcoming GOP candidate for the District 96 state House seat now held by Democrat Dwayne Thompson). Another is the recent decision announced by Strickland shutting off any new taps on the city sewer line by county developments.

• Across town, on the same day that week, in Whitehaven, a former county commissioner, James Harvey, was hosting an event for Lane, the county director of homeland security, who is the odds-on favorite to be the Republican nominee for sheriff next year.

At least half the crowd was African American, a good sign for a Republican candidate, especially one likely to be facing a credentialed black candidate, Chief Deputy Floyd Bonner, as the Democratic nominee for sheriff. And Bonner, let us remember, drew an appreciable number of white folks to his recent kickoff at the Racquet Club, among them current Sheriff Bill Oldham, who was elected eight years ago as a Republican and who made a point of endorsing Bonner.

While clearly we are not yet in a post-racial political environment — and may never be — both candidates will be pitching in all directions. A good thing, that.

Incidentally, Harvey, who was elected to two terms as a commissioner as a Democrat, spoke at some length in his introduction of Lane, making the point that he himself had crossed the party line and was now a Republican. Make of that what you will.

In his remarks, Lane, as usual, stressed his intention to focus on combatting youth violence.

 

• Another recent fund-raiser was the one held last week at the Donati law office on Union for County Commissioner Van Turner, who is unlikely to attract any serious opponents of his reelection next year but is taking no chances.

A goodly crowd showed up for that one, and, as is fairly often the case, much of the drama lay in who was there to see and be seen. In the case of the Turner event, it was Bank of Bartlett president Harold Byrd, a former state representative and Democratic congressional candidate who, as was noted recently by the Flyer, has signaled an interest in re-entering active political life as a candidate for county mayor.

More show-and-tell is due this week, with Germantown Democrats awaiting an appearance at their monthly meeting on Wednesday night by state Senator Lee Harris, who is also floating a possible mayoral bid (actually co-floating one with his University Memphis law school colleague and former County Commissioner Steve Mulroy; don’t ask).

And, apropos that aforementioned city/county dichotomy, two potential cross-overs are in play: City Councilman Ed Ford has a fund-raiser Wednesday night for his bid for county commission District 9 (now held by the term-limited Justin Ford). And conjecture continues about a possible Democratic primary race for county mayor by former council stalwart, now Chamber of Commerce veep Shea Flinn.

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Byrd and Flinn Looking to County Mayor’s Race?

UPDATED to correct the order of finish in the 2014 Democratic primary for Shelby County Mayor.

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Last week, Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland, speaking at a fund-raiser in his honor at Southwind Country Club, let loose with typically strenuous blasts against his two major Republican opponents in the forthcoming 2018 race for Shelby County mayor — characterizing County Trustee David Lenoir as basically a tool of the political/financial establishment and questioning Juvenile Court Clerk Joy Touliatos‘ bona fides on de-annexation matters.

The Republican three-way battle royal is an open and settled proposition. It is on the Democratic side that intrigue (in every sense of that word) and potential surprise are major factors behind the scenes. 

Sidney Chism, the ex-Teamster leader, former local party chairman, two-time county commission chairman, interim state senator, and political broker nonpareil, has long advertised his availability for the office, but, though Chism continues to preside over a well-attended annual political picnic, it is an open question whether and to what degree the major clout he once enjoyed in Democratic circles has been diminished. 

Now employed by Sheriff Bill Oldham, Chism has had to weather criticism from party purists for his past electoral support of Oldham, who ran for office as Republican, and though he was eventually cleared by an ethics panel, had to withstand formal conflict-of-interest charges from then commission colleague Roland for having voted on appropriations measures that contained wraparound benefits for his day-care operation.

Meanwhile, other Democrats continue to ponder the idea of running. Two possibilities are University of Memphis law professors Steve Mulroy and Lee Harris, who have long been supportive of each other’s political careers. 

A liberal’s liberal in the manner of Memphis congressman Steve Cohen, Mulroy served two terms on the county commission and was a candidate for county mayor in the 2014 Democratic primary, finishing third a three-way race involving eventual nominee Deidre Malone and the Rev. Kenneth Whalum Jr. , who finished second despite being out of the country during the latter part of the race).

Until the surprise election of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump last year drastically altered his prospects, at least for the immediate future, Mulroy’s chief ambitions concerned the possibility of an appointment to the federal judiciary. Now Mulroy’s options have once again become more expressly political.

Harris has always leaned in the direction of political office. As a political unknown in 2006, Harris was one of the also-rans in the 9th District congressional primary of that year, won eventually by Cohen. By 2011, he had enough name recognition to run for, and narrowly win, a Memphis City Council race against Kemba Ford.

Harold Byrd and Shea Flinn

Nor did Harris’ ambitions end there. He was active in pursuit of cutting-edge issues and was the chief sponsor of an ordinance prohibiting job discrimination against members of the LGBTQ commmunity. In 2014, he ran in the Democratic primary against another member of the Ford political clan, state Senator Ophelia Ford, and was able to unseat her.

Harris got himself elected leader of the shrunken five-member Democratic corps in the state Senate and made the most of his position, becoming an active spokesman for the party’s issues, and meanwhile working across the aisle with Republicans like state Senator Brian Kelsey on nonpartisan matters.

Ever on the move, Harris meditated seriously on another race for Congress against incumbent Cohen but thought better of it, publicly dropping the idea in early 2016. His latest initiative, the Tennessee Voter Project, serves the dual purpose of revving up Democratic energy in general and keeping his name before the public.

And now opportunity beckons once more with the county mayor’s race. It seems almost inevitable that either he or Mulroy, still functioning as a mutually supportive duo, will make the race, and that coin flip will likely happen fairly soon.

Nor does the guessing game end there. The latest rumors in Democratic Party circles concern the possible mayoral candidacies of two other big names — Harold Byrd and Shea Flinn. 

A core member of the politically active Byrd family, Byrd is president of the Bank of Bartlett, essentially a family enterprise. A longtime state Representative and a political broker in his own right, Byrd was the Democratic nominee for Congress in the 7th District in 1994, losing that year to Republican Ed Bryant.

He prepared a race for county mayor in 2002 but reluctantly withdrew when then Public Defender A C Wharton became a candidate for the nomination, transforming that year’s Democratic primary into a three-way affair that also included then state Representative Carol Chumney.

By 2010, Byrd’s reputation and popularity, both in Democratic circles and across the party line, were such as to make him an odds-on favorite to be elected county mayor that year. Pointedly, Mark Luttrell, the ultimate winner as a Republican nominee, had let it be known that he would eschew the mayoral race and seek reelection as sheriff if Byrd ran for mayor. But a combination of a personal illness and a post-recession duty to see to the needs of the family banking business kept Byrd from running that year.

Now, the word is that Byrd, with both his own and the bank’s health in seemingly good order, is looking at one last chance at gaining the office.

Then there is the chance of a candidacy for the office by Shea Flinn, yet another former political figure with a high profile, both in Democratic Party ranks and in bipartisan circles. A prominent member of the city council after his election in 2007, Flinn resigned his seat in 2015 to become senior vice president for the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce.

That Flinn was considering a re-entry into political ranks was first signaled recently when his name was prominently featured in a telephone robo-poll of potential candidates for county mayor. That was amid rampant speculation that Flinn had a hand in the sponsorship of the poll.

If Flinn should become a candidate he is sure to have the full support of his father, wealthy radiologist/broadcast executive George Flinn, whose resources are such as to have paid for numerous political races by the senior Flinn himself, a one-time member of the County Commission but a so-far unsuccessful aspirant for a variety of other offices.

That George Flinn is a conservative Republican and Shea Flinn is known as a progressive Democrat is an anomaly of the James Carville-Mary Matalin sort that troubles neither father nor son.

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Politics Politics Feature

Filling in the Blanks

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Shelby County Assessor Cheyenne Johnson, a Democrat, will not be running for reelection and instead will be supporting the candidacy of Shawn Lynch, a legal adviser in her office and the son of well-known local businessman and civic figure Terry Lynch.

Shelby County Commissioner Heidi Shafer, now in her second term, has not been bashful about proclaiming a desire to serve in the state legislature.

​During last year’s Republican primary for the then-open 8th District congressional seat, ultimately won by current Congressman David Kustoff, Shafer loyally and fully supported her employer, George Flinn, in whose medical office she serves. But, if state Senator Brian Kelsey had won instead and made it all the way to Washington, there was little doubt among those who know her that she would have been a definite contender to succeed him in the state Senate.

And there is little doubt, either, that the surprise victory last year of Democrat Dwayne Thompson over GOP incumbent Steve McManus in state House District 96 gives her a target to go after as soon as next year, when Thompson has to run for reelection.

​All Shafer will say for the record regarding such a contest is, “I’m looking at it.” But Thompson indicated Saturday at the annual Sidney Chism political picnic on Horn Lake Road that he is expecting a challenge from Shafer and is girding for it.

As has long been known, Chism himself will be back on the ballot in 2018, running for Shelby County mayor. The former Teamster leader and longtime Democratic political broker served an interim term in the state Senate and two full terms on the commission, chairing that body for two years running, until he was term-limited off.

​But he may have serious opposition in the Democratic primary for county mayor. Word going around the picnic grounds at his event on Saturday was that state Senator Lee Harris is getting strong encouragement to seek the office, which incumbent Republican Mark Luttrell, now in his second term, will have to vacate because of term-limit provisions in the county charter.

​Among those reportedly urging Harris to run for county mayor is University of Memphis associate law dean and former Democratic Commissioner Steve Mulroy, a former mayoral candidate who is himself considered a theoretical possibility to seek the office again.

​Harris, who serves as the leader of the five-member Senate Democratic Caucus, has meanwhile embarked on a series of “Senator Lee Harris on Your Street” events at which he promises “updates on the latest legislative bills and issues we tackled in Nashville this year.”   

The Republican side of next year’s mayoral race will feature a showdown between Commissioner Terry Roland, who has been openly running, in effect, for well more than a year, and County Trustee David Lenoir, whose intentions to be a candidate are equally well known.       

It will be interesting to see how Lenoir responds to a gauntlet thrown down by Roland at Monday’s regular meeting of the commission, a four-hour affair that was nearing its end when Roland made a point of notifying Luttrell and County CAO Harvey Kennedy that he intended to seek an amendment to the pending county budget to provide funding for an add-on position sought by Judge Tim Dwyer for the Shelby County General Sessions Drug Court.

To pay for the position, Roland announced that he would offer a resolution at the next commission meeting to strip $50,000 from the amount already allocated to the Trustee’s office. Roland says he can demonstrate that an equivalent sum is currently being paid to an employee of Lenoir’s office who isn’t “showing up for work” — a contention almost certain to bring a hot protest from Lenoir at next week’s committee sessions, where the resolution will get a preliminary vetting.

Roland will also seek to re-allocate $100,000 currently slated to the Juvenile Court Clerk’s office to provide funding for the Shelby County law library, which, he said, faces the threat of closure for financial reasons. He accused state Senator Kelsey of letting a funding bill for the library “sit on his desk” during the legislative session just concluded.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Kelsey, Harris File Legislation to Regulate Future Water Policy in West Tennessee (UPDATED)

CREDIT: JB

UPDATE: (Bill would not directly affect already approved applications like proposed new TVA wells, though ongoing lawsuit from Sierra Club and Protect Our Aquifer might.)

Though currently approved projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority’s plan for operating five wells to draw water from the Memphis Sand Aquifer won’t be affected, a piece of legislation filed by two Shelby County legislators could substantially affect future water policy locally.
JB

Senators Lee Harris (l), Brian Kelsey

State Senators Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) and Lee Harris (D-Memphis) have filed a bill that would establish a Memphis Sand Aquifer Regional Development board with approval powers over any pumping of more than 10,000 gallons of water from the aquifer, source of the Memphis area’s drinking water.

A TVA plan to drill into the aquifer via five new wells has been sanctioned by the Shelby County Water Quality Control Board but is still opposed by a group of environmentally minded citizens, who are concerned about possible leak-through contamination of the aquifer, among other issues.

The expressed purpose of the TVA drilling is to obtain some 3.5 million gallons of water daily from the aquifer to serve as coolant for the Authority’s forthcoming natural-gas power plant. Though the bill presented by Kelsey and Harris will not offset the Shelby County Water Control Board’s previous approval of that project, it was directly inspired by environmental concerns and would impose stringent new conditions for any future such proposals.

And a current lawsuit filed in Chancery Court by The Sierra Club and the Protect Our Aquifer nonprofit group challenges the Water Quality Board’s action and offers a possible means of reversing TVA’s license to pursue with its aquifer-drilling project.

As Ward Archer, founder of Protect Our Aquifer, explains in a memo to the Flyer:

“On February 1, 2017, Protect Our Aquifer, along with the Sierra Club, filed a petition for a writ of certiorari in Shelby County Chancery Court seeking judicial review of the Shelby County Groundwater Quality Control Board’s decision upholding the issuance of well permits to TVA to draw potable water directly from our Memphis Sand Aquifer.

“The case was assigned to Chancellor Jim Kyle. On February 9, 2017, Chancellor Kyle signed an order instructing the clerk of the court to issue the writ requiring the board to submit the record from the administrative proceeding to the court within thirty days.

“This is the first step in the appeal process.”

The petition from Sierra Club and Protect Our Aquifer can be accessed here:

[pdf-1]
And here is the news release announcing the Kelsey/Harris bill:

(NASHVILLE), February 14, 2017 — State Senators Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown) and Lee Harris (D-Memphis) have filed legislation in the Tennessee General Assembly setting up a Memphis Sands Aquifer Regional Development Board to protect water supplies in West Tennessee. Senate Bill 776 also requires board approval to pump more than 10,000 gallons of water from the aquifer to ensure its long-term viability.

It is sponsored by Rep. Ron Lollar (R-Bartlett) and Rep. Curtis Halford (R-Dyer) in the House of Representatives.

“Clean drinking water is very important to our citizens and our future,” said Sen. Kelsey. “This legislation aims to ensure the aquifer remains a clean and reliable source for future generations.”

The action follows approval given to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) to pump approximately 3.5 million gallons of aquifer water each day to cool its new power-generating plant in Southwest Memphis, a move which is deemed controversial by some scientists and environmentalists.

Under the bill, the board would have all of the powers, rights, and privileges necessary to manage, conserve, preserve, and protect the aquifer, and to increase the recharge of, and prevent the waste or pollution in, the aquifer. The nine-member board would be fairly comprised of the mayors of Shelby and two other West Tennessee counties overlying the aquifer. The governor would appoint the remaining members with two from the agricultural community, two from commerce, and two from the environmental/research community.

“This board would also help ensure that the flow of rain and water into the aquifer prevents pollution and waste,” Kelsey added. “I believe this legislation provides a well-balanced approach to ensure the aquifer is protected for many years to come.”

In addition, Senate Bill 886, sponsored by Harris and Kelsey, requires anyone planning to drill a well to give at least 14 days advance notice to the state commissioner of the Department of Environment and Conservation with the notice published on department’s website. Rep. G.A. Hardaway (D-Memphis), Rep. Lollar and Rep. Halford are sponsoring the bill in the House of Representatives.

Senator Harris said, “Everyone should know that our aquifer makes West Tennessee a very special place, as compared with other areas of the country. We need to work to preserve that asset. We know that there’s enough drinking water for today’s generation, but that’s not the worry. We want to make sure that the aquifer is preserved for future generations. That means we need to be careful with respect to the precedents we set today, since those precedents have a funny way to leading to negative consequences later. Because this aquifer is so special, we also want to do what we can to make sure that the public knows what’s happening with it and how it’s being utilized. When there are proposals to use that resource, we need to have a serious conversation with the public, and sometimes we need to be able to modify or even reject some of these uses.”

The water stored in the Memphis sand aquifer, which is also known as the Middle Claiborne, first fell as rain 332 BC. It covers 7,500 miles in portions of seven states, including 20 West Tennessee counties. Although aquifers are used for drinking water by more than 100 million Americans, Kelsey said the quality of the Memphis aquifer is unsurpassed.

The bill itself (SB0776/HB0816) may be seen here:

[pdf-2]

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

The Buddy System

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

In both our editorial and in this week’s cover story there are a few oblique references to a phenomenon that seems to be on the rise, in Nashville as well as in Washington. And that is an increased readiness of elected public officials to shake somewhat loose from their ideological preoccupations and habits of gridlock — long enough, anyhow, to work effectively to the public good across party lines.

A first-class example of this is the recent joining together for a worthy purpose of two local state senators, each with some claim to political prominence and each with a past record of intense partisan loyalty.

It is still too early to determine just what concrete results might be achieved from the joint efforts of Senator Lee Harris, a Memphis Democrat, and Senator Brian Kelsey, a Germantown Republican, in publicly challenging the intentions of the Tennessee Valley Authority to employ five newly constructed wells in siphoning off from three to five million gallons of water a day from the Memphis Sand aquifer.

TVA’s stated purpose with the wells is to use the water pumped up from the aquifer to cool the machinery of their soon-to-be natural-gas power plant on President’s Island, currently under construction and slated to go online in 2018, replacing the authority’s existing coal-powered plant.

Environmentally knowledgeable citizens, like Ward Archer of the ad hoc Protect Our Aquifer organization and Scott Banbury of the Sierra Club, have been waging a campaign of resistance to TVA’s plans, warning of posssible damage to the clay layers surrounding the aquifer and potential contamination of its contents, the famously pure Memphis drinking water.

They, aided by experts like Brian Waldron, director of the Center for Applied Earth Science and Engineering Research (CAESER) at the University of Memphis, have done their best to make sure that such possible consequences are recognized and taken into account, and have argued that TVA has several alternative sources for its cooling water, all readily at hand — in the Mississippi River, in a nearby alluvial basin, and from the Maxson Wastewater Treatment plant.

And TVA also has the option of purchasing the water it needs directly from MLGW. Arguing that all of these methods would be costlier than drilling water directly from the Sand aquifer, TVA has plugged on with its plans and won approval to do so from the Shelby County Groundwater Quality Control Board, which levied its judgment not on the pros and cons of the matter but essentially on whether TVA had gone through the right protocols in applying for its drilling permits.

Enter Harris and Kelsey, who joined such other public officials as Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, in calling for TVA to take no chances with the Memphis aquifer and to pursue one of the other aforementioned options to secure its coolant water.

Harris and Kelsey did more than merely protest; they led a pilgrimage of local media last week to several of the local sources relevant to the TVA/aquifer controversy, including an MLGW water-processing plant, the site of one of the newly drilled wells, and the TVA’s naural-gas facility, nearing completion.

At the latter site, Kelsey noted for the attendant media that the new TVA plant would be “a great thing,” given its ability to operate without the gross air pollutants produced by the coal-operated plant it will replace. But, he warned, the gains in environmental safety could be offset by a “bad thing,” the danger of contamination to the source of Memphis drinking water, should TVA follow through on its plans for drilling into the Sand aquifer.

As Kelsey put it earlier, succinctly, “There’s no point in trading bad air for bad water.”

Even those in the environmental movement who had mistrusted some of Kelsey’s other political positions as being overly conservative are grateful for his intercession, and for his active ad hoc alliance with Harris, a political opposite number in every sense. The two of them together are using a bully pulpit to make their concerns known, and it remains to be seen what the results of that will be.

And, given his political connections and concerns about pollution, Kelsey might well be a source of corrective advice for the Trump administration, which, according to a news item last week, has the option of making enough new appointments to the TVA board this year to form a governing majority on it.

According to sources, the new administration is said to favor TVA’s continuing with coal-burning plants. Memphis has moved beyond that stage, but other sites in TVA’s coverage area haven’t.