Tag: Lee Mills

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Which County: Shelby or Fayette?

Lee and Amber Mills’ residence on Shane Hollow Drive in Arlington (Photo: Jackson Baker)

Back in 2015 Tom Leatherwood, as Shelby County register, signed and thereby authenticated the deed of Lee and Amber Mills for a brand-new house at the Shelby County address of 12903 Shane Hollow Drive in Arlington.

In 2022, Lee Mills, an airline pilot and a former chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party, is hoping to unseat Leatherwood in a race for the District 99 state House of Representatives seat.

It would be Mills’ third effort to defeat Leatherwood for the seat, beginning with a decision in 2018 by the county GOP steering committee to designate Leatherwood as the party nominee rather than Mills after the death of the long-term holder of the seat, Ron Lollar. Mills then made an unsuccessful run against the then-incumbent Leatherwood in the 2020 Republican primary.

County line map showing the Mills’ residence in Fayette County (Photo: Courtesy Lee Mills)

But the third time may not, even potentially, be the charm for Mills if a ruling by the state election coordinator, Mark Goins, is sustained in the courts. In a letter to Mills on April 18th, Goins informed Mills that his residence was in Fayette County, not Shelby, and quoted from Article II, Section 9 of the state constitution: “No person shall be a Representative unless he shall be a citizen of the United States, of the age of twenty-one years, and shall have been a citizen of this state for three years, and a resident in the county he represents one year, immediately preceding the election.” (Note: Italics added for emphasis.)

The determination, said Goins, had been made by Doug Himes, an attorney who had worked on the 2020 House redistricting legislation, using census guidelines. And Goins included with the letter a map clearly showing the Mills residence and most of the subdivision that contains it to be in Fayette County.

Lee Mills protests that he and his wife have paid county property taxes on the Shane Hollow dwelling since 2015 and that the premise of a Shelby County address has been accepted as valid in several other civil transactions. He cites Tennessee Code Annotated 5-2-116, a provision of which declares that in “circumstances where a dispute arises concerning the location of a county line for purposes other than property taxation … the state board of equalization shall not have the authority to locate a county line so that property that has been assessed for property taxation purposes in one (1) county for five (5) years or more is located in a different county.”

The Shelby County Election Commission has asked for a declaratory judgment on the matter, which is scheduled for resolution in Chancery Court and has been assigned to Chancellor Jim Kyle. Lee Mills vows that an adverse decision will be appealed.

Meanwhile, a related circumstance is that of Mills’ wife Amber Mills, who has represented District 1 on the Shelby Commission since her election in 2018 and has been certified as a candidate for re-election by the Election Commission. Amber Mills was the only candidate listed on the Republican primary ballot this week.

At this writing, no legal challenge has been made to the validity of Commissioner Mills’ presence on the ballot, and, if she is subsequently certified by the Election Commission as the winner of this week’s primary, that fact will undoubtedly loom large in legal proceedings involving her husband’s case.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

“Fire Fauci!” — Candidates Call on High-Powered Surrogates

CREDIT: JB

As the last week of the August 6th election round began, candidates were racing around putting their best surrogates on display — hitchhiking, as it were, on other, better established or more well-known political figures.
JB

Leatherwood (l) with Lee

In the case of Tom Leatherwood, a Republican running for reelection to the state House of Representatives from District 99 (Eads, Arlington, eastern Shelby), the doppelgänger was Governor Bill Lee, down from Nashville. The two held forth before a sizable late-Monday-morning crowd at Olympic Steak and Pizza in Arlington, while partisans of Leatherwood’s GOP primary opponent, former Shelby County Republican chairman Lee Mills, picketed outside.

Slightly later on Monday, U.S. Senate candidate Manny Sethi, a Nashville physician and Republican newcomer who styles himself “Dr. Manny,” hit the stage of another well-attended event, this one at The Grove, an establishment in Cordova. He had in tow U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and Sethi, who is opposed by former Ambassador Bill Hagerty, a Trump endorsee, fairly quickly disposed of any idea that he might be the moderate in the race.

JB

Sethi (r) with Cruz

“I’m tired of this coronavirus, aren’t you?” Sethi said, addressing a seated crowd of which roughly a third were maskless. “Let’s fire Dr. Fauci!” he continued, going on to endorse the glories of hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug President Trump has touted as a potential antidote to Covid-19.

James Mackler, a Democratic candidate in the Senate race, has condemned Sethi’s position as one making him unworthy of serving in the Senate.

Sethi is one of two physicians in the Senate race. The other, Republican George Flinn of Memphis, has denounced Trump’s response to the coronavirus pandemic as being woefully insufficient.

Meanwhile, Democratic state Representative Joe Towns, bidding for reelection in District 84, was the beneficiary of a Monday fundraiser at India Palace on Poplar. Towns had asked both Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris to be on hand. Strickland was able to make it, Harris was not. JB

Mills’ picketers at Leatherwood event.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Grudge Match: Leatherwood vs. Mills

Tom Leatherwood, the Republican state representative in House District 99, was greatly relieved on Tuesday of this week. He had just relocated in a temporary hotel after damage from the tornado that swept through Nashville on Monday night had made his regular hotel unliveable.

But he was forced to take note of a new threat taking place over the course of the current election season. That comes from an ongoing challenge to his renomination from Lee Mills, who, until a change of guard last year, served as chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party.

After former longtime State Representative Ron Lollar unexpectedly died in July 2018, with that year’s election season underway, the local GOP steering committee met to select an alternate candidate for the District 99 position on the general election ballot. Mills was one aspirant; Leatherwood was another, and he ended up prevailing.

“It wasn’t but two weeks or so later that I heard they were getting ready for an effort to see me defeated the next time,” said Leatherwood, the “they” being Mills and his wife, Shelby County Commissioner Amber Mills. “She’s using her office to promote her husband’s political ambitions,” he said.

Friends of Mills are now circulating a story that a delegation from the Shelby County Commission headed by Amber Mills was snubbed by Leatherwood, who allegedly declined to meet with the commissioners when the group was in Nashville last week on the occasion of Shelby County’s official Day on the Hill, an annual pilgrimage to the state capital.

“That’s a lie,” Leatherwood said emphatically, when asked about the story. “No one ever made an appointment to see me.” He said he could affirm that he himself was never contacted by the delegation. Members of his staff, like those of other legislators, could not confirm or deny the fact of an appointment request, having been asked to stay away from the Hill on Tuesday in the wake of the tornado damage.

Leatherwood said he did not fear the challenge from Lee Mills, contrasting his campaign war chest of some $100,000 with a far lesser amount he said had been raised so far by his GOP opponent.

“I’ve never wanted to destroy an opponent the way I want to destroy him,” Leatherwood said of Mills. He boasted his own support from within Republican ranks and said the activities of Lee and Amber Mills could have the effect of indirectly helping Democrats in their designs upon other legislative positions, particularly the open District 97 House seat and the District 83 seat now held by Republican Mark White.

There are Democratic candidates in both of those races, but so far not in District 99.

In District 97, now held by the retiring Republican Jim Coley, two Democrats — Allan Creasy and Gabby Salinas, both veterans of hard-fought but losing races in 2018 — vie for the nomination, along with Ruby Powell-Dennis and Clifford Stockton III. Two Republicans, Brandon Weise and John Gillespie, who has been endorsed by Coley, also seek the seat.

Democrat Jerri Green will oppose White in District 83.

Democrats once dominated the Shelby County legislative contingent but in the last few decades have had to yield the suburbs to Republicans. They have had one signal victory in their recent effort to make inroads in eastern Shelby County: Democrat Dwayne Thompson won House District 96 in 2016 in an upset over then-Republican incumbent Steve McManus; in 2018 Thompson successfully defended the seat against Republican challenger Scott McCormick.

This year, Thompson faces a primary challenge from fellow Democrat Anthony Johnson, while Republican Patricia Possel will seek the office on the Republican side.

…

Like duellists, potential general election opponents in House District 96, Dwayne Thompson, Democrat, and Patti Possel, Republican, stood back to back and handed out literature at the AgriCenter during the recently ended Early Voting period.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Politics Wrap Up

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

At press time on Tuesday, U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) was scheduled to make one more effort, via a unanimous-consent request on the floor of the Senate, to get a vote on the confirmation of Ed Stanton III of Memphis as U.S. District Judge. 

Stanton, now serving as U.S. Attorney for Tennessee’s Western District, was nominated by President Obama in May 2015 to succeed Judge Samuel H. “Hardy” Mays.

Sponsored by 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen of Memphis, a Democrat, and heartily endorsed by Tennessee’s two Republican Senators, Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander, Stanton was expected to be a shoo-in for Senate confirmation long ago, but the same partisan gridlock that has prevented Senate action on Obama’s Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland has held up action on Stanton and other judicial nominees.

• The two major political parties have both now established local headquarters for the stretch drive of the presidential race. 

The Republicans went first, opening up a combination HQ for 8th District congressional nominee David Kustoff and the coordinated GOP campaign at 1755 Kirby Parkway on August 31st. The Democrats will open theirs, at 2600 Poplar, with an open house this Saturday. 

At the GOP headquarters opening, Kustoff spoke first, then Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland, as West Tennessee chairman for Donald Trump. Next up was Lee Mills, interim Shelby GOP chair (he replaced Mary Wagner, who had been nominated for a judgeship). He began recognizing Republican gentry in the room.

When Mills got to David Lenoir, the Shelby trustee who’s certain to oppose Roland for county mayor in 2018, he fumbled with Lenoir’s job title, then somewhat apologetically said, “David, I always want to call you tax collector.” Roland then shouted out delightedly, “I do, too!”

• Given the overwhelmingly Republican nature of voting in the 8th District in recent years, Kustoff’s chances of prevailing are better than good, but for the record, Rickey Hopson of Somerville is the Democratic nominee. Hopson is making the rounds, having spoken at last month’s meeting of the Germantown Democratic Club, one of several local Democratic clubs taking up the slack for the Shelby County Democratic Party, decertified by state Democratic chair Mary Mancini several weeks ago.

Another Democratic underdog challenging the odds is Dwayne Thompson, the party’s candidate for the state House District 96 seat (Cordova, Germantown) now held by the GOP’s Steve McManus. A fund-raiser is scheduled for Thompson next Wednesday, September 28th, at Coletta’s Restaurant on Highway 64.

Memphis lawyer John Ryder, who currently serves as RNC general counsel and who supervised both parties’ rules changes and the RNC’s redistricting strategy after the census of 2010, has been named Republican Lawyer of the Year by the Republican National Lawyers Association and will be honored at a Washington banquet of the RNLA at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington on Tuesday, September 27th. “Special guests” will include Senator Corker and RNC chairman Reince Priebus.