Lynn Moss – Memphis Flyer

Even as most political attention locally is trained on an ongoing city election season, Shelby County government has a political crisis on its hands in the form of an ongoing power struggle between branches of government.

When the Shelby County Commission concluded its last public meeting of the 2014-15 cycle on Monday, it was still in a state of uncertainty and division as to the nature of its own leadership in the year to come, having elected Steve Basar as its chairman two weeks ago, only to un-elect him in a reconsideration vote an hour later.

But the commissioners seemed to have less difficulty on Monday in unifying against a common foe: the administration of Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, which has gotten involved in a power struggle with the commission — one that consistently has put the two entities at loggerheads as to just who is the boss in the county system.

The contest was joined in two ways on Monday. First, when Luttrell requested and was given the opportunity to address the commission to open the meeting, in his remarks, the mayor made an effort to review some of the differences between his administration and the commission on budgetary and spending priorities and proposed a forthcoming “summit” with the county’s legislative body to review priorities and to try to get them in sync.

One item mentioned in the mayor’s remarks — a workforce development grant of $175,000 to Seedco, a national nonprofit organization, to train local residents for retail positions — would become the focus of a debate and test-case vote, one that the mayor, who opposed the grant, would lose by a 10-2 vote.

Luttrell’s opposition to the Seedco grant, much of which would be in conjunction with the opening of a Just-A-Buck dollar store, was that routing economically at-risk citizens into relatively low-paying retail-sales positions was not the proper focus for the county’s workforce-development efforts.

In the commission’s later debate on the Seedco grant, the mayor’s position was supported by Commissioners Basar and David Reaves, two Republicans who often find themselves on opposite sides of the commission’s internal politics, but who concurred in opposition to the grant.

Basar, as Luttrell had, challenged the emphasis on retail sales vs. higher-paying kinds of employment, and pointed out that Seedco had in 2012 been charged by the federal government with fraud in its New York City job-placement operation.

Reaves made the point that the commission, once having made a grant to Seedco, would have no further oversight over its disposition, contrasting that with workforce development programs conducted under two existing entities, the Greater Memphis Alliance for a Competitive Workforce (GMACW), operated under the auspices of the city/county EDGE board, and the federally sponsored Workforce Investment Network (WIN).

The commission would have significant input in either of those workforce development programs without having to “spend a nickel,” said Reaves, who called the proposed Seedco grant an exercise in “pork.” He offered a motion, seconded by Basar, to refer the matter of the Seedco grant back to committee while the commission looked into doing something with GMACW or WIN.

The motion went down, however, and it became apparent that something more than pure cost-accounting or workforce-development policy was involved in the debate when influential GOP Commissioner Heidi Shafer, the body’s budget chair and normally an opponent of grants in principle, came down hard for the Seedco grant.

Shafer has made no secret of her view that the Luttrell administration had arrogated too much authority to itself, particularly in its dealings with the commission during recent budget negotiations, when the administration declared a $6 million surplus but opposed efforts by Republican members to offset enough of that amount to allow for a one-cent decrease in the county tax rate.

Other members, Democrats and Republicans, have nursed other grievances, and there developed an apparent post-budget consensus on the commission for the body to look into having its own legal recourse and independent vetting sources.

The commission has meanwhile pressed for more candor from the administration on the county fiscal situation and secured an administration pledge in last week’s committee sessions for a “truing-up” this fall of the county’s fluid revenue status.

At one point in Monday’s discussion of the Seedco grant, after Luttrell had left the auditorium, GOP Commissioner Terry Roland confronted administration CAO Harvey Kennedy with an accusation that “it was kind of disrespectful for the mayor to come up here and talk about a summit when he has run roughshod over us for five years. … When you look at that charter, what it says is that this body has the power. … At the end of the day, we are the governing body.”

Later in the debate, Kennedy called Roland’s characterization of relations between the commission and administration “extremely inaccurate” and insisted that the county charter provided “shared responsibility” for the branches of government and that “we don’t work for the commission.”

Whatever the case, relations between the two branches could hardly be more strained, and it would seem that Luttrell’s desired “summit” with the commission, if and when it ends up taking place, could be the last best chance of patching things up.

Meanwhile, the commission will attempt once again to resolve its chairmanship question at its September 14th public meeting, with Commissioner Van Turner, a first-term Democrat, presiding as acting chair.

DOGGING THE VOTE:

Three candidates in the Memphis city election who are running along similar and somewhat unorthodox lines are including an emphasis on shoring up animal rights in their platforms and
collaborated in a meet-and-greet at the Overton Bark dog park at
Overton Park on Saturday.

It didn’t take long for this little terrier, belonging to an attendee, to commit himself and come looking for a constituent service — to wit, a dog biscuit — from (l to r) mayoral candidate Mike Williams; Lynn Moss, candidate for City Council, District 9, Position 2; and Robin Spielberger, candidate for Super district 9, Position 1.

Two other issues held in common by the three are support for
retaining the Mid-South Coliseum and restoration of lost benefits for
city employees.

If, as so many people declaim, money is the “mother’s milk” of politics, the fact is, there are some determined candidates who are virtually lactose-free and decline to be poor-mouthing about it. Others are letting their gross receipts and checkbooks speak for them.

As a sample case of such contrasts, consider the five-candidate race for Super District 9, Position 2. It is, like the races for mayor and City Court clerk, an at-large race. The two Super Districts, 8 and 9, represent a compromise dating from a 1991 judicial settlement, when the city’s electorate was roughly half white and half black.

In blunt terms, District 9 was the white half, more or less, while District 8 was predominantly African-American. Population shifts since then have altered the makeup of both districts, but the rough division still holds.

And there are clear distinctions between how candidates might run in an at-large race and how they can run in district races.

As Shea Flinn, the former councilman from 9, 2, and now an executive with the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce, put it, “You can walk a district race.” (That is, go door-to-door.) “You can’t do that to nearly the same degree in an at-large race. The territory is too large.”

That fact would seem to militate against an at-large candidate without a budget big enough to do radio, TV, and newspaper advertising. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the candidate with the most money wins in an at-large race, but ample funding certainly conveys an advantage.

On the other hand, the same judicial settlement that created the current district structure ordained that, unlike the case in district races, there would be no runoffs in any of the at-large races. That fact gives even cash-poor candidates the hope of winning a plurality, if they can bring some other advantage to the winner-take-all scramble.

Stephanie Gatewood, for example, a former Memphis School Board member who now aspires to the Super District 9, Positon 2, seat, reported exactly $671.45 on hand in her second-quarter financial disclosure, covering the period April 1st to June 30th. She listed two contributions, each for $500.

Gatewood’s expenditures for the period totaled $338.95, which she laid out to Perkins Productions for some “4 x 6” wallet cards.

At a recent meet-and-greet/fund-raising affair held at Acre Restaurant (after the last reporting deadline), Gatewood boasted that her election to the old Memphis City Schools board had been achieved by grass-roots and word-of-mouth efforts without much of a budget and, after engaging with attendees in a kind of quiz-’em-on-the-issues dialogue, she asked those present to notify their Twitter or Facebook networks where they were and whom they were listening to.

Clearly, Gatewood hopes that her former school board incumbency, and the contacts that came with it, can generate some turnout.

That prospect may loom even larger with another name candidate and former school board member in the same race, Kenneth Whalum Jr. Whalum, who is something of a master at using social media and attracting press coverage, has made it clear, too, that his efforts will not depend on raising a huge amount of campaign cash.

In addition to his considerable name-recognition, gained most recently from a good showing at the 2014 Democratic primary for Shelby County mayor, Whalum intends to engage in serious networking — emphasizing the theme of education and coordinating his own efforts with those of like-minded candidates for other council positions.

As a late entry, Whalum was not required to post a financial disclosure for the second quarter.

Another entry in the 9, 2, race is Lynn Moss, a novice candidate with no prior incumbencies and no name-recognition factor. Her financial receipts are also lacking — with second-quarter receipts of $1,745, mainly from personal friends, and cash-on-hand of $1,173.48.

Moss would seem to be unusually handicapped against her opponents, but she has one ace-in-the-hole, affiliation with a group of grass-roots activists who meet frequently to challenge the precepts of various civic establishments. In particular, she is running on a ticket of sorts (with Robin Spielberger in Super District 9, Position 1, and Jim Tomasik in District 1) that advocates de-annexation from Memphis of relatively recently annexed suburbs such as Cordova. To the extent that she and others can make that issue prominent, she has prospects.

The campaign of Paul Shaffer, longtime business manager for the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers), is intermediate between the position of determined do-it-yourself campaigns and those that are backed by numerous and significant donations.

Shaffer has benefited from large donations from union-oriented Political Action Committees (PACs). His cash-on-hand amount of $11,735.22 in his second-quarter report derives almost entirely from such sources, which are, however, relatively limited in number. They run the gamut from $500 to $5,000.

Shaffer can depend also on voluntary grass-roots support from union members and from the Democratic Party rank-and-file activists who have known Shaffer for years (many of them, as candidates, having benefited from IBEW’s own financial generosity).

And then there is Philip Spinosa, a new name to most Memphians, including the majority of voters residing in Super District 9, 2, but one not destined to stay that way for long. Already motorists along several of the city’s major thoroughfares — Walnut Grove being a case in point — are seeing Spinosa’s yard signs in great quantity, often in tandem with those of Reid Hedgepeth, the incumbent council member in Super District 9, Position 3, and Worth Morgan, a candidate in District 5, a Midtown-East Memphis enclave.

Like Hedgepeth and Morgan, Spinosa, a sales executive with FedEx, has the kind of youthful image that is made-to-order for television advertising, and his connections with influential members of the city’s business elite are similar to theirs as well. His second-quarter receipts were a whopping $164,940, and his cash balance was $149,133.75.

Resources like that (Morgan is similarly fixed, by the way) are almost on a par with those of the two mayoral-race titans, Mayor A C Wharton and Councilman Jim Strickland, and, over the long haul, obviously give Spinosa the potential to close and overcome the name-ID factor currently owned by a couple of his opponents.

Jackson Baker

The family of late civil rights icon and National Civil Rights Museum founder D’Army Bailey acknowldged the Shelby County Commission’s vote on Monday to rename the Shelby County Courthouse in his honor. From left: son Merritt Bailey, wife Adrienne Bailey, Commission chair Justin Ford, son Justin Bailey. At right is Commissioner Terry Roland, sponsor of the re-naming resolution.