Tag: Mark White

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New Blended Sentencing Law Could Send Hundreds of Youth to Adult System

The exterior of the Memphis-Shelby County Juvenile Court in Downtown Memphis. Photo by Andrea Morales for MLK50
The exterior of the Memphis-Shelby County Juvenile Court in downtown Memphis. Photo by Andrea Morales for MLK50

This story was originally published by MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Subscribe to their newsletter here.

In January, a new “blended sentencing” law will go into effect in Tennessee that could usher hundreds of children into the adult criminal justice system with fewer checks than the existing adult transfer process. It will also keep those kids in the juvenile justice system longer. 

The law is “extremely harmful for youth in Memphis,” said Ala’a Alattiyat, coordinator for the Youth Justice Action Council. “It will not keep our community safer, and it will continue to perpetuate the cyclical nature of the justice system by making it harder for youth to exit that cycle.”

Children as young as 14 could be subject to blended sentencing. These children will be required to serve juvenile sentences until they turn 19. They will also face up to four years of adult prison or probation.

Initially, this adult sentence is stayed, meaning it will only take effect if certain criteria are met. Only one of these criteria concerns whether a child has committed another delinquent act.

As a result, kids could end up in adult prison without committing another crime, said Zoe Jamail, policy coordinator at Disability Rights Tennessee. Instead, the text of the law allows children to increase their risk of going to prison by breaking curfew or failing to graduate from high school. 

Ultimately, children “who would otherwise never have been facing an adult sentence” will be swept into the adult system, said Jasmine Ying Miller, a senior attorney at Youth Law Center.

Read more about how the law will work here. 

Blended sentencing is part of a broader effort by some lawmakers to make Tennessee’s juvenile justice system more punitive, even though rates of youth crime in the state have been declining for at least a decade. 

In April, the state legislature passed the “Juvenile Organized Retail Theft Act,” which allows children to be tried as adults for shoplifting or stealing a gun. In May, it passed the “Parental Accountability Act,” which allows judges to fine parents for offenses committed by their children.

Rep. John Gillespie. Photo by Andrea Morales for MLK50

The blended sentencing legislation, which also passed in May, was introduced and sponsored by several Memphis-area lawmakers. In the State Senate, the bill was sponsored by state Sen. Brent Taylor (R-Memphis). In the House, the bill was sponsored by Rep. Mark White (R-Memphis), Rep. John Gillespie (R-Memphis), and Rep. G.A. Hardaway (D-Memphis). 

“State policies related to youth justice consistently and disproportionately target Memphis, which is a predominantly Black city,” said Alattiyat. As a result, “this type of law always ends up disproportionately targeting Black youth.”

Blended sentencing’s sponsors often imply — incorrectly — that youth are responsible for most of Memphis’s crime. 

“We are living in a state of fear in Memphis, in the surrounding area,” Rep. Gillespie told colleagues during a House discussion of blended sentencing, “and it is almost entirely because of juveniles committing violent crimes that are going unpunished.”

These claims are misleading. Memphis-Shelby County Juvenile Court has said that adults are responsible for most crimes in the county. Children do seem to be disproportionately involved in car theft; about a third of those charged with vehicle-related crimes are youth offenders, according to the Memphis Police Department. Available data suggest that youth are less involved in violent crime. 

According to statistics maintained by the Memphis-Shelby County Juvenile Court, juvenile crime did increase in 2022. But by 2023, juvenile crime had fallen to the same level as 2021. Overall, juvenile crime in Memphis has been on a steady decline since at least 2011. 

Nevertheless, legislators insist that drastic action must be taken on youth crime in Memphis.

Rep. Mark White during a House committee hearing in March of this year. Photo by Andrea Morales for MLK50

“Juvenile laws traditionally have been there to protect the juvenile,” said White, who introduced the bill in the House. In his view, protection is no longer the right approach. “We’re living in a different time with some of the crimes committed by these 14, 15, 16, 17-year-olds.”

Currently, Tennessee’s juvenile justice system operates on two tracks: either children remain in the juvenile system — where they must be released by 19, no matter the offense they’ve committed — or they can be transferred to the adult system. 

White believes that the first track, in which children remain in the juvenile system until age 19, enables juvenile crime. Under the current system, children “can shoot and kill a person at 17 and go free at 19,” he said. 

Children accused of murder and attempted murder are usually transferred to adult court unless they have been abused or coerced, lawyers say.

Some juvenile judges also take issue with this part of the law; they’d like the option to keep older kids who have committed serious offenses in the juvenile system beyond 19.

“We all want a tool where we can extend jurisdiction to capture youth past the age of 19,” said Judge Aftan Strong, chief magistrate of Memphis-Shelby County’s Juvenile Court. “Extended jurisdiction” would give courts more time to rehabilitate young offenders, she said. 

Blended sentencing bears little resemblance to this policy. And while juvenile judges are legally required to rehabilitate youth offenders, the architects of blended sentencing have made it clear that rehabilitation is beside the point. 

White introduced an initial version of blended sentencing to the legislature in April 2023. The next month, White published an op-ed where he wrote, “We are well past the time of ‘we need to rehabilitate our youth.’” Instead, he wrote, the juvenile justice system should focus on “discipline, correction and punishment.” 

A view of the state legislature floor during a House session in March 2023. Photo by Andrea Morales for MLK50

In that same op-ed, White compared Memphis’ “undisciplined youth” to the 1870s yellow fever epidemic that killed or displaced 30,000 Memphians.

Ultimately, blended sentencing will likely incarcerate more children while failing to address youth crime, critics say. Empirical research on young people “does not support this viewpoint that you can punish your way into reducing crime.” said Cardell Orrin, Tennessee executive director at Stand for Children. 

White is not concerned by this critique. “We have to have a system where [young offenders] understand the seriousness of what they did and that they will be detained in the system,” White told MLK50. 

“A lot of the issues are coming from 2 percent-4 percent of our [youth] population,” he continued. “If we would just detain those people and make believers out of them, it may keep other people from reoffending.” 

Four percent of Memphis’ population between the ages of 10 and 17 is roughly 2,700 children, based on available U.S. census data. 

“We may have to go too far to one side trying to correct it in order to get back to sanity,” said White.

Rebecca Cadenhead is the youth and juvenile justice reporter for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. She is also a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms. Email her  rebecca.cadenhead@mlk50.com.

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Down to the Wire

Photo: Rawpixel | Adobe Stock

The 2024 election season had its share of both suspense and drama. 

That was certainly true of the quadrennial national election for president (arguably the most momentous one since the Civil War), which went down to the wire and frazzled millions of nerve endings before a winner could be discerned.

As all prognostications had it in advance, the presidential picture seemed headed for a resolution later than election night itself. Such opaqueness as lingered in the vote totals abruptly dissolved by the morning’s light, however. Shockingly, Donald J . Trump was back. With a vengeance.

At the center of the suspense had been the three so-called “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. It was presumed that a victory for Democrat Kamala Harris in all three of these habitually Democratic states would give her the presidency, but just barely. A victory for former GOP president Trump in any of them could drastically derail that prognosis. In the event, he appears to have won them all, as he did in 2016.

Kamala Harris (Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson)
Donald J. Trump (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

Nor was drama absent from the local side of the ballot. There is little prospect of the local results being challenged, as is always possible with the presidential numbers, but their effect may linger and, in some cases, simmer.

This is especially true of the series of referenda that Memphis voters were asked to pass judgment on. As of late Tuesday evening, election commission totals had all the referenda winning handily.

The most significant ones — the outcome of which was never much doubted — had set city against state and enraged the guardians of statehouse authority well in advance of the individual items receiving a single vote.

In brief, the offending referenda items of Ordinance 5908, asked city residents to approve (1) restoration of permits for the right to carry firearms, (2) a ban on the sale of assault weapons in the city, and (3) a “red flag” proviso empowering the local judiciary to confiscate the weapons of demonstrably risky individuals.

All of the items are “trigger laws,” to be activated only when and if state law should permit them.

Even so, the Republican Speaker of the state House of Representatives, Cameron Sexton, had made bold to threaten the city of Memphis with loss of state-shared revenues unless the offending referendum package — unanimously approved by the city council — was withdrawn from the ballot.

That was enough to make the Shelby County Election Commission blanch, but the council itself was not cowed and, led by Chairman JB Smiley Jr., sued to have the measures restored. Chancellor Melanie Taylor Jefferson obliged.

As did Memphis voters, in their turn. All three questions of Referendum 5908 passed by gigantic majorities of 100,00 votes or more.

Other referenda passed on Tuesday would: strike down the city’s existing ban of runoffs in at-large elections (Referendum 5884), impose a two-year residency requirement for Memphis mayoral candidates (Referendum 5913), and authorize the city council to determine the salaries of the mayor, council members, the city chief administrative officer, and division directors (Referendum 5893). 

All in all, it was a good night for the referenda, as well as for the council itself. And, arguably, for the citizens of Memphis.

Perhaps predictably, the form sheet also held for elective offices, with incumbents of both parties doing very well indeed.

Marsha Blackburn (Photo: United States Senate, Public domain | Wikimedia Commons)

Republican U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn held off a challenge statewide from Knoxville state Representative Gloria Johnson, her Democratic opponent, though in heavily Democratic Shelby County, Johnson was leading, 156,303 to 104,633.

Another Republican incumbent, 8th District Congressman David Kustoff led Democratic challenger Sarah Freeman by a 2 to 1 margin in Shelby County’s portion of the vote, 66,398 votes to 30,255.

Steve Cohen (Photo: U.S. House of Representatives, Public domain | Wikimedia Commons)

Meanwhile, 9th District Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen was overwhelming his perennial Republican opponent Charlotte Bergman even more dramatically with vote totals in the county of 162,299 to 47,634.

On the legislative scene, the much-ballyhooed District 97 state House race saw Republican incumbent John Gillespie edging out his Democratic challenger Jesse Huseth, 15,859 to 14,600.


John Gillespie (Photo: Courtesy tn.gov)

And, in another state House race where Democrats nursed upset hopes, in District 83, incumbent Republican Mark White held off Democrat Noah Nordstrom, 19,283 to 13,713.

Mark White (Photo: Courtesy tn.gov)

Most attention — locally, nationally, and even worldwide — remained on the showdown between Trump and Harris. 

As late as the last weekend before this week’s final vote, the presidential race was being referred to as a dead heat, a virtual tie, a sense of things apparently corroborated by a string of polls in the so-called “battleground” states — the Rust Belt trio of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin; the Sun Belt states of Nevada and Arizona; and the competitive Southern states of Georgia and North Carolina.

A freakish outlier poll in the presumably red state of Iowa showing Harris with a last-minute edge over Trump in Iowa, though, was an indicator of possible unexpected volatility.

That the presidential race had even gotten so measurably close was a reflection of a political standoff in which halves of the nation had seemingly cleaved against each other in a variety of different and sometimes paradoxical ways. 

This was not the same old story of Democrats versus Republicans. Both of those coalitions had undergone profound changes over the years. No longer was the “working class” (ditto, the “middle class”) to be grouped in a single body. Upward mobility had revised people’s notions of class, then stalled in such a way as to confuse them further. Generational change was rampant, and ethnicity was no longer a dependable metric for determining political attitude. Disagreement over social matters like gender identity and abortion policy had sundered the old divides.

The center could not hold. It was not only, a la Yeats, that the falcon could not hear the falconer. Social media and impatient ways had created multitudinous new sources professing to be the latter.

The nation’s two-party political system had atrophied to the point that, seemingly, neither was able to generate a dependable bench of A-list players. Donald J. Trump, the Republicans’ once and would-be future president, had come from the worlds of seat-of-the-pants commerce and TV showbiz to reign over a hodgepodge of time-servers, has-beens, and sycophants in his party, and Democratic incumbent president Joe Biden, a survivor of his party’s dwindling corps of traditionalists, headed up the Democrats.

That’s how things were at the end of the early-year primaries, and there were no few voices wondering aloud: Was that all there was, this uninspiring rematch of moldy oldies?

To give Biden his due, he had done his best to wreak from overriding political inertia some promising legislation, especially in the rebuilding of the country’s decaying infrastructure. To give Trump his due, he had recovered from a stupefying series of misdeeds, including, arguably, an aborted coup against the political system, to regain his political stature.

When the two met on a late-June debate stage on the eve of the two party conventions, the 81-year-old Biden, who had fared well in the earlier presentation of his State of the Union address, crumbled so visibly and profoundly that to many, probably most, observers, the presidential race seemed over then and there, especially when the 78-year-old Trump would go on to defiantly survive a serious assassination attempt two days before the opening of the GOP political convention in July.

But desperation in the Democrats’ ranks had meanwhile generated a determination to replace the compromised Biden at the head of the party ticket. Enough pressure developed that the incumbent finally, if reluctantly, had to yield, and realistically, given the lateness of the hour, the most feasible outcome proved to be that of elevating Vice President Kamala Harris, the erstwhile California senator and former prosecutor, in Biden’s stead at the Democratic convention in August.

Once the matchup between Trump and Harris got established, it quickly settled into an even-steven situation, a kind of free-floating draw in which the two sides always stayed within reach of each other.

From the Democratic point of view, this would seem something of a miracle. Nikki Haley had based her runner-up GOP presidential race on the conceit that a female could win the presidency, either herself or, with the aging Biden still a candidate, his vice president, Harris, still regarded at that point as a nonentity. It was Haley’s way of mocking the opposition.

Indeed, even in Democratic ranks, Harris was long seen to be something of a liability, a drag on the ticket. That this was due to the way she had been used — or misused — by the incumbent president (in the ill-defined role of “border czar,” for example) became evident only when she was freed to become her own person. 

On the stump in her own right, she proved to be a natural, with unsuspected reserves of charisma and an appeal that was fortified by her selection of the pleasantly homey governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, as her running mate. (Trump’s choice as potential veep, the edgy Ohio Senator JD Vance, was clearly head-smart and acceptable to Trump’s base among the MAGA faithful but kept bumping up against his own innate arrogance.)

The change in tone among the Democrats was almost instantly evident. It came to be symbolized in the concept of “joy” and in Harris’ slogan, “a new way forward.”

While coming across as a certifiable New Thing, she was also able, credibly, to posit herself as the defender of constitutional values against the alleged schemes by the usurper Trump to override them in the interests of personal power.

“We are the promise of America,” she would say, uniting her own purpose with those of her audience members. 

Against this, against Harris, the ebullient rock-star presence on stage, Trump seemed buffaloed. In his fateful June debate duel with Biden, he had seemed vital, a hurricane of restless energy hurling scorn and unchecked charges at his befuddled opponent. Now it became more and more obvious that he, too, was a near octogenarian, with no new promise of his own to offer.

The shift in positions was fully demonstrated, post-conventions, in the follow-up debate with Harris when, matador-like, she had baited the bullish Trump with mockery of his rallies (which, in fact, were becoming more and more disorganized and less and less focused and empty of real content). His red-eyed response, that Haitian immigrants were eating the dogs and cats of Middle Americans in Ohio, was perfectly framed for the television audience by the split image of Harris’ gleeful wonderment at this out-of-nowhere non sequitur.

It was not long afterward that Harris’ progress was slowed somewhat, as much by a petulant media’s insistence that she submit to interviews as a sign of her seriousness as anything else. Dutifully, she did, and emerged with appropriate talking points — a middle-class tax cut, subsidies for small business and new housing starts, and legislation to suppress price-gouging. These would become highlights of the “to-do” list which she would juxtapose against what she characterized as the brooding Trump’s ever-multiplying enemies list. 

It became a cliche of press coverage that the former president’s seething ire at an imagined “enemy from within” was displacing what his would-be handlers wanted him to discuss — a supposedly intractable inflation and the pell-mell overcoming of the nation’s borders by a horde of illegal invaders. Both menaces, as it happened, were in something of an abatement — the former by a plethora of relatively rosy economic indices, the latter by fairly resolute, if delayed, executive actions taken by the lame-duck president in the summer and fall.

What Trump’s audiences were getting on the stump instead was the overflow of his ever more naked id, a witches’ brew of resentment and machismo — insults against his adversaries, threats to use the machinery of government against them, and improvisations on themes ranging from Arnold Palmer’s junk size to nostalgia for “the late, great Hannibal Lecter.”

Partly, this was due to what Harris characterized as her opponent’s presumed “exhaustion,” but partly, too, it was Trump’s instinctive reliance on what had always been the source of his appeal, an exposure of pure personality, a willingness, for better or for worse, to let it all hang out, to be The Show, a cathartic vehicle for release of his followers’ emotions. 

It was this penchant, after all, that had allowed him to sweep past a stage full of practical Republican politicians during the primary season of 2016 and, later that year, to surprise the calculating and overconfident Hillary Clinton at the polls.

GOP eminences — even those who, like Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, despised Trump, or, who, like senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, had been vilified by him, learned that they were no match for his carnival-like presence and resolved to use him for their own purposes, only in the end to be used by him instead for his. 

It remained a fact that, for all his defects, real and imagined, Trump was able to sustain a plausible hope of regaining the office he had lost to Biden in the pandemic-inflected campaign year of 2020.

And, beyond the presidential race itself, Republicans still nursed hopes of holding onto their slim majority in the House of Representatives as well as of capturing the Senate outright. At stake were such matters as healthcare, climate change, and reproductive policy domestically, as well as of meeting the economic challenge of China and in the conduct of foreign policy in the Middle East and vis-a-vis Russia in its challenge to NATO in Europe. 

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Politics Politics Feature

Sharing the Spotlight

Democrats Johnson, Huseth at High Point (Photos: Jackson Baker)

As was surely to be expected, the next-to-last weekend of the climactic 2024 election campaign was filled with feverish activity of various kinds — with early voting into its second week and candidates trying to get as many of their partisans as possible to the polls.

A case in point was a pair of events involving Gloria Johnson, the Knoxville Democrat who is trying to unseat incumbent Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn. 

Johnson, the state representative who gained national attention last year as a member of the “Tennessee Three” proponents of gun-safety legislation, has raised some $7 million for her bid — almost all of it from in-state sources, she contended proudly.

While that is no match for the incumbent’s $17 million or so, it has been enough to buy Johnson a series of concise and well-produced TV spots pinpointing Blackburn’s alleged shortcomings. And it even gives her some of the kind of influence that politicians call coattails.

Opponents Nordstrom and White at Belly Acres

Johnson was in Shelby County on Saturday, sharing time with two other Democrats, District 83 state House candidate Noah Nordstrom (like Johnson a public schoolteacher) and District 97 House candidate Jesse Huseth. 

The first event was a joint rally with Nordstrom and state Democratic chair Hendrell Remus just outside the perimeter of the New Bethel Missionary Baptist early-voting station. Next, Johnson met up with Huseth at High Point Grocery for some joint canvassing efforts, after which Huseth, who opposes GOP incumbent John Gillespie, set out on some door-to-door calls on residents in that western part of his district.

The most unusual pre-election event on Saturday didn’t involve Johnson, nor was it, in the strictest sense, a partisan event at all. It was a meet-and-greet at the Belly Acres restaurant in East Memphis involving both Nordstrom and his GOP adversary, incumbent Republican state Representative Mark White.

Not a debate between the two, mind you. A joint meet-and-greet, at which both candidates circulated among the members of a sizeable crowd, spending conversational time with the attendees and with each other.

The event was the brainchild of one Philip D. Hicks, impresario of something called the Independent Foundation for Political Effectiveness. Hicks says he hopes the Nordstrom-White encounter, his organization’s maiden effort, can serve as a precedent for other such joint candidate efforts to come — presumably in future election seasons.

Inasmuch as political competition is, by its nature, an adversarial process, it’s somewhat difficult to imagine such events becoming commonplace, but, all things considered, this first one went amazingly well.

It wasn’t the same kind of thing at all, but there were elements of such collegiality between potential election opponents at an earlier event, a meeting of the Germantown Democratic Club at Coletta’s on Appling Road during the previous week.

That event included Memphis City Council Chair JB Smiley as its featured speaker, and Smiley, who is reliably reported to be thinking of a race for Shelby County mayor in 2026, spent a fair amount of time comparing notes on public matters (e.g., MLGW, the future of the erstwhile Sheraton Hotel) with attendee J.W. Gibson, a businessman who has basically already declared for that office.

Take heed, Mr/Hicks.

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Election 2024: Party Time

Photo: Hero Design | Adobe Stock

The Flyer recently highlighted several referenda for Memphis voters on the November 5th election ballot. This week, which will see the onset of early voting (October 16th through October 31st), we look at partisan contests in several key races.  

Legislative Races

Noah Nordstrom, tall, stately, with long blonde hair he ties into a bun, says people tell him he looks like Trevor Lawrence, the ex-Clemson quarterback who now pilots the Jacksonville Jaguars of the NFL. “Either that or Thor,” Nordstrom says. “I’ll take either one.”

Images aside, Nordstrom is paradoxically mild-mannered and not macho at all, indeed somewhat diffident, as befits his day job as a public school teacher.

Noah Nordstrom (Photo: Jackson Baker)

What else he hopes to take is the title of state representative for Tennessee’s District 83, an enclave that straddles the southeastern rim of Shelby County and the western edge of Germantown. Challenger Nordstrom, a Democrat, has his work cut out for him. The seat has been held since 2010 by Republican Mark White, a fixture in the state GOP’s legislative supermajority in Nashville and the chair of the House Education Committee.

Education, as it happens, is also the central concern of Nordstrom, who teaches Spanish at Overton High School and is sounding the alarm about what he calls the “radical” ideas of the current legislative Republican supermajority. The specific moment that galvanized him into running came, he says, “when I realized that my state representative, Mark White, is pushing the voucher bill.”   

That bill, a main priority of GOP Governor Bill Lee, is described by Nordstrom as “a proposal that would defund our public schools across the entire state of Tennessee.” A bit of an exaggeration, perhaps, but the premise of the proposed legislation is that substantial amounts of taxpayer money would be siphoned out of the general fund to provide tuition at private schools, which, arguably, are in direct competition with the long-established public school system.

“I live just over on the Memphis side [where] Memphis has set up against it completely,” said Nordstrom. Also, as he notes, “The leaders here in Germantown, the entire school board, and the mayor stood up and said, you know, we don’t want this. … Even the Republican-leaning communities don’t want it. And so I decided to throw my name in.”

Indeed, opposition to school vouchers is universal in Shelby County school circles, not only in the urbanized Memphis-Shelby County Schools, but in each of the six county municipalities — Germantown, Collierville, Bartlett, Lakeland, Arlington, and Millington — that won the right to establish their own public school districts during the school merger controversy of the county’s previous decade.

Opposition to vouchers is one of the key wedge issues, along with demands for gun safety, also linked to public schools, that Democrats — presumed to be a minority in District 83, as they certainly are in the state at large — hope can support a political comeback for the party.  

“We can do better for our kids, and so that’s been one of the main issues,” Nordstrom said at the Future901-sponsored meeting, held in a Germantown household, where he recently spoke his views. “Obviously one of the other major ones is gun violence. It’s overwhelming to realize that you might not be able to save some of these kids. We see it every day, wondering whether they’re going to make it home safe.” 

Gloria Johnson (Photo: Jackson Baker)

Unforgotten is the “good trouble” of spring 2023, when mass protests were held at the state Capitol following a lethal episode of gun violence at a Nashville school. In the aftermath, three Democratic House members, including Justin J. Pearson of Memphis and Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, a candidate this year for the U.S. Senate, were held to accounts by the Republican majority for their passionate support of protesters’ demands for gun safety legislation.

Pearson was expelled by the vengeful majority, along with Justin Jones of Nashville, the third member of the “Tennessee Three.” Johnson survived expulsion by a single vote. All three were celebrated nationally for their stands, and Pearson and Jones were hastily returned to office in special elections.

Realistically, Democrats don’t envision any immediate regaining of the hegemony the party held for much of Tennessee’s history, but they do hope to achieve at some point a competitive status with the Republicans, who established their dominance in the statewide election years of 2010 and 2014 and have never looked back.

At the Future901 meeting in Germantown, there was a fair amount of partisan bear-baiting of Republicans, to be sure, but there were also expressions of concern regarding the increasing takeover of the GOP by MAGA ideology and a corresponding erosion, as attendees saw it, of commonsense shared values among Republican office-holders.

John Gillespie (Photo: Jackson Baker)

White, Nordstrom’s opponent, and state Representative John Gillespie, the incumbent Republican in House District 97, were specifically cited as case studies of GOP moderates shedding their scruples, or at least trimming them at the edges, while going along to get along with the MAGA-minded majority.

As Nordstrom noted, “Now the gun lobby is so strong they say, ‘Don’t vote our way and we’ll find a candidate for the primary, and we’ll pick you out.’ And that’s part of the reason why Mark White has gotten so much more radical. You know, at one point he opposed getting rid of the permitting system for concealed carry. And last year, he voted to arm teachers, and that’s because he knows they” — members supported by the gun lobby — “are comfortable.” 

Democratic activist Diane Cambron, an attendee, concurred: “That’s one of the reasons why [District 96 Democratic state Representative] Dwayne Thompson is not running for reelection. He didn’t run for reelection this time because, according to him, when he first got elected in 2016 there were some moderate Republicans with whom he could work, but every year, those moderate Republicans drop out, they don’t run, and they’re replaced by younger, more radical Republicans, and that is what our Republican legislature is becoming. Even though they have a majority, they’re getting more and more radical all the time. There are very few moderate Republicans left.”

It should be said that White, the criticism notwithstanding, is widely regarded as being able to work across party lines. And, as the old joke has it, White can cry all the way to the bank. As is the case with most incumbents, especially well-heeled establishment figures, his cash receipts dwarf those of opponent Nordstrom, a first-time candidate.

His Education Committee chairmanship is consistent with his background in that, before attaining some success with a party-favor business, he was an elementary school teacher and a principal. He co-founded something called the Global Children’s Educational Foundation, which provided financial assistance and educational opportunities to impoverished children in Panama. And he won the Tennessee Community Organizations’ Legislator of the Year award in 2016 and the Tennessee CASA Association’s Legislator of the Year award in 2012.

He is no slouch, no easy target.

All of which is to say that Noah Nordstrom and the Democrats will have their hands full in District 83. They remain hopeful, though, that they can build on the incremental success they began in 2016 — ironically the year of Donald J. Trump’s win over Hillary Clinton nationally. The victory in 2016 of the aforementioned Dwayne Thompson over incumbent Republican Steve McManus in District 96 was just as much of an upset locally. As then constituted, District 96 also straddled city and county lines and the accustomed bailiwicks of either party.

Jesse Huseth (Photo: Jackson Baker)

So does House District 97, where the case can be made that Democratic challenger Jesse Huseth might even be regarded as a favorite over incumbent Republican John Gillespie. The two opponents have raised approximately the same amount of money, each with cash on hand of just under $100,000, and, as currently configured, the district lines encompass a territory where Democrat Jason Martin, a distant second to incumbent GOP Governor Bill Lee virtually everywhere statewide, actually out-polled Lee. And the same can be said of Joe Biden in his presidential race against Trump.

The district’s current configuration remains one of the mysteries of Election Year 2024, since Gillespie, as a member of the GOP supermajority, had the opportunity to call the shots during the redistricting that followed census year 2020. And he decided to discard two Republican-dominated county precincts in return for two politically ambivalent ones further west in Memphis proper, presumably lowering his chances for reelection.

There has yet emerged no satisfactory explanation for Gillespie’s decision. One theory is that, as someone not regarded as slavishly partisan, he fretted over the prospect of being challenged in this year’s primary by a MAGA type in the formerly configured district. Another is that he was determined to prove that he could still win the more problematic district as a presumed Republican moderate — one who conspicuously deviated from GOP orthodoxy on the issue of guns, among other issues. Yet a third theory is that Gillespie simply wishes to represent the concerns of Memphis’ Poplar Corridor business community.

In any case, the District 97 race is regarded statewide as something of a coin-flip race — a test case of sorts regarding future partisan tendencies and the Democrats’ best chance of altering the current statistical ratio in the House, which stands at 75 Republicans and 24 Democrats. 

The race could hinge on the two candidates’ contrasting positions on crime, which reflect an ongoing showdown between state and city. Huseth is a strong supporter of three referenda on the Memphis ballot that seek citizen support for “trigger” laws that would allow possible local reinstitution of gun permit requirements, the banning of assault rifle sales, and the imposition of “red flag” laws allowing judges to confiscate firearms from likely offenders. The Democratic candidate is an adherent as well of District Attorney General Steve Mulroy’s call for a new Memphis crime lab that would facilitate detection and prosecution of violent crime.

Gillespie has allied himself with state Senator Brent Taylor, a declared foe of Mulroy, in aggressive sponsorship of legislation strengthening anti-crime penalties and counteracting local options on matters of sentencing. Gillespie authored a bill striking down the Memphis City Council’s ban of “preemptive” traffic stops based on minor infractions.

Partisan races exist in several other legislative districts, where the incumbents are heavily favored. The contests are: Democratic incumbent Larry Miller vs. Republican Larry Hunter in House District 88; Democratic incumbent G.A. Hardaway vs. Republican Renarda Renee Clariett in District 93; Democratic incumbent Antonio Parkinson vs. the GOP’s Cecil Hale in District 98; and Republican incumbent Tom Leatherwood vs. Democrat William P. Mouzon in District 99.

U.S. Senate 

Democrats have not come out ahead in a statewide race in Tennessee since then-Governor Phil Bredesen fairly handily won reelection in 2006. By the time Bredesen was next on the ballot, in a race for the U.S. Senate in 2018, he was defeated with equal ease by arch-conservative Republican state Senator Marsha Blackburn.

Nothing more clearly indicates the sea change in Tennessee partisan politics which occurred in the meantime, with the rapid shift of Tennessee from the status of a bellwether state to one in which Republican domination of state affairs had become a given.

Blackburn is up for reelection this year, and Democratic hopes are vested in the aforementioned Gloria Johnson, who won prominence as a member of the “Tennessee Three,” the Democratic House members who drew the ire of the Republican leadership for their assertive support of gun safety protesters in 2023.

Both Blackburn and Johnson have well-deserved reputations for intense partisanship, with Blackburn being a mainline supporter of former President Donald J. Trump, of strong action against illegal immigration, and of MAGA causes in general, and Johnson being equally vigorous in espousal of Democratic positions on such matters as reproductive freedom and climate change. She has clashed repeatedly with Republicans in the legislature and, after being gerrymandered out of one state House seat by the GOP supermajority, returned to the General Assembly as the representative of another.

Efforts by Democrats and others to arrange debates between the two candidates have so far foundered on a confident and financially well-endowed Blackburn’s reluctance to entertain them, but various polls have suggested that underdog Johnson, beneficiary of a recent fundraiser at the Annesdale Mansion in Memphis, may be within striking distance.

Congressional Races

Incumbent Democrat Steve Cohen is heavily favored against Charlotte Bergmann, a perennial Republican opponent of his in the Memphis-based 9th District, while Republican incumbent David Kustoff in the 8th District has a scrappy challenger in Sarah Freeman of Germantown, who hopes to revive a dormant Democratic base in the rural enclaves of that West Tennessee district.

Sarah Freeman (Photo: Jackson Baker)

The effect of the 2024 presidential race on any and all of these local races is somewhat harder than usual to estimate. Normally a heavy Democratic turnout in Memphis precincts for the presidential race inflates the totals of Democrats running in local districts. And that effect could be augmented by a larger turnout than usual among women voters who favor the Democratic position on behalf of abortion rights and who might be influenced by the fact of a woman, Kamala Harris, heading the Democratic ticket. But local Republican candidates, too, can expect a boost, from whatever turnout the Trump/MAGA base can command. 

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Lawmakers Irked For State Failure On Gun Safe Storage Campaign

Tennessee lawmakers express frustration the state Department of Safety is failing to follow through with gun-safety ads for which the legislature approved funding. (Photo: Karen Pulfer Focht)

Tennessee’s Department of Safety is failing to follow through on a $1.6 million campaign for safe gun storage in vehicles, despite a major increase in weapon thefts from cars and trucks, lawmakers say.

Lawmakers approved the funding in an August 2023 special session on public safety for a firearms public awareness drive that was supposed to target vehicle break-ins. Gov. Bill Lee called lawmakers into that special session but was unable to pass any consequential gun-related bills in response to the Covenant School shooting in which six people were killed, including three children.

Since then, the Department of Safety has produced a weapon safe-storage commercial for homes but nothing dealing with vehicles, where lawmakers say the problem is the worst.

The state’s public service spot shows a man overseeing his son using a shotgun to fire at aluminum cans. Meanwhile, in the house, the man’s daughter pulls a rifle from a closet and appears to be on the verge of firing it, before the video shows the rifle is equipped with a safety lock designed to keep children from loading it and pulling the trigger.

Rep. Caleb Hemmer (D-Nashville) supports that commercial but is “frustrated” with the state’s refusal to target safe gun storage in vehicles. Hemmer and Sen. Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville) ran into opposition from Republicans when they sponsored a bill requiring, then encouraging, people to lock weapons in vehicles.

“We have this problem, and we put money to deal with it and they’re only dealing with 10 percent of the problem, not 90 percent of it,” Hemmer says. 

He notes the department is not even “thinking about addressing it,” after public and private “prodding.”

Critics of Tennessee’s gun law argue that weapon thefts from vehicles increase dramatically after the Legislature passed the permit-less carry law five years ago. State law, based on the Attorney General’s interpretation of a court decision, now allows people 18 and above to carry without a permit. Yet they are not allowed to take their weapons into many businesses and leave them in vehicles unsecured.

Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake circulated statistics immediately after the Covenant School shooting in 2023 showing vehicle thefts jumped to 1,378 in Nashville in 2022 from 848 in 2019 and to 2,740 in Memphis from 1,159 in the same time frame. 

I’m very adamant that we need to inform the public that when you get out of your vehicle you have it safely stored if you can’t take it with you.

– Rep. Mark White, R-Memphis

The state’s two largest urban areas saw a downtick last year. Metro Nashville reported 984 weapons stolen from cars in 2023, while Shelby had 2,113, according to information from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

Many weapons are stolen from vehicles by teens and wind up being used in violent crimes, such as the 9mm pistol juveniles pulled on a Belmont graduate and musician Kyle Yorlets when he was shot to death in February 2019.

Republican state Rep. Mark White (R-Memphis), who carried the measure for a safe storage campaign in the 2023 special session, said Monday he had spoken with Hemmer and the Department of Safety and plans to keep pushing the message.

“I’m very adamant that we need to inform the public that when you get out of your vehicle you have it safely stored if you can’t take it with you,” White says.

White, whose efforts to pass safe gun storage laws failed several times, says the Department of Safety told him it was just starting to get “ramped up” on the safe gun storage campaign.

Safety Department spokesman Wes Moster did not respond to Tennessee Lookout questions about the public service spots and why they don’t deal with vehicles.

Instead, he said there has been “no delay” in the advertisements, which are being distributed statewide across radio, television and movie theaters. In addition, spots on streaming services, social media, newspapers and billboards will be sent out this summer.

“The department will strategically determine whether additional advertisements will be made,” Moster said in an email response to Lookout questions.

Tennessee Lookout is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Tennessee Lookout maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Holly McCall for questions: info@tennesseelookout.com. Follow Tennessee Lookout on Facebook and X.

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Politics Politics Feature

Naming Names

Photo: Frederick Tappan with Cary Vaughn

District Attorney-elect Steve Mulroy took the opportunity last week to name the members of his newly created transition team, to be chaired by outgoing County Commissioner and local NAACP head Van Turner.

Turner, who recently acknowledged that he would be a candidate for mayor in next year’s Memphis city election, promised “a thorough, top-to-bottom review of the operations, priorities, and staffing of the District Attorney’s Office.”

Other members of the transition team are: District 29 state Senator Raumesh Akbari (D); District 83 state Representative Mark White (R); Demetria Frank, associate dean for diversity and inclusion at the University of Memphis Law School; Richard Hall, chief of police, city of Germantown; Muriel Malone, executive director of the Tennessee Human Rights Commission and former Shelby County assistant DA; Kevin Rardin, retired member of the Public Defender’s Office and former Shelby County assistant DA; Mike Carpenter, director of marketing and development for My Cup of Tea; Yonée Gibson and Josh Spickler of Just City; and attorneys Jake Brown, Kamilah Turner, Brice Timmons, and Mike Working.

Paul Young (Photo: Jackson Baker)

• Paul Young, the director of the Downtown Memphis Commission, gave members of the Kiwanis Club a comprehensive review of current and future projects for Downtown development on Wednesday of last week. One matter of public curiosity did not go unspoken to in the subsequent Q&A. Would he, someone asked, be a candidate for Memphis mayor next year as has been rumored?

Young’s reply: “Obviously, we’ve had a lot of conversations. And you know, it’s not time for any type of announcements or anything like that. I’m gonna continue to do the job at DMC to the best of my ability, regardless of when the season comes for the mayor’s race, but we definitely have had discussions.”

• Meanwhile, the Shelby County Republican Party, having been defeated for all countywide positions in the recent August 4th election, is doing its best to retain optimism. Looking ahead to the next go-round, the federal-state general election of November 8th, the local GOP held a fundraiser Friday at the South Memphis headquarters of the Rev. Frederick Tappan, who will oppose Democratic nominee (and recently appointed incumbent) London Lamar for the District 33 state Senate seat.

Imported for the occasion was state Senator Ken Yager of Kingston, the GOP’s Senate caucus chair, who assured local Republicans, for what it was worth, that “the Republican leadership are 100 percent committed to the election of Frederick Tappan.”

Tappan, pastor of Eureka TrueVine Baptist Church and founder of L.I.F.E. Changing Ministries, sounded his own note of commitment: “We can do this if we come together. We need one mind, have one mission, to become one Memphis. We don’t lean to the left, we don’t lean to the right.”

GOP chair Cary Vaughn, who would probably admit leaning somewhat to the right, said, “We took it on the chin a few weeks ago. But that was not the finish line. That was the starting line for November 8th, we’ve got a chance to redeem ourselves.” Vaughn mentioned several of the party’s legislative candidates, including state Senator Kevin Vaughan, state representatives Mark White and John Gillespie, and state Senate candidate Brent Taylor. “We have a chance to rectify the situation. And we have an opportunity, not just to finish, but to finish well.”

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Transfer of “Three Gs” Braked, Pending Talks

Germantown High School is one of the "Three Gs" under discussion in the General Assembly and between Shelby County Schools and Germantown.

According to state Representative Mark White (R-Memphis), Education chair in the Tennessee House, the fate of the Germantown public schools known as the “Three Gs” is still unsealed, despite a maneuver last week by his Senate counterpart, Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown).

District 83 Rep. Mark White (R-Memphis).

A bill requiring the three schools — Germantown Elementary School, Germantown Middle School, and Germantown High School — to shift from the authority of Shelby County Schools (SCS) to that of the Germantown School District, appears to be shelved for the current legislative sessions, thanks to a gentlemen’s agreement of sorts.

What Kelsey did last week was rescue a frustrated effort to require SCS to yield authority over to the Germantown district. As Senate Education chair, he was able to reattach a key amendment to that effect from SB 898, which had been defeated in his committee, and add it to SB 924, a bill of his own.

Newly attached to the Kelsey bill, the legislation was forwarded to the Senate calendar committee, one step away from a vote on the floor.

But meanwhile, White withdrew his House bill containing the same enabling amendment, on the theory, he says, that the SCS board has agreed to discussions with Germantown authorities over the ultimate fate of the three schools. The “Three Gs” are long-time Germantown legacy institutions that in 2013 devolved into the orbit of SCS at the conclusion of the city/county merger/demerger period.

At the time, the newly created Germantown School District could not guarantee to accommodate the schools’ large student population living outside of Germantown. The City of Germantown built a new elementary school and proclaimed Houston High School, on the elite suburb’s eastern perimeter, as the city’s official high school.

But there never ceased to be sentiment in Germantown to reclaim the buildings, all of which are within the city’s core and governmental center. There is still, however, no certainty that, if reincorporated into Germantown,  the schools would be open to current student populations comprised of an overwhelming majority of non-Germantown residents, nor will there even be a guarantee, Germantown Mayor Mike Palazzolo acknowledges, that the buildings would be used as public-school structures.

White said on Thursday, however, that the real point of his House bill HB 917, was to encourage conversations between SCS and Germantown on the matter, not to force a solution, and that he and Kelsey — who, according to White, has agreed to pull his enabling amendment from SB 924 — had concurred on withholding any legislative action unless there is no progress by the end of this year in talks between the disputing parties.

This arrangement is, of course, dependent on Kelsey’s following through with his pledge to withdraw his enabling amendment from SB 924 when that bill comes before the full Senate. Should he not do so, a House-Senate conference committee would be appointed to resolve differences between 924 and a companion House measure by state Rep. Scott Cepicki (R-Culleoka) to which it is now technically coupled.

State Rep. Dwayne Thompson (D-Memphis) is guardedly optimistic that the gentlemen’s agreement will go through, but he remains dubious about the prospect, soon or late, of the Three Gs passing from SCS to Germantown. “If you ask me,” he said, “that’s holding hostage some 4,000 students now enrolled in the schools for whom there is no conveniently located school that isn’t already overcrowded.”

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Wish Lists

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

As expected, the Biden-Harris ticket was an easy winner in Democratic-dominated Shelby County last week; also unsurprising was the overwhelming support enjoyed by the Trump-Pence Republican ticket in Tennessee at large.

To the extent that there was any kind of suspense factor, it was in a pair of local races. Even as Democrats nationally made serious inroads on previously Republican suburban areas, the contests for House District 83 and House District 96, both on the suburban fringe, were unusually tight. Republican state Representative Mark White was able to hold off a stout challenge by Democrat Jerri Green, by a margin of 17,682 to 15,063, and the GOP’s John Gillespie had an even closer margin over Democratic candidate Gabby Salinas, 14,697 to 14,212.

Jackson Baker

House Speaker Cameron Sexton

Gillespie, who won the open seat vacated by former Representative Jim Coley, was one of two new members of the Shelby County delegation. The other was Democrat Torrey Harris, who easily won over longtime incumbent John DeBerry, forced to run this year as an independent, in House District 90.

Both Gillespie and Harris were on hand on Monday and Tuesday for the Shelby County legislative delegation’s annual legislative retreat, this year conducted virtually as a Zoom meeting.

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, a first-day speaker, said he wants CLERB, the city’s independent civilian review board, to have subpoena powers of its own so that it need not go through the city council in probing accusations of police misconduct. The mayor also wants Memphis to have equity with Nashville in state funding received for mental health services. “We have many more mental health patients than Nashville, but Nashville gets more,” he said Monday.

The annual retreat, at which spokespersons for major local interests state their wish lists for the coming legislative session in Nashville, is normally held in January, just before the session begins, but got a bit of a jump-start this year.

Among the other desiderata on Monday, the first day of the two-day virtual session:

Patrice J. Robinson, chair of the Memphis City Council, asked the legislators to pass a bill banning payday lenders. She also wanted to see the decriminalization of medical marijuana and a continuation of the COVID-era expedient of allowing sales-to-go of alcoholic beverages from storefronts.

Robinson endorsed as well a bill that state Senator Brian Kelsey (R-District 31) said he would introduce increasing the local portion of the state sales tax — this as a means of recouping some of the financial loss to cities from the pending elimination of the state Hall income tax on dividends and investments.

Memphis Police Department director Michael Rallings focused on the gun problem, maintaining that increased prevalence of firearms was the main reason for a rise in certain categories of crime. “Thank goodness permitless carry was not passed,” Rallings said, musing on the last legislative session. Rallings also noted for the lawmakers that he considers Memphis to be “490 to 700 officers down” from an optimum roster number.

The headliner on day two, Tuesday, was state Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton, Republican of Crossville, who promised the legislators that the General Assembly’s calendar would be flexed with the uncertainties of COVID-19 in mind so that, as one example, they would have a little “extra time for filing their bills.”

Asked about his attitude toward marijuana legislation, Sexton said he would feel more comfortable with efforts to legalize medical marijuana if the federal government removed its status as a Schedule 1 drug. Sexton said he was in favor of local jurisdictions making decisions about such issues as school openings and guns on school property. He also said, apropos the dormant Memphis megasite, “We’ve gone too far to pull back.”

During his appearance before the legislators, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris noted his concern about skeptical statements made by Governor Bill Lee and state Attorney General Herbert Slatery regarding the results of the presidential election won by President-elect Joe Biden. That was one of the few times during the two-day session that partisanship as such became a subject of discussion.

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Political Trick-or-Treating

We know it’s the fashion in this age of Photoshop to doctor photographs, but this is ridiculous. Behold what happens to a harmless, even wholesome, snapshot (below, top) of Jerri Green, Democratic candidate for state House District 83, shown with Democratic state Rep. Dwayne Thompson of District 96 at last year’s Germantown Christmas Parade,

Those cut-ups at the House Republican Caucus got ahold of the picture and transformed it, for advertising purposes, into a shot (below) of Green as a Satanic eminence of some kind, posing gleefully in a scene of fiery destruction. The most remarkable question raised by the doctored photo is this: Who is the dude in the hat who shows up as a shadow across Green’s face? And how would the purported flames behind her create a shadow in front of her?

As for the allegations in the ad’s text, Green doesn’t remember calling anybody in legitimate law enforcement a “stormtrooper” but stands by her horror at the border camps where infants were separated from their would-be immigrant parents.

Green’s opponent in the November 3rd election is GOP state Rep. Mark White.

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Politics Politics Feature

Kustoff Defends Postal Changes

The U.S. Postal Service cannot “continue to act like Blockbusters in a Netflix world.” So said 8th District U.S. Representative David Kustoff in a Zoom address to the Rotary Club of Memphis. The matter came up in relation to concerns about the effect of reductions of postal services on mail-in ballots.

Speaking from his local office in Ridgeway Loop, Kustoff said those reductions reflected ongoing social changes — mainly the drastic reduction in first-class mail caused by the cyber-revolution — and had begun under President Obama. “The Postal Service will have to adapt,” he said.

On another matter, Kustoff took note of the fact that there has been no congressional follow-up to the original COVID-related stimulus payments and said that the window for passing another stimulus bill had, for practical purposes, shrunk to the dimensions of the next three weeks.

Congressman David Kustoff

Members of Congress stand ready to return to Washington to vote for a solution as soon as one is agreed to by the two parties, he said, but, “once we hit October, everybody will be in their districts and involved with campaigns.”

• COVID-19 has clearly affected the way running for office has proceeded, locally. Certain races that usually involve a significant amount of public appearances or door-to-door contacts are more than usually dependent on social media, mailouts, phone banks, and — not least — polls.

Much polling is, of course, carried out by disinterested parties and seeks genuine opinion sampling. But increasingly candidates invest in polling, including “push polls” that are phrased so as to insinuate various points of views, for or against. And there are “benchmark” polls, designed to elicit public attitudes on various issues so as to guide the campaign strategy of a given candidate.

Two polls that were dropped last week indicate the range. One, arriving in people’s message boxes, is entitled “The Voter Survey,” and, despite its generalized name, is not so anodyne as all that, including as it does several leading questions that “push” in the direction of some candidates as against others.

The other poll, on Facebook, asks a wide variety of questions about various candidates and offices, and, to the degree that it deals with positions, phrases those positions more or less fairly. It, like the other poll, seems to focus ultimately on the state House District 83 race between incumbent Republican Mark White and Democratic challenger Jerri Green — indicating that the District 83 race is considered up for grabs. More on these two polls anon.

• The Shelby County Commission is scheduled to meet next in committee on September 9th, and, if all goes as County Mayor Lee Harris has indicated, they’ll finally have a budget book from the administration to pore over. Uncertainty over the final shape of the 2020-21 budget has vexed the last several meetings of the commission, and the budget book, which has been firmly promised for delivery on September 8th by Deputy Mayor Dwan Gillom, could go far toward resolving several issues or opening up new questions. Or both.

In recent meetings, the commission has been asked to lift a freeze on new hiring for several departments, both in the purview of elected officials and elsewhere. Those departments seeking relief from the freeze have pointed out that the proposed new positions would remain within fiscal limits voted on earlier. The commission has agreed to lift the freeze in one or two instances but in other cases has held judgment, pending receipt of the budget book.

Budget issues have been complicated by disagreements between the commission and the administration over an abundance of matters — ranging from the actual status and amount of funds on hand to the matter of authority over revising specific allocations. The original budget proposal submitted by Harris for the new fiscal year was rejected by the commission, which, after a lengthy series of meetings, proposed and voted on a different sort of budget altogether. In several areas, implementation of the budget has awaited the final details in the aforesaid administration budget book.