Tag: Memphis mayor’s race

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Strickland‘s Amen Corner

CREDIT: JB

JB

Strickland and his clerical support group.

Some critics of Mayor Jim Strickland have expressed skepticism about his accomplishments and maintain that he is out of touch with large portions of the greater Memphis community — specifically, its African-American population. The Prayer Breakfast shared by Strickland and African-American pastors on Saturday at his Poplar Avenue headquarters in the old Spin Street building could be seen as a move toward discrediting such assertions.

At the end of the breakfast meeting, the 30-odd clergy members, representing several denominations and numerous well-known community churches, gathered around Strickland and offered serial testimonies to his virtues and reaffirmed their support.

Leading off was Bishop Henry Williamson of the CME church: “We know this man has shown his commitment for increased business opportunities, jobs and the African American community … and of course, going forward into the future, the development of Memphis into a world-class city And so for that, we are proud to endorse him today and encourage all citizens vote for this progressive, productive man, Jim Strickland.

He was followed by Bishop Brandon Porter of COGIC, who would credit Strickland’s efforts for returning his church’s annual convention to Memphis and absolved the mayor of any blame for the resurgent crime problem.

Next came the Rev. Bill Adkins of the Greater Imani Cathedral of Faith, who noted that 28 years earlier he had been one of the main supporters of the candidate, Willie Herenton, who would become the city’s first elected black mayor. Calling Strickland “a mayor of all the people,” Adkins said, “He has responded well, expediently. He has answered many of the questions that we have, and he has pursued many of the causes that we have great interest in therefore we are totally supportive. And this turnaround from 28 years ago to this day, and we hope that all the other methods would see the great job that he has done as the mayor of this city. And we encourage all of us to support him for the good work that he has done.”

Asked by a reporter to specify something in particular that Strickland has done, Adkins answered instantly, “The statues,” and went on to credit Strickland for ridding the city of memorials to Nathan Bedford Forrest, “founder of the Klan,” and to the Confederacy at large. Adkins thanked Strickland “for listening to us, understanding our concerns, understanding our needs, and responding.”

(After the meeting, Adkins said, “Strickland has done everything we have asked him to do. I’ve supported two black mayors, but maybe we’ve got to the point that we don’t have to vote for mayor on the basis of race.”

Pastor after pastor added other items to the bouquet, mentioning summer work opportunities for youth, a growth in living-wage jobs, action on behalf of the city’s sanitation workers, the city’s provision of pre-K, projects for Whitehaven, etc. All matters that Strickland would gladly claim as talking points and was no doubt happy to hear said by someone else.

Among other things, the turnout on Saturday could indicate that polls showing Strickland holding his own with the black vote, as he did in 2015, might well be on target.

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Politics Politics Feature

Tami Sawyer Won’t Wait; Enters Memphis Mayoral Race

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

It has been no secret that Tami Sawyer is disinclined to wait on events. Clearly, the progressive activist and first-term Shelby County commissioner would rather influence events — or, even better, take charge of them. She was that way about the lingering problem of monuments to the Confederacy, she is that way about social-justice issues on the commission, and, most recently, she is that way about advancing her own political star (though she would prefer to see her impatience as being directed at a cluster of pending civic issues rather than at her own ambitions).

In any case, after taking the counsel of numerous acquaintances, including several established figures who advised her to hold up until she at least acquired more experience in public office, the youthful commissioner has now declared her candidacy for mayor of Memphis.

Although she had leaked the information beforehand, Sawyer made her declaration most vividly and formally at a public rally on Saturday night, billed appropriately under the head “Memphis Can’t Wait,” at the highly symbolic Clayborn Temple Downtown. It was there that sympathizers with the goals of striking sanitation workers and of Dr. Martin Luther King gathered before marching in 1968. And it is there that Sawyer hopes to have begun her march to power.

The venerable old church was nearly filled with enthusiastic supporters chanting “We Can’t Wait!” Alison Smith, a senior at White Station High School, said she couldn’t wait. So did veteran activists Mike Moseley and Danny Song. So did the self-identified “queer woman” who got cheers for that acknowledgment and cheers again for the declaration that she couldn’t wait for the development of a truly viable transit system because, among other things, she was tired of the lack of one making her late to work.

And there was TaJuan Stout-Mitchell, the former Memphis City Council member and veteran of local government who was the closest thing to a senior political eminence on hand. She couldn’t wait, either, and threw her support to the young “flipper” she described this way: “She is unbought, she is unbossed, she is uncompromised!”

And then the stage was all Tami’s … There is no doubting Sawyer’s appeal as a change agent, proven during her direction of the long and ultimately successful Take ‘Em Down 901 campaign to divest the city of its most prominent Confederate memorials. It remains moot whether that is translatable into an ability to marshall a majority of eligible Memphis voters, across all sorts of age, gender, class, racial, and political lines, on behalf of an agenda that would necessarily be far more sweeping and diffuse.

Although “she’ll split the black vote” was one of the tease lines sent up for disbelieving ridicule by Sawyer’s supporters at the rally, that concern is part of the reckoning, old math or not, that has to be applied to her effort. After all, the field of mayoral candidates already includes, besides the established Mayor Jim Strickland, another challenger whose relationship to the African-American majority of Memphis is nothing less than historic.

That would be Willie Herenton, a pathfinder twice over, as the first black superintendent of Memphis public schools, and then, as the man who in 1991 broke the racial barrier with his election as mayor, an office he would hold for for 18 years.

Granted, Herenton’s mayoralty had lost luster toward the end, as his enthusiasm for the job and his attention to it both dissipated. Granted, too, his attempt to mount a political comeback by running for Congress in 2010 floundered in the wreckage of a 4-to-1 loss to incumbent 9th District Representative Steve Cohen. It remains a fact that, even at 78, Herenton retains an innate formidability and an eminence, however tarnished, that make it hard to estimate his vote potential.

There is no doubting one thing: The Herenton camp has already evinced its displeasure at Sawyer’s entry and no doubt will continue to. Thaddeus Matthews, a free-booting critic in the black community of all things establishmentarian, has been both off and on an ally of Herenton. Right now he is on, and is using his various cyber and broadcasting platforms on behalf of the once and would-be future mayor.

In a recent online post, Matthews treated it as a given that Sawyer has been “put in the race by current mayor Jim Strickland to take votes away from his most formidable opponent, W.W. Herenton.” Matthews posits a sibling relationship between Sawyer and Michael Hooks Jr., a contractor who, he says, has been the beneficiary of city contracts. “Now I understand why she wants to run,” says Matthews, “to make sure that her brother continues to be fed by Strickland and other power brokers.”

The credibility of a putative hand-in-glove collusion between candidates Sawyer and Strickland would seem to be undermined by the all-too-obvious tension between the two during the runup to the final uprooting of the statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest and Jefferson Davis, when Strickland was challenged to act, relentlessly and not always with tender respect, by Sawyer and her Take ‘Em Down 901 movement.

And it is clear that Sawyer’s base constituency is made up of individuals, black and white, who have modest regard for Strickland and his accomplishments and whose claims of “we can’t wait” as applied to their personal and politically progressive goals seem real enough. The fact is that, while Herenton’s electoral base is obviously the most likely to suffer drainage from the Sawyer candidacy, Strickland’s is, to some degree, vulnerable as well.

In getting 81 percent of the vote in the 7th County Commission District against moderate Republican Sam Goff in 2016, Sawyer more than held her own in the upscale Evergreen area, and her enthusiastic audience in Clayborn Temple on Saturday was more than moderately impacted with pockets of white Midtowners.

Still, name-recognition polls — hers and Strickland’s, for sure, and perhaps even by Herenton — indicate a serious deficit on her part. It’s a problem that this race will help resolve for the long run. In the shorter run — which is to say, by October 3rd, it’s chancey, especially since her dollar deficit to the well-funded Strickland is enormous.

Still, Tami Sawyer has chutzpah, she has ideas, she has some quality midway between charm and charisma. She has determination, and she has a following. She and they can’t wait to see how this turns out, and neither can we.

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News News Feature

The View From Afar

The gentle breezes of the tropics stream through the open doors of our casa here in Belize. We leave these doors open from sunrise to sunset.

It’s a far cry from our life in Memphis — bars on the windows, a security system, and two dogs who went ballistic every time the MPD blue lights flashed in front of our house for traffic stops made at the busy intersection of Jackson and McLean. That’s because there is an inherent sense of tranquility here and not the constant fear and worry generated in an urban setting.

During our few weeks here, I’ve had a chance to reflect on how much the fear factor impacted our lives. I’m not just talking about our personal safety. It’s how local government, business interests, police, and prosecutors continue to exploit various forms of fear to deflect from substantive issues that could improve the quality of life for all.

Memphis government dictates that city finances are in dire straits. They tell us our tax dollars are still not enough to deal with a formerly neglected pension debt. But rather than demand that audit, taxpayers are only told that city finances could be taken over by the state if pension obligations are not met. Is it better to be informed or stay afraid of shadowy consequences? Aren’t taxpayers not owed that courtesy?

For years, the PILOT program run by the EDGE board, which grants millions of dollars in tax-free property initiatives, has had its hand firmly on the panic button. Since its creation, it has espoused that we must give out-of-town companies tax breaks or they will never move here. Yet women- and minority-owned businesses struggle to keep the wolves from the door on a daily basis. Granted, small businesses may not generate the potential for hiring hundreds such as IKEA, Electrolux, and Mitsubishi promised in pushing for tax breaks. But shouldn’t keeping local businesses whose home-grown allegiance to Memphis comes through only their own determination to succeed also become an EDGE board top priority?

The fear factor is never more prevalent than the constant threat of crime in the Bluff City. When people are gunned down in the streets, there is very little comfort when you’re told by MPD that violent crime statistics are down from the previous year. It is of little comfort when the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission uses stats from 2006 as the basis for a reduction in crime over nearly a decade. How do you explain that to the families of the murder victims?

The media too fan the flames of anguish and fear. Get ready for a barrage of crime-related stories during the November ratings, referred to as the “sweeps.” Titles such as “Do you know who really lives down the street from you?” and “Are your children safe at their day care?” will headline every local news broadcast. Some of these stories will contain useful information; most will rely on the shock value generated by the title, meant only to hook viewers.

As I mentioned before, it’s the public’s fears that serve as the driving force behind decisions that too often are based on emotions rather than logic and reasoning.

This year’s elections offer a crucial opportunity for voters to look for candidates willing to set sail on new courses of action. This is a critical time, one that will shape the city’s direction for the near future. A 20 percent voter turnout will only ensure more of the same directionless leadership.

Last week, I posted on Facebook my impressions of what I’ve heard and read about the race for Memphis mayor. My suggestion that the candidates should pledge to improve the lives of all Memphians was met with derision and complaints that “it can’t be done in four years!” Those reactions completely missed my point. With the myriad of problems confronting Memphis, expansive efforts to change a culture from bottom to top over a few years is unrealistic. But demanding accountability from our elected officials should be set as a standard for a mayor or city council person.

The stakes for the future of Memphis have become too high to invest our public trust in individuals with their own personal agendas. I sincerely hope that you will have the opportunity to inspire and breathe the winds of change and do so without fear of what lies ahead.

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Politics Politics Feature

It Was What It Was

The year 2014 began with a call for unity from several of the political principals of Memphis and Shelby County — remarkable circumstances given that just ahead was another one of those knock-down, drawn-out election brawls that characterize a big-ballot election year.

Speaking at an annual prayer breakfast on January 1st, 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen called for an end to bipartisan bickering in Congress and touted the achievements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) (aka Obamacare). Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell asked for civility in county government, and Memphis Mayor A C Wharton, amid a good deal of wrangling over city pension reform, among other matters, said something similar and declared, “I’m through with whose fault it is!”

Surely no one is surprised that few of these hopes were fully realized in the course of 2014.

Not that some concrete things didn’t get done. The nervy national website Wonkette crowned Tennessee state Representative Stacey Campfield (R-Knoxville) “S***muffin of the Year,” and, lo and behold, the voters of Knox County would come to a similar conclusion down the line, voting out the incumbent madcap whose most famous bills had come to be known, fairly or otherwise, as “Don’t Say Gay” and “Starve the Children.”

State Senator Brian Kelsey had mixed results, losing again on a renewed effort to force Governor Bill Haslam into a big-time school voucher program and in a quixotic attempt to strip Shelby County of two of its elected judges but getting his props from those — including a majority of Tennessee voters — who supported his constitutional amendment to abolish an income tax in Tennessee for all time.

All four constitutional amendments on the state ballot would pass — including one to strip away what had been some fairly ironclad protections of a woman’s right to an abortion and another to transform the selection and tenure procedures for state appellate judges. Another little-noticed amendment guaranteeing veterans the right to hold charity raffles also passed.

The battle over the key three amendments all reflected a growing concern that Republican-dominated state authority had begun to enlarge its control over local governments and individual citizens alike, not only in the nature of the constitutional amendments but in the legislature’s effort to override local authority in matters including firearms management, public school oversight, public wage policy, and the ability of localities to establish their own ethical mandates.

Shelby County Democrats, who had been swept by the GOP in 2010, had a spirited primary election, with most attention focusing on the mayor’s race between former County Commissioner Deidre Malone, incumbent Commissioner Steve Mulroy, and former school board member and New Olivet Baptist Church pastor Kenneth Whalum Jr.

When votes were counted on May 6th, Malone emerged to become the head of a Democratic ticket that would challenge several well-established Republican incumbents. Democrats’ hopes were high at first, but two of their expected election-day stalwarts began to suffer self-destructive moments at an alarming rate.

The two were lawyer Joe Brown — the “Judge Joe Brown” of nationally syndicated TV fame; and County Commissioner Henri Brooks, a former legislator who had an abrasive way about her but who had recently won laurels as the watchdog on Juvenile Court who had forced the Department of Justice (DOJ) to mandate a series of reforms.

Both District Attorney General candidate Brown, through his celebrity and what was thought to be his ability to bankroll much of the Democratic ticket’s activity, and Juvenile court Clerk candidate Brooks, riding high on her DOJ desserts, were thought to be boons, but they rapidly became busts.

Brown, it turned out, had virtually no money to pass around, even for his own campaign efforts, and he got himself arrested for contempt in Juvenile Court. When, late in the campaign, he launched a series of lurid and seemingly unfounded attacks upon the private life of his opponent, Republican D.A. Amy Weirich, he was dead in the water.

Brooks engaged in successive misfires — browbeating a Hispanic witness before the commission; assaulting a woman she was competing with for a parking spot; and, finally, turning out not to have a legal residence within the commission district she represented.

The bottom line: Shelby County Democrats — underfunded, under-organized, and riven by internal rivalries — were overwhelmed once again on August 7th, with county Mayor Mark Luttrell, Weirich, and Sheriff Bill Oldham leading a Republican ticket that won everything except the office of county assessor, where conscientious Democratic incumbent Cheyenne Johnson held on against a little-known GOP challenger.

All things considered, the judicial races on August 7th went to the known and familiar, with almost all incumbents winning reelection on a lengthy ballot in which virtually every position in every court —General Sessions, Circuit, Criminal, Chancery, and Probate — was under challenge.

Meanwhile, 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, who had dispatched a series of Democratic Primary and general election challengers since his first election to Congress in 2006, faced what appeared in advance to be his most formidable primary foe yet in lawyer Ricky Wilkins. Cohen won again — though only by a 2-to-1 ratio, unlike the 4-to-1 victories he was used to.

The final elections of the year, including the referenda for the aforementioned package of constitutional amendments, would take place on November 4th.

But for the amendments, there was no suspense to speak of. Two Democrats running for the U.S. Senate — Gordon Ball and Terry Adams, both Knoxville lawyers — had run a spirited and close race in the primary, but winner Ball ran way behind Republican incumbent Senator Lamar Alexander, despite Alexander’s having barely eked out a primary win over unsung Tea Party favorite Joe Carr.

Haslam, the Republican gubernatorial incumbent, easily put away Charlie Brown, an unknown quantity from East Tennessee who had won the Democratic primary mainly on the strength of his comic-strip name.

Throughout the year, there had been persistent wrangles in City Hall between Wharton and members of the city council over dozens of matters — including pension and health-care changes, development proposals, and failures to communicate — with the result that influential councilmen like 2014 council Chairman Jim Stickland and Harold Collins were possible rivals to Wharton in a 2015 mayoral race that might draw in a generous handful of other serious candidates.

Toward year’s end, though, Wharton pulled off a series of coups — announcing new Target and IKEA facilities and appearing to finesse the pension and school-debt matters — that underscored his status as the candidate to beat.

In Nashville, Haslam seemed to have achieved the high ground, finally, with his espousal of a bona fide Medicaid-expansion plan, “Insure Tennessee,” and a determination to defend the Hall income tax and at least some version of educational standards. But battles over these matters and new attacks on legal abortion loomed.

We shall see what we shall see.

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Politics Politics Feature

And There’s Deidre …

Ever since the names of state senator Jim Kyle and county commissioner Steve Mulroy were mentioned in a recent column as possible Democratic candidates for county mayor in 2014, numerous plugged-in sorts have made a point of reminding me that former county commissioner Deidre Malone is almost certain to be a candidate.

Malone, who was edged out in a bid for county mayor by then provisional mayor Joe Ford in 2010, confirms that she’s likely to run. And she has experience and relationships that would enable her to run seriously. A longtime Democratic Party activist, Malone served two terms on the commission, from 2002 to 2010. She subsequently ran Memphis mayor A C Wharton‘s successful 2009 reelection campaign. She served two five-year terms on the Shelby County Housing Authority and is currently a member of the city/county EDGE board and the Memphis-Shelby County Port Commission. And she runs the Carter-Malone public relations firm.

•  While we’re speculating on names of possible future candidates, an interesting email came through the transom this week from a well-informed friend who suggests that Wharton is almost certain to run for reelection in 2015 and wonders who might be wanting to succeed him in 2019.

Sez he: “The general consensus seems that people need to be positioning themselves now for a run at the big chair when that time comes … but nobody really is. There are a few usual suspects that pop up in conversation (Darrell Cobbins, Tomeka [Hart], Mike Carpenter, [Jim] Strickland, [Harold] Collins, Paul Morris, and Keith Norman).”  

All of the aforementioned seem credible and credentialed enough. Cobbins is a longtime activist and former MLGW chairman; Hart has served as local Urban League head and on the MSC and Unified school boards and ran for Congress in the 9th District last year; Carpenter, currently an aide to Wharton, served two terms on the county commission and, until recently, represented the StudentsFirst organization in Nashville.

Strickland and Collins are both city council members who have been prominent as budget chairman and council chairman, respectively; Morris is head of the Downtown Memphis Commission; and Norman is a local Baptist minister who has been Shelby County Democratic chairman and was recently cited by the White House for his efforts to stem youth violence.

Of course, 2019 is a long way off.

 

• NOTES FROM NASHVILLE — Shelby County Democrats voted overwhelmingly for the winner in last Saturday’s election contest for a new state party chairman.

The winner, by a 32-27 vote of state executive committee members, was former legislator Roy Herron of Dresden, who as a late entry overcame what had earlier appeared to be a consensus in favor of Dave Garrison of Nashville, who had been serving as party treasurer.

The vote by Shelby Countians was nine for Herron, a fellow West Tennessean, and three for Garrison.

• Governor Bill Haslam, ever adept at walking political tightropes, managed several versions of the feat during his 2013 State of the State address before a joint legislative session in the House chamber and before whatever political junkies might have tuned in to a statewide multimedia simulcast.

On several key issues, the governor expressed himself with studious ambiguity — notably on the still pending matter of Medicaid expansion under the terms of the Affordable Care Act. “Most of us in this room don’t like the Affordable Care Act, but the decision to expand Medicaid isn’t as basic as saying, ‘No ObamaCare, No expansion,'” he said. In other words, he was carefully weighing the issue.

On the one hand, “The federal government is famous for creating a program and then withdrawing the funds years later, which leaves state governments on the hook.” That was apropos conservative opponents’ expressed fears — embodied in new prohibitive legislation sponsored by state senator Brian Kelsey (R-Germantown).

But on the other hand, “There are hospitals across this state, many of them in rural communities, that are going to struggle, if not close, under the health-care law without expansion.” For “hospitals,” read: sources of serious lobbying efforts for expansion.

And, regarding proposed legislation to enable state vouchers for use in private schools (including a far-reaching variant by the self-same Kelsey), Haslam was able to thread his way through the controversial issue without ever even using the word “voucher” at all. Still, the governor left no doubt that he would be pushing a “school choice” proposal, one that focused on low-income students, and he balanced that with boasts that he had greatly increased financial support — $47 million, over and above annual funding — for the struggling schools that might lose students through a voucher program.

What was interesting about the SOTS address from the standpoint of audience reaction in the chamber was that every time Governor Haslam mentioned this or that new expenditure — $51 million for “technology transition upgrades in schools across the state”; $16.5 million for workforce development programs; $45 million for a new community health facility at the University of Memphis; $58 million for new jails and prisons, etc., etc. — he got substantial applause from the supermajority of supposed GOP tightwads.

True, too, however, that the governor stressed whenever possible anything he could refer to as a tax cut — in levies on groceries, for example; or in the state inheritance tax (which he, admirably, declines to call a “death tax)”; or on gift taxes; or on the Hall income tax — and he got the same prolonged applause.

Haslam briefly boasted about his educational reforms and improved student performance on standardized tests. He touted a variety of public-private partnerships in the marketplace and an increase in the number of state jobs. He circled around a couple of problem areas — issues within the department of children’s services, for example, concerning which he spoke mainly of “upgrading nearly 200 case manager positions” and “guns and schools,” which he morphed into a call for “a larger conversation about mental health issues, identifying warning signs, and getting people the help they need.”

One of Haslam’s strongest stands concerned his support for stability in the state’s procedures for making judicial appointments. He noted that a pending 2014 referendum calls for modest changes and said, “I … believe that it makes sense to preserve the current process until the people have a chance to vote. … Making changes in the meantime does nothing but confuse the situation further.”

At the very onset of his speech, Haslam hit one inescapable issue head-on: “I believe we have to begin this evening by addressing the elephant in the room — or I guess I should say the elephants in the room. There are a lot of expectations and preconceived notions about how our Republican supermajority is going to govern. … As we go through this legislative session, I ask everyone in this chamber this evening to keep in mind what Senator [Howard] Baker said: ‘The other fellow may be right.'”

And in the spirit of that suggested bipartisanship, the only significant modification made by Haslam in his prepared text was an ad-libbed recognition of Memphis state representative and former House speaker pro tem Lois DeBerry for her 40 years of service in the legislature. That drew a standing ovation, as did several other tributes to various state employees whom he recognized for their superior performance.

In one sense, Haslam’s State of the State message left a lot of blanks to be filled. But in another sense, he filled as many as he could with what seemed to be encouraging data and honest feel-good sentiments.

• Several of the established lobbyists on Capitol Hill in Nashville have jumped at the chance to apply for the new position of lobbyist for the Shelby County Commission — one whose very existence attests to the continued strain between the county administration of Mayor Mark Luttrell and the commission as a whole.

Indeed, suspicion regarding the administration’s motives is one of the few circumstances which can unify the members of an oft-fractionated commission.

A solid commission front emerged recently when, as commissioners saw it, Luttrell unilaterally signed a provisional accord with the U.S. Department of Justice regarding Juvenile Court reforms, which members felt could obligate the commission financially.

In any case, the deadline was this week for applicants seeking to become commission lobbyist, and interviews could begin as soon as Wednesday of next week.