Tag: Memphis mayor’s race 2015

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Politics Politics Feature

Old Country, New World

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

PARIS — Some clichés have outlived their usefulness. One of them is the myth of French rudeness. I just returned from a whirlwind tour of four countries — Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium, France— on a bucket-list trip I contracted for back in the spring, before I realized how close to the end of the election season it would fall. (I know. I know.) 

In any case, most of the trip took place in French-speaking Europe, and most of that was in La Belle France itself. Not once did I utter a syntactically complete and correct French sentence to a native of the country, and seldom did I even attempt it. (Well, make an exception for “Où est la toilette?”)

Moreover, I was in a group that had its share of American-style rowdies. But no French person — clerk, waiter, or citizen — was anything but kind and responsive and willing to try to navigate across the language barrier in our direction. 

Nor was there anything goose-steppy or overbearing about the Germans our group encountered in Munich, or elsewhere in the swaths of Bavaria or western Germany we traversed. Even as reports of newly indigenous German pacifism indicate, and just as the song says, this country ain’t gonna study war no more. 

A stark reminder of the reasons for that was evidenced in the human and architectural tableau that occurs every afternoon in Munich’s downtown square of Marienplatz, where a crowd, composed of both locals and visitors (the latter drawn last week from an estimated 6 million of diverse nationalities in town for the ongoing Oktoberfest), gathers at 5 p.m. in front of the city’s medieval city hall structure.

As the bells chime out the time, what follows is a mechanical musical template involving two sequential levels of drama enacted by painted wooden figures in the building’s belfry — the higher of which shows a pair of jousting knights, while the lower sets in motion wooden figures of celebrants dancing in glee as the slumping of one of the knights on his horse indicates that the trouble above is all over.

The cheers that issue forth from the massive crowd in the square are clearly for the depicted revelry and not for the little show of combat that preceded it. Ain’t gonna study war no more.

Off to the right of Marienplatz is a tall, yellowish building with long, cone-shaped spires that make it look simultaneously medieval and futurist and which somehow has the look of a movie prop rather than a truly functional structure. And, indeed, one is told that this is the site of the old city hall, totally destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II and replaced by a concrete facade with squares painted on to simulate the building’s original stones.

Munich wishes above all to manifest its ancient traditions of Gemütlichkeit — hence, the massive annual carnival of Oktoberfest (the original one so named, mind you, and one that dwarfs all imitative festivals, in Memphis or elsewhere).

The city is doing its best to live down its reputation as an erstwhile Nazi capital, of sorts. It was here that an ex-solider named Adolf Hitler attempted to begin a putsch against the newly established Weimar Republic in 1923, and it was here that Hitler, after release from a slap-on-the-wrist prison term, established his party headquarters, biding his time until the international Depression in the early 1930s generated enough new chaos for an already traumatized people to see his iron-hand rule as a last, desperate way out.

We know the story, and, believe me, so do the Germans. They maintain Dachau, the suburban retention facility that became the new regime’s first concentration camp, as an object lesson for themselves as well as for the steady train of international visitors that come to see it.

As for the erstwhile headquarters building of the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party that served as the site for the signing of the fateful Munich Agreement of 1938 and that, against all odds, survived the war intact, it has been converted into a Hochschule für Musik, a conservatory.

As for the prospect of tensions between Islamic immigrants and long-term inhabitants of the predominant ethnicity anywhere in Europe, I offer only two images, admittedly incomplete, to suggest the spectrum. 

There was the kids’ soccer team in Munich, taking a break from practice at an ice cream store, with one of the players, a swarthy lad with the name Mohamed identifying him on his jersey, joking at ease with his blondish teammates. So there can be, and is, some acceptance.

And in Paris, warily patrolling the edge of a large throng gathered in front of an ongoing mass and communion at Notre Dame Cathedral, were members of a SWAT squadron, making their presence felt as a clear warning to any would-be militants of the sort that famously have staged murderous raids in the recent past and have begun to cast the faint shadow of fear on the edifices and attractions of the City of Light. So there can be, and is, apprehension.

               

• MEMPHIS, Tennessee — I know the foregoing, strictly speaking, isn’t political in the way that readers of this column expect. Nor is it explicitly relevant to the issues and possible outcomes of the pivotal city election that is just concluding.

And yet, there are legitimate points of reference. Ethnic pre-judgments — whether uttered afresh by Donald Trump or whomever or merely passed sotto voce through the medium of voters’ habits — will have played a role in the results here in Memphis. There is a reason why demographic categories exist in all legitimate polls of likely election outcomes.

There is a “white vote,” and there is a “black vote,” and both categories are spoken of freely and taken stock of in the estimations and planning sessions of all serious campaigns. 

When, after this week, we look at the results of the 2015 races for mayor, city clerk, and at-large Memphis City Council races, it will be truly revealing to gauge the strength of habitual ethnic voting patterns vis-à-vis the impact of economics or a myriad of issues that transcend race.

Was there a significant impact from the last-minute revelations of a lucrative contract (now canceled under pressure) that was bestowed on Deidre Malone, Mayor A C Wharton‘s campaign manager, to promote the city’s new police body cameras?

With four mayoral candidates all drawing significant votes from various constituencies, where will vote splits have mattered most decisively — in the “black vote” that Wharton needed a commanding share of to prevail? Or within the ranks of voters anxious for change and uncertain as to which of three challengers to give their votes to?

Within that choice lie two different outcomes, and how the choice will have been made is one key to the mayoral outcome, as, for that matter, will have been the relative turnouts of major voting blocs.

If there is a single undoubtable given in the mayor’s race, it is in the nearly monolithic vote that Councilman Jim Strickland, regarded as Wharton’s leading challenger, was expected to receive from white voters. Strickland was doing his best to court disaffected black voters, as well, and the results will demonstrate whether that effort, perhaps abetted by the aforementioned “September Surprise,” came to something or nothing.

Both Councilman Harold Collins and Memphis Police Association president Mike Williams seemed to be making late converts. To what result?

What was the voter takeaway from the Lipscomb Affair? That’s another enigma.

How effective was the unprecedented outpouring of money by the two leading mayoral candidates and by a few candidates, hitherto political unknowns, for council positions?

As we speak, all these questions are about to be answered.

Meanwhile, suspense will continue in the several expected runoffs in single-district Council races, not to be decided until November 19th.

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Politics Politics Feature

Memphis Mayor’s Race: Light in August

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

There will be two more joint appearances by mayoral candidates this week. And, as if any more proof were needed that the mayoral race is a tight, tense affair, there was incumbent Mayor A C Wharton out there on Saturday, with the temperature in the 90s, going door to door and asking Whitehaven residents for permission to put his signs in their yards.

This was two weeks after the mayor’s opening of a Whitehaven headquarters on Elvis Presley Boulevard (followed a week later by his opening of a Poplar Avenue HQ).

To hear the mayor say it, Whitehaven has always been a proving ground for him in his various elections, especially when, as in 2011, when one of his opponents was a Ford — in that case, former City Councilman Edmund Ford Sr., a member of the prominent South Memphis-based political family.

Jackson Baker

The Mayor does DIY with yard signs in Whitehaven

“They’ve always said I’d have trouble with Whitehaven, but I always do okay,” said Wharton, as he trundled up Whitworth Road, waiting to rendezvous with an aide in a car, headed his way with more signs. “All you gotta do is look around here and see how many signs we’ve already put up.”

Whitehaven has the potential to be a problem area for Wharton this year, inasmuch as one of his opponents, City Councilman Harold Collins, represents the area on the council. That morning, even as Wharton was doing his door-to-door in Whitehaven, Collins was having a formal headquarters opening at Southbrook Mall, mere blocks away on Shelby Drive at Elvis Presley.

The mayor did not minimize the Collins threat, but, as he said, “Only a Ford is a Ford,” meaning, presumably, that in his view the councilman lacked the well-known political clan’s lingering mystique in the area.

And, as it happens, only days before, Edmund Ford Sr., Wharton’s former opponent, had released to the media a scathing letter accusing Collins of running a diversionary campaign designed not to win but to siphon African-American votes away from Wharton to help the mayoral candidacy of Councilman Jim Strickland.

And, meanwhile, Edmund Ford Jr., who succeeded his father on the city council and represents a part of Whitehaven adjoining Collins’ bailiwick, is one of the mayor’s major backers, speaking on his behalf at various rallies. That sort of help will surely prove useful to the mayor’s reelection campaign.

Although nobody, as of yet, is releasing poll results, those you hear about are said to confirm the fact that Wharton is indeed involved in a competitive race — with Strickland the major threat — and has to meet various percentage figures among both black and white voters in order to prevail.

Wharton and Strickland have enormous campaign treasuries and are in a position to spend anywhere from $200,000 to $300,000 on their campaigns between now and October 8th — much of that on print, radio, and TV advertising. Collins and a fourth candidate regarded as serious, Memphis Police Association director Mike Williams, don’t have resources on that scale, but both got positive exposure on last Monday night’s debate on WMC-TV and stand to claim an ever greater share of public attention, with several more mayoral forums yet to come.

Jackson Baker

Collins with daughters at Southbrook

Collins’ headquarters opening on Saturday took place in a former bank building in the parking lot of Southbrook, the down-at-the-heels shopping mall which has been the subject of an on-again/off-again renovation project that was shelved back in June by the mayor. Days later, Wharton proposed a commission to look into a more ambitious $50 to $70 million renovation of the entire area, though there were cynics who saw that move as purely hypothetical and designed only for its short-term P.R. value.

The mayor has been nothing if not candid about what he sees as the priorities of the city’s voters. Some weeks ago, speaking to women supporters at Waterford Plaza, he expressed regret at the benefit cuts imposed on city employees this year but said polling showed that voters overall were not exercised over the matter, whereas they expressed a great deal of anxiety about the city getting its financial house in order. Recalling the matter on Saturday, Wharton mused, “‘Getting our financial house in order’ got a 9.4 rating on a scale of 10.”

Both Southbrook and the benefits cuts are integral matters to Collins’ platform and got due mention on Saturday — the former with the councilman’s promise to come to the rescue of local entrepreneurs; the latter, when local Firefighters Union president Tommy Malone told the crowd that fire employees had “lost everything that we’ve gained for 30 years” during the Wharton administration.

By contrast, Collins had been the “only candidate who has consistently supported the firefighters,” Malone said. “We’ve got to work this man into office. Or we’ll get four more years of the same thing, and we can’t stand that in this city.”

Collins had been preceded to the mic by his two daughters, who told the crowd how they had been reluctant to return to Memphis after college elsewhere because of limited, low-pay job opportunities back home. The councilman elaborated on that, one of his basic themes, saying that Memphis’ young people “see no future in … pull-it, pick-it, and push-it jobs” at $9 or $10 an hour. He promised, as mayor, to bring in well-paying finance, engineering, and technology jobs.

Recalling last year’s youth mob attack on shoppers at the Poplar Plaza Kroger, Collins cited the specter of urban “terrorism” and said he would “work with the Juvenile Court system to deal with violence, making sure the perpetrators were detained and subjected to a judicial hearing within 24 hours. We will determine whether somebody is the head of some gang or if the valedictorian is at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Collins said.

After pledging, “We won’t have all these CEOs and COOs in our administration,” an obvious dig at the incumbent mayor, Collins ran a few stirring phrases up the flagpole and, in an oblique reference to the Edmund Ford Sr. letter, declared, “We’re in this race to win it. Nor in this race to do anything else, but win. But win. But win!”

While all this was going on, Strickland, like the Mayor, was going door to door, something he does on weekends with fair frequency. The simple yard signs saying “Strickland” are beginning to appear in quantity along such high-visibility thoroughfares as Poplar and Walnut Grove, as are those for Wharton. Collins, too, has a fair number of signs out.

With both Wharton and Strickland about to turn loose gobs of money (their first TV ads have already appeared) and Collins stepping up his fund-raising efforts, the campaign of Williams remains a true variable. He doesn’t yet have anything like the public presence of the others, but last week’s agile debate performance, which seemed to disprove that he’s a one-trick pony, has people watching.

Williams spent most of Saturday at the Agricenter attending a “Pet Expo.” He materialized late in the day at a location off White Station Road, where the Police Association was collecting donations for the family of slain MPD officer Sean Bolton.

Williams and the others were scheduled for a debate at the University of Memphis’ Rose Theater at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday and at Central High School for an Evergreen Historic Association forum on Thursday at 6 p.m. We’ll be watching.

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Politics Politics Feature

Spreading Blessings

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Monday’s televised debate involving five Memphis mayoral candidates may have a significant effect on public attitudes toward the contestants. It certainly gave them all greater currency.

As almost all the initial media coverage indicated, the central event of the forum was a one-on-one verbal slugfest between Mayor A C Wharton and Councilman Jim Strickland, whom Wharton and most observers regard as the the major challenger to the mayor’s incumbency.

But each of the other candidates involved — Councilman Harold Collins, Memphis Police Association president Mike Williams, and former Memphis School Board member Sharon Webb — had an opportunity, as well, to define themselves to a general audience that, for the most part, has been unfamiliar with them.

Collins and Williams, both of whom proved to be articulate and knowledgeable about the issues confronting city government, probably enhanced their vote potential.

Webb’s case is harder to evaluate. In her favor is the fact of being the only woman in the race, coupled with a likable presence and a way of making the case that “it’s time for a woman to take over” that is both eloquent and passionate. Detracting from her prospects, though, is her obvious unfamiliarity with city issues, the same weakness that caused her to draw a blank in a TV debate the last time she ran for mayor in the special election of 2009.

The exchange of attacks and insults between Wharton and Strickland clearly provided the most intense moments of the forum, which was televised by WMC-TV, Action News 5, and was co-sponsored by the Memphis Association of Black Journalists and the League of Women Voters.

Oddly, for an incumbent facing a challenge to his reelection, the mayor was the more aggressive in seeking out points of difference, and his assertiveness was nicely complemented with periodic references to the value of experience and a show of wit — as when he dubbed Strickland “Dr. No” for favoring clamps on police funding as budget chairman.

Contrasting that with Strickland’s emphasis on public safety as a campaign theme, the mayor said, “I think candidate Strickland ought to be introduced to Councilman Strickland, because they are two different people.”

Strickland responded by putting the blame for a reduced police presence on budgets prepared by the mayor, and he showed some polemical skill of his own in attacking redundancies in Wharton’s administration, by suggesting that the mayor was trying to be “Noah,” making allowances for two of everything.

Strickland and Wharton also quarreled over their relative support for summer jobs for youth, with each claiming credit for what appeared to be different programs in different eras.

While the bickering between the two may have shed some light on areas of city government, it also drew out both men as able combatants, with the normally easy-going Wharton showing some unaccustomed swagger — as well as the kind of agility that allowed him to co-opt emcee Joe Birch’s introductory description of Memphis as “a city on the move” as a motto for his administration.

Strickland, meanwhile, seemed to flourish under the mayor’s goading, which forced him away from his usual bullet-point recitations — that can turn into rote — into some impressively vigorous improvisations.

The Wharton-Strickland duel also gave Collins and Williams some good moments, allowing Collins, for example, to appear statesman-like in commenting on the “Tom and Jerry Show” aspects of the scrap, while Williams, commenting on the exchange of accusations between Wharton and Strickland on police issues, made the plague-on-both-their-houses observation that the city’s active police force had shrunk from 2,500 to 2,000 on their watch. He was enabled thereby to tilt the police debate away from self-serving arguments about benefits into the realm of public safety.

Collins, too, had a telling retort to the mayor’s experience factor, adding Wharton’s seven years as Shelby County mayor to the six he has served as mayor of Memphis and contending that those 13 years have not netted much for the community.

All things considered, the debate did not occasion any major breakaways in the direction of a particular candidate. If anything, it tended to equalize things, in the direction of all-have-won-all-must-have-prizes.

But there are several more mayoral forums planned, all of them — like the one Monday night — good free-media opportunities for the less well-endowed candidates to catch up to the ones with bankrolls.

• In a bizarre turnaround, the Shelby County Commission elected a new chairman, Steve Basar, as its first order of business Monday, withdrew the honor an hour later in a reconsideration vote, then decided to defer further action on the chairmanship until next month.

Basar, a Republican member who served as vice chair of the commission last year, suffered his second consecutive disappointment. He had expected to be named chairmen last year, only to lose out to Democrat Justin Ford when Basar’s GOP colleagues withheld their support from him.

This one had to feel all the more crushing, since Basar had believed himself to be the chairman-elect and was clearly savoring the triumph, until the reconsideration vote was called for by Democrat Eddie Jones, whose vote for Basar on a final ballot had originally broken a deadlock in Basar’s favor.

Jones offered no explanation for his change of heart, though Basar would note to reporters afterward that “you saw who was sitting next to each other.” Basar sat on one side of Jones; on the other side was fellow Republican Terry Roland, who had also sought the chairmanship and served notice that, given another shot at it, he was prepared to try again.

In deference to Jones, who will be absent at the commission meeting of August 24th, the next chairmanship vote will take place on September 14th, with current vice chair Van Turner, a Democrat, presiding. As County Attorney Ross Dyer noted on Monday, current chair Justin Ford’s term will run out at the end of August. The unexpected — and unprecedented — circumstance of Monday had its roots in the shifting alliance structure of the commission, which, ever since last year’s post-election reorganization, had drifted into a quasi-party-line division in which six Democrats, plus Republican Basar, had been one faction, with the other faction consisting of five Republicans plus Ford, who won his chairmanship with GOP support.

Jackson Baker

Former Chattanooga congressman Zach Wamp was in Memphis on Monday, convening a meeting at Owen Brennan’s Restaurant of supporters of the presidential candidacy of Florida Senator Mario Rubio. Here, Wamp consults with Rubio’s West Tennessee chairman, Germantown state Senator Brian Kelsey.

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Politics Politics Feature

On the Cusp

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Let the record show that Harold Collins, the city council member whose mayoral candidacy is one of the key variables of the 2015 election season, was able to sport the first prominent campaign signs around town.

And Collins’ reported second-quarter financial receipts of $48,812, giving him a total on hand of $61,405, support the idea that his candidacy is feasible, depending on developments in the roughly two-and-a-half months remaining in the city election period. (That’s when, as conventional wisdom has it, people actually start paying attention.)

As will be seen, Collins’ financial assets don’t begin to compare to those of the two presumed mayoral frontrunners (incumbent Mayor A C Wharton and Collins’ council colleague Jim Strickland) or to a couple of unusually well-endowed council candidates, for that matter. His candidacy, of necessity, will focus more on grass-roots activity, especially on his home ground of Whitehaven, one of the areas with a voter population large enough to be one candidate’s base (or the source of another’s swing vote).

From that standpoint, the early campaign signs are a good omen.

And let it be said that Kenneth Whalum, Jr., the New Olivet pastor and former school board member whose will-he or won’t-he attitude toward a mayoral race has made him the great unknown quantity of 2015, had scheduled to announce his plans for 2015 on Tuesday night at Church Park, well after this column must deadline for the week. We’ll catch with up the news online.

In April, Whalum drew petitions for mayor, for city council District 5 seat, and for the council’s Super District 9, Position 2 seat. The fact that he finished a close second in the 2014 Democratic primary for Shelby County mayor, even while being out of the country during the final weeks, has given his announcement a certain suspense value.

Memphis Police Association’s Mike Williams, who filed last week, has, at the very least, a niche following among aggrieved city employees, and especially among fire and police employees. He has a tight but active support group, but his reported second-quarter receipts of $6,204 make his race an uphill battle.   

County Commission chairman Justin Ford has also filed, as has James Harvey, his predecessor, but it remains to be seen how serious their candidacies are.

There is no doubting that Wharton and Strickland are still the big dogs in the race, certainly financially. Strickland raised $140,521 in the second quarter, while Wharton raised $129,700. Each appears to have $400,000 on hand, and their campaign treasuries are still growing. One possible caveat regarding those figures: The mayor has committed more money to date than has Strickland.

The possible relevance of that fact became obvious on Saturday, as Strickland and an aide braved 100-degree weather to go door-knocking on Walnut Grove, looking in particular for places to locate yard signs on that highly visible thoroughfare. Strickland got reasonably good feedback from the homeowners, but he won’t have the signs ready for delivery until August 1st.

Wharton continued last week with a series of modest-sized fund-raisers, located in upscale areas where he faces competition from Strickland. One of these was at Waterford Plaza, where he spoke to a group of women supporters and delivered one of those point-by-point surveys of city projects at which the mayor is both glib and convincing. He also addressed his concern that opponents portray him as “the Grinch” for having to impose austerity measures in response to intractable budget problems.

Thursday is filing deadline for city positions, with the withdrawal deadline a week later. Then we’ll know for sure what we’re dealing with.

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News News Feature

Looking for a Leader

For the more than 30 years I lived and reported in Memphis, it always pained me that thousands of people live out their lives in anguished anonymity. Many of these folks have accepted their sad lot in life based on their faith. I’ve always had a hard time comprehending that.

On my final day of work as a television reporter last week, I led a visiting PBS documentary team to a few of the most desolate and blighted areas of the inner city, so they could get a feel for the desperation that continues to plague many of the 28 percent of Memphians living below the poverty line.

In North Memphis, we found an elderly woman overseeing the care of her pre-school grandchildren, ages 2 and 3, by herself. She told me her home was the only house on the block that hadn’t been boarded up and abandoned. She pointed to her left and told me that two drug addicts had burned down the house next door. She believed those who had been living in the empty house on her right had been responsible for poisoning the dog that had served as her family’s only protection against the neighborhood’s rampant crime. Her house was now being “guarded” by a small Pekinese a family member had given her.

When I asked her about safety concerns, she said whatever happened to them would “be the Lord’s will.” I thanked her for telling me her story and quickly turned to walk away so she wouldn’t see the tears welling in my eyes.

It was with that memory still searing my brain that I read a newspaper article last weekend about the hundreds of thousands of dollars being raised by candidates running for Memphis mayor in October’s citywide election. The more I read, the angrier I got. I know money is often described as “the mother’s milk of politics,” but it has worsened in recent years due to increased money coming from sources outside the city looking to influence local politics.

What really irritates me is the amount of money being spent to gain a mayoral office that doesn’t pay as much as the candidates will spend to get it. It’s just another disheartening example of the power of special-interest groups to put the blinders on those who seek elected office — men and women who otherwise might use the mantle of that office to strive for transformative change.

The success of fund-raising efforts should never serve as the main barometer for how voters cast their ballots. If you take your right to vote seriously, go online and find out exactly where the candidates’ money is coming from. In Memphis, though I haven’t looked yet, I’d be willing to gamble the names of the donors are quite familiar — as well as the motivations behind their financial support.

I’m now retired, officially, and for the first time in decades I will not be here to report on election night. But I will exercise my right to vote through absentee ballot. My choice for mayor will not be made based on fund-raising amounts. Having been to nearly every nook and cranny of this city, I will vote for the candidate who takes his case to the streets, who walks the walk and doesn’t just spout the rhetoric of change. I want to vote for a leader who doesn’t emerge from a limo surrounded by a photo-op entourage when he or she visits Orange Mound, South and North Memphis, and Frayser. I want a leader who does more listening than talking when it comes to learning about the needs in those imperiled communities. I want a leader who will take that information and use it to devise a comprehensive, no-nonsense plan to attack poverty, blight, and unemployment.

And I want an elected City Council not mired in personal agendas or racially motivated political partisanship. I want a leader who doesn’t use the past as an excuse for not envisioning a progressive future. This city has yet to reach its full potential, but that potential is there.

And when it comes to divine intervention, I still believe the Lord helps those who help themselves.

Les Smith is a former reporter for WHBQ Fox-13.

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Politics Politics Feature

The Beat Goes On

As the Election Commission’s April 17th date for making candidate petitions available approaches, the 2015 city election season becomes ever more clearly a case of the old making way for the new. Within the past few weeks, such core pillars of the city council as Chairman Myron Lowery and Councilmen Shea Flinn and Harold Collins have announced they will not be candidates for reelection. Flinn’s future plans remain unknown, although they are rumored to involve some sort of relationship with the Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce. Another key councilman, Jim Strickland, announced back in January that he would not run for reelection and would opt instead for a mayoral race, which is now fully underway. Collins’ announcement of non-council candidacy was widely regarded as confirmation of his long-indicated plans to join the widening cast of characters in the contest for mayor. So far the dramatis personae in that race are Strickland, county commission Chairman Justin Ford, Memphis Police Association President Mike Williams, and former University of Memphis basketballer Detrick Golden.

Meanwhile, the incumbent, Mayor A C Wharton, kept himself front and center over the Easter weekend with a “coffee and chat” on Saturday morning at the Midtown IHOP on Union Avenue, followed by a number of appearances at events held in conjunction with the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1968 assassination.

After the IHOP event, sponsored by Shelby County Commissioners Melvin Burgess Jr. and Reginald Milton, Wharton was asked if the proliferation of opponents in the mayoral field would help or hinder his chances of reelection. “You can’t worry about that,” he answered. “I just have to keep my attention on what I’m doing.”

The mayor shed some light on a bit of verbal zig-zagging he had indulged in earlier this year on the prospect of the city’s gaining a Cheesecake Factory, confirmed last week as coming to Wolfchase Galleria. On the occasion of his State of the City address in January, Wharton had alerted his listeners to the likelihood of the popular restaurant franchise coming to Memphis.

But shortly thereafter, at a well-attended address at Lafayette’s Music Hall, the mayor made an effort to pass off his earlier forecast as having been merely a thinking-out-loud recollection of his daughter’s telling him she’d like to see such a happy event come to pass.

Now that the Cheesecake Factory was definitely on track, had the mayor’s rhetorical fluctuations been something of a screen for the to-and-fro of negotiations, he was asked on Saturday. “You’re very discerning,” was his answer, accompanied by a self-effacing chuckle.

Council Chairman Lowery had long ago dropped hints that he might not be a candidate, and that his son Mickell Lowery, a sales representative at FedEx, might be on the ballot instead as a successor for the Position 3 seat in Super-District 8.

Councilman Lowery had served consecutively since his first election in 1992, with a brief intermission during his three-month service as interim mayor in 2009, following the retirement of longtime Mayor Willie Herenton. And, like the practiced politician that he is, he contrived to get the maximum amount of public notice for his departure and his son’s prospective advent.

First came a press conference in Lowery’s City Hall office last week in which the chairman gave his own bon voyage to the attendant media, expressed gratitude for having been able to serve for so long, and predicted that there would be a spirited race to succeed him, no doubt including many candidates. Wife Mary was on hand for the occasion, and so, conspicuously, were son Mickell Lowery, his wife Chanisa, and young Milan Lowery, the councilman’s granddaughter. Asked his own intentions after the press conference, the younger Lowery indicated only that he would have “something to say” soon. When, he was asked. “It won’t be too long,” was the reply.

Indeed it wasn’t. Mickell announced his own candidacy for the seat on Monday, from the steps of LeMoyne-Owen College, his alma mater, as well as his dad’s. The choice of venue, said the aspiring councilman, was symbolic in that the school represented “advancement in our community,” a quality he saw as consistent with his campaign theme, “New Leadership for a Better Memphis.” 

Candidate Lowery added that he wanted “to make sure that the priorities of City Hall match the priorities of the community.” He named crime reduction as one of his priorities, and may have intended to cite some more. 

But just then a chip off his block — his toddler daughter Milan, who nestled in granddad’s arms — made a bit of a noise, and Daddy Mickell demonstrated his quickness on the uptake with what seemed a relevant segue: “I intend to be talking with students as early as elementary school,” he said.

Asked about his advantages in what might still become a competitive and well-populated race, Mickell stressed what he said were years of “hard work” for the community as a neighborhood football coach and “on various boards.” By way of further emphasizing his community work, he added, “That’s why I didn’t try to run 10 years ago, simply off my last name.”

Even so, his beaming father was on hand again on this second announcement occasion, as well as Mickell’s wife and child and a decent-looking collection of friends and family.

• As had been widely predicted, Flinn’s long-expected announcement of non-candidacy for his Position 2, Super-District 9 seat, opened up the possibility that candidates already announced for Strickland’s District 5 seat might effect a shift of venue into the at-large race.

It may or not signal a trend, but one of the previous District 5 hopefuls has already made the passage over. That would be Joe Cooper, the ever-persistent pol who may ultimately eclipse all existing records for the maximum number of candidacies launched during a lifetime.

In the truest sense, Cooper’s campaign strategies have been out-of-the-box, and so have many of his proposals, such as his advocacy, during a race for county commissioner some years back, that the resident bison at Shelby Farms be moved out to make room for possible development on the rim of the park property. That idea backfired, drawing the wrath of every environmentalist within geographical reach.

Cooper’s latest proposal is equally idiosyncratic. This week, he floated the idea of turning the Coliseum building and its parking lot over to the proprietors of the Wiseacre brewery for the creation of a “tourist attraction” that would simultaneously allow visitors to observe the beer-making process and alternately to spend time with a museum featuring the grunt-and-groaners who once rassled at the Coliseum.

Oh, and the two airplanes owned by the late Elvis Presley and now scheduled for eviction by the new gods of Graceland could find a resting place in the parking lot.

Another frequent political candidate, former County Commissioner George Flinn, has thrown his name in the hat as a would-be successor to state Republican Chairman Chris DeVaney of Chattanooga, who made a surprise announcement recently that he would be departing the position to head up a hometown nonprofit.

Flinn said he would seek, as chairman, to promote unity among the state’s Republicans and to promote “inclusiveness” in party membership.

His most recent electoral run was as the GOP’s 2014 candidate for the state Senate seat vacated by now Chancellor Jim Kyle and won ultimately by Kyle’s wife Sara Kyle, the Democratic nominee.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

No Rest for the Weary

CREDIT: Kyle and Norris photos courtesy of Jackson Baker

Shelby Countians have figured in several post-election moves:

The Rev.  Kenneth Whalum Jr., a possible candidate for Memphis mayor next year, isn’t waiting until then to make some waves. Whalum is one of eight plaintiffs from across the state in a suit in federal court designed to invalidate the ‘Yes’ vote seemingly conferred by a majority of voters on Amendment 1, which grants the General Assembly considerable new authority in legislating on abortion matters.

The basis of the suit, which was filed Friday in Nashville, is the language of Article XI, Section 3, of the state Constitution, which states that voters “approve and ratify such amendment or amendments by a majority of all the citizens of the state voting for governor, voting in their favor.”

The plaintiffs, all of whom opposed Amendment 1 and all of whom aver that they cast votes in the governor’s race, say that the constitutional language should be taken literally and that the state has a duty to determine and count only those votes on an amendment question that were cast by persons who also cast votes for governor.

Records compiled by the office of Secretary of State Tre Hargett showed that 32,570 more votes were cast on Amendment 1 than for governor, 1,385,178 as against 1,352,608. The plaintiffs alleged that the disproportion was the direct result of what their attorney Bill Harbison of Nashville, president-elect of the Tennessee Bar Association, said was a strategy by proponents of the amendment of “intentionally abstaining from the governor’s race in an effort to manipulate the numbers in order to pass an amendment” and “a clear violation of [others’] 14th Amendment rights.”

It seems anything but clear to Hargett, a former state representative from Bartlett and a nominal defendant in the suit, along with Governor Bill Haslam, new state Attorney General Herb Slatery, and the seven members of the state Election Commission.

Hargett notes that state election officials have never tried to match votes on amendment questions with ballots cast by the same voters for governor but have measured amendment votes, more abstractly, against a threshold of 50-percent-plus-one of the total votes cast in the governor’s race. “It does not make sense any other way,” he has said.

Also weighing in was Brian Harris, president of Tennessee Right to Life and a coordinator for the Yes on 1 campaign. “Even if you wrongly discount those who may have voted for Amendment 1 but not in the governor’s race, there is still a margin of almost 20,000 votes in favor of the amendment,” said Harris.

Aside from legalities, some complicated mathematical reckonings may figure in this case, due for a first hearing in U.S. District Court in Nashville on January 12th. Meanwhile, legislative advocates of new restrictions on abortion are known to be readying bills in time for the new session of the General Assembly, opening up the same month.

• And speaking of enabling legislation, Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris (R-Collierville) issued a press release on Monday, the eve of Veterans Day, announcing that he and state Representative Rusty Crowe (R-Johnson City) were drafting legislation to allow veterans’ organizations to conduct raffles and games of chance for fund-raising purposes, in accordance with the provisions of Amendment 4, which passed handily in the election.

The amendment expressly grants to 501(c)(19) organizations (veterans’ groups) the same ability to hold such fund-raising affairs as are currently permitted to 501(c)(3) organizations, so long as the veterans’ groups observe the same deadlines for submitting applications to do so — January 31st of a given year for an event scheduled to occur between July 1st  of that year and June 30th of the next. 

A technical point, even a housekeeping matter, but a necessary one. 

Norris, who doubles as chairman of the veterans subcommittee of the Senate State and Local Government Committee, said in the release: “Our legislation will allow this process to move forward and will ensure that the deadline affords these organizations enough time to get their applications in.”

            

• Hargett and Norris, along with state Senator Brian Kelsey of Germantown, were among Republicans cited this week by The Commercial Appeal‘s veteran Capitol Hill reporter Rick Locker as likely candidates for governor in 2016. Though their ranks have progressively been thinned in recent years by an accelerating statewide shift of political power to the GOP, there are Democratic names involved in gubernatorial speculation as well.

One of them is that of Gordon Ball, who was recently defeated by Republican incumbent Lamar Alexander in this year’s U.S. Senate race.

The wealthy Knoxville lawyer, who made his legal reputation and his fortune suing big-ticket corporations, is meanwhile going through some significant personal changes.

On the plus side, Ball, a graduate of the University of Memphis Law School whose son Tanner is now a student here, told the Flyer last week that he plans to transition at year’s end from his life-long residence in East Tennessee to a residence on Memphis’ Mud Island. 

On the down side, Ball also saw his marriage of less than a year to wife Happy Hayes Ball, who accompanied him on his first several campaign trips to Memphis, come to an apparent end. He filed divorce papers last Friday, listing a variety of complaints, including his wife’s alleged unauthorized use of funds from his business account.

Ball’s estranged wife also figured in another possibly unauthorized action that became a campaign issue. It was her removal of a television set and several other furnishings from the couple’s condo in Destin, Florida, that prompted Alabaman Barry Kraselsky, who had purchased the condo from Ball, to sue for breach of contract over the missing items.

That dispute is yet to be adjudicated. Meanwhile, Ball, who has resumed his law practice, says he intends to play golf and take a post-election vacation in Naples.

• An uneasy truce that settled over the Shelby County Commission following a hearing on the body’s rules last week by Chancellor Jim Kyle was in danger of erupting into discord again in this week’s committee sessions.

In a hearing on Thursday, Kyle opted not to rule in the matter of a suit brought against commission Chairman Justin Ford by a group of commission plaintiffs — six Democratic members plus Republican Steve Basar — who allege that Ford violated the body’s rules in arbitrarily keeping a proposed rules change off the commission agenda.

The chancellor told both sides that the commission, in essence, had no rules to break, inasmuch as each elected version of the commission is obliged to set its own rules, and the body elected in August has not yet done so.

Both sides to the dispute had assumed that the commission was bound by rules inherited from previous commissions. The rules change sought by the plaintiffs would have lowered the threshold necessary to enact further rules changes from a two-thirds majority to a simple majority. 

Democratic Commissioner Van Turner, one of the plaintiffs in the suit and chairman of the body’s general government committee, which was scheduled to meet on Wednesday, said he intended to bring up the whole matter of commission rules. Meanwhile, said Turner, Kyle’s ruling apparently left the county charter, which calls for a simple majority to decide such matters, as the commission’s sole authority.

Behind all the legal complications is a simple power struggle, pitting the commission’s Democrats and Basar, who was vice-chair in the commission’s last session but lost his bid to become chairman in the current session, versus the other five Republicans plus Ford, a Democrat who gained the chairmanship with GOP support.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Election Year 2015 is Upon Us

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Even as time was running out on the elections of 2014, with early voting ending this week in the election process that ends Tuesday, November 4th, the stirrings of Election Year 2015 were at hand. 

Among those in attendance at a Monday morning rally for Democratic candidates at the IBEW building on Madison were Kenneth Whalum and his wife Sheila. And while neither was quite ready to commit to a candidacy for Memphis mayor by the New Olivet Baptist Church pastor and former school board member, both seemed to relish the thought of a follow-up race to the Rev. Whalum’s surprisingly close second-place finish to Deidre Malone in last May’s Democratic primary for Shelby County mayor.

“Maybe it’s time for another tour of India,” joked the reverend, who had been absent on that East Asian sub-continent for a prolonged period just before election day but who finished strong, a fact indicating either that 1) absence made the hearts of voters grow fonder; or that 2) a more vigorous late effort on Shelby County soil might have put him over.

Either scenario, coupled with the fact that his appeal of a 2012 school board race narrowly lost to Kevin Woods had been finally disallowed by the courts, clearly left the irrepressible Whalum available for combat.

Who else is thinking about it? The proper question might be: Who isn’t?

Also present at the IBEW rally was former Shelby County Commission Chairman James Harvey, who is already committed to a race for Memphis mayor to the point of passing out calling cards advertising the fact.

“Changing parties again?” a passer-by jested to Harvey, a nominal Democrat who, in the past year or so on the commission, often made common cause with the body’s Republicans.

“I need ’em now!” responded Harvey, good-naturedly, about his attendance with other Democrats at the IBEW rally, which featured Gordon Ball, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senator, at the climax of his statewide “No Show Lamar” bus tour; District 30 state Senate candidate Sara Kyle; and District 96 state House of Representatives candidate Dwayne Thompson.

Not so sunny was another attendee, Memphis City Councilman Myron Lowery, who, when asked if he was considering another mayoral race (he ran unsuccessfully in the special election of 2009 while serving as interim city mayor) answered calmly, “No,” but became non-committal, to the point of truculence, at the follow-up question, “So, are you closing the door?”

Lowery has confided to acquaintances, however, that he is indeed once again measuring the prospect of a mayoral race, while simultaneously contemplating a race by his son, management consultant Mickell Lowery, for his council seat should he choose to vacate it.

Another council member, Harold Collins, has formed an exploratory committee and is contemplating a mayoral race based largely on the theme that the current administration of Mayor A C Wharton is acting insufficiently in a number of spheres, including those of dealing with employee benefits and coping with recent outbreaks of mob violence.

Another councilman considered likely to make a bid for mayor is current council Chairman Jim Strickland, who has built up a decently sized following over the years by dint of his highly public crusades for budgetary reform. He, too, has often been critical of the incumbent mayor.

In accordance with assurances, public and private, he has made over the past year, Wharton himself is still considered to be a candidate for reelection, though there are those who speculate he may have second thoughts, given his advancing years and the increasing gravity of fiscal and social problems confronting the city.

The mayor’s supporters tend to pooh-pooh such speculation and suggest that only Wharton is capable of achieving across-the-boards support from the city’s various demographic components.

Others known or thought to be considering a mayoral race are former state legislator and ex-councilmember Carol Chumney (who has run twice previously); current county Commissioner Steve Basar; and Memphis Police Association President Mike Williams.

The list of potential mayoral candidates is a roster that may grow larger quickly.

• In introducing Ball at the IBEW rally, state Democratic Chairman Roy Herron contended that incumbent Republican Senator Lamar Alexander‘s poll numbers were “going down and down and down and Gordon Ball’s are going up and up and up, and those lines are going to intersect.”

In his own remarks, Ball charged that “my opponent has spent millions of dollars trying to smear and discredit us” and cited that as evidence of how seriously Alexander was taking the threat to his reelection.

The Democratic nominee spent considerable time addressing the recent publicity about a suit brought against him by one Barry Kraselsky, an Alabama resident who recently purchased a Florida condo from Ball and is accusing Ball and his wife, Happy, of having “duped” him by removing items from the property.

Ball said he was being sued for $5,300, even though he had posted an escrow account of $5,000, which was available to Kraselsky, whom he said was a “charlatan” and a major Republican donor. “We’re going to take care of him after November 4th.”

In remarks to reporters after his formal speech, Ball, who opposes the proposed Common Core educational standards, contended that Alexander, who has mainly been opaque on the subject, was a supporter of Common Core, which is opposed by many classroom teachers. Ball noted that Alexander had bragged on well-known teachers’ advocate Diane Ravitch, who is now a Common Core opponent, in Lamar Alexander’s Little Plaid Book, which the senator published years ago.

“He doesn’t mention her anymore,” said Ball. “He and [state Education Commissioner] Kevin Huffman and [educational reformer and Common Core supporter] Michelle Rhee are in this together.”

Also taking part in the IBEW rally were Whalum and Ashley Coffield, CEO of Memphis Planned Parenthood, who passed out to all the candidates T-shirts opposing Constitutional Amendment 1 on the November 4th ballot. Amendment 1 would in effect nullify a 2000 decision by the state Supreme Court that granted more protection to abortion rights than have the federal courts, as well as empower the General Assembly to legislate on a variety of potential new restrictions to abortion.

• The Shelby County Commission, which was unable on Monday to come to a decision on proposed changes in County Mayor Mark Luttrell‘s amended health-care plan for county employees (see this week’s Editorial) also was somewhat riven on another – more explicitly political – issue.

This was a suit filed by seven commissioners in Chancery Court against current Chairman Justin Ford challenging his right to arbitrarily keep items off the body’s agenda.

The plaintiffs are the commission’s six Democrats and one Republican, former vice Chairman Steve Basar, who previously voted with the Democrats to stall the committee appointments by Ford, who was elected in this fall’s first organizational session by a combination of his own vote with that of the commission’s five Republicans. As the GOP’s Heidi Shafer explained at the time, the outnumbered Republicans had a choice between Ford, who has fairly consistently voted their way in previous years, and Bailey, who rarely has.

Basar was aggrieved by having been denied votes for the chairmanship, which he believed himself to be in line for, by most of his Republican colleagues.

Subsequent attempts to place items on the commission agenda proposing rules changes that would threaten Ford’s authority have been arbitrarily removed by the chairman.