Tag: Michael Harris

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Politics Politics Feature

Beyond the Party Line

Servers at Saturday’s “Elephants in the Park” homeless feed. (Naser Fazlullah front and center, with shades on) (Photo: Kristina Garner)

Political parties, as is surely no secret, are constantly looking for converts, and, to that end, normally have what is designated as an “outreach” officer or branch.

The Shelby County Republican Party, which in recent years has lost a shade of its former demographic edge, has one of the best and most effective outreach officials in Naser Fazlullah, a native of Bangladesh and a small business owner who, in the 20 years or so of his American experience, has employed his natural enthusiasm and work ethic to forge ties and friendships across all sorts of boundaries, political and otherwise.

A case in point was an event he conceived and brought to fruition on Saturday at Morris Park on the edge of Downtown. Called “Elephants in the Park,” it had cadres of the local Republican party working side by side with off-duty judges, members of law enforcement, and community activists like Stevie Moore, founder of Freedom From Unnecessary Negatives (FFUN), a renowned anti-violence group — all toiling at food tables handing out meal boxes (fish, spaghetti, fries, coleslaw) to a population of hungry Memphians recruited from three local homeless agencies, an estimated 300 people before the day was over. The food came from both Fazlullah’s own Whitehaven restaurant and from other donors.

Politics, as such, figured not at all. The idea was to make people-to-people connections, for the sake not merely of the beneficiaries but of the servers who worked for the day on their behalf — like John Niven, a veteran GOP activist who commented, “I’ve never done anything that made me feel as good as this did. The homeless basically don’t vote, and those who do probably vote Democratic, but so what?”

• The most common political name right now? That’s an easy one. It’s “Harris.” There’s Lee Harris (county mayor); Sheleah Harris (school board); Michael Harris (Shelby County Democratic Party’s chairman); and Linda Harris (candidate for district attorney general).

And, of course, there’s Kamala Harris (vice president of the United States).

The one who was on display Monday morning at The Hub in East Memphis (to a group of politically astute ladies calling themselves “Voices of Reason”) was Torrey Harris, first-term state representative for House District 90.

State Rep. Harris discussed with a rapt audience the ins and outs of how Democrats struggle to make their influence felt in the supermajority Republican legislature. His auditors were especially interested in — and aggrieved by — the majority’s passage in the last session of a bill outlawing the teaching in the state’s public schools of “critical race theory,” which, as Harris noted, is (a) not taught in the public schools, and (b) is the GOP’s catchphrase for attempts to deal honestly with the nation’s racial history.

Running as a Democrat last year, Harris had defeated former state Representative John DeBerry, whose long-term sympathy with Republican positions caused the denial of his right to run under the Democratic party label.

The defeated DeBerry, who ended up running as an independent, was rewarded by GOP Governor Bill Lee with a well-paid job as gubernatorial advisor, and one of the ex-Democrat’s main functions, Harris explained, is — wait for it — that of liaison with the House’s Democratic members.

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Politics Politics Feature

Family Matters: It’s Father vs. Daughter in Council District 6 Race

While the Memphis city election was still in the petition-pulling phase, it looked for a while that there might be several family members — mostly named Ford — who might be running against each other in pursuit of the same office.

By the time last month when both the filing and the withdrawal deadlines had come and gone and the Election Commission had certified an official candidate list, however, most of those intriguing matchups had failed to materialize. They were cases, generally, in which various candidates had considered a variety of races before settling on one, and, when the settling occurred, the potential familial rivalries disappeared from the election roster.

There was one exception: the District 6 City Council race, in which two candidates named Bond are competing — Perry Bond and Theryn Bond. They are father and daughter, as it happens, and when the two of them, along with candidates for other offices, turned up at AFSCME headquarters on Beale Street last Thursday for a forum sponsored by various Demoratic Party groups, the only reference to the pairing came from the senior Bond, who noted for the audience, “My daughter is in this race, too, and she has every right to be there.”

Jackson Baker

Theryn Bond Perry Bond

In her turn, Theryn Bond described her race as a venture in courage — appropriately enough, since, as she explained, she has in the last several months faced and overcome cervical cancer. Even before that, Theryn Bond made something of a name for herself at council meetings as an articulate and consistent opponent of the established order of things on the current council.

Alphabetical order being what it is, the two Bonds lead the list of candidates on the October 3rd ballot. That should help their vote totals in a district race which already has some drama. Edmund Ford Sr., the former holder of the seat, is attempting to regain it, and Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, engaged in a running feud with Ford’s son, Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr., has endorsed yet another candidate, Davin Clemons, a minister/policeman who serves as the MPD’s liaison with the LGBTQ community.

• Yes, it’s true: Steve Cohen has an opponent. The 9th District Congressman, who has knocked off a serious string of Democratic challengers since 2006, when he first emerged victorious from a multi-candidate primary field, now faces a 2020 bid from Corey Strong, the former Shelby County Democratic chairman.

Strong acknowledges that Cohen has made the appropriate votes in Congress, supported legislation that a Democrat should have supported, properly backed up Democratic President Obama, and has correctly opposed Republican President Trump. Further, says Strong, the congressman has successfully become a factor in key national dialogues.

What he has failed to do, Strong maintains, is to bring jobs to a home region that desperately needs them. Strong even finds evidence of this alleged failure in a well-publicized stunt staged by Cohen last spring on the House Judiciary Committee. That was the occasion in May when the congressman ridiculed the failure of Attorney General William Barr to answer a subpoena by wolfing down pieces from a Kentucky Fried Chicken basket at his seat on the committee.

Cohen got headlines, both pro and con, and, says Strong, “I have no problem with that. What I have a problem with is that we’ve got all kinds of local fried-chicken enterprises here in Memphis, and he could have made his point with them if he wanted. But he didn’t.”

Strong is well aware that Cohen, who is white and Jewish, has easily dispatched all previous would-be party rivals in his predominantly African-American Memphis district since that first victory in 2006. He has triumphed over Justin Ford, Willie Herenton, Tomeka Hart, Ricky Wilkins, and Nikki Tinker, all of whom had either name recognition or financial support or both.

He has done so, as Strong acknowledges, by careful attention to the needs of his constituency in most ways — save the aforementioned inability to raise the income level of his district.

Strong believes he can succeed at that task, where, he says, Cohen has not. And one way of demonstrating his prowess will be to raise a campaign budget that will allow him to compete with the financially well-endowed incumbent Congressman on relatively even terms.

“I will do that,” says Strong, a Naval Reserve officer who in 2017 became the renovated Shelby County Democratic Party’s bounce-back chairman after it was decommissioned by the state Democrats a year earlier during a period of internal stress and discord within the local party.

Strong acknowledges that Michael Harris, his successor as local party chairman, has had a difficult problem arousing support from party cadres because of issues stemming from his suspended law practice. But, says Strong, local Democrats have a duty to support their party.

The future congressional aspirations of current Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris have become so obvious as to make Harris’ ambitions something of a public proverb, and a good race next year by Strong, even if unsuccessful, could serve the purpose of setting up a future challenge against Mayor Harris. But Strong insists he is in the 9th District race this year to win.

• The 2019 session of the Tennessee General Assembly is over, but one of the key pieces of legislation that emerged from it — a bill to permit private school vouchers via public money — is apparently still subject to change.

It will be remembered that the bill barely passed the state House of Representatives, and did so only because then-House Speaker Glen Casada held open the vote for an hour, during which time he bargained with members opposed to the measure in an effort to change at least one vote.

That vote turned out to be that of Representative Jason Zachary (R-Knoxville), who succumbed to a pledge from Casada that the voucher bill would be rewritten to exclude Zachary’s home city.

With an eye toward future potential opposition in the state Senate, the bill was rewritten, in fact, to exclude all localities except Memphis and Nashville, which became the sole subjects of what was now styled as a “pilot” program.

A vigorous opponent of the bill, which was a pet project of Governor Bill Lee, was Representative Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville), who has now become Speaker in the wake of a scandal that forced Casada out of the position.

Sexton continues to oppose vouchers and wishes at the very least to delay their onset. Lee, meanwhile, has reacted to the change of circumstance by expressing a desire to speed up the implementation of vouchers from 2021 to 2020. The coming legislative session may well come to focus on the struggle over the issue between the two leaders.

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Politics Politics Feature

Lammey, Casada, Michael Harris Face Potential Threats to Their Jobs

It was a 12-0 vote on the Shelby County Commission on Monday to support the pending possible censure by the Tennessee Board of Judicial Conduct of Criminal Court Judge Jim Lammey for social media posts that consistently contained links to racist, anti-immigrant, and anti-Semitic themes.

The potential 13th vote, which would have made things unanimous, was that of Democratic Commissioner Reginald Milton, who had to miss the meeting for personal reasons but who had made his approval of a censure resolution known.

Even two Republican commissioners who had demurred at endorsing censure for Lammey when a preliminary vote was taken in committee last Wednesday — Amber Mills, who wanted Lammey to be given a chance to present “his side” and Brandon Morrison, who argued that the commission had no judgmental authority over the judiciary —  voted with the others on Monday.

Commissioner Tami Sawyer

Lammey, who was invited to appear before the commission on Monday, did not do so, pleading a “heavy trial docket” for the date, but the beleaguered jurist did submit a letter to the commissioners that Lammey suggested would “set the record straight against those who so maliciously mischaracterize me as an anti-Semite hater of all immigrants.”

The accusations against Lammey stem from a series of articles by Commercial Appeal writer Daniel Connolly documenting, first, a Facebook post by Lammey linking to an article by one David Cole, identified by several sources as a Holocaust denier. That article stated, among other things, that Jews should “get the f**k over the Holocaust” and referred to Muslim immigrants as “foreign mud.” Lammey’s post called the story “interesting.”

Subsequent Lammey posts and links unearthed by Connolly dealt with a variety of right-wing nativist themes in which disdain for immigrants loomed large. The judge also received negative publicity for his insistence on ordering immigrants with cases before his court to register with immigration authorities.

Ultimately, Lammey’s actions were condemned by a variety of civic organizations and religious groups — Christian, Jewish, and Islamic. Spokespersons for the groups — some demanding the judge’s outright resignation — appeared before the commission both on committee day last Wednesday and on Monday.

Speaking on behalf of the pro-censure resolution on Monday were Rev. Lucy Waechter-Webb of MICAH (Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope); Imam Nabil Bayakly, chairman of Muslims in Memphis; Rabbi Katie Bauman of Jewish Community Partners and MICAH; Marti Murphy of Facing History and Ourselves; and Duane Stewart of the Messianic Jewish Movement, a Christian group.

In his letter to the commission, Lammey protested that both he and his social media posts had been mischaracterized. Cole, he said, was “Jewish and not a Holocaust denier,” and he appended a note from Cole himself in which that author contended that the term “foreign mud” used in the article posted by Lammey was a reference to the Golem figure in Jewish legend, not immigrants. As for his courtroom behavior toward immigrants, Lammey said, “I believe all immigrants should come here legally. That’s my constitutional right under the first amendment.”

Several of the speakers on Monday disputed Lammey’s claims as equivocations, with Rev. Webb contending they “confirmed his lack of judgment.”  Stressing the need for a formal judgment, Rabbi Bauman said, “Silence helps the oppressor, never the victim.”

Republican Commissioner Mick Wright, who noted that he and Lammey were Facebook friends and that the judge was his constituent, observed that “some of my constituents believe Judge Lammey has been singled out for political reasons” and continued, “Because of that, I feel it’s important to point out that it’s entirely possible to hold conservative views on immigration, to believe our borders should be protected, and our immigration laws should be enforced, and to also love immigrants and to have compassion and mercy on those who are unlawfully present. Because I believe all our laws should be respected and enforced, I hold those who share my viewpoint to the highest possible standard of conduct.”

Commissioner Van Turner, the body’s chairman, worried aloud that Lammey’s attitude over the years may have “infected” others in the legal community.

Summing up before the vote, Democratic Commissioner Tami Sawyer, author of the pro-censure resolution, thanked “all those who have spoken out in support of this resolution,” characterized action on the issue as the kind of thing “we are here to do,” and called for a unanimous vote. She got it.

• Memphis got a visit last Thursday from members of the campaign of California Senator Kamala Harris, who seeks the Democratic nomination for president. The group included Harris’ campaign manager, Juan Rodriguez, senior advisors Averell “Ace” Smith and David Huynh, Southern regional finance director Stephanie Sass, and political director Missayr Boker.

Daphne Rankin, a local representative of the campaign, said that response from Memphis activists to Harris indicated that the city was one of the most receptive areas in the nation to her candidacy. The senator, a former California attorney general and San Francisco district attorney, has attracted considerable attention for her piercing interrogations of witnesses before the Senate Judiciary Committee, including, most recently, William Barr, attorney general in the administration of President Donald Trump.

Harris is considered to be in the first tier of the heavily populated field of declared Democratic presidential contenders. While in Memphis, the Harris representatives were the guests of honor at a reception held at Mahogany Restaurant, hosted by owners Veronica Yates and Colleen McCullough. They also met privately with Gale Jones Carson, Democratic National Committeewoman from Tennessee, and had a late dinner at the Rendezvous with influential local party activist David Upton.

• The 2019 session of the Tennessee General Assembly may have ended week before last, but fallout on Capitol Hill from recent revelations concerning Republican House Speaker Glen Casada continues unabated, threatening Casada’s tenure as speaker and possibly even as a member of the House.

Most recently, the legislative Black Caucus, headed by state Representative G.A. Hardaway (D-Memphis), met with Casada on Monday and afterward formally asked for him to step down as speaker. The caucus had earlier sought an investigation of charges that Casada’s then aide Cade Cothren forged the date on an email to Casada from protestor Justin Jones, making it appear that Jones had violated a judicial no-contact order.

That was one of several matters that have the speaker in hot water. He was also recently exposed for having exchanged sexist emails with Cothren and tolerating racist attitudes from his aide, who has since resigned. Casada and Cothren are also suspected by some of illegal electronic eavesdropping on legislators.

The Democratic Caucus as such has also sought Casada’s resignation, as have several Republican legislators, singly.

• Michael Harris, the controversial recently elected chairman of the Shelby County Democratic Party, conducted his first meeting of his executive committee last Thursday at the IBEW Union Hall. Harris, whom some members seek to unseat because of misconduct allegations that caused the suspension of his law license by the Board of Professional Responsibility, agreed to schedule a meeting in the near future to consider the issue in response to a motion from member Sanjeev Memula.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Harris Conducts Smooth First Meeting as Dems’ Chair; Other Local Officers Elected

CREDIT: JB

JB

Harris presiding over his first meeting as SCDP chair

The executive committee of the Shelby County Democratic Party completed its reelection of officers Thursday night in a placid, orderly meeting that concluded in a shouting match over whether its newly elected local chairman, Michael Harris, can continue as party leader.

Harris, a suspended lawyer who has admitted having to live down a formidable list of professional “mistakes,” would, on the strength of commentary from members Thursday night, seem to have ample support on the local committee to continue. But committee member Sanjeev Memula, on behalf of a group of Democrats opposed to Harris’ continuation as chair, was able, amid controversy, to move for a hearing on the Harris matter, coupled with a call for a new chairmanship election.

Harris himself agreed to accept Memula’s motion after a ruling from parliamentarian Larry Pivnick that only the chairman or the executive committee itself, functioning as a grievance committee, could approve the motion. Before that happened, there were calls from several members to purge Memula and two other members publicly opposed to Harris — and a temporary motion to the effect, later withdrawn, from member Williams Brack.

Time and place for the hearing on the Harris matter have, as of Friday morning, yet to be set.

Harris’ professional issues — resulting in a 5-year suspension from the practice of law by the Board of Professional Responsibility and disqualification of him as a bankruptcy petitioner by the United States Bankruptcy Court — have complicated his tenure from the moment of his election, by a single vote over “none of the above” as a stated alternative , in a stormy organizational meeting early in April.

The beleaguered chairman’s conduct Thursday night of his first meeting as chairman could hardly be faulted. It was generally agreed, even by critics, that he seemed smooth, organized, and focused as he discussed a series of items with the membership — including the time and place of future committee meeting (likely to be held at AFSCME headquarters downtown), plans for a forthcoming public event, strategies for community outreach, and possible sponsorship of a mayoral debate during the ongoing city government election.

Memula and other critics of Harris have alleged, however, that his personal issues should disqualify him as a party leader and have brought the party into bad repute. They cite the likelihood that Republicans will be able to exploit those issues for their own purposes, and, indeed, the Tennessee Star, a publication featuring the point of view of right-wing Republicans, has already featured Harris’ problems in a published feature.

Aside from the chairmanship issue, the other standout fact of Thursday night’s meeting was that it included the first fully completed successful use of ranked choice voting in a local election. RCV backer Aaron Fowles was on hand to serve as an advisor on the process, which allows sampling of runner-up votes to determine a winner in multi-candidate races without a majority winner in the first round of voting.
Elected Thursday night were the following:
*Sara Beth Larson, first vice chair;
*Brian McBeidge, second vice chair;
*Regina Perry, secretary;
*Emily Fulmer, assistant secretary;
*Jesse Huseth and Williams Brack, steering committee members

Harris’ appointment of Lucretia Carroll as treasurer was accepted by acclamation by the membership.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

New Filing: The Background Papers of the Michael Harris Case

CREDIT: JB

The pending intra-party litigation by several members of the Shelby County DemocratIc Party seeking to invalidate the election of Michael Harris JB

Michael Harris

as chairman of the SCDP has been supplemented with an abundance of new documents for the state Democratic executive committee to consider — all this on the eve of the first planned meeting, Thursday night of this week, of the newly elected SCDP executive committee.

As it happened, the local committee, amid an oft-turbulent discussion, took no action Thursday night but agreed, on a decision by Harris himself, to hear out a petition by SCDP executive committee member Sanjeev Memula to hold a new election. Memula’s petition asks for the hearing within 20 days, in accordance with local party bylaws.

Before the state party issued its response remanding the issue back to the SCDP, members seeking Harris’ ouster had submitted a series of documents:

The first grievance to the state committee, filed on April 10, focused on possible discrepancies in the rules of election practiced by the SCDP executive and grass roots committees on April 6, when Harris, a lawyer who has been suspended from his practice for a five-year period, was elected by one vote over “None of the above.”

Subsequent supplements deal with what the litigants believe is the unsuitability of Harris for the position of chairman, given a lengthy and still uncorrected record of professional infractions and misdeeds by Harris. In one supplement, immediately below, the litigants cite these issues in a general way; they specifically seek a public hearing for their evidence, Harris’ disqualification, nullification of the election results, Harris’ disqualification, and ultimately a new election.

This supplement, like all the others gathered here, speaks for itself:
[pdf-6]
The second supplement, immediately below, repeats the requests made in the first supplement and cites facts relating to Harris’ frequent efforts to claim bankruptcy protection, claims that the United States Bankruptcy Court has now expressly prohibited him from renewing:

[pdf-5]
In support of this second supplement, the litigants cite the specific efforts made by Harris in his quests for bankruptcy protection, listed below in a timeline:

[pdf-3]

Next is the order from the U.S. Bankruptcy Court revoking Harris’ privileges even to file for further bankruptcy protection:

[pdf-2] The next supplement is an itemized record of actions taken by the Board of Professional Responsibility apropos Harris’ suspension:

[pdf-4]
And the final, and most lengthy supplement, is an itemized chronology of the aforementioned infractions charged to Harris during his now terminated practice of law:

[pdf-1]

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Democratic Litigants File Grievance to Nullify Chairmanship Election

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

That election for chairman of the Shelby County Democratic Party? It may not be over.

A grievance has been filed with the state Democratic Committee by several participants in the recent Shelby County Democratic Party chairmanship election, who contend that the election should be nullified.
Jackson Baker

Shelby County Democratic Party Chairman-elect Michael Harris

The litigants offer several scenarios; the point of each is that, however the number of valid voters might have been determined, the declared winner — Michael Harris — should have been gauged as falling short by at least one vote.

In that eventuality, it had previously been determined, the former chairman, Corey Strong, would have continued in office, pending calling for a new election, with newly elected candidates and a new vote.

The grievance reads as follows: [pdf-1] :

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Shelby County Democrats: The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. Again.

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

In August, 2016, Tennessee  Democratic Party chair Mary Mancini announced that the state party executive committee had voted to disband the Shelby County Democratic Party, a hopelessly fractious organization that, as Mancini noted, had experienced “many years of dysfunction.”

One year later, in August 2017, a reconstituted local party took shape at a convention that crowned months of focus-group activity in tandem with the state party. Corey Strong, a Shelby County Schools administrator and a military reservist, was elected chair of a new body that possessed both an executive committee and a larger “grassroots” council.

Coupled with the revived Democratic activism that, in Memphis as elsewhere, fueled a “resistance” movement to President Donald Trump, the moment looked promising indeed for local Democrats.

But now, a year and a half later, in the aftermath of party successes at the ballot box in 2018 and on the threshold of a presidential election year, the Shelby County Democratic Party is freshly riven by a dispute that seemingly has racial overtones but may actually be the consequence of warring ambitions and an internal power struggle.

Months ago, Strong had indicated that he would not seek re-election, and for a long time only one potential successor made his leadership desires public. This was Jeff Etheridge, a retired businessman (Dilday’s TV Sales and Service) and an activist who had pulled his oar in many a party drive and political campaign.

Jackson Baker

Michael Harris for the (self-)defense.

Etheridge’s home base was the Germantown Democratic Club, a racially diverse organization whose membership encompassed large sectors of Shelby County well beyond the enclaves of East Memphis and the county’s eastern suburbs. More than most Democratic groups, it had been responsible for organizing the Shelby County party effort, from the reactivation effort onward. Its president, David Cambron, had, with his wife Diane and other core members, taken the lead in making sure the party had a full roster of candidates in the 2018 election.

But there were other party power centers, as well. One of them was the Young Democrats of Shelby County, a group that tilted more toward the urban precincts of Midtown and the inner city. Its president, Danielle Inez, had been Lee Harris‘ campaign manager during Harris’ successful 2018 campaign for Shelby County mayor, and she had become his primary assistant in the reconstituted county government, someone hugely influential in staffing and logistical decisions.

Inez and the YDs were also feeling their oats and looking to make further contributions. They cast about for one of their own to bear the hopes of the younger generation for party leadership, and — for reasons best known to them — settled on one Michael Harris, a young man who had taken an active role in party outreach activities.

Those were the two known candidates when the party met Saturday before last at White Station High School to hold its preliminary caucuses for the convention to be held this past Saturday. In the nomination process other names were put forward — Erica Sugarmon and Allan Creasy, two impressive candidates from the blue wave year of 2018 — but these nominees withdrew, leaving only Etheridge and Harris.

There matters stood until the beginning of last week, when Etheridge began communicating with party leaders, complaining of “pressures” and stress he was getting from backers of Harris — some of it, he indicated, with racial overtones (Etheridge is white, Harris black). He had meant to be a unifying force, not a divisive one, he told his auditors, and he saw his opportunity to build bridges being undermined by a whisper campaign.

Jackson Baker

Harris supporter Danielle Inez and nay-voter David Upton muse over the outcome.

Simultaneously, word was getting out about difficulties Harris had experienced as a young and inexperienced lawyer.

As it turned out, there was evidence on the public record that in June 2017 Harris had been suspended for five years from his legal practice by the Board of Professional Responsibility of the Supreme Court of Tennessee. He was accused by the board of “lack of diligence and communication, excessive fees, improper termination, failure to expedite litigation, failure to perform services for which he was paid, unauthorized practice of law, dishonesty, and conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice.”

As a precondition to consideration of listing his suspension, the board ordered Harris to “make restitution” in the total amount of $22,975 to nine clients whose cases he was considered to have mishandled.

Knowledge of these facts emerged more or less at the same time that word of Etheridge’s withdrawal was getting out. On Wednesday of last week, which was the formal deadline for any post-caucus applications of candidacy, news was put out that two Memphis state representatives, London Lamar and Raumesh Akbari, had filed petitions to run for local party chair. Both were well-regarded young African Americans, seen as scandal-free legislative stars with wide appeal to all segments of the party.

Later Wednesday, stories were hitting the state media to the effect that Lamar had become the consensus choice. In actual fact, both she and Akbari had been desperation hotbox choices and would end up declining to pursue the chairmanship, pleading the press of business in Nashville. That objection was on the level, as anyone who has seen the demanding legislative process at first-hand can attest, but the swirls of internal discontent in Shelby County party circles had become all too obvious by now and were clearly another factor.

During the brief period when Lamar’s name was being floated as a consensus choice, Harris was confronted by party elders (former chairman David Cocke and Shelby County Commission chair Van Turner among them) who suggested that he yield the chairmanship to Lamar, thereby saving himself and the party the obvious public embarrassment that would come at Republican hands when his background was publicly vetted, as inevitably it would be.

In appreciation of his own efforts and ambition, Harris, now working as a compliance officer for Advance Primary Care, might serve for a year as a party vice chair, using that interval to make amends for his legal derelictions and refurbish his personal credentials. Harris said he’d think about it. He thought about it, said no, and meanwhile so did Lamar and Akbari.

That was the background of events going into Saturday’s party convention at Lindenwood Christian Church. As an ironic complement to the confusion, the party had agreed weeks earlier to conduct the chairmanship vote by the process of Ranked Choice Voting, a method of resolving multi-candidate races by reassigning the votes of trailing candidates in subsequent rounds of recalculation.

Given the fact of there being only one candidate (Harris), it was hard to see how the method of RCV could be applied, but Aaron Fowles, a local adherent of the process, provided a methodology which was announced to the voting membership by outgoing chairman Strong. Inasmuch as RCV (also known as IRV,  for “instant runoff voting”) required that a winner ultimately receive 50 percent of the vote “plus one,” Harris, as the sole nominee, would be matched against votes for “none of the above.”

Should Harris be outvoted by that formulation, it was agreed beforehand, Strong would continue to serve as party chairman until a new convention (hopefully, one with multiple candidates) could be held.

Those were the circumstances when what seemed an artificially relaxed buffet feed was concluded, and the delegates elected a week earlier at White Station filed into the church sanctuary, accompanied by a fair number of curious onlookers.

Harris had arrived late and had worked the crowd. Now it was his time to take the stage and face the voters and the accusations that hung over him.

He began with the device that might have been expected. “Those of you who have never made a mistake, raise your hands,” he asked. Unsurprisingly, there were no takers. He then went on to give a brief bio of his life, admitting at this point, without specifying, that he had made his share of mistakes, and exhorting his audience to think in terms of unity. “We shouldn’t be turning on each other,” he said. “We should be turning up the heat on the Republicans.”

Harris said he took responsibility for his actions and cited his generally creditable past performance as vice chair of the party’s outreach efforts. Still, he faced questions. How many elections had he voted in, he was asked. He could not recall in any detail, but said, “I’m an active voter now.” Inevitably, the questions came about his legal issues.

Asked how much money was still owed to the past clients, Harris was vague on the amount and slow to acknowledge that much, perhaps most, of what had been dispensed was paid out by the Tennessee Lawyers Fund for Client Protection or other legal-support organizations. The bottom line: He would still need to compensate the organizations that made the payments.

“I am not a thief!” Harris insisted, despite the fact that misappropriations of his clients’ money was one of the prime allegations against him.

“He has paid his dues,” said supporter George Boyington. Inez praised Harris’ “courage” and what she considered the deftness of his responses, though others, like Danielle Schoenbaum, one of the party’s corps of surprisingly effective suburban legislative candidates in 2018, didn’t think as highly of them: “2020 is very important,” Schoenbaum said. “If you put self first, before party, you’re not fit to be chair.” It was a theme expressed by others, as well.

And there was the matter of the detailed evidence against Harris. One speaker noted that people had been foreclosed on and lost their homes because of his ineffective or even nonexistent representation.

Inevitably, in days to come, pages from the case reports against Harris would surface. As one summary said, “Mr. Harris repeatedly took money but did not provide the most basic of services. He took desperate clients, who came to him as a last hope, and did nothing for them. It is not that he took difficult clients and fought the good fight but lost. He took people’s money and did not complete the most basic of tasks. He did not respond to basic discovery requests or summary judgments (ever). He literally did not fight at all.”

Interestingly, given the job to which Harris was aspiring, that of leader and figurehead of one of the county’s two major political parties, the opposing lawyer in several of the cases for which Harris was cited by the Board of Professional Responsibility was one Lang Wiseman, a former county Republican chairman and current deputy governor of Tennessee. This fact underscores the truism that none of Michael Harris’ legal misadventures are unlikely to remain unknown in the public circles he will inhabit as a party chair.

And a party chair he is, as of Saturday. Of the 76 eligible Democratic voters present, 72 actually cast ballots, and Michael Harris received 37 of those votes, versus 35 for “none of the above.” He had received precisely 50 percent plus one — the bare minimum needed for election.

Harris’ supporters are optimistic that he can unify his party and lead it to a victorious election year in 2020. His detractors fear the worst, a public catastrophe and implosions yet to be imagined. And the state party, having interceded so dramatically in 2016, is not in the best position to do so again.

Chairman Harris and his executive committee will be meeting again soon to determine who the rest of the party’s officers will be. That’s the next round of decisions that will loom large in the Shelby County Democratic Party’s future.

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Politics Politics Feature

Shelby Democrats to Elect New Chairman; “Bathroom Bill” Peters Out

CREDIT: JB

Shelby County Democrats have a contest on their hands for the chairmanship of the party. In party caucuses at White Station High School last Saturday, members were selected both for the party’s local executive committee and for its grassroots assembly. And four people were nominated for the top job to succeed Corey Strong, who had indicated for some time, largely on account of his military reservist duties, that he would not be seeking re-election.

Jeff Etheridge, Michael Harris, Erica Sugarmon, and Allan Creasy were the nominees, but Sugarmon and Creasy, each of whom made some well-noticed races last year (Sugarmon for a Memphis City Council vacancy, Creasy in a close race against GOP incumbent state Representative Jim Coleh) quickly turned down their nominations. Both are certain to be heard from again.

Meanwhile, it is a two-man race for Democratic chair, to be decided this coming Saturday at noon at Lindenwood Christian Church.

The two contestants: Jeff Etheridge, the former owner of Dilday’s TV Sales and Service, has been running for several months and is essentially using his retirement from business as an opportunity to help revitalize the Shelby County Democratic Party. Michael Harris has been involved in the same process, working in the party’s outreach effort.

• The Tennessee General Assembly’s seemingly annual attempt at passing a “bathroom bill” — construed as an effort to keep transgender individuals out of gender-specific bathroom spaces — has suffered the same fate as all previous versions. This year’s bill, however, is on the way to earning its defeat by the unusual and paradoxical fact of actually being passed.

Which is to say, the bill has now been amended to the point of being moot. It no longer seeks to define “indecent exposure” in the context of a person designated at birth as a member of one gender using a bathroom (or “rest room, locker room, dressing room, or shower”) reserved for members of another gender.

JB

Antonio Parkinson

In fact, an amendment added to the bill (HB1151/SB2097), before scheduled deliberations on it on Tuesday in both House and Senate committees, stripped it of any reference to genders at all. The bill now merely names the aforementioned venues as places where indecent exposure can occur and be properly penalized.

This development underscored previous objections to the bill in the House by Representative Antonio Parkinson (D-Memphis), who pointed out in debate that, inasmuch as indecent exposure was illegal everywhere, therefore any and all spaces and places — even, as he put it, a hallway, a janitor’s closet, or the speaker’s chamber — could as easily be named as off limits.

The bill was scheduled for hearing in House Judiciary last Tuesday but was held over until the committee’s Wednesday session by committee chairman Michael Curcio (R-Dickson) on grounds that the Tuesday morning session’s hour-long time limit did not permit proper discussion.

Representative Karen Camper (D-Memphis), the House minority leader, protested that the postponement was unfair to the Rev. Alaina Cobb, a transgender herself, who had traveled all the way from her home in Chattanooga in order to oppose the bill.

Cobb would have that opportunity in the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, which met later Tuesday and heard the bill as its first order of business. To the surprise of some attendees, who were unaware of the new amendment transforming the nature of the bill, the bill passed unanimously on an 8-0 vote and has now been referred to the Senate Calendar Committee, one step away from floor action. The House Judiciary Committee followed suit a day later after Senate Judiciary action.

Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project, which had opposed the bill as discriminatory, professed himself as unconcerned about the bill in its amended form, though he wondered aloud, perhaps with tongue in cheek, if the new genderless version might open the way to charges of same-sex indecent exposure in sports teams’ locker rooms.