Tag: Myron Lowery

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Myron Lowery for City Council (Again)?

CREDIT: JB

JB

FATHER-SON COMBO: Once and possibly future City Councilman Myron Lowery (l) with current County Commissioner Mickell Lowery, his son, at the Lowerys’ annual New Year’s prayer breakfast.

The Memphis City Council took some serious licks Tuesday at the annual New Year’s prayer breakfast, presided over for a quarter-century by former Councilman Myron Lowery, and this year, by County Commissioner Mickell Lowery, his son.

The upshot was that several of the event’s principal speakers — 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, and finally former Councilman Lowery himself — expressed some of the negative views that have been circulating in the community at large during weeks of gridlock over the appointment of new council members, following months of other questionable actions by the council.

Part of the fallout was the suggestion by the senior Lowery at the event’s conclusion that he had given thought to putting his name up for appointment to the “fractured” council, now three members short. Lowry went on to say he had discarded the idea, but added, as a parting tease: “I am giving consideration perhaps to another run this year.”

Earlier, Cohen had included a dig at the council amid kudos for County Mayor Harris and members of the Shelby County Commission in attendance: “The county commission seems to be doing a little better than the city council,” the Congressman said.

When it came his time to speak, Harris extolled both Lowerys for their service and quipped, “Some of y’all remember when we had a city council in Memphis.”

All of which led to the piece de resistance, Myron Lowery’s floated idea of another council run.
[jump]

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Politics Politics Feature

Herenton and Cohen: Still at It

Neither current Memphis Congressman Steve Cohen nor former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton have any intention of hanging it up. 

Those two realities, each with significant bearing on the coming year and beyond, were made evident on the last day of calendar year 2016 when the two familiar public figures each addressed separate public prayer breakfasts. Both made some possible waves with their remarks.

Herenton was the guest key-noter at the first New Year’s prayer breakfast held by Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland at the Guest House at Graceland. Though his speech conformed in general to the theme of citizen volunteerism enunciated by Strickland at the event, the former mayor’s most widely noted statements had to do with what he saw as the imperative of the city’s African-American community to improve its circumstances, not by appealing for help from others but through action of its own.

Or, as Herenton, who served from 1992 to 2009 as the city’s first elected black chief executive, put it: “No one can help us if we don’t help ourselves. It’s up to us, to protect us from us.” That was his preamble to a series of statements about urban crime that were bound to be received either as a provocation or as a challenge, depending on the attitude of the listener.

With the fact of a dramatic rise in the Memphis homicide rate serving as the background of his remarks, Herenton made a point of focusing on “black male youth” and “black-on-black crime” and laid a major portion of the burden for addressing the problem on the affected population itself. 

“The people who are shooting, they aren’t riding deep in Germantown and Collierville,” he said. “They’re riding in Orange Mound. They are riding in Binghamton. They are riding in Frayser.”

The public entities normally charged with dealing with crime were “floundering,” said Herenton, who, without mentioning names, cited the offices of the sheriff and the Juvenile Court judge, as well as the Memphis/Shelby County Crime Commission. He went on: “I’ve had some people tell me the answer to this city’s problems would be if we had an African-American mayor. The critics used to say the same things about me. I was the first black mayor, and people would say we need a white mayor. I don’t care what color the mayor is. All I want is a good mayor.”

To the end of enabling Strickland to become just that, Herenton called for 10,000 African-American men to volunteer as mentors for black youth. “They need to help this mayor with blight, tutoring, after-school programs, the Boy Scouts — all kinds of things.” Herenton referred to such a collective effort as constituting a “new path,” a term he also uses to describe his ongoing proposal for model charter-school dormitories in Shelby County for youthful offenders.

• Cohen’s remarks, made some miles away at the Holiday Inn Select on Democrat Road, were the highlight of former City Councilman Myron Lowery‘s annual prayer breakfast.

An advance news release from the Congressman’s office had served as a teaser for the event, promising “a major announcement … regarding his future in the United States Congress.” 

That both addressed existing reports of Cohen’s possible exit from public life and gave them further fuel, but toward the end of his remarks at the breakfast, the Congressman decisively dismissed the prospect.

“There have been some rumors around that I was going to retire,” Cohen said. These, he said, waggishly, citing statesman/financier Bernard Baruch as the author of remarks normally attributed to Mark Twain, had been “greatly exaggerated.” 

Cohen declared categorically: “We’ll be here in 2018, and we’ll be here in 2020. I plan to run for reelection.” He declared he was a better Congressional server today than ever before and said, “I’ll do it as long as you want me to do it.”

The Congressman disclaimed yet another rumor, that he intended a future run for the Senate. “It’s cool to be in the United States Senate,” he said, “[but] this state is red.” Noting his first abortive race for Congress in 1996, when he was defeated by Harold Ford Jr., as well as one for Governor in 1994, Cohen said, “I’ve tilted at windmills before. … I’m not running for another office the rest of my life that I can’t win.”

Vowing always to “speak truth to power,” Cohen warned of imminent dangers to the Affordable Care Act, public education, and the environment resulting from the combination of a Donald Trump presidency and a GOP-dominated Congress.

Cohen said the forthcoming Trump administration has sold out to “Exxon and Russia,” a fact presumably signaled both by Trump’s choice of the giant oil company’s CEO Rex W. Tillerson as secretary of state and by the president-elect’s non-stop flattery of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Noting the Russian government’s dependence on international oil sales, Cohen said, “All they want is to drill the Arctic.”

As for Trump, Cohen said he did not trust “this presidency not to use the IRS or the FBI” as tools against dissenting citizens, and he warned, “When an individual becomes the power and not the country — like Benito Mussolini — that’s fascism.”

In an apparent reference to Congressional Republicans’ intent to have the Constitution read aloud, Cohen said, “I hope when they read the impeachment clause, they understand it.”

Though most of his remarks concerned issues of domestic import, the Congressman made a point of stressing the importance of a “peaceful solution in the Middle East.” Referring to renewed controversy over Israeli settlements on the occupied West Bank, Cohen said, “What the Israelis are doing now is wrong. … We need peace there. Israel needs peace.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Second Efforts

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The de-annexation bill that was temporarily stalled in the state Senate on Monday of this week was, as this week’s Flyer cover story (p. 14) documents, the subject of concerted resistance activity on the part of Memphis legislators, city council members, and representatives of the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce.

Many of the same legislators were part of another never-say-die effort, this one mounted by the House Democratic Caucus, which got behind an effort by House Democratic leader Craig Fitzhugh (D-Ripley) to enable a non-binding resolution for a statewide referendum on Governor Bill Haslam‘s moribund Insure Tennessee proposal.

That proposal, which would have allowed some $1.5 billion in federal funds annually to further Medicaid expansion in Tennesee, has been so far bottled up by the Republican super-majority in the General Assembly. And Fitzhugh’s resolution itself was routed off to the limbo of legislative “summer study” as a result of a procedural gambit employed by Representative Jeremy Durham (R-Franklin), who was formally ousted from his House leadership positions recently because of allegations involving improper activities involving interns and female staffers.

Memphis representatives Joe Towns, Larry Miller, and G.A. Hardaway were among those speaking on behalf of reactivating Insure Tennessee legislation at a press conference last week in Legislative Plaza.

 

• Ninth District Congressman Steve Cohen began the week as a part of the entourage that accompanied President Obama on his history-making trip to Cuba, where the president furthered the official Cuba-U.S.A. relations he reopened last year.

The trip was the second one to Cuba for Cohen, who also was part of a delegation accompanying Secretary of State John Kerry to the Caribbean island nation in 2014. The Memphis congressman obviously went to some considerable effort to get himself involved with both missions. Why Cohen’s more than usual interest in the matter?

Well, first of all, the congressman has long advocated a normalizing of relations with Cuba, which became estranged from the United States during the height of the Cold War when Cuban ruler Fidel Castro instituted what he termed a communist revolution and cozied up to the Soviet Union, then a superpower antagonist to the U.S.

Cohen has favored rapprochement and an end to the still-active trade embargo on political and economic grounds, pointing out that the Cold War, at least in its original form, is long gone and that American enterprises, in Memphis as well as elsewhere, stand to prosper from improved relations between the two countries.

And there is the fact that, when Cohen was growing up, his family lived in Miami, the American city closest to Cuba and one containing a huge number of exiles from that nation.

But there’s more to it than that —as those Memphians know who were privy to an old AOL email address used by Cohen, one that employed a variant on the name of former White Sox baseball star Minnie Miñoso, who happened to hail from Cuba.

The backstory involving Cohen and Miñoso was uncovered this week for readers of the Miami Herald by reporter Patricia Mazzei in a sidebar on Obama’s trip to Cuba.

Mazzei related the essentials of a tale familiar to those Memphians who were readers of a Cohen profile that appeared in the Flyer‘s sister publication, Memphis magazine, in 2001. After noting that the young Cohen, who had always aspired to an athletic career himself, had been afflicted by polio at the age of 5, Mazzei goes to observe: “His parents, lifelong baseball fans, took young Steve, hobbled with crutches, to see Mom’s hometown Chicago White Sox at a Memphis exhibition game. Steve made his way near the field to plead for autographs.

“That’s when a pitcher, Tom Poholsky, handed him a real Major League baseball. It wasn’t from him, Poholsky told him. It was from an outfielder who couldn’t give the boy the ball himself because this was Memphis, in 1955, and the outfielder was black. The first black White Sox, in fact.

“His name: Minnie Miñoso. A native of Perico, Cuba.”

The young Cohen was struck by the fact that Miñoso, who for obvious reasons became something of a personal idol for him, had been so inhibited by restrictions that were part of an outmoded way of life, and his lifelong emotional attachment to the great Miñoso, who died only last year, ensued.

“I learned from Miñoso about civil rights, and I learned from Miñoso about Cuba, and I learned from Miñoso to be nice to kids,” Cohen said to Mazzei, who disclosed also that the congressman had toted a Miñoso-embossed White Sox baseball cap to Cuba on the Kerry trip with the aim of getting it to current Cuban president Raúl Castro.

He brought several more such caps with him to hand out here and there on the current presidential trip.

Jackson Baker

Roasted, toasted, and pleased about it all at a Democratic fund-raising “roaster” last Saturday honoring: (l to r, seated) Shelby County Commissioner Walter Bailey, former state Senator Beverly Marrero, and former City Councilman Myron Lowery. Standing is longtime former public official Michael Hooks, who applied the barbs to Bailey. The affair was held at the National Civil Rights Museum.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Another Year, Another Myron Lowery Prayer Breakfast

CREDIT: JB

JB

Myron Lowery says goodbye to attendees at this year’s prayer breakfast, his 25th.

Although there were some early fits and starts, as is the case with most politicians, the political career of Myron Lowery began, more or less, in 1991 — the same year as the epochal election of Willie Herenton as Memphis’ first black elected mayor. And it would seem to have ended on Friday, January 1, 2016, when the Super District 8, Position 3 City Council seat Lowery decided not to pursue again in last year’s city election was filled with the swearing-in of Martavius Jones.

That’s 24 consecutive years, a considerable run and a record for an African-American official in Memphis, and if son Mickell Lowery had prevailed, as expected, in his election contest with underdog Jones, a former School Board member, the seat might have remained in the family for yet another generation.

The senior Lowery had to have had that prospect in mind a year ago, when in his 24th consecutive “Myron Lowery Prayer Breakfast,” he looked on as son Mickell moderated the festivities at the airport Holiday Inn in his stead. Lowery’s first prayer breakfast had been held on January 1, 1992, the day that both he and Herenton, the guest of honor at the breakfast, had been sworn in.

On that first occasion (held at The Peabody), as on the 24th, the breakfast — a fundraiser whose proceeds would be shared out with various deserving local causes as the event evolved — attracted an overflow crowd of politically influential guests. Except for a brief spell, a decade or so back, when Herenton began holding his own New Year’s prayer breakfast, more or less in competition, the Lowery breakfast always had the city’s mayor — first Herenton and then A C Wharton —on hand, along with most other local politicians of any consequence.

The breakfast became, as they say, a tradition, often a news-making one, depending on the candor and intensity of the speeches by political figures, which were interspersed with musical selections from local choirs and celebrated church singers and with, well, prayers.

It was a tradition that could have been expected to continue for a while except for that hitch in the outcome of the 2015 election. Not only was Mickell Lowery, the projected host of future breakfasts, upset in his Council race, but his father had rolled the dice and lost in his support of the reelection of then incumbent Mayor A C Wharton.

It wasn’t just that Councilman Lowery had backed the loser in the mayoral race. He had done so in the most conspicuous — and, to eventual mayoral winner Jim Strickland, most offensive — way possible. At last year’s breakfast, Lowery had asked Strickland, his longtime Council mate, to stand, and, after beginning with praise of Strickland, then not only proceeded to confer his public endorsement on Wharton (whom Lowery himself had opposed in the special election of 2009) but basically called out Strickland, at some length, for what Lowery deemed a premature challenge.

Rather than stand and continue to listen as Lowery went on with remarks that may not have been intended as patronizing but certainly sounded that way, Strickland walked out of the room.

He wasn’t there for Friday’s breakfast, although, in a preliminary mailing sent out to advertise this year’s prayer breakfast, Lowery had mentioned Strickland as one of the dignitaries invited to speak. Such speaking as Strickland had in mind to do was apparently reserved for the new mayor’s own inauguration address later that morning at the Cannon Center.

Strickland’s counterpart, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell, was there Friday and spoke to a crowd that was still respectably sized, if obviously diminished from previous years. So was 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, the featured speaker, who — as he usually does — provided a few verbal sparks.

Cohen’s most newsworthy statement may have been his blast at the Shelby County grand jury that recently failed to return an indictment in the shooting death, at the hands of a Memphis police officer, of a black youth, Darrius Stewart. After ter
JB

Rep. Cohen

ming the grand jury’s inaction “a mystery’ and wondering out loud why no indictment was returned, Cohen said, “Police need to think twice before taking lives” and dilated on a reform bill he is sponsoring which calls for federal funding to investigate such cases and for handling them in jurisdictions other than the one in which they occur.

The congressman used the formula “3 C’s” to describe leading items on his wish list for the new session. Spelling them out, they were: “commutations,” which he wants to see more of from the federal government, especially in relation to drug convictions; “cannabis,” an increase in the liberalization of marijuana laws; and “Cuba,” the further flowering of the relationship, recently opened up by President Obama, between the United States and the island nation to our south.

Much of Cohen’s speech was given over to the theme of greater bi-partisan collaboration in Congress. He stressed the need for “collegiality and respect for [one’s] colleagues” and said that he himself was “getting better all the time” with regard to both “tools and relationships.”

On the national scene, Democrat Cohen stopped just short of congratulating the Republicans for their choice of Paul Ryan as House Speaker. On the local scene, he thanked Mayor Luttrell for being a partner in government and, while anticipating a good relationship with Mayor Strickland, made a point of expressing his appreciation for former Mayor Wharton, another absentee on Friday.

Mickell Lowery had opened up things Friday with a suggestion that the annual prayer breakfast might be continued, though in a scaled-down form. His father, when it came time to make final remarks, made a tentative effort at calling the roll of elected officials who were present, only to let that effort tail off when he realized that most of the Shelby County Commissioners, the group he started with, had already left the scene.

As for the future of the prayer breakfast, former Councilman Lowery put the question to those audience members who remained. “Should it be continued?” he asked. Most of those remaining applauded, in degrees ranging from the polite and perfunctory to the enthusiastic.

Presumably, we’ll find out next year.

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Politics Politics Feature

2015: A Year of Change in Memphis Politics

Sitting uneasily at the same table for the annual Myron Lowery prayer breakfast on January 1, 2015 were future antagonists Mayor A C Wharton (left) and Jim Strickland (in center). At far right is Council candidate Mickell Lowery, who would be upset in a Council race by underdog Martavius Jones.

The year 2015 began with a bizarre New Year’s Day event in which Memphis City Councilman Jim Strickland was asked to stand up by a reigning figure in city politics, whereupon said official, council chairman Myron Lowery, basically called Strickland out for his presumption in considering a race against incumbent Mayor A C Wharton.

The year will end with the selfsame Strickland preparing to stand on a stage on New Year’s Day 2016 and take the oath as mayor, while both Wharton and Lowery exit city government, and Mickell Lowery, the latter’s son, wonders what went wrong with his own failed bid to succeed his father on the council.

On the national stage, similar head-scratching must be going on at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport and in other establishmentarian councils where the old reliable form sheets seem to have gone suddenly and sadly out of date.

Everywhere, it would seem, the representatives and figureheads of things-as-usual are hearing variations on “You’re fired,” which is how it might be put by Donald Trump, the real estate billionaire and political eccentric whose out-of-nowhere surge to the top of the pack among Republican presidential contenders is one of the obvious indicators of the new mood.

One of the most trusted end-of-year polls of the GOP race had Trump at 42 percent and Jeb Bush at 3 percent. Less extremely, back in our own bailiwick, the formerly invincible Wharton, whose two earlier mayoral races netted him victory totals of 70 percent and 60 percent, finished his 2015 reelection effort with a woeful 22 percent of the vote, a full 20 points behind the victorious Strickland, in what was essentially a four-person race.

It takes no crystal ball or soothsaying skill to see that there was discontent against traditional management — again, what we call the establishment — in all the public places: locally, nationally, and even statewide. Governor Bill Haslam, a pleasant, well-intentioned man with a little sense and sensibility, was spurned by the leadership and rank-and-file of his own Republican Party in the General Assembly in Nashville. 

His prize proposal, a home-grown version of Medicaid (TennCare) expansion called Insure Tennessee, was just different enough from the semantically vulnerable Obamacare to pass muster with the state’s hospitals, medical professionals, and — according to polls — the Tennessee public at large. It was opposed by the GOP speakers of the two legislative chambers in both a special session in February and the regular session later on and kept thereby from ever getting a vote on the floor of either the House or the Senate.

As Haslam noted in a barnstorming expedition across the state later in the year, the state also had a serious need for upgrading of its roads, bridges, and infrastructure in general, but — once burned and twice shy from the rejection of Insure Tennessee — he dared not advocate a gasoline tax or any other specific plan to raise revenue for infrastructure purposes. He was reduced instead to voicing a hope at each of his stops that an aroused public itself would clamor for such remedies. No such luck.

Meanwhile, the once-dominant Democratic Party had become such a shell of its former self that it was powerless to suggest anything of its own legislatively or to oppose any initiative of the Republicans, who owned a super-majority — and a Tea Party-dominated one — in both houses.

What the Democrats could do, in Shelby County and statewide, was outfit themselves with new leaders. Mary Mancini, a veteran activist from Nashville, became the new state party chairman, while Randa Spears was elected in Memphis to head Shelby County Democratic Party and to impose overdue reform on what had been some serious mismanagement of the party’s finances.

The local Republican Party elected a female chair, too,  Mary Wagner, suggesting the existence of a trend and the possibility that, as confidence in the old order continued to erode, political folks were increasingly looking to the women in their ranks as a source of new leadership.

• City and county politics were crucially affected by budgetary matters during 2015. 

In the case of the city, austerity measures approved by both Mayor Wharton and a council majority — specifically pension reform and reduction of health benefits for city employees — would taint public confidence in city government and shape the resultant four-way mayoral race to the incumbent’s disadvantage.

Even such seeming talking points for the mayor as the new Electrolux and Mitsubishi plants failed to diminish local unemployment to the degree that had been expected.

Mayoral candidate Harold Collins was telling with his mockery of the $10-an-hour jobs for temps he said prevailed at both locations. Memphis Police Association president Mike Williams embodied resentment of lost benefits for first responders in his mayoral bid. 

And, most effectively, the aforementioned Strickland hammered away at a triad of issues — public safety, blight, and a need for more accountability on the part of public officials — that his polling suggested were winning themes among voters of all ethnicities and economic classes.

Some considered these mere housekeeping issues, but as poll-derived distillations of the Memphis electorate’s concerns about the here and now, they were evidently on point — enough so that Strickland, in many ways a generic white man, would eventually capture 25 percent of the city’s black vote, pulling his mathematical share against African-American candidates Wharton, Collins, and Williams.

On the council front, six new members were chosen in open races, and in each case it was the most business-friendly candidate who won. This was undeniably the case with candidates such as Philip Spinosa, a young FedEx executive who raised a prohibitive $200,000 in an at-large race, avoiding public forums with his five opponents or much public contact of any kind except for a forest of yard signs bearing his name along the major traffic arteries of central and East Memphis.

Another financially well-endowed council newcomer, Worth Morgan, advertised himself similarly, but was willing to confront the rest of his field — and in the runoff a well-regarded Republican activist — in open debate, where he held his own.

Along with Strickland’s nonstop emphasis on public safety, there was an abundance of pro-police rhetoric among the winners of city races. The question — one that achieved the level of irony — was how all this public empathy, short of restoring lost benefits, could arrest the ongoing fallout from the ranks. Some 200 to 300 cops had already responded to benefit cuts by going elsewhere.

The general sense of rebellion that, in one way or another, seemed to characterize the political scene in 2015 may have found its fullest fruition in Shelby County government, where, after enacting various expected rituals of partisan rivalry amongst themselves, the county comissioners began to mount a coordinated campaign as a body against the administration of county Mayor Mark Luttrell. This development was a direct outgrowth of the budget season, during which commissioners on both sides of the party line convinced themselves that they were being spoon-fed half-truths about money available for public purposes and at year’s end were attempting to assert their own authority as superceding that of the mayor.

As with so much else on the political landscape in 2015, the accustomed way was under challenge. The new year of 2016 will presumably have to come up with some answers.

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News The Fly-By

Update on Removal of Forrest Statue

CREDIT: Toby Sells

The Memphis City Council voted this week to remove the statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest from Health Sciences Park, even though the next steps to make that happen remain murky.

The proposal to remove the statue surfaced in June, part of a national movement to remove Confederate symbols after a white supremacist shot nine African Americans at a church in Charleston, South Carolina. 

Toby Sells

Confederate supporters at a rally on Saturday

The move also ratifies a 2013 resolution to rename Forrest Park to Health Sciences Park, Confederate Park to Memphis Park, and Jefferson Davis Park to Mississippi River Park. A separate but related proposal to move Forrest’s remains and those of his wife from the park and back to Elmwood Cemetery was approved by the council in early July.

Council chairman Myron Lowery sponsored the ordinance for the statue’s removal.

“It’s important because Memphis is not the same city it was in 1905, when the statue was put in place,” Lowery said. “It is wrong to honor a slave trader on public property in 2015.”

But Lee Millar, a leader of the local Sons of Confederate Veterans group, said Saturday he didn’t see it that way. He and about 100 others gathered around Forrest’s statue, hoisting, waving, and wearing Confederate flags, their conversations about Southern heritage and the council vote only interrupted by a bullhorn that sporadically belted out “Dixie.”

“We’ll be there Tuesday to let the council know they’re doing the wrong thing,” Millar said. “They don’t need to erase Memphis history.”

Millar said removing the statue is a “waste of time,” that it wouldn’t “solve a single problem with gangs and crime and all of that,” and that it would only “add to the division in Memphis.” Forrest was a “prominent Memphian,” Millar said, as a city council member and an executive in an insurance company and a railroad who “hired blacks and whites alike” to help “rebuild Memphis after the [Civil War].”

Allan Wade, the city council’s attorney, said last week that he was still working on a plan for the statue’s removal and would reveal the details to the council. An official in Memphis Mayor A C Wharton’s office said the city has had “several offers” for the statue, including a very public one from the mayor of Savannah, Tennessee, who told news outlets last month his city would pay for the statue and its relocation.

“But there is still a lengthy process that has to take place before the statue and graves can be removed from the public space,” said Dewanna Smith, a Wharton spokesperson. “At this point, it would be premature to respond to any offers.”

Relocating the graves will also be a lengthy process. The matter will be decided in Shelby County Chancery Court in a case between the city and Forrest’s descendants. Millar said he has located eight Forrest descendants in the area and that “every one of them is steadfastly against moving the statue or the grave.”

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Cover Feature News

Into The Sunset

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The once — and seemingly future — gravesite of General Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife is on a promontory at Elmwood Cemetery called Chapel Hill. Dominated at its apex by a statue of Jesus, the hill slopes down on its western side to a grassy area containing several graves adorned with the name “Forrest,” — four of them in a row belonging to his brothers, all of whom, according to the stones’ modest inscriptions, served as cavalry officers for the Confederate States of America. In front of these modest markers is a plain grassy area that appears vacant and undisturbed — but that is somewhat misleading, for this earth has been turned more than once, the last time, some 110 years ago, in 1905, so that General Forrest and his wife, Mary, could be disinterred and reburied a mile and a half north, under a splendid bronze statue of the general on horseback. And there it has remained, the centerpiece of an urban park named for a man who was regarded for many decades as a local hero of heroes: Nathan Bedford Forrest, whose military tactics are so highly regarded that they are taught at West Point, whose exploits were countless, and whose valor was marked by the many horses that were shot out from under him in battle.

Jackson Baker

The Forrests would occupy the space in front of the general’s brothers at Elmwood Cemetery.

A month ago, during the whiplash of worldwide revulsion that followed the gunning down in Charleston, South Carolina, of nine African Americans engaged in bible study by a delusional white youth who embraced Confederate imagery, the rebel battle flag began being hauled down from its official places everywhere, as a symbol of an idea whose time had not only come and gone but had clearly become toxic.

And, as Southerners, dazed and horrified by the tragedy like everyone else, looked closer at a venerated Confederate heritage they had long taken for granted, it began to dawn on many that the poison may always have been there. As they read the published manifestoes of the secessionist states, one after another of them proclaiming as their casus belli the need to defend white supremacy and the God-given right to subjugate blacks, the rhetoric of those forefathers could not be cleanly disentangled from the recent ravings of the lunatic Dylann Roof.

Nor could absolution from the legacy of this racial hubris be conferred on the persona of General Forrest — a slave trader before the war, a commander accused during the war of responsibility for the massacre of black Union troops trying to surrender at Fort Pillow, and the documented founder and first Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan after the war.

All this was hard to explain away, although the general’s defenders certainly tried, as the Memphis statue increasingly became a provocation — not only to the city’s African-American population, now a political majority, but to business interests and civic-minded folk who saw the official veneration of Forrest as an embarrassment and a hindrance to civic progress.

Mayor A C Wharton responded to the outrage in Charleston by calling for the expedited removal of the statue and gravesites from what was now called Health Sciences Park. It was the culmination of a process that had long been building.


• Anti-Confederate sentiment first flared in Memphis in earnest in 2005. The Forrest statue was directly assailed by a group of African-American dignitaries, including Shelby County Commissioner Walter Bailey and the Rev. LaSimba Gray, while the Center City Commission (now the Downtown Memphis Commission) petitioned the City Council to consider renaming not only Forrest Park but Jefferson Davis Park and Confederate Park downtown.

Influential businessman Karl Schledwitz, a trustee of the University of Tennessee, whose medical-school buildings surround the park property, made the first proposal for an outright removal of the statue and the return of the Forrests’ remains to Elmwood Cemetery. City Councilman Myron Lowery made a more modest suggestion to add a monument to Ida B. Wells and perhaps other heroic black figures and to give the park a different name.

Justin Fox Burks

Myron Lowery and youthful demonstrators at the general’s statue last week.

In the middle of all this ferment, the Rev. Al Sharpton came down to add his two cents. But then Mayor Willie Herenton held a news conference to denounce “outside agitators” and scotch what he considered the wild talk of name changes and tampering with monuments. The mayor did propose transferring maintenance of Forrest Park to UT, however, and, after all the fuss, that change was made.

Further defusing the situation had been advice from then state Senator Steve Cohen. Minutes of the climactic meeting of the Center City Commission in 2005 record Cohen’s position this way: “There have been things that have offended him as a minority, but he has learned to overcome those personal offenses and see things in a bigger light. … He asked for the board to reconsider this issue and not pass it forward, for it will do no good and will only do harm.”

In the end, the then Center City Commission’s resolution for name changes of the downtown parks, spearheaded by then chairman Rickey Peete and board member (later director) Paul Morris, was ignored by the council, as well as by the Chamber of Commerce, the Landmarks Commission, and the Convention & Visitors Bureau. Even Bailey would say, “I think we’re at a point where until such time as we see some concern by our city leaders, we have to continue to pause.”

An extended pause did ensue, during which, in 2009, over objections from Bailey, state Representative G.A. Hardaway, and others locally, Forrest Park was added to the National Register of Historic Places. That was something of a coup for N.B. Forrest Camp 215, the local unit of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which had submitted the nomination to the National Register and which had been assisting in routine maintenance of the park for years.


• Things had cooled off and settled into something of a détente between contending parties until 2011, when the Sons of Confederate Veterans, confident that the moment of danger had passed, arguably overplayed their hand.

Lee Millar, an officer of N.B. Forest Camp 215, had written a letter to Cindy Buchanan, then city parks director, proposing to place a new sign with the name “Forrest Park” on the Union Avenue side of the park. Millar had signed his letter, however, not as an officer of the Sons of Confederate Veterans but as chairman of the Shelby County Historical Commission, a post he held at the time.

Buchanan responded with a letter that said, in part, “We appreciate the commission’s offer to provide this important signage for one of the city’s historic parks. … The proposal to create a low monument style sign of Tennessee granite with the park name carved in the front was reviewed by park design staff and found to be appropriate in concept … similar to the monument style signage placed by the city at Overton Park.”

The letter directed Millar to meet with Mike Flowers, administrator of park planning and development, to follow through on the construction and installation of the sign. Copies of Buchanan’s letter were apparently sent to Flowers and then city CAO George Little.

That is as far as the process went, when N.B. Forrest Camp 215 (not the Shelby County Historical Commission), apparently acting on the strength of Buchanan’s letter and dispensing with the suggested further meeting with city officials, raised $9,000 — enough to pay for a large granite sign saying “FORREST PARK.”

The sign sat there for some weeks until its presence was brought to the attention of Little, who insisted that the sign was unauthorized — as, from his point of view, it was: no city permit having been issued.

Little had the sign removed early in 2013, and the simmering crisis was reignited. It was fired up even further when, amid a new groundswell for changing the names of the three Confederate-tinged downtown parks, two state legislators — state Representative Steve McDaniel of Parkers Crossroads and state Senator Bill Ketron of Murfreesboro — rushed into passage HB553, a bill declaring that “[n]o statue, monument, memorial, nameplate, or plaque which has been erected for, or named or dedicated in honor of …” [the bill then names a seemingly complete list of America’s wars, including the Civil War] “… located on public property, may be relocated, removed, altered, renamed, rededicated, or otherwise disturbed.”

The bill went even further, prohibiting name changes to any “statue, monument, memorial, nameplate, plaque, historic flag display, school, street, bridge, building, park preserve, or reserve which has been erected for, or named or dedicated in honor of, any historical military figure, historical military event, military organization, or military unit” on public property.

Though the bill created obstacles to altering the status of the general’s statue and the downtown parks and provided grounds for litigation that still exist, it also inflamed sentiment on the Memphis City Council, which saw this maneuver as an outright transgression by the legislature against local sovereignty. The council’s reaction was further stoked by counsel Allan Wade’s statement that McDaniel and Ketron had been acting on a suggestion by Millar.

Councilman Shea Flinn referred to “the ironic war of aggression from our northern neighbor in Nashville,” while Councilman Harold Collins said, “We will never let the legislature in Nashville control what we in Memphis will do for ourselves.”

Thereupon the council, hesitant to act in 2005, voted 10-0, with three abstentions, for name changes in three downtown parks: Forrest Park would become Health Sciences Park; Jefferson Davis Park would become Mississippi River Park; and Confederate Park was renamed Memphis Park.

And there matters stood until the awful events in Charlleston June 17th.


• Wharton’s demand for the removal of the statue and graves from what was now Health Sciences Park followed quickly upon the atrocity, and council chairman Lowery’s authorship of a resolution to return the remains to Elmwood and an ordinance to remove the statue was announced almost immediately afterward. Unlike the cases of 2005 and 2013, there was no hint of a contrary view on the council.

A quantum leap in consciousness had occurred in Memphis, as elsewhere. In South Carolina, Governor Nikki Haley and a suddenly compliant legislature agreed to lower the capitol’s ceremonial Confederate battle flag. In Mississippi, official action was begun to remove Confederate imagery from that state’s flag.

Justin Fox Burks

A protestor taunts a Forrest loyalist.

On July 7th, Lowery’s proposals were approved unanimously by the council.

The issue was spoken to succinctly on that Tuesday night by, of all people, Bill Boyd, the venerable survivor of the old white-tinted South Side who can, as he did that night, cite the fact that Marcus Winchester, the first Mayor of Memphis, was his great-grandfather, and who had offered words of praise for Forrest in the parks-naming debate of 2013. 

Defenders of Forrest, a handful of whom testified before the council, deny Forrest’s complicity in the massacre of surrendering black Union troops at Fort Pillow in 1864, and maintain that the general was not really the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Or that, if he was, it was not a viciously intended organization with racist terror at its core. Or that, if other sorts allowed it to become that, Forrest expeditiously dissociated himself from it. Or whatever.

Justin Fox Burks

Children wonder what all the fuss is about.

Boyd made allowance for all these attempted exculpations in his remarks, but, as he noted, they all ignored the one fact of Forrest’s life that was undeniable: that he made his living before the war as a slave trader. That was something Forrest did of his own free will, for personal gain, said Boyd. Slavery was the stain on him, it was the stain on the Confederacy, and there was no defending it. And that was why Boyd was willing to see the general’s statue and remains removed from a place of official honor in downtown Memphis.

And that is why city government and state government and regional and national sentiment, across ideological and party lines, are all moving so deliberately and definitively to distance themselves from the likes of General Forrest and the whole panoply of the Confederacy — that once vaunted “heritage” now seen as a cover for what had been racial despotism.


• Not everywhere and by everyone, however. As the fates would have it, General Forrest’s birthday celebration occurred on schedule this past Sunday, with a formidable and impressive display of Confederate colors and a large and devoted crowd of celebrants. The turnout dwarfed a modest demonstration of youthful anti-Forrest protesters held earlier in the week. Ironically, a proclamation in General Forrest’s honor from Governor Bill Haslam was read to the appreciative crowd. State law requires such a thing, Forrest’s birthday being one of six recognized state holidays. The governor, who has since advocated the removal of a bust of General Forrest from the state capitol, had penned the required accolade in early June, pre-Charleston.

The keynote speaker at Sunday’s celebration was one Ron Sydnor, an African American from Kentucky who serves as superintendent of Jefferson Davis State Historic Site there. He spent an hour providing biographical details about Davis, concluding with a story involving a congenial time spent together by the Confederate president and the “wizard of the saddle,” then a city alderman and, like Davis, involved in the insurance business in Memphis.

After Sydnor’s address, which was warmly applauded, came the ceremonial laying of wreaths at the base of the Forrest statue and a musket salute to the general by members of “the 17th Mississippi and 51st Tennessee Infantry, C.S.A.”

Jackson Baker

The general’s supporters at his birthday celebration Sunday.

But clearly, as they say, events are now in the saddle, despite the efforts of Forrest’s defenders, who have included esteemed deceased Memphis novelist/historian Shelby Foote, who in his monumental trilogy, The Civil War, lionized Forrest and discounted tales of his misconduct at Fort Pillow. If and when Nathan Bedford Forrest comes to rest again in his family plot at Elmwood Cemetery, he and his wife, Mary, will be reburied in their old vacated spot, immediately to the right of the graves of Foote and his wife.

The writer, as renowned a chronicler as Forrest was a warrior, was given his pick of sites at Elmwood, and this is the spot he chose.

That is one last tribute that, come what may, cannot be taken away from the general. 

Categories
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
News News Blog

City Delivers Check for $8 Million to Shelby County Schools

The city has made good on part of its agreement to pay Shelby County Schools (SCS) $41.8 million. On Friday, the city delivered its first check for $8 million to SCS. Memphis City Councilman Myron Lowery forwarded this image to the media Friday afternoon.

The payment stems from a 2008 dispute in which the school system alleged that the Memphis City Council trimmed its funding below what the state required.

The city will pay SCS $20 million more in $1.3 million payments over the next 15 years. The rest will be paid back through services. Memphis police services will be provided at schools until the end of the 2016 school year, which city officials value at $2 million.

Also, the city will spend no more than $3.8 million on educational facilities for the school system.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Lowery’s Breakfast Boner

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Regardless of how some current situations come out — Mayor A C Wharton‘s public endorsement of higher salaries for city employees or his “settlement” of the city’s debt to Shelby County Schools (SCS) or, for that matter, his early-bird announcement of IKEA’s coming to Memphis — Wharton’s credibility and his standing with his city council are at serious risk.

Beyond that, while all of the foregoing matters may have constituted an immediate political plus for the mayor as the 2015 city election season gets under way, his political situation could be gravely threatened if any or all of them go south.

The IKEA outcome, for better or for worse, would be shared with other public officials and with the city/county Economic Development Growth Engine (EDGE) board. And the chief impediments to what would appear to be a done deal are the valid questions of whether a) EDGE decides to engage in its first-ever payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) arrangement with a purely retail enterprise; and b) whether state guidelines permit as much. The odds are that “yes” is the answer to both questions.

Score one for the mayor, especially if the whole IKEA/H&M/Trader Joe’s new-business package pans out.

The other two circumstances are different: While there is at least a theoretical prospect of concurrence on the pay-raise matter by some council members, the majority are surely inclined to say no, especially in light of the well-known budget dilemma that caused such agonizing cuts in employee benefits in recent months. Not only does the mayor’s suggestion, made during his remarks at Councilman Myron Lowery‘s New Year’s Day prayer breakfast, not bear logical muster, it also seems to put the council, already bruised and tattered, on the spot one more time.

So, for that matter, has Wharton’s announcement last month of an agreement with SCS Superintendent Dorsey Hopson (and an eagerly compliant SCS board) of a $43 million payout in settlement of the city’s court-ordered liability of $57 million in maintenance-of-effort funding, owed from 2008. But sentiment is building on the council that Wharton did indeed undermine ongoing mediation efforts with SCS, as charged by Councilman Shea Flinn, who was involved in the mediation process.

Flinn and others promptly complained that Wharton’s arbitrary effort sacrificed what many on the council believe is a substantial financial counter-claim. And they pointedly reminded the mayor that, while he had authority over lawsuits involving the city, he would have to come to the council for approval of the financial package.

Even as this state of affairs was settling into focus, an unexpected disruption further jostled the equilibrium of the mayoral race. This one, like the mayor’s pay-raise suggestion, took place at Lowery’s New Year’s Day event at the Airport Hotel.

This was the 24th and latest version of the annual New Year’s Prayer Breakfasts, which Lowery began on January 1, 1992 (coincident with the inauguration of former Mayor Willie Herenton as the first elected black chief executive in Memphis history).

As is his annual wont, Lowery, this year’s council chairman-designate, was closing out the breakfast with some parting words, in the wake of speeches by other political figures — Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell and Wharton, and 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen — interspersed with songs, sermonettes, and prayers by various lay and clerical folks.

Lowery’s prayer breakfasts have often been occasions for collectively thinking out loud and taking stock regarding political directions, and even for the launching of useful initiatives by one or more of those taking part. The breakfasts are, in that sense, traditional events for the larger community, though let us be clear: They are fund-raising events, and there is definitely a self-serving side to them. 

Lowery told his council colleague and chairmanship predecessor Jim Strickland, who was getting ready to take his leave well before the end of the breakfast, not to go, that if he did he would miss some “nice things” Lowery had to say about him.

When the time came for Lowery to conclude the event, he did indeed have some compliments for Strickland, who had dutifully stayed around. In fact, Lowery made a point of asking his colleague, a persistent critic of Wharton whose hopes of running for the city’s premier office himself have been well known (and well underway) for years, to stand. 

“He’s done a great job as chairman during a very difficult year,” said Lowery, amid other words of praise. “I like him. He’s got the potential to be a future mayor of Memphis.” Hmmm, the crowd had to be wondering, what was coming? An endorsement? Even Strickland, who was reasonably sure that Lowery, himself a 2009 loser to Wharton, was committed to supporting the mayor’s reelection, found himself wondering.

After all: He’s got the potential to be a future mayor of Memphis. “But not just yet,” Lowery said, suddenly undercutting the premise he himself had raised. There is no way to describe what came next as anything other than setting his council colleague up for a fall. The mortified Strickland, still standing and the focus of everyone’s gaze, would surely see it that way.

“I have to be honest,” Lowery was saying. “I’m with the mayor. … He’s controversial. He may not do everything right all the time. But his heart’s in the right place, and he’s done a good job.”

Lowery then began, with Strickland still standing there, a full-fledged endorsement of Wharton: “I know a lot of people,” Lowery kept saying, and what else was this meant to be but the boast of a kingmaker?

Strickland, meanwhile, had had enough. Lowery was still going strong when his understandably offended colleague pointedly began to walk. Intercepted midway by a reporter on his passage out, Strickland shook his head and said, in amazement as much as in anger, “He asked me to stick around to hear that!”

Lowery now has an ambivalent status with his fellow council members. A highly chameleon-like figure, emotionally and issue-wise, he is politically ambidextrous enough to have positioned himself on the council as a conciliatory figure, a maker of compromises between factions and, for that matter, across the occasional racial divide. For that, and for his experience, gained from nearly six full council terms, he has been able to maintain a fair degree of confidence from his peers — enough to have earned repeated elections as council chair, most recently for the year to come.

But there is such a thing as, metaphorically, throwing your weight around, and Lowery’s New Year’s Day gaffe seemed to numerous colleagues and other onlookers to be just that. That was especially so at a time when Lowery has made known his hopes of promoting his son, Mickell Lowery, to succeed him on the council, perhaps as early as this year. For the record, the younger Lowery, a management consultant, shared moderating duties with his father at this year’s prayer breakfast and was arguably the abler and certainly the more discreet of the two.

That Lowery, at a time when at least two of his council colleagues, Strickland and Harold Collins, have openly nursed serious ambitions for mayor, publicly proclaimed his endorsement of Wharton’s reelection — at a putatively neutral “prayer breakfast” — was bizarre enough. That he did so while having contender Strickland stand at full attention was widely regarded as outrageous — no matter the praise he had heaped on his colleague (which seemed patronizing in the after-taste) and no matter the sorry-if-I-offended-you non-apology apology he reportedly made to Strickland later.

Though no one on the council has said much publicly, there is definite sentiment among Lowery’s colleagues to call him to account on his fidelity to a mayor who is increasingly in disfavor with the council (and whom, ironically, Lowery himself, then serving as interim mayor, opposed in the 2009 special election that followed Mayor Herenton’s retirement). There has even been an exploratory balloon or two regarding the prospect of reconsidering the chairmanship.

And, whatever his intent, the one definite result of Lowery’s New Year’s Day gaffe has been to make the prospects for contesting Wharton’s reelection more likely.