Tag: Patrice Robinson

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TVA Board Still Has No Memphis Members

Tennessee Valley Authority offices in Knoxville. (Photo: TVA)

More than 11 months since she was nominated to become the only Black member of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) Board of Directors, Memphian Patrice Robinson is still waiting to take her seat. The nomination awaits approval from the Senate Environment and Public Works committee.

Robinson, a former Memphis City Council member, was nominated by President Joe Biden to the nine-member TVA board on September 11, 2023. She has yet to be confirmed. In fact, she has not even had a confirmation hearing, and it doesn’t look like one will be scheduled any time soon.

Patrice Robinson
Patrice Robinson

“I am still waiting to be confirmed by the Senate. This has just not been a priority,” Robinson said. “It has been a little nerve-wracking, but I am not there yet.”

Currently, eight people are seated on the nine-member board. All are white. None are from West Tennessee.

A federally owned utility company, TVA supplies electricity to parts of seven states. It is the exclusive supplier of electricity to Memphis. As TVA’s single largest power customer, city-owned Memphis Light, Gas & Water (MLGW) pays $1 billion a year for electricity. Yet the city has not had anyone on the TVA board since John Ryder, a Memphis attorney and former general counsel for the Republican National Committee, who died in May 2022, just months after leaving the board.

That is unacceptable, said state Rep. Justin J. Pearson.

“It is imperative that we get representation on the TVA board,” said Pearson (D-Memphis), a frequent critic of TVA. “We provide a significant amount of revenue for TVA. And we in Memphis have the greatest energy burden for any place in the country. We are spending a lot of our money on energy. Our voice is critically important.”

When contacted July 25 about the status of Robinson’s approval, a spokesperson for the the Senate Environment and Public Works committee offered a one-line email response: “The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee has yet to schedule further consideration of Patrice Robinson’s nomination.”

Gridlock on Congressional confirmations is nothing new and not unique to Robinson’s appointment. On July 30 at a U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration hearing, an official with the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service urged Congress to streamline the process of approving presidential appointments, which she said hurts local communities and even threatens national security.

“The work required to select, nominate, and vote on presidential appointees is longer, more complicated, and more uncertain,” testified Jenny Mattingly of Partnership for Public Service in a written statement. “Many positions remain vacant for months or even years; some never will be filled.”

Previous appointments to the TVA board have also waited long periods before getting confirmed. Current board member Beth Geer of Brentwood, who works as the chief of staff for former vice president Al Gore, and two others, were first nominated in spring of 2021 but waited until December of 2022 to be approved.

Biden’s 2021 TVA board nominations included Kim Caudle Lewis, an African-American businesswoman from Huntsville, Alabama, but she withdrew to make an unsuccessful run for the Alabama state senate.

Robinson, 68, completed her two terms on the Memphis City Council in December, where she served as the council’s liaison to MLGW. She also spent 17 years as a supervisor with MLGW. The TVA board position became vacant in January with the retirement of former TVA board chairman Bill Kilbride of Chattanooga.

At the time of her nomination, U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) praised Robinson as the ideal person to represent Memphis and West Tennessee on the TVA board.

“Patrice Robinson has a lifetime of experience in utility management and public service and is the ideal candidate for the TVA Board. I am happy to see a Memphian again appointed to the board,” Cohen said in a statement.

Robinson said she has talked to a representative of the Senate committee, but she is right now “in a holding pattern.”

Four of TVA’s current eight board members are from Tennessee. But none of those four live anywhere close to Memphis (Nashville, Brentwood, Chattanooga and Johnson City). The others are from Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia and Kentucky.

Scott Brooks, TVA representative, said TVA has no influence on who is nominated nor confirmed for its board. The board has met twice since January, being one member short for each of those meetings. The board meets again on August 22 in Florence, Alabama.

Memphis has had previous TVA board members in addition to Ryder. Cohen’s office reported that Robinson would follow in the footsteps of these Memphians who previously served on the TVA board: Ron Walter, V. Lynn Evans, and Bishop William Graves.

Pearson suggested that public pressure could help get Robinson’s nomination confirmed, as it has worked in the past when Congressional confirmations have been delayed. Pearson has been highly critical of TVA’s pursuit of fossil-fuel generating plants at the expense of green energy such as wind and solar power.

“It makes no sense that we have no representation on the TVA board,” Pearson said. “We need someone to help elevate our issues. And to speak out against the horrible direction that the TVA is going.”

Robinson declined to comment on whether Memphis and West Tennessee citizens should be concerned that such an important component of the area’s energy supply has no representation. She said she would prefer to focus on her credentials for the job.

“I do believe I would represent West Tennessee and our community well. I have a utility background and a political background, and I cannot think of a better candidate,” Robinson said.

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Politics Beat Blog

Mulroy Alleges Blacks Under-Represented in Shelby D.A.’s Office

Mulroy with supporters at Thursday press conference

“Racial equity” in the D.A. ‘s office was the subject of a press conference held by Democratic candidate Steve Mulroy outside the Shelby County office building Tuesday afternoon, and he got boosting on the point from three key supporters, two of them African-American notables.

Flanked by the Reverend LaSimba Gray and Memphis City Council members Patrice Robinson and Jeff Warren, Mulroy cited figures which, he said, showed that, under incumbent Republican D.A. Amy Weirich,  “we have a district attorney’s office that is 90 percent white, roughly in attorneys, and 90 percent white in supervising attorneys. This is unacceptable. It has been unacceptable for years, and it needs to change.”

Mulroy added, “African Americans in Shelby County are disproportionately the victims of violent crime. And they’re disproportionately the victims of systemic discrimination in our criminal justice system. Therefore, it’s especially important that we have diversity among the actual prosecutors that make the charging decisions.”

Backing up Mulroy, Robinson said, “It is so important to know that you are represented by your community in a like manner. What he’s saying to us today is that currently, we do not have the representation for African-American people in the district attorney’s office, in that most of the people who are being prosecuted don’t have people to represent them ….”

Said Warren: “ I had no idea those numbers were as dramatic. And I think I am certain that Steve Mulroy will make the changes necessary to make our district attorney office look much more like our city in general, like it should.”

Rev. Gray, who in the past has made a point of backing African Americans in primaries where both blacks and whites were candidates, explained why he was supporting Mulroy against two African-American opponents in the Democratic primary:”Obviously, he’s a better candidate. See, in this race, you’re talking about experience. You got some running with no prosecutorial experience. And they are saying that all around the campaign trail.” 

Asked about an accusation by state Senator Raumesh Akbari, in a TV campaign commercial, that Weirich’s office was practicing “racial profiling,” Mulroy  said, “In a 30-second commercial, that was shorthand for the fact that we have disproportionate charging of African Americans, disproportionate treatment of African Americans with respect to pretrial detention, with respect to adult transfer from juvenile court to criminal court, with respect to sentences that are meted out.”

Mulroy contrasted the amount of blacks participating in the Shelby D.A.’s office with the number of those in the D.A.’s office of Davidson County  (Nashville), which has far fewer African Americans in its population. “I can tell you the raw number of African-American attorneys, not just the percentage, but the raw absolute number is higher in Davidson County, even though their total attorney complement is 75 compared to our 115.” 

Responding to the Mulroy press conference, Weirich issued this statement:

“The data Professor Mulroy provided is not accurate but that’s not surprising since his entire campaign is based on false data and dangerous ideas like releasing more criminals from jail.  The percentage is 31 and I have 223 employees – not 148 as he stated. 

“As the first female District Attorney in Shelby County, I have worked hard to hire people who best reflect the community and I’m proud to have increased the percentage of minorities in the office since I was elected.  More minorities hold supervisory positions than any other time in the history of our office.  It is indeed hypocritical that Professor Mulroy, a white male who chose to run against three women, is  making diversity his platform. Electing him alone sends a disturbing message that women shouldn’t be in leadership roles.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Wish Lists

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

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

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

Jackson Baker

House Speaker Cameron Sexton

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Politics Politics Feature

Chism Backs Strickland for Mayor

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Adherents of City Councilman Jim Strickland‘s campaign for mayor are certainly pleased with their guy’s ability to go fund-raising dollar-for-dollar against incumbent Mayor A C Wharton (both candidates having reported $300,000-plus in their first-quarter disclosures). And they’re counting on a good showing for Strickland in both the Poplar Corridor and Cordova, where his message of public safety and budgetary austerity resonate.

But those predominantly white areas of Memphis (to call them by their right name) are probably not enough, all by themselves, to get Strickland over, especially since Wharton has his own residual strength in the corridor and with the city’s business community, where the mayor can hope to at least break even.

There is also the mayor’s advantage in being able to command free media on a plethora of governmental and ceremonial occasions.

Yes, it’s probably true that A C’s support in predominantly African-American precincts ain’t what it used to be, and it never was what you would call dominating, not this year with all the well-publicized cuts in city services. And not with Mike Williams working the African-American community, along with Whitehaven Councilman Harold Collins and Justin Ford, and with the Rev. Kenneth Whalum ready to grab off a huge chunk of that vote, should he make what is at this point an expected entry into the mayoral field.

Still, Strickland needs to grab a share of the black vote to have a chance to get elected. Where does he get it? Well, he’s attending African-American churches on Sunday, one of the well-worn pathways in local politics. So that will help. But probably not as much as the endorsement he got last Saturday at the annual Sidney Chism Community Picnic on Horn Lake Road from the impresario of that event. Longtime political broker Chism early on announced his support of Strickland from the stage of the sprawling picnic grounds.

Time may have tarnished Chism’s reputation a bit, as it did his longtime ally, former Mayor Willie Herenton (an attendee at the picnic), but the former Teamster leader, Democratic Party chairman, state senator, and county commissioner still has enough influence to have basically put Randa Spears over as Shelby County Democratic chair earlier this year. And he may have enough to give Strickland that extra boost he needs to be fully competitive. We’ll see.

Chism, as it happens, is mired in a couple of controversies at the moment. His employment as a “media specialist” by Sheriff Bill Oldham is regarded with suspicion as a political quid pro quo and pension-inflater by several Republican members of the Shelby County Commission, who at budget-crunch time are making an issue of it, along with an Oldham-provided job for former Shelby County Preparedness director Bob Nations.

And Chism may have reignited another long-smoldering situation when he used the bully pulpit of his picnic to attack an intramural Democratic Party foe, Del Gill, who was runner-up to Spears in the party chairmanship contest. Chism did so at first indirectly, on the front end of the event, while he was acknowledging from the stage the presence in the crowd of party chair Spears.

“She’s been catching a whole lot of flak from one crazy person, but I hope y’all put him out of this city, and he’ll be all right.” Chism chose to be more explicit when he returned to the stage after a series of candidates in the city election had made their public remarks.

“I said something earlier,” Chism said. “I said there was somebody who needed running out of town, and that person, I didn’t call his name, but that person is Del Gill. … He ain’t worth two cents. … He’s been lyin’ on me for 10 years He won’t show up and do it to my face, but he lies all the time.”

In a widely circulated email response, Gill returned fire, reminding his readers that he had taken the lead in having Chism censured by the local Democratic Party executive committee in 2014 for allegedly attempting to subvert the sheriff’s campaign of Democratic nominee Bennie Cobb in favor of Republican Oldham.

Chism used his attack on Gill as a platform from which to launch his recipe for Democratic success at the polls: “We’re not going to win any elections in Shelby County until we get into the mindset that we’ve got to get in the middle. If we get in the middle, we can elect Democrats, qualified Democrats.

“I didn’t say you’ve got to be a super-intelligent magna cum laude educated person. I’m saying you ought to be smart enough to know that the people in this country are in the middle.” He urged his listeners to “vote for the right person, and he ain’t got to look like me; just act like me.”

Actually, the two Chism battlefronts — his employment battle with GOP county commissioners and the Democratic Party fireworks — are connected. Such commission critics of Chism as Heidi Shafer and David Reaves, both Republicans, have made pointed remarks in private about what they claim was Chism’s disservice to fellow Commissioner Reginald Milton, a Democrat, in intervening against Milton’s own bid for party chairmanship. And Milton, perhaps unsurprisingly, has expressed his own skepticism about the sheriff’s budget requests.

Shafer and Reaves, along with GOP Commissioner Terry Roland, are also suspicious that Oldham’s wish to have Chism (and other Chism associates) aboard is related to a potential 2018 campaign by Oldham for county mayor, an office for which Roland, for one, has essentially already announced.

Oldham has been mum on the subject of his future political intentions, if any, but it is a fact that the progression from sheriff to county mayor has been made already by several predecessors — Roy “Skip” Nixon, Bill Morris, and current County Mayor Mark Luttrell.

Random notes: The newly elected president of the Shelby County Young Democrats is Alvin Crook, who made something of a stir last year when, in the course of a public debate, he formally endorsed Van Turner, his Democratic primary opponent for a county commission seat.

Crook, who is employed as a courtroom bailiff, says his group will be making endorsements in the city election this year.

Other new Young Democrat officers: Regina Beale, first vice president; Jim Kyle Jr., 2nd vice president; Matt Pitts, treasurer; Rebekah Hart, secretary; and Justin Askew, parliamentarian.

• Two Shelby Countians, state Senator Mark Norris and attorney Al Harvey, were among three Tennesseans who were invited guests of British royalty at Monday’s ceremony in Runnymede, England, commemorating the 800th anniversary of the signing of Magna Carta there.

Norris was invited in his capacity as immediate past chairman of the Council of State Governments; Harvey, along with General Sessions Judge Lee Bussart Bowles of Marshall County, represented the American Bar Association.

A sure sign that the city election season is heating up: On Thursday, June 18th, from 5 to 7 p.m., Patrice Robinson, a candidate for city council, District 3, and Mary Wilder, candidate for the council’s District 5, will be holding simultaneous fund-raisers in different parts of town.

Overlapping events of this sort, still uncommon, will at a certain point in the election cycle, become routine.

• In its latest issue, the Tennessee Journal of Nashville takes note of the Tennessee Republican Party’s concerted “Red to the Roots” campaign directed at capturing as many of the state’s county assessor positions as possible next year.

The newsletter also notes that Shelby County Assessor Cheyenne Johnson, a Democrat, will be exempt from the purge attempt, having already won reelection to a four-year term in 2014. Johnson’s being on a different cycle from other state assessors is a consequence of the county commission’s consolidating all county offices into a common election cycle via 2008 revisions to the county charter.

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Politics Politics Feature

Henri Brooks and Joe Brown: Beyond the Storm

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

If, for partisans of the Shelby County Democratic Party, the period just before the current month got under way was the calm before the storm, what has happened since has been the storm.

Believe it or not, there are several Democratic candidates on the county general election ballot — including Deidre Malone, the party’s candidate for Shelby county mayor, who is running an intelligent, well-conceived campaign involving several ad hoc support groups; and Cheyenne Johnson, the incumbent Shelby County assessor, who is widely regarded as having served effectively, and who proved her appeal to a general public with an impressive reelection win just two years ago.

But two other Democrats on the ballot have monopolized all the attention of late, effectively drawing it away from Malone, Johnson, and other Democratic nominees. Worse, most of the publicity attracted by those candidates — Henri Brooks, candidate for Juvenile Court clerk, and Joe Brown, candidate for district attorney general — has been negative.

To be sure, both Brooks and Brown have seen a closing of the ranks behind them of core supporters — backers of Brooks, especially, have been active, filling the County Commission’s interim meeting room on Monday, making it S.R.O. for yet another showdown on her residential status — but general elections in Shelby County are not won solely on the basis of partisan support.

And both Brooks and Brown seem to have burned more bridges than they have built to swing voters, despite what had initially seemed good prospects for expanding their bases.

Brooks, a term-limited county commissioner, began the election year on a wave of relative acclaim, having almost single-handedly forced the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate conditions at Juvenile Court and subsequently to mandate reforms in the court’s procedure. Really, all Brooks had to do to sustain good election chances was to make nice in the way of most candidates, doing at least minimal outreach beyond her African-American inner-city constituency.

Instead, she managed to alienate considerable numbers of white and Hispanic voters in the course of a stormy commission debate about minority contracting on county construction projects (one in which her rhetoric undercut the tenable logic of her case); incurred a misdemeanor assault charge in a needless wrangle over a parking-lot space; and, finally, was discovered not to be inhabiting her listed residence, leading to serious efforts by fellow commissioners to declare her ineligible to serve and to vacate her seat.

Brooks has so far come out ahead in a series of skirmishes on the residential matter. She won a declaratory judgment last week from Chancellor Kenny Armstrong invalidating County Attorney Marcy Ingram’s finding that Brooks’ seat should be vacated. Armstrong ruled that only the commission could make such a finding.

And when the commission took up the matter on Monday, in the aforementioned jam-packed meeting room, no agreement on going forward could be reached by Brooks’ 12 colleagues. After a lengthy and contentious session, the commission concurred on a resolution to meet again on a still undefined date later this month, but there was a general consensus, at least privately, that Brooks would be able to run out the clock — on the basis of her attorneys’ appeals, if by no other means — and will be able to finish her term of office.

But that tactical victory, and the ongoing fuss about Brooks, could turn out to be Pyrrhic for her election chances.

As for Judge Joe Brown (as the former Criminal Court judge was billed during the 15 years of his nationally syndicated TV arbitration show), the aura of de facto ticket booster that his celebrity had initially gained him had already sagged due to an extended period of inactivity during May and June.

Brown had let it be known that, as of July 1st, things would be different. And he was right about that, if wildly wrong about which direction the difference would take. Speaking to a group of supporters last week, he responded grumpily to a TV station’s prodding him about the deleterious effect of an ongoing divorce on his surprisingly scanty campaign finances.

A supporter filmed and posted online Brown’s angry, rambling suggestion that the media should turn its attention instead to the matter of what he called the “down low” sexuality of his opponent, incumbent District Attorney General Amy Weirich, whose lifestyle is regarded as that of a conventional wife and mother. 

Brown’s unsubstantiated remarks generated a predictable and virtually universal outrage, but he declined to disavow them, calling himself an “entertainer” running for office.

Doubtful as it is that swing voters will be amused, they were “summoned” by the newly visible Brown to a meet-and-greet this Wednesday night at the Central Train Station on Main.

• Interestingly enough, County Commissioner Justin Ford was scheduled to be the host for another meet-and-greet on Wednesday — this one for aunt Ophelia Ford‘s reelection campaign in state Senate District 29. 

It will be remembered that Commissioner Ford won his primary race in the new Commission District 9 in something of a stealth manner against two highly active opponents, former school board member Patrice Robinson and Memphis Education Association President Keith Williams. During most of the spring primary campaign, there was talk in both of those two campaigns that the race was between the two of them, that Ford had been redistricted away from his main source of support in the South Memphis environs of N. J. Ford Funeral Home, and so forth.

When votes were counted on the evening of May 6th, however, it was Justin Ford who came out ahead, having put on something of a late rush and, perhaps as importantly, riding the residual cachet that belongs to the Ford name.

Reports of a decline in the Ford political dynasty have been somewhat exaggerated. Take a look: There is a Ford on the County Commission, another (Edmund Ford) on the City Council, and, however battered by bad publicity, adverse revelations about her attendance (more of which is likely to come) and doubts about her competence, Ophelia has so far managed to remain in the state Senate.

There is no doubt that City Councilman Lee Harris, is running a smart, vigorous, and apparently well-supported and financed campaign to unseat Senator Ford, and he has the further advantage of the free media that comes from being in the public eye as a highly active member of the council.

But there is a rule of thumb about incumbents having the edge in three-way races, and the fact is that the Democratic primary race in state Senate District 29 is a three-way — a four-way, really, inasmuch as Ricky Dixon and Herman Sawyer are on the ballot along with Ford and Harris.

Either Dixon or Sawyer could siphon anti-incumbent votes away from challenger Harris, but Dixon is a threat in his own right. Brother of former state Senator Roscoe Dixon, also a Tennessee Waltz figure, candidate Dixon has run before, most recently as the Democratic nominee in 2010 for Circuit Court clerk, netting 44 percent of the votes in that race.

What happens in the remaining month or so before election day on August 7th will be crucial. If Harris can translate his endorsements and campaign appearances into visible evidence of support during early voting, which begins on Friday, July 18th, he could be on his way to a new political venue.

If so, Harris will have accomplished something not yet done by anybody — defeating a Ford for reelection. Even with someone so visibly tarnished as Ophelia Ford, that might not be so easy.