Tag: Paul Boyd

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Politics Politics Feature

After Kelsey

Brent Taylor exiting the SCEC (Credit: Jackson Baker)

One looks for potential shifts in political direction. One case where that is sure to happen is with state Senate District 31, whose seat-holder up to now has been Brian Kelsey, the erstwhile “Stunt Baby of Germantown,” who evolved from a prankster as minority member of the last Democratic-dominated House to a saboteur of the state constitution as a GOP senator in a supermajority Republican General Assembly, sponsoring an endless series of hyper-partisan constitutional amendments.

Though an engaging sort personally, Kelsey has been a take-no-prisoners type as a legislator, and his easy way with the machinations of the GOP’s extremist fringe was no doubt useful to him in a cutting-edge career that now, alas, has left him bleeding on the battlefield — indicted for campaign-finance violations and compelled to drop out of his re-election race while he prepares a legal defense.

Kelsey’s would-be successors in the Republican primary are wholly different types — all Republican regulars but all more at home in a bipartisan environment. That is certainly the case with Brent Taylor, who recently resigned as chairman of the Shelby County Election Commission and seeks state service as a way of crowning a career that has included significant stints on the Memphis City Council and Shelby County Commission.

Taylor, who once had an uncanny resemblance to the TV character Pee-wee Herman, has matured into a statesmanlike presence who had stabilizing roles as an elective politician and on the Election Commission. So far, Taylor, who recently sold off an extensive funeral-home business, is the only Republican who has actually filed for the Senate position. And he is said to have the support of U.S. senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty.

Paul Boyd, who served two terms as Probate Court clerk after winning election to that office in the Republican sweep year of 2010, has toiled dependably in the GOP’s ranks for decades and, as an African American, brings a bit of outreach to a party that, to mince no words, needs it.

Naser Fazlullah, an engaging and near-omnipresent figure among local Republicans, is a native of Bangladesh who has been in charge of the party’s outreach efforts overall. Well-liked and uncontroversial, he is likely to end up instead on the ballot for GOP state committeeman.

And there is Brandon Toney, a political newcomer without much of an established pedigree in GOP ranks.

Four years ago, Democrat Gabby Salinas came close to ousting Kelsey in a much-watched race. During her successful run for the Shelby County Democratic chairmanship last year, Salinas more or less committed to not being a candidate for elective office this year. But Ruby Powell-Dennis, who was a strong runner-up to Salinas in the 2020 Democratic primary for the House District 97 seat, has basically been running hard for the District 31 Senate seat for some time and must be reckoned with in a district with purplish tendencies.

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Politics Politics Feature

Signs of Political Life as Election Season Finally Kicks Off

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

At long last, and after months of inaction, it can probably be said that there’s an election season on. On the Republican side, GOP members of all stripes were on hand Sunday at a Germantown Parkway storefront that will serve as the party’s campaign headquarters for the duration of the 2020 election year.

Interestingly, the new party headquarters location is on the approximate geographic site — the same lot, it would seem — as the old, sprawling Homebuilders headquarters, razed to the ground some years ago but, in its prime, a complex that contained a generous-sized auditorium/arena area that long served as a meeting place for local GOPers, as well for civic clubs of various kinds.

Local Republican party chairman Chris Tutor, who, because of the resurgent coronavirus, insisted that all attendees wear face masks and do what they could to achieve some measure of social distancing, turned things over to keynote speaker David Kustoff, the 8th District congressman, who pointed out that one final Democrat-vs.-Republican contest loomed on the August 6th county general election ballot: the General Sessions Court clerk race between Republican Paul Boyd and Democrat Joe Brown.

That was something to unite upon, given that others in the crowd were running against each other for positions in the federal/state primary elections to be held on the same day.

In theory, Shelby County Democrats were on the move, too, organizing a series of “forums” involving their candidates for the state and federal primaries, and simultaneously recording for later broadcasting these events, some of them conducted at the old Hickory Ridge Mall.

Jackson Baker

Who was that (un)masked man? At Sunday’s opening of the Shelby County Republcan campaign headquarters on Germantown Parkway, everybody, in accordance with advance instructions, wore a face mask. There was one exception — the unidentified interloper at the very right side of this photo.

Jackson Baker

time for the U.S Senate seat being vacated by Lamar Alexander.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Biden’s Big Night, Joe Brown’s Surprise Win

It was a great night for Joe B. Who’d a’ thunk it?

Former Vice President Joe Biden

That sentiment applies not only to the results of the Democrats’ presidential primaries on Super Tuesday, in which former Vice President Joe Biden exceeded all expectations and took the lead away from Bernie Sanders. It also describes the out-of-nowhere victory of former city councilman Joe Brown in the Democratic Party primary for General Sessions Court clerk.

In both the national and the local case, the winner’s vote totals were out of all proportion to the campaigning done by the candidate. Biden famously won Massachusetts without spending a nickel there or having an office or any kind of gr

former Councilman Joe Brown

ound game. Joe Brown was conspicuously less visible than his major competitors in a highly populated race in which there were several other name candidates.

Meanwhile, former Probate Court clerk Paul Boyd won the four-way Republican primary for General Sessions clerk and will oppose Brown in a general election showdown in August.In his case, as in Brown’s, name identification played a large part in the outcome.

In the case of Biden, who handily won Tennessee (and Shelby County in the process), the astonishing revival of his previously moribund campaign in last weekend’s South Carolina primary, coupled with a wave of major endorsements from former primary opponents, propelled the ex-Veep into the enviable position that, only days ago, Sanders had been expected to achieve.

The final Shelby County totals:

In the Democratic presidential primary:

Michael Bennet 623
Joseph R. Biden 50,273
Michael R. Bloomberg 18,183
Cory Booker 311
Pete Buttigieg 1,747
Julián Castro 50
John K. Delaney 100
Tulsi Gabbard 229
Amy Klobuchar 1,123
Deval Patrick 54
Bernie Sanders 20,482
Tom Steyer 280
Elizabeth Warren 8,461
Marianne Williamson 28
Andrew Yang 127
Uncommitted 108

In the Democratic primary for General Sessions Court Clerk:

Gortria Banks 7,581
Rheunte E. Benson 1,239
Joe Brown 20,602
Tanya L. Cooper 6,139
A. Dailey-Evans 2,623
Deirdre V. Fisher 2,116
R. S. Ford Sr 3,852
Del Gill 940
Eddie Jones 10,627
Wanda Logan-Faulkner 8,568
Thomas Long 11,457
Reginald Milton 13,127
Tavia Tate 1,466
Write-In 45

In the Republican primary for clerk:

Paul C. Boyd 9,514
Michael Finney 2,949
George Summers 1,924
Lisa W. Wimberly 4,841
Write-In 80 MTK

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Politics Politics Feature

Two 2020 Races Generate a Flood of Candidates in Shelby County

Ready? Deirdre V. Fisher, Eddie Jones, Gortria Anderson Banks, John Ford, Paul Boyd, Rheunte E. Benson, Thomas Long, Del Gill, Joe Brown, Tanya L. Cooper, Tavia Tate, Adrienne Dailey-Evans, Michael Finney, Reginald Milton, George D. Summers, Lisa W. Wimberly, Wanda R. Faulkner.

Those 17 names represent just the first wave of applicants at the Shelby County Election Commission for the right to seek the post of General Sessions Court clerk, a post that has been held since 2011 by Ed Stanton Jr. (not to be confused with his son, lawyer Ed Stanton III, who received appointments from President Barack Obama both as U.S. attorney and later as a U.S. district judge, though his nomination for the judgeship was bottled up and kept from confirmation by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell).

The senior Stanton, a Democrat, was a longtime employee of county service before his selection by the General Sessions judges to fill a vacancy as clerk and his subsequent two re-elections in 2012 and 2016. Stanton, a solid sort, attracted few challengers as an incumbent clerk, but there are obvious reasons — foremost among them, perhaps, being the $134,986 annual salary — why the job, now open, has generated the current flood of office-seekers.

Jackson Baker

District 97 Candidate Gabby Salinas (r)shmoozes with voter Sherry Compton; Another District 97 hopeful, Allan Creasy, chats up Norma Lester

Some of the candidates are neophytes. Others have names that are, how to put it — well-worn: Del Gill, Joe Brown, John Ford? Ford may not ultimately be eligible, inasmuch as his rights seem not clearly to have been restored since a felony conviction from the FBI’s Tennessee Waltz sting. Two current county commissioners are on the list of hopefuls — Jones and Milton. Long and Boyd have previously held clerkships. Of this early list of 17, all are Democrats except for Boyd, Finney, Summers, and Wimberly, who are Republicans. 

So far, only seven of the petition-pullers have filed, but expect that number to grow, as will the number of new applicants asking for petitions.

• Meanwhile, the candidate field for state House District 97 is doing some multiplying as well. This is the seat in Bartlett/Eads that has been the bailiwick of longtime Republican incumbent Jim Coley, who decided to take his leave after a final term in which various ailments were incapacitating him. Two fellow Republicans have declared their candidacies for the job — John Gillespie, who works as a grant coordinator for Trezevant Episcopal Home, and Brandon Weise, an employee of the Shelby County Register’s office.

Gillespie made the first splash and has attached himself to Coley’s coattails, as well as to the Republican establishment in general, and lines up with a somewhat modified version of the education savings account bill (aka: voucher program) steamrollered into passage last year when then House Speaker Glen Casada, acting on Governor Bill Lee‘s behalf, kept the voting rolls open in the House long enough to to turn one legislator’s crucial nay note into an aye.

Weise stands in opposition to the voucher program, which would affect only Shelby County and Davidson County schools and would be likely to fall in behind new GOP Speaker Cameron Sexton of Crossville, who opposed the bill relentlessly last year and has indicated he would like to at least delay its immediate implementation. Weise, however, does observe Republican orthodoxy on matters such as opposition for federally funded Medicaid expansion and support for block grants to deal with health-care issues.

Democrats have their own contest pending in House District 97, with Allan Creasy, a narrow loser to Coley last year, making a renewed try for the seat. And another Democratic near-success story from 2018, Gabby Salinas, is also looking for another way into the General Assembly, after giving GOP state Senator Brian Kelsey a serious scare in his re-election race last year.

Both candidates see themselves as still having hot hands and ready-to-go constituencies. Before taking on Kelsey, Salinas had been able to turn on a head of steam to defeat David Witherspoon, a well-supported candidate and an early favorite in the Democratic primary. Salinas has the benefit of an affecting backstory regarding her childhood pilgrimage to the United States from Bolivia with her family in order to seek treatment for her at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. A personal endorsement by Marlo Thomas of St. Jude, daughter of the institution’s founder, Danny Thomas, proved helpful to Salinas’ candidacy.

Both Creasy, a popular manager and bartender at Celtic Crossing restaurant in Cooper-Young, and Salinas are opposed to the governor’s voucher legislation, and both also favor acceptance of federal Medicaid expansion funds under the Affordable Care Act. Both were much in evidence pressing the flesh at Sunday’s annual Democratic Women’s Christmas party at the IBEW headquarters building on Madison.

After several years in which Democrats figured only as sacrificial lambs in suburban legislative districts, the fact of having competitive primaries in such districts has the party faithful both nervous and excited.

• At its regular monthly meeting on Monday, the Shelby County Commission: 1) approved with near unanimity the use of PILOT (payment-in-lieu-of-tax) rents in the Pinch District TIF area by the Center City Revenue Finance Corporation, contingent upon the developer’s complying with CRFC requirements that not less than 28 percent of spending on construction will go to minority vendors; with the same requirement being imposed on the ongoing Union Row project; 2) voted to resolve a work-overload issue in the Register of Deeds office by approving two new full-tme positions and three temporary positions; 3) approved an add-on funding formula to enable additionl capital improvement projects at municipal schools; 4) agreed to hear in committee a proposal by Commissioner Van Turner for a MATA Capital Funding Ordinance to codify Shelby County’s commitment to transportation needs.

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Politics Politics Feature

The Swinging Door

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

As one election, a national one, finally heads to an end (with votes still being counted here and there), the next process of electoral transition is underway, locally.

This week, an abbreviated one because of the Thanksgiving holiday, sees the beginning of turnover on the Memphis City Council. Of the body’s 13 available seats, three will be spoken for during the next few weeks. Those are the ones that were scheduled for vacating as of August 2nd, when three council members — Bill Morrison in District 1, Edmund Ford Jr. in District 6, and Janis Fullilove in Super District 8, Position 2 —  won elections for positions in Shelby County government.

Jackson Baker

Jeff Warren

At the Flyer‘s press time on Tuesday, the first of these seats — that of Morrison, who was elected Probate Court clerk — was due for reappointment that evening by vote of council. The applicants were Paul Boyd, Mauricio Calvo, Faye Morrison, Tierra Holloway, Rhonda Logan, Danielle Schonbaum, and Lonnie Treadway.

The seats currently held by Ford and Fullilove will be filled next. Fullilove, now Juvenile Court clerk, has announced her resignation, effective November 23rd, and Ford’s resignation will take effect two days later, on November 25th. Applicants for either seat must submit proof of their residency, a resume, a letter of interest, a sworn affidavit, and a nominating petition with 25 signatures of registered voters in the relevant district.

Registration packets for the two seats will be available as of noon next Monday, November 26th, and the deadline for filing applications is Thursday, December 13th. The council is expected to vote on filling the two seats at its meeting on December 18th.

The seats held by Morrison, Ford, and Fullilove became points of controversy following the August 2nd election, when local activists insisted in vain that the council members resign their positions soon enough to permit the inclusion of their vacated seats on the November 6th election ballot. Instead, the three members chose to continue occupying their council seats for nearly the full 90 days post-election that the city charter permitted — a fact making it necessary to fill the seats by appointment and giving the remaining council members the say-so over replacing the departing members.

Ford, now a member of the Shelby County Commission, was even deputized by commission chair Van Turner to serve as a de facto liaison between the two local legislative bodies.

The councilman’s forthcoming resignation is not the only change on his horizon. He was named financial literacy coordinator for Memphis Public Libraries last week, and, as he informed his fellow commission members on Monday, Ford’s employment as a teacher in the Shelby County Schools system would end on Wednesday of this week — a fact permitting him to vote without recusal on an issue affecting school funding.

Ultimately, all 13 council seats, including the three being filled between now and year’s end, will be up for grabs in the 2019 city election scheduled for next October. At least one seat, the one for Super District 9, Position 3, now held by Councilman Reid Hedgepeth, has already drawn a challenger.

Seeking the seat will be Jeff Warren, a physician who served on the old Memphis City Schools board that went out of existence with the merger of Memphis and Shelby County systems. Warren was a member of the Memphis board minority that resisted the crucial vote of December 20, 2010, to surrender the MCS charter.

“I believe we are on the verge of turning a corner in Memphis,” Warren said in announcing his candidacy. “We  have had many recent successes, despite our long-term challenges. We have been pushing educational growth and do not need to let up. Mayor Strickland will continue to need support and advice to increase job growth.”

• The county commission acted decisively on a number of matters at its Monday meeting. Especially noteworthy were a vote on authorizing a TIF (tax increment financing project) for a forthcoming Lakeland Commons development and a vote resolving a holdover schism regarding the ongoing opioid crisis between former county Mayor Mark Luttrell and the commission that expired with the August 2nd election.

There were several aspects to the divide between Luttrell and the commission, who engaged in a more or less continuous power struggle, but the opioid matter was the matter with the most relevance to the community at large.

The disagreement arose last year when then commission chair Heidi Shafer, supported by other commission members, availed herself of clauses in the county charter that, she argued, allowed her to contract for legal action against various parties, including physicians and pharmaceutical companies, involved in the over-distribution of opioids in Shelby County.

Shafer’s action arose from her conviction, shared by former chair Terry Roland and a majority of other members, that opioid abuse had become rampant to the point of causing serious damage to Shelby Countians and that the Luttrell administration had been slow in pursuing remedial action.

Unsurprisingly, Luttrell disagreed and, putting forth his own plan of action, insisted that the county charter left the authority for pursuing legal remedies entirely in his hands.

What ensued was a back-and-forth between the two branches of county government that required several hearings in Chancery Court and would not be fully resolved until agreement on coordinated action was reached between new Mayor Lee Harris and the new commission, culminating in the vote on Monday, authorizing a settlement.

Shafer, who would receive several testimonials of appreciation from commission members, was present for the vote and expressed her pleasure that no more intramural acrimony would be occurring and “we can concentrate on dealing with the bad guys.”

The Lakeland matter, involving a $48 million development at the site of an abandoned remainder mall, drew attendees from both sides of the recently concluded municipal election in Lakeland, with Mayor-elect Mike Cunningham and supporters asking the commission for a delay of two weeks on approving the TIF, giving the new administration time to acquaint itself with the details of a project that had been strongly favored by the administration of outgoing Mayor Wyatt Bunker.

The commission approved the TIF 9-2, after noting that authority for continuing with the project would still rest with the Lakeland city government.