Tag: Phil Bredesen

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Politics Politics Feature

Bredesen and Dean Hoping to Ride the Wave

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

With six weeks to go before the November 6th election, the question on most minds — certainly on the minds of Democrats — is whether the blue wave that was so evident locally on August 2nd exists in enough strength statewide to affect the outcome of the races for governor and senator.

Former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and former Governor Phil Bredesen, the Democratic candidates for governor and senator respectively, certainly hope so. And so far their efforts to swell that wave have made them more evident in the Memphis area than their Republican opponents, Franklin businessman Bill Lee, the GOP gubernatorial nominee, and 7th District Congressman Marsha Blackburn, the party’s candidate for senator.

Jackson Baker

fund-raiser in a Memphis home.

When Blackburn opted out of an invitation for a senatorial debate at Rhodes College last Thursday, Bredesen turned up anyhow, converting the aborted showdown with his opponent into a “‘Memphis Matters’ Ideas Forum” before a nearly full house in Rhodes’ McNeil Concert Hall.

A questioner in the audience suggested that, if 80 percent of succeeding at something consisted of just showing up, the former two-term governor might get 80 percent of the votes from those who turned out. Bredesen upped the ante a bit, suggesting hopefully that he might get as much as 82 percent of the audience vote. Given the strongly partisan cast of the attendees, that didn’t seem terribly far-fetched.

The more objective polls taken to date of the population at large have see-sawed, with Bredesen and Blackburn trading small leads back and forth.

Dean’s situation is a bit more challenging. In his latest Memphis appearance, at a Monday afternoon fund-raiser at the Central Avenue home of Cynthia and Mark Grawemeyer, the Democratic nominee for governor noted the progession from a Fox News poll showing him 20 points behind Lee to a “newer and bigger and more accurate” poll by CNN cutting the gap to a mere nine percentage points.

“Nine points is fantastic!” said Dean, who told his sizeable crowd of well-wishers that he’d expected to come out of the primary-election period something like 12 points down, with the opportunity to chip away at his GOP opponent’s lead on the strength of vigorous campaigning and persuasive issues like the state’s need for Medicaid expansion, which he favors and Lee does not.

Dean described other “clear differences” with Lee: “He’s for arming teachers. I’m for security officers. I’m for the Second Amendment but want some sensible background checks. He’s for permitless carry, not a good thing.”

Decrying the local poverty rate of “46 or 47 percent” as “simply not tolerable,” Dean promised help in what he described as Memphis’ “existential battle” with the neighboring states of Mississippi and Arkansas in the competition for economic growth. “It’s time to win some of those battles,” he said.

There’s no doubting that Memphis will figure large in Dean’s own battle with Lee, who narrowly lost Shelby County to Diane Black in the GOP primary but had made considerable gains here late in that campaign, as he did elsewhere in the state — mainly, it would seem, on the basis of a compelling personality. But Dean professes confidence. “If we vote, we win,” he said Monday, predicting, “There’s going to be a blue wave of some sort.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Seeing Double

CREDIT: Photographs by Jackson Baker

So, okay, the newly elected version of the Shelby County Commission began the process of reorganizing itself  on Monday, keeping some of the body’s traditions and abandoning others — managing to be somewhat surprising, either way.

The man of the day was Van Turner, who became the new commission chairman. There was no surprise there — except maybe to those who expected one erstwhile custom — that of automatic promotion to the chairmanship of the previously serving vice chair. That would be Willie Brooks, like Turner a second-termer, who was at least expected to serve as acting chairman for the chairmanship vote.

Photographs by Jackson Baker

Van Turner

But when clerk Rosalind Nichols undertook to assist the commission, eight of whose 13 members are brand-new, by explaining the bylaws for the reorganization, she specified that two votes would be held. And when nominations were invited for the first of those, for acting chair, the new commissioner from District 1, Amber Mills, had first dibs and nominated Turner.

Turner, as it happens, had written to each commissioner, expressing his wish to be chairman, and Mills, understandably, may have become confused as to the order of things. In any case, Turner was elected acting chair in a lopsided vote over Brooks and presided over the vote for permanent chair, winning that by acclamation.

Another returning commissioner, Reginald Milton, a Democrat like Turner and Brooks, had aspired to be vice chair and had done some proselytizing to that effect, stressing that it was time to discard the commission’s vintage habit of alternating power positions between Democrats and Republicans. Simultaneously, returning GOP Commissioner Mark Billingsley had dispatched a letter to his fellow commissioners making the contrary case.

When it came time to vote, not only did the four new GOP members vote his way, so did most of the Democrats. Final vote: 9-3 for Billingsley.

There was more to the votes for chair and vice chair than honorifics. Turner had managed to establish what had long been forecast to be his ultimate preeminence on the commission, and Billingsley had maintained at least the semblance of bipartisan sharing, as well as his own viability.

Ed Ford

There was one more decisive act on Monday, and, appropriately, it came from Turner, who announced to all and sundry that he would be appointing a task force to maintain liaison with the Memphis City Council and would construct it around the person of newly elected Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr., who, after his election to the commission on August 2nd, continues to serve on the City Council, along with two other Council members — Bill Morrison and Janis Fullilove — who were also elected to county positions and remain on the council.

By keeping up their council identity, which by statute they can do until 90 days after their election to new office — November 2nd, in this case — the three departing council members will negate the organized efforts of various activists to call for a special election in November to replace them, thereby allowing their successors to be chosen by the remaining council members in an appointment process for which the current council has become notorious.

At least where Ford is concerned, Turner’s action in effect provides cover for the process. In announcing his task-force plans, the new commission chair touted Ford’s dual service as an opportunity to “utilize the fact that he’s also a city councilman for these waning months” and “allow us to see what’s going on in the city from the county perspective.” Among the issues to be examined in this way by Ford and whoever else ends up on the task force are MATA and health care, two areas of city/county joint concern.

Asked about this de facto seal of approval (which, to be fair, could also be seen as a simple acknowledgement of reality), Commissioner/Councilman Ford denied outright that there was any “controversy” involved in his continuing to serve in two different elected bodies.

“The people in my district don’t care,” the commissioner from District 9 insisted, speaking of a forthcoming “meeting” that evening involving the constituents of Council District 6.

• Several members of the commission, along with other local elected officials, took part on Saturday in the annual Orange Mound Parade through that centrally located African-American Memphis neighborhood. Among those taking part was Phil Bredesen, the former two-term Tennessee governor, now running for the U.S. Senate as the Democratic nominee. Bredesen’s Memphis schedule on Saturday also included a luncheon appearance in Germantown with the “Women United for Bredesen” group and a planned participation in the Southern Heritage Classic Tailgate, which ran into bad weather.

All the events served as a sort of run-up to another Bredesen appearance this Thursday night. Currently billed as a “‘Memphis Matters’ Ideas Forum” at Rhodes College, it is what remains of what was originally intended by the sponsors (including Rhodes, WMC-TV, and the USA Today newspaper chain) to be one of four statewide televised debates between Bredesen and the Republican Senate candidate, 7th District U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn.

For whatever reason, Blackburn demurred at the idea of a debate at Rhodes, and the Bredesen campaign has been making the most of that decision, sending out press release after release accusing the GOP candidate of ducking a joint encounter in Memphis and playing up the newly configured Ideas Forum as a vehicle for their candidate to hold up his end on the matter.

At press time, Blackburn could not be reached on the matter of the aborted Memphis debate. Although two subsequent debates have since been arranged between the Senate candidates for Nashville and Knoxville, the only exchanges between the two candidates thus far have occurred via TV ads.

Blackburn currently has two attack ads running, one featuring President Trump endorsing her and bad-mouthing Bredesen and another accusing the former governor of favoring additional taxes and of gussying up the governor’s mansion at taxpayer expense. Both claims are somewhat off the mark. As Bredesen maintained in a response ad, he did not raise taxes, and, while the governor’s mansion was renovated during his tenure, he and his wife did not live there, remaining instead in their Nashville residence.

While most of his TV commercials to date have featured Bredesen sounding soft-spoken and willing to work across the partisan aisle, at least one ad on his behalf has appeared of late accusing Blackburn of excessive travel and other high-living habits on the taxpayers’ dime.

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Politics Politics Feature

Fallout From the August Election and Predictions for November

Here we go again. The voting round that concluded on August 2nd with a virtual Democratic sweep is the second local election in a row in which a resurgent Democratic Party has demonstrated quantifiable strength at the polls, just as it did in the May 1st county primary election, when the Democrats totaled 44,768 votes against 30,208 for the Republicans. 
And here again, too, comes some of the skeptical second-guessing that followed that outcome, the tenor of which is that an apt reading of the numbers actually proves the opposite of what the election results seemed to indicate.

My resourceful and distinguished friend John Ryder, the former general counsel of the Republican National Committee and as eminent a Republican as can be found in these parts, assayed forth in The Commercial Appeal last weekend with an analysis of the August 2nd election that mirrored his conclusions about the previous one. 

On the prior occasion, Ryder juggled some numbers from past elections in order to demonstrate that, as he insisted, the voting curve actually favored Republicans and that Democrats would discover on the then-far-off date of August 2nd, that conditions boded ill for their party.

But, just as the Ides of March inexorably came for Caesar, the 2nd of August would come in for Ryder and other GOP optimists — with the aforementioned result, a sweep for Democratic candidates in countywide races and a measurable gain for them in other positions.

Predictably, however, Ryder managed to find solace in the numbers. More Republicans across the state of Tennessee voted for governor in their primary than statewide Democrats did in theirs, he noted, a finding that led him to conclude: “This does not bode well for the Democrats in the November election.” Considering the difficulties incurred by Ryder since his similar prophecies in May, it may just be that his bod-o-meter is out of order and needs to be serviced.

Or he may be right, of course, in implicitly predicting a victory for Republican gubernatorial nominee Bill Lee, who certainly emerged from the GOP primary as a likeable new face, and who, perhaps conveniently, lacked any political record and thus was immune to the knife-throwing tactics of his chief Republican opponents, Randy Boyd and Diane Black, who managed to slash each other into irrelevance.

Or maybe the problem was that Boyd and Black were engaged in a desperate contest to see who could more accurately pose as a loyal minion to President Donald Trump. Trump deigned not to confer his official favor on either, for better or for worse.

In any case, the Republicans’ four-way gubernatorial race (which included also state House Speaker Beth Harwell) certainly generated more press attention than did the Democratic race between former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and the woefully underfunded House Democratic Leader Craig Fitzhugh. That could be one explanation for the numbers differential of the two parties’ gubernatorial votes — which Ryder cites as gospel, despite declining to accept the Democrats’ edge in mayoral-primary voting as an indicator back in May.

Whatever the  reasons for his thinking, Ryder seems implicitly to be predicting that 7th District Congressman Marsha Blackburn, an outspoken Trumpian with The Donald’s full endorsement, will triumph over her Democratic opponent for the U.S. Senate. That would be former Governor Phil Bredesen, a middle-of-the-road veteran whose two gubernatorial terms were won with significant crossover votes from Republicans and independents, and who has been faring well so far in competitive polling against Blackburn.

Trump’s coattails or more blue wave? Which bodes well — and for whom — in the November general election? It remains to be seen.

• If Jesse Jackson has his way, the blue wave will keep on rolling. The iconic civil rights veteran and former Democratic presidential candidate was in Memphis early this week on behalf of his Rainbow PUSH coalition’s effort to encourage more voter participation in this year’s election process.

Jackson spoke Monday 

morning to students at Booker T. Washington High School, urging them to register to vote and to stand against violence in their neighborhoods. Afterward, asked his reaction to the Democratic sweep in the county election here, Jackson said he was pleased to see “blacks and whites voting together” in recognition of their “common interest” in “a very difficult season of our lives as Americans.”

Jackson said it was too early for him to get behind a specific presidential candidate in 2020. “We don’t know who’s running. It’s too early.” But he took the occasion to inveigh against the current electoral-college winner-take-all system of voting by states.

“The last time around, the loser won, and the winner lost,” Jackson said, noting Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 3 million popular vote edge. “We need a one-person, one-vote democracy,” he said. “Let the winner win, and the loser lose, to be fair.” 

As for the Electoral College, “we never could apply to it,” he said in a bit of wordplay. What the country needs is “universal rights, not states’ rights.”  

 

• Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, a former local Democratic Party chairman who keeps a low partisan profile as a nonpartisan political official, was invited to deliver the opening statement Saturday at a “Hot Dogs in the Park” event in Overton Park celebrating recent Democratic election victories.

Strickland complied and launched into a congratulatory message to the sponsoring organization, the Democratic Women of Shelby County, and continued with several citations by him of progress on his mayoral watch, which he attributed in part to inspiration by the DWSC.

Commissioner-elect Tami Sawyer, a Democrat, is welcomed by GOP Commissioner Mark Billingsley.

A group of four or five protesters, led by activist Hunter Demster, began heckling the mayor’s brief remarks, yelling things like “Where’s Tami?” (an apparent reference to the absence from the event of County Commissioner-elect Tami Sawyer) and “How many African Americans?” in answer to Strickland’s claims of increased city contracting with firms owned by women or minority members.

In response to the heckling, event organizer Norma Lester called for a police presence, and a few squad cars pulled up, though the officers never entered the pavilion where the event was taking place and stood quietly, as observers on the periphery. After the initial heckling, there was no further interruption, and various newly elected Democratic officials contributed brief statements to the celebration.

• “Changing of the guard” was a largely unspoken theme Monday at what was the next-to-last full meeting of the Shelby County Commission before its newly elected  members are sworn in at the end of the month. Such Commissioners-elect as Democrat Sawyer and Republican Amber Mills sat onstage on the periphery of the meeting, as outgoing members struggled to complete a lengthy agenda of unfinished business. Most got processed, but two key items — one levying a new tax on Airbnb domiciles and another involving a proposed new housing development in Collierville — were kicked back to committee, with but one public meeting left to consider them. 

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News News Blog

Election Results: Harris, Dean, Blackburn, Lee, Bredesen, Kustoff, Cohen Win

CREDIT: Ward Archer

Ward Archer

County mayor victor, Lee Harris, talks with reporters at his victory party.

Yes, Virginia, there was a blue wave in Shelby County, Tennessee — at least it appeared so when all the votes were counted for the August 2nd election, which included a county general election, primaries for state and federal offices, and isolated other ballot matters. From Mayor-elect Lee Harris on down the ballot, Democrats swept all the races for county offices, and even picked up an extra seat on the County Commission, giving their party an 8 to 5 majority going into the next four years.

Though Diane Black barely carried Shelby county in the Republican primary race for governor, the winner statewide was Franklin businessman Bill Lee, with former state Economic Development Commissioner Randy Boyd finishing second, Black finishing third, and state House Speaker Beth Harwell coming in fourth.

The Democratic gubernatorial primary was won, in Shelby County and statewide, by former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean over state House Democratic Leader Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley. Former Governor Phil Bredesen and 7th district Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn easily won nominations for U.S. senator in the Democratic and Republican primaries, respectively.

U.S. Reps. Steve Cohen (D) and David Kustoff (R) handily won their primary races for reelection, Kustoff having to head off a well-funded intra-party challenge from perennial candidate George Flinn. Cohen will oppose Republican Charlotte Bergman in the fall, while Kustoff’s opponent will be Erika Stotts Pearson, who edged out John Boatner Jr. in the Democratic primary.

The other news of the night was that, not for the first time, a glitch of some sort at the Shelby County Election Commission marred reporting of the results. A sizeable crowd had gathered early on in The Columns downtown (the old Union Planters headquarters building) hoping to cheer a victory for county mayor by the Democratic nominee Lee Harris, but was frustrated for nearly two hours after the polls closed without seeing any results.

When the numbers finally came in, though, there was tumult among the well-wishers in the large room, followed, moments later, by the happy mayor-elect himself. Harris addressed the crowd from a stage that came to include, besides family and campaign staff, 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen and former Mayor A C Wharton.

A gracious Harris extended thanks to one and all and even asked for some appreciative applause for his vanquished Republican foe, County Trustee David Lenoir.

Final vote for Mayor, with all 166 precincts reporting, was Harris, 84,956; Lenoir, 68,491.

Chief Deputy Floyd Bonner, running as a Democrat for Sheriff, solidly beat local Homeland Security director Dale Lane, running as a Republican. Vote was 91,370 to 60,433, giving Bonner the election’s highest total number of votes.

Other county results:

Assessor of Property— Melvin Burgess (D), 81, 815: Robert “Chip” Trouy, 61,707; Katherine Culverhaus (I), 614.

County Trustee— Regina Morrison Newman (D), 84,712; George Barnes Chism, 62,194.

Circuit Court Clerk — Democrat Temiika Gipson over Republican Tom Leatherwood, 81,573 to 68,806.

Criminal Court Clerk — Democrat Heidi Kuhn, 85,492; Republican Richard De Saussure, 60,917.

Juvenile Court Clerk — Janis Fullilove (D), 75,031; Bobby Simmons 74,030.

Probate Court Clerk — Bill Morrison (D), 81,057; Chris Thomas ( R), 61,862; Jennings Bernard (I), 6,333.

County Clerk — Wanda Halbert (D), 86,327; Donna Creson ( R), 63,017.

Register of Deeds — Shelandra Ford (D), 75,260; Wayne Mashburn R), 70, 575

Other notable results:

SHELBY COUNTY COMMISSION: Democrat Michael Whaley’s victory in County Commission District 5, over Republican Richard Morton, increased the existing Democratic majority by one, to 8 to 5. Other winners: Republican Amber Mills over Democrat Racquel Collins, District 1; Republican David Bradford over Democrat Tom Carpenter, District 2; Republican Mick Wright over Democrat Monica Timmerman, District 3; Republican Mark Billingsley over Democrat Kevin Haley, District 4; Democrat Willie Brooks, District 6; Democrat Tami Sawyer over Republican Sam Goff, District 7; Democrat Mickell Lowery, District 8; Democrat Edmund Ford Jr. over Republican Sharon Webb, District 9; Democrat Reginald Milton over independent Vontyna Durham, District 10; Democrat Eddie Jones, District 11; Democrat Van Turner, District 12; Republican Brandon Morrison over Democrat George Monger, District 13.

In closely-watched legislative races:
Democratic challenger Katrina Robinson ousted incumbent Democrat Reginald Tate in state Senate District 33.

State Rep. Raumesh Akbari defeated County Commissioner Justin Ford in the Democratic primary in state Senate District 29 and will oppose Republican Tom Stephens in November.

Gabby Salinas defeated David Weatherspoon in the Democratic primary for state Senate District 31 and will compete against incumbent Republican Brian Kelsey in the fall.

Incumbent Republican Mark White defeated challenger Doyle Silliman in the GOP primary for state House District 83.

Scott McCormick defeated Patricia Possel in the GOP primary for state House District 96 and will oppose incumbent Democrat Dwayne Thompson in November.

Jesse Chism won out over fellow Democrats Ricky Dixon and Lynette Williams in state House District 85.

Incumbent Democrat Barbara Cooper defeated Amber Huett-Garcia and Jesse Jeff in state House District 86.

Incumbent John DeBerry defeated challenger Torrey Harris in the Democratic primary for House District 90.

London Lamar beat fellow Democrats Doris DeBerry Bradshaw and Juliette Eskridge in the Democratic primary for House District 91.

Incumbent Democrat G.A. Hardaway turned back challenger Eddie Neal in House District 93.

Incumbent Antonio Parkinson beat Johnnie Hatten in the Democratic primary for House District 98.

JUDICIAL RACES:

Circuit Court, Division 7: Incumbent Mary Wagner over Michael Floyd.

Circuit Court, Division 9: Yolanda Kight over incumbent David Rudolph.

Criminal Court, Division 10: Jennifer J. Mitchell over incumbent Jennifer S. Nicho
Environmental Court, Division 14: Incumbent Patrick Dandridge over Price Harris.

SCHOOL BOARD RACES:

Shelby County Schools Board, District 1: Michelle McKissack over incumbent Chris Caldwell, Michael Scruggs, and Kate Ayers;

Shelby County Schools, District 6: Incumbent Shante Avant over Percy Hunter, Minnie Hunter, and R.S. Ford;

Shelby County Schools, District 8: Incumbent William Orgel over Jerry Cunninghan;

Shelby County Schools, District 9: Joyce Dorse-Coleman over incumbent Mike Kernell, Alvin Crook, Rhonnie Brewer, and Kori Hamner.

SPECIAL ELECTION, MEMPHIS CITY COUNCIL, SUPER DISTRICT 9, POSITION 2: Interim incumbent J. Ford Canale over Lisa Moore, Charley Burch, Erika Sugarmon, Tim Ware, David Franklin, and Tyrone R. Franklin.

Complete election results and vote totals from the Shelby County Election Commission.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Memphis Reacts to Border Crisis

CREDIT: Courtesy of the @PhiBredesen for Senate campaign

Jackson Baker

Bredesen at Bioworks Foundation

This week was destined to see large and distinct choices, forks in the road for the politically minded.

Be this a blue-wave year or not, the Shelby County Republican Party still has to be considered the county’s dominant political unit, on the strength of its success in the last several election results. And what is arguably the lynchpin organization of the SCRP, the East Shelby Republican Club, scheduled its annual Reagan Day Master Meal for Thursday night at the Great Hall of Germantown, with state treasurer David Lillard as the featured speaker.

The occasion is one of two during the year (the other being the GOP’s February Lincoln Day Dinner) that generally brings out the Republican brass, who will sing such praises as they can for the Trump administration.

• Former Governor Phil Bredesen, a conservative at heart, might be considered an unlikely avatar of the aforementioned Democratic blue wave, but that he is, as the party’s standard-bearer for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by the GOP’s Bob Corker. Bredesen was in town for a Monday night fund-raiser, which followed up on an earlier meeting Monday with representatives of the Memphis Bioworks Foundation about the effect of Trump’s tariffs on entrepreneurial initiatives being midwifed into being by the foundation.

“Too early to tell,” was Bredesen’s finding about the fledgling medical enterprises under discussion, though he told reporters afterward that the president’s tariff policy would give a hard hit to the state’s agriculture and possibly its automobile industry — as well as to Tennessee whiskey, which Bredesen described as one of the state’s major exports and one wide open to other countries’ retaliations.

As Bredesen said, “You can’t hurt Elvis, and you can’t hurt Dolly, but you can definitely hurt Jack Daniels.” Bredesen had harsh words for the president’s hard-line policy on immigration. “Child abuse,” he called it.

That may end up being the mildest epithet bestowed this week on President Trump’s “zero tolerance” border policy toward immigrants seeking asylum. A massive demonstration protesting that policy and its results, notably the separation of parents from their children and the scattering of both to various detention camps in the country, took place Sunday at Lindenwood Christian Church, under the auspices of MICAH (Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope).

Jackson Baker

candidate John Boatner and family at border action rally

Yet another demonstration took place Monday evening at Shady Grove Presbyterian Church under the auspices of the activist group Indivisible Memphis and the non-profit Showing Up for Racial Justice. Both assemblies numbered in the several hundreds and, at both, plans were launched for aiding the afflicted asylum-seekers and countering the border policy.

Yet a third such gathering, a “Families Belong Together Memphis Action Rally,” hosted by Latino Memphis and Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition [TIRRC], will convene on Saturday, June 30th, at 10 a.m. at Gaisman Park.

Political candidates, mainly Democrats, were observed at the first two rallies, and doubtless will be at the third, but ordinary citizens, expressing extremes of both outrage and compassion, are the main players in this drama, a continuing one that could well transform the ongoing course of the year and trump politics as usual.

And yes, that pun was very much intentional.

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Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Remains a Beehive of Political Activity

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The pending visit to The Orpheum on Friday by former Vice President (and possible 2020 presidential candidate) Joe Biden for his “American Promise” tour highlights what continues to be a busy election season.

Republican gubernatorial candidate  Randy Boyd last week underscored the importance of Shelby County in his election campaign by making the county the site of two different stops on his current 95-county bus tour of the state.
Boyd kicked off his bus tour in Millington on Monday, and after making several stops elsewhere in West Tennessee, returned to Shelby County on Saturday for a meet-and-greet lunch in the Collierville town square. Among the several Shelby County officials at the affair, either as backers for Boyd or as courtesy visitors, were County Commissioner David Reaves of Bartlett, Mayor Mike Palazzolo of Germantown, Germantown Alderman Mary Ann Gibson, trustee and county mayor candidate David Lenoir, former county Mayor Jim Rout, state Representative Mark White, and, serving as master of ceremonies for the occasion, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell.

Boyd, who went on to make a day of it in Shelby County, attending the FedEx St. Jude golf tournament and the Germantown Horse Show, noted that he had taken no salary while serving as director for economic development under Governor Bill Haslam. Boyd promised not to do so as governor, either, unless, as he jested, “some of you who have Invisible Fence stop purchasing new batteries, in which case I may need to renegotiate.”
Boyd, one of several independently wealthy candidates for governor, made his fortune as the inventor and vendor of Invisible Fence, which establishes electronic barriers for domestic pets. 
David Weatherspoon, who held the latest version of his “listening tour” at Cheffie’s Restaurant on High Point Terrace on Monday, is expecting to get an earful — and maybe a bagful — of support from members of Shelby County’s health-care community at a June 26th fund-raiser scheduled for Germantown Country Club.

Among the hosts for the affair are Gary and Glenda Shorb, Meri Armour, Ed Barnett, Richard Glassman and Susan Lawless-Glassman, David and Julie Richardson, Nadeem Shafi, Kip and Martha Frizzell, Charles and Kalyna Hanover, Melody Cunningham, and Michael Rohrer.

Weatherspoon, whose campaign treasurer is Ed Roberson, the erstwhile director of Christ Community Health Centers, has made support for Medicaid expansion (“a no-brainer decision”) a key point in his campaign for the District 31 state Senate seat now held by Republican Brian Kelsey (as, for that matter, has Gabby Salinas, the other Democrat running in the forthcoming Democratic primary of August 2nd).

Kelsey is a sworn opponent of former President Obama’s Affordable Care Act and its Medicare-expansion component, and was the sponsor of legislation requiring approval by both chambers of the General Assembly’s Republican super-majority before expansion could take place, dooming Insure Tennessee, the state’s variant of the plan. The rejection, according to Weatherspoon, has cost Tennessee $4 billion in federal funding and contributed to the closure of 10 community hospitals.

• Headquarters Openings: Two candidates drew large crowds for opening new headquarters last week. Democratic county mayor nominee Lee Harris set up at 2127 Central Avenue on Friday, and a Memphis headquarters was established at in the Highland Strip by the campaign of former Governor Phil Bredesen, now a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Bredesen’s Modest Bio, Common Touch Score with Local Democrats

CREDIT: JB

JB

Bredesen with Memphis Democrats at the Akbari Institute

Phil Bredesen came to Memphis on Thursday, and, in a meeting thrown together at the last minute by the Shelby County Democratic Women, convincingly reintroduced himself, not as some silver-spooned entrepreneur/politician from Nashville, but as the struggling son of a single-parent family, uprooted from his original home outside Boston when, as he explained, “my father found a woman he liked better than my mother and took off.”

From that point on, Bredesen says he became “a kind of exotic person,’ a child forced as a pre-teen to relocate with his mother — a bank teller — to upstate New York, where they had to live with Bredesen’s grandmother, a seamstress with a fourth-grade education, who took in sewing to make ends meet and had to work the new arrivals into what was already a large extended family of some 12 offspring.

In the nearly 30 years of Bredesen’s celebrity in Tennessee, that brief bit of Horatio Alger autobiography, spoken with the former two-term governor’s customarily diffident delivery but without his sometimes off-putting stiffness, came off as pure revelation to the audience of 40 or so Democratic office-seekers, public figures, and off-the street activists who’d been summoned without much advance notice to a small meeting room of the Lisa Akbari World Trichology Institute, an East Memphis cosmetology enterprise run by the family of state Representative Raumesh Akbari.

As much as anything policy-wise that Bredesen said during the hour or so he stayed with the SCDW crowd — on his desire to create jobs and a universal health-care program, to work across the political aisle if elected and meanwhile to run a positive campaign — his connection with the audience was based on that initial presentation of himself as a modest person, lucky in life, who wanted above all to pass on the opportunity for good fortune to others.

It conferred credibility on his espousal of Memphis — an exciting volatile town like Chicago, he said — as the hotbed of Democratic votes and hopes in Tennessee, and, as the main source of the support he needs to win. (This kind of appeal always seems to work in Memphis, which, however, is by actual measure much less of a dependable Democratic bellwether than metropolitan Nashville, which consistently elects Democratic officials across all racial, class, and ethnic lines at a rate that Memphis cannot match. Bredesen himself is a case in point.)

In any case, Bredesen did in fact seem right at home in the bosom of this representative crowd of Memphis Democrats, to whom he — or, more strictly, one of the young helpers with him — promised to open an office of his candidacy on South Highland, in the University of Memphis area, sometime in the next two weeks.

When he’d heard last year that Republican Senator Bob Corker would not be running for re-election and he started getting telephone calls “from around the state” (and from Democrats around the nation eager to retake the Senate), Bredesen said he had first to satisfy himself that a run would not be a “suicide mission.”

Obviously, he decided it wouldn’t be. And if he truly needed the enthusiasm of Memphis Democrats to kindle his hopes of reentering political life as state’s newest U.S. Senator, then — based on the warmth of his reception among the party cadres on Thursday — he seemed to have a good basis for it. 

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Opinion The Last Word

Bredesen Can’t Be GOP-Lite

CREDIT: Wikimedia Commons

There’s talk of a “blue wave” sweeping the country in 2018. It already has elevated Democrats in impossible places such as Alabama and Pennsylvania and scared the likes of Paul Ryan into retirement.

And it is going to graze Tennessee like a fizzling tropical depression. I don’t want it to be true, and I hope I’m wrong. When it comes to Bob Corker’s soon-to-be-vacant U.S. Senate seat, Tennessee has two options: flip it or get used to hearing the words “Senator Marsha Blackburn.” Recent polling has shown Blackburn lagging behind her opponent, former Governor Phil Bredesen, by up to a double-digit margin, prompting behind-the-scenes pleading for Corker to reconsider. Of the 600 registered voters surveyed, more independents said they would pick Bredesen over Blackburn.

Cool. So this strategy of finding the one Democrat who has proven an ability to win a statewide election in Tennessee is working so far. Not my first choice, but keep doing what you’re doing, I guess. How long will it work if he sticks with the message of “There’s no reason the president and I can’t work together?” Just because half the state hasn’t figured out that nobody can work with the guy doesn’t mean their votes are gettable. Trusting Marsha to stick to her proven track record of being The Actual Worst and hoping it all works out seems a little naive.

Wikimedia Commons

Phil Bredesen

The president announced on a Friday night he’d done another little war, and totally not to distract us from the avalanche of scandal that befell him in that particular week, by the way. No dog-wagging here. He doesn’t even like dogs. He’s a germaphobe, okay? I checked Twitter, as I usually do when these things go down, and I swear I heard a TV-show record-scratch sound effect when I read this tweet from Bredesen:

“The President is justified in his actions. The chemical attacks in Syria compel us to act decisively in cooperation with our allies. If the President intends further action, I trust Congress will take up its Constitutional war-making responsibilities. Godspeed to our military.”

I usually abhor articles about other people’s tweets. I think it’s lazy. But I have been stewing about this particular post for days now, and I just have to ask: why? Why tweet this, Phil Bredesen? Who put you up to this? Who even asked? It looks to me as if someone got a little too confident and decided to let that tepid neoliberal flag fly on a Friday night.

If Marsha Blackburn wins the Senate election, it will not be because the people of Tennessee abhor net neutrality and funding disaster relief, and love Blackburn’s folksy brand of Bought and Paid For. It will be because the Democratic candidate let his eagerness to be Reach Across the Aisle Guy overshadow the fact that there is ostensibly a (D) next to his name. “Reaching across the aisle” isn’t a thing anymore. It’s a nice notion, but it doesn’t work when the people on the other side only reach back only to steal your watch.

“Bomb first, explain later” is never a good look. “The president was justified” is not the way to say that. Especially as a Democrat. Especially with this president.

“I trust Congress” should have stayed in the Drafts folder. Nobody trusts Congress. Not even Congress trusts Congress. That’s why Trump didn’t ask for their permission. Even though the majority party has not yet displayed a willingness to defy him, they can’t afford for their war votes to become a talking point when they’re up for re-election.

I’m out of the social media management game for now, but if I worked on the Bredesen campaign, I would have advised staying mum on this and focusing on localized issues. But here’s what he should have said: What Assad is doing is wrong, and we deplore his actions. We turn to violence only as a last resort and in a way that minimizes harm to civilians. The Syrian people need our support, and as your Senator I’ll do my best to ensure any future action is taken with their human rights in mind.

The state of Tennessee ranks in the bottom 10 in education, median household income, and employment rate. We’re top 15 in opioid deaths. There’s plenty of evidence that the people who represent this state in our federal government aren’t fighting for us. Pandering to the people who elected them — the same ones who’d rather die than vote Democrat — won’t get it done.

Jen Clarke is a digital marketing specialist and an unapologetic Memphian.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Weekend Review: Focus on Willie Herenton, Phil Bredesen, and Bob Corker

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Jackson Baker

Bredesen, Corker, Herenton

Willie Herenton became an epochal cultural figure upon his election in 1991 as Memphis’ first elected African-American mayor. He went on to run the city for 18 years before retiring under pressure in 2009. He tried a comeback in 2010, with a race for the 9th District Congressional seat, but lost by a 79-to-21 percent margin to Congressman Steve Cohen in the overwhelmingly black district.

Now Herenton is embarked on a new race for mayor in 2019, announced last Thursday in the wake of the MLK50 commemorations in honor of the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike and assassination in Memphis of Martin Luther King Jr. Though the former mayor’s announcement engendered real excitement for many of his former supporters, some political observers see his race against Cohen — haphazard, impulsive, underfunded, and ill-prepared — as foreshadowing the likely result of the 78-year-old Herenton’s latest surprise comeback attempt.

Herenton’s declared reason for running again is to “complete the mission” of Dr. King, and the difficulty of his undertaking is amplified by Mayor Jim Strickland’s relatively good 2015 showing among black voters and by Strickland’s success in increasing black business contracts with the city and in removing Confederate war memorials.

Herenton disclosed some of his views in an interview this week with podcaster Brian Clay at Crosstown Concourse: “I had the privilege of marching with Dr. King on two occasions when he came to Memphis, 28 years ago,” said Herenton, then a Memphis city schools principal and later schools superintendent. “I stood in front of City Hall wearing an ‘I Am a Man’ sign. I always had a social conscience. I’m always addressing injustice.”

The former mayor said that “50 years later, I had to look in the mirror again.” He quoted the Socratic axiom: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Herenton added, ”We have become a very, very poor city. … We cannot separate economics from education, history has taught me.” He spoke of “a correlation” between failing schools, failing health care, housing, and numerous other issues.

But Herenton cautioned voters to have “reasonable expectations” and said that, while he could promise to “give the very best managerial skill, vision, and boldness” he had, “no magic wand and could not by himself, cure ‘generational poverty.’” He said, “I’m not going to promise you that poverty is going to go away or that people will stop killing each other.”
The former mayor faulted himself for not having prepared a proper successor during his 18 years as mayor. While making a point of not criticizing the current administration of Strickland, Herenton said he had the “energy and passion now to make some needed changes. It’s a new economy now. … Memphis cannot be a growth city paying people starvation wages.”

In addition to earlier reports in the Flyer, here is additional information on recent appearances and statements in Memphis by former Governor Phil Bredesen and retiring U.S. Senator Bob Corker:

In an interview with the Flyer last week, Bredesen, now a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, made it clear that his middle-of-the-road campaign rhetoric is no accident: “In our state, I need to capture a lot of middle-of-the-road voters — even a few of what I would call economic Republicans.” To that end, the former governor acknowledged he was “not crazy” about the Affordable Care Act, but “it’s on the books, and we’ve got to try to make it work.”

In general, said Bredesen, the Democratic Party has “narrowed too much” and adopted “too many litmus tests. … We have to win if we want to govern again.”

Bredesen theorized about the desirability of having a close working relationship with Republican Senator Lamar Alexander, if elected: “I haven’t talked to Lamar about linking, but he’s a good example of people in both parties who, if they got together, could make a comprehensive start to be a block of 10 or 12 to start to do something. I’d like to be a part of a movement like that.”

Two days later, Alexander announced his support in the Senate race for fellow Republican Marsha Blackburn.

Referring to retiring GOP Senator Bob Corker as “a thought leader in the Senate” and a “straight shooter,” Mayor Strickland introduced Corker at a luncheon meeting of the rotary club of Memphis at Clayborn Temple last week.

Corker said he continued to have disagreements with President Trump, though he hadn’t made a point of emphasizing the fact on each occasion. But, among other things, the Senator declared that the president’s tweeting habit was “very harmful, and he expressed concern about the strong likelihood that Trump intends to abrogate U.S. adherence to the current multinational agreement withholding sanctions on Iran if that nation maintains a freeze on its development of nuclear-weapon capability.

Corker said that Iran could be “off and running” on a nuclear pathway if the agreement ceased to be, and he said a better course than renouncing the agreement would be to seek modification, in tandem with America’s European allies, of the pact’s current 10-year “sunset” provision. Otherwise, he said, it was doubtful that the Europeans would follow Trump’s lead in scrapping the agreement.

“I personally think we’d be better off keeping the agreement in place,” Corker said.
The senator also deplored Congress’ recent passage of a $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill but said, “The system works better than you think. … Believe it or not, Washington reflects the country much more fully than you think.”

And he said he’d been “terribly impressed” by the vigor and commitment of the students from Parkland High School who have launched an ongoing national campaign for anti-gun legislation.

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Politics Politics Feature

Political Works in Progress During MLK50 Week

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

In this week of worldwide remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., focused on his martyrdom here in Memphis, many eminent visitors will have come to celebrate his name and commemorate his mission. One of the first to speak on the subject was Eric Holder, the former U.S. Attorney General under President Obama.

Holder, introduced by the newly elected Democratic U.S. Senator from Alabama, Doug Jones, was keynote speaker at a Monday luncheon at the Peabody held in tandem with a two-day symposium co-sponsored by the University of Memphis Law School and the National Civil Rights Museum. 

Holder reminded his listeners that, “Dr. King’s dream has not been fully realized,” further noting that there has been backsliding on voting rights, criminal justice reform, and the unexpected re-empowerment of white supremacists and white nationalists. The struggle for social justice, Holder said, remains as difficult as it was during the time of King, who, he noted, was seen by many as a “threatening, polarizing, and disliked figure.”

“The age of bullies and bigots is not entirely behind us,” Holder continued. “We have not yet reached the promised land.” He suggested that, as was the case with King, “it is necessary to be indignant and impatient so that it impels us to take action. … We cannot look back toward a past that was comforting to few. That is not how to make America great.”

Holder was complimentary toward Memphis. “I love this city, its energy, its sense of possibility, and its extraordinary progress,” he said, specifically paying tribute to the 901 Take ‘Em Down movement for its successful agitation to remove symbols of Confederate domination from the Memphis landscape.

But he enumerated several problems still much in need of correcting, including continued economic inequality and systematic voter suppression and gerrymandering.

• The subject of voting rights was the subject of one of the most well-attended symposium panels conducted Monday, moderated by UM law professor Steve Mulroy. It was also one of the subjects on the mind of former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen, now running as a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate and one of the many political figures of note on hand for the MLK50 week of commemorations.

In an interview with the Flyer at the Peabody on Monday, Bredesen mentioned the existence of various “efforts to suppress African American voters [as] one of the things as senator I’d like to address.”

Bredesen said as the former state’s chief executive, he was able to solve vexing problems by governing from the middle, working with both parties, including those he called “economic Republicans.” If elected Senator, he said he would continue in that vein.

As a successful health-care executive before entering politics, Bredesen said he would address the issue of the nation’s medical insurance system, currently at risk because of uncertainty about the fate of the Affordable Care Act. “The act is still on the books,” he said, “and we’ve got to make it work. As was the case with Medicare and Social Security,” he added, “it requires modifications.”

Bredesen sees his ability to compromise across the political aisle as an asset in his forthcoming Senate race against expected Republican foe, the ultra-conservative U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn, whom he currently leads in statewide polls.

• Meanwhile, retiring incumbent Republican Senator Bob Corker, the man whom Bredesen and Blackburn would replace, was also in town, addressing members of the Rotary club of Memphis on Tuesday and warning of a spendthrift Congress and the importance of the Iran nuclear pact. “The President should know: you can only tear up the agreement one time,” he said. (More at memphisflyer.com, Political Beat blog.)