Tag: Philip Spinosa

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Politics Politics Feature

The Suspense Holds

Willie Herenton (Photo: Jackson Baker)

Now that Memphis city candidates have begun pulling petitions for various races on the 2023 city ballot, what have we learned? Not so much, not yet. And old questions remain.

When hopefuls began posting their financial disclosures for the first quarter of the year, Brian Harris was first up in Super District 8, Position 3. He declared receipts of $30,166 for the quarter, and the same amount as the figure for his cash on hand. He also listed the selfsame sum of $30,166 as having been raised entirely from contributions of $100 or less.

Only problem was — and still is — that if indeed all those facts are true, Harris is required to list and identify all contributions, no matter the size, over the total amount of $2,000, since unidentified contributions are capped at that figure. Any receipts over that amount have to be itemized. In Harris’ case, that means a minimum of $28,166 needs to be accounted for.

Attempts to reach Harris and unravel the mystery of his funding sources have so far proved unavailing — though in the long run the Election Commission, and through it the voters, is sure to find out what there is to know.

One declared adversary of Harris in Super District 8, Position 3, is Jerred Price. The local activist and entertainer of Almost Elton John fame declared receipts for that first quarter of $20,465, with cash on hand of $13,998.87. All contributions and payouts are duly listed, as required, including — almost quaintly — a disbursement of $10.50 as a bank service charge.

Several other candidates have pulled petitions so far for Super District 8, Position 3 — Davin D. Clemons, Yolanda Cooper-Sutton, Roderic Sydney Ford, Damon Curry Morris, Paul Randolph Jr., and Robert White Jr. — but none of them have yet released any numbers.

So far, there remains no indication that former Councilman Berlin Boyd has picked up a petition for 8-3 or for any other position, though he has long been rumored to favor a Super District race as his way back to the council. (As the incumbent for District 7 in 2019, Boyd was defeated in a runoff by Councilwoman Michalyn Easter-Thomas.)

The big race on the city council calendar this year will almost certainly be the contest for District 5. One contender for this seat, which bridges Midtown and East Memphis, is Meggan Wurzburg Kiel, a longtime mainstay for MICAH (Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope). As of that first-quarter disclosure, Kiel was already reporting cash on hand of $104,084.39, and she has continued to raise money since.

Kiel’s principal adversary will be yet another former council member seeking to return: former Super District 9, Position 2 Councilman Philip Spinosa, who, as of the year’s first disclosure, was reporting cash on hand of $14,721.60. Though that figure isn’t comparable to what Kiel reported at the time, Spinosa, like Kiel, has important connections and will ultimately raise a war chest commensurate with that fact.

Money will be an important indicator of candidate viability this year, but not the only one. One conclusion drawn by almost all observers of this year’s mayoral field is that one candidate sure to draw beaucoup votes will do so sans benefit of significant fundraising.

That would be former five-time Mayor Willie Herenton, mentioned in this space last week. Herenton finished second to incumbent Mayor Jim Strickland in 2019 without raising any money to speak of, and, especially with his new hard anti-crime platform, he remains an elephant in the room for this election season.

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Politics Politics Feature

Giving It Another Try

Photo: Juan Moyano | Dreamstime.com

One of the best-known lines in American literature was written by F. Scott Fitzgerald, who famously opined, “There are no second acts in American lives.”

Well, there are. And one of those lives belongs to former City Councilman Philip Spinosa, who — after a stint with the Chairman’s Circle of the Greater Memphis Chamber and another spell with Prestigious Logistics, a company he founded — intends to run again for the council, presumably in District 5.

As a council member representing District 9-2 from 2015 to 2019, Spinosa concerned himself with issues of economic growth and crime and sponsored such legislation as the Neighborhood Sentinel Program, which established surveillance cameras in various neighborhoods and proved so crucial in the ongoing case involving the death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of a police unit.

In addition to his prior service, Spinosa has the kind of economic connections that would ensure more than adequate financing for his campaign — a fact which will not be lost on potential opponents, who at the moment include well-known activist Meggan Wurzburg Kiel and restaurateur Nick Scott. Others known to be considering a race in District 5 include Anna Vergos Blair, daughter of former councilman and restaurateur John Vergos, and activist/entrepreneur John Marek.

Marek, who is also considering a race for Position 1 in Super-District 9, professes exasperation with the city council’s continuing delay in determining district lines for the forthcoming city election. Some of that hesitation apparently has to do with the view of some members that a 1990s judicial consent decree requires a charter amendment for certain outcomes, including one calling for single-member districts exclusively.

(At present, seven council positions are elected by a single district, and another six are elected in Memphis’ two “super districts,” each comprising approximately half the city’s population. Runoffs are permitted in the single districts, but not in the super districts.)

Two other former council members are apparently going to attempt returns to the city’s legislative body. Berlin Boyd, who served in District 7 and lost a runoff in 2019 to current seat-holder Michalyn Easter-Thomas, is considering a run for the Super District 8-3 seat being vacated by the term-limited Martavius Jones. And Scott McCormick, who represented Super District 9-1 in the first decade of this century, contemplates a race for District 2, now represented by mayoral contender Frank Colvett.

• Developer Chance Carlisle, whose brother Chase represents Council District 9-1, had strongly considered a race for mayor before deciding against it, but he still intends to have a major influence on public policy. His instrument for doing so will be via the medium of a soon-to-be-created political action committee (PAC).

Still to be named, the PAC will have a strong pro-business slant, said Carlisle, who recently was at loggerheads with city government over Mayor Jim Strickland’s reluctance to support further public financing for a proposed grand hotel on the riverfront.

The new PAC will support candidates in this year’s city election and will avoid any kind of partisan inflection, said Carlisle, who acknowledged that the recent announcement for mayor by Councilman Colvett, a well-known Republican, was a factor in his own decision not to run for mayor. That, plus another candidacy by former Mayor Willie Herenton, also recently announced, had the effect of creating possible cleavages in the electorate, said Carlisle.

“This election shouldn’t be about either political party or race,” said Carlisle, who stressed that affordable housing and better mass transit were two of the city’s most important unmet needs.

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News The Fly-By

Residents Can Get “SkyCop”-Style Cameras for Their Neighborhoods

In East Memphis’ Belle Meade subdivision, neighborhood security camera footage recently led to an arrest of a person stealing a trailer with a four-wheeler on the back. But unlike a typical private security camera, this one fed directly into the Memphis Police Department’s (MPD) Real Time Crime Center (RTCC).

Back in February, Belle Meade became the first neighborhood to fund-raise and purchase their own “SkyCop”-style cameras, which were installed throughout the area bordered by Walnut Grove, Poplar, Goodlett, and East Cherry.

The MPD has been placing surveillance cameras in high-crime or highly trafficked areas for years, and they have several mobile cameras that are placed around town during special events. But the Memphis City Council cleared the way earlier this year for any neighborhood to get a camera hooked up with the RTCC.

“This process is for people who are interested in having their cameras tie into the RTCC,” said Councilman Philip Spinosa, who sponsored the resolution to allow neighborhoods to purchase their own police cameras.

While any neighborhood can install cameras that don’t feed into the RTCC, Memphis Police Sergeant Joe Patty said the police-approved surveillance cameras make it easier for police to access video when something happens. The cameras also become property of the MPD, so maintenance falls to them, not the neighborhood.

“You have our patented SkyCop enclosure with the blue light on it, so it’s easy to recognize as a police camera. It belongs to the police, so it becomes our problem,” Patty said. “And if something were to happen, we could instantly access it and pull the video. In the other scenario [where neighborhoods use private cameras], we have to send somebody from our video team to go out and pull that video. Unless it’s a homicide or a really critical incident, that’s usually the next couple days after it happens.”

Here’s how it works: Once a neighborhood group decides it wants police cameras, someone from the group will contact the MPD’s RTCC at MPDNeighborhoodCameras@memphistn.gov, and they’ll send back a list of approved vendors. The group gets quotes from those vendors and either fund-raises from within or applies for grants to cover the cost of the camera and installation. The group then donates that cost to the Memphis and Shelby County Law Enforcement Foundation, which will purchase the cameras and have them installed.

“It becomes property of MPD, and we add it into our grid,” Patty said. “It’s basically an MPD camera, but it’s purchased by private funds.”

When the council cleared the way for this process earlier this year, some council members had concerns that citizens in neighborhoods that might need cameras the most wouldn’t be able to afford to purchase them. So they also approved a new Neighborhood Sentinel Program that allots $400,000 in the city budget for 70 neighborhood cameras to be installed in crime hotspots determined by MPD data.

“Neighborhoods should have access to cameras regardless of financial means,” Spinosa said. “This is a first step in adding security to neighborhoods. I would love it if, after we do these 70, we could do another resolution for another 70.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Second Efforts

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jackson Baker

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

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News News Blog

Officials: MPD Body Camera Program Needs Time, Money

Rallings, McGowen, Spinosa, Ford

Memphis Police Department officials asked the Memphis City Council on Tuesday for money this fiscal year to hire video analysts they say they need to get the department’s body camera program off the ground. 

MPD told council members Tuesday that they need $109,000 to hire 10 part-time video analysts who will review body camera footage before it can be made available to the public. That figure rises to about $300,000 for the new employees next year as they are paid for a full 12 months.

Asked for a timeline on the full implementation of the body camera program, MPD interim director Michael Rallings said “we’re not there yet.” 

“We need to hire the analysts first, before we put the cart before the horse,” Rallings said.

However, he said he hoped the analysts could all be hired by April.

Doug McGowen, the city’s chief operating officer, compared Memphis to other peer cities rolling out body camera and in-car camera programs. Seattle, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and Denver are all “taking a phased-in approach.”

So far, Memphis has 150 in-car cameras deployed. It now has three officers testing body cameras but has a total of about 1,700 body cameras ready to be deployed.

Seattle has deployed 18 of its 500 cameras. L.A. has deployed about 690 of its 1,500 body cameras. Milwaukee has deployed about one-tenth of its total cameras and Denver is one-fifth of the way through a full deployment of its camera program.

McGowen projected that the MPD body cameras will create about 72,000 hours of footage each month. In-car cameras in Seattle now create about 18,000 hours each month. Milwaukee projects it will create about 36,000 hours each month. McGowen said Denver has created about 6,000 hours of footage in the last 28 days.

McGowen projected it will take three hours here to fully review and redact one hour of footage from police cameras. In Seattle, where they have more stringent public records rules, the process will take 10 hours for every one hour of footage. L.A. Has not yet released any police videos. Milwaukee and Denver have not yet had any requests for videos, McGowen said.

Cost projections to store the Memphis videos will be about $4.5 million in the next five years, McGowen said. That price shoots up to $10 million with the full deployment of all cameras. The figure in L.A. Is about $50 million and no cost projections were yet available form the other cities surveyed.

Council member Edmund Ford Jr. asked Rallings how Memphis stacked up against Albuquerque and New Orleans, cities that have already fully deployed car and body camera programs.

Rallings said camera policies in those cities are likely very different than what they’ll be in Memphis. Officers there can turn the cameras on and off “at will,” he said, and open records laws are also different in both cities. In total, he said the comparison to Memphis would not be “apples to apples.”

MPD bought its body cameras from Taser International last year. A lawsuit filed earlier this month from Taser rival Digital Ally claims Taser bribed officials to get contracts in six cities, including Memphis. Council member Phillip Spinosa asked Rallings if the suit would affect the city’s camera program.

“It has nothing to do with us,” Rallings said. “It’s between Taser and the other company.”

Sexual Assault Kit Update

The Memphis Police Department (MPD) has whittled its backlog of about 13,000 untested sexual assault kits down to about 3,000 untested kits.

That was the latest from MPD officials who told Memphis City Council members Tuesday that more than 5,500 kits have completed analysis and more than 5,000 are now at labs for testing.

Officials said they can send about 30 kits a month for testing.

Also, MPD’s rape kit testing project got a nearly $2 million infusion of cash Tuesday. In September, the New York County District Attorney’s Office announced it would award nearly $38 million in grant to 32 jurisdictions in 20 states to test backlogs of rape kits. Memphis won one of the biggest grants which ranged in size from $97,000 to $2 million.

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Politics Politics Feature

Money vs. Grit ‘n Grind

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

If, as so many people declaim, money is the “mother’s milk” of politics, the fact is, there are some determined candidates who are virtually lactose-free and decline to be poor-mouthing about it. Others are letting their gross receipts and checkbooks speak for them.

As a sample case of such contrasts, consider the five-candidate race for Super District 9, Position 2. It is, like the races for mayor and City Court clerk, an at-large race. The two Super Districts, 8 and 9, represent a compromise dating from a 1991 judicial settlement, when the city’s electorate was roughly half white and half black.

In blunt terms, District 9 was the white half, more or less, while District 8 was predominantly African-American. Population shifts since then have altered the makeup of both districts, but the rough division still holds.

And there are clear distinctions between how candidates might run in an at-large race and how they can run in district races.

As Shea Flinn, the former councilman from 9, 2, and now an executive with the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce, put it, “You can walk a district race.” (That is, go door-to-door.) “You can’t do that to nearly the same degree in an at-large race. The territory is too large.”

That fact would seem to militate against an at-large candidate without a budget big enough to do radio, TV, and newspaper advertising. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the candidate with the most money wins in an at-large race, but ample funding certainly conveys an advantage.

On the other hand, the same judicial settlement that created the current district structure ordained that, unlike the case in district races, there would be no runoffs in any of the at-large races. That fact gives even cash-poor candidates the hope of winning a plurality, if they can bring some other advantage to the winner-take-all scramble.

Stephanie Gatewood, for example, a former Memphis School Board member who now aspires to the Super District 9, Positon 2, seat, reported exactly $671.45 on hand in her second-quarter financial disclosure, covering the period April 1st to June 30th. She listed two contributions, each for $500.

Gatewood’s expenditures for the period totaled $338.95, which she laid out to Perkins Productions for some “4 x 6” wallet cards.

At a recent meet-and-greet/fund-raising affair held at Acre Restaurant (after the last reporting deadline), Gatewood boasted that her election to the old Memphis City Schools board had been achieved by grass-roots and word-of-mouth efforts without much of a budget and, after engaging with attendees in a kind of quiz-’em-on-the-issues dialogue, she asked those present to notify their Twitter or Facebook networks where they were and whom they were listening to.

Clearly, Gatewood hopes that her former school board incumbency, and the contacts that came with it, can generate some turnout.

That prospect may loom even larger with another name candidate and former school board member in the same race, Kenneth Whalum Jr. Whalum, who is something of a master at using social media and attracting press coverage, has made it clear, too, that his efforts will not depend on raising a huge amount of campaign cash.

In addition to his considerable name-recognition, gained most recently from a good showing at the 2014 Democratic primary for Shelby County mayor, Whalum intends to engage in serious networking — emphasizing the theme of education and coordinating his own efforts with those of like-minded candidates for other council positions.

As a late entry, Whalum was not required to post a financial disclosure for the second quarter.

Another entry in the 9, 2, race is Lynn Moss, a novice candidate with no prior incumbencies and no name-recognition factor. Her financial receipts are also lacking — with second-quarter receipts of $1,745, mainly from personal friends, and cash-on-hand of $1,173.48.

Moss would seem to be unusually handicapped against her opponents, but she has one ace-in-the-hole, affiliation with a group of grass-roots activists who meet frequently to challenge the precepts of various civic establishments. In particular, she is running on a ticket of sorts (with Robin Spielberger in Super District 9, Position 1, and Jim Tomasik in District 1) that advocates de-annexation from Memphis of relatively recently annexed suburbs such as Cordova. To the extent that she and others can make that issue prominent, she has prospects.

The campaign of Paul Shaffer, longtime business manager for the IBEW (International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers), is intermediate between the position of determined do-it-yourself campaigns and those that are backed by numerous and significant donations.

Shaffer has benefited from large donations from union-oriented Political Action Committees (PACs). His cash-on-hand amount of $11,735.22 in his second-quarter report derives almost entirely from such sources, which are, however, relatively limited in number. They run the gamut from $500 to $5,000.

Shaffer can depend also on voluntary grass-roots support from union members and from the Democratic Party rank-and-file activists who have known Shaffer for years (many of them, as candidates, having benefited from IBEW’s own financial generosity).

And then there is Philip Spinosa, a new name to most Memphians, including the majority of voters residing in Super District 9, 2, but one not destined to stay that way for long. Already motorists along several of the city’s major thoroughfares — Walnut Grove being a case in point — are seeing Spinosa’s yard signs in great quantity, often in tandem with those of Reid Hedgepeth, the incumbent council member in Super District 9, Position 3, and Worth Morgan, a candidate in District 5, a Midtown-East Memphis enclave.

Like Hedgepeth and Morgan, Spinosa, a sales executive with FedEx, has the kind of youthful image that is made-to-order for television advertising, and his connections with influential members of the city’s business elite are similar to theirs as well. His second-quarter receipts were a whopping $164,940, and his cash balance was $149,133.75.

Resources like that (Morgan is similarly fixed, by the way) are almost on a par with those of the two mayoral-race titans, Mayor A C Wharton and Councilman Jim Strickland, and, over the long haul, obviously give Spinosa the potential to close and overcome the name-ID factor currently owned by a couple of his opponents.

Jackson Baker

The family of late civil rights icon and National Civil Rights Museum founder D’Army Bailey acknowldged the Shelby County Commission’s vote on Monday to rename the Shelby County Courthouse in his honor. From left: son Merritt Bailey, wife Adrienne Bailey, Commission chair Justin Ford, son Justin Bailey. At right is Commissioner Terry Roland, sponsor of the re-naming resolution.