Tag: political

Categories
Editorial Opinion

On Changing Charters

In what was almost certainly the first of many such appearances to come, three elected county officials showed up at the conservative-oriented Dutch Treat Luncheon last Saturday to argue against making their positions and those of two other county officials appointive rather than elective.

The three — Sheriff Mark Luttrell, Trustee Bob Patterson, and Register Tom Leatherwood — noted for the record that the issue will
almost certainly be adjudicated in the courts. That’s because Shelby County is one of two Tennessee counties enjoying home rule, the other being Knox County, subject of a recent state Supreme Court decision allowing for the possible appointment of constitutionally mandated county officials.

The court’s ruling was based on the fact that the Knox County charter did not provide specific establishment of the offices of sheriff, trustee, assessor, county clerk, and register. Since Knox County’s governmental system was modeled precisely on that of Shelby County, the precedent there clearly indicates that our own system is vulnerable to revision by a similar judicial ruling.

Saturday’s meeting was further energized by a claim from the three Shelby County officials that county mayor A C Wharton was sponsoring legislation already before the General Assembly in Nashville that would facilitate a changeover into an appointive system. That generated something of a state of alarm among the listeners, who seemed to concur with Luttrell, Patterson, and Leatherwood that appointed officials are more remote from the population they serve than elected ones, less subject to direct monitoring, and, by definition, immune from a change in their status at the hands of the electorate.

As it turns out, the bill now pending in Nashville failed by a narrow margin to achieve support from the Shelby County Commission at the commission’s Monday meeting — a fact which probably dooms it to defeat in the legislature at large. And the scope of the bill was somewhat less than advertised, as well. As Wharton explained on Tuesday, the bill — the only one on the subject that he has personally approved — would merely have amended current state requirements to the end that referenda on changes in the county charter could be scheduled by the commission for special elections rather than awaiting regularly scheduled countywide general elections. “I just wanted us to be ready earlier, just in case,” Mayor Wharton said, somewhat ambiguously.

Though we are predisposed to the arguments made by the three officials on Saturday, we are open-minded about the issue in general. We urge Shelby Countians, official and otherwise, to avail themselves of ample study and debate on the matter while there’s still time to consider alternatives.

Meanwhile, we congratulate the members of the city Charter Commission, who on Monday announced a series of public meetings on possible changes in that charter.

The schedule: March 21st, 6 p.m., at City Council chambers, 125 N. Main; March 29th, 6 p.m., at Hollywood Community Center, 1560 N. Hollywood; March 31st, 1 p.m., at Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library, 3030 Poplar; April 18th, 6 p.m., at Whitehaven Community Center, 4318 Graceland.

Further information is available at www.memphischartercommission.org.

Categories
Opinion

Majority Rules

As the mayoral race heats up, the 1991 law that abolished runoffs in Memphis mayoral and at-large City Council elections is ripe for reconsideration.

Simply put, Memphis is clearly a majority-black city (63 percent in the 2005 census update). When the minority becomes the majority, is there still a need for election laws imposed by the federal courts “to eradicate minority-vote dilution”?

The question looms as Mayor Willie Herenton seeks to stay in office for a fifth consecutive four-year term. With the filing deadline for the October election still more than four months away, he already faces three challengers: Carol Chumney, Herman Morris, and John Willingham. Ironically, the elimination of the majority-vote requirement that helped Herenton win the office in 1991 could now give hope to challengers who might have a harder time defeating the mayor one-on-one.

“There is a school of thought that says we could have a mayor elected with 34 to 37 percent of the vote,” says Greg Duckett, chairman of the Shelby County Election Commission. The figures are not far-fetched. In the 2006 9th Congressional District Democratic primary, Steve Cohen led the 15-candidate field with 31 percent. Cohen is white, and his leading challengers were black, as is the majority of the district.

With a runoff, the top two finishers face off, giving voters an either-or proposition and encouraging alliances among candidates who finish out of the running or drop out before the election. Herenton himself has twice been elected with less than 50 percent of the vote. In 1991, he got just over 49 percent, and in 1999, he got 46 percent.

A brief history lesson is in order: When the Memphis City Charter was overhauled in 1966, the authors, most of them white, decided on a City Council with seven district seats and six at-large seats. In an at-large council election or a mayoral election, the charter stated that if the leading vote-getter fell short of a majority, then there would be a runoff between the top two candidates.

The demographics of Memphis were very different in 1966. As recounted by Rhodes College political scientists Marcus Pohlmann and Michael Kirby in their book Racial Politics at the Crossroads, black civil rights leader Vasco Smith said “we don’t stand a ghost of a chance in this town when it comes to running at-large” because white voters heavily outnumbered black voters and voted as a bloc.

During the 1970s and 1980s, at-large seats and the runoff provision helped whites maintain their grip on the City Council and the mayor’s office. In 1982, for example, black city councilman J.O. Patterson Jr. led the mayoral field with 40.7 percent to 29.8 percent for white runner-up Dick Hackett. But in the runoff, Hackett defeated Patterson 54 percent to 46 percent.

The world changed in 1991. The United States Department of Justice filed suit under the provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act against the election process in Memphis. It was in 1965 that President Lyndon Johnson pushed the Voting Rights Act through Congress after civil rights marchers were thrashed by police in Selma, Alabama.

Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act bans voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in a language minority group. The act has been amended five times, most recently in 1992. In a key amendment, the act has been interpreted as banning practices that have a discriminatory result as well a discriminatory purpose. The Justice Department or private citizens can sue under Section 2. In a landmark ruling in U.S. v. City of Memphis, the late U.S. district judge Jerome Turner ordered a plan “which will eradicate the minority vote dilution.” The result was the end of runoff elections in mayoral and other citywide races.

In the closest election in Memphis mayoral history, Herenton defeated Hackett six weeks after Turner’s ruling by 142 votes out of 247,973 votes cast. Each of them got 49.4 percent of the vote, with white crank candidate Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges getting the rest.

In the 1990 census, the black-white population ratio in Memphis was 55-45. In 2000, the black-white ratio was 61-34. Some people have tried to estimate the percentage of eligible voters who are black or white, but Duckett says that is guesswork because voters don’t have to declare and there are a large number of “others.”

In 1995, the City Council amended the charter by ordinance, and the council now consists of seven regular districts and two super districts with three members each. But the change “appeared to have no effect or intended effect on the existing law concerning mayoral elections,” says city attorney Sara Hall. “Nobody has done anything that would overtly change what Judge Turner ordered us to do. The question now is should we.”

While not advocating or discouraging such action, Duckett agreed there are “sufficient facts” to challenge the runoff law. There is a precedent. In 1988, Dr. Talib-Karim Muhammad filed a class-action suit in Memphis challenging at-large elections. The lawsuit was incorporated in the Justice Department’s action.

Another change since 1991 is the higher incidence of crossover voting as opposed to racial bloc voting. Herenton and Cohen and a handful of other Memphis politicians have enjoyed a significant measure of crossover votes.

Could a white Memphian sue under Section 2? While telling the Flyer she does not know the particulars in Memphis, Justice Department spokeswoman Cynthia Magnuson noted a recent case in Mississippi, United States v. Ike Brown and Noxubee County. This is the first case filed by the Justice Department in which it alleges that whites are being subjected to voting discrimination on the basis of race.

The issue of runoffs in the mayoral race and citywide races should be raised and decided sooner rather than later so voters and candidates know the score — and the scoring system.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter from the Editor: Those Expat Memphis Bashers

Part of my job, as I see it, is to read as many local blogs and Web sites as I can. And it’s interesting to me how the local efforts mirror the national blogs. Thaddeus Matthews, for example, is our local version of the Drudge Report. He throws up every outrageous rumor that comes his way, no matter how potentially libelous or scandalous. And about half the time he’s on target.

Of course, that also means that about half the time he’s totally full of crap. It’s a case of reader beware, but even so, Matthews has posted dozens of items that have led to stories in mainstream media outlets.

It’s the same with other local sites. In Memphis, we’ve got media blogs, liberal blogs, conservative blogs, food blogs, art blogs, and dozens of variations on those themes. Add in the hundreds of MySpace accounts and personal journals and the number of options for reading local “authors” of one sort or another becomes overwhelming.

One thing I’ve noticed, though, is a consistent theme in reader comments: Memphis-bashing. It usually comes in the form of “I’m glad I left this stupid town” or “This is the last straw. I’m moving to DeSoto County” (or Fayette County or Covington or some other perceived Shangri-la).

What the Memphis-haters seem to have in common, however, is an inability to stop themselves. If they’ve moved away, why are they still engaged in local issues? Why go to a blog to insult Willie Herenton if you’re now living the good life in Olive Branch?

Sure, we’ve got problems here in River City, but there is also hope and more media outlets than ever before — amateur and professional — performing watchdog functions. The old 24-hour news cycle is dead. Web sites, including MemphisFlyer.com, post around the clock, as news happens.

Never has more information been more available to the public, and I believe better things are possible with a better-informed electorate. It happened nationally in the last election. It can happen here. We need to keep smoking the rascals out and then take action at the ballot box.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Cohen + Conyers = Coup

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

If the turnout and response at Steve Cohen‘s “town meeting” with Michigan congressman John Conyers last Thursday night at the National Civil Rights Museum was any indication of the 9th District congressman’s future fortunes, Cohen might as well start looking into long-term living arrangements in the District of Columbia.

Conyers isn’t your ordinary visiting congressman, for starters. The longtime representative from Detroit is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, on which freshman Cohen sits. Not only that, he was on Judiciary in 1974 when the committee voted articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon, hastening that errant president’s departure from office. And not only that, as Conyers reminded this reporter afterwards, he wrote the first articles of impeachment against Nixon.

In short, the man is a congressional legend, and Conyers’ very presence here was a tribute to Cohen’s standing this early in his congressional tenure. Beyond that, Conyers made a point of extending his explicit blessing to Cohen, and since the noted Michigander takes a back seat to no one on economics and civil rights issues, it was a convincing plug for Cohen to the African Americans in the audience (who were numerous and enthusiastic and who conferred frequent praise on both congressmen).

The congressmen fielded an abundance of questions and concurred on such matters as impeachment of President Bush (justifiable but not practical with other priorities facing the nation), health care (a scandal and a scam as proposed by Bush), Iraq (should be ended now by cutting off funds), Iran (containable without potentially reckless military adventurism by Bush), civil liberties (severely menaced at present), getting out the vote (election procedures need amending and rights need to be safeguarded), and much more.

Conyers and Cohen dilated, when asked, on everything from inadequate traffic lights at Third and Holmes to the continuing shameful conditions in New Orleans after Katrina. They spoke without hesitation and with no roundabout dodges. People were still lined up to ask questions when Cohen aide Willie Henry was forced to call time, advising the crowd (which filled up both the museum’s auditorium and an overflow room with a TV monitor) that written questions could be submitted with assurances they would be answered later, presumably by mail.

The crowd, mixed with equal parts Everyman and Who’s Who types, seemed satisfied. So did the two congressmen. Cohen, whose verbal nimbleness was on a par with that of his illustrious guest, will no doubt make a habit of these affairs. He would be well advised to.

Or so thought such attendees as maverick blogger Thaddeus Matthews, who boldly proclaimed afterward: “This is the first time in decades this district has gotten straight answers.”

A generous sampling of those “straight answers” can be found under the head “Cohen, Conyers Click Together at Town Meeting” in “Political Beat” at MemphisFlyer.com. Here are two brief samples:

Conyers on Katrina: “[It’s] one of the greatest scandals of this administration. There’s some $9 million missing … . There’s nothing to come back to in New Orleans. Government negligence has been more harmful than the natural disaster.”

Cohen on Iraq: “This is Bush’s war. It’s like Rosemary’s baby. It’s named … My hands are not tainted by a vote for this war, and I don’t intend to get my hands tainted.”

More Cohen: Consistent with predictions by some (read: this columnist) that Cohen would equal or excel the celebrity quotient of his 9th District predecessor, Harold Ford Jr., the hyperactive congressman was due to appear this Thursday night as the featured guest on The Colbert Report with Stephen Colbert. Steve to Steve, as it were.

And, as it happens, the Memphis congressman was the only major local official to lend his office to active pursuit of a Toyota plant for nearby Marion, Arkansas. Mayors Willie Herenton and A C Wharton offered little encouragement beyond lip service, if that — seemingly in deference to efforts by Governor Phil Bredesen and other state officials to attract the plant to Chattanooga.

In the event, Toyota announced Tuesday morning that the plant would be built in Tupelo, Mississippi, instead — inconveniently distant from the Memphis labor market and off the Tennessee tax rolls, as well.

• As Shelby County Democrats head into this month’s reorganization meetings — a preliminary caucus on Saturday, followed by a convention on March 31st — there is no clear favorite for party chairman, with lawyer Jay Bailey still the only fully declared candidate.

Others reportedly considering a bid are Jody Patterson, Desi Franklin, and Shelby County commissioner Henri Brooks. A brief draft boomlet on the part of several activists for interim state senator Shea Flinn collapsed last week when Flinn expressed no interest.

A key to the process may be county commissioner Sidney Chism, leader of one of the party’s three major factions, who said last week he would not support Bailey but has not specified his own preference.

Meanwhile, county Republicans made little fuss in reelecting their own chairman, Bill Giannini, at a convention over the weekend.

Categories
Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

Let’s be clear on something: The Democrats did not get elected because they had a better plan or were more trusted. They got elected because they were not Republicans. And time will tell if, as the Republicans did, they squander their opportunity. It does not look like a great start, however. After promising an amazing five-day work week to pass their “100-hour agenda,” the Democrats took off the first Monday of the session because Florida played Ohio State in the BCS national championship game (the Swing State Bowl). I must remind you that the game was at 8:30 p.m. — you know, at night. Clearly the Democrats had to paint their faces and get to a tailgate party earlier that day, so they called off work for themselves.

It looks as if Bush has not gotten the election message either. He is doubling down on the bad hand he dealt himself in Iraq by sending 21,000 more troops. I am not sure where they are going to get the soldiers. He has gotten our nation down to very few fighting men left, so an ex-military friend of mine imagined that at this point he will have to enlist the Salvation Army and some Civil War reenactors to get to the number of uniformed soldiers that he wants to “surge” in Iraq.

Bush did rearrange the deck chairs on his Titanic by reassigning some key Iraq officials. He demoted the director of intelligence (which is like being principal of summer school) to serve as deputy secretary of state under Condoleezza Rice. Seeing the need for a man under Rice, Bush moved swiftly to reassign John Negroponte, or, as Bush calls him, “Hey there, Sport.”

It’s funny to watch the old Democratic senators gin up outrage at the Iraq war and Bush (whose approval ratings by the American people are currently somewhere between a skin rash and Durham, North Carolina, district attorney Mike Nifong). If you think the old-guard Democratic senators are acting mad now, just think back on how mad they did not act three years ago, when most of them voted for the war.

Neither party has any credibility on the issue at this point. As I have long said, it is this bloated, inefficient, and egoistic government that led us into this war. It has gotten so bad now that congressmen might actually read the Iraq Study Group report to see what they have been doing for the last three years. Ready, fire, aim, then blame is their motto.

I am not an expert on war. My last official uniformed service was with the Boy Scouts, so I make no pretenses about knowing what we should do. I do know, however, that huge mistakes have been made, and it makes no sense to keep digging this hole. The role of our military is to protect our country. If it is depleted and demoralized with an ill-thought-out war, then it can’t do that.

Democrats have to fight the label of the “tax and spend” party; then, and only then, will they succeed. I am not sure what “rich” is these days in their view. Perhaps it is anyone with a flat-screen TV or who sleeps on 300-count sheets, but I’m convinced they will soon identify them and chase them from the village, killing the golden geese they have long loved to tax.

Still, it’s the GOP that needs to get the message. Evidence that they have not is the fact that they demoted one of my favorite congressmen, Arizona Republican Jeff Flake, who is the only person who stands up and challenges those sneaky earmarks attached to bills to provide pork for congressmen. In the new congress, GOP leadership punished Flake by not giving him a committee assignment that he clearly should have gotten. If this continues, the exile of the GOP, “the party of less government and less spending,” will be a long one.

Ron Hart is a satire columnist and investor in Atlanta. He worked for Goldman Sachs and was appointed to the Tennessee Board of Regents by Lamar Alexander. E-mail: RevRon10@aol.com.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Juvenile Justice

Whether it’s the inevitable effect of a party-line shift on the Shelby County Commission, which went from a 7-6 Republican majority to a 7-6 Democratic majority after last year’s quadrennial elections, or it’s a matter of purposeful effort on the part of new members, race-consciousness has returned to the commission’s front burner. (See also this week’s)

Not that it was ever wholly absent. Any number of issues before the commission in the last decade or so have been affected, at least implicitly, by the issue of race. For starters, there is the matter of school construction — and disagreement between blacks and whites (aka Democrats and Republicans) over how city and county systems should be governed and funded. Another racially tinged issue, dormant for the moment but a raging controversy during the last several years, was that of privatizing the county’s correction facilities.

But justice, and the question of whether it is dispensed equally and equitably, is at the core of explicitly racial concerns that haven’t been so directly addressed on the commission since arguments over redistricting preoccupied the body more than a decade ago.

The focus of recent discussion has been the matter, which simmered after last summer’s countywide general election and came to a boil with the swearing-in of the new commission, of whether there should be a second Juvenile Court judgeship. That probably wouldn’t have been an issue had anyone other than Curtis Person — a respected longtime state senator, a white, and a Republican — won in a field in which three prominent African-American and, presumably, Democratic candidates canceled out each other’s votes. The fact that Person had served as a part-time court administrator for several years (and thus could be identified by critics with its practices) exacerbated matters, as did the question of racial inequities in the administration of juvenile justice.

Though support for the candidacy of last year’s court runner-up, former U.S. attorney Veronica Coleman, is part of the reason for the current controversy, race has become the overriding issue. There is no denying that black youths predominate before the court, that their cases are disproportionately remanded to adult courts, and that, as was recently disclosed, suburban white youths have often had their own cases diverted to alternate and presumably milder handling outside the court’s jurisdiction.

This situation is but the tip of the iceberg, say several of the commission’s black Democrats, some of whom are demanding both a federal investigation of the court and a command appearance before the County Commission by Judge Person, who, for his part, has promised to address all concerns if permitted to do the job he was elected to do. The commission’s Republicans, who tend to be Person’s defenders, balk at what they consider the peremptory nature of the summons.

Meanwhile, a decisive vote on the issues of a second judgeship has been delayed, and, following a stormy, racially tinged debate in a committee session on Monday, so has a vote on commissioning a formal study on the court’s procedures.

While there is no doubt that the moment of truth is approaching on the issues of Juvenile Court, we hold on to the hope that racial and political comity will survive the final resolution.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Race Matters

This week’s special-election Democratic primary in state Senate District 30 has engendered much more than the normal quota of divisiveness in party ranks.

Both former city attorney Robert Spence and state representative Beverly Marrero have significant support from established political and civic figures; both also have highly animated opposition, and some Democrats privately worry that enduring hostilities will hobble the winner in the March 13 showdown with Republican Larry Parrish.

The battle is for the Midtown-based seat given up by new 9th District congressman Steve Cohen, and Cohen is on record as endorsing Marrero, a longtime political ally. But Cohen aide Randy Wade has made a series of statements tempering that endorsement as more pro forma than active — perhaps in acknowledgement of a potentially combustible racial issue.

So far, there is no such fire, but there was enough smoke that activist Jerry Hall, upon learning of Cohen’s endorsement plans on New Year’s Day, made a point of saying to the then congressman-elect, “I hope this doesn’t become racial.”

Neither Marrero, who is white, nor Spence, an African American, has encouraged any such split, and both have both white and black backers, but the fact remains that the cores of their respective support bases are somewhat racially divergent.

Besides Cohen, other leading supporters of Marrero are City Council member Carol Chumney, Shelby County commissioner Steve Mulroy, and Memphis school board member Jeff Warren, all of whom are white. Marrero, however, has also been endorsed by black legislative colleagues John DeBerry, Joe Towns, and Larry Turner.

For his part, Spence is supported by city councilman Myron Lowery, county commissioners Deidre Malone and Sidney Chism, and other prominent African Americans close to Mayor Willie Herenton.

Race has become a serious factor on the Shelby County Commission, where Democrat Steve Mulroy and Republican Mike Carpenter, both new members elected last August, have emerged as potential swing voters.

Carpenter’s role was showcased late last year when he was the only Republican voting with the commission’s seven Democrats to establish a second Juvenile Court judgeship. As of this week, he still favors that move — delayed by legal and procedural obstacles and requiring at some point a re-vote — but he shifted back into the company of his fellow Republicans Monday during a party-line committee vote deferring approval of a formal study of Juvenile Court procedures.

The Democrats won that vote, 7-6, after a stormy discussion that had racial overtones (as one example, Commissioner Sidney Chism charged that disproportionate incarceration of blacks might be related to the issue of “making money”) and focused on whether Juvenile Court judge Curtis Person should appear before the commission to answer questions.

Afterward, Carpenter made it clear that he regarded the demand, made chiefly by Chism and fellow Democrats Henri Brooks and Deidre Malone, as bordering on uncivil.

Mulroy, the lone white among the commission’s majority Democrats, took the lead Monday in several black-white matters, voicing his concern over an issue that is normally Brooks’ province and forcing a party-line roll-call vote overturning what had earlier been a unanimous committee vote approving a minor contract. The issue? Whether the company receiving the contract employed a proportionate number of African Americans.

Up to this point, the commission, eight of whose members are new, has experienced an unusual degree of comity. But both the current raging matter of reorganizing Juvenile Court (see Editorial, page 14) and various Title VI issues raised by Brooks relating to (equal-employment) clauses of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, have brought the potentially divisive question of racial inequity to the fore. Said Chism: “Whether we like it or not, it does exist.” Brooks: “I’ll go further. … It’s on this commission.”

It seems to be a factor as well in the current session of Congress. Congressman Cohen got some more this week with the debut issue of a much-heralded new online publication.

Politico.com reported that “several current and former members” of the Congressional Black Caucus had “made it clear that a white lawmaker was not welcome” in its ranks, and that Cohen, accordingly, had dropped whatever plans he had to seek membership. Cohen was quoted as saying that attempting to join the caucus would be a “social faux pas.”