Tag: Politics

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Politics Politics Feature

Of This and That

State Representative Justin Pearson, whose presence during this year’s legislative session has been fragmentary, has resumed regular attendance as the General Assembly heads into its stretch drive.

Pearson, who has avowedly been dealing with the aftereffects of his brother’s death in December, was a speaker at the meeting of the Shelby County Democratic Party (SCDP) convened Saturday at Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church to elect new party officers. 

Things went downhill after rousing unity speeches by Pearson and others, as the assembled Democrats could not reach agreement on the bylaws needed to continue with the meeting, which was to have elected a new chairman and other officers. Amid chaos, the meeting was aborted, with the professed intent by those present of reconvening within 30 days.

The Tennessee Democratic Party (TNDP), whose chair Rachel Campbell of Chattanooga was on hand, temporarily decommissioned the local party, as it had nearly 10 years earlier during a previous period of public disorder in the SCDP.

• The Democrats’ foreshortened meeting was the site for a fair amount of schmoozing from potential near-term political candidates. One such was Michael Pope, a former sheriff’s department deputy who served a brief tenure as the SCDP’s last nominal chair before its previous shutdown by the state party in 2016.

Pope later became police chief in West Memphis. He resigned during a controversy over allegedly suppressed evidence in the case of the West Memphis Three, who were subsequently released after serving several years for a notorious murder.

Pope is now an announced candidate for sheriff in 2026. An expected opponent is Anthony Buckner, the current chief deputy to Sheriff Floyd Bonner.

• Former state Senator Brian Kelsey will hold a celebration in East Memphis on Saturday for his recent release from prison. “It’s time to party!” say the invites. Kelsey, who had been convicted of campaign finance violations and served only two weeks at a federal prison in Kentucky, was pardoned last month by Trump.

• State Senator Brent Taylor is trying again after his bill seeking the legislative removal from office of DA Steve Mulroy failed to gain traction and was taken off notice. 

Taylor and state Senate Speaker Randy McNally made public their request that the state Supreme Court create a panel to investigate Mulroy, Nashville DA Glenn Funk, and Warren County DA Chris Stanford. Like Mulroy, Funk is a liberal who has ruffled the ideological feathers of the state’s GOP supermajority. Stanford is something of a throw-in. He is under indictment on charges of reckless endangerment after firing a pistol in pedestrian pursuit of an accused serial killer.

The shift in tactics from legislative to judicial was an effort to avoid the appearance of being politically partisan, said Taylor, who acknowledged that any action on the new proposal would be delayed at least thorough the summer.  

• Entities in Memphis and Shelby County seem to have done well in their entreaties for financial aid from the state. Included either in Governor Bill Lee’s original budget or his supplemental budget, announced last week, were such petitioners as the city of Memphis, the Memphis Zoo, the Memphis Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum, Agape Child & Family Services, Youth Villages, Memphis Allies, Operation Taking Back 901, Church of God in Christ (COGIC), PURE Academy, YMCA of Memphis & the Mid-South, Tech901, Moore Tech, Southern College of Optometry, Hospitality Hub, Memphis Teacher Residency, Memphis City Seminary, Africa in April, Stax Music Academy, and Tennessee College of Applied Technology (for the Memphis aviation campus).

Also included was funding for an audit of Memphis-Shelby County Schools. Conspicuously missing so far are allotments for Regional One Health and the Metal Museum. Additions and subtractions are to be expected before the session ends.

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Beyond the Arc Sports

Grizzlies Leave Jazz Singing the Blues

Scotty Pippen Jr. dribbles the ball in a game against the Utah Jazz on March 26, 2025. (Photo by: Jamie Sabau/NBAE via Getty Images)

 The Memphis Grizzlies ended a three-game skid by routing the Utah Jazz 140-103, Tuesday night, capping off a 4-0 season series sweep.

Despite yet another sluggish start and trailing by as many as 14 points in the first half, the Grizzlies narrowed the deficit to 65-64 by halftime.

With a 41-17 third-quarter surge, Memphis took command of the game and improved to 44-28 for the season. The team now holds a slim half-game lead over the Lakers for the fourth seed in the Western Conference.

The Grizzlies recorded 38 assists, outscored Utah 27-8 in points off turnovers, and dominated the boards 52-28, including a 17-4 advantage on the offensive glass. Additionally, Memphis had a 25-0 edge in second-chance points and outscored Utah 76-38 in the second half.

After the game, Grizzlies head coach Taylor Jenkins acknowledged Jazz’s strong start, noting that Memphis lacked physicality and resistance in the first quarter and early second quarter, allowing Utah to get easy shots. However, he expressed relief that the Grizzlies were able to “weather the storm.”

Jenkins added: “We were getting what we needed on the offensive side, even though we were missing a couple shots there. But we made a great run at the end of the second quarter, and then just our resistance and physicality on the defensive side in the third quarter was so much better.”

“That allowed us to get out — our fast break numbers were better,” Jenkins continued. “We ended up with 38 assists. We were just playing with a different level of energy, because our defense sparked us.”

Desmond Bane led Memphis in scoring with 21 points, adding six assists and four rebounds in 29 minutes of action.

Jaren Jackson Jr. contributed 19 points on 8-of-12 shooting, while also grabbing three rebounds and blocking two shots, before exiting with an injury in the third quarter. He rejoined the team on the bench in the fourth quarter.

In a notable defensive stretch, the Grizzlies held the Jazz to just a single field goal for over seven minutes following Jackson Jr.’s exit from the game.

Scotty Pippen Jr. delivered a strong all-around effort, tallying 16 points, 10 assists, and five rebounds. Rookie Jaylen Wells had a solid performance, scoring 10 points, grabbing six rebounds, and dishing out five assists.

The Grizzlies’ bench dominated their Jazz counterparts, outscoring them 65-39 while also controlling the glass with 29 rebounds and distributing 13 assists.

Zach Edey, Vince Williams Jr., and Jay Huff formed a potent bench trio, as all three players scored 15 points each.

The Grizzlies will conclude their five-game road trip on Thursday against the league-leading Oklahoma City Thunder, who boast an impressive 60-12 record. OKC currently holds a 3-0 advantage in the season series against Memphis.

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Politics Politics Feature

Taylor Resolution Limping

Young at Kiwanis: Leery of “BS” issues (Photo: Jackson Baker)

After a lengthy period of inaction on it, state Senator Brent Taylor’s much-vaunted legislative resolution to remove Shelby County DA Steve Mulroy from office was scheduled for a hearing in the state House Criminal Justice Subcommittee on Wednesday of this week.

Asked about the matter following his appearance before the Downtown Kiwanis Club last week, Mayor Paul Young had this to say: “I don’t think they should remove a duly elected individual. I told Brent that, but I opt not to get into all of the public back-and-forth on DA Mulroy or the school board because I believe that Memphis needs a leader that can stay above the fray. And I get so sick of the drama. It’s just nauseating. Every day is some BS that people want us to respond to that’s all personality-driven that does not help our people, so I stay out of it and let them figure it out.”

What the House subcommittee will try to figure out was expressed this way in Taylor’s original Senate resolution: “General Assembly, Statement of Intent or Position – Authorizes the Speaker of Senate to appoint a committee to meet with a like committee from the House of Representatives to consider the removal of Steven J. Mulroy from the office of District Attorney General for the Thirtieth Judicial District by the Tennessee General Assembly acting pursuant to Article VI, Section 6 of the Constitution of Tennessee.” 

The Senate resolution has not so far advanced. It is the House version, more or less identically worded and co-sponsored by state Representative Kevin Vaughn, that will be considered on Wednesday, to be regarded either (in Young’s phrase) as “BS” or, as Senator Taylor has argued, as an important element of his soi-disant “Make Memphis Matter” campaign.

Taylor has issued a lengthy, if somewhat sketchy, bill of particulars to justify his essential claim that Mulroy’s tenure is injurious to the prospects for crime control in Memphis. 

Word to this point has been that few members of the legislature’s leadership or its rank and file have shared Taylor’s sense of urgency or timing.

The issue will be vying for attention with such matters as a pending measure authorizing state takeover of the Memphis Shelby County School Board and Governor Bill Lee’s announcement this week of a supplement to his budget.

And both Mulroy and Young, in his remarks to Kiwanis last week, have cited figures showing dramatic recent decreases in the incidence of crime in the city.

The mayor presented figures showing a 13.3 percent decrease in crime overall since 2022, with reductions occurring in every ZIP code except two. Homicides were down 30 percent, and motor vehicle thefts were down 39 percent, he said.

He also cited figures demonstrating that crimes in the FedExForum area were substantially lower than equivalent areas in Downtown Nashville.

“Results,” he said when asked why the city council, which failed to approve his reappointment of Police Chief C.J. Davis in 2024, had unanimously approved her this year.

• The appointment of Circuit Court Judge Valerie Smith to replace the retiring Judge Arnold Goldin on the state  Court of Appeals was finalized by the legislature on Monday.

• Inspired by the ongoing series of angry popular protests of Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) actions at congressional town halls nationwide, Shelby County Democrats made ready to organize a protest action last Saturday at a scheduled local appearance by 8th District Republican Congressman David Kustoff.

The action had to be called off, however, when Kustoff’s speech to the men’s club at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in Germantown was canceled because of what church officials called “safety concerns.” 

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Politics Politics Feature

Fallout

Pastor Ricky Floyd (Photo: Pursuit of God Church Memphis | Facebook)

In a scenario occasioned by the tragic shooting death this past week of revered pastor Ricky Floyd, two prominent members of the Memphis political community found themselves at loggerheads.

The two were Javier “Jay” Bailey, CAO in the office of Assessor Melvin Burgess and newly announced candidate for assessor to succeed his term-limited boss, and Antonio “Two-Shay” Parkinson, influential state representative from District 98 in North Memphis and longtime chair of the legislature’s Black Caucus.

There was already a certain amount of bad blood between the two as a result of what Parkinson felt was an innuendo from Bailey that he had sided with the Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) board in the firing of former schools Superintendent Marie Feagins. But the dispute rose to incendiary dimensions when Bailey chose to comment on the Floyd killing on his Facebook page.  

His commentary began with a seemingly uncontroversial sentiment: “Pastor Ricky Floyd was my friend. I am absolutely saddened by his death and this community will suffer the loss of a great man concerned about more than himself.”

Bailey would continue with an admonition for people to avoid passing judgment on Floyd’s accused slayer Samantha Marion, who was arrested for shooting Floyd after the two quarreled outside a South Memphis restaurant and bar in the early hours of Wednesday, March 12th.

“[L]et us take caution and not turn this sister into a villain or a demon,” Bailey wrote. “There are facts that most of you have not heard.” Although Bailey did not go on to divulge any “facts” per se, he seemed to Parkinson to be implying that the quarrel and the shooting stemmed from the existence of a prior relationship between Floyd and Marion, who was charged with manslaughter in his death. 

That was enough to enrage Parkinson, well-known to be close to the deceased minister and his partner in many a public activism. In a Facebook post of his own, Parkinson noted that follow-up investigation appeared to show that Floyd and Marion had not known each other and wrote: “Many people who claimed to be Ricky Floyd[’s] friend, like Javier Bailey and others, that was posting for clout, comments and likes are about to feel real stupid now.”

Between the two of them, these Facebook posts generated several hundred responses from Facebook perusers, who exploded with expletives, high emotion, and every conceivable surmise as to the fatal confrontation between Floyd and Marion — the cause of which remains mysterious as of this writing.

The killing of Floyd was mourned among every social stratum of his home city, and especially among the members of Memphis’ African-American population, where the reverend was increasingly regarded as someone between a hero and a saint.

Nor were the denizens of the state’s General Assembly unaffected when the late pastor was honored with a moment of silence on the House floor.

The heated interchange between Parkinson and Bailey was in a sense just another symptom of the toll and human dimensions of the drama. 

A commemoration of the Reverend Floyd, under the heading “Celebration Service,” will be held at Greater Imani Church on Austin Peay on the morning of Friday, March 28th, with visitation on the preceding date at R.S. Lewis & Sons Funeral Home. 

• The aforementioned Marie Feagins affair and this week’s showdown in the General Assembly on a proposed state takeover of the MSCS school board were footnoted during Monday’s meeting of the Shelby County Commission in a suggestion by Commissioner Shante Avant that the commission’s vote several weeks ago of “no confidence” in the board had been an influence in the introduction of the takeover legislation.

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Film Features Film/TV

Memphis Flyer Podcast March 13, 2025: It’s Legislatin’ Time in Tennessee!

Chris McCoy gives you the rundown on what’s going on in Nashville as the new legislative session gets rolling. Plus, Mickey 17!

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Politics Politics Feature

Catching Up

Protesters gathered on President’s Day to condemn President Donald Trump and his administration. (Photo: Chris Davis)

The Tennessee Board of Professional Responsibility had good news last week for Shelby County DA Steve Mulroy regarding four distinct matters charged against him by his persistent adversary, state Senator Brent Taylor, who had included them in his proposed resolution to seek legislative removal of Mulroy. 

The board found Mulroy legally blameless in:

1) His decision to take the death penalty off the table in the murder case of Michael Sample, when two different experts concluded that the defendant was intellectually disabled and thus ineligible, under the law, for the death penalty.

2) His decision not to oppose a reduction of a 162-year sentence for a string of nonviolent forgeries in the case of Courtney Anderson. 

3) and 4) Two separate allegations that he had engaged in improper “ex parte” communication with a presiding judge outside the presence of opposing counsel. 

OUTMemphis placed third at the 12th Annual TEP Gumbo Contest. (Photo: Courtesy Jonathan Cole)

• The OUTMemphis organization, whose booth is pictured here, was one of several winners in the annual fundraising gumbo contest sponsored by the Tennessee Equality Project.

The 12th annual TEP event was held Sunday at the Memphis Sports and Events Center at Liberty Park, drawing a large crowd of entrants, attendees, and public figures who braved the frigid weather.

Proceeds from the event support a variety of projects which, in the words of TEP, “advance the well-being of LGBTQ people and their families here at home in Tennessee.”

Among the elected politicians on hand were state Senator Raumesh Akbari and state Representative Gabby Salinas. Senator Akbari served as one of five primary judges for the event.

This year’s event was held amid several pending developments in both state and national government of direct interest to the LGBTQ community and on the eve of hearings in the state General Assembly on HB 315/SB 0737, the “Tennessee Covenant Marriage Act.”

That legislation, as described by its chief sponsor, state Representative Gino Bulso (R-Williamson), would allow marital unions “between a man and a woman,” requiring compulsory counseling and excluding “irreconcilable differences” as reasons for divorce.

Bulso said the bill would also challenge the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that enabled same-sex marriages.

• President’s Day weekend was notable in other ways as well. On Monday, a sizeable crowd of protesters gathered Downtown to convey their sentiments regarding ongoing actions by the Trump administration.

Former Flyer staffer Chris Davis was there and took the photo below. 

(Photo: Chris Davis)
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Politics Politics Beat Blog Politics Feature

Political Dominoes

(left) Marsha Blackburn; (right) Bill Hagerty (Photos: United States Senate, Public domain | Wikimedia Commons)

To remind the faithful readers of this space: In our year-end issue, we offered forecasts about the shape of things to come in the political arena.

One circumstance noted for the record was the fact that both of Tennessee’s incumbent U.S. senators — Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty — would strongly consider running for governor in 2026.

That is what our pipeline said, and that is what we reported, even though it seemed passing strange, even to us. Why? Because the customary rites of passage flow in the opposite direction — with the gubernatorial office more often serving as a springboard for Senate, than vice versa.

That is definitely the pattern in our neighboring state of Arkansas, where such eminent recent members of the Senate as Dale Bumpers and David Pryor (both now deceased) served what amounted to apprenticeships as governor before going on to become senators.

To be sure, ambitions may figure differently in the Land of Opportunity than in the Volunteer State, but Lamar Alexander ran first for governor and then for senator. And one recalls the unhappy, arguably tragic fate of Democrat Frank Clement, who served several terms as the state’s governor before meeting his Waterloo in two successive failed runs for the Senate.

(Interestingly, Clement’s second and final failed try, in 1966, resulted in the election to the Senate of Republican Howard Baker — the forerunner of what, in the course of time, would become the wall-to-wall ubiquity of GOP state officials.)

In any case, both of Tennessee’s current Republican senators have floated unmistakable trial balloons regarding gubernatorial races in 2026, and both seem dead serious. It may be far-fetched to imagine a competitive race between the two, but, my, wouldn’t that be an attention-grabber!

More likely, forces in the Republican Establishment — most notably Donald Trump — would probably dictate the choice of one over the other. (Either could make a plausible claim of loyalty to the president and to the MAGA agenda.)

And, given the high probability of success for the ultimate GOP nominee, one can imagine a domino-like chain reaction of opportunities opening up for other upwardly mobile Tennessee Republicans.

If Hagerty makes a governor’s race, he could either run for both governor and re-election as senator simultaneously, or go ahead and shed his Senate seat (his term would expire in 2026, anyhow) while campaigning for governor. In that latter eventuality, a race for his departed seat would occur in 2026, with a high probability that 8th District Congressman David Kustoff would be a candidate.

Kustoff’s seat, in turn, might then well be targeted by, say, the preternaturally ambitious state Senator Brent Taylor, in which case his seat would open as well, with possible aspirants for it including former city councilmen Kemp Conrad and Frank Colvett, and maybe even state Rep. Mark White. (A White race would create yet another vacancy and another domino.)

If Blackburn runs and wins, she would keep her Senate seat until being sworn in, in which case either she or a lame-duck Bill Lee would appoint a temporary Senate successor, with a special election for a permanent senator to be held in 2028.

The same sort of sequence as mentioned above for a Hagerty win might then occur, involving the same or a similar cast of characters, though everything would happen at a later remove in time.

Got all that straight, gentle reader? Probably not, though it could be worse. There are other permutations and possible complications we’re sparing you from.

The bottom line is that some shock and awe seems certain for the state’s political calendar in 2026, along with a potentially dizzy round of dominoes.

And who knows? Maybe some as yet unknown Democrat comes out of nowhere to spoil the party at some point along the succession line. 

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Politics Politics Feature

Rumors and Reality

JB Smiley Jr. (Photo: Jackson Baker)

Okay, we are at that stage of political and public developments in which rumors, which have been flying fast and furious, are yielding to reality and tying disparate events together.

To start with what would be newsworthy on its own, the ambitions of various would-be candidates for the office of Shelby County mayor in 2026 are crystallizing into direct action.

As noted here several weeks ago, the list of likely aspirants includes city council member and recent chair JB Smiley Jr., entrepreneur/philanthropist J.W. Gibson, Shelby County commissioner and former chair Mickell Lowery, Assessor Melvin Burgess Jr., Criminal Court Clerk Heidi Kuhn, and county CAO Harold Collins.

Smiley, Gibson, and, reportedly, Lowery are basically declared and actively nibbling at potential donors. Smiley in particular has been soliciting funding and support in a barrage of text requests.

For better or worse, meanwhile, the erstwhile council chair finds himself also at the apex of events stemming from the ongoing showdown between now-deposed schools Superintendent Marie Feagins and the Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) board.

A suit against the board by Feagins quotes Smiley as having angrily responded to Feagins’ petition last summer for a legal order of protection against influential commodities trader and political donor Dow McVean, with whom Feagins had feuded.

The suit alleges that, in a phone call, Smiley “shouted at Dr. Feagins, ‘Don’t you ever file a f***ing police report in this city again without telling me first. … You don’t know these people. … My funders are on me now telling me she has to go because they know I supported you. … They are telling me to get rid of you.’”  

Smiley was also quoted in the suit as telling a third party, “We are coming after [Feagins].” 

• A bizarre sideline to the Feagins controversy: During a lull in last week’s proceedings of the local Republican Party’s chairmanship convention at New Hope Christian Church, a rumor spread in the church auditorium’s packed balcony that had astonishing implications.

It was that Feagins was the daughter of one of her predecessors and a well-known one at that — none other than Willie Herenton, who served a lengthy tenure as schools superintendent before serving an even longer time as the city’s mayor. 

A tall tale, indeed. As it turned out, the rumor was based on someone’s hasty reading of a line in The Commercial Appeal’s account of the heated school board meeting at which a MSCS board majority voted Feagins out.

The line read as follows: “Prior to reading off her prepared statements, Feagins acknowledged her father and former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton, who were in the audience.”

The tell-tale word “were” is the key to the misreading. It indicates clearly that Feagins’ citation of the individuals was plural and not at all of the same person. But, coming late in the sentence, the verb seems to have been overpowered by the previous yoking of “her father and former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton.”

“Were” got read as “was.” And all of a sudden, a short-lived cause célèbre got birthed.

• For that matter, the conflict between schools superintendent and board in Memphis seems to have caused an equally over-excited reaction in the state capital of Nashville, where state House Speaker Cameron Sexton, well-known already for his frequent designs upon what remains of home rule in Shelby County, let loose with brand-new threats against the autonomy of the elected MSCS board.

As noted by various local media, Sexton announced his intention for a state-government takeover of the local schools system. Radio station KWAM, an ultra-conservative outlet, had Sexton on their air as saying, in a guest appearance, that “plans are being drawn up to declare the local school board ‘null and void’” and that “the state will take over the school board.” [Sexton’s emphasis.]

More of all this anon. 

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At Large Opinion

Keepers of the Flame

Photo: Evgeniya Leonova | Dreamstime.com

The presidential inauguration in the Capitol rotunda on Monday marked the return to power of the most controversial and scandal-plagued president in American history. It felt a little like when the second plane hit the tower on 9/11 — the moment when we knew it wasn’t an accident.

Monday was also Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and here in Memphis — the city where Dr. King was assassinated in 1968 — the celebration of his life takes on a special significance. The NBA’s annual MLK Day celebration featured the Memphis Grizzlies hosting the Minnesota Timberwolves, and the National Civil Rights Museum held a day of events called “Community Over Chaos,” which seemed a most fitting theme.

But before it fades into history, buried by the noisy deluge of Trump drama, I want to take note of former President Biden’s farewell address of last week. As might be expected, he cited the achievements of his administration — the record job-creation numbers, the long-desired ceasefire in the Middle East, the strengthening of NATO, and the ongoing resistance to the Russian invasion of Ukraine — but his real purpose in his speech seemed to be to deliver a warning, to address, as he said, “some things that give me great concern.”

Citing President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation, in which he warned the country about the dangers posed by the “military industrial complex,” Biden decried the rise of a new threat, one he called the “tech industrial complex.”

“Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power,” Biden warned. “The free press is crumbling. Errors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit.” No errors detected.

The tech industrial complex was on full display in the Rotunda on Monday, including Sundar Pichai (Google), Tim Cook (Apple), Jeff Bezos (Amazon, The Washington Post), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta, Facebook, Instagram, Threads), and Elon Musk (X, Tesla, Starlink, xAI).

Never have so few had so much unbridled power to influence public opinion and so much money to invest in doing so. And it doesn’t help that they’re supplicating themselves (and giving millions of dollars) to the new president to curry his favor. It’s called obeying in advance, and it’s worrisome stuff. Journalism is in danger of being put out of business by “content providers” that have no ethical qualms about ignoring the truth in favor of whatever makes a profit — or makes the president happy.

CNN, ABC, and even MSNBC have also made at least token moves to ameliorate relations with the new administration. CNN buried Trump critic Jim Acosta in a late-night slot. ABC settled a libel lawsuit with Trump that it easily would have won in court. Facebook eliminated fact-checkers. Companies are getting rid of diversity hiring programs. Macho (“masculine energy”) is all the rage among the tech bros. Women’s healthcare rights continue to be eroded in red states.

Biden called it “a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people,” and cited the consequences “if their abuse of power is left unchecked.” What Biden was describing is an oligarchy. Merriam-Webster (remember dictionaries?) defines it as “a government in which a small group exercises control, especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.”

Can there be any doubt that an oligarchy of extreme wealth, power, and influence is moving into power in the United States, one that threatens our democracy and our basic rights and freedoms?

Democracy depends upon the will of the people, and if the people are misinformed, disinformed, or uninformed, they can be manipulated. As we well know, public opinion — and elections — can turn on well-funded, broadly circulated lies and propaganda.

Our social media platforms are already permeated by disinformation, mostly via bots that skillfully imitate real people and overwhelm legitimate content by their sheer numbers. Artificial intelligence is now upping that deception to previously unknown heights. Biden called AI “the most consequential technology of our time, perhaps of all time.”

The former president concluded by saying to his fellow Americans, “It’s your turn to stand guard. May you all be the keepers of the flame.” That doesn’t feel like malarkey, folks. 

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Politics Politics Feature

A GOP Grudge Match

Naser Fazlullah with South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, Trump’s secretary of Homeland Security nominee and last year’s Lincoln Day keynoter. (Photo: Naser Fazlullah | Facebook)

The race for chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party, due to be resolved at the local party convention on Saturday at the Venue at Bartlett Station, has turned into a real donnybrook, with potentially divisive consequences.

As noted previously in this space, the two candidates are former Memphis City Councilman Worth Morgan, the beneficiary of an intra-party “Revive” campaign supported by numerous prominent party members, and longtime activist Naser Fazlullah, whose nose-to-the-grindstone party activities have won him a sizable grassroots constituency. 

Underlying the surface aspects of the race are conflicts and rivalries involving other party figures and a myriad of issues.

Morgan’s most significant supporter is undoubtedly state Senator Brent Taylor, who claims credit for having recruited Morgan, an unsuccessful candidate for Shelby County mayor in 2022, to seek the chairmanship. Taylor won election to the state Senate that same year, claiming the seat vacated by former incumbent Brian Kelsey, who was forced out by legal problems. Since then, he has gone on to generate an amount of attention for himself unusual for a first-term legislator.

That’s partly due to the fact that Taylor, wealthy from the sale of his extensive funeral home network, has personally endowed numerous GOP candidacies and party events, both statewide and locally. And he continues to attract publicity for his aggressive efforts, in and out of the legislature, to impose stronger state control over law enforcement in Shelby County.

The most recent manifestation of what Taylor calls a “Make Memphis Matter” campaign is his ongoing attempt to force the removal of Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy, whom he accuses of lax crime control. The senator has initiated a legislative procedure that would ultimately require a two-thirds vote in both chambers of the legislature to oust Mulroy.

As it happens, Fazlullah opposes that effort, on the grounds that using legislation to remove a legally elected local official is unjustified overkill.

That’s one reason for Taylor’s animus toward Fazlullah and his recruitment of Morgan as a rival candidate. Another is his assertion that, at last fall’s Germantown Festival, Fazlullah strenuously urged GOP state Representative Mark White to oppose Taylor’s reelection in 2026. White acknowledges that Fazlullah made such an approach, which he politely turned aside.

Says Taylor: “Naser should never be party chairman after trying to recruit a candidate to run against a sitting state senator in a primary who happens to have been the largest contributor to the Republican Party while he was vice chairman. Two can play at this game!”

Meanwhile, Fazlullah has allies who hold grudges against Worth Morgan. One is Terry Roland of Millington, a notable GOP conservative who regards Morgan as a lukewarm Republican, a “Never-Trumper,” and a potential advocate of city-county consolidation.

Roland sees Morgan as a tool of party “elitists” and reproaches the chairmanship candidate for allegedly “boycotting” the local GOP’s 2022 Lincoln Day banquet, which was keynoted that year by Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows.

The showdown over the chairmanship reflects a complicated pattern of conflicting loyalties, with GOP moderates and conservatives to be found on both sides.

• You saw it here first, in our year-end forecast of future political events: U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn is seriously considering a race for governor in 2026 and has so informed an increasing number of her fellow Republicans statewide. 

Glenn Jacobs, the Knox County mayor who was previously regarded as perhaps the leading Republican gubernatorial hopeful, has energized Blackburn’s likely candidacy with a formal endorsement. 

The Republican nomination, though, will apparently still be contested by U.S. Representative John Rose of Cookeville, a multi-millionaire with the capacity to self-fund.