Democrats Johnson, Huseth at High Point (Photos: Jackson Baker)
As was surely to be expected, the next-to-last weekend of the climactic 2024 election campaign was filled with feverish activity of various kinds — with early voting into its second week and candidates trying to get as many of their partisans as possible to the polls.
A case in point was a pair of events involving Gloria Johnson, the Knoxville Democrat who is trying to unseat incumbent Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn.
Johnson, the state representative who gained national attention last year as a member of the “Tennessee Three” proponents of gun-safety legislation, has raised some $7 million for her bid — almost all of it from in-state sources, she contended proudly.
While that is no match for the incumbent’s $17 million or so, it has been enough to buy Johnson a series of concise and well-produced TV spots pinpointing Blackburn’s alleged shortcomings. And it even gives her some of the kind of influence that politicians call coattails.
Opponents Nordstrom and White at Belly Acres
Johnson was in Shelby County on Saturday, sharing time with two other Democrats, District 83 state House candidate Noah Nordstrom (like Johnson a public schoolteacher) and District 97 House candidate Jesse Huseth.
The first event was a joint rally with Nordstrom and state Democratic chair Hendrell Remus just outside the perimeter of the New Bethel Missionary Baptist early-voting station. Next, Johnson met up with Huseth at High Point Grocery for some joint canvassing efforts, after which Huseth, who opposes GOP incumbent John Gillespie, set out on some door-to-door calls on residents in that western part of his district.
The most unusual pre-election event on Saturday didn’t involve Johnson, nor was it, in the strictest sense, a partisan event at all. It was a meet-and-greet at the Belly Acres restaurant in East Memphis involving both Nordstrom and his GOP adversary, incumbent Republican state Representative Mark White.
Not a debate between the two, mind you. A joint meet-and-greet, at which both candidates circulated among the members of a sizeable crowd, spending conversational time with the attendees and with each other.
The event was the brainchild of one Philip D. Hicks, impresario of something called the Independent Foundation for Political Effectiveness. Hicks says he hopes the Nordstrom-White encounter, his organization’s maiden effort, can serve as a precedent for other such joint candidate efforts to come — presumably in future election seasons.
Inasmuch as political competition is, by its nature, an adversarial process, it’s somewhat difficult to imagine such events becoming commonplace, but, all things considered, this first one went amazingly well.
It wasn’t the same kind of thing at all, but there were elements of such collegiality between potential election opponents at an earlier event, a meeting of the Germantown Democratic Club at Coletta’s on Appling Road during the previous week.
That event included Memphis City Council Chair JB Smiley as its featured speaker, and Smiley, who is reliably reported to be thinking of a race for Shelby County mayor in 2026, spent a fair amount of time comparing notes on public matters (e.g., MLGW, the future of the erstwhile Sheraton Hotel) with attendee J.W. Gibson, a businessman who has basically already declared for that office.
A local study of poverty rates in Memphis and Shelby County confirms what most people, local and otherwise, probably already suppose to be the case.
The incidence of poverty is higher in the city proper than in the county as a whole, and both Memphis and Shelby County have a higher rate of poverty than does Tennessee, while the state itself has a higher incidence of poverty than pertains in the nation.
Poverty as a percentage of population (Photo: Courtesy Delavega and Blumenthal)
The study, entitled 2024 Memphis Poverty Fact Sheet, was prepared by local analysts Elena Delavega and Gregory M. Blumenthal, a husband-and-wife team who undertake annual statistical reports on the incidence of poverty.
If there is a surprise in the study, based on 2020 census figures, it is that poverty rates for non-Hispanic whites are higher in Tennessee at large than in the United States, Shelby County, and the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) of Memphis.
This might seem to suggest a rising affluence gap between the state’s white residents and its Black and brown residents. It also has implications concerning the effects of out-migration from the Memphis area.
Poverty has increased since last year, the authors find. “This is true for most groups, including children and minorities, but not for whites in Memphis or Shelby County,” they say. “Poverty for non-Hispanic whites has fallen since 2022. It also appears that the population size of non-Hispanic whites in the city of Memphis has dropped more than for other groups, suggesting that those non-Hispanic whites who left were those in poverty.”
It is “not a surprise,” say the authors, that the poverty rate among minorities is higher than among whites. Indeed, they find that structural disparities based on race seem to have accelerated in 2023. “[These] disparities remain and will require deliberate efforts to dismantle. Solving poverty will require regional solutions and regional investments.”
One possible explanation for what seems to be a deepening divide locally is that the labor market in Memphis tends to consist of unskilled workers in the warehouse industry. “The lack of comprehensive, effective, and efficient public transportation also makes progress against poverty quite difficult,” the authors maintain.
“An additional problem has been that of external firms acquiring Memphis housing stock and renting it to Memphians at inflated prices, which makes it almost impossible for local families to afford housing.”
Finally, say the authors, “The divide between the city and the county, as evidenced by the racial and geographical differences in poverty, tends to deprive the city of Memphis of the funds it needs to support the region.”
Apropos the racial divide, the authors note that while Memphis ranks second in overall poverty and first in child poverty among large MSAs (urbanized areas with populations greater than 1,000,000) and second in overall poverty and child poverty among cities with over 500,000 population, it ranks significantly better when only whites are included.
Ranked only by its white population, Memphis is positioned significantly lower in the list, ranking 25th among 54 large MSAs (populations greater than 1,000,000) and 61st among 114 MSAs with populations greater than 500,000.
Ominously, the authors conclude that while the long-term poverty trend provides evidence of the structural nature of poverty in Memphis, five-year trend graphs suggest that disparities are increasing along racial lines.
• Meanwhile, on the eve of the pending presidential election, an equally fraught finding comes from a new poll by the Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy. The survey, conducted from September 20th to 23rd, based on responses from 1,030 adults across the nation, concludes that most Americans think that democracy is in danger.
More than 50 percent of Americans think that our democracy is “under attack” in the run-up to the election. The Unity Poll is meant to offer “regular snapshots of Americans’ sense of national political unity and their faith in the country’s democratic institutions,” according to Vanderbilt professor John Geer.
JB Smiley at Germantown Democrats’ picnic (Photo: Jackson Baker)
Most people are familiar with an adage, often attributed to the late Speaker of the U.S. House Tip O’Neill, that “all politics is local.”
Until it isn’t.
Tennesseans are becoming uncomfortably aware that state government is muscling into as many local government prerogatives as possible — in areas ranging from education to healthcare to social policy to, increasingly, law enforcement.
A number of current circumstances reflect what seems to be a war of attrition waged at the state level against the right of Memphis and Shelby County to pursue independent law-and-order initiatives.
Memphis City Council chairman JB Smiley spoke to the matter Sunday at the annual picnic of the Germantown Democratic Club at Cameron Brown Park.
Said Smiley: “You know, recently, I’ve been, against my will, going back and forth with someone in the statehouse who doesn’t care for Shelby County called Cameron Sexton. Yeah, he doesn’t believe that Shelby County has the right to exercise its voice.“
Sexton, of course, is the Republican speaker of the state House of Representatives who recently threatened to withhold from Memphis its share of some vital state revenues in retaliation for the city’s inclusion on the November 5th ballot of a referendum package soliciting citizens’ views on possible future firearms curbs.
The package lists three initiatives — a reinstatement of gun-carry permits, a ban on the sale of assault rifles, and the right of judges to impose “red-flag” laws against the possession of weapons by demonstrably risky individuals.
All the initiatives are in the form of “trigger laws,” which would be activated only if and when state policy might allow the local options. As Smiley noted, “That’s what the state did when they disagreed with the federal government when it came to abortion rights. As soon as the law changed in the country, [their] law became full and effective. That’s what we’re going to do in the city of Memphis.”
Simultaneous with this ongoing showdown between city and state has been a determined effort by Republican state Senator Brent Taylor and others to pass state laws restricting the prerogatives of local Criminal Court judges and Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy.
One piece of Taylor-sponsored legislation, passed last year, would transfer authority over capital punishment appeals from the DA to the state attorney general. Litigation against the law pursued by Mulroy and an affected defendant resulted in the measure’s being declared unconstitutional in trial court.
But the state Appeals Court reversed that judgment last week, seemingly revalidating the law and causing Taylor to crow in a social media post over what he deemed a personal victory over Mulroy, whom he accused of wanting to “let criminals off of death row” and whose ouster he has vowed to pursue in the legislature.
The fact is, however, that there will be one more review of the measure, by the state Supreme Court, before its ultimate status is made clear.
Some of the immediate media coverage of the matter tended to play up Taylor’s declaration of victory over Mulroy, ignoring the ongoing aspects of the litigation and overlooking obvious nuances.
One TV outlet erroneously reported the Appeals Court as having found Mulroy guilty of “inappropriate” conduct when the court had merely speculated on the legalistic point of whether the DA had appropriate standing as a plaintiff (a point that was conceded, incidentally, by the state Attorney General).
Mulroy’s reaction to the Appeals Court finding focused on the issue as having to do with governance: “The Tennessee Constitution says local voters get to elect a local resident DA to represent them in court. This law transfers power over the most serious cases, death penalty cases, from locally elected DAs across the state to one unelected state official half a state away. This should concern anyone, regardless of party, who cares about local control and state overreach.”
It may be the proverbial tempest in the teapot, but the quarrels among Democrats, both local and statewide, continue to boil over.
The Shelby County Democratic Party (SCDP) may or may not have fully recognized official leadership as a result of contradictory recent actions taken by state chairman Hendrell Remus and the local party executive committee.
Remus started the turmoil by a surprise announcement, weekend before last, that he was removing local party chair Lexie Carter from her position as head of the SCDP. This was in the immediate wake of the local party’s annual Kennedy Day banquet, which drew a sizeable crowd of attendees and, according to Carter, raised $40,000 for party coffers.
Remus said the basis of his action was Carter’s failure to prepare an acceptable plan for the November election in response to his request for one in a questionnaire sent to Carter. As needy but overlooked Democrat campaigns, he mentioned specifically that of District 97 state representative candidate Jesse Huseth, who opposes Republican incumbent John Gillespie, and that of Gloria Johnson of Knoxville against GOP U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn.
But, according to Carter, the state chair’s action was more likely due to a series of conflicts that occurred between Remus and herself and others at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August.
In any case, Remus’ action has not gone unchallenged. Both his decision and the authority to take it have been challenged, locally and at the state level.
Speaking for himself and what he said was a sizeable portion of the state Democratic committee’s membership, Erick Huth of Shelbyville, until recently a member of that committee from state District 14, said the party’s bylaws did not permit Remus to remove a local chairman without expressly granted permission from the state body.
Remus had said he vetted in advance his removal of Carter with several West Tennessee vice chairs of the state party, but, said Huth, such a claimed consultation, even if accurate, would not have authorized Remus’ removal action.
Huth, who in August lost an election to retain his state committee seat, said that fact enabled him to speak more freely about party matters, including what he said was Remus’ high-handed and ineffective conduct of his chairmanship.
“The state committee is badly divided, and that’s largely due to Hendrell,” he said.
An active state committeeman from Nashville, who chose not to be identified, confirmed Huth’s analysis of things.
For the record, Hendrell Remus has opted not to be a candidate for reelection as chair in state committee elections scheduled for January. According to various sources, Remus intends to return to Memphis, his former home base, in order to scout a possible future run for an elective position.
Meanwhile, the executive committee of the local SCDP met late last week in Whitehaven and, in a highly argumentative session, engaged in disagreements among themselves as well as with state chair Remus about the whole brewing matter.
The local committee declined in its turn to accept Remus’ changes, which included the naming of four proposed temporary co-chairs for the SCDP.
These were former state Representative Dwayne Thompson, Memphis City Council Chair JB Smiley Jr., Shelby County Commission Chair Miska Clay Bibbs, and veteran party figure Danielle Inez. The proposed new co-chairs were invited to speak their piece on ideas for the party and the fall election, but their status as party leaders was not confirmed.
Instead, in the absence of both Lexie Carter and Hendrell Remus from the meeting, the local committee named as acting SCDP chair Will Simon, who is a current state party vice chair.
None of these changes, by the state chair or the SCDP committee, would seem to be anything but ad hoc expedients, as the situation simmers on.
“Shock waves” is too strong a term for the reaction, but a fair number of eyebrows have been raised by the surprise action of state Democratic Party chair Hendrell Remus in removing from power local Shelby County party chair Lexie Carter.
The action took place Thursday following a Zoom call between Carter, Remus, and others. Invoking what the state chair said was the absolute authority of the state party over local parties, Remus said Carter had not measured up to the needs of a coordinated Democratic campaign for the fall election.
He mentioned specifically the campaigns for District 97 state representative of Jesse Huseth, who opposes Republican incumbent John Gillespie, and that of Gloria Johnson of Knoxville against GOP U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn.
Remus said he had sent a questionnaire to Carter asking for details of the local party’s readiness for election activity and received insufficient information in response.
Carter professed to be taken by surprise by her removal, having just, as she maintained, presided over the local party’s annual Kennedy Day banquet on September 5th and grossed upwards of $40,000 for party coffers.
She alleged that a number of disagreements and confrontations had occurred between herself and Remus at the recently concluded Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Remus had apparently been considering the removal action well in advance, having discussed the possibility with potential ad hoc successors to Carter the previous week.
He said he would appoint four temporary co-chairs to guide the Shelby County Democratic Party (SCDP) until December, when a local party election would be held. The Flyer has learned that two of those invited to serve in that capacity are outgoing state Rep. Dwayne Thompson and City Council Chair JB Smiley.
Former local party chair and ex-County Commissioner Van Turner, who had assisted Carter in answering Remus’ questionnaire, raised concerns about due process in Carter’s removal and likened his action to the state Republican Party supermajority’s attempt to dominate over the actions of local government.
The new developments recalled the situation of 2016 when then-state Democratic chair Mary Mancini disbanded the Shelby County party following years of local controversy, including charges of embezzlement.
The local party was reconstituted in 2017 with Corey Strong as chair. So far, no names have surfaced as potential local candidates for the permanent chairmanship of SCDP.
As it happens, Remus will be giving up his own chairmanship in January, when his elected term ends. So far the only known candidate to succeed him is Rachel Campbell, chair of the Hamilton County (Chattanooga) Democratic Party and vice chair of the state party.
• Sarah Wilkerson Freeman, the Democratic nominee for the 8th District congressional seat, confirms that Susan Boujnah, a videographer who accompanied her to last month’s Democratic National Convention, is hard at work on an official campaign video, which will be released (presumably via social media) within the month.
Though Freeman has issued no formal debate challenge to Republican incumbent David Kustoff, Freeman observed that the NAACP will be holding an open forum for area candidates in Collierville on October 8th and that Kustoff is among those invited to participate.
Freeman, a resident of Germantown, likes to say she lives “within spitting distance” of her opponent.
• Former U.S. Senator Jim Sasser died at his North Carolina home last week. Sasser represented Tennessee in the Senate from 1977 to 1995 and later served as ambassador to Japan.
It is no accident that many savants in the legal/political universe regard the 1962 Baker v. Carr decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to be second to none among landmark judicial decisions.
This decision was brought on by a suit from Charles Baker, chairman of what was then the Shelby County Court, precursor of the present Shelby County Commission. On behalf of Shelby County, rapidly urbanizing at the time, as was the nation as a whole, Baker sought relief from un-democratic districting guidelines imposed by the state of Tennessee that unduly favored the state’s rural population.
The court held in essence that the Fourteenth Amendment required that the principle of one person-one vote be applied in the determination of legislative district lines.
While the decision had immediate and lasting repercussions on determining matters of voter eligibility, both in Tennessee and elsewhere in the nation, it has by no means eliminated gerrymandering based on partisan politics (e.g. witness the Republican legislative supermajority’s strip-mining away of Democratic Party rights in Nashville’s Fifth Congressional District), nor has it much diminished the edgy relationship between urban and rural interests in policy-making.
The latter issue has flared up again in the quarrel over whether Memphis voters should be allowed to vote their preference on several gun-control measures embedded in a referendum proposed by the city council but now endangered by the action of the county Election Commission in removing it from the November ballot.
In so acting, the Election Commission — dominated 3-2 by GOP members according to state mandate — has clearly responded to overt threats from the state’s Republican leadership to withhold from the city some $78 million in state revenues, if the referendum should go through as scheduled.
This was some of the “stiff resistance” promised by House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who articulated things this way: “Local governments who want to be progressive and evade state laws will lose shared sales tax funding.” The speaker likened the city’s referendum plans to “subversive attempts to adopt sanctuary cities [and] allow boys in girls’ sports.”
Some Memphians were expressing concern that the state’s retribution could also be visited on various large local projects dependent on previously pledged state subsidies, like those involving the zoo, FedExForum, and Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium.
It is worth recalling the actual import of the endangered referendum, authorized earlier by the council’s unanimous vote. In the words of its chief sponsor Councilman Jeff Warren, “Memphis voters will be asked whether they approve amending the city’s charter to require a handgun permit, restrict the storage of guns in vehicles in many cases, ban assault weapons sales after January 1, 2025, and enact extreme risk protection orders, sometimes called Red Flag Laws.”
All the referendum would do is solicit voter opinion, it would seem. Sexton chooses to see it otherwise, as a direct challenge to state authority.
Whichever interpretation is correct, the ongoing confrontation between city and state over a host of policy matters, of which gun safety is only one, is rising to fever pitch, as evidenced the rhetoric employed last week by Council Chair JB Smiley and various supportive council members, who announced their intent to sue the Election Commission to reinstate the ballot measure.
“Memphis has been shot and is bleeding out,” said Councilwoman Jerri Green. “We won’t back down, and we damn sure won’t be bullied,” proclaimed Smiley.
Memphis Mayor Paul Young meanwhile seemed to be trying to position himself at the nonexistent calm center, saying he understood the council’s “frustration” but expressing the view that the referendum ultimately would be “futile.”
Editor’s note: Our political columnist Jackson Baker and former Flyer writer Chris Davis traveled to Chicago, Illinois, last week for the Democratic National Convention from Monday, August 19th, to Thursday, August 22nd. For this story, Baker and Davis reflect on their experiences, giving light to the ever-changing political landscape.
CHICAGO — Let the record show that the second major-party convention of 2024 ended as the first one had — with a firm conviction on the part of its cadres that victory in the November general election was, if not inevitable, then likely. And if not that, at least possible.
That circumstance, ideal from the vantage point of a suspenseful showdown and a spirited turnout, depended largely on events that occurred between the two, the Republican gathering in Milwaukee in mid-July and the Democrats’ a month later.
Those events began with the withdrawal from the race of Democratic President Joe Biden, whose evident infirmities had been amply signaled in an early debate with former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee.
Kamala Harris after acceptance address (Photo: David Upton)
They continued with the substitution of Democratic nominee of Vice President Kamala Harris, as close to her party’s line as Biden had been and vastly more dynamic and appealing in espousing it.
In between these events had come what appeared to be an emotional unraveling of contestant Trump, who was largely reduced to unloosing poorly formulated insults at his new opponent, including one which, manifestly absurdly, claimed he was the better-looking of the two.
Harris had, with impressive speed and efficiency, managed to still most doubts about herself as campaigner and party avatar within her party ranks, and she had bolstered her position with her choice of a running mate, the unassuming but engagingly folksy governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, a former high-school football coach progressive enough to have been faculty advisor for a “gay-straight alliance” at his school.
The Democrats’ changing of the guard would be relatively seamless. On night one of the convention, Biden, transparently grieving, would take his demotion with gravel-voiced acceptance and would be rewarded with prearranged chants of “We love Joe” and ritual hugs from wife, family, and Kamala. All would liken him to George Washington, obscuring the look of archetypal sacrifice.
Thereafter the money rolled in, the polls responded, and it was all a rush to celebrate Kamala as the first Black woman, first Asian, first woman of color (pick one) to be nominated for president of the United States, the consecrators came forth — the old Lion Bill in his subdued approving wheeze, the Obamas, “Do something,” “Tell Trump this is one of those Black jobs,” and the formal roll call to nominate her became a collage of carnivals, all more Dionysian than Apollonian. Coach Walz came in with gridiron metaphors: “A field goal down in the fourth quarter,” “Let’s roll.”
Kamala had every reason to smile, and her ever-beaming face became mask, then masque. It was on. The entertainers arrived, Stevie Wonder sighting higher ground and Oprah Winfrey flinging her arms in wide embrace.
On the last night, it was all Kamala. And she delivered, lashing the fundamentally unserious Trump as the serious threat he was, tying him to the retrograde Project 2025 with its rolling back of American freedoms and vowing, “We’ll never go back!”
She would go on to touch all the bases: a woman’s right to bodily autonomy, tax cuts for the middle class, freedom to read, solidarity with our NATO allies, confronting Big Pharma, retarding pursuing inflation, and overhauling immigration policy, protecting the border while creating a path to citizenship.
There was one less developed point — just what to do about the Israel-Gaza war, other than to seek a ceasefire and the return of hostages taken by Hamas.
The much-ballyhooed protest of Gaza war policy — seriously overseen by squadrons of Chicago’s finest — turned out to be more pro forma than profound. Passing through the midst of the chanters of an evening, I heard one voice out on its periphery, more prevalent than the rest, and that turned out to belong to a solitary sentinel denouncing things of this world.
A Christian soldier, as it were, passing out literature extolling a world to come — one even more remote than one in which Palestinians might achieve what they and their supporters could regard as full justice.
If there was a serious issue that never made it to the rostrum of either convention in 2024, it was anything resembling a major re-evaluation of the nation’s Middle East policy.
Kamala, it seemed, was able to finesse the issue on a talking point pledging support for Israel’s right to defend itself coupled with hopes for eventual self-determination for Palestinians.
That this might be seen as progress was a statement in and of itself.
Among the Democrats taking part one day in a rooftop celebration for the Tennessee delegation atop one of Chicago’s several new Downtown skyscrapers were Joseph Walters and Brenda Speer of Speerit Hill Farm of Lynnville. A second-marriage couple, they were, in retirement age, looking to the Harris-Walz team and its attempted evocation of joy as a revival of their political hopes.
These had been lapsed now for a near-generation, since, Walters remembers, the time of Obama, when a presidential victory in the nation at large became, paradoxically, a signal for the white South, including Tennessee, to forswear its Democratic Party heritage.
These were the years when Memphis’ Jim Kyle, now a Shelby County chancellor and then the Democrats’ leader in the Tennessee state Senate and a potential heir to the mantle of lieutenant governor, began a campaign for governor in 2010, only to discover that “all the yellow-dog Democrats had become yellow-dog Republicans”
“I was so disappointed,” Speer, still a mainstay of party activity in rural Middle Tennessee, such as it is, says of that time, when her neighbors began deserting the Democratic legacy in droves.
It may be impossible now, and for some time yet, for Democrats to challenge the Republican supermajority in Tennessee for power in the state at large.
Yet the building blocks would seem to be emerging in the ranks of determined Democrats like Sarah Freeman of the Germantown Democratic Club, a candidate this year for the 8th District congressional seat now held by Republican David Kustoff. Freeman won out in what was an old-fashioned multi-candidate free-for-all in the Democratic primary, and she was accompanied at the convention by her own videographer documentarian.
There was Lee Harris, the Shelby County mayor who was on hand for ongoing policy talks with peers from local governments elsewhere, and there was first-term Memphis Mayor Paul Young, who declared to his fellow Tennesseans, “People in the hood … don’t care about our conventions. They just want things to change. And so as we leave here, I want us to take this energy and turn it into action.”
Justin J. Pearson with the Tennessee delegation (Photo: Jackson Baker)
And there was Justin J. Pearson, the oracle of change to come, the galvanizing figure of the campaign to save South Memphis from a potentially hazardous oil pipeline and later a key member of the Tennessee Three, who shamed the state’s GOP leadership for its inaction on gun safety. And still later Pearson, the District 86 state representative, would become an accomplished fundraiser and all-purpose benefactor of progressive causes he deemed meritorious or necessary. And their apostle, as in the following words delivered to the Tennessee delegation on the last morning of the convention:
“We’ve got to be fired up when we have somebody who’s been convicted of 34 felonies running against the most qualified person ever to run for president of these United States, Vice President Kamala D. Harris.
“We’ve got to be fired up for such a time and moment as this, where we are seeing the rights of women being taken. We’ve got to be fired up when the gun violence epidemic continues to plague our communities because the Tennessee Firearms Association and the National Rifle Association seem to have bought our politicians into a level of complacency and cowardice that is demeaning and degrading and hurting us.
“We’ve got to be fired up when our civil rights are being attacked on every side, and this Supreme Court acts much more like a MAGA-extremist Republican Party than it should.
“We have to be fired up in this moment to preserve and protect and defend the democratic constitutional experiment that our ancestors marched for, that our ancestors died for, that our ancestors built through many dangers, toils, and snares. We’ve got to be fired up in this moment. In Tennessee and in America, we’ve got to be fired up. …
“We are Democrats. We are Democrats.”
Pearson’s oratory was confined to the Tennessee delegation. The nation at large has not yet heard him. But they will. They will.
Meanwhile, there is the following: a priceless musing on the subject at hand from my colleague on this mission and a strong right arm indeed, Chris Davis. — Jackson Baker
……………
A new audacity: Hopeful Democrats leave Chicago full of fight, but questions linger
The rebellion started, like they do, with a normal request from the back of the bus: “Can we please just get off and walk to United Center?” The question, voiced by some unidentified patriot, who only wanted to get to the Democratic National Convention in time to hear President Joe Biden speak, set off a rumble of interest. Problem was, a small but determined group of demonstrators had broken away from the bulk of Monday’s pro-Palestinian protests in Union Park and breached the DNC’s security perimeter.
The occupation was brief and peaceful but it ended in arrests, confusion, and a lengthy lockdown of the perimeter that stranded a mile-long convoy of buses, carrying DNC guests from their Downtown hotels to the venue. The stuck Democrats were getting restless, but they weren’t getting mad; they were ready to do something.
Pro-Palestine protestors marched in Chicago. (Photo: Chris Davis)
A genial police officer, assigned to guard the shuttle carrying delegates and guests to the venue in Chicago’s Near West Side neighborhood, didn’t want anybody taking any unnecessary risks: Stick to the plan and the bus will get everybody there, eventually. Ex-military and petite, the officer was wrapped in Kevlar, strapped with tactical gear, and gifted with an evident flair for theatrical performance.
She told riders they needed to stay on the bus because modern protesters wear gloves treated with caustic chemicals so they can burn cops just by grabbing them. The officer said she thought other guests from other buses had already attempted to walk and they’d gotten into fights with protesters or something like that. She said it was better for everybody to stay on a bus that wasn’t going anywhere than risk running into any of that.
Before the smiling officer could finish her cautionary fairytales, somebody in the middle of the bus found footage of the breach on TikTok. “I think I’m gonna walk,” they said. “The protesters aren’t wrong,” someone else said to a buzz of general agreement, and people began to stand up and move toward the front of the bus. By this time doors to the other stalled buses were swinging open and Democrats poured out into the street: evidence of similar, simultaneous rebellions within the stalled convoy.
The protestors called for action not just for Palestine but for other nations, like the Philippines, whose leader is in effigy above with Harris and Biden. (Photo: Chris Davis)
“If you really want to get off the bus, I can’t stop you,” the officer said, as Democrats started getting off the bus en masse and trudging like a well-dressed zombie horde toward the fenced perimeter. Only those with mobility issues, and people who despise walking were left to ride. They would, as the police officer assured, arrive in time to see the president speak. Three-and-a-half hours later the last of the stuck passengers disembarked at the United Center.
This feels like a metaphor for something. Maybe a metaphor for everything. In any case, I got off the bus and walked to a happy hour event hosted by Grow Progress, an organization who “use[s] science and empathy” to build more persuasive political messages. They persuaded me to enjoy several drinks, and I arrived in the arena somewhat later than the stranded bus riders, but in a much better mood.
Hillary Clinton was speaking. I could see her on the hallway monitors, as I made my way to a media-friendly space, and I could hear the crowd chanting, “Lock him up.”
It was a beautiful first day for the DNC. The sun was high and bright but a steady wind turned larger, handmade signs into sails, billowing and blowing around some of the protesters gathering in Union Park to demonstrate on behalf of the people of Palestine.
These random acts of slapstick were a stark counterpoint to an event more sincere than sizable. Organizers had predicted a turnout of 20,000 or more and a credulous media, convinced 2024 was the new 1968, transformed those hopeful numbers into big, scary headlines. But taking every lazy argument into account, 2024 only resembles 1968 the way a cloud might resemble Grandma. You can see her sweet smile and that weird growth on her neck so clearly up there in the sky, but no matter how much that Grandma-shaped cloud reminds you of a simpler, happier time, it’s a cloud and won’t be baking cookies for your birthday. By the 2 p.m. start time, hundreds of pre-printed picket signs remained spread across the lawn, uncollected. It seemed unlikely that the protest would attract even a quarter of its projected numbers.
The protests were more sincere than sizable. (Photo: Chris Davis)
A big reason 2024 wasn’t like 1968 is the fact that Democrats weren’t engaged in a contentious fight to choose their candidate. This certainly could have happened and even typically level-headed pundits like Ezra Klein fantasized an open or brokered convention, rationalizing that the Democratic Party could only be perfected and purified by walking through a fire certain to burn bridges and destroy alliances. But that never happened. Biden selected his Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed him, just as she would should he ever become unable to fulfill the duties of office, and to everybody’s surprise, the Democrats, a coalition party rarely able to agree on anything, got fully on board with a candidate voters hadn’t much liked the one time she ran for the nomination.
’68 was a rough ride for America. We lost MLK and Bobby Kennedy to assassins who didn’t miss. Conscripted American soldiers were dying in Vietnam, the Civil Rights Movement and American youth counterculture were in their fullest blossom, and the angry, young protesters who made their stand in Chicago truly believed the pressure they built there might determine who’d be picked to lead the Democratic ticket. Inside the convention, things were equally fraught with many delegates shouting, “No! No!” when Hubert Humphrey, who’d backed Johnson’s escalation of conflict in Vietnam, secured the party’s nomination.
’68 is also the year when Alabama Governor George Wallace, a right-wing extremist hellbent on denying either party an electoral majority, broke with the Democratic Party to make his own run at the White House, taking a big chunk of the “forget Hell!” South with him. Outside of President Biden choosing not to seek reelection and American involvement in a foreign civil war, 1968 and 2024 couldn’t be more dissimilar.
Even President Biden, in his emotional address to the DNC said, without reservation, “Those protesters out in the street have a point.” Only, he didn’t stop there, while he was ahead. “A lot of innocent people are being killed on both sides,” he concluded, glossing over the disproportionate carnage that’s led to charges of war crimes and accusations of genocide against Israel, and to normal complaints from the back of the bus.
In 2004 America held its first post-9/11 political conventions, and as it’s so frequently stated, after that infamous date, “everything changed.” Manhattan locked down when the Republican National Convention landed in town.
The National Guard greeted the bridge-and-tunnel crowd with barricades and heavier arms, while a militarized police force took to the streets, throwing up barricades faster than protesters could pour into the city. New York arrested more than 1,800 people over four days, including kids, media, and bystanders. Detainees were taken to a makeshift detention camp called Pier 57, but described as, “Guantanamo on the Hudson.” More than 300 protesters were arrested by militarized police in St. Paul, Minnesota, on the first day of the RNC in 2008, and similar numbers were arrested each subsequent day during that convention. America’s misadventures in Iraq were still on the ballot and the whole world was experiencing massive economic collapse. Protest was heavy and the police response was disproportionate.
America was still at war during the 2016 conventions, but the public wasn’t activated to the same degree. Protest diminished and, for the Democrats, it was almost exclusively an internal squabble. Although senator and presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders was giving Clinton his full-throated support, his disappointed supporters refused to let go of his lost candidacy. They turned out in force to protest by taping their mouths shut, and slamming against the perimeter barricades, where they were summarily arrested by militarized police.
I mention all of this protest history because one of the notable changes in both Milwaukee and Chicago compared to past conventions is how differently they were policed. Recent police raids clearing pro-Palestine encampments in Chicago encouraged our talking heads to dream harder about the ghost of Mayor Daley and a 1968 redux. But Chicago’s old-school head-busting police aren’t who showed up to serve and protect at the DNC. Bicycle cops and police wearing their everyday uniforms circled Union Park, where the bulk of the convention’s protests originated, to observe like an audience prepared for something other than the very worst.
Riot cops did get busy for a short time on Tuesday, when a fringe protest led by groups like Behind Enemy Lines and Samidoun (vocally supportive of Hamas’ October 7th attack against Israel) got out of hand. During that one action, police made 50 of 74 total arrests spread across four days of mostly peaceful public demonstration. It’s not a perfect example, but this is progress.
So what year is it again, if not 1968? When I heard the chants of “Lock him up,” I was rocketed back to the 2016 RNC, when Hillary’s emails were big news and chants of “Lock her up” shook Cleveland’s Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse.
Now that Trump’s a convicted felon 34 times over, the irony is too delicious, and I wanted to enjoy watching the former senator from New York and failed presidential contender enjoy her moment. But no matter how perfectly poetic, or deserved, hearing a mob calling for the incarceration of their immediate political rival is somehow no less chilling now than it was eight years ago.
But what do I know? Nielsen ratings for the DNC’s first night demolished the RNC’s opening by a margin of 29 percent and, against the usual trend, the Democrats increased viewership each night. It’s interesting to consider how only a month ago serious commentators watching the RNC’s opening night contemplated the possibility of a once-in-a-generation political realignment favoring the GOP. It’s helpful to remember how the Democrats’ increased viewership, though in the millions, might be accounted for within the biggest blue areas and reflect no electoral college advantage whatsoever. It’s important to know that almost four times as many people tuned in to watch the DNC in 1968, when real Americans watched TV, goddammit.
Critics of the 2024 convention have astutely recognized that it was largely about feelings, and feelings aren’t a plan. True enough, but politics is made out of feelings. In recent cycles, anger, fear, hope, grief, grievance, and a host of other feelings have driven voters to the polls, why not bet on joy, for a change? Policy is key, but as Al Gore will surely tell you, if you lead with it, they put you in a lockbox.
What else can I say about the Democrats’ superb execution at the United Center that won’t have been said a thousand times already by the time anybody reads this article? Has anybody else noted how even the venue’s name seemed to announce party goals every time it was spoken? A united center is literally what I saw in Chicago. The only thing that might bring normie America together harder than the unrehearsed display of love Tim Walz’s son Gus showed for his dad is the near-universal revulsion evinced when the weirdo tried to mock him for it. The 2024 convention was a credible, joyful attempt by Democrats to reclaim ideas long ago hijacked by the right: ideas like family values, patriotism, and … well … “normal.”
In the fight against Trump, J.D. Vance, and the whole Project 2025 gang, it currently looks like the only thing still dividing Democrats is Palestine. Vice President Harris’ near-flawless closing night speech promised a different approach. With its rhetoric about Palestinian self-determination, she also promised to give Israel everything it needs in the meantime.
Activists demanding disinvestment and an arms embargo remain unconvinced and uncommitted. For them, the D-bus is stalled, all they are hearing from the cop up front is fairytales, and the threat of getting off and walking is real. So the big question going into the homestretch of this, the latest most important election of our lifetime: Will the Center hold, or will we elect Nixon? — Chris Davis
District 30 state Senator Sara Kyle (Photo: Jackson Baker)
The historic congressional district of Memphis, currently and for many years designated as Tennessee’s 9th, has generally been one of long incumbencies.
The seat’s current inhabitant Steve Cohen, a Democrat and a longtime member of the state Senate, won it in 2006, after Harold Ford Jr., who had succeeded his father in the seat, had let go of it to seek an open U.S. Senate seat.
The two Fords, both Democrats, had served the 9th for a total of 32 years, beginning in 1974 when Ford Sr. pried it loose in what was then regarded as an upset, from Dan Kuykendall, the only Republican ever to hold the seat, at least in modern times.
Kuykendall had won the seat in 1966, defeating liberal Democrat George Grider, who in 1964 had won a Democratic primary race against Cliff Davis, a longtime member of the old Crump political machine who had held the Memphis seat for a full quarter century.
From an historical perspective, the relatively brief Grider/Kuykendall period, during which Republicans had, both locally and statewide, enjoyed a resurgence, was the only real time of rapid flux in the district’s — which is to say, the city’s — voting habits.
Before then, Memphis and the 9th had voted the traditional Southern Democratic party line. And, after that, with the Fords’ advent, that line bore the imprimatur of the growing political dominance of African Americans.
Cohen, white and Jewish, won the seat in 2006, taking advantage of a split among a dozen-odd Black primary opponents, and he has held it ever since — successfully taking on a series of name Black primary opponents and defeating them all, one-on-one, usually with ease.
He would seem clearly on that record to have represented his majority-Black district faithfully.
Cohen’s main current primary challenger is no slouch. Lawyer Corey Strong is a former Democratic Party chair with a background in education and military affairs (U.S. Naval Academy, two tours of Afghanistan).
Faced with Cohen’s enduring popularity and his million-dollar war chest, Strong has done the best he can, chiding Cohen for his often antic behavior and claiming the incumbent has not helped to keep the city’s infrastructure current (despite an impressive record of securing grants and Cohen’s recent announcement of $400 million for a new I-55 bridge).
Senate candidate Gloria Johnson (Photo: Jackson Baker)
Other races of note on the August 1st ballot:
• A free-for-all in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate, with Knoxville state Rep. Gloria Johnson (she of the “Tennessee Three”) vying with Memphian Marquita Bradshaw and others for the right to take on Republican incumbent Marsha Blackburn in November
• Another brisk competition in the Democratic 8th District congressional primary, with Sarah Freeman, Leonard Perkins, Lawrence A. Pivnick, Lynnette P. Williams, and Brenda Woods, competing for a November shot against GOP incumbent David Kustoff
• A Democratic primary challenge to District 30 state Senator Sara Kyle from Erika Stotts Pearson
• A primary challenge to District 84 Democratic state Rep. Joe Towns from Vernell Williams
• A primary challenge to District 86 state Rep. Justin J. Pearson (he of the “Tennessee Three”) by David Page
• A Democratic primary challenge to District 93 state Rep. G.A. Hardaway from Lashanta Rudd
• A hot race in the Democratic primary for the open District 96 state House seat involving contestants Eric Dunn, Telisa Franklin, Gabby Salinas, Orrden Williams, and David Winston
• A Republican Party challenge to District 97 state Rep. John Gillespie from Christina Oppenhuizen
• A general election race for General Sessions Court clerk between Democrat Tami Sawyer and Republican Lisa Arnold
Shelby County Republican chairman Cary Vaughn with General Sessions clerk candidate Lisa Arnold (Photo: Jackson Baker)
Along with other offices to be decided this year, five of the nine seats on the Memphis-Shelby County School Board are on the August ballot. Candidates are:
• District 2: Ernest Gillespie III, Althea Greene (incumbent), and Natalie McKinney
• District 3: Jesse Jeff, Stephanie Love (incumbent), Ozell Pace Jr., and Angela Rogers
• District 4: James Q. Bacchus, Alvin Crook, Eric Harris, Tamarques Porter, and Anecia Washington
• District 5: Mauricio Calvo (incumbent), Audrey Elion, and Sable Otey
• District 7: Chavez G. Donelson, Danielle Huggins, Frank William Johnson (incumbent), Towanna C. Murphy, and Jason Sharif
Saturday of this week will see the end of early voting for the August 1st Shelby County general election and the state and federal primary elections.
As a reminder, Monday through Friday, early voting locations are open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with the exception of the Shelby County Election Commission site which is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Weekend times for all sites are 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, July 27th.
Early voting sites (in Memphis except where otherwise indicated) are:
• Abundant Grace Fellowship Church, 1574 E. Shelby Drive
• Anointed Temple of Praise, 3939 Riverdale Road
• Arlington Safe Room, 11842 Otto Lane, Arlington
• Baker Community Center, 7942 Church Road, Millington
• Briarwood Community Church, 1900 N. Germantown Parkway
• Collierville Church of Christ, 575 Shelton Drive, Collierville
• Compassion Church, 3505 S. Houston Levee Road
• Dave Wells Community Center, 915 Chelsea Avenue
• Ed Rice Community Center, 2935 N. Watkins Street
• Gaisman Community Center, 4223 Macon Road
• Glenview Community Center, 1141 S. Barksdale Street
• Greater Lewis St. Baptist Church, 152 E. Parkway N.
• Greater Middle Baptist Church, 4982 Knight Arnold Road
• Harmony Church, 6740 St. Elmo Road, Bartlett
• I.H. Clubhouse, 4523 Canada Road, Lakeland
• Mississippi Boulevard Church Family Life Center, 70 N. Bellevue Boulevard
The Shelby County Commission — and county government in general — normally gets less public and media attention than do Memphis city government and the city council. This is largely due to long-held tradition held over from the numerous decades of the preceding century when the bulk of the county’s total population resided in the traditional urban core.
White flight, sprawl, and suburban growth have altered the demographic proportions and residential patterns significantly, of course, but even before the balance of population began to shift so radically eastward and outward, the fact was that, in Shelby as in the state’s other 95 counties, county government has been the chief instrument of self-government — not least because Shelby County is the Venn diagram; it contains not only Memphis but six other incorporated municipalities and much unincorporated turf as well.
The county’s budget is larger than any city’s, and it has primary constitutional charge of health and education matters, as well as significant and growing responsibility over law enforcement.
Monday’s meeting of the county commission reflected the unique aspect of our binary system, actually one of multiplicities.
One significant debate concerned the expanses into which solar energy enterprises — those harbingers of our greener future — can be allowed to spread. Mindful of the outer county’s increasing residential mass, the boundaries for such installations were significantly circumscribed: Going forward, they must be distant from each other by at least a mile and no closer than 600 feet at any point to residential areas. And they must be limited in size to a square mile.
Another prolonged discussion concerned the question of whether a portion of a long-dormant planned commercial development in the Eads area should be allowed to proceed with the development of septic tanks pending an opportunity to connect with the Memphis sewer system. (It will be remembered that such new tie-ins with new developments outside the city were discontinued as of 2017.)
The developers of the area under consideration Monday — one that was de-annexed in 2020 — hope eventually to manage such a connection. But expressed concerns on Monday from Eads residents and defenders of the Memphis sand aquifer about potential pollution resulted in a unanimous turn-down of the septic tank proposal by the commissioners.
After these and various other agenda items were dealt with, several of the commissioners turned their solemn attention to a matter that increasingly roils citizens everywhere in Shelby County — shoot-outs like the one that in the last few days resulted in the deaths of MPD Officer Joseph McKinney and attendees at an Orange Mound block party.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” said Commission chair Miska Clay Bibbs. Indeed so. The bell tolls for city and county alike.
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David Pryor (right) with the author in 2016
In Memoriam
He was not a Memphian nor even a Tennessean, but Arkansan David Pryor, a near neighbor who died Saturday after a lingering illness, deserves our sympathy and remembrance as well.
Pryor, who represented Arkansas as a congressman, as governor, and as senator, was the genuine article, a selfless public servant. He may turn out to have been the last major Democrat in his state’s history, but as my friend and former Arkansas Gazette colleague Ernie Dumas observes in an almost book-length obituary in the Arkansas Times this week, Pryor was much more — “the most beloved member of the U.S. Senate” in his time, across all partisan lines. That was something that I learned myself when he took me in tow on my first visit to Washington as a cub reporter back in the ’60s. R.I.P.
Push is coming to shove in the public outrage stemming from the shooting death last week of MPD Officer Joseph McKinney. And the shoving, on behalf of stouter crackdowns on local crime, is coming from more sources than ever before.
Mayor Paul Young, who has arguably been somewhat slow on the draw in fleshing out his crime program, cruising along with an interim police chief and nobody yet to fill his ballyhooed position of public safety director, is suddenly all cries and alarms.
Sounding almost like some of the more active Republican critics of Memphis crime in the legislature, Young released a statement including these words: “Together, let’s petition our judges and the DA for stronger, swifter sentencing for violent offenses. If you are part of the judicial system, hear my voice first. We need to work together to do better for our community.”
DA Steve Mulroy himself expressed anger that a $150,000 bond that he’d previously set for previous crimes committed by the youth suspected in the death of Officer McKinney had been somehow amended by a judicial commissioner to allow the youth back on the streets through his own recognizance.
And Shelby County Commissioner Mick Wright, a leading critic of the current crime wave, was warning, on behalf of his commission mates, “We are not finished. … You’re going to see some judges get exited stage left if I have anything to say about it.”
It was a definite irony that, scarcely a week after the MPD had announced the 100th homicide in Memphis this year, Young scheduled this week’s public celebration of his first 100 days in office at Mt. Vernon Baptist Church.
Perhaps the mayor will use that occasion to outline further his and the city council’s plan for a new nonprofit organization to reverse the crime trend.
• Former Shelby County Democratic chair Gabby Salinas, who in recent years ran two close races against established Republican office-holders, has a different situation on her hands this year.
She’s running for the state House District 96 seat being vacated by Democratic incumbent Dwayne Thompson. Not a Republican contestant in sight so far, but Salinas has four Democratic rivals — Eric Dunn, Telisa Franklin, Orrden Williams Jr., and David Winston. She remains the favorite.
• As mentioned in this space of late, Democrats are seriously contesting the state House District 97 seat now held by Republican John Gillespie. Mindful of the potential perils of procrastination, they brought out some heavy artillery last week.
At a fundraiser for party candidate Jesse Huseth at the home of attorney Robert Donati last week, an important attendee was 9th District U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, the county’s senior Democratic office-holder, who formally bestowed his endorsement on Huseth and was critical of Gillespie for legislative actions intended to shift various aspects of law-enforcement authority from the city to the state.
Cohen noted that the 97th, which was redistricted by the legislature last year, would now seem to be tilted demographically to Democrats in this election year — “up three points for Huseth and up five points for Biden.”
As Huseth himself put it, the East Memphis-based district had lost “four solid-red precincts and picked up two light-blue precincts and two light-red precincts.”
The point of the redistricting, which was carried out by the General Assembly’s GOP supermajority, remains something of a mystery, although it is said that Gillespie signed off on it, thinking it gave him more potential access to‚ and opportunity to serve, the business community.
• No doubt emboldened by the local unpopularity of Governor Bill Lee’s school-voucher program, which was formally opposed by the Memphis-Shelby County School Board and by the boards of the six municipal school districts as well, Democrats are taking another crack at the state House District 83 seat held by Mark White, House education chair and a champion of vouchers.
At least one Democrat is: political newcomer Noah Nordstrom, an MSCS Spanish teacher.
