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Mayoral Residency: What’s at Stake

Shelby County Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins (Photo: Memphis Bar Association | Facebook)

Between the 18th of this month, a Thursday, and the 22nd, a Monday, there will fall one business day and a weekend. Within that brief period, the political history of Memphis for at least four years — and maybe longer — could well be determined.

The 22nd is the first date on which candidate petitions for the October 5th city election will be made available by the Shelby County Election Commission. The 18th, four days prior, shapes up as a day of judgment for candidate eligibility. On that date, the long-festering issue of residency requirements for mayor will be resolved, one way or the other, in the courtroom of Shelby County Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins.

So indicated His Honor on Monday. His fateful announcement, made at the close of a hearing on the residency matter, followed an equally eventful one from Memphis city attorney Jennifer Sink, rendered in Jenkins’ courtroom by Michael Fletcher, a lawyer for the city. In essence, Sink said via Fletcher that an opinion she had requested weeks ago from attorney Robert Meyers reflected city policy, reversing a statement she made last month in which she declined to go that far.

The Meyers opinion had cited language in an 1895 city charter mandating a prior residency in Memphis for a period of five years for candidates for mayor. That opinion, published on the Shelby County Commission website, generated significant turmoil, including litigation from two announced candidates — Sheriff Floyd Bonner and NAACP president Van Turner — challenging such a mandate.

Bonner and Turner, whose suits were later combined, insist that Memphis voters approved a superseding referendum in 1996 that did away with a prior-residency requirement for both mayoral candidates and candidates for the city council, and that several city elections had been held since under the new standard. (Indeed, several current members of the council could not have passed a five-year requirement for prior residency.)

As for Sink’s apparent change of mind, lawyers for the litigants point out that the city doesn’t administer elections; the Election Commission does, which had meanwhile dropped Meyers’ opinion from its website.

In danger of invalidation, Bonner and Turner, who until recently lived just outside the city, are joined by former Mayor Willie Herenton, a sometime resident of Collierville in recent years. Ironically, all three were basically tied for the lead in the only mayoral poll made public so far.

One clear beneficiary of their ouster (though he has steered clear of the controversy) would be Downtown Memphis Commission CEO Paul Young, who by a wide margin would lead the rest of the declared field in fundraising. Two other mayoral hopefuls, businessman J.W. Gibson and School Board member Michelle McKissack, have declared themselves in favor of the Meyers opinion.

In the wake of Monday’s events, Bonner issued a ringing statement which said in part: “The voters of Memphis voted in 1996 to do away with a dated residency requirement from the 1800s, and we are fighting to make sure the people’s voice is heard.” Turner also responded: “It is unfortunate that some group of insiders are trying to decide the election instead of letting the will of the voters play out. … [W]e will continue to prepare for our day in Court on May 18, and we will continue to campaign on the issues and not the distractions.”

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Of Shows and No-Shows

Monday night’s venue (Photo: Halloran Centre | Facebook)

By now, the much-ballyhooed first of two mayoral forums to be conducted by the Daily Memphian has come and gone. The five billed participants at Monday night’s event at the Halloran Centre were Paul Young, Michelle McKissack, J.W. Gibson, Frank Colvett, and Karen Camper.

The fact is, only one of these participants can be ranked among the leaders at this early pre-petition stage of the mayoral race. That would be Downtown Memphis Commission CEO Young, who is indisputably the most successful fundraiser among all the candidates.

Young reported $432,434.97 on hand in his second-quarter financial disclosure, just outdoing Sheriff Floyd Bonner, who reported $400,139.12. Young is also known to have significant support among the city’s business and civic social elite, who make up a large percentage of the donor class.

At this juncture, the main disadvantage facing Young vis-à-vis rival Bonner is a fairly enormous name-recognition gap favoring the sheriff, who has out-polled every other contestant for whatever position in each of the last two Shelby County elections.

Clearly, the need to narrow this gap is one reason, along with his undoubted public-spiritedness, that impels Young to take part, along with other relatively unknown candidates, in every public forum that comes along.

Keeping their distance from such events so far are Bonner and Willie Herenton, the even better-known former longtime mayor. Almost as hesitant to appear at such affairs has been local NAACP president and former County Commissioner Van Turner, who, like the other two, was absent Monday night, as he had been at a recent mayoral forum at First Congregational Church.

Turner, also, can claim a respectable degree of prior name recognition, and he brought into the mayoral race a fairly well-honed constituency among the city’s center to center-left voters.

The relevance of all this to this week’s forum, and to other such opportunities for exposure that may come along before petitions can be drawn on May 22nd, should be obvious. Those who need to enhance their share of public attention are likely to be attendees; those who feel more secure in their familiarity to the electorate may not be.

To be sure, both Bonner and Turner pleaded the fact of previously scheduled fundraising events as reasons for their absence on Monday night. A reliable rule of thumb in politics is that the existence of “prior commitments” can always be adduced to explain nonparticipation in a particular event.

Still, to win, it is necessary to be an active competitor, and Bonner, Herenton, and Turner, who — not coincidentally — topped the results in the only poll that has been made public so far, can be expected to rev things up in fairly short order. Bonner and Turner have been stalled somewhat by their ongoing litigation against a five-year residency requirement posited by the Election Commission.

That matter may be effectively resolved in Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins’ court at a scheduled May 1st hearing.

Herenton, meanwhile, has habitually stonewalled multi-candidate appearances throughout his long public career — out of apparent pride as much as anything else.

None of the foregoing is meant to suggest that other candidates, including the five involved Monday night, can’t break out of the pack. Politics is notoriously unpredictable.

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Bottom Lines

At the invitation of Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, Circuit Court Judge Carol Chumney addressed a standing-room-only crowd last Thursday in Vasco A. Smith Jr. Shelby County Administration Building. Chumney read from The Arena: One Woman’s Story, her recently published memoir of a life in local politics, including two runs for Memphis Mayor.

First-quarter deadline for Memphis mayoral candidates’ financial disclosures was March 31st, with reports due at the state Registry of Election Finance by April 10th, Monday of this week. It will take a while for all of them to be collated and made public, but, when available, presumably this week, they will be a useful key to the competitive status of various candidates.

Likely leader in revenues raised and on hand will be Downtown Memphis Commission CEO Paul Young, who has been the beneficiary of several recent big-ticket fundraisers. Two of Young’s main competitors — NAACP president and former Commissioner Van Turner and Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner — will probably show lesser revenues than might ordinarily be expected.

The obvious reason for that is such public doubt as has recently been raised by uncertainties regarding possible residency requirements for Memphis mayor — though the Shelby County Election Commission has, amid litigation by Turner and Bonner, removed a note from its website citing an opinion from former SCEC chair Robert Meyers proclaiming a requirement for a five-year prior residency in the city. Meyers based his opinion on a city-charter provision dating back to 1895.

Turner, Bonner, and former Mayor Willie Herenton, who is not known to have launched a significant fundraising campaign, have all maintained residencies outside the city at some point in the past five years. Herenton is not a party to the ongoing litigation, regarding which separate suits by Bonner and Turner challenging the Meyers opinion and seeking clarification have been combined in the court of Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins.

During a status conference on the suits last week, Jenkins established May 1st as a date for ruling on the litigation. He had previously rejected a motion by attorneys for the SCEC to include the city of Memphis as a codefendant along with the Commission. Jenkins decided that the city had not officially endorsed the Meyers opinion, though city attorney Jennifer Sink had forwarded it to the SCEC. For her part, Sink has said she has no intention of formally claiming the Meyers opinion as the city’s own.

• In calling a special meeting of the County Commission for this Wednesday on the issue of reappointing the expelled state Representative Justin J. Pearson to the House District 86 seat, Commission chair Mickell Lowery made his own sentiments evident.

After noting that he was “required to make decisions as a leader,” Lowery said, inter alia, “I believe the expulsion of state Representative Justin Pearson was conducted in a hasty manner without consideration of other corrective action methods. I also believe that the ramifications for our great state are still yet to be seen. … Coincidentally, this has directly affected me as I too reside in state House District 86. I am amongst the over 68,000 citizens [actually, 78,000] who were stripped of having a representative at the state due to the unfortunate outcome of the state assembly’s vote.”

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Turmoil at Capitol

Democrats in jeopardy: (from left) Justin Pearson, Gloria Johnson, Justin Jones (Photo: John Partipilo | Tennessee Lookout)

Not since the income tax riots of 2001 has the Tennessee state capitol building in Nashville seen such intensity. Monday’s session of the General Assembly, which included the introduction of resolutions in the House threatening the expulsion of three Democratic state representatives, concluded with the crowded galleries shouting epithets — including “fascists” — at members of the Republican supermajority.

Outside the capitol, worse things were being chanted by massive crowds at the expense of GOP Governor Bill Lee, who, like the Republican lawmakers, was faulted for inaction on gun safety following last week’s gun massacre at a Nashville Christian school.

“Eff Bill Lee!” the demonstrators chanted.

The three Democrats in jeopardy — representatives Gloria Johnson of Knoxville and Justin Jones of Nashville, along with Memphis first-termer Justin Pearson — had gone to the well of the House last Thursday, and, with the aid of bullhorns, encouraged protesters in the galleries to keep demanding action on guns.

A vote on expulsion of the three will probably take place Thursday, along with, equally probably, energetic new protests on their behalf and for gun-safety legislation.

• On Thursday this week, Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins will hold a status conference on suits by mayoral candidates Floyd Bonner and Van Turner against an apparent edict by the Shelby County Election Commission (SCEC) requiring five years of prior residence in Memphis for candidates.

Neither candidate could clear a strict interpretation of the SCEC’s edict, which is included on the Commission’s website via a link to an opinion from former Commission chair Robert Meyers.

Jenkins gave a preliminary ruling last Friday against the SCEC’s effort to include the city of Memphis as a co-respondent against the suits.

• There was some unprecedented attention given to the matter of county contracts at Monday’s public meeting of the Shelby County Commission, and it all started while the body was considering the meeting’s “consent agenda,” ordinarily regarded as routine and largely consisting of pre-screened items.

With Democratic member Britney Thornton in the lead and with fellow Democrats Erika Sugarmon and Henri Brooks, among others, taking part, members kept county financial officers and economic opportunity administrator Shep Wilbun in the well for more than an hour answering detailed questions about each and every contract up for a vote, including many that appeared to be essentially maintenance matters.

The two basic questions were: How many bids were there for the contract? And how many bidders were minority? In most cases there was an obvious and even enormous disparity in the two numbers, which was, of course, the point of the questioners.

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Part Two: Mayoral Candidate Update

J.W. Gibson (right) in discussion with consultant Brett Thompson at a recent meet and greet. (Credit: Jackson Baker)

Note: in a prior article, the campaigns of four presumably mainline mayoral candidates were discussed  — those of Floyd Bonner, Paul Young, Van Turner, and Willie Herenton.

J.W. Gibson: The businessman/developer is something of a wild card in the Mayor’s race. He is a former County Commissioner whose high-matter mark, politically, was a hard-fought but losing in-camera contest for a chairmanship vacancy with then Commission colleague Joe Ford.

Gibson is well known in developmental circles and to a certain extent in political ones, as well. At the moment, he still hopes to be involved in a pending, long-maturing TIF that would cover the Soulsville area of South Memphis.

Of all the declared candidates, Gibson has the most direct access to independent wealth, and that puts him, to start with, at an even keel financially with Bonner and Young, the standout fundraisers so far.

His financial means could be important, especially in a protracted race, but Gibson, however familiar to insiders, has a long way to go to achieve widespread name recognition in the community at large.

Frank Colvett: This city councilman, a former Council chair, took pains when he announced to insist that he was not a partisan candidate and would appeal to all sectors of the Memphis  population in what is, of course, a formally non-partisan race.

Even so, Colvett’s image as a well-known Republican stirred speculation that the councilman intended to corner the local GOP electorate as at least a base for his further efforts.

As last year’s county general election made clear, though, Republicans are a distinct minority in Shelby County, and that disparity is even more pronounced within Memphis city limits, where the GOP-voting population is estimated to be between 15 and 20 percent.

Colvett is doggedly showing up at many of the mayoral forums, often ill-attended, that are so far being held. And he is a fixture at any bona fide Republican event, handing out his lapel stickers at the gate.

James Harvey: Another former County Commissioner, another Republican (as of recent years, anyhow), and a true long shot, Harvey is an African-American who hopes to get his share of widely disparate voting populations.

He has a tendency to talk too long when asked to speak at events (a holdover from his erstwhile Commission habits), but, as he demonstrated at a recent GOP meeting (in Germantown, not the most obvious place to find Memphis voters), he was off-and-on riveting when he talked Law and Order themes to the faithful.

Still, he probably shouldn’t hold his breath. (Or, to invert that metaphor, maybe he should.)

Karen Camper: As the minority leader of the state House Democrats, Camper is an influential figure, and in her campaign announcement, she made a good try of casting herself as a spokesperson for Memphis’ inner-city neighborhoods. 

And her legislative experience has given her a good grasp of the state-local interface she would need to work as the city’s chief executive.

One thing that has held her back is the moratorium that’s been imposed on fundraising of General Assembly members for the duration of the current legislative session. 

Another thing that holds her back is the simple fact that, however important she is as a pubic official, she has been working at a 225-mile distance from Memphis and, consequently, outside Nashville and her legislative district, she remains something of an unknown in Memphis at large.

Michelle McKissack: There surely is a political market for such a highly presentable and well-spoken female candidate as this former local TV personality who has lately served as chair of the Shelby County Schools board.

But McKissack has been stumbling somewhat in making her entry into the race an established fact. She made an unusual public announcement early on that she was thinking of running, but has never amplified on that in any tangible way since. (She has been, however, a presence at several local low-key forums.)

Another drawback to McKissack’s candidacy is that she is subject to fallout from the embarrassing implosion of the now departed and disgraced schools superintendent Joris Ray, whom she had a hand in selecting.

Judge Joe Brown: You kidding me? Is he really running — this former actual Shelby County jurist and, somewhat famously later, a pretend one on syndicated national TV?

Well, he evidently really is. He’s showed up at a couple of local mayoral forums, anyway, where he has continued demonstrating a serious case of foot-in-mouth disease (e.g., saying out loud that a female Mayor would be subject to being raped if she kept a too public profile).

Brown’s name recognition was thought to be an advantage when he ran for D.A. back in 2014, and it may well continue to be, given that  former Councilman and current Shelby County Clerk Joe Brown (no relation) probably owes his various elections to the name similarity.

But Judge Brown’s 2014 campaign dramatically dissolved as a result of his many behavioral and verbal indiscretions, and he had no money to run on, anyhow. He still doesn’t have any.

(This concludes Part Two of a brief survey of Memphis mayoral candidates. Almost surely I’ve overlooked somebody, in which case I’ll realize that at some point and add them on. In any case, petitions can’t even be drawn until May 22, so nobody is really official just yet.)

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Shaking Things Up

Outgoing Democratic chair Gabby Salinas (r) checks results of party convention with state Rep. Dwayne Thompson and Rose Mary Bradley. (Photo: Jackson Baker)

A smallish crowd of 166 people showed up last Saturday at First Baptist Church on Broad to take part in the first round of balloting for the biennial Shelby County Democratic Party reorganization. Two delegates from each of the county’s 13 Shelby County Commission districts were selected to form the party’s executive committee.

Norma Lester, who presided over last Saturday’s Democratic event, lamented that fewer members attended than had been expected. She attributed that fact to the lingering effects of the pandemic, during which in-person party events were relatively rare.

The party’s bylaws require that the two committee members representing each district be of different genders, and in one district, that allowed for an unprecedented result. On Saturday, the voters of District 11 elected the first transgender committee member, Brandy Price, to serve.

Some 100-odd members were also named to the party’s grassroots council. Members of both groups will convene via Zoom on Saturday, April 1st, to name a chairman to succeed outgoing chair Gabby Salinas. The three known candidates are businessman Jesse Huseth, longtime activist Lexie Carter, and Alvin Crook, a former Young Democrats chair.

Meanwhile, on this coming Saturday, March 25th, the county’s Republicans will hold their party’s reorganization caucus at the YMCA corporate offices on Goodlett Farms Parkway. Current GOP chairman Cary Vaughn has indicated that he intends to seek a second term as chair in order to continue his ongoing fundraising plan for the party.

• To say that the 2023 Memphis mayor’s race is in something of an uproar is a classic understatement. It is still two full months before the first date (May 22nd) to pick up candidate petitions at the Election Commission, and three of the race’s putative leaders, as identified in a recent poll, may be disqualified from even picking one up. They are Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner, NAACP president and former County Commissioner Van Turner, and longtime former Mayor Willie Herenton.

Bonner and Turner have both raised substantial amounts of cash, and, while less is known about Herenton’s receipts, his background in city government and historical cachet are such as to guarantee him a substantial vote base to begin with.

What makes the position of these three candidates tenuous is that none of them would qualify under residency requirements just posted on the Election Commission website. In its instructions to would-be candidates, the commission links to a legal opinion written by former EC chairman Robert Meyers. That opinion states explicitly that a city-charter provision of 1895 is still in effect and requires candidates to have lived in Memphis for five years “next preceding” an election.

None of the three candidates would fit that precise language, and these happen to be the three contenders who just finished on top in a local poll conducted by the Caissa Public Strategy group. The poll gives Turner a minuscule edge over the other two. Although Caissa normally handles candidates of its own, it so far has no mayoral candidate on its roster, and, though there are skeptics here and there regarding the poll’s reliability, most observers give it a fair degree of credibility.

Candidate Bonner has filed suit against the commission’s published criteria, and Chancellor Jim Kyle will consider the litigation, probably at rush speed. Meanwhile, other candidates, notably Paul Young of the Downtown Memphis Commission and wealthy businessman J.W. Gibson, have to be pinching themselves at their apparent good luck.

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Splitting Legal Hairs

Photo: Kasia Biel | Dreamstime.com

The matter of residency requirements for election to the office of Memphis mayor and service in that position has suddenly become enormously significant. It has, in fact, become the crux of the election matter, even as three of the most highly touted mayoral candidates have for several months already been competing and raising money feverishly for the right to serve.

Those candidates are Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner, NAACP president and former County Commissioner Van Turner, and former longtime Mayor Willie Herenton. Though each of them has lived many years in Memphis prior to this election year, each of them also has, at some point in the recent past, lived outside the city limits of Memphis and would be ineligible to serve as mayor under an 1895 city charter clause explicitly requiring mayoral candidates to have lived within the city for five years “next preceding” their election.

That charter would be amended in 1966, a year before Memphis held a city election for a newly adopted mayor-council form of government. The new charter did not use the words “next preceding” to define the terms of residential eligibility, nor did a judicial decree of 1991 regarding election criteria, nor did a subsequent 1996 voter referendum based on that decree explicitly define mayoral residency requirements in the sense of the 1895 charter.

Since then, there has remained a sense of ambiguity regarding the residency requirements for a mayoral candidacy, and an opinion last year by city council attorney Allan Wade became the de facto ruling on the matter.

Addressing queries from county Election Administrator Linda Phillips, Wade argued that the 1996 referendum — technically a home rule amendment — changed the residency requirements for city council members, eliminating any specific prior term of residency, and that the prior charter of 1966 linked the mayor’s residency requirements to those of the city council.

In another opinion made public last week, however, former Election Commission Chairman Robert Meyers, responding to city attorney Jennifer Sink, argues that voters in 1996 voted merely to change the residency requirement for city council, and were not aware that such a change would trigger the mayor’s residency requirements as well. His bottom line was that a mayoral candidate still had to abide by the need to have lived within the city for five years preceding an election.

Both opinions split more legal hairs than can be indicated in this space, but clearly the aforementioned candidates for mayor (and their opponents) have a vested interest in what a court might rule on the matter, and suits to force a definitive ruling can be expected, probably in short order.

• Partisans of the Shelby County Democratic Party will convene at First Baptist Church on Broad this Saturday to elect new members of the party’s grassroots council and its executive committee.

Those persons so elected will meet again at the same site on Saturday, April 1st, to elect a new party head to succeed current chair Gabby Salinas, who is not running for reelection.

The two known candidates for party chair are activists Jesse Huseth and Lexie Carter. They, or whoever else might seek the chairmanship, will take part in a public forum, probably on the intervening Saturday, March 25th.

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Going the Distance

James Harvey in Germantown (Photo: Jackson Baker)

As noted in this space last week, the current Memphis city election year is seemingly destined to become the most long-distance such event in the city’s history, with several mayoral candidates already declared and notably running months in advance of any actual voting.

To stress the point: No ballots will be cast until September 15th, when early voting begins for the election, which concludes for most purposes on October 5th. Should there be district council races in which there is no majority winner, runoffs will be held for those districts on November 16th.

Contestants for mayor and for city council positions will not even be able to pick up their qualifying petitions from the Election Commission until May 22nd, almost three months from now. And district lines for the 13 council positions are still under review.

All these facts indicate just how far off in time the election really is; though in key races, for city council as well as for mayor, there is a distinct flurry of activity as would-be candidates try to get their campaigns (and their fundraising needs) established and in order.

• Apropos long-distance campaigning, Monday night of this week saw a different application of the term. Memphis mayoral candidate James Harvey, speaking not in Memphis but before an audience in Germantown, held forth for an hour and a half. That’s the length of speaking time that occurs usually only for events like a presidential State of the Union address or an arena speech by Donald Trump to one of his devoted, cult-like audiences.

Harvey, a longtime FedEx administrator who now is proprietor of his own staffing service, is a former member of the Shelby County Commission and served a term as that body’s chairman. An African American, he was a Democrat in those days, but his party affiliation has become somewhat ambiguous. He has involved himself in several Republican races as a sponsor of other people’s events, but on Monday night he downplayed the issue of partisanship (appropriately enough for the Memphis city election, which is formally nonpartisan).

Monday night’s event, at the Perkins Restaurant & Bakery in Germantown, was sponsored by the Shelby County Republican Party’s outreach committee, and chaired by the indefatigable Naser Fazlullah, who advised attendees that Harvey had “the gift of gab.”

That’s one way of putting it. Another was voiced years ago by then County Commissioner Chris Thomas, who commented after one of colleague Harvey’s extended monologues, “I could have gone out and gotten a haircut during all of that.”

James Harvey does indeed love to talk, and, though several members of his audience Monday night had to leave before he finished, the body as a whole seemed to resonate with his remarks, which focused on public safety and crime and the value of strong authority. He declared himself in favor of age 15 as the outer limit for Juvenile Court supervision and fulminated against tinted car windows and the antisocial actions of wayward youths, whom he characterized by the terms “Li’l Billy and Li’l Pookie.” He also at one point singled out “Jay [sic] Morant,” the Grizzlies superstar who has recently been involved in a series of questionable incidents.

As a candidate, Harvey is something of an anomaly and would be well advised to limit his speaking time but, in the best of circumstances, could find appreciative audiences like the one Monday night.

• Businessman J.W. Gibson, who is able to self-fund if need be, formally announced his candidacy for Mayor at an event Monday at the Stax Museum, calling for a “different tune” in city government.

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Three on a Match

Activist Jerred Price (right) conducted a monster fundraiser at IBIS restaurant last week, and numerous supporters showed up for the event, which was broken up into a meet-and-greet and a concert, in which Price delivered his patented tribute to Elton John. With Price here are Thurston Smith (left) and Regina Morrison Newman (center). (Photo: Courtesy Jerred Price)

Although the Memphis city election of 2023 won’t take place until October, candidates are already fully extended in an effort to get their campaigns (and especially their fundraising needs) established and in order. This has been especially the case regarding the race for mayor, but it is evident in selected council races as well.

One of those races is the one for Super District 8, Position 3, which the term-limited Martavius Jones, currently the council chairman, is scheduled to vacate at year’s end. The District 8 position is one of the six at-large districts permitted by a judicial consent decree dating from the 1990s. In essence, a line was drawn bisecting the city, dividing Super District 8, a majority-Black district, from Super District 9, a majority-white area.

Each of the super districts has three positions, and there are six Super District seats altogether. Unlike the case of the seven smaller regular districts, runoffs are not permitted for the Super District races. They are winner-take-all.

Three candidacies are already fully launched for Super District 8, Position 3. The candidates are shown here.

Business consultant and community activist Brian Harris (center, with tie) hosted a campaign event for fellow Overton High School alumni (classes of 1995-1999) last Sunday at Chef Tam’s Underground Cafe on Union Avenue. (Photo: Jackson Baker)
FedEx executive and former City Councilman Berlin Boyd (here in a vintage photo with erstwhile council colleague Bill Boyd) is seeking a return to the council, where he served as a representative from District 7 from 2011 until his defeat by current Councilwoman Michalyn Easter-Thomas in 2019. (Photo: Jackson Baker)
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Giving It Another Try

Photo: Juan Moyano | Dreamstime.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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