Tag: Reginald Milton

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Harold Ford Sr. is Back on the Case

Strickland, Milton, and Ford at Memphian Hotel fundraiser.

Time was, when the presence of Harold Ford Sr. was inescapable during an election year. That was during the 20-plus years when Ford, serving as Congressman from Memphis’ 9th District and as the city’s acknowledged political broker-in-chief, would put out a slate of recommended candidates, and woe be to those who weren’t on it, at least in the core precincts of Memphis

Ford was ultimately succeeded in office by his son, and Harold Ford Jr., who focused more on his national ambitions, didn’t pay the same heed to local political matters. The concept of the “Ford Ballot” increasingly became a non-factor at election time.

The senior Ford retired to Florida and used his influence on Memphis and Shelby County elections on a more or less ad hoc basis through the years. This remained the case even when Ford, who always found time to come back to Memphis on as as-needed basis, opened a plush, new, hypermodern funeral home on Sycamore Grove.

Well, the 2022 election season beckons, and Harold Ford Sr. has given indication that, in one form or another, he’ll be heard from in something like the old way. 

When Memphis Democrats gathered for a pre-election forum at the Great Hall of Germantown on Wednesday night, and Memphis Councilman JB Smiley took his turn at the dais, Smiley spent much of his time talking about a lengthy conversation he had just had with Ford, and dilated at length on the political advice offered by the latter.

Ford is doing more than offering his advice. He turned up Thursday night for  a rooftop fund-raiser and announcement event at the Memphian Hotel at Overton Square for County Commissioner Reginald Milton’s intended campaign for Juvenile Court Clerk.

Ford was there as a principal endorser and sponsor of Milton, and he was joined in that role by Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, giving Milton’s kickoff a bit of extra adrenaline. (The Ford-Strickland duo was also a feature of the brief local Bloomberg-for-President campaign in 2020.)

In previous campaigns, Milton, who is term-limited and cannot run for reelection to the commission, has had premium sponsorships and no doubt will earn more before the campaign is over, but, being bracketed by Strickland and Ford was surely not a bad way to begin. 

And that event, coupled with Smiley’s earlier remarks, gave fair notice that Harold Ford Sr. might not be finished with lending his political influence and advice for the coming season. Stay tuned.

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Politics Politics Feature

“Doing the Same Things Twice”

Reginald Milton (Photo: Jackson Baker)

Where the Shelby County Commission is concerned, some issues would seem to be eternal. Several of them got their latest looking-over Monday, September 27th, at the body’s regular Monday meeting.

There was the issue of city-county governmental consolidation, an issue also being discussed on the City Council these days. Somehow a proposal from Commissioner Reginald Milton to develop potential concrete remedies for historically blighted Memphis neighborhoods had transmogrified into a discussion about the prospect of consolidation — one in which the usual discords and divisiveness associated with that issue came to the fore.

Milton listened patiently to the querulous back-and-forthing, and, as the matter devolved into a question of establishing a powerless ad hoc committee on consolidation, with himself as chair, Milton finally had enough.

As he saw it, the opportunity to come up with hard and practical solutions to an eternally intractable array of socioeconomic problems was being steered into the see-no-evil, do-no-good timidity of a study group.

“To hell with every one of you who let this happen, forget it! I’m out!” Milton said.

And so was the agenda item, never even subjected to a vote.

A vote did occur on another revived matter, this one the question of whether federal monitors should return to Shelby County to re-examine the status of Juvenile Court, which the Department of Justice had investigated and found riddled with bureaucratic and race-based issues. A 2012 Memorandum of Understanding between the county and the DOJ had resulted in specific remedies for improvement spelled out.

Some changes were made in accordance with the MOA, and in 2018, a request that had been initiated by then Mayor Mark Luttrell to remove the monitors was accepted by the DOJ.

A local group, the Shelby County Juvenile Justice Consortium (CJJC), which was dissatisfied with the rate and extent of reform in the court, had urged that the monitors return to re-evaluate court operations “as … relates to protecting the Constitutional Rights of the children of Shelby County, Tennessee,” and that request came to the County Commission for its approval.

After several citizens, including members of the CJJC, testified to continuing abuses at Juvenile Court, including an “appalling” rate of prisoner transfers to Criminal Court, members of the commission took sides on the matter, with the body’s conservatives tending to see the new charges as overstated and based on incomplete information, and others seeing that very lack of complete information to be suspicious in itself.

In the end, the commission voted 8 to 4 in favor of the federal monitors’ return with the four dissenters being Commissioners Brandon Morrison, Mark Billingsley, David Bradford, and Amber Mills, and with Commissioner Mark Wright abstaining.

Another revived issue on Monday was that of the creation of a “blue-ribbon” advisory committee on mayoral appointments to the Shelby County Ethics Commission, a controversial proposal which, in its final form, had been seriously watered down.

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News News Blog

Black County Commissioners Oppose Lee’s Order on Masks in Schools

Members of the Shelby County Commission Black Caucus spoke out Tuesday against Gov. Bill Lee’s executive order allowing parents to opt their children out of school mask mandates.

Commissioner Tami Sawyer said the group stands with the parents in Shelby County who are concerned with the “distasteful” executive order.

“Parents are reeling from this decision,” Sawyer said. Based on pictures she’s received of school hallways, she said it’s unlikely that students are social distancing between classes. With students able to opt out of wearing masks, Sawyer said there will be an even greater spread of the virus. 

“It gave me the heebie jeebies to think about how that’s going to work without masks,” Sawyer said. “It’s not just the kids and that’s the point that needs to be driven home. When you think about the economic crisis that Shelby County is in, a lot of children are being raised in multigenerational homes. So they are taking this virus to their ailing grandparents, to their mother who is then taking it to work, to their younger siblings taking the virus to middle school or kindergarten.” 

Sawyer also noted that the executive order is another example of the state undermining local government. The local government cannot make decisions for itself without fear of litigation or punitive measures by the state, Sawyer said. 

“That is not the way state and local governments are supposed to work together,” Sawyer said. “Whenever Shelby County makes a decision that’s best for them, we have to be afraid or concerned that the state is going to come back and reverse it or punish us because of our decision, especially when it comes to our children and education.”

Commissioner Mickell Lowery, who has two school-aged children, said protecting children should not be political. 

“It’s hard to tell children to stay separated and social distance when they’re just being kids,” Lowery said. “It affects all of us.”

Lowery added that the group supports any method, “by any means,” to keep children safe. 

Commissioner Reginald Milton said the executive order is using students as “political pawns.” 

“I will not play politics or games with their lives,” Milton said. “I ask all of you to stand with us and say ‘this is wrong and the governor is wrong.’”

With three children in school, Commissioner Van Turner said as a parent, “it’s nerve wracking.” 

“I think parents have rights, but they don’t have rights to endanger the lives of other children in other households,” Turner said. “If that’s the case, why don’t we allow children to smoke at school. Here we are dealing with real life situations where people are passing and the governor is doing something opposite of what’s going to protect our young people.

Turner said the group supports all efforts to pursue legal action against the executive order. 

Shelby County Schools superintendent Joris Ray said Monday that he, along with the SCS board members and its general counsel, are reviewing the legalities of the executive order. In the meantime, he reiterated that masks are still required for all school employees, students, and visitors. 

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Rumblings on the Commission

It is the City Council that grabs most of the headlines and TV attention, but it must be remembered that the Shelby County Commission not only represents more constitutionally ordained authority than does the Council, it is the body that ultimately calls the shots on such important aspects of our collective life as public education and public health.

Eddie Jones

Not that the Commission controls the public schools; it just pays for them on behalf of the taxpayers. It can’t dictate on matters of curriculum — those are entirely to be worked out between the School Board and the superintendent’s office — but the Commissioners can, if they choose, withhold funding for the schools if they don’t like the drift of things.

Once in a while, in the heat of debate on the Commission, action of that sort gets threatened. One of the most persistent critics of the Shelby County Schools system is current County Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr., an educator himself and one who, in particular, is forever suspicious of S.C.S. spending plans and demands to see the fine print and the bottom line regarding virtually everything representatives of the school system bring to the Commission to get funded.

And now the Commission, which already is responsible for monitoring the county Health Department, is — in the crush of the ongoing pandemic — attempting to ground its authority even deeper, with the proposed creation of a Shelby County Health Board. The recent proposal to do so, which seemed at first to be uncontroversial, has become anything but.

Two key members of the Commission, outgoing chairman Mark Billingsley and Edmund Ford Jr., withdrew their sponsorship of the enabling ordinance at Monday’s Commission meeting amid reported pressure from city government and suburban municipalities — both of which entities are said to view the proposed new Board as threatening to their own power concerns. “We don’t like people trying to pre-empt us. We don’t like the state to pre-empt us, and we don’t like anybody else doing it, either,” said a well-placed source in Memphis city government.

The city, of course, is the driving force behind the Memphis-Shelby County COVID-19 Task Force, though virtually everyone of importance in local medicine, not to mention representatives of all the municipalities and first-responder agencies, is a member of that sprawling body which, for all the honorific nature of its cast of characters, does hard work and holds at least two valuable public information sessions during the week.

What the Task Force does not have is the power to compel policy throughout the county, and that is what the proposed Board would have, and that is why city and suburban officials were resistant to it right away. Van Turner, the low-keyed but highly influential inner-city Democratic commissioner and former chairman, is the remaining major sponsor, and he indicates he is amenable to broadening the composition of the Board — certainly not to the dimensions of the Task Force but in ways inclusive of the concerned separate jurisdictions.

After a preliminary 7-3 vote on the Board proposition and a decision to send it back to committee, the process of compromise and overhaul has begun. As it proceeds to the point necessary for passage, the concept of the Board seems likely to become that of an advisory body rather than a prescriptive one, and, in that case, its relevance as an add-on to the Task Force may cease to be obvious.

Besides the initial aversion of Memphis and suburban officialdom to the idea of the Health Board, there was another inherent obstacle to its creation — the ever-widening gap between Mayor Lee Harris and the Commission itself. There has always been a certain tension between the two power centers of mayor and Commission. In a sense the relationship is based on a balance of power, and relations between the two have always swung pendulum-like between common purpose and rivalry.

It was the latter state that dominated things during the last two or three years of the administration of former Mayor Mark Luttrell. A jurisdictional dispute that had begun in 2015 over the amount and disposition of a county fiscal surplus would harden into long-term enmity. A pair of Repubican commissioners — Terry Roland of Millington and Heidi Shafer of East Memphis — would each serve a term as Commission chair during the crucial period and the two of them, working with each other and with a technical Democratic majority, would supervise a rebellion against the GOP mayor that would erode his authority significantly and see him, at the end of his two terms in 2018, unable or unwilling even to oversee the details of transition to the newly elected Democratic mayor, Lee Harris.

Harris came into office with an 8 to 5 Democratic majority and resolved to avoid any schism with the Commission. Yet here he is, two years later, with the Commission having seized the initiative on producing the budget — and not tenderly, either — exactly as the previous Commission had done with Luttrell at the very start of their mutual alienation.

Brandon Morrison

It is this Mayor-Commission dichotomy and not partisan bickering that had seemingly become the major determinant of disagreements in county government. Yet that may be changing, as partisanship certainly reared up as a reality in the course of Monday’s election of chair and vice chair.

The Shelby County Commission has, more than most bodies elected by partisan election, been able to enjoy cooperation across party lines — certainly more so than Congress or the state legislature in Nashville. As already noted, the case can be made that Republicans Roland and Shafer (neither of whom can be described as a moderate) provided the guidelines for group action in the previous version of the Commission, a majority-Democrat one like the present version, which lines up 8 to 5 Democratic.

Which is not to say that Shafer and Roland imposed GOP ideology; except for their efforts on behalf of a tax cut, the main Commission emphasis during that period arguably was on behalf of MWBE (Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprises). That and resistance to Nashville on matters like school vouchers.

Two Democrats — Eddie Jones and Edmund Ford Jr. — have experienced no problem working back and forth across the political aisle, in much the same manner as Jones and Justin Ford did in the previous Commission. The occasional vote on a partisan matter has often seen either or both of them voting with the body’s GOP members. Up until now, there has been no equivalent among Republicans.

That all changed on Monday, when, after a unanimous vote of all Commissioners for Jones as the body’s next chairman, East Memphis Republican Brandon Morrison joined six Democrats in a vote to make herself vice chair and defeat fellow Republican Amber Mills, a north county member who tilts significantly to the right and was the preferred candidate of the other GOP members. The significance of the vote is the bearing it is likely to have a year from now when the vice chair will presumably be in the catbird seat for the next vote for chair.

Mark Billingsley, a Republican from Germantown and the outgoing chairman, has reacted with outrage to what he sees as devious and disloyal action on the part of Morrison (whose conservative voting record, incidentally, has not been radically dissimilar from Mills’), and he declined to consider a motion from Democrat Tami Sawyer to make Morrison’s election unanimous.

While Democrats like Van Turner and Reginald Milton saw the matter as no big deal, except as a good-for-the-goose, good-for-the-gander bit of parallelism, the outgoing chair remained unappeased. Given that Billingsley himself had, during his chairmanship, clearly attempted to position himself as a conciliator of factions, his reaction could signal a sea change in future relations between the parties. All that remains to be seen.

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Politics Politics Feature

Numbed by the Numbers: County Commission Struggles to Agree on Budget

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Separate attempts to produce a budget for Shelby County failed to produce anything resembling a consensus on a marathon meeting day of the County Commission on Monday. Commission Chairman Mark Billingsley said he intends to call a special meeting for next week to see if the process can be expedited.
Jackson Baker

Commission Chairman Mark Billingsley

Billingsley told his fellow commissioners the called meeting would likely be necessary in the interests of reaching agreement on a budget, with the new fiscal year just around the corner on July 1st.

The Memorial Day holiday next week forces an adjustment of the normal schedule, which would mandate a day of committee meetings during the week, preparatory to the next regular commission meeting the week after. The holiday forces the entire sequence to occur a week later, with committee meetings scheduled for June 3rd and the next regular public meeting to be on June 8th.

Hence the need for a called meeting, especially since Monday’s meetings — a special called budget meeting, starting at 11 a.m., followed by the regular Commission meeting at 3 p.m — became embroiled in complications that were still unsnarled when the commission adjourned at nearly midnight.

“We’re getting into another day,” said budget chair Eddie Jones wearily, with the clock moving toward the witching hour and one of the Webinar meeting’s participants, an administration staffer participating from home and having to alternate her contributions with soothing words for a restless two-year-old. “That sounds wonderful,” was the wistful comment of Commissioner Mick Wright on this audible reminder of a domestic life beyond numbers-crunching.

Various formulas have been adduced for dealing with a looming budget deficit that had looked to be as large as $10 million even before the effects of the coronavirus crisis pushed things even further into fiscal crisis.

In mid-April, County Mayor Lee Harris had proposed a $1.4 billion “lean and balanced” budget, with $13.6 million in specified cuts offset by a $16.50 raise in the county’s motor vehicle registration tax, a.k.a. the wheel tax. A majority of commissioners could not be found to agree, and alternative budget proposals, all with different versions of austerity, have since been floated, one by Commissioner Brandon Morrison, another by budget chair Jones, working more or less in tandem with vice chair Edmund Ford.

Among the issues raised by Monday’s day-long discussion was that of whether, as county Chief Financial Officer Mathilde Crosby contended, the proposals offered by Jones and Ford focused overmuch on cuts in administrative departments, thereby paralleling what has been something of a running feud between Harris and Ford based, as more than a few observers see it, as a potential long-term political rivalry between the two.

Crosby also offered criticism that the Jones-Ford proposals for budget-cutting ignored distinctions between the county’s general fund and various dedicated funds for mandated functions.

Another potential issue is that of the county tax rate, currently pegged at $4.05 per $100 of assessed value. Commissioner Reginald Milton, for one, believes that the rate is set artificially low because of simple mathematical error and that this factor is bound to doom the county to endless future variations of the current budget scramble until the rate is recalculated. The current rate has so far been reaffirmed in two of the three readings required for passage.

The budget issue is predominating over other matters, though the commission did reach an agreement Monday on what had been a controversial proposal by Commissioner Tami Sawyer for an ordinance requiring, on penalty of $50 fine, that residents and visitors wear protective face masks in public areas. Sawyer recast her proposal in the form of a resolution requesting such a requirement by the Health Department but providing for no fine. The resolution passed 8-5 on a party-line vote, with the Commission’s Democrats voting for and the Republicans voting against.

Another matter of consequence that awaits the commission is the matter of new voting machines for Shelby County. The commission has twice voted a preference that the county invest in a system of hand-marked paper ballots in time for the August county general election and federal-state primaries, but the Shelby County Election Commission has approved the recommendation of Election Administrator Linda Phillips that new ballot-marking machines from the ES&S Company be purchased instead.

With the elections approaching, the need for a decision soon increases. The process requires that Harris sign an order authorizing the purchase of a new system, after which the commission must vote for its funding. At issue is whether the commission will approve the Phillips/SCEC request or act according to its own preference for the hand-marked system.

A sizable and well-organized group of local activists is pushing for the latter option, on grounds, among others, that a system of hand-marked ballots would be cheaper, more transparent, and less vulnerable to hacking.

Other, related aspects of the controversy include allegations from the activist ranks of potential conflicts of interest involving Phillips and family members and a concern that purchase of the ES&S machines would involve an implicit need to purchase a new voter-registration system from the same company.

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Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Commission Tackles Issues With State Legislature

The March 3rd Super Tuesday vote, with presidential preference primaries favoring Democrat Joe Biden and President Donald Trump, and nominating Joe Brown and Paul Boyd, respectively, as the Democratic and Republican candidates for General Sessions Court clerk, has come and gone.

But there was still politics to be found locally. In a lengthy, oddly contentious meeting of the Shelby County Commission on Monday, political factors weighed heavily on several controversial issues, most of which were resolved either unanimously or via one-sided votes. A pair of hot-button issues were addressed in the form of late add-on resolutions at the close of Monday’s meeting, which had already generated significant steam via the regular agenda.

One of the add-on resolutions opposed Republican Governor Bill Lee‘s proposal for open-carry legislation, at least for Shelby County, and passed the Commission by a bipartisan 10-1 vote, the lone vote in opposition coming from GOP Commissioner Mick Wright, who chose to let his dissent speak for itself.

The resolution was co-sponsored by Republican David Bradford and Democrat Tami Sawyer. The minimal discussion of the measure was itself bipartisan, with, for example, Democrat Reginald Milton and Republican Amber Mills making similar declarations of being pro-Second Amendment but citing opposition to the open-carry measure from law enforcement officials.

Specifically, the resolution’s enacting clause asks that any open-carry measure exclude Shelby County: “Now, therefore, be it resolved the Board of County Commissioners of Shelby County Tennessee be carved out of any and all permitless gun carry legislation.”

It should be noted that in a separate action over the weekend, the Shelby County Democratic Executive Committee unanimously passed its own resolution condemning Senate Bill 2671/House Bill 2817, the permitless-carry legislation, citing similar objections — noting that, for example, “the Memphis Mayor, Memphis Police Director, and the Shelby County Sheriff have already spoken out against the bill.”

Another late add-on resolution at Monday’s commission meeting was introduced by Sawyer. It would have repeated the commission’s previous stand in favor of voter-marked paper ballot machines in Shelby County and included an exhortation to the General Assembly to “support legislation for paper ballot on-demand options,” thereby tying into specific ongoing legislation to that end.

Further, and importantly, the resolution provides an alternative to holding a public referendum authorizing new voting machines, as apparently required under a newly unearthed provision of state law. It underscores the authority of the county commission itself, “as the governing body of Shelby County” to purchase new voting machines, and notes the subsequent reallocation last month by the commission of capital improvement funds as a means of doing so. The resolution would not be acted on directly but was by unanimous consent referred to the next meeting of the commission’s general government committee.

Commissioner Sawyer appended to the resolution a copy of a letter signed by five Republican legislators representing Shelby County and addressed to the three Republican members of the Shelby County Election Commission.

The letter, on the official letterhead of state Senator Brian Kelsey, carried two specific “recommendations” to the GOP SCEC members. One directly opposes voter-marked ballots, stating that “[a]llowing voters to handle and mark paper inevitably opens the election process to numerous unnecessary human errors” and that “reverting back to technology from the 1990s would be a huge mistake.”

A second “recommendation” needs  to be quoted in its entirely: “Second, in order to ensure that everyone has the same opportunity to vote and to limit the financial strains on the taxpayers, we recommend seven days of early voting be conducted at all satellite voting locations in Shelby County, preceded by eight days of early voting at the Shelby County Election Commission office. Opening only one early voting location in the Agricenter, as was done in 2018, was wrong and in violation of state law. The solution we propose will fix this problem.”

Buried in this somewhat disingenuous language is the idea of cutting back the amount of time devoted to satellite early voting from two weeks to a single week.

Sawyer was pointed and defiant in the citation of the Kelsey letter, saying that its recommendations and circumlocutions alike, as well as the confinement of the communication to Republican members of the SCEC, constituted an affront to the commission and to the process of resolving the voting-machine issue in an orderly, conscientious manner.

“The letter undermines this board,” she declared, insisting that her condemnation of the letter be given maximum public exposure.

The voting-machine issue was not the only matter to invoke the possibility of cross-purposes between county and state authorities. An unexpected controversy arose over a proposal, advanced by Commissioners Milton and Van Turner at the behest of County Mayor Lee Harris, to allocate $33,799 for a Veterans Service Officer in Shelby County. Commissioner Mills, who with colleague Edmund Ford, had been to Nashville last week to discuss county-government needs with state officials, asked for a postponement of the action, insisting that she had been promised the prospect of not one, but five such officers for Shelby County via state action, and that county action on the matter could scuttle the state effort.

An argument ensued between Mills and Harris, with the mayor, backed by several members of the commission, expressing disbelief that county action on the matter would provoke a punitive reaction in Nashville. But in the end a narrow vote approved a deferral of the issue to the commission meeting of April 20th.

Modest controversy arose, too, over the commission’s action in approving  a paid parental leave policy for county employees. The annual price tag of the proposal, $830,000, to be paid for by internet sales tax revenues, was objected to by Republican Commissioners Mills and Brandon Morrison, who cited a looming $85 million county deficit, and abstained from an otherwise unanimous vote of approval.

Democrats at the Ready

Jackson Baker

Among those gathered Saturday morning at Kirby High School for preliminary party caucuses before this summer’s Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee were (l to r) Rick Maynard, U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, and David Upton.

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Politics Politics Feature

First Things First: Political Developments Around Shelby County in the New Year

There are other well-known politicians in the mix, but insofar as there is speculation about the frontrunner in the 17-member race for General Sessions Court Clerk, much of it focuses on the two Shelby County commissioners in the field — Reginald Milton and Eddie Jones, both Democrats.

More so than most of the other contenders — even former Memphis City Councilman Joe Brown and former City Court Clerk Thomas Long — the two commissioners have a good chance of generating support from other local figures, not only via name recognition but as a result of their current prominence in active government positions.

On the matter of name recognition, there were early prospects for the presence on the ballot of one of Shelby County’s best-known political names, but former state Senator John Ford, who was caught up in the FBI’s Tennessee Waltz bribery sting several years back and served a prison term, failed to get the judicial order he needed to legitimize his candidacy. And perennial candidate Roderic Ford, no relation to the clan of political Fords, failed to qualify.

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It goes without saying that neither Milton nor Jones would even consider trading on their ability to shape legislation that moves before the commission, but it is equally obvious that habitual petitioners before that body would necessarily be concerned about the need to maintain cordial relations with both, to the maximum degree possible. Be not surprised if the two commissioners’ financial disclosures don’t end up showing an unusual number of identical contributors, even to the similarity of amounts given.

Meanwhile, Milton would seem to have an initial edge in garnering high-profile endorsements. Over the weekend, he was able to note online that he had the public backing of freshly reinaugurated Mayor Jim Strickland. And word is that additional endorsements are on the way from 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen and Myron Lowery, the former longtime councilman who has just been sworn in as City Court clerk.

Jones is likely to be heard from on the score of endorsements, as well.

Though most attention is being paid to the 13 candidates vying in the March 3rd primary — held on Super Tuesday, simultaneous with the Democrats’ closely watched presidential primary — four Republicans are on the GOP primary ballot, as well — former Probate Court Clerk Paul Boyd, Michael Finney, George D. Summers, and Lisa W. Wimberly.

• So far in his tenure as mayor, Strickland has been cautious about handing out his imprimatur. In 2018, he gave endorsements to Patrick Dandridge and Mary Wagner, candidates for Environmental Court judge and Circuit Court judge, respectively, and both were successful in their quest. Other than that, nada.

Now that Strickland is, by his own statement, done with running for public office, he may prove more eager to lend his name to other people’s causes. Such, in any case, is the opinion of some of those closest to him.

One thing noteworthy about the Milton endorsement is that it comes in a party primary. Though Strickland continues to designate himself a Democrat and a generation ago served a term as Shelby County Democratic chairman, his political base has been essentially nonpartisan, and he scored highly among city Republicans in both his mayoral races.

• A year ago, Strickland was on the cusp of a re-election race, and accordingly, his remarks at his annual New Year’s prayer breakfast basically centered on what he could put forth as achievements in office. His speech at this year’s breakfast focused on the need to confront the issue of early childhood literacy.

Touting such community programs as Arise to Read and Team Read, the mayor called for volunteer efforts to raise the literacy rate among Memphis youth. As he noted, “Students in low-income communities are, on average, three grade levels behind their peers in affluent communities by the fourth grade. Think about that,” adding, “Only 25 percent of all third graders in public schools in Memphis read at third-grade level.”

The mayor got hearty applause when he reminded his audience at the University of Memphis Holiday Inn of the forthcoming city/county joint pre-K program. As he said, “We initiated what has become a community-wide effort that will result in free universal needs-based pre-K, for the first time in our city’s history.”

During his swearing-in speech on New Year’s Day at the university’s Rose Theater, Strickland let another new shoe drop, unveiling plans for a new Public Service Corps that would employ members of the city’s “dropout” population — men and women who, for one reason or another, lack a high school education — to pick up litter at $12 an hour. The program, whose beneficiaries would include Memphians who have run afoul of the legal system and are trying to find their way back into society, would, as the mayor described it, deal simultaneously with the issues of blight, poverty, and under-education.

• The main sanctuary at Germantown Presbyterian Church was completely filled Saturday, as a massive crowd turned out to bid farewell to Bobby Lanier, who died last week at the age of 90.

As several speakers at the funeral service noted, Lanier had an abundance of friends. Attendees included a virtual Who’s Who of people involved in the public life of Shelby County. Former Memphis Mayor A C Wharton, one of a string of county mayors whom Lanier served as a right-hand man, in effect, spoke for them all with a eulogy. Other speakers included Bill McGaughey, who attested to Lanier’s decades-long supervision of the Germantown Charity Horse Show, and Pastor Will Jones, who presided over the service and spoke movingly of Lanier’s intimate involvement with church activities.

• The aforementioned Congressman Cohen is a fixture at the annual New Year’s prayer breakfasts begun by then-Councilman Myron Lowery and continued by current County Commissioner Mickell Lowery, the clerk’s son. And the congressman’s ruminations and forecasts of political circumstances to come are a significant feature of those breakfasts.

Understandably, perhaps, Cohen, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, which formally prepared articles of impeachment for President Trump, focused this year on the still-pending (and not yet arranged) Senate trial of the president, emphasizing the necessity of the event as a means to preserve the validity of the Constitution. Cohen, it will be remembered, was an early advocate, introducing a resolution of his own to that end in 2017, and he may end up serving as an official House manager during the Senate trial.

Meanwhile, the Congressman has a primary opponent this year in former Shelby County Democratic Party chairman Corey Strong. Consultant Steven Reid has released new polling figures showing Cohen with lofty favorability ratings. In four samplings taken since December 2018, Cohen has maintained local favorability percentages ranging from 82 percent to 92 percent. The most recent figures, from September, show Cohen with 88 percent favorability among Democrats at large and 87 percent among African Americans, who predominate in his district.

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Politics Politics Feature

Two 2020 Races Generate a Flood of Candidates in Shelby County

Ready? Deirdre V. Fisher, Eddie Jones, Gortria Anderson Banks, John Ford, Paul Boyd, Rheunte E. Benson, Thomas Long, Del Gill, Joe Brown, Tanya L. Cooper, Tavia Tate, Adrienne Dailey-Evans, Michael Finney, Reginald Milton, George D. Summers, Lisa W. Wimberly, Wanda R. Faulkner.

Those 17 names represent just the first wave of applicants at the Shelby County Election Commission for the right to seek the post of General Sessions Court clerk, a post that has been held since 2011 by Ed Stanton Jr. (not to be confused with his son, lawyer Ed Stanton III, who received appointments from President Barack Obama both as U.S. attorney and later as a U.S. district judge, though his nomination for the judgeship was bottled up and kept from confirmation by Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell).

The senior Stanton, a Democrat, was a longtime employee of county service before his selection by the General Sessions judges to fill a vacancy as clerk and his subsequent two re-elections in 2012 and 2016. Stanton, a solid sort, attracted few challengers as an incumbent clerk, but there are obvious reasons — foremost among them, perhaps, being the $134,986 annual salary — why the job, now open, has generated the current flood of office-seekers.

Jackson Baker

District 97 Candidate Gabby Salinas (r)shmoozes with voter Sherry Compton; Another District 97 hopeful, Allan Creasy, chats up Norma Lester

Some of the candidates are neophytes. Others have names that are, how to put it — well-worn: Del Gill, Joe Brown, John Ford? Ford may not ultimately be eligible, inasmuch as his rights seem not clearly to have been restored since a felony conviction from the FBI’s Tennessee Waltz sting. Two current county commissioners are on the list of hopefuls — Jones and Milton. Long and Boyd have previously held clerkships. Of this early list of 17, all are Democrats except for Boyd, Finney, Summers, and Wimberly, who are Republicans. 

So far, only seven of the petition-pullers have filed, but expect that number to grow, as will the number of new applicants asking for petitions.

• Meanwhile, the candidate field for state House District 97 is doing some multiplying as well. This is the seat in Bartlett/Eads that has been the bailiwick of longtime Republican incumbent Jim Coley, who decided to take his leave after a final term in which various ailments were incapacitating him. Two fellow Republicans have declared their candidacies for the job — John Gillespie, who works as a grant coordinator for Trezevant Episcopal Home, and Brandon Weise, an employee of the Shelby County Register’s office.

Gillespie made the first splash and has attached himself to Coley’s coattails, as well as to the Republican establishment in general, and lines up with a somewhat modified version of the education savings account bill (aka: voucher program) steamrollered into passage last year when then House Speaker Glen Casada, acting on Governor Bill Lee‘s behalf, kept the voting rolls open in the House long enough to to turn one legislator’s crucial nay note into an aye.

Weise stands in opposition to the voucher program, which would affect only Shelby County and Davidson County schools and would be likely to fall in behind new GOP Speaker Cameron Sexton of Crossville, who opposed the bill relentlessly last year and has indicated he would like to at least delay its immediate implementation. Weise, however, does observe Republican orthodoxy on matters such as opposition for federally funded Medicaid expansion and support for block grants to deal with health-care issues.

Democrats have their own contest pending in House District 97, with Allan Creasy, a narrow loser to Coley last year, making a renewed try for the seat. And another Democratic near-success story from 2018, Gabby Salinas, is also looking for another way into the General Assembly, after giving GOP state Senator Brian Kelsey a serious scare in his re-election race last year.

Both candidates see themselves as still having hot hands and ready-to-go constituencies. Before taking on Kelsey, Salinas had been able to turn on a head of steam to defeat David Witherspoon, a well-supported candidate and an early favorite in the Democratic primary. Salinas has the benefit of an affecting backstory regarding her childhood pilgrimage to the United States from Bolivia with her family in order to seek treatment for her at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. A personal endorsement by Marlo Thomas of St. Jude, daughter of the institution’s founder, Danny Thomas, proved helpful to Salinas’ candidacy.

Both Creasy, a popular manager and bartender at Celtic Crossing restaurant in Cooper-Young, and Salinas are opposed to the governor’s voucher legislation, and both also favor acceptance of federal Medicaid expansion funds under the Affordable Care Act. Both were much in evidence pressing the flesh at Sunday’s annual Democratic Women’s Christmas party at the IBEW headquarters building on Madison.

After several years in which Democrats figured only as sacrificial lambs in suburban legislative districts, the fact of having competitive primaries in such districts has the party faithful both nervous and excited.

• At its regular monthly meeting on Monday, the Shelby County Commission: 1) approved with near unanimity the use of PILOT (payment-in-lieu-of-tax) rents in the Pinch District TIF area by the Center City Revenue Finance Corporation, contingent upon the developer’s complying with CRFC requirements that not less than 28 percent of spending on construction will go to minority vendors; with the same requirement being imposed on the ongoing Union Row project; 2) voted to resolve a work-overload issue in the Register of Deeds office by approving two new full-tme positions and three temporary positions; 3) approved an add-on funding formula to enable additionl capital improvement projects at municipal schools; 4) agreed to hear in committee a proposal by Commissioner Van Turner for a MATA Capital Funding Ordinance to codify Shelby County’s commitment to transportation needs.

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Politics Politics Feature

Bogus Ballot Battle on Hold; Candidates Line Up for 2020

So what’s the status of the “bogus ballot” question, which was due to be given a post-election judicial hearing last week?

“On hold” is the answer. Several factors have intervened to postpone a final reckoning about the legality of sample ballots circulated at election time by entrepreneurs on behalf of candidates willing to pay potentially thousands of dollars to have themselves “endorsed” by shell organizations.

One factor was a heart attack suffered by retired Circuit Court Judge William B. Acree of Jackson, who was imported before the election to rule on the propriety of “pay-for-play” ballots circulated by organizations calling themselves the “Greater Memphis Democratic Club” and the “Shelby County Democratic Club,” respectively.

The former is operated by Greg Grant, the latter by M. Latroy Alexandria-Williams. Neither organization has an actual connection to any official organ of the Democratic party, and both “endorsed” candidates with demonstrable Republican connections in sample ballots mailed and handed out to prospective voters.

Lawyer John Marek, a candidate for Memphis City Council in the recent city election, the Shelby County Democratic Party, and the Young Democrats of Shelby County all joined on a request for an injunction against circulation of the ballots. Acree wound up hearing the case when all local judges, most of whom had previously patronized such ballots, recused themselves.

With three hours to go before the polls closed on election day, October 3rd, the judge issued a temporary restraining order against further circulation of the ballots and scheduled a follow-up hearing for last Wednesday, November 13th, to consider a permanent ruling on the matter.

Judge Acree’s heart attack was not the only event to intervene against that schedule. Defendant Alexandria-Williams, as was his right, filed a notice of removal of the case from state to federal jurisdiction. For his part, Grant has of yet not made a decision to join in the notice of removal. The case now rests in the hands of U.S. District Judge Sheryl Lipman, who has not yet ruled on whether she intends to keep the case or remand it back to state court.

Nor have the attorneys for the plaintiffs — Bruce Kramer, Jake Brown, and Melody Dernocoeur at Apperson Crump — decided on whether to seek the remand themselves. A goal of the attorneys, incidentally, in whatever is the final court of record, is a ruling of “unjust enrichment,” whereby the ballot entrepreneurs would be required to forfeit the profits they made from the sale of their endorsements.

• The 2019 Memphis city election may have come to a finish with the conclusion of last Thursday’s runoff elections for two city council positions in District 1 and District 7, won by Rhonda Logan and Michalyn Easter-Thomas, respectively.

But 2020, which will be chock-full of elections, is just two flips of the calendar away, and one of the races sure to draw much attention will be that for the position of General Sessions Court clerk, which will be vacated by current longtime clerk Ed Stanton Jr. (father of former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton III).

Three of the known contenders for the clerkship are, like Stanton, Democrats and well known to followers of local politics. The first name in the hat was that of Shelby County Commissioner Eddie Jones, who filed two weeks ago. At about the same time, Commissioner Reginald Milton began informing people of his interest in the race.

The two commissioners were just joined on the ballot by former longtime state Senator John Ford, who filed for the race on Monday. Yes, that John Ford, the controversial member of the Ford political clan who ran afoul of the FBI’s Tennessee Waltz sting in 2005, was convicted of bribery, and served a term in state prison.

Ford formerly served a term as General Sessions clerk, simultaneous with holding his Senate seat. Having long since regained his citizenship rights, Ford aims to re-establish himself as a public official. Despite his notoriety, he was regarded as someone with an in-depth knowledge of the ins and outs of state government and as a go-to legislator for mental health and various other public issues.

Milton, a community organizer and chairman of the commission’s community grants committee, which he brought into being, was a veteran of several political races before his 2014 election to the commission and his 2018 re-election. He greeted the news of Ford’s filing by saying, “I’ve never run an easy race. I’m used to it.”

Confiding that he would make a formal announcement next week, Milton said, “I appreciate those willing to offer themselves for public office, and I look forward to sharing with the public why I feel I would be best suited for this position.”

• As was noted in this space recently, state Representative Jim Coley (R-District 97) has decided to retire and won’t seek re-election in 2020. So far, two Democrats have made known their interest in seeking the seat — Allan Creasy, who got 45 percent of the vote in District 97 in a race against Coley last year, and Gabby Salinas, who gave Republican State Senator Brian Kelsey a close race in his 2018 re-election bid.

Republicans will try to hold on to the seat, of course, and there is an active GOP candidate in the field — John Gillespie, who works as a grant coordinator at Trezevant Episcopal Home and is making his first try for political office. Gillespie issued a press release this week claiming receipts of $47,000 at a recent East Memphis fund-raiser — not a bad first-time haul.

…

Jackson Baker

Democrat Edmund Ford Jr. (left) and Republican Amber Mills (right) co-sponsored County Commission resolutions providing $80,000 to the County Health Department for testing children for alleged exposure to lead in water sources at Shelby County Schools and adding to the Commission’s legislative agenda an official notice of the issue to the General Assembly and Governor Bill Lee. The Commission approved both resolutions unanimously.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

John Ford, Reginald Milton, Eddie Jones, Others to Battle for General Sessions Clerk

CREDIT: JB

JB

John Ford (l); Reginald Milton (r)

The 2019 Memphis city election may have come to a finish with the conclusion of last Thursday’s runoff elections for two city council positions in District 1 and District 7, won by Rhonda Logan and Michalyn Easter-Thomas, respectively.

But 2020, which will be chock-full of elections, is just two flips of the calendar away, and one of the races sure to drawn much attention will be that for the position of General Sessions Court clerk, which will be vacated by current longtime clerk Ed Stanton Jr. (father of former U.S. Attorney Ed Stanton III).

Three of the known contenders for the clerkship are like Stanton, Democrats, and well known JB

Eddie Jones

to followers of local politics. The first name in the hat was that of Shelby County Commissioner Eddie Jones, who filed two weeks ago. At about the same time Commiss9oner Reginald Milton began informing people of his interest in the race .
The two Commisdsioners were just joined on the ballot by former longtime state Senator John Ford, who filed for the race on Monday. Yes, that John Ford, the controversial member of the local Ford political clan who ran afoul of the FBI’s Tennessee Waltz sting in 2005, was convicted of bribery, and served a term in state prison.

Ford formerly served a term as General Sessions Clerk, simultaneous with holding his Senate seat. Having long since regained his citizenship rights, Ford aims to re-establish himself as a public official. Despite his notoriety, he was regarded as someone with an in-depth knowledge of the ins and outs of state government, and as a go-to legislator for mental health and various other public issues.

Milton, a community organizer and chairman of the commission’s community grants committee, which he brought into being, was a veteran of several political races before his 2014 election to the commission and his 2018 reelection. He greeted the news of Ford’s filing by saying, “I’ve never run an easy race. I’m used to it.”

Confiding that he would make a formal announcement next week, Milton said, “I appreciate those willing to offer themselves for public office, and I look forward to sharing with the public why I feel I would be best suited for this position.

UPDATE: Other candidates for General Sessions Clerrk who have filed or requested petitions though Thursday, November 19, are:

Democrats Deirdre V. Fisher, Gortria Anderson Banks, Rheunte E. Benson, and Thomas E. Long; and Republican Paul Boyd.