Tag: Shelby County Democratic Party

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Democrats, NAACP Prevail in Voting-Sites Matter

CREDIT: JB

After what turned out to be virtually an entire day’s worth of testimony from both sides on Monday, Chancellor JoeDae L Jenkins ruled for the plaintiffs JB

John Ryder (l), attorney for the Election Commission, and Alexander Wharton, attorney for the NAACP, joust over a demographic map prepared by witness Steve Ross. Judge JoeDae L. Jenkins would rule for the Shelby County Democratic Party and the NAACP in a dispute over early-voting sites for the August 2 election.

and against the Election Commission, ordering that Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church and Frayser’s Ed Rice Community Center (or some similarly located venue) be added to the three early-voting sites scheduled to open on Friday of this week.

Judge Jenkins also enjoined that all the designated sites (numbering 27 in all, after tonight’s ruling) open on Monday, June 16th, instead of Wednesday, June 18th, as the Election Commission and Election Administrator Linda Phillips had planned, giving the Shelby County Democratic Party and the NAACP the essence of what they sought. The early-voting period is scheduled to last from June 13th to June 28th, with final voting to be held on the officiaL election day of August 2nd.

Monday’s decision was loaded with ironies. The Election Commission had ignited what became a county-wide controversy when it arbitrarily and without advance public notice announced in June that it was expanding the original list of 21 early-voting sites (the same as that employed for the May county primary), adding five new sites in what it termed “under-served” areas, most of them in historic Republican territory. The EC further designated the AgriCenter in Shelby Farms as a super-site, open for four extra days. (A “compromise” offer by the commission last Friday would have substituted three other extra-time sites, including one in a heavily Democratic area.)

Judge Jenkins turned that logic on its head, saying in his ruling from the bench that it was African-American areas that were under-served by the new configuration, and to arguments from Election Commission lawyer John Ryder and EC spokesperson Joe Young that there was no time left to effect any more changes or provide for an earlier availability for the sites, the Chancellor would rule that the commission had erred in the first place by springing its own changes on to the public without adequate notice or preparation.

All the parties will reconvene in Chancellor Jenkins’ courtroom on Tuesday at 10 a.m. to get written notice of the judge’s ruling, and attorneys for the Election Commission have indicated they will seek an interlocutory appeal and a stay of Jenkins’ injunction.

One set of plaintiffs on Monday consisted of Myron Lowery and the Shelby County Democratic Party and was represented by lawyer Julie Byrd Ashworth, the other was the NAACP, represented by brothers Alexander Wharton and Andre Wharton. Ryder did the honors for the Election Commission.

Highlights of the hearing were a lengthy cross-examination of Election Commission chairman Robert Meyers by Alexander Wharton and detailed testimony on the demographics of site selection by witness Steve Ross, who was put on the stand by the plaintiffs.

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Politics Politics Feature

Busting Some Moves

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Jackson Baker

Craig Fitzhugh addresses a Collierville crowd.

Shelby County Democrats are continuing with their efforts to spread their party’s influence. The most recent instance was a fund-raising dinner Sunday night at the 148 North Restaurant in Collierville featuring several speakers — including state Representative Craig Fitzhugh, the state House minority leader and currently a candidate for governor; James Mackler, candidate for U.S. Senator; Floyd Bonner, candidate for sheriff; state Senator Lee Harris, now running for Shelby County mayor; John Boatner Jr., candidate for the District 8 congressional seat; and Sanjeev Memula, candidate for state House District 95.

• Another local gathering attracting a sizeable number of political figures was the Christmas party of the Tennessee Nurses Association, held Monday night at Coletta’s in Cordova. A good mix of Republicans and Democrats was on hand, including District 33 state Senator Reginald Tate, an inner-city Democrat who confided that he had felt compelled to resign his longstanding affiliation with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a national organization, largely funded by conservative donors, which grinds out sample bills and disseminates them to state legislatures.

Tate, who had been listed as a member of ALEC’s Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force, told the Flyer he had been pressured by fellow Democrats to sunder his ties with the organization, for which he expressed no particular ideological affinity.

• The confrontation between a Shelby County Commission majority and County Mayor Mark Luttrell over the circumstances of proposed litigation against distributors of opioids went up another notch on Monday. 

An eight-member commission majority — Republicans Heidi Shafer (the current commission chair) and Terry Roland, and Democrats Van Turner, Willie Brooks, Justin Ford, Reginald Milton, Melvin Burgess, and Eddie Jones — are supporting a Shafer initiative to force Luttrell’s hand on proposed litigation by the county against an extensive network of physicians, pharmacists, and others involved, both legally and illegally, in distribution of opioids, which, in the estimation of Shafer and the commission, have resulted in damaging levels of addiction in Shelby County.

Chancellor Jim Kyle recently ruled that Luttrell, who sued to block Shafer’s unilateral engaging of a law firm, had rightful authority over litigation by the county but declined to intervene in the lawsuit itself, now in limbo in Circuit Court. The chancellor suggested that the suit was in the public interest but recommended mediation between the commission and the mayor.

Meanwhile, Luttrell, who has floated the alternative idea of deferring to a statewide legal action against the opioid network, is still in formal (if suspended) litigation in Chancery Court against the commission. The eight-member coalition at odds with the mayor on the matter voted Monday to hire Allan Wade, who represents the Memphis City Council, as its “special legal counsel” in the matter.

That action carried, but it aroused opposition among a five-member commission minority consisting of Democrat Walter Bailey and Republicans Mark Billingsley, George Chism, Steve Basar, and David Reaves.

Typical of this group’s sentiments were Billingsley’s complaints that outside attorneys were enriching themselves at county expense and that the proposed ongoing action against the alleged opioid-distribution network was too extensive, involving well-established name-brand companies like Johnson & Johnson.

Roland, among others, responded that the proposed legal actions against opioid distributors were pro bono and would cost the county nothing, while Luttrell’s action did in fact “cost the county.”

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

It’s Alive! Local Democrats Resuscitate the Official Shelby County Party

CREDIT: JB

JB

State Democratic chair Mary Mancini was on hand Saturday to re-christen a new SCDP to replace the old ‘dysfunctional’ one she decertified a year ago.

Several hundred Democrats gathered in (and filled) a cavernous meeting space in the even more cavernous Missisissippi Boulevard Christian Church on Saturday to elect members of the newly revived Shelby County Democratic Party.

Given that the last group that went by that name numbered only in the scores and was split into irreconcilable squabbling JB

Ex-Nashville Mayor Karl Dean (here chatting with process co-host David Cocke) was there….

factions, there would seem to be ample room for optimism by party members, especially since a significant number of the attendees on Saturday for Part One of a convention process were bona fide new faces.

One old face was conspicuously missing —- that of Del Gill, a long-term party member who had been a principal in Democratic Party wars as far back as the ‘80s. Gill was known either as a stickler for the rules or as an obstructionist pedant, depending on one’s point of view. The latter attitude may have predominated on Saturday, to judge by the reactions of other party veterans asked on Saturday about Gill’s absence.

Few of them were shedding tears over his widely reported refusal to involve himself in a local party whose decertification (on grounds of dysfunction) was declared in August 2016 by state Democratic chair Mary Mancini and whose rebirth was substantially midwifed by the selfsame Mancini, who was on hand Saturday to cheer on and effectively re-christen the new version of the SCDP.

Gill was not alone in having taken umbrage at what several JB

…So was House Democratic Leadert Craig Fitzhuigh, like Dean a gubernatorial hopeful.

 former SCDP executive-committee members saw as Mancini’s having dictated a setllement to resolve former local chairman Bryan Carson’s questionable accounting of missing party funds. Rick Maynard, a Gill ally in that stand-off, was also unreconciled and said so to numerous bystanders during his brief early attendance at Saturday’s convention.

But most of the other former members who thought Carson had been let off easy or who had other grudges had sucked it up and participated in Saturday’s convention one way or another. There was, all things considered, a general sense of harmony to the event, the end point to a series of countywide reorganizational forums presided over by ad hoc co-chairs David Cocke and Clarissa Shaw, with considerable input as well from Danielle Inez, the Young Democrats’ new local chair.

Among the onlookers Saturday were several distinguished party figures with a vested interest in a newly revived, aggressive, and well-functioning local party. Two — former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean and current state House Democratic Leader Craig Fitzhugh of Ripley — are probable opponents in the forthcoming 2018 Democratic primary for Governor, with Dean having already announced.

Another dignitary was 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, the ranking Democratic Party figure in Shelby County, who hailed the reborn local party in a brief but spirited address.

After the speeches, attendees to Saturday’s convention broke off into 13 caucus groups, each corresponding to one of Shelby County’s established County Commission districts. They proceeded to elect 150 members to a new Democratic Grass-Roots Council, which will meet on a quarterly basis to discuss issues and policy and to generate momentum. Two members — one female and one male from each district caucus — were then elected from the larger groups to form a new party executive committee, which, like the old executive committee, will hold monthly meetings and formally execute party business.

All the elected members will gather again on August 5 at a traditional party venue, the IBEW meeting hall on Madison, to elect a new party chair. Several aspirants to that position were nominated from the floor on Saturday, but more nominations can be made as late as August 5, from the floor of the IBEW meeting itself.

(More details to come both here and in this week’s “Politics” column in the print edition of the Flyer.)
JB

Caucus participants in District 6 vote their choices.

LIST OF NEWLY ELECTED MEMBERS TO SHELBY COUNTY DEMOCRATIC  ‘GRASS ROOTS’ COUNCIL, WITH MEMBERS OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE LISTED IN BOLD:

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Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County Democrats to Revive

Mary Mancini of Nashville, who in late January won reelection as Tennessee Democratic Party chair at a meeting of the state party’s executive committee, has, as one of her first priorities, launched an effort to recreate the defunct Shelby County Democratic Party.

Mancini has contacted 13 local Democrats and asked them to serve as an ad hoc committee for the purpose of reforming the Shelby County party. Members of this core group will next agree amongst themselves on a date for an organizational meeting, either late this month or sometime in March.

A series of subsequent public meetings will then be scheduled to allow input from prospective new Democratic Party members, and out of those subsequent meetings a new party machinery will be formed.

When the process is completed at some point down the line, presumably in the spring or early summer, the Shelby County Democratic Party, complete with new officers to be elected during the course of those several public meetings, will be a reality again for the first time since August, when Mancini, backed by the state party committee, formally decertified the local party.

That dramatic act of decertification occurred after a lengthy period of local party dissension (“many years of dysfunction” was Mancini’s phrase) and, in particular, during the course of a pitched battle between Shelby County party members over the issue of what to do about party funds allegedly unaccounted for during the tenure of former local chairman Bryan Carson.

At issue also were several fines incurred by the Shelby County party, both during and after the flap over Carson, for incomplete and late financial disclosures to the state Election Registry.

Some of the local Democrats named by Mancini to the ad hoc committee that will attempt to recreate the Shelby County party are David Cocke, Dave Cambron, George Monger, Van Turner, Jeannie Johnson, Jolie-Grace Wareham, Corey Strong, and Deborah Reed.

The local reorganization effort occurs at a time of numerous local demonstrations of resistance to the national administration headed by Republican Donald Trump and calls for a local party organization to function as an opposition force.

• Nowhere was that spirit of resistance more evident than during a weekend “town meeting” held at East High School by 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, who, coincidentally, has just been named to the House Ethics Committee as one of five Democratic members by House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who made the announcement on Tuesday.

Over the course of a grueling three hours on Saturday, Cohen, assisted by Memphis lawyer Brian Faughnan from the Tennessee chapter of the ACLU and Chris Coleman from the Tennessee Justice Center, responded to questions from an audience of nearly 1,000 people.

The questions, on every political subject under the sun, mostly involved attendees’ negative responses to actions taken by the Trump administration and featured numerous concerns that Democrats, even out of power, might be able to mount an effective opposition.

Typical was one woman’s plea: “We are not fighting back! We need a grass roots growth like the Tea Party. We need a Democratic tea party now!”

Despite the size of the crowd (which necessitated a substantial police security force, just in case) and abundant expressions of anger, there was little internal dissent. Faughnan offered assurances that the ACLU was on the case in resisting both the Trump travel ban nationally and pending legislation in the Tennessee General Assembly to limit free expression. Similarly, Coleman provided details of available government services and detailed strategies for defending those services against Republican efforts to abolish or truncate them.

Cohen himself was indefatigable in dealing with specific audience concerns, dealing out wisecracks and dollops of advice and assuring the attendees, mostly Democrats or party sympathizers: “We are going to win in the future!”

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Politics Politics Feature

Dems on the Rebound

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

A group of 75 to 80 people showed up at the Steamfitters Union Hall Monday night for a session which was billed in advance as a “debriefing” with state Democratic Party chairman Mary Mancini — the first of several such affairs which Mancini intends to hold all across the state of Tennessee.

As the westernmost part of the state, Shelby County was as logical a starting point for such a mission as any. There were good reasons other than the strictly geographic for Mancini to start off her tour in Memphis, however. 

One reason is that Shelby County is one of three counties — Davidson (Nashville) and Haywood (Brownsville) were the other two — carried by the party’s presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, in the 2016 election. For the record, those three counties, plus Hardeman (Bolivar), were the only counties in 2012 that went for President Obama, the party’s standard-bearer that year. 

Shelby County — on the strength, essentially, of its large African-American vote — is something of a bedrock constant for Democratic presidential candidates, though not necessarily anymore for statewide candidates. Or, for that matter, for countywide candidates, given that Republicans have been accustomed, for the last several countywide elections, to get electoral sweeps, or near-sweeps.

A second reason is the fact that in January the state Democratic executive committee will meet in Nashville and elect a chair for the next two years, and it makes sense for Mancini, who intends to run for reelection, to touch base with Democrats in Shelby County, which is still the state’s largest county, population-wise.

This is especially the case inasmuch as wealthy businessman Bill Freeman, Mancini’s fellow Nashvillian and Tennessee’s most active donor to Democratic candidates and causes, made a conspicuous pre-election foray into Memphis in early November, during which he let it be known that he intended to run for governor in 2018. In the wake of the statewide election results, in which the Democrats lost one seat overall in the state House of Representatives and failed to gain in the state Senate, Freeman said point-blank that the party needed a new chair.

At this point, it remains to be seen whether there will be a Freeman-backed candidate for the chairmanship as such, but, given his gubernatorial ambitions and his known history as a generous source of party funds, Mancini is in no position to take Freeman lightly. That’s especially the case, since, as she acknowledged Monday night, the party had not possessed the $5 million or so this year that she estimated would have been necessary to provide full backing for all the candidates who ran in Tennessee under the party label. 

And a third reason why Memphis was a logical starting place for Mancini’s debriefing tour is the embarrassing one that there is at the moment no formal Shelby County Democratic Party, as such, the party organization here having been decertified by Mancini herself back in August, in the aftermath of a lengthy dispute between herself and an SCDP majority over the issue of whether and how to settle an ongoing financial scandal in the local party.

Jackson Baker

Allison Berger at Mancini debriefing

The local party had also, as Mancini pointed out at the time, endured “many years of dysfunction,” involving internecine warfare of various kinds, and there were any number of local party members who were more than ready to throw in the towel. 

In any case, there is a clear and present need for local Democrats to have an umbrella organization serving the entirety of Shelby County, and Monday night’s turnout was surely hearty enough to offer them some encouragement — especially since a goodly portion of the attendees seemed to be new faces, and several of those were willing to offer their own thoughts about how to develop a strong Democratic base in Shelby County.

Typical of these was Sean MacInnes, who introduced himself as a Christian Brothers University employee and suggested that there were numerous potential members of the Democratic base who were not being tapped and should be invited into active participation. 

Referring to statistics showing that 45 percent of the state’s electorate had not become involved in this year’s election, MacInnes said, “Those are the voters we should be reaching out to. We should be saying, ‘Why are you not involved in the political process? What is it that the Democratic Party should be should be doing for you and [to] represent you?'” He suggested more concerted party effort to reach potential party cadres on the internet.

And there was Alison Berger, an activist in efforts to curb gun violence, who said she discovered in her outreach efforts that it was the Democratic Party which seemed most to concur with her point of view and her goals. As a result, she said, she had become involved with “Pantsuit Nation” and other party-oriented organizations and causes. “Now, I’m a staunch Democrat,” she said, recommending that the party expand by seeking out alliances with single-issue groups like her own. On one key question, when the Shelby County Democratic Party might be able to reconstitute itself, Mancini pinpointed March as the normal time for local party reorganizations and the likely date for Shelby County as well.

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Editorial Opinion

Two Political Milestones in Shelby County

So it’s come to this: There is, as pointed out this week by state Young Democrat president London Lamar, only one “chartered Democratic organization in this county,” and it isn’t the Shelby County Democratic Party, a body which was officially “decertified” last Friday by state Democratic chair Mary Mancini. It is, in fact, the Shelby County Young Democrats, led by Lamar’s colleague Alvin Crook.

Surprisingly, given the fact that the SCDP was a hotbed of internal dispute, there was very little remorse at its passing. It would seem that Mancini’s action was widely regarded by all sides as something of a mercy killing.

Meanwhile, Lamar and Crook promise that the Shelby County YDs will  pursue “initiatives” and, in effect, act in the stead of the now defunct “state SCDP,” pending its reconstitution.

That reconstitution will take some doing, in that the party organization, as such, has been so locked into pointless disputation for some time as to have been of little consequence in influencing political results in Shelby County — at least to any positive end. 

In elections for local countywide office, only two Democrats — Assessor Cheyenne Johnson and General Sessions Clerk Ed Stanton Jr. — have been able to gain office and be re-elected in recent years. To rescue an often-abused phrase, their cases are the proverbial exceptions that prove the rule. Both Johnson and Stanton are county-government veterans with demonstrable records of competence and with support across partisan lines. Their success at the polls would seem to clearly debunk the claim made by losing Democratic nominees in every county election in this century that the defeats of party candidates must be due to some infamy or illegality perpetrated by the county’s Republican Party or by the admittedly error-prone Election Commission, with its current preponderance of three Republican members to two Democratic ones.

For whatever reason, in a county which, by the usual demographic and economic measures, should possess an overwhelming majority prone to voting Democratic, Republicans rule the roost instead. It is high time that local Democrats cease looking for the blame elsewhere and begin a long overdue reexamination of their own premises.

Under the circumstances, the plucky resolve of the county’s Young Democrats is a welcome first step.

Ann Morris

Speaking of pluck, the huge turnout this week at the visitation and funeral rites for Ann Ward Norton Morris, across various kinds of lines, political and otherwise, was in large part a testament to that quality in her life — as well as to the virtues of courage and perseverance, which Morris continued to demonstrate, even after a severely disabling stroke suffered in 1997 deprived her of most of the faculties which the rest of us take for granted. Remarkable also was the heroic care-giving service rendered unstintingly over that nearly 20-year period by her husband, former Sheriff and County Mayor Bill Morris, who regards that service, and not any office he gained, as the summit of his own life’s work. 

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Politics Politics Feature

RIP for the Shelby County Democratic Party

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

For what it’s worth — and that is a very open question — the Shelby County Democratic Party has ceased to exist, having been formally decertified last Friday by state Democratic Party chair Mary Mancini of Nashville. 

Mancini’s letter of decertification, dispatched to the latest person to chair the SCDP, Sheriff’s Department Lieutenant Michael Pope, cited as the basis for her action “Article III Section 2(f) and Article VII Section 1(a)(3) of the Tennessee Democratic Party Bylaws,” which, she said, made it “the responsibility of the Tennessee Democratic Party Executive Committee to establish ‘the procedures and rules for organizing and functioning of County Democratic Executive Committees and maintaining close relationships with such committees’ and to develop and monitor a minimum set of requirements that must be observed by a state sanctioned certified County Democratic Party.”

That description left unaddressed two important components of the matter: 1) whether and to what extent the state committee took part in her decision; and 2) specific reasons for her action.

Those are arguably related issues, in that one of the known factors in forcing Mancini’s hand, and likely the precipitating one, has been the Shelby County party’s months-long impasse over what to do about the case of former local party chair Bryan Carson, who resigned last year after an audit turned up evidence of unexplained shortages in the party treasury.

Ever since, through the brief tenure of one successor to Carson as chair, Randa Spears, who also resigned, pleading a need to give full attention to her administrative job at St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, and into the election of Pope as her successor, the local party organization has been riven into two factions. 

One faction was willing to accept a compromise proposal, letting Carson effect partial repayment of the unaccounted-for funds at the level of $6,000, through monthly installment payments of $100. The other, contending that a second audit showed Carson’s liability to be at $25,000 or higher, sought prosecution of some sort and prevailed in a vote of the committee at its June meeting.

Nothing came of that vote, however. Meanwhile Mancini, expressing displeasure that the imbroglio was getting in the way of the party’s ability to focus on electing the party’s candidates this year, prevailed upon Pope to execute an agreement with Carson on behalf of the $6,000 compromise.

That led to a vote at the SCDP committee’s July meeting at which a tie vote failed to ratify the agreement, and to a vote at the committee’s August meeting, two weeks ago, renouncing Carson’s bona fides as a Democrat.

Carson continues to be a member of the state Democratic executive committee, however, a fact that his critics, and Mancini’s as well, find questionable under the circumstances.

In any case, Mancini could with some justice cite as additional reasons for her decertification what she termed (in something of an understatement) the SCDP’s “many years of dysfunction,” typified by nonstop personal feuds, many of them involving self-appointed party gadfly Del Gill, and the fact that, in both Carson’s tenure and Spears’, the SCDP failed to meet deadlines for financial disclosures to the state Election Registry, thereby incurring fines rivaling in size the amounts alleged to have gone missing under Carson.

In the meantime, Alvin Crook, president of the Shelby County Young Democrats, and London Lamar, president of the state YD organization, held a press conference on Monday, at which the YD officers promised, in Lamar’s words, to continue to “represent the views of the Democratic Party,” as the only remaining “chartered Democratic organization in this county.”

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Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

About Jackson Baker’s Politics column, “Settle the Carson Matter!” …

Mr. Kustoff, if you can singlehandedly end Obamacare, stop illegal immigration, and destroy radical Islamists, there’s no reason to wait until Election Day. Please, sir, put on your cape, and fix all our problems immediately. Having done so, you will no doubt win by acclamation. 

Boris

Seeing the party’s inability to audit its own books, we are left to ponder a couple of possible reasons: 1. The party is incapable of performing an audit due to an utter lack of accountability for the funds, not just from the former chairman, but everyone involved (i.e., no one submitted receipts even for legitimate expenses), or 2. The party is unwilling to perform an audit due to general penny-ante corruption, not just of the former chairman, but throughout the organization.

And the actions of the state party chairman, rather than being a harsh reprimand, seem more like the actions of someone desperate to sweep the whole thing under the rug.

Jeff

It’s foxes guarding the hen house. Maybe I’m just a cynic, but I’m not optimistic that Bryan Carson will satisfy the entire $6,000 debt.

Regarding David Kustoff’s campaign ads: I’ve noticed that they don’t display any of the arrogance, condescension, and general snarkiness that he exhibits on shows like Informed Sources. Maybe he has turned over a new leaf.

Okay. That was pretty sarcastic.

Jenna

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

The Shelby County Democratic Party Fracas for Dummies

CREDIT: JB

If it’s July, the Shelby County Democratic Party must be live and well and getting ready for next month’s primary voting, right? 
JB

Shelby County Democratic Party chairman Michael Pope (left) with Germantown Democratic Club president Dave Cambron at a party fundraiser on Thursday

Well, not necessarily. Not for the first time, there seem to be two local Democratic Party organizations in Shelby County, or at least two wholly disparate factions — one loyal to the current chairman, Sheriff’s Department Lt Michael Pope and to state party chair Marty Mancini; and another, possibly constituting a majority, up in arms against Pope and Mancini over the issue of a legal settlement involving former local party chairman Bryan Carson.

Carson, the son of longtime state party secretary Gale Jones Carson, was forced by the local party executive committee to resign his chairmanship in February 2015 after the Shelby County party had missed a state Election Registry filing-disclosure deadline and after an informal committee audit determined that party funds amounting to as much as $10,000 could not be accounted for, then or later. The party then proposed a settlement whereby Carson might repay the local party a lesser sum of $6,000 in installments of $100 a month. The offer was rejected in a letter by Carson’s attorney, Robert Spence, but may have been agreed to in some form later on, a matter key to the current disagreement.

[NOTE: It now appears that a letter made available to the Flyer in which Spence is seen to be explicitly rejecting a proposal may actually have been in response to a later proposal from a committee source demanding a much larger repayment amount from Bryan Carson of $26,336.00, with a $5,257.20 down payment and a monthly note of $585.24. This would be a reference to a matter referred to in the next paragraph.]

Meanwhile, the party missed another financial-disclosure deadline early this year, and, in April, Carson’s elected successor as party chair, Randa Spears, and the party vice chair, Deidre Malone, resigned their positions, pleading a need to focus more on their livelihoods. One known catalyst, however, was the still pending Carson affair, in which the two departing officers had supported the $6000 payoff. Meanwhile, an ad hoc party committee conducted a second audit, maintaining that, by means of a second, unauthorized bank account, Carson had managed to misappropriate another $15,000-plus. Adding that sum to the original raw number of $10,000 nudged the amount of unaccounted-for funds over the $25,000 mark, and a majority of the executive committee voted in early June to seek Carson’s prosecution for embezzlement.

Meanwhile, Pope, who, ironically, was elected the new chairman in the same meeting as the vote to prosecute, was in contact with state party chair Mancini, who, along with Pope and a minority faction of the local party, favored getting past the Bryan matter so as to move on to electoral matters in this election year. Late last week, Mancini, regarding the Carson affair as “already settled,” wrote a letter to Shelby County executive committee members, claiming that state party bylaws gave her “supervisory and organizational” authority over local party matters and giving the local party a de facto ultimatum of July 1 to endorse the $6,000 repayment proposal or risk losing the local party charter. (Interestingly, some local party members, willing and anxious to start again from scratch, have actually called for a voluntary surrender of the charter!)

There are numerous other complications, charges, and counter-charges, but the bottom line is that Pope has signed a statement authorizing the settlement, and Mancini has accepted it. What seems to have been a local party majority petitioned Pope for an emergency called meeting by the July 1 deadline to dispute the settlement, alleging that it had not been authorized by the committee. Citing party bylaws requiring what he said was a 15-day notice for a special called meeting, Pope rejected the idea of having one.

The committee will hold its next regular meeting on Juty 7, at which, it seems clear, the whole confusing affair will be the subject of a knock-down, drag-out. For the moment, everything is uncertain, including the legal status of the alleged settlement with Carson, conflicting claims over Mancini’s authority, and the question of who it is that actually runs — or will run — the Shelby County Democratic Party, which, as Mancini noted in her ultimatum letter of June 24, has experienced “many years of dysfunction.”

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

State Party Head to Local Dems: Settle the Carson Matter!

Mary Mancini

There are, as it turns out, more guaranteed circumstances than the two most often noted: death and taxes. Right up there with those two, in terms of inevitability, is the fact of discord in state and local Democratic Party ranks.

The latest instance of such is contained in a letter dispatched to members of the Shelby County Democratic executive committee from state Democratic Party chair Mary Mancini. The letter deals with the long-festering case of former local party chairman Bryan Carson, who was forced to resign by the county committee in February of 2015.

The Mancini letter, in essence, mandates the terms of a resolution of the matter by the Shelby County party and provides a short deadline for doing so.

The executive committee’s action in early 2015 came after the county party had been fined by the state Election Registry for its failure to comply with financial reporting deadlines and after Carson had been unable to account for the disposition several thousand dollars in party funds. At issue also was the fact that the chairman had apparently switched bank accounts for the party funds without express authorization by the executive committee and had made several withdrawals from ATM machines without providing receipts.

The amount of the financial discrepancy has never been determined with exact accuracy, but a preliminary audit performed by committee members at the time of Carson’s resignation estimated the unaccounted-for amount to be at least $6,000. Another ad hoc investigating group on the committee has since arrived at a higher estimate for the missing funds, in the vicinity of $25,000, but there has never been absolute agreement on the committee on the validity of either sum.

Through his attorney, Robert Spence, Carson admitted no wrongdoing but offered to settle the dispute by compensating the local party for the $6,000 sum at the rate of $100 a month. There is disagreement as to whether the full committee was ever apprised of the offer, which in any case ceased to be active.

Compounding the confusion was the fact that Carson’s elected successor as chairman, Randa Spears, as well as the local party’s first vice chair, Deidre Malone, had both abruptly resigned their positions in April, each giving the press of other obligations as the reason for their departure. The Spears-led party had meanwhile missed another financial reporting deadline for this year and had been assessed a fresh $10,000 fine by the Election Registry.

At its regularly scheduled monthly meeting on Thursday, June 2, the executive committee elected a new chairman, Sheriff’s Department Lt. Michael Pope, and acted on a motion by defeated chairmanship candidate Del Gill to prosecute Carson for embezzling the larger estimated sum. That motion passed, fairly handily, but there has been no formal action on the matter by the committee since.

All of that formed the background for the Mancini letter, dated Friday, June 24, to the Shelby County executive committee, care of chairman Pope.

Mancini’s letter begins with a citation of party bylaws and state codes that, she says, assign her “both a supervisory and organizational role over each of the county executive committees that operate throughout the state.” The letter follows with a cursory and none too indulgent recounting of the Shelby County’s ongoing problems (“many years of dysfunction,” as she puts it).

Mancini then comes to the nut of the matter, prescribing a settlement in accord with the dormant offer made to the party by Carson through his attorney:

“With a looming election that is shaping up to be of monumental importance for our state and our country, and for the health of your organization and executive committee, it is my responsibility to inform you that you must agree to the arrangement that Mr. Carson pay the amount of $6000 at $ 100 per month for 5 years and be released from any additional claims and that Chairman Pope must sign all the necessary paperwork to honor that agreement or you will no longer be in compliance with your charter issued by the Tennessee Democratic Party.”

Ironically, perhaps, Mancini had in recent months been sounded out by disgruntled party members wondering if voluntary surrender of the local party’s charter might be a feasible option. She had always answered no to such inquiries.

The deadline for “signing the necessary paperwork and forwarding it to Mr. Carson’s attorney is Friday, July 1, 2016,” Mancini concludes.

Some party members are questioning Mancini’s authority to mandate an or-else solution of this sort, while others are ready to acknowledge that she has the right. In any case, there is no pending meeting of the executive committee until the regularly scheduled one of Thursday, July 7 and thus no opportunity for a committee vote before Mancini’s deadline.

Chairman Pope, however, has indicated he is prepared to accept Mancini’s mandate, but his authority to do so without a committee authorization is questionable. To say the least, confusion persists.

• Dynamic duo: During his first several congressional terms after being elected in 2006, 9th District U.S. Representative Steve Cohen cemented an alliance with venerable Detroit congressman John Conyers (D-Michigan), who then served as House Judiciary Committee chairman and regarded the Memphis liberal, a committee member, as something of a protégé and journeyed to Memphis on Cohen’s behalf.

When the Republicans captured control of the House after the election of 2010, the Conyers-Cohen tandem was not heard from with the same intensity, but it still existed. This week, after the landmark Supreme Court decision striking down the severe restrictions on abortion clinics imposed by a Texas state law, Conyers and Cohen reasserted themselves as a duo.

In a joint press release, Conyers, in his capacity as ranking member of the Judiciary Committee and Cohen, as ranking member of the Judiciary subcommittee on the Costitutional and Civil Justice, and Cohen, hailed the Court’s decision as a reaffirmation of “the fundamental cnstitgutional right of women to make their own decisdions about their health, their bodies, their families, and their lives.”

Said the two congressmen: “The Court correctly saw the Texas law for what it was, which was an attempt to severely restrict abortion rights and not one to protect women’s health” and that the Texas law “placed such substantial obstacles to a woman’s choice to have an abortion that its provisions were an “undue burden” on women’s constitutional right to choose….”

The Conyers-Cohen press release, one of several recently released by Cohen’s office, highlighted one of the incumbent congressman’s built-in advantages in generating media. Cohen has three opponents in the 2016 Democratic primary — Shelby County Commissioner Justin Ford, Larry Crim, and M. LaTroy Williams. Republican Wayne Alberson and independent Paul Cook will be on the November ballot.

• More fallout: The Court’s decision on the invalidated Texas statute, incidentally, will almost surely have repercussions in Tennessee, where the General Assembly in recent years had enacted laws with provisions almost identical to those in the Texas law, which basically required doctors performing abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals and imposed rigid standards on abortion clinics resembling those for hospitals performing outpatient surgery.

Laws passed by the Tennessee legislature in 2012 and 2014 had made similar specifications, which have been challenged in the U.S. District Court in Nashville.

• Promises, promises: The fact that a freshman seat In the U.S. House of Representatives — to be one of 435 — is the equivalent of landing an entry-level job in the federal government, the continuation of which is entirely contingent on the good will (or passing whims) of voters back home, is often lost sight of in the heat of campaigning. Candidates want to suggest that they can, all by themselves, shift national policy, and who can blame them?

Along this line, it will be hard for any of his competitors to beat two claims made by 8th District Republican congressional candidate David Kustoff in a TV commercial that just hit the airwaves over the weekend. The ad proclaims, of course, that Kustoff, the former U.S. Attorney for Western Tennessee, has impeccable credentials as a conservative and will, for example, oppose Obamacare, but it makes two additional claims that are unprecedented in their magnitude.

In the checklist of promises with which the commercial concludes, one learns that Kustoff will (drumroll) “end illegal immigration” and (thunder and lightning) “destroy radical Islamic terrorism.” Not to vote to do these things, mind you, but — well, just to do them.
Er…wow! •