Shelby County Mayor – Memphis Flyer

Name-Checking 2026

Politics is like any professional sport you could name in that new rosters, new seasons, and new players are undergoing formation and preparation even as current contests are grinding to a conclusion.

To be specific, there is a ferment of activity in Shelby County right now, aimed at the elections of 2026. Two positions in particular already have potential candidates looking at them seriously and making plans.

The positions are those for Shelby County mayor, where current Mayor Lee Harris will be completing his term-limited time in office, and the 9th District congressional seat, held against all comers by incumbent Democrat Steve Cohen since his election there in 2006.

County mayor: At least six Democrats are looking seriously at the idea of seeking what will be an open seat. (Note: There may well be Republicans eyeing it as well, but, the county’s demographic imbalance being what it is, the GOP is as fundamentally handicapped in seeking local office as Democrats are in attempting to crack the Republican supermajority statewide.)

Melvin Burgess, the current assessor, is known to be contemplating a run for county mayor. He’s been thinking out loud about it since his time serving on the county commission from 2010 to 2018.

His experience in office and genial personality, coupled with the lingering resonance with voters of his father, Melvin Burgess Sr., an erstwhile police chief, give him a leg up.

Harold Collins, the current CAO for Shelby County Government and former city councilman and candidate for city mayor, has acknowledged the likelihood of a race for county mayor and is all but announced.

J.W. Gibson, the mega-developer and former county commissioner who ran for Memphis mayor last year, is holding meet-and-greets with an eye toward a county mayor’s race.

JB Smiley Jr., the erstwhile gubernatorial hopeful now serving as chair of the Memphis City Council, is being somewhat coy about it but has convinced friends he’ll seek the county mayor’s job as a logical stepping-stone from his present power position.

Mickell Lowery is the son of Myron Lowery, a former well-known local city councilman who served a temporary term as Memphis mayor. Having successfully acquitted a term as county commission chair, the younger Lowery is considered ripe for advancement.

Heidi Kuhn, the current Criminal Court clerk, is known to be actively preparing a race for county mayor, one based both on her activist conduct of her present job and her highly saleable personal qualities.

• The outlook for the 9th District congressional seat is somewhat different, in that the seat won’t be open unless the present long-term incumbent, Democrat Steve Cohen, chooses to vacate it.

There is no current indication that Cohen is so minded, and his record of responsiveness to this majority-Black district, along with his unbroken string of successes against a string of name challengers make a direct challenge to Cohen almost prohibitively difficult.

Yet potential candidates are in the wings. Most obvious is current County Mayor Harris, whose prior legislative service on the city council and in the state Senate, where he was Democratic leader, whetted his appetite for such a job. His credentials have meanwhile been enhanced by strong service as an activist mayor.

Another prospect is District 86 state Representative Justin J. Pearson, whose strong activism and oratorical prowess, freshly demonstrated at the just concluded DNC, suit him for a rise in the political ranks.

And yet another prospect, if an open race should develop, is state Senator Raumesh Akbari, unique as a Democratic legislator who enjoys wide respect across political lines and has something of a national reputation as well.

Yes, “Defund the Police” was a terrible idea and a genuinely stupid slogan. Any true believers in it are deserving of whatever comeuppance they get.

But the fact is, the unjust linking of the term to political adversaries has turned into the latest political smear. It’s McCarthyism on steroids — right up there with a previous era’s “Soft on Communism.”

A solid piece of fact-checking by The Commercial Appeal’s Katherine Burgess conclusively made the case against County Mayor candidate Worth Morgan’s allegation that incumbent County Mayor Lee Harris, whom he opposes, defunded Sheriff Floyd Bonner’s budget, to the tune of some $4½ million. The accusation turned out to be so much jiggling of budget numbers, and Morgan has since owned up to having made an “error.” The clincher is that the Sheriff himself disowns any such complaint.

The “defund-the-police” smear has meanwhile become an increasingly prominent aspect of incumbent District Attorney Amy Weirich’s campaign against her Democratic challenger, Steve Mulroy.

It is the linchpin of a currently playing TV commercial on Weirich’s behalf, one in which Mulroy is not only accused of having advocated defunding the police — something which he denies and for which no credible record exists — but is represented, through a highly creative juxtaposition of images, as having marched in a parade with activists carrying “Defund the Police” signs.

Fact: a still photo of Mulroy holding a picket sign (but obscuring what the sign says) quickly segues into a video of the aforesaid defunders’ march. The reality is that his sign (and his march) belonged not to that affair but to a wholly different one, on behalf of Starbucks employees’ efforts, ultimately successful, to unionize their workplace.

Similarly, the same commercial misrepresents Mulroy’s support, during a severe phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, of ongoing litigation to secure improved safety precautions for at-risk jail inmates. The ad would have us believe the suit, by Mulroy himself as the litigant of record, was against Bonner for the simple purpose of releasing criminals — any and all criminals, it would seem — from jail.

This is not to suggest that Mulroy himself, or his own ad-makers, are wholly innocent of misrepresentation. An ad on his behalf yoked Weirich together with Donald Trump and the ex-president’s “mobs” on the occasion of Trump’s recent appearance in nearby Southaven. Yes, Weirich is running for reelection as the Republican nominee, but there is little in her record to suggest that she is a party-line Republican, much less a Trumpian fanatic.

The balance of Mulroy’s ad is more defensible. He alleges, correctly, that violent crime has risen during Weirich’s tenure as D.A., and viewers of the ad can decide for themselves whether that upsurge has occurred because of, or in spite of, her crime-fighting techniques. It is also true, as the ad suggests, that Weirich has been accused by official tribunals more than once of professional misconduct.

On a recent prime-time evening, the two ads ran back-to-back on local television — Weirich’s first, followed without a break by Mulroy’s. To say the least, the combined effect did not add up to an ideal instance of the Socratic method at work. (Not that TV advertising of any kind is totemic with regard to truth.) And, in fairness to the two candidates, head-banging distortions of the sort described here seem to be the rule, not the exception, for political advertising in particular.

POSTSCRIPT: Despite the fact-checking in the CA, a TV ad continues to push Morgan’s claim that County Mayor Harris “defunded the police.” The “defunding the police” claim put forth by Weirich against Mulroy is still extant as well. Meanwhile, the Mulroy ad mentioned above continues to appear, though both he and Morgan have aired new commercials.