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2021: Here’s Looking at You

If 2020 was the year of despair, 2021 appears to be the year of hope.

Wanna see what that could look like? Cast your gaze to Wuhan, China, birthplace of COVID-19.

News footage from Business Insider shows hundreds of carefree young people gathered in a massive swimming pool, dancing and splashing at a rock concert. They are effortlessly close together and there’s not a mask in sight. Bars and restaurants are packed with maskless revelers. Night markets are jammed. Business owners smile, remember the bleak times, and say the worst is behind them. How far behind? There’s already a COVID-19 museum in Wuhan.

That could be Memphis (once again) one day. But that day is still likely months off. Vaccines arrived here in mid-December. Early doses rightfully went to frontline healthcare workers. Doses for the masses won’t likely come until April or May, according to health experts.

While we still cannot predict exactly “what” Memphians will be (can be?) doing next year, we can tell you “where” they might be doing it. New places will open their doors next year, and Memphis is set for some pretty big upgrades.

But it doesn’t stop there. “Memphis has momentum” was Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s catchphrase as he won a second term for the office last October. It did. New building projects bloomed like the Agricenter’s sunflowers. And it still does. Believe it or not, not even COVID-19 could douse developers’ multi-million-dollar optimism on the city.

Here are few big projects slated to open in 2021:

Renasant Convention Center

Throughout 2020, crews have been hard at work inside and outside the building once called the Cook Convention Center.

City officials and Memphis Tourism broke ground on a $200-million renovation project for the building in January 2020. The project will bring natural light and color to the once dark and drab convention center built in 1974. The first events are planned for the Renasant Convention Center in the new year.

Memphis International Airport

Memphis International Airport

Expect the ribbon to be cut on Memphis International Airport’s $245-million concourse modernization project in 2021. The project was launched in 2014 in an effort to upgrade the airport’s concourse to modern standards and to right-size the space after Delta de-hubbed the airport.

Once finished, all gates, restaurants, shops, and more will be located in a single concourse. The space will have higher ceilings, more natural light, wider corridors, moving walkways, children’s play areas, a stage for live music, and more.

Collage Dance Collective

The beautiful new building on the corner of Tillman and Sam Cooper is set to open next year in an $11-million move for the Collage Dance Collective.

The 22,000-square-foot performing arts school will feature five studios, office space, a dressing room, a study lounge, 70 parking spaces, and a physical therapy area.

The Memphian Hotel

The Memphian Hotel

A Facebook post by The Memphian Hotel reads, “Who is ready for 2021?” The hotel is, apparently. Developers told the Daily Memphian recently that the 106-room, $24-million hotel is slated to open in April.

“Walking the line between offbeat and elevated, The Memphian will give guests a genuine taste of Midtown’s unconventional personality, truly capturing the free spirit of the storied art district in which the property sits,” reads a news release.

Watch for work to begin next year on big projects in Cooper-Young, the Snuff District, Liberty Park, Tom Lee Park, and The Walk. — Toby Sells

Book ‘Em

After the Spanish flu epidemic and World War I came a flood of convention-defying fiction as authors wrestled with the trauma they had lived through. E.M. Forster confronted colonialism and rigid gender norms in A Passage to India. Virginia Woolf published Mrs. Dalloway. James Joyce gave readers Ulysses. Langston Hughes’ first collection, The Weary Blues, was released.

It’s too early to tell what authors and poets will make of 2020, a year in which America failed to contain the coronavirus. This reader, though, is eager to see what comes.

Though I’ve been a bit too nervous to look very far into 2021 (I don’t want to jinx it, you know?), there are a few books already on my to-read list. First up, I’m excited for MLK50 founding managing editor Deborah Douglas’ U.S. Civil Rights Trail, due in January. Douglas lives in Chicago now, but there’s sure to be some Memphis in that tome.

Next, Ed Tarkington’s The Fortunate Ones, also due in January, examines privilege and corruption on Nashville’s Capitol Hill. Early reviews have compared Tarkington to a young Pat Conroy. For anyone disappointed in Tennessee’s response to any of this year’s crises, The Fortunate Ones is not to be missed.

Most exciting, perhaps, is the forthcoming Black Panther: Tales of Wakanda prose anthology, expected February 2nd. The anthology is edited by Memphis-born journalist Jesse J. Holland, and also features a story by him, as well as Memphians Sheree Renée Thomas, Troy L. Wiggins, and Danian Darrell Jerry.

“To be in pages with so many Memphis writers just feels wonderful,” Thomas told me when I called her to chat about the good news. “It’s a little surreal, but it’s fun,” Jerry adds, explaining that he’s been a Marvel comics fan since childhood. “I get to mix some of those childhood imaginings with some of the skills I’ve worked to acquire over the years.”

Though these books give just a glimpse at the literary landscape of the coming year, if they’re any indication of what’s to come, then, if nothing else, Memphians will have more great stories to look forward to. — Jesse Davis

Courtesy Memphis Redbirds

AutoZone Park

Take Me Out With the Crowd

Near the end of my father’s life, we attended a Redbirds game together at AutoZone Park. A few innings into the game, Dad turned to me and said, “I like seeing you at a ballpark. I can tell your worries ease.”

Then along came 2020, the first year in at least four decades that I didn’t either play in a baseball game or watch one live, at a ballpark, peanuts and Cracker Jack a soft toss away. The pandemic damaged most sports over the last 12 months, but it all but killed minor-league baseball, the small-business version of our national pastime, one that can’t lean on television and sponsorship revenue to offset the loss of ticket-buying fans on game day. AutoZone Park going a year without baseball is the saddest absence I’ve felt in Memphis culture since moving to this remarkable town in 1991. And I’m hoping today — still 2020, dammit — that 2021 marks a revival, even if it’s gradual. In baseball terms, we fans will take a base on balls to get things going before we again swing for the fences.

All indications are that vaccines will make 2021 a better year for gathering, be it at your favorite watering hole or your favorite ballpark. Indications also suggest that restrictions will remain in place well into the spring and summer (baseball season). How many fans can a ballpark host and remain safe? How many fans will enjoy the “extras” of an evening at AutoZone Park — that sunset over the Peabody, that last beer in the seventh inning — if a mask must be worn as part of the experience? And what kind of operation will we see when the gates again open? Remember, these are small businesses. Redbirds president Craig Unger can be seen helping roll out the tarp when a July thunderstorm interrupts the Redbirds and Iowa Cubs. What will “business as usual” mean for Triple-A baseball as we emerge from the pandemic?

I wrote down three words and taped them up on my home-office wall last March: patience, determination, and empathy. With a few more doses of each — and yes, millions of doses of one vaccine or another — the sports world will regain crowd-thrilling normalcy. For me, it will start when I take a seat again in my happy place. It’s been a long, long time, Dad, since my worries properly eased.— Frank Murtaugh

Film in 2021: Don’t Give up Hope

“Nobody knows anything.” Never has William Goldman’s immortal statement about Hollywood been more true. Simply put, 2020 was a disaster for the industry. The pandemic closed theaters and called Hollywood’s entire business model into question. Warner Brothers’ announcement that it would stream all of its 2021 offerings on HBO Max sent shock waves through the industry. Some said it was the death knell for theaters.

I don’t buy it. Warner Brothers, owned by AT&T and locked in a streaming war with Netflix and Disney, are chasing the favor of Wall Street investors, who love the rent-seeking streaming model. But there’s just too much money on the table to abandon theaters. 2019 was a record year at the box office, with $42 billion in worldwide take, $11.4 billion of which was from North America. Theatrical distribution is a proven business model that has worked for 120 years. Netflix, on the other hand, is $12 billion in debt.

Will audiences return to theaters once we’ve vaccinated our way out of the coronavirus-shaped hole we’re in? Prediction at this point is a mug’s game, but signs point to yes. Tenet, which will be the year’s biggest film, grossed $303 million in overseas markets where the virus was reasonably under control. In China, where the pandemic started, a film called My People, My Homeland has brought in $422 million since October 1st. I don’t know about y’all, but once I get my jab, they’re going to have to drag me out of the movie theater.

There will be quite a bit to watch. With the exception of Wonder Woman 1984, the 2020 blockbusters were pushed to 2021, including Dune, Spielberg’s West Side Story remake, the latest James Bond installment No Time to Die, Marvel’s much-anticipated Black Widow, Top Gun: Maverick, and Godzilla vs. Kong. Memphis director Craig Brewer’s second film with Eddie Murphy, the long-awaited Coming 2 America, will bow on Amazon March 5th, with the possibility of a theatrical run still in the cards.

There’s no shortage of smaller, excellent films on tap. Regina King’s directorial debut One Night in Miami, about a meeting between Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown, premieres January 15th. Minari, the stunning story of Korean immigrants in rural Arkansas, which was Indie Memphis 2020’s centerpiece film, lands February 12th. The Bob’s Burgers movie starts cooking April 9th. And coolest of all, next month Indie Memphis will partner with Sundance to bring the latest in cutting-edge cinema to the Malco Summer Drive-In. There’s plenty to be hopeful for in the new year. — Chris McCoy

Looking Ahead: Music

We usually highlight the upcoming hot concerts in this space, but those are still on the back burner. Instead, get a load of these stacks of hot wax (and streams) dropping next year. Remember, the artists get a better share when you purchase rather than stream, especially physical product like vinyl.

Alysse Gafkjen

Julien Baker

One of the biggest-profile releases will be Julien Baker’s Little Oblivians, due out on Matador in February. Her single “Faith Healer” gives us a taste of what to expect. Watch the Flyer for more on that soon. As for other drops from larger indie labels, Merge will offer up A Little More Time with Reigning Sound in May (full disclosure: this all-Memphis version of the band includes yours truly).

Closer to home, John Paul Keith’s The Rhythm of the City also drops in February, co-released by hometown label Madjack and Italian imprint Wild Honey. Madjack will also offer up albums by Mark Edgar Stuart and Jed Zimmerman, the latter having been produced by Stuart. Matt Ross-Spang is mixing Zimmerman’s record, and there’s much buzz surrounding it (but don’t worry, it’s properly grounded).

Jeremy Stanfill mines similar Americana territory, and he’ll release new work on the Blue Barrel imprint. Meanwhile, look for more off-kilter sounds from Los Psychosis and Alicja Trout’s Alicja-Pop project, both on Black & Wyatt. That label will also be honored with a compilation of their best releases so far, by Head Perfume out of Dresden. On the quieter side of off-kilter, look for Aquarian Blood’s Sending the Golden Hour on Goner in May.

Bruce Watson’s Delta-Sonic Sound studio has been busy, and affiliated label Bible & Tire Recording Co. will release a big haul of old-school gospel, some new, some archival, including artists Elizabeth King and Pastor Jack Ward, and compilations from the old J.C.R. and D-Vine Spiritual labels. Meanwhile, Big Legal Mess will drop new work from singer/songwriter Alexa Rose and, in March, Luna 68 — the first new album from the City Champs in 10 years. Expect more groovy organ and guitar boogaloo jazz from the trio, with a heaping spoonful of science-fiction exotica to boot.

Many more artists will surely be releasing Bandcamp singles, EPs, and more, but for web-based content that’s thinking outside of the stream, look for the January premiere of Unapologetic’s UNDRGRNDAF RADIO, to be unveiled on weareunapologetic.com and their dedicated app. — Alex Greene

Chewing Over a Tough Year

Beware the biohazard.

Samuel X. Cicci

The Beauty Shop

Perhaps a bit hyperbolic, but the image that pops into my head when thinking about restaurants in 2020 are the contagion-esque geo-domes that Karen Carrier set up on the back patio of the Beauty Shop. A clever conceit, but also a necessary one — a move designed to keep diners safe and separated when going out to eat. If it all seems a little bizarre, well, that’s what 2020 was thanks to COVID-19.

We saw openings, closings, restrictions, restrictions lifted, restrictions then put back in place; the Memphis Restaurant Association and Shelby County Health Department arguing back and forth over COVID guidelines, with both safety and survival at stake; and establishments scrambling to find creative ways to drum up business. The Beauty Shop domes were one such example. The Reilly’s Downtown Majestic Grille, on the other hand, transformed into Cocozza, an Italian ghost concept restaurant put into place until it was safe to reopen Majestic in its entirety. Other places, like Global Café, put efforts in place to help provide meals to healthcare professionals or those who had fallen into financial hardship during the pandemic.

Unfortunately, not every restaurant was able to survive the pandemic. The popular Lucky Cat Ramen on Broad Ave. closed its doors, as did places like Puck Food Hall, 3rd & Court, Avenue Coffee, Midtown Crossing Grill, and many others.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Working in the hospitality business requires a certain kind of resilience, and that showed up in spades. Many restaurants adapted to new regulations quickly, and with aplomb, doing their best to create a safe environment for hungry Memphians all while churning out takeout and delivery orders.

And even amid a pandemic backdrop, many aspiring restaurateurs tried their hand at opening their own places. Chip and Amanda Dunham branched out from the now-closed Grove Grill to open Magnolia & May, a country brasserie in East Memphis. Just a few blocks away, a new breakfast joint popped up in Southall Café. Downtown, the Memphis Chess Club opened its doors, complete with a full-service café and restaurant. Down in Whitehaven, Ken and Mary Olds created Muggin Coffeehouse, the first locally owned coffee shop in the neighborhood. And entrepreneurial-minded folks started up their own delivery-only ventures, like Brittney Adu’s Furloaved Breads + Bakery.

So what will next year bring? With everything thrown out of whack, I’m loath to make predictions, but with a vaccine on the horizon, I’m hoping (fingers crossed) that it becomes safer to eat out soon, and the restaurant industry can begin a long-overdue recovery. And to leave you with what will hopefully be a metaphor for restaurants in 2021: By next summer, Andy Ticer and Michael Hudman’s Hog & Hominy will complete its Phoenician rebirth from the ashes of a disastrous fire and open its doors once again.

In the meantime, keep supporting your local restaurants! — Samuel X. Cicci

“Your Tickets Will be at Will Call”

Oh, to hear those words again, and plenty of arts organizations are eager to say them. The pandemic wrecked the seasons for performing arts groups and did plenty of damage to museums and galleries.

Not that they haven’t made valiant and innovative efforts to entertain from afar with virtual programming.

But they’re all hoping to mount physical, not virtual, seasons in the coming year.

Playhouse on the Square suspended scheduled in-person stage productions until June 2021. This includes the 52nd season lineup of performances that were to be on the stages of Playhouse on the Square, The Circuit Playhouse, and TheatreWorks at the Square. It continues to offer the Playhouse at Home Series, digital content via its website and social media.

Theatre Memphis celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2021 and is eager to show off its new facility, a major renovation that was going to shut it down most of 2020 anyway while it expanded common spaces and added restrooms and production space while updating dressing rooms and administrative offices. But the hoped-for August opening was pushed back, and it plans to reschedule the programming for this season to next.

Hattiloo Theatre will continue to offer free online programming in youth acting and technical theater, and it has brought a five-week playwright’s workshop and free Zoom panel discussions with national figures in Black theater. Like the other institutions, it is eager to get back to the performing stage when conditions allow.

Ballet Memphis has relied on media and platforms that don’t require contact, either among audience members or dancers. But if there are fewer partnerings among dancers, there are more solos, and group movement is well-distanced. The organization has put several short pieces on video, releasing some and holding the rest for early next year. It typically doesn’t start a season until late summer or early fall, so the hope is to get back into it without missing a step.

Opera Memphis is active with its live Sing2Me program of mobile opera concerts and programming on social media. Its typical season starts with 30 Days of Opera in August that usually leads to its first big production of the season, so, COVID willing, that may emerge.

Courtesy Memphis Brooks Museum of Art and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Dana Claxton, Headdress at the Brooks earlier this year.

Museums and galleries, such as the Dixon Gallery & Gardens, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, National Civil Rights Museum, and the Metal Museum are functioning at limited capacity, but people can go and enjoy the offerings. The scope of the shows is limited, as coronavirus has put the kibosh on blockbuster shows for now. Look for easing of protocols as the situation allows in the coming year. — Jon W. Sparks

Politics

Oyez. Oyez. Oh yes, there is one year out of every four in which regularly scheduled elections are not held in Shelby County, and 2021 is such a year. But decisions will be made during the year by the Republican super-majority of the state legislature in Nashville that will have a significant bearing on the elections that will occur in the three-year cycle of 2022-2024 and, in fact, on those occurring through 2030.

This would be in the course of the constitutionally required ritual during which district lines are redefined every 10 years for the decade to come, in the case of legislative seats and Congressional districts. The U.S. Congress, on the basis of population figures provided by the U.S. Census Bureau, will have allocated to each state its appropriate share of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. And the state legislature will determine how that number is apportioned statewide. The current number of Tennessee’s Congressional seats is nine. The state’s legislative ratio is fixed at 99 state House members and 33 members of the state Senate.

Tennessee is one of 37 states in which, as indicated, the state legislature calls the shots for both Congressional and state redistricting. The resultant redistricting undergoes an approval process like any other measure, requiring a positive vote in both the state Senate and the state House, with the Governor empowered to consent or veto.

No one anticipates any disagreements between any branches of government. Any friction in the redistricting process will likely involve arguments over turf between neighboring GOP legislators. Disputes emanating from the minority Democrats will no doubt be at the mercy of the courts.

The forthcoming legislative session is expected to be lively, including holdover issues relating to constitutional carry (the scrapping of permits for firearms), private school vouchers (currently awaiting a verdict by the state Supreme Court), and, as always, abortion. Measures relating to the ongoing COVID crisis and vaccine distribution are expected, as is a proposal to give elected county executives primacy over health departments in counties where the latter exist.

There is no discernible disharmony between those two entities in Shelby County, whose government has devoted considerable attention over the last year to efforts to control the pandemic and offset its effects. Those will continue, as well as efforts to broaden the general inclusiveness of county government vis-à-vis ethnic and gender groups.

It is still a bit premature to speculate on future shifts of political ambition, except to say that numerous personalities, in both city and county government, are eyeing the prospects of succeeding Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland in 2023. And several Democrats are looking at a potential race against District Attorney General Amy Weirich in 2022.

There are strong rumors that, after a false start or two, Memphis will follow the lead of several East Tennessee co-ops and finally depart from TVA.

And meanwhile, in March, the aforesaid Tennessee Democrats will select a new chair from numerous applicants. — Jackson Baker

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Editorial Opinion

A Seasonal Summing-Up for Memphis and Shelby County

As Memphis and Shelby County headed into the heart of the holiday season, the two entities and their resident populations had much to rejoice about and many serious concerns as well.

For purposes of contrast, merely consider the rather different facts reflected in the respective circumstances of the two major local legislative bodies — the Memphis City Council and the Shelby County Commission.

It may be that the council is able to resolve the issue of filling three vacancies this week. Or maybe not. The council will need to produce a quorum even to begin untangling the circumstances of last week’s deadlocked vote to fill just one of the seats, and acquiring a quorum has been made tougher by the resignation of two council members who were present and voting prior to last week.

Bill Lee

Those two members — Janis Fullilove and Edmund Ford Jr. — are two of the trio of members who were elected to Shelby County positions on August 2nd but deigned not to resign their council seats in a timely manner that would have allowed their positions to be filled by the vote of constituents on the November ballot. The third member of this threesome — Bill Morrison — had resigned earlier by a week.

It is uncertain the degree to which the foot-dragging threesome held on to their seats for personal reasons versus retaining them on the advice, implicit or explicit, to do so by their remaining colleagues, whose demonstrated passion for replacing departed collegues by the appointment process is equaled only by their fecklessness in actually delivering on the appointments.

In any case, if the deadlock holds, the obvious solution is to call for an election, which should have been done in the first place. Only this time, the taxpayers will be footing some extra expense.

Over on the county commission, things seem a little more Christmas-y. Though there are conspicously different political points of view on display there (of the liberal-vs.-conservative sort), so far they have not created a divide. Instead, there has been a measure of peace, harmony, and compromise. The most obvious difference between the version of county government elected on August 2nd and the one preceding it is that there is no schism between the executive and legislative branches, as there was in the long-running power struggle between the former commission and then Mayor Mark Luttrell.

The current county mayor, Lee Harris, and the new commission, led by chairman Van Turner, have evinced an obvious determination to agree on as many issues as possible, and numerous disagreements of the past have been resolved, resulting in a common understanding on such issues as independent legal representation for the commission and an alignment of views on the conduct of legal action to offset the ravages of opioid distributors.

At the state level, things are a tad uncertain as of yet. While we welcome the positive aura emanating from Republican Governor-elect Bill Lee, we are disappointed by his expressed support for voucher legislation (a specter that we thought had been abandoned by the General Assembly) and his reluctance to see the good sense of long-overdue Medicaid expansion.

Even so, we’ll try to be optimistic. Happy Holidays!

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Two Tennessee Democrats on the Move

 If voters need a little help in brushing off the dust of the now completed May 1st county primary elections, two candidates in the forthcoming state primary elections of August 2nd may have the right formula.

Craig Fitzhugh, Democratic candidate for governor, and Gabby Salinas, who’s running in the Democratic primary for the state Senate in District 31, indicated to supporters on successive weekends that they know how to infuse a little energy into their stump appearances.

Fitzhugh did on Saturday, April 21st, at his local headquarters opening on Poplar Avenue, which ended with the place shaking to the strains of Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best,” rendered by a torch singer and band, both in excellent form. The performance was a tribute to the fact that Fitzhugh, a native of Ripley in West Tennessee, had the aforesaid Turner as a baby sitter growing up.

And on Friday, April 27th, not quite a week later, Salinas combined a 30th-birthday celebration with a campaign meet-and-greet at the University of Memphis Holiday Inn, and that one concluded with several numbers by Los Cantadores, a mariachi band par excellence, including the piece de resistance, a song called “De que manera de Olvido” (“How can I forget you?”) which was played in memory of Salinas’ father Omar Salinas, who died some years ago, along with her sister Valentina, in a tragic automobile accident.

Gabby Salinas

However, the rest of the extended Salinas family, which hails from Bolivia originally, was on hand with numerous local supporters for the celebration — one that flowed naturally and exuberantly around a candidate with movie princess looks and a killer backstory. Not only did Gabby Salinas survive the auto crash that killed two family members, she has survived three separate bouts of cancer, courtesy of the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital — including a case of Ewing’s Sarcoma and two instances of thyroid cancer.

For all that hardship, Salinas went on to earn a PhD in pharmacology. She has abundant energy and, as she demonstrated in her remarks to the crowd that turned out for her event, a firm knowledge of what she stands for. The main plank in her platform is a backing for Medicaid expansion, a determination she shares with her current Democratic primary opponent, LeBonheur Hospital chaplain David Weatherspoon, who was briefly profiled in this space last week.

The two state Senate candidates, Salinas and Weatherspoon, draw from similar constituencies, as, for that matter, do Fitzhugh and his rival for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean. All four cite health care as their number one issue. Others are education, jobs, child care, the needs of the underserved. As Fitzhugh put it, “We all do better when we all do better. I’m not worried about the folks in the skyscrapers. I’m worried about those living in the shadows of the skyscrapers.”

Fitzhugh, accompanied to his event by son Tom, wife Wendy, and their newborn child, cited his roots as a West Tennessean. He called himself a “supporter of Memphis” from birth on, one who learned to spell by learning the letters of the now-defunct HumKo shortening plant, which he’d see on trips from the city on Highway 51 North.

Like Salinas, Fitzhugh, currently the Democratic minority leader in the state House and one beloved by his troops, knows he’s got a tough primary fight.

So does Salinas. “I’m a tough lady” she says, and she figures that, having beaten cancer, her ultimate election opponent, the formidable Republican incumbent in District 31, Brian Kelsey, would be easier pickings.

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Politics Politics Feature

Reginald Milton

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Whether one is running for an office anew or is preparing for a reelection race, it is necessary to have a fund-raiser at regular intervals.

The most obvious reason for this is, duh, to raise funds. No one (or virtually no one) gets elected these days without having enough money to pay for mailers and other advertising, staffers, office space, etc., etc. Beyond the purely material, though, there are other reasons for doing fund-raisers. A good fund-raising event also serves as a mixer, whereby supporters, donors, staffers, the host, and — believe it — curious voters looking for a horse to back can get together, get a sense of who they are, and gauge something of the long-term outlook for the candidate in question.

And, finally, a good fund-raiser is a good party, as well as yet another occasion in a series in which the candidate gets to do his/her song and dance and perfect the campaign message.

All those qualities were working for Shelby County Commissioner Reginald Milton last Friday night at a fund-raiser for his reelection campaign held at the Peabody Avenue home of Allison Stiles and Robert Cohen. The address was good, the hosts were known to be quality folks, and the hors d’oeuvres and light libations made for sociability.

Most important was the mix of attendees — diverse by race, by gender, by class, and, perhaps most importantly, by party. Former Commissioner Mike Ritz, a Republican, was there. The guest speaker for Milton was 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen. Former Memphis Mayor A C Wharton was on hand. Organization Democrats were there in force, as were Republicans, independents, and candidates for other offices, taking advantage of the opportunity to show themselves in such company.

And Milton put in a good word for himself and his intentions, talking about his history as a proprietor of a nonprofit, working directly in his District 10 community.

All in all, the auguries were good for Milton, who may or may not have a significant opponent next year in his county commission reelection bid (in which case, said opponent — or opponents —  will surely also get their proper due in this space). The likelihood, though, is that, like most incumbents who have performed well (and well in this case means consistently, with effort, with effect, and with apparent sincerity) Milton should be in good shape for reelection.

It was not ever thus. Milton made several runs at elective office before finally winning his current seat in a 2014 nail-biter with Martavius Jones (now a city councilman). And he spent much of his first term learning by trial and error, as one does.

He seems to be peaking at a good time. In the last year he has been a prime mover of the commission’s adoption of MWBE (minority and women business enterprises) and LOSB (Locally Owned Small Business) programs, designed to diversify the dispensing of county contracts in the interests of fairness. He also was the force behind the commission’s Enhancement Grants, the device whereby each individual commissioner is allowed to determine the local beneficiaries of county grant funds, a not unimportant source of the current more generalized dispersal of authority that partly underlies the ongoing reapportionment of county power vis-a-vis the commission and the county admininistration.

Milton is one of four commission Democrats (of the current seven party members serving) who will be seeking reelection. The others are Van Turner, Willie Brooks, and Eddie Jones, and each of them no doubt harbors thoughts of offering personal leadership for a party contingent that stands a fair chance of increasing its numbers next year.

Milton has served notice of that ambition, by word and deed, and organized the joint filing of the (would-be) returning four at the Election Commision last week. So far he has gone largely unsung in publicity emanating from the commission — in this space and elsewhere. This column is in one sense a means of amending the balance sheet. The man indeed has a song — one likely to become louder in the course of time.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Another Big Shoe Drops with Lane’s Entry in Sheriff’s Race

CREDIT: JB

JB

The voice on the other end of Dale Lane’s cell phone is his chief endorser, County Mayor Mark Luttrell, tied up in Nashville but eager to speak, via microphone, to Lane’s kickoff crowd.

Close on the heels of Democratic candidate Floyd Bonner’s kickoff of his campaign for Sheriff two weeks ago at the Racquet Club, another big shoe dropped last Thursday when county Homeland Security director Dale Lane, a leading Republican candidate for trhe office, had his own kickoff affair in Millington.

Lane’s was a homier affair, held at the Mid-South Auction Group & Marketplace in Millington, but, like current chief Deputy Bonner, who was endorsed by his boss, outgoing Sheriff Bill Oldham, Lane had some bigtime backing, too. His came from County Mayor Luttrell, who served two terms as Sheriff himself before his election as Mayor in 2010.

An obstacle to Lane’s announcement of the Luttrell endorsement was the fact that the Mayor had been in Nashville and was still en route back to Memphis. That logistical problem was solved via some everyday technology: Lane got Luttrell on his cell phone and had him speak to the assembled crowd by holding the phone to a microphone.
JB

Candidate Lane also gets a boost from wife, Karen, and baby grandson Braxton Allen Lane.

Luttrell noted the candidate’s impressive credentials, which included several important command positions, including that of chief inspector of the Department’s patrol division and supervision of the Department’s swat team and its training division.

And finally, the Mayor said, Lane had served “as our point person in Shelby County,” as director of preparedness and Homeland Security.

In his own remarks, Lane, a devout Christian, made a point of proclaiming, as he always does in his public appearances, the chief importance in his life of his faith and his family. He reminisced about having begun his law enforcement career 30 years ago as a member of the Millington police force.

Lane said one of his chief preoccupations as Sheriff would be that of youth violence, for which he proposed a multi-layered approach involving partnership with the faith-based and business communities, intervention via youth activities, and direct suppression, by means of street-level enforcement.

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Politics Politics Feature

Filling in the Blanks

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Shelby County Assessor Cheyenne Johnson, a Democrat, will not be running for reelection and instead will be supporting the candidacy of Shawn Lynch, a legal adviser in her office and the son of well-known local businessman and civic figure Terry Lynch.

Shelby County Commissioner Heidi Shafer, now in her second term, has not been bashful about proclaiming a desire to serve in the state legislature.

​During last year’s Republican primary for the then-open 8th District congressional seat, ultimately won by current Congressman David Kustoff, Shafer loyally and fully supported her employer, George Flinn, in whose medical office she serves. But, if state Senator Brian Kelsey had won instead and made it all the way to Washington, there was little doubt among those who know her that she would have been a definite contender to succeed him in the state Senate.

And there is little doubt, either, that the surprise victory last year of Democrat Dwayne Thompson over GOP incumbent Steve McManus in state House District 96 gives her a target to go after as soon as next year, when Thompson has to run for reelection.

​All Shafer will say for the record regarding such a contest is, “I’m looking at it.” But Thompson indicated Saturday at the annual Sidney Chism political picnic on Horn Lake Road that he is expecting a challenge from Shafer and is girding for it.

As has long been known, Chism himself will be back on the ballot in 2018, running for Shelby County mayor. The former Teamster leader and longtime Democratic political broker served an interim term in the state Senate and two full terms on the commission, chairing that body for two years running, until he was term-limited off.

​But he may have serious opposition in the Democratic primary for county mayor. Word going around the picnic grounds at his event on Saturday was that state Senator Lee Harris is getting strong encouragement to seek the office, which incumbent Republican Mark Luttrell, now in his second term, will have to vacate because of term-limit provisions in the county charter.

​Among those reportedly urging Harris to run for county mayor is University of Memphis associate law dean and former Democratic Commissioner Steve Mulroy, a former mayoral candidate who is himself considered a theoretical possibility to seek the office again.

​Harris, who serves as the leader of the five-member Senate Democratic Caucus, has meanwhile embarked on a series of “Senator Lee Harris on Your Street” events at which he promises “updates on the latest legislative bills and issues we tackled in Nashville this year.”   

The Republican side of next year’s mayoral race will feature a showdown between Commissioner Terry Roland, who has been openly running, in effect, for well more than a year, and County Trustee David Lenoir, whose intentions to be a candidate are equally well known.       

It will be interesting to see how Lenoir responds to a gauntlet thrown down by Roland at Monday’s regular meeting of the commission, a four-hour affair that was nearing its end when Roland made a point of notifying Luttrell and County CAO Harvey Kennedy that he intended to seek an amendment to the pending county budget to provide funding for an add-on position sought by Judge Tim Dwyer for the Shelby County General Sessions Drug Court.

To pay for the position, Roland announced that he would offer a resolution at the next commission meeting to strip $50,000 from the amount already allocated to the Trustee’s office. Roland says he can demonstrate that an equivalent sum is currently being paid to an employee of Lenoir’s office who isn’t “showing up for work” — a contention almost certain to bring a hot protest from Lenoir at next week’s committee sessions, where the resolution will get a preliminary vetting.

Roland will also seek to re-allocate $100,000 currently slated to the Juvenile Court Clerk’s office to provide funding for the Shelby County law library, which, he said, faces the threat of closure for financial reasons. He accused state Senator Kelsey of letting a funding bill for the library “sit on his desk” during the legislative session just concluded.

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Politics Politics Feature

Break in the Weather

The political situation, locally as well as statewide, might appear to be in something of a lull, but the apparent calm could well presage something of a storm.

That would certainly seem to be the case at this week’s committee meetings on Wednesday of the Shelby County Commission, where at least two of the agenda items are sure to generate sparks.

One is a referred-back-to-committee item on funding the Shelby County District attorney general’s office to deal with car and body cameras employed by law enforcement; the other is a Shelby County Schools audit report and a discussion of SCS’ capital improvement needs. 

The request by D.A. Amy Weirich‘s office for $143,378 to pay for “additional personnel and equipment to process in-car and body-worn cameras” got a turndown two weeks ago by what amounted to a skeleton crew of commission members meeting under the rubric of the commission’s law enforcement committee.

It fared little better when presented to the full commission at last Monday’s regular public meeting. Though there were advocates to go ahead with the funding matter, there was significant opposition as well, particularly relating to the body-cam issue, which turned out to have enough jurisdictional, philosophical, and fiscal overtones to justify a 10-1 vote for another committee go-over — this one sure to be more fully attended.

The SCS matters are sure also to generate some close attention as the commission swings into the initial stages of its budget season. This is especially so, given the school district’s emergency request for an additional $40 million to stave off Draconian cuts, accompanied by some heated exchanges back and forth between the commission and the SCS administration and board.

• The 2016 legislative session of the Tennessee General Assembly is formally over, but questions regarding what it did and didn’t do are still provoking serious — and, in some cases, heated — reactions.

Mary Mancini, the chair of the Tennessee Democratic Party, scheduled a press conference for Tuesday of this week “to discuss the recently ended legislative session and the upcoming elections.”

According to Spencer Bowers, the TNDP communications director, actions to be discussed (which is to say, deplored) at the event, scheduled for the steps of the War Memorial Building, include the passage of a bill allowing professional counselors to reject gay and transgendered clients on the basis of “sincerely held principles” and another allowing college and university employees to carry weapons on campus, along with Governor Bill Haslam‘s refusal to veto the bills. The agenda for the Democrats’ press conference also included mention of an expanded list of Democratic candidates running in congressional races and in legislative races across the state, to challenge the Republicans’ current super-majority status in the General Assembly.

On Wednesday, three prominent Shelby County Republican members of that selfsame General Assembly will present their own takes on the legislature’s deeds, misdeeds, actions, and omissions at a noon luncheon of the National Federation of Independent Business at Regents Bank on Poplar Avenue.

The legislators are state Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris of Collierville, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Brian Kelsey of Germantown, and House Education Committee chair Mark White of Memphis. The trio will surely have both satisfactions and disappointments in the wake of the late session. Their complaints are likely to be in an opposite direction from those of Mancini and the Democrats.

• There is, however, one lament in which the official statements of the two parties are close to being on the same page. This is in regards to the matter of Measurement, Inc., the North Carolina company entrusted with preparing and grading testing materials for the state’s new TNReady program of student/teacher evaluations.

Days after public statements by Haslam disparaging the performance of Measurement, Inc., the Tennessee Department of Education revoked its contract with the company, which failed to generate workable materials for online testing and then failed to deliver printed testing materials as well, for any but grades 9 through 12.

In a press conference at the Raleigh legislative office, state Representative Antonio Parkinson (D-Memphis), state Senate Minority Leader Lee Harris (D-Memphis), and SCS School Board member Stephanie Love slammed the unreadiness of the TNReady program. Parkinson called for a three-year extension of the current moratorium on expansion of the state’s Achievement School District and for scrapping of any official testing procedure until a satisfactory one might be developed.

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Politics Politics Feature

As Early Voting Starts, a Burst of Kumbaya

CREDIT: JB

Toward the end of Monday’s regular meeting of the Shelby County Commission, which had featured the final resolution of a month-long stand-off on approval of Chairman Justin Ford’s appointment of committee chairs, Commissioner Mark Billingsley, a Germantown Republican, conferred praise on the relative bipartisan unanimity of the day.

Billingsley went on to offer kudos for the inaugural “coffee and conversation” event sponsored by Ford last Friday, involving commissioners and guests at large, which he termed the kind of “positive” news often overlooked by the media. 

Indeed, there was a fair amount of kumbaya on the political scene last week, a modest cessation of conflict, even as the calendar slipped into the final month of the fall political campaign and early voting began on Wednesday of this week. 

One example of concord took place last Thursday at the Madison Hotel in a forum on Constitutional Amendment 2, one of four amendments on the November 4th ballot. The participants in the event, sponsored by the Federalist Society were Republican John Ryder and Democrat Steve Mulroy, both lawyers and both well-known for their partisan political involvement.

Ryder is a GOP national committeeman from Tennessee and general counsel of the Republican National Committee, and he was the chief architect of his party’s national redistricting efforts after the census of 2010. Mulroy, a Democrat and law professor, recently completed two terms on the Shelby County Commission and was a candidate earlier this year for his party’s nomination for Shelby County mayor.

Yet, both had no problem agreeing on the need for Amendment 2, which would constitutionally authenticate a variant of the oft-contested “Tennessee Plan” for appointment of state appellate judges. Like Governor Bill Haslam and former state Supreme Court Justice George Brown of Memphis, who had appeared at a public forum at the Kroc Center earlier in the week, both Ryder and Mulroy saw Amendment 2 as balancing the need for judicial independence with that of citizen input.

Essentially, the amendment provides for gubernatorial appointment of appellate judges, coupled with a need for ratification by both houses of the General Assembly. Judges would be subject to retention elections every eight years, as they are at present.

Along with the requirement for legislative approval (within a 60-day window for response), the amendment would do away with the current judicial nominating commission, which has previously been charged with making suggestions to the governor on the front end of the appointment process.

Ryder and Mulroy agreed, as had Haslam and Brown at the earlier forum, that direct election of appellate judges would introduce too much political involvement and financial influence into the naming process — a result of what Ryder called “an excess of Jacksonian democracy.”

While Amendment 2 has its opponents (notably lawyer John Jay Hooker of Nashville, who for years has litigated in favor of direct election of appellate judges), the most hotly contested of the four constitutional amendments on the ballot is unquestionably Amendment 1, which has generated considerable political activity and big-time war chests on both sides of the issue.

Basically, Amendment 1 would nullify a 2000 state Supreme Court decision, which provided protections of abortion rights that in some ways were stronger than those afforded by the federal courts. Opponents of abortion welcome the amendment, while supporters fear the “slippery slope” effect of its language allowing potential legislative action on abortion, even in cases involving rape, incest, and threats to the life of the mother.

JB

Director Ashley Coffield, Congressman Steve Cohen, and honoree Beverly Marrero at Planned Parenthood event

Planned Parenthood of Memphis, which is aggressively resisting Amendment 1, honored former state Senator Beverly Marrero at a fund-raising event for the its campaign last Thursday night. •  Realistically, the battle for leadership on the Shelby County Commission is over for the time being — or at least in remission. By a vote, on Monday, of 11 for, one opposed, and one abstaining, the commission formally sustained Chairman Ford’s choices for committee chairs and thereby ended any immediate prospect of a challenge to his leadership. Monday’s vote was a reprise of a preliminary vote in Ford’s favor at last Wednesday’s committee meetings.

Given that last week’s vote had been similarly lopsided, there was very little fighting left to do at the regular commission meeting, and Democrat Walter Bailey, who had been the chief Ford resister, was content to cast his no vote, the only one against the appointments, as quietly and uneventfully as possible. The only other break from unanimity was an abstaining vote from Democrat Van Turner, chairman of the general government committee, which handled the appointments matter. 

The lack of drama reflected the currently anti-climactic state of a controversy that had seen Ford’s appointments blocked and referred back to committee by a 7-6 vote — six Democrats and Republican Steve Basar — on a motion made by the disgruntled Bailey at the regular Commission meeting of September 22nd.

And the relatively matter-of-fact denouement occurred, despite some serious prodding from others, on both sides of the issue, who evidently thought the contest was still on. 

Over the weekend, Norma Lester, a vocal Democratic representative on the Shelby County Election Commission, released the text of an “open letter” to fellow Democrats. The letter expressed Lester’s view that Ford, who was elected chairman of the reconstituted commission last month on the strength of his own vote, plus those of six Republicans, had subsequently fulfilled GOP wishes in the manner of the committee chairmanships.

Lester echoed Bailey’s charge that a “deal” had been cut on the chairmanship appointments between Ford and the GOP members who supported his chairmanship bid. Particularly controversial was the naming, for the second year in a row, of Republican member Heidi Shafer as chair of the commission’s budget committee.

Bailey had slammed what he called “political machinations” involved in both Ford’s election and his subsequent naming of committee chairs. Lester’s weekend letter seconded Bailey’s accusations of deal-making and “getting in bed with Republicans,” and made a charge of “blatant betrayal, which is what happened with young Ford and [is] the basis for the contempt amongst fellow Democrats.”

A visibly subdued Bailey restricted his objections on Monday to asking that the two appointments issue items be pulled off the commission’s consent agenda, leaving them potentially subject to debate.

But all Bailey had to say was “I again voice my objection.”

JB

Political activists turned up en masse for Saturday’s nuptials of well-known blogger Steve Ross and Ellyn Daniel, daughter of former state Rep. Jeanne Richardson.

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Politics Politics Feature

Wars and Rumors of War

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

“Just like World War Two, I’m going to Nashville to get my allies, and I’m coming back to bomb your Hiroshima!” That was how Millington’s Terry Roland, an opponent of city/county school merger and a backer of municipal school systems in the suburbs, put it last week, when he was out-voted on a school-related issue on the Shelby County Commission.

That was one Republican’s point of view as the GOP-dominated General Assembly headed into a week in which consideration of enabling legislation for municipal schools as well as school vouchers was due to be on the front burner.

Another Republican, meanwhile, was feeling some heat himself, though he professed not to mind it. This was commission chairman Mike Ritz, suddenly the subject of efforts by a group of discontented local Republicans to have him recalled as chairman and declared “persona non grata” by the state Republican executive committee.

Jackson Baker

Commissioner Mike Ritz

Ritz, up to this point a Republican in good standing, told the F lyer, “I certainly won’t volunteer to leave the party,” and basically shrugged off the threat. He thinks the whole development could be “quite frankly, helpful” to him in a plan he’s actively considering to run for county mayor in 2014 as an independent.

About the recall effort, announced at Sunday’s county Republican convention by a group associated with the Tea Party movement, Ritz contended that most of his critics live outside the area he represents, District 1, which takes in much of the city of Memphis from Midtown to its eastern periphery as well as scattered precincts in its adjoining suburbs.       

Ritz says he doubts that 21,000 signatures could be found inside his district for a recall petition. That’s the number — 15 percent of the district’s registered voters — estimated as necessary according to state law by Mick Wright, a vice chair of the county GOP organization supporting the recall effort and a parallel one to have Ritz formally excommunicated from the Republican Party.

“Now, they might have an easy time of it out in the county,” Ritz said, meaning, essentially, District 4, which takes in unincorporated areas of Shelby County, as well as six suburban municipalities, which are seeking to form independent school districts and are resisting long-term involvement in the unified city-county school district, which Ritz supports. “The mayors out there might even circulate the petition themselves,” Ritz said, only half joking.

Rather famously, Republican Ritz and seven county commission Democrats have formed a solid bloc of eight in favor of completing the unification of city and county schools and litigating against efforts by the suburban municipalities to secede from the school consolidation forced by the December 2010 surrender of the Memphis City Schools charter.  

Concerning the likelihood of legislation favorable to suburban school independence, Ritz and the commission majority have consistently expressed the view that whatever is decided by Hardy Mays, the presiding judge over school-merger litigation, will trump any actions by the General Assembly.

Term-limited and unable to run again for his commission seat, Ritz foresees no negative consequences from either the recall effort or an attempt to expel him from the GOP. He doubts things will come to that, but, given his mayoral-race plans, “If they kick me out, it could be the best thing possible for my candidacy.”

Running as an independent candidate for Shelby County mayor against GOP incumbent Mark Luttrell and any of several possible Democrats, he could at the very least be something of a “spoiler,” Ritz believes. And if Luttrell should accept an appointive office from Governor Bill Haslam — something Ritz thinks is possible — “my vote potential looks better and better.”

Whatever happens, Ritz says, he’s perfectly at ease with the political positions he’s taken, attributing them all to a sense of fiscal responsibility: “I think most people see that I’m a moderate, and that’s basically what I am.”

• The city council-appointed Committee on Renaming Parks held its inaugural meeting on Friday in City Hall and made plans for a second meeting on April 1st, where the public can express its views in a town-hall format.

If that meeting should feature as many disparate points of view as the one on Friday, the public meeting could turn into a wild and woolly affair.

Such was not the case on Friday, inasmuch as the committee’s council co-chairs, Bill Boyd and Harold Collins, did their best to ensure that decorum prevailed and the committee members managed to disagree — and occasionally agree — in polite fashion.

But the variance in points of view was wide enough on what happened in the past — the Civil War portion of it, anyhow — that the chances of agreement on how to commemorate that past seemed remote.  

The Rev. Keith Norman, current president of the Memphis NAACP, made it clear early in the meeting that he regarded the idea of paying homage to Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest, a “slave trader,” as unacceptable and that the Southern Confederacy, whose reason for being was to further slavery, was a case of treason against the United States and therefore deserving of no honor.

That was one flank of the debate. The other was provided fairly quickly by Becky Muska, a late appointment by council parks committee chairman Boyd, who appointed the naming committee. Muska was chosen, Boyd said, because her ancestors had settled in Memphis early in the river community’s history.

Her explanation for the Confederacy and the Civil War was as distant from that of Norman as could be imagined. The 13 Southern states that seceded had done so not because of slavery, she said, but in defense of “states’ rights,” and their grievance was against high tariffs on Southern agricultural exports imposed by Northern manufacturing interests.

As for Forrest Park, Muska said it was an outgrowth of Progressive Era politics and had the support of Robert Church, a Memphis African-American eminence, she said. For all the volatility generated by disputes over Forrest and the Confederacy and the meaning of that aspect of history, “I don’t feel ashamed, and I don’t feel embarrassed.”

The other members of the committee, also present and taking part, were: Jimmy Ogle, president of the Shelby County Historical Commission; Larry Smith, deputy director of Parks & Neighborhoods; Michael Robinson, chairman of African & African American Studies at LeMoyne-Owen College; Douglas Cupples, former instructor of history at the University of Memphis; and Beverly Bond, associate professor of history at the U of M.

Ogle and Smith attempted to route the discussion away from forming conclusions about history. Ogle noted that the saga of Memphis was abundant with examples of every kind of historical development, telling “the story of America better than any other city,” and that ample potential parkland existed to pay tribute to any and all points of view.

Smith took the point of view that the committee’s purpose was to formulate guidelines for future development of park properties. “I don’t think we’re here to name a park,” he said bluntly (and somewhat surprisingly, given the publicly stated purpose of the committee).

Councilman Collins got in the last word at Friday’s meeting, commenting that “our mission is bigger than our own opinions.” The committee’s task was to do what “benefits the city.” Whatever that is is yet to be decided, of course, and the naming committee’s role is an advisory one. The council will make any final decisions.

• A vote by the Shelby County Democratic caucus in the legislature to replace IT specialist George Monger with businessman/activist Anthony Tate on the Shelby County Election Commission has some local Democrats in an uproar.

The loss of Monger, who had impressed many as an assertive advocate for needed election reforms and as an expert in election-software issues, was lamented by several local bloggers and activists, as well as by Norma Lester, the other Democrat on the five-member SCEC board. There evidently is a move afoot to get Monger named to a pending vacancy on the five-member state election commission. Another Democrat interested in that slot is Van Turner, outgoing chairman of the Shelby County Democratic Party.