Tag: Shelby County Republican Party

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Politics Politics Feature

Seeing Red

The 2024 presidential election results by precinct (Photo: Courtesy Don Johnson)

The Shelby County Republican Party is scheduled to hold its biennial convention in January, and the party has a bona fide chairmanship race on its hands.

One candidate is Bangladesh-born Naser Fazlullah, manager of a food-and-beverages firm and the local party’s vice chair, who has been highly active in Republican outreach efforts over the years. Most unusually, he professes a desire to “bring both parties together” for the benefit of Shelby County and has numerous friends both inside and outside GOP ranks.

The other candidate is insurance executive Worth Morgan, the former city council member who in 2022 ran unsuccessfully for county mayor and had been rumored as a possible candidate for Memphis mayor the next year before deciding not to make the race.

Both candidates are running as the heads of slates for a variety of other party offices.

Morgan’s campaign in particular, run under the slogan “Revive,” is in the kind of high gear normally associated with expensive major public races and has employed a barrage of elaborate online endorsements from such well-known party figures as state Representative Mark White, state Senator Brent Taylor, and conservative media commentator Todd Starnes. 

The GOP convention is scheduled for January 25th at The Venue at Bartlett Station.

• Morgan’s choice of the campaign motif “Revival” is interesting. Not too long ago, Republicans dominated county government, but demographics now heavily favor Democrats in countywide voting. As one indication of that, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris outdistanced the GOP’s Donald Trump in November by a margin of 201,759 to Trump’s 118,917. 

In a series of post-election analyses, however, veteran Republican analyst Don Johnson, formerly of Memphis and now heading the Stone River Group of Nashville, has demonstrated the GOP’s supremacy virtually everywhere else in Tennessee. He has published precinct-specific maps of statewide election results showing areas won by Trump in red. Patches of Democratic blue show up only sporadically in these graphics and are largely confined to Memphis, Nashville, and the inner urban cores of Knoxville and Chattanooga. Even Haywood County in the southwest corner of the state, virtually the last Democratic stronghold in rural Tennessee, shows high purple on Johnson’s cartography.

Post-election analysis shows something else — a shift of the Republican center of gravity eastward, toward the GOP’s ancestral homeland of East Tennessee. For the first time in recent presidential elections, Republican voting in Knox County outdid the party’s totals in Shelby County.

Looking ahead to the 2026 governor’s race, it is meaningful that a recent poll of likely Republican voters by the Tennessee Conservative News shows two Knoxvillians — Congressman Tim Burchett and Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs — leading all other potential candidates.

• The Shelby County Commission ended its year with a full agenda of 89 items, several of which were matters involving schools and school funding. The commissioners navigated that agenda with admirable focus and aplomb, considering that the bombshell news of Tuesday’s scheduled Memphis Shelby-County Schools board meeting regarding the potential voiding of superintendent Marie Feagins’ contract exploded midway through their discussions.

• One of the more inclusive political crowds in recent history showed up weekend before last at Otherlands on Cooper to honor David Upton on the occasion of his 60th birthday. Upton is the proverbial man-behind-the-scenes in Shelby County politics and has had a hand — sometimes openly, sometimes not — in more local elections and civic initiatives than almost anybody else you could name. 

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Cracks in the Binary Box

Democrat Dwayne Thompson (left) and Republican John Gillespie talk over the current legislative session. (Photo by Jackson Baker).


If there is a single leitmotif that defines the coming disharmony of a local election in these parts, it is the struggle between members of the two parties — Republican and Democratic — for dominance. The 2022 election in Shelby County is skewed in this way, with all the structural advantages adhering to the Dems. Actually, there is a fairly accurate division of influence — with the demographics of the city (i.e., Memphis) favoring Democratic candidates and those of the suburbs tilting unmistakably and dependably toward Republicans.

Yet beyond the party leaderships there is here and there a breach in this binary circumstance. Take the 13 members of the Shelby County Board of Commissioners — apportioned 8 to 5, as of now, in favor of Democrats, with the 2022 election likely to make that division 9 to 4 in favor of the Democrats — on the strength of reapportionment that’s fetched up another seat, the new District 5 seat in Cordova, expected to go the Democrats’ way.

Up until now, the Republicans have for several sessions been holding their own by the simple device of finding two dependable Democrats who could be coaxed onto their side when need be. Democrats Edmund Ford and Eddie Jones (the most recent two such) have reasonably often opted to make common cause with the Republicans, so long as the right trades were made on other points elsewhere.

Within the 2021-2022 session the Democrats did some bargaining of their own, attracting East Memphis Republican Brandon Morrison, already prone to look for non-partisan solutions, to their side on some key votes — both procedural: she would become vice chair instead of the minority Republicans’ choice of Amber Mills in northern Shelby (District 1), and policy-wise: (she would display an open mind on key votes favored by the Democrats (e.g., county funding of MATA), Morrison even agreed to serve as vice chair of a committee to re-examine the virtues of Metro consolidation, that bane of the suburbanite.

That makes the current contest in District 4 (East Memphis, Germantown) between Morrison and political newcomer Jordan Carpenter simply a matter of arithmetic. Morrison’s current GOP colleagues — Mills, Mick Wright, David Bradford, and the term-limited Mark Billingsley — are backing Carpenter to restore as much of an unbroken Republican orthodoxy as possible. Even a bloc of 4 in what is likely to be a new Commission favoring Democrats by a 9-4 margin,  is, in their minds, worth something.

It remains to be seen if party loyalty or the principle of bi-partisanship will prevail. The Democrats, with their probable 9-vote supermajority, can indulge a certain equanimity on the matter.

* * *

The recent brouhaha over the endorsement of Republican state Senate candidate Brent Taylor, in District 31,  by Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, a nominal Democrat, indicates another way in which the binary party system is being breached. In their primary Democrats had been grooming Ruby Powell-Dennis, an educator and civil figure, to seek the seat, which up to now has been  held by the indicted and now withdrawn GOP incumbent Brian Kelsey.

The fact is, Memphis mayors, whose own elections are non-partisan, have frequently crossed the party line to espouse candidates of another party. Willie Herenton, a Democrat, did it twice on behalf of the statewide candidacies of Republicans Don Sundquist and Lamar Alexander.

Strickland was in the large crowd that gathered on Taylor’s behalf for a fundraiser last Thursday at the East Memphis home of Craig and Cathy Weiss. Spotting the Mayor, who was a full head taller than most of the attendees, Taylor quoted Strickland as having said the endorsement of Taylor was for the sake of “better outcomes for Memphis.” Addressing the Mayor, he jested, “I would ask you to say a few words but I think you’ve probably said enough. If you say any more, they may try to impeach you.”

That got an animated chuckle from the crowd. Then Taylor proceeded: “I know you took a lot of heat for it. But I love Memphis and I think you know I love Memphis, and that’s one reason he endorsed me.”

Taylor continued: “There’s a second thing. I just came back to Nashville on Monday and Tuesday where I met with Senate leadership and about half of the Senate. They are very excited about having me joining the Senate, primarily because they don’t understand Big Shelby. They don’t understand Memphis and its politics. And they’re excited to have me up there…. I will tell you that [the  Mayor’s endorsement] meant more among those senators than the endorsement of [U.S. Senators] Hagerty and Blackburn because they knew they needed somebody to help them understand Memphis and Shelby County.” 

Binary politics is under threat elsewhere in local politics. Shelby County’s Republicans caved in to the reality that they could not find a GOP candidate to beat Sheriff Floyd Bonner, the Democratic nominee; so they have in effect endorsed Bonner’s campaign as well. It was no accident that the huge crowds that gathered the weekend before last at the Sheriff’s campaign headquarters opening included as many Republicans as Democrats.

And conversations between the two parties — like one between Democratic state Representative Dwayne Thompson and Republican John Gillespie, both representing “purplish” adjoining districts — abounded as well.

It will take some time before the twain truly meet, but it has to be a good sign that they are talking.

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Politics Politics Feature

One-Way Ticket

Lang Wiseman (Photo: Wiseman Bray)

Lang Wiseman, the Memphis native who announced weeks ago that he would be leaving his post as deputy governor to Republican Governor Bill Lee, dropped the other shoe on Monday, when he declared his departure officially as of this coming Friday, December 3rd.

Wiseman, a former University of Tennessee basketball star who went on to get a law degree from Harvard and served for a spell as chairman of the Shelby County Republican Party, announced that he would not be returning to Memphis but would remain in Nashville (suburban Brentwood, actually) to pursue future opportunities.

Once considered a possible candidate for a now-vacant seat on the state Supreme Court, Wiseman is also rumored to be interested in a possible future appointment as state attorney general. In any case, what he’ll end up doing will be done in Nashville.

That kind of one-way ticket is a fairly customary thing for Memphians who enter the vale of state politics. Perhaps the most famous emigre to the state capital is former Governor Winfield Dunn, who was a Memphis dentist and local Republican activist before his surprise election as Tennessee’s chief executive in 1970.

Dunn would serve a single term before absenting the governor’s office (at the time, the state constitution prohibited Tennessee governors from seeking consecutive terms) and was succeeded in 1974 by Adamsville Congressman Ray Blanton, a Democrat, whose administration would be plagued by scandal.

After waiting out the two terms of fellow Republican Lamar Alexander, Dunn would make another try for the governor’s office in 1986, losing to Democrat Ned McWherter of Dresden. Dunn had meanwhile become a resident of Nashville, where he would remain, making only an occasional return trip to Memphis.

Another Memphian who settled in Nashville was more avid about touching base locally and made several back-and-forth trips on Interstate 40, culminating in an ill-fated one.

This was Bill Giannini, a former chairman of both the Shelby County Republican Party and the Shelby County Election Commission. Giannini, who was then serving as deputy commissioner of the state Department of Commerce and Insurance, was returning to Nashville in 2017 from attending a political fundraiser in Memphis when he was killed in a car crash in Decatur County.

Two other one-time Memphians turned Nashvillians are Tre Hargett and David Lillard, formerly a state representative and a county commissioner, respectively.

For the past several years, Hargett has held the office of Secretary of State and Lillard that of state Treasurer.

In addition to the aforementioned, there are numerous other former residents of the Bluff City who have lingered in the capital city, serving as lobbyists or state functionaries or what-have-you.

And, without mentioning any names, there have been instances of an elected Memphis representative or two who basically ended up as more or less full-time residents of Nashville, making only occasional toe-tap visits — generally at election time — back to a Memphis home address of record.

In state politics, “Go West, Young Man” is effectively reversed more often than not.

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Editorial Opinion

Party Judicial Endorsements Are a Bad Idea

Elsewhere we feature the second of two articles (thus far) on the matter of judges running for office in Shelby County. Just so you know, we’re not through with the subject. Not only will we continue to monitor the races for local judgeships as they develop — as well as the simultaneous retention elections for state Supreme Court justices — we will have more to say, too, about the whole matter of political interference with the judiciary, the one branch of government that should be free from politics.

Well, as free as possible. We’re not naive, and the whole idea of having your name on a public ballot at election time and hoping that people will vote for you — and asking for them to do so — is political. What we’re talking about is partisan politics — the kind that specifically serves the ends of special interests. We don’t use that phrase “special interests” pejoratively, just knowingly.

Corporations are one kind of special interest. Labor unions are another. Faith-based organizations are special interests. So are abortion-rights support groups. And so on. Nothing wrong with this. Our political system thrives on the play of special interests vis-a-vis each other — sometimes at odds, sometimes in common cause — through the structured processes of elections and government.

But judges are different. They have the same function regarding the civil and criminal aspects of society as referees do in sports. It is axiomatic that our founding fathers intended to create a political system with “checks and balances.” The ultimate check-and-balance is the independent judiciary. Judges don’t make the rules, but once the rules are made, judges enforce them. Without bias. That, in any case, is how it is supposed to be.

It is often said, apropos arguments against electing other local officials, that there is no Democratic way to issue deeds, no Republican way to organize court dockets, and so forth.

That goes double for members of the judiciary.

There are counties in Tennessee where judges run in party primaries for the right to compete in general elections. We don’t do that in Shelby County, but our two major political parties, Democratic and Republican, have taken to issuing endorsement slates in judges’ races, with little or no pretense to evaluating the legal credentials of the candidates they honor, but with the all-but-avowed (or even the openly avowed) purpose of getting party members or sympathizers onto the bench. With all due respect, we wish they’d butt out. And, with all due respect, the same goes for other quasi-political bodies, ethnic support groups, or what-have-you that cater, however well and ethically, to this or that self-interested corner of society.

Really, all we want in a judge is somebody who knows the law, understands how it applies in a given instance, and is fair-minded about doing so. Later this month, the Memphis Bar Association will be making public the evaluations made by its members, collectively, of this year’s crop of candidates for public office.

Now, those are judgments that might mean something.