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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Key Races on May 3 Primary Ballot


As of Thursday’s filing deadline, the lineup cards are in for the first major voting of the campaign year: the county Democratic and Republican primaries of May 3, pending withdrawals by next Thursday. Most of the primary races are between Democrats, though a serious showdown in August will come for some of those Democratic winners, as formidable Republican foes will await them on the general election ballot. (Incumbents’ names are in caps.)

DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY

MAYOR: The County’s first-term chief executive, LEE HARRIS, will be favored against city administrator Kenneth Moody and Michael Banks. City Councilman Worth Morgan, a Republican, lies in wait for the August general election.

SHERIFF: FLOYD BONNER, JR., who also has de facto Republican endorsement, is highly favored against challenger Keisha Scott.

ASSESSOR: MELVIN BURGESS, who probably has ambitions down the line, should be secure against this relatively  unknown challenger, Roderick Blount.

CIRCUIT COURT CLERK: Veteran TEMIKA GIPSON will have all she can handle against challenger Jamita E. Swearengen, the current Memphis City Council chair and member of a prominent political clan.

COUNTY CLERK: Activist clerk WANDA HALBERT should be well positioned vs. Arriell Gipson (daughter of Temika Gipson), Mondell Williams, and William Stovall.

JUVENILE COURT CLERK: Retiring County Commissioner Reginald Milton could have brisk challenges from TV reporter Janeen Gordon, former School Board member Stephanie Gatewood, and Marcus Mitchell.

PROBATE COURT CLERK:
BILL MORRISON is opposed by Eddie Chism and retiring County Commissioner Eddie Jones.

REGISTER: SHELANDRA FORD is matched against retiring Commissioner Willie Brooks and Wanda Faulkner.

TRUSTEE: REGINA NEWMAN will be highly favored against frequent candidates Roderic Ford and Marion Alexandria-Williams (aka M. LaTroy Williams). Former GOP County Commissioner Steve Basar will oppose the winner in August.

CRIMINAL COURT CLERK: HEIDI KUHN has won awards and is hustling hard to stave off a repeat primary  opponent, Carla Stotts, and Maeme Bernard.

DISTRICT ATTORNEY GENERAL: The celebrated legal activist Steve Mulroy, a former County Commissioner and University of Memphis law professor, is favored  against two able opponents, Linda Harris and Janika White, for the right to challenge the formidable Republican incumbent AMY WEIRICH in August.

COMMISSION #5: The newly forged Cordova seat on the County Commission has drawn three formidable aspirants, the Commission’s able administrative assistant Quran Folsom, recently retired School Board member Shante Knox-Avant, and Reginald French, a prominent aide to former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton.

COMMISSION #6: Minister/activist Charlie Caswell is matched against former Young Democrat president Alexander Boulton.

COMMISSION #7: Former legislator and Commissioner Henri Brooks is hazarding a comeback against School Board vice chair Althea Greene, Kathy Temple, and Cartavius Black.

COMMISSION #8: MICKELL LOWERY will run unopposed and will have no Republican opponent in August.

COMMISSION #9: EDMUND FORD, Jr. will defend his turf against contenders Sam Echols and Sean Harris.

COMMISSION #10: Activist Britney Thornton, she of the unofficial homeless shelter, vs. lawyer Kathy Kirk, member of a Memphis political family, and Teri Dockery.

COMMISSION #11: Human Resources specialist Candice Jones vs. School Board member Misaka Clay Bibbs and Eric Winston.

COMMISSION #12: Erika Sugarmon, the well-known activist and member of a legendary political family, has challengers in Reginald Boyce, David Walker, and Jasmes Bacchus.;

COMMISSION #13: MICHAEL WHALEY, running in a new district unopposed, will be challenged in August by Republican businessman Edward Apple.

Other Democratic candidates: Donna McDonald Martin vs. Kerry White in Commission District 1; Lynette Williams in Commission District 2; Britney Chauncey in Commission District 4.

REPUBLICAN PRIMARY

COUNTY COMMISSION # 4: In the only out-and-out Republican primary contest, BRANDON MORRISON is favored against challenger  Jordan Carpenter.

Running unopposed in the GOP primary are: Worth Morgan, Mayor; Stephen Cross, Assessor; Sohelia Kail, Circuit Court Clerk; Jeffrey Jacobs, County Clerk; Steve Basar, Trustee; Paul Houston, Criminal Court Clerk; Rob White, Juvenile Court Clerk; DeWayne Jackson, Probate Court Clerk;  Bryian Edmiston, Register; and District Attorney General AMY WEIRICH.

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Politics Politics Feature

Signs of Political Life as Election Season Finally Kicks Off

At long last, and after months of inaction, it can probably be said that there’s an election season on. On the Republican side, GOP members of all stripes were on hand Sunday at a Germantown Parkway storefront that will serve as the party’s campaign headquarters for the duration of the 2020 election year.

Interestingly, the new party headquarters location is on the approximate geographic site — the same lot, it would seem — as the old, sprawling Homebuilders headquarters, razed to the ground some years ago but, in its prime, a complex that contained a generous-sized auditorium/arena area that long served as a meeting place for local GOPers, as well for civic clubs of various kinds.

Local Republican party chairman Chris Tutor, who, because of the resurgent coronavirus, insisted that all attendees wear face masks and do what they could to achieve some measure of social distancing, turned things over to keynote speaker David Kustoff, the 8th District congressman, who pointed out that one final Democrat-vs.-Republican contest loomed on the August 6th county general election ballot: the General Sessions Court clerk race between Republican Paul Boyd and Democrat Joe Brown.

That was something to unite upon, given that others in the crowd were running against each other for positions in the federal/state primary elections to be held on the same day.

In theory, Shelby County Democrats were on the move, too, organizing a series of “forums” involving their candidates for the state and federal primaries, and simultaneously recording for later broadcasting these events, some of them conducted at the old Hickory Ridge Mall.

Jackson Baker

Who was that (un)masked man? At Sunday’s opening of the Shelby County Republcan campaign headquarters on Germantown Parkway, everybody, in accordance with advance instructions, wore a face mask. There was one exception — the unidentified interloper at the very right side of this photo.

Jackson Baker

time for the U.S Senate seat being vacated by Lamar Alexander.

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Politics Politics Feature

Shelby County: 2018 Electoral Reality Check

As might be expected in a county that, despite its ostensible Democratic majority, consistently elects Republicans in local partisan races, the 2018 Shelby County mayor’s race is developing faster on the GOP side than on the Democratic one.

Among Republicans, Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland announced for mayor more than a year ago, Juvenile Court Clerk Joy Touliatos announced week before last, and County Trustee David Lenoir reports he will definitely be announcing for the office this month. (Lenoir also pointedly notes that there is no basis for recent rumors suggesting that he is interested in seeking the state Senate seat of Mark Norris, recently nominated for a federal judgeship.)

No Democrat has yet made a formal announcement, though former commissioner and interim state Senator Sidney Chism has made it clear privately that he will run. County Commissioner Melvin Burgess has made broad hints that he would like to, and state Senator Lee Harris and former county Commissioner Steve Mulroy, both of whom are University of Memphis law school professors, are still in the flip-a-coin stage of deciding which one of them will run. (Mulroy was a candidate in the Democratic primary four years ago.)

Democrats would seem to have some reason to be more optimistic about the race for sheriff after last week’s annoucement, before a huge and diverse crowd at the Racquet Club, by current Chief Deputy Floyd Bonner, an African American who, in the course of 37 years, has worked himself up from a jailor’s job.  

JB

Bonner with incumbent Sheriff Bill Oldham, who endorsed him.

Bonner was introduced and endorsed by the current Sheriff, Bill Oldham (elected eight years ago as a Republican). Said Oldham: “I’m going to do something that my predecessor [then sheriff, now county Mayor Mark Luttrell] didn’t do for me. I’m going to fully endorse Floyd Bonner.”

Though other candidates, Democratic and Republican, are expected to announce, Bonner is the clear favorite on his side. The Republican most likely to succeed is Dale Lane, the county’s current director of the Office of Preparedness.

When local Republicans gathered two weeks ago at the Great Hall in Germantown for the Master Meal Banquet (sponsored annually by the East Shelby Republican Club), it was in the immediate wake of U.S. Senator Bob Corker‘s much-publicized questioning of President Trump‘s “stability” and “competence,” but, publicly at least, the local GOP gentry still seem inclined, left-handedly or otherwise, to toe the line of loyalty.

State GOP chairman Scott Golden said this from the dais: “When Donald Trump was elected president, we knew that the media wasn’t going to cut him any slack. … Do not be sidetracked by the news of the day … because at the end of the day, Hillary Clinton is not president. And remember: The worst Republican on any given day is better than the best Democrat.”

Eighth District U.S. Representative David Kustoff, in his turn as a follow-up speaker, was even more upfront in his support of the president. Denouncing what he said was nonstop “fake news,” Kustoff said, “You can’t get any other news. I am proud to stand behind this president. I am proud to stand behind Donald Trump.”

One of the revealing features of the annual banquet comes early on, when the M.C. of the event —in this year’s case, Golden — calls the roll of public officials present.

It is always a revelation of sorts to be reminded just how numerous the GOP contingent is in Shelby County officialdom, and the process is prolonged further by the inclusion of nonpartisan attendees (judges, for instance), who feel obliged to show their flag at the event.

Candidates in ongoing races get their names called, too. One of the intriguing GOP primary matchups for next year that surfaced at the event was that for county clerk between longtime party factotum Arnold Weiner and former Democratic mainstay Danny Kail, who at present is CAO at the Criminal Court clerk’s office.

In a way suggestive of musical chairs, Wayne Mashburn the current county clerk, reportedly intends to run for register, while current Register Tom Leatherwood will be seeking the office of Circuit Court clerk to succeed Jimmy Moore, who will not be running for reelection.

The move-alongs of Mashburn and Leatherwood are prompted by the term-limits provisions of the county charter.

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Politics Politics Feature

On the Health-Care Front

Against all odds, backers of a renewed effort to secure legislative approval for Governor Bill Haslam‘s Insure Tennessee proposal hoped to steer the Medicaid-expansion measure through committees in both the state Senate and state House this week.

And, even if the proposal is stopped short of the goal, as it was in an aborted February special session, 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen and other members of the state’s congressional delegation have managed to obtain some measure of fiscal relief for the state’s beleaguered hospitals.

Cohen announced this week the passage of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act, which, the congressman said in a press release, will “guarantee disproportionate share hospital (DSH) allotments totaling more than $530 million over the next 10 years to help the state’s hospitals and community health centers recoup expenses incurred caring for those who cannot afford to pay.”

As Cohen, who took the lead in securing the new funding, noted, Tennessee is the only state in the nation that, until passage of the act, was not in a position to receive annual DSH allotments automatically.

The reason for that has been that, when the administration of Governor Ned McWherter negotiated a waiver with the federal government to convert Tennessee’s Medicaid operation into what became TennCare, the DSH allotments were not included within the waiver. The oversight, based on an apparent overestimation of TennCare’s ability to cover all exigencies, may have kept the state from receiving as much as $450 million in DSH funding annually.

Attempts in recent years to remedy that situation have been blocked by a general atmosphere of fiscal austerity in Washington, and even the new arrangement, which secures a guaranteed amount of new federal DSH funding amounting to $53 million annually, provides but a drop in the bucket compared to the $1.4 billion that would be made available to the state’s hospitals for indigent health care through Insure Tennessee via the Affordable Care Act.

Haslam’s proposal was voted down 7-4 by a specially constituted state Senate Health and Welfare committee in the special session, but, Lazarus-like, it got up and moving again last week as Senate Joint Resolution 93, passing hurdles in the Senate Health and Welfare subcommittee and the regular Senate Health Committee.

SJR 93, co-sponsored by Senators Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville), Doug Overbey (R-Maryville), and Richard Briggs (R-Knoxville), was on the schedule to be considered this week by the Senate Commerce and Labor Committee. Meanwhile, over in the House, Rep. Larry Miller (D-Memphis) had put the House version of the measure, HJR 90 on notice in the Insurance and Banking Subcommittee. Opinion of lawmakers consulted by the Flyer is divided on the extent to which consideration of Insure Tennessee on the floor of either the Senate or the House will be determined by what happens in committee.

Some proponents of the proposal are wondering out loud if a bill passed last year requiring legislative approval of Medicaid expansion actually applies prohibitively to an executive action by the governor.

· In separate conventions held over the weekend, the Shelby County Democratic Party (SCDP) and the Shelby County Republican Party each elected a new chairperson. In both cases – a woman.

The Democrats went first, convening on Saturday at First Baptist Church on Broad, selecting first a 29-member executive committee, which in turn elected longtime party activist Randa Spears on the second ballot from a field of four aspirants.

Spears thereby became the first white female to head the local Democratic Party in its history.

Her ascension to party leadership, after 32 years in the gruntosphere, made perfect sense. It was a reward for faithful service — including a recent stint as campaign manager for Deidre Malone, the Democratic nominee in last year’s county mayor race. It was a nod to the longstanding prominence of women in party affairs (as in local social and civic life, generally). And it was a clear signal to Shelby County’s white population that the SCDP was not, as it has sometimes seemed in recent years, a monolithically black organization.

Asked about that last fact in the aftermath of her second-ballot win over runner-up Del Gill, Spears was discreet, diffident, and diplomatic: “I don’t know that that is important. I think it’s important that someone with my focus and experience and enthusiasm is chairman. And I think I’ve worked with almost everybody in this room, except for the new folks, on one campaign or another. So I look at this as all one group.”

Malone, who, in an exchange of roles this year, had been Spears’ campaign manager, addressed the point more freely: “I do think it’s important to have elected a white chair — and especially a white female. It makes a statement.”

Just as it might to elect a female mayor at some point, she was prodded? “Yes,” she nodded, in gratitude for the implied tribute to her pathfinding 2010 and 2014 mayoral campaigns.

For the fact is, American politics is all about constituent groups (or blocs, if you choose). The more different ones your party can address satisfactorily, the more broadly based — and successful — your party is likely to be.

All four candidates on Saturday’s ballot had something to say for themselves. Runner-up Del Gill could boast his four decades of party work, newcomer Jackie Jackson was a fresh breath, just a little too new to most committee members to win; and pre-convention favorite Reginald Milton, a well-respected county commissioner, was conspicuous in his efforts to unite disparate party factions.

Politics is also all about trade-offs, and Spears’ victory owed much (as did Milton’s defeat) to longtime party broker Sidney Chism, who, for whatever reason, tipped his support, and that of his still significant network, to her.

Gill, all things considered, was not that far behind Spears, at 11 to her 16 on the second ballot. And, Gill being Gill, it was unlikely that he was prepared to fall in line behind Spears. Encouraged by his original first-ballot-leading total of 11, he put up something of a fuss at meeting’s end about a procedural issue regarding the validity of the new committee’s voice vote to continue the party’s bylaws in lieu of a full review of them.

The newly elected Spears politely but firmly disallowed the complaint and moved on to complete the day’s business. She did say later that she was willing to avail herself of the “wealth of experience” of Gill and whomever else. But it remained to be seen whether she can impose an effective measure of unity on a committee composed in large part of members potentially sympathetic to Gill’s dissident outlook.

A day later, on Sunday at the Bartlett Municipal Community Center, a throng of several hundred Republicans (including 400-odd delegates as such) witnessed what amounted to a re-assertion of the local GOP establishment’s control of the Shelby County Republican organization.

Though there was no dearth of competition — either for the party chairmanship, won by Mary Wagner over Arnold Weiner, or for the numerous other offices up for grabs — the Tea Party rebellion that flared up at the 2013 Republican conclave and in attempted power grabs at several local Republican clubs has been contained. There was no Tea Party slate as such, with adherents of that somewhat diversified, quasi-libertarian point of view to be found on both contending slates, Wagner’s and Weiner’s.

There was a message to be had, though, in the fact that the slate headed by Wagner, a relative newcomer to party politics whose last position was that of Young Republicans president, all but swept the slate led by Weiner, a longtime party veteran who had been, most recently, a party vice chair and immediate past president of the East Shelby Republican Club. And that “all but” is required mainly because Curt Cowan, the Wagner slate’s candidate for Primary Board position Number 5, was prevailed upon to drop out in favor of George Flinn, the wealthy radiologist/broadcast executive and sometime political candidate who still maintains a high profile in the local Republican Party.

The other 35 contested positions — for chairman, at-large steering committee members, district representatives, and primary board members — were won by the Wagner slate. The message, quite simply, is that there is a Republican mainstream, and it is back in full command.

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Editorial Opinion

Get It Together

Four aspirants to succeed local Democratic Party Chairman Bryan Carson, who resigned under pressure recently (though his term was about to expire anyhow), made their cases Saturday in a forum at the IBEW Union Hall. They were

Reginald Milton, Jackie Jackson, Randa Spears, and Del Gill.

Party caucuses will be held on March 14th, a party convention to name a new executive committee and a new chairman on March 28th.

Meanwhile, the Shelby County Republicans caucused at Bartlett Municipal Center on Monday night of this week, selecting delegates for their own convention at the Bartlett location on March 29th. There are two declared candidates for chair to succeed the outgoing Justin Joy: Arnold Weiner and Mary Wagner.

All the names mentioned here, be they sinners or saints, are committed activists, with personal histories that indicate that they possess the energy to acquit themselves well in the positions they are seeking. “Zeal” might even be a better descriptor in some cases. There’s the rub. Particularly if partisanship per se commands the electoral environment, the nature of our political debates is often nothing less than poisonous.

Strong feelings have always been a feature of political life in Shelby County, but only since the mid-1990s, when first the Republicans and later the Democrats adopted partisan primaries as a means of selecting preferred candidates for local office, have local political contests become as divisive as they are today, at least at the level of countywide elections. Until the advent of local partisan primaries, it was the rule, not the exception, for various components of the body politic to form coalitions behind this or that candidate. Blacks, whites, Democrats, Republicans, atheists, Christians, and Jews, plus whatever other categories come to mind — the more different sectors of the community were accounted for in a political campaign, the greater the likelihood for that campaign to succeed.

These days, that situation is reversed. One of the questions asked of the Democratic chairmanship aspirants at Saturday’s forum was how each of them would deal with the flight of white former-Democrats into the Republican Party. One of the candidates rejected the question as irrelevant. He was in error, as would have been demonstrated by a look at Monday night’s GOP caucus crowd — almost entirely white, though there is presumably some variance in their political complexion. That configuration was an inverse mirror image to Saturday’s predominantly African-American Democrat crowd.

This is not a suggestion that either of the county’s parties avows or practices racism, as such. The increasing racial polarization of the local parties is largely a result of the primary process — which has magnified ethnic and social differences that have always existed and assigned them to opposite ends of the spectrum.

Contrast this troublesome phenomenon with the city elections — including the one to be held this fall — where the absence of party affiliation will, as it always has, encourage some serious coalition-building across party and ethnic lines.

In the long run, we’d like to see local partisan primaries done away with as detriments to the political process. In the short run, we would merely express a wish that whichever of the chairmanship candidates mentioned above actually ends up at the controls of our two major parties understand that we all are — or should be — a single community.

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Politics Politics Feature

In Sync with the Season

The Shelby County Commission conducted its last meeting of the year on Monday and, in the process, put off until mid-January any decisions relating to two vexing matters — that of Robert Lipscomb’s proposed Tourist Development Zone (TDZ) project for the Fairgrounds and the supposedly dormant but still-simmering issue of rules changes.

The shelving of the TDZ plan was according to plan. Behind the scenes, key members of the commission, Democrats and Republicans, are working on a compromise version that can be presented to the state building commission.

Jackson Baker

Lipscomb meets the press as Cooper-Young consultant David Upton looks on

A successful agreement could be presented as proof not only that the commission supports the TDZ, which is a city project that must be okayed by the state, but that Republican conservatives on the commission, whose counterparts dominate in the General Assembly, are among the plan’s chief supporters.

And things were moving swiftly toward such an agreement, with the GOP’s Heidi Shafer and the Democrats’ Reginald Milton taking leading roles in establishing a commission consensus that, in city planning czar Lipscomb’s words (echoing a title by thriller author Tom Clancy) would resolve “the sum of all our fears.”

Those fears, over the course of several public sessions and private negotiations, had involved three main points:

1) A concern by several commissioners, as well as county Mayor Mark Luttrell, that school funding be insulated from the flow of incremental sales tax revenue to the TDZ’s developmental fund. What is emerging is the concept of a voluntary “set-aside” of what would constitute the schools’ normal portion of incremental sales tax revenue generated within the TDZ.

That amount has been estimated to be as high as $1 million to $2 million annually by Republican Commissioner Steve Basar, who has long been a skeptic regarding the Fairgrounds TDZ (and Lipscomb projects in general) but whose resistance may be softening.

2) An insistence by GOP Commissioner (and former school board member) David Reaves and others that the city of Memphis, as the price of commission support, finally come across with monies long owed the county — notably the court-ordered “maintenance-of-effort” amount stemming from the city council’s decision in 2008 to withhold some $57 million in its customary annual payment to the Memphis school system.

That debt, which is now owed, post-school merger, to Shelby County Schools (SCS), has been the subject of negotiation between the city and SCS, and word is that the wangling principals are within a million dollars or so of a settlement in the general area of $40 million.

3) Guarantees against financial cannibalization by the TDZ — which envisions a combination of athletic facilities and retail enterprises at the Fairgrounds — of other prime commercial and sports areas.

Cases in point are the Cooper-Young and Overton Square shopping/entertainment areas, both of which are in the enlarged TDZ, and such existing athletic operations as Gameday Baseball and the burgeoning sports complex overseen by former University of Memphis basketballer Anfernee Hardaway.

Agreement in all these problem areas by a bipartisan commission majority encompassing both urban and suburban areas is near. It is still far enough away, however, as to ensure slam-dunk passage of a motion to defer action until the January 15th commission meeting. The motion was made formally by Democratic Commissioner Eddie Jones, whose District 11 is directly affected by the proposed TDZ.

On hand Monday to audit proceedings was Lipscomb, who chatted with reporters after the commission’s deferral vote, pointing out that, while commission action on the TDZ was not, strictly speaking, necessary, it would enhance the proposal’s prospects for approval by the state building commission.

Lipscomb welcomed the month-long delay by the commission, saying, “It’s worth taking the time to do things right.”

• The other matter deferred by the commission until January 15th came after a surprise motion by Democrat Walter Bailey to revisit the issue of a rules change for the commission that would basically establish a majority-vote rule for all pending matters, including several that currently require a two-thirds majority vote.

Bailey’s motion was something of a surprise because the commission appeared to have decided on remanding the rules-change issue to an ad hoc committee as one aspect of an agreement to dismiss a lawsuit on the matter brought against Chairman Justin Ford by seven commission members.

The suit had been prompted by Ford’s persistence in rejecting an agenda proposal for the aforementioned rules change from Commissioner Basar. The context of that had been the newly elected commission’s reorganization vote in September, in which Basar, last year’s vice chair, had been denied the chairmanship by a majority vote on behalf of Ford. Though nominally a Democrat, Ford has often joined ranks with the commission’s Republican minority and enjoyed GOP support for the chairmanship.

The bad feeling that persisted from that occasion resulted in a seven-member coalition, comprised of Basar and six Democrats, that challenged Ford’s prerogatives as chairman and, in the judgment of Ford’s Republican supporters, may have also contemplated deposing Ford as chairman.

The objecting members sued Ford in Chancery Court for violation of commission rules in his handling of agenda matters, but Chancellor Jim Kyle ruled that the new commission had not formally adopted rules and needed to do so. In the wash of all that came a compromise agreement in which Ford’s tenure was guaranteed and the rules-change matter was referred to the aforesaid ad hoc committee, which has not yet been activated.

Bailey noted that fact in making his motion to reprise the rules-change matter, but the long and the short of it all was that action was deferred on the matter when Democrat Van Turner, who with Bailey had been co-counsel in the seven commissioners’ lawsuit, called for adherence to the ad hoc committee solution as a matter of good faith.

“We’re all friends here,” said the GOP’s Terry Roland, who, with Shafer, had spoken against Bailey’s motion.

Turner himself will apparently serve as chairman of the ad hoc committee, which presumably will meet and report by the January 15th date.

• Among the other matters dealt with by the commission on Monday was a $14.5 million TIF (tax increment financing plan) to finance the creation of a hotel in the Graceland area. Bailey challenged the plan as “a bad investment [that] could go south,” and one that should have been handled under private auspices.

Bailey asked “who, besides the taxpayers” would be responsible for retiring the bonds on the project if expected proceeds fell short.

James McLaren, attorney for Elvis Presley Enterprises (EPE), assured that EPE would be responsible for any shortfall, and the commission gave its approval to the plan by a 9-1 vote.

(This week’s Flyer “Viewpoint,” by businessman Taylor Berger, p. 17, provides a less than favorable view of both the Graceland proposal and the Fairgrounds TDZ.)

• The local political component of the Christmas season got under way with holiday parties sponsored by the Democratic and Republican parties of Shelby County. Whatever the ratio of political support claimed by the two parties, they managed to provide equally festive occasions.

The Shelby County Democrats’ official party took place last Thursday night, simultaneously with two candidate events related to the forthcoming 2015 city election season.

Councilman Edmund Ford Jr., a candidate for reelection, was the beneficiary of a well-attended fund-raiser at the river-bluff residence of Karl and Gail Schledwitz. Architect Chooch Pickard, who is considering a run for the council, held a preliminary meet-and-greet at the Jay Etkin gallery on Cooper.

Pickard, who espoused a preservationist platform, said he was meditating on a candidacy for the District 5 seat now held by Jim Strickland, if Strickland should run for mayor. Crowd-wise, he undoubtedly benefited from the fact that his event was held just prior to, and next door to, the Democrats’ party at Alchemy.

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Politics Politics Feature

Parties Party and Pols Plan

Memphis mayor A C Wharton has been at the forefront of numerous initiatives of late, including the recently failed referendum for a half-cent sales-tax increase to provide for a citywide pre-K program, this week’s showdown on a prospective purchase by the city of AutoZone Park, and a couple of long-term development projects proposed by housing director Robert Lipscomb that are still hanging fire.

But, whatever his cumulative batting average on these might turn out to be, Wharton has another initiative he has already committed to — that of reelection to the office of mayor in 2015.

The Flyer asked Wharton about his electoral plans during the recent “Strut” fund-raiser held to benefit the Community Legal Center, at which the mayor did a turn as an honorary bartender. Is he, as is generally expected, a candidate for reelection?

“Yes,” he answered, unequivocally.

No surprise, and many were already taking the fact for granted, but it occurred to us that we ought to take formal note of the fact, lest Christmas spirits get the best of some of the hopefuls, several on the current city council, who have visions, down the line, of political plums to go with their sugared ones.

• The Shelby County Commission met in a special called meeting on Monday to vote an end to its litigation against Collierville, Bartlett, and Millington, the three latest suburbs to reach agreement with the Shelby County Schools board on terms for the transfer of school properties to the soon-to-be municipal school districts.

Arlington and Lakeland had previously settled with the board and seen the commission dissolve its lawsuits against them. The only suburb with remaining issues is Germantown, where — despite some indications last week that the new Germantown school board might be willing to settle — enough disagreement has remained in the suburb’s civic and political circles to keep an immediate resolution at bay.

The sticking point is the plan, proposed by SCS superintendent Dorsey Hopson and adopted by his board, to retain three Germantown school properties — Germantown High School, Germantown Middle School, and Germantown Elementary — within the SCS system.

• County commissioner Wyatt Bunker‘s official notice of resignation on Monday, tendered formally in a letter to commission chair James Harvey, ensured that the commission will have at least one vacancy to fill, and, if Bunker has his druthers, it may have another.

The second potential commission vacancy is that of Chris Thomas, who has been asked by Bunker, now serving as mayor of Lakeland, to apply for the job of Lakeland city manager.

But Lakeland’s board of commissioners, which met Monday night, has delayed immediate action on replacing former city manager Robert “Bob” Wherry, who was fired last week. The vacancy has been publicly advertised, with a deadline for applications of December 13th. The board will meet again on December 17th to decide on a hire.

Bunker’s letter to Harvey specified that his resignation would take effect on January 3rd. The commission will be tasked with naming an interim replacement for Bunker — and for Thomas, too, if need be.

Thomas, however, is reportedly thinking about remaining on the commission, at least to the end of his current term, if he ends up with the managerial position at Lakeland — a prospect that might call for a certain amount of recusals on his part.

In any case, the former Probate Court clerk seems to relish his place on the commission — a post he decided to run for in 2010, on the evidence of several prior election years, that the demographic tide had finally created an invincible Democratic majority for countywide elective offices.

Famously, though, things didn’t turn out that way in 2010. Whether it was the fact of hotly contested Republican primary races at the statewide level that year or shortcomings of the local Democratic slate or the impact of what turned out to be a major political shift toward the Republican Party in Tennessee at large, or, as some Democrats still maintain, electoral hanky-panky, Republicans pulled off a sweep of countywide offices.

Thomas saw his probate job go to GOP activist Paul Boyd, and he himself was faced with finding another full-time job. He ended up with a series of stop-gap positions, and, as is well known, he finally had to file a bankruptcy petition.

As is not so well known, Thomas had been eyed by a number of Republicans as a potential replacement for an embattled Rich Holden as administrator of the Shelby County Election Commission, which in recent years has been the subject of virtually nonstop negative publicity concerning this or that glitch.                  

In any case, Bunker is due to depart the commission, and candidates are beginning to line up to fill his District 4 seat on an interim basis. Names being mentioned are those of former Shelby County Schools board member Diane George, banker Kevin Hardin, retired sheriff’s deputy Ron Fittes, mortgage banker George Chism, and Mark Billingsley, a fund-raising specialist for the Methodist Hospital system.

Chism and Fittes have indicated they are active candidates for reconfigured single-district commission positions in the regular 2014 election cycle.

• Yes, it was an informal occasion — one without overt political significance, but the 49th birthday celebration of longtime behind-the-scenes pol David Upton, hastily improvised by his longtime pal John Freeman, drew a fair share of public figures to the party room of Mulan’s in Cooper-Young on Saturday night.

Among those present were former Memphis City Schools (and provisional Shelby County Schools) board members Freda Williams and Sara Lewis; legislators like state representatives Larry Miller and Joe Towns, former state representative Mike Kernell, and former state senator Beverly Marrero; city council members Lee Harris and Harold Collins; county commission chairman James Harvey, county commissioner Justin Ford, and former commissioner J.W. Gibson.

Several of them vented their vocal skills during an extended karaoke session, but most were outdone by celebrated opera singer Kallen Esperian, whose highlight was probably her duet with Upton on “Fly Me to the Moon.”

• Speaking of karaoke, it seems to be the fashion these days, at least among Democrats. The Shelby County Democratic Party will hold its annual Christmas Party this Friday, December 6th, from 6 to 10 p.m. at the Ice Bar and Grill on Hacks Cross Road, and, as was the case last year, karaoke will be the party motif.

Official “hosts” for that event will be city councilman Myron Lowery and county commissioner Steve Mulroy, both inveterate karaokans.

Another annual Democratic event is the party sponsored by the Democratic Women of Shelby County, to be held this year on Saturday, December 14th, from 4 to 7 p.m. at its usual venue, the home of Bob and Myra Stiles on South McLean Boulevard.

Republicans, too, have abundant celebrations in mind. Their Yule season kicks off on Wednesday of this week with a Christmas buffet under the auspices of the Republican Women of Purpose at TPC Southwind ($25 a head, and reservations required).

The other main holiday event by a GOP women’s organization will be the Christmas tea held by the Shelby County Republican Women at Windyke Country Club on Tuesday, December 10th, at 11 a.m.

Shelby County Young Republicans have a “Holiday Happy Hour” scheduled for 5:30 to 7 p.m. on Monday at the Tower Room on Poplar; the East Shelby Republican Club will hold its annual Christmas Potluck supper on Tuesday night at the Pickering Center in Germantown; and, on Sunday, December 15th, the Shelby County Republican Party is having a “Holiday Open House” at the Clubhouse at Devonshire Gardens in Germantown.