Tag: Steve Cohen

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Editorial Opinion

Good Start for Lee Harris

Say this for Lee Harris: The man gathers no moss. The University of Memphis law professor and state senator-elect from District 29 is still keeping his City Council seat warm, a participant in every significant debate and hands-on in every decision reached there. And, though he doesn’t formally begin his new job as state Senate Democratic leader until January, Harris has already begun to exercise his authority on the statewide scene.    

        On Tuesday, as Presdent Obama was on his way to Nashville for a speech on the immigration issue, Harris issued a statement of greeting: “As people of a state known for its Southern hospitality, we could not be more proud to welcome those immigrants who choose to make Tennessee their home, and to welcome President Obama here today. We thank those immigrants for their many contributions to our state, just as we thank the president for sharing his views and addressing this very important issue.”

Harris’ statement of welcome was well-considered, generous,
and — most importantly — forthright on a sensitive
issue regarding
which too few public officials, either Democratic or Republican, had much useful to say during the recent election season.

As anyone who has observed City Council proceedings over the past four years knows, Harris is seldom at a loss for words. He is even prone — to tell it like it is — to jump the gun on an issue once in a while. In this case, and, we trust, in many more to come, these tendencies (which, like all other human attributes, have both a high side and a low side) will serve Harris and his constituents well, for political rhetoric in Tennessee, once a haven for redoubtable orators, has taken a distinct turn for the worse — toward the mealy-mouthed or the spiteful, depending on which side of an issue was being taken.

Witness: U.S. Representative Diane Black (R-6th) accused the president of having “chosen Nashville as a destination to publicly thumb his nose at the American electorate that just rebuked him in the last election” and said, further,”The Obama presidency has been a disaster and can’t end soon enough.” State Represntative Andy Holt (R-Dresden) said: “Enjoy your stay, and we soon hope to see you in court soon.” By comparison, the often vitriolic U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn (R-7th) was almost courtly: “I share in the frustration Americans have with this president and will continue to do everything in my power to stop his executive amnesty. Enough is enough.”

All this as a response to a presidential executive order that cracks down on the hiring of undocumented workers and strengthens border security, while it provides a path to “earned citizenship” with numerous legal hoops for serious and productive immigrants to jump through.

As for the chorus of Democratic defenders of Mr. Obama… Congressmen Jim Cooper of Nashville and Steve Cohen of our own bailiwick accompanied Obama on his trip to Tennessee. Otherwise, vocal Democratic support of the president is about as non-evident as it was during the recent fall campaign. But at least Harris didn’t keep us waiting for his appropriate and on-point remarks. Keep it up, Mr. Harris. We could use a few more politicians willing to shoot straight.

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News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall 1344

White Castle

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Memphis) has had some good ideas in his time. We’re glad he finally got Congress to apologize for slavery, and it’s really troubling to think about how many lives might be lost every day in dangerously fast-moving convenience store lines if Cohen hadn’t fought for the popular state lottery. But Cohen raised a few eyebrows last week when he asked Acting Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy about recent White House security failures. “Would a, uh, a moat. Water. Six feet around, be kind of attractive and effective?” he asked.

“It may be,” Clancy answered, weighing the merits of medieval castle fortification. Cohen later told NBC News that he looked up the definition of “moat” and realized his vision for a protective water barrier was something else entirely. Then Cohen walked back his walkback in a tweet to NBC’s Andrew James. “Upon further research I was right,” Cohen wrote. “Moat need not be medieval 360. Look up zoo moat. Trench. Memphis Zoo moat is what I recalled.” The Congressman failed to mention something else they have at the Memphis Zoo that would definitely discourage would be fence-jumpers: Bears.

Verbatim

WMC-TV collected man-on-the-scene responses to news of yet another Elvis-related auction. Presley fan Lewis Clark, who may need to get out more, had this to say: “If you can have the ability to buy Elvis Presley’s driver’s license and have it in your house, it just doesn’t get any better than that.”

Illness As Metaphor

Here is a photo of WREG’s Stephanie Scurlock modeling the season’s hottest fashion trend — Ebola suits.

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Cover Feature News

A “Change” Election

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Jackson Baker

Lawyer Lang Wiseman and Supreme Court Justice-designate Holly Kirby make the case for Amendment 2 on judicial appointment

It is one of the laments of local political junkies that the number of seriously contested candidate races on the November 4th ballot is somewhat restricted, to say the least. Oh, they exist here and there — in a hot race for mayor of Germantown between Mike Palazzolo and George Brogdon, for one example, and one in Bartlett  between incumbent Bubba Pleasant and challenger Mick Wright, for another.

And, of course, Charlotte Bergmann and George Flinn, two Republican never-say-die types would insist on the competitive nature of their races — for the 9th District congressional seat and the District 30 state Senate seat, respectively. And so, for that matter, would Dwayne Thompson, the valiant Democrat who is running against incumbent state Representative Steve McManus in House District 96, one of the reddest Republican areas of Shelby County.

There is, moreover, a race of sorts in the mainly rural 8th Congressional District, which these days includes a generous slice of eastern Shelby County within its far-flung western-Tennessee sprawl. One Wes Bradley, a sheriff’s deputy from Paris, up near the Kentucky border, traveled into Germantown (yes, Germantown) not long ago to make a rousing speech to a group of Democrats (yes, Democrats) in support of his race against well-heeled Republican Stephen Fincher of Frog Jump, who seeks a third term in a district that, like so much of Tennessee, switched abruptly to GOP control in 2010 and hasn’t yet looked back.

Most political observers find it hard to share the optimism of Bergmann, Flinn, Thompson, and Bradley, since each is bucking a well-established tide favoring the opposition, but there is a caveat that needs to be taken seriously — which is that the very paucity of competitive races on the Shelby County ballot would almost seem to put the coming vote in the category of a special election, with all the attendant lack of public interest that could be exploited by a determined stealth candidate.

Case in point: Current Republican Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland is as red a Republican as they make ’em, and he very nearly upset Ophelia Ford in a 2005 special election contest for the state Senate seat vacated by the Democrat’s brother John Ford, a Tennessee Waltz indictee.

Factors such as money and organization could help offset the expected outcome to some degree. In his race against Democrat Sara Kyle for the seat just vacated by her husband, newly elected Shelby County Chancellor Jim Kyle, Flinn, a famously wealthy businessman/physician, can self-finance ad infinitum as he has in several prior races. And Bergmann may have a modest amount of financial support, too, though nothing to compare with the resources of incumbent Democratic Congressman Steve Cohen, a formidable candidate and veteran fourth-termer who has an unspent $1 million or more carried over from previous campaigns.  

But what really makes the hopes of such long-odds challengers look unrealistic is the fact that there are indeed some choices on the November 4th ballot that should jack up the vote totals enough to reduce the prospect for any freak outcomes.

John Jay Hooker, sworn foe of Amendment 2

No one expects Republican Governor Bill Haslam to be seriously troubled by Democratic gubernatorial nominee Charlie Brown, a retired East Tennessee construction worker who has the late cartoonist Charles Schulz to thank for the name recognition that got him through a crowded but little-noticed Democratic primary. Brown will do well to stay even with such other also-runnings as Isa Infante of the Green Party and legendary — if lapsed from his glory days — independent John Jay Hooker.

But Democrat Gordon Ball, the successful Knoxville lawyer who is challenging veteran GOP veteran Lamar Alexander for the latter’s U.S. Senate seat, is wealthy enough to do some self-financing of his own, and he displayed some chops in a hotly contested primary battle with fellow Knoxville attorney Terry Adams. 

Alexander is, as they say, highly favored (and is in possession of several million dollars in campaign cash, to boot), but Ball cites for the record both that the incumbent finished below 50 percent in his August primary against Flinn and the Tea Party backed Joe Carr and that a current poll shows Alexander to be still below 50 percent — though leading — in his race against Ball, Libertarian candidate Tom Emerson, and a passel of others.

(For more on the U.S. Senate race and assorted other contests, see “Alexander and Ball in Heated Tennessee Senate Race” in this weeki’s “Politics” column.)

CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENTS

Jackson Baker

Proponents of Amendment 1 with passer-by at Bartlett Festival

Again, though, the galvanizing factor in this election — and that which makes a meager special-election turnout unlikely — lies in the voting for four proposed amendments to the Tennessee Constitution, three of which are potential bringers of serious, even transformational, change to the state.

By far the most controversial of the proposed ballot issues is Amendent 1, which proponents — who include Governor Haslam and other influential members of the predominant Republican state establishment — say is necessary to amend a 2000 state Supreme Court ruling that affords more protection of abortion rights in Tennessee than the federal courts allow for the nation at large.

Opponents of the amendment — who include the chief figures of the Tennessee Democratic Party, including Ball, Cohen, and state party Chairman Roy Herron — see Amendment 1 as nothing less than the proverbial “slippery slope,” designed to turn back the clock on abortion rights or ultimately to discard them altogether.

Even some neutral observers find troubling the Amendment’s last clause — which expressly opens the way to legislative revision of the accustomed preconditions for abortion in cases of “rape, incest, or threats to the life of the mother.”

In any case, the amount of money invested on the issue seems destined to rise well above a million dollars for either side, with a major player being Planned Parenthood — which in recent years has been fighting for its life, literally, against a hostile state GOP establishment bent on defunding or disempowering it. 

Jackson Baker

Former state Senator Beverly Marrero makes the case against Amendment 1

(For a fuller discussion of Amendment 1,

and some of the issues attending it, see Bianca Phillips’ story, p. 21.)

Amendment 2, which concerns the mode of appointing state appellate judges, is seen as equally crucial by its adherents, who include numerous legal lights and an impressively bipartisan cast of characters (both Haslam and his Democratic predecessor, Phil Bredesen, are making the rounds for the amendment).

Much like Amendment 3, which would explicitly ban a state income tax, Amendment 2 is designed to eliminate an ambiguity in the state Constitution, which stipulates that appellate judges must be “elected by qualified voters of the state.” To those who take the Constitution literally — like the aforementioned Democratic maverick Hooker, once a leading political figure but now an almost hermetically obsessive one — that means to vote for appellate judges in the same way that Tennesseans vote for state trial judges.

Others believed in the legality of the state’s current “Tennessee Plan” — among them, the members of a special Supreme Court panel (including two Memphians, lawyer Monica Wharton and Criminal Court Judge Bobby Carter) that, earlier this year, validated it. The plan allowed for a special nominating commission to present names to the governor, who in turn could select from the names or call for a new list. Whoever got appointed would be subject to a statewide yes/no retention vote at eight-year intervals.

Amendment 2 keeps to the same general format, though it eliminates the provision for a nominating commission and adds a new one requiring legislative approval of a gubernatorial appointment. Without an adverse vote by both chambers of the General Assembly within 60 days, the appointment becomes final.

The veto power given the legislature was the factor that garnered approval of the amendment from such current supporters as Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey and state Senate Judiciary Chairman Brian Kelsey of Germantown, the latter of whom is Amendment 2’s chief sponsor. Supporters of Amendment 2 warn that, if it is rejected, direct election, which has had its backers and which opponents warn would bring both big money and high-stakes politics to the appellate selection process, will once again be in the legislative hopper, with good prospects of success.

In something of a hat trick, Kelsey is also the main legislative sponsor of Amendment 3, which would ban a state income tax and a state payroll tax and potentially lead to the abolition of the currently legal Hall Income Tax on interest and While essentially acquiescent in the case of Amendment 2, Kelsey has been nothing short of zealous in shepherding Amendment 3 through the complicated process of approval by both legislative chambers in consecutive sessions in order to qualify for the ballot.

Though a state income tax was seriously pushed more than a decade ago by former Governor Don Sundquist, a Republican, and by the Democratic legislative leadership of the time, it aroused grass-roots resistance bordering on the fanatical and was finally blocked in July 2001 by a bona fide mob riot on the grounds and in the halls of the state Capitol.

Though the idea of an income tax still has its defenders — to some degree, in both parties — they are so clearly in the minority that virtually no one doubts overwhelming success for Amendment 3.

After all the sturm-und-drang involved in the first three amendments, the last one, Amendment 4, comes off as inconsequential and even a bit quaint. Basically, it loosens constitutional restrictions on state lotteries to permit charity raffles on behalf of veterans’ groups, and the chief threat to its success is an existing constitutional wrinkle that ties success or failure of an amendment to the number of votes cast in the gubernatorial race. 

Basically, for a constitutional amendment to pass, it must garner a majority of the votes that is at least equal to the number of votes that would constitute a majority in the race for governor.

Given the essential no-contest aspect of the 2014 governor’s race, pro- and con- activists in the case of a particular amendment have advocated strategies making use of this constitutional quirk. Those wishing to defeat an amendment are being counseled to vote for somebody, anybody for governor at all costs, thereby raising the threshold for the amendment’s approval.

Conversely, proponents of an amendment might well take a pass on the governor’s race, thereby lowering the threshold of success. OTHER BALLOT INITIATIVES

Wine-in-Grocery-Stores: After dint of much struggle in many legislative sessions, the wine-bibbers of Tennessee finally got the General Assembly to uncork the opportunity for them to purchase their fermented grape delights in grocery stores as well as in liquor stores per se.

There are several catches, though. One is that localities that already have legalized retail liquor sales or bars and that want to permit such diversity are obliged to pass through two hoops — first, the establishment of a referendum on this fall’s ballot sounding out voter opinion on the merits of such an expansion of wine sales; secondly, the passage of the referendum. 

Six of Shelby County’s legal municipalities — Memphis, Bartlett, Collierville, Germantown, Arlington, and Millington — are holding such referenda, couched in simple “for” or “against” choices on the question of “legal sale of wine at retail stores” within city limits. (Voters residing in the county’s other municipality, Lakeland, will find an alternate referendum on their ballot, on whether to approve “the legal sale of alcoholic beverages for consumption on the premises in city of Lakeland.” Should this referendum pass, Lakeland will qualify for a wine-in-grocery-stores referendum of its own on some future ballot.)

In the event a municipality should pass the referendum enabling wine sales in grocery establishments, several other catches come into play. One is that the grocery-store sales may not begin until July 1,

2016. Another mandates that retail food establishments within 500 feet of an established liquor store must wait another year, until July 1, 2017.

Yet another catch — a concession to big-box retailers — is that only grocery stores sized 1,200 square feet or greater may sell wine when the time comes.

Meanwhile, the liquor lobby, which has held sway in Tennessee virtually forever, won the right as of July 1st of this year to sell commercial beers, which are already available at most of them.                

Civil-service-reform: An initiative on the ballot for Memphis voters asks them to decide whether to “1) increase the number of Civil Service Commission members; 2) make administrative updates to civil service hearing processes and procedures; and 3) Allow the Director of Personnel to consider performance as a measure for personnel evaluations.” Enough said.

Making Sense of Amendment 1

A guide to the history and rhetoric behind the ballot initiative that affects abortion rights.

By Bianca Phillips

 

“Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a right to abortion or requires the funding of an abortion. The people retain the right through their elected state representatives and state senators to enact, amend, or repeal statutes regarding abortion, including, but not limited to, circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest or when necessary to save the life of the mother.”

           

That’s the language Tennessee voters will see on the ballot for Amendment 1 on Election Day. But what does that mean?

In a nutshell, a “Yes” vote would amend the Tennessee Constitution to allow the General Assembly to enact new laws or amend existing laws to further restrict a woman’s right to an abortion.

They could pass bans on abortion after 12 weeks of pregnancy, as some other states have done. Or they could require that all second trimester abortions be performed in hospitals. They could even go so far as to restrict abortions for women who have been raped or women who may die giving birth because of some health condition or complication.

Owen Phillips, a local OB/GYN appears in a television ad for the “Vote No on 1” campaign. In that commercial, she shares a story about a patient who had cancer and was told she might die if she kept her baby. That patient chose not to have an abortion, and she lost her life.

Screeenshot from ‘vote no on 1’ commercial

“I chose that story because whether or not she continued the pregnancy or had an abortion didn’t matter. What mattered is that she had a chance to sit down with her family and make the decision that was right for her,” Phillips said. “I think most people listening to that story would say, ‘Oh my gosh, I would not have chosen that.’ They see that their decision may have been different, and this law would take that decision-making out of their hands.”

Since the General Assembly has tried before (and failed, thanks to a U.S. Supreme Court decision), they could pass mandatory 72-hour waiting periods between a woman’s initial consultation with an abortion provider and her procedure. That would make obtaining abortions more difficult for women who are forced to travel across the state or from other states since they would have to take multiple days off work (and spend more money on travel expenses) for the entire process.

While Roe v. Wade provides some federal protection for abortion rights, it has been challenged before, and it could be challenged again in the future.

“I think [state legislators] will pass something that says abortion becomes illegal in Tennessee if Roe v. Wade is overturned,” said Ashley Coffield, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region.

A “No” vote on Amendment 1 would leave things just as they are. But how are they? The “Vote Yes on 1” camp often touts that abortions in Tennessee are largely unregulated. But that’s not exactly true.

Tennessee has had parental consent laws in place for minors seeking abortions since the 1990s. And in 2012, the state legislature passed a law requiring doctors in reproductive health clinics to have hospital-admitting privileges in order for those clinics to provide abortions. When that restriction passed in 2012, two of the state’s abortion clinics were forced to shut down. Abortion in Tennessee, said Coffield, is “highly regulated.”

“We have to have a surgery treatment center license at Planned Parenthood, and we are subject to licensure and inspection by the Tennessee Department of Health,” Coffield added. 

The licensing issue is a major talking point for proponents of Amendment 1. One who makes the case for the amendment is Lorene Steffes, a board member of Yeson1.org and the organization’s director of community education.

Steffes said in September, when announcing her campaign’s county chairs: “We even lack the legal basis for licensing and inspecting facilities where abortions are performed. The severity of this matter has inspired these 95 leaders to step forward to win Amendment 1 in November, and we are grateful for their dedication and support.”

Coffield says that the theory of abortions being unregulated in Tennessee is based on a state Court of Appeals ruling regarding licensure of ambulatory surgical treatment centers.

“The regulations in Tennessee for ambulatory surgical treatment centers say any health center that does a substantial number of abortions has to have a certificate of need from the state and a license and must be an ambulatory surgery center,” Coffield said. “But what is a substantial number of abortions?

“Nobody knows what that means, so a private physician [Gary Boyle] challenged that, and he won. And now he can do abortions in his private practices [in Nashville and Bristol] and not be a surgery center. This is where our opposition gets the idea that abortion is unregulated because private physicians can do it in their practices, and they don’t have to have a surgery treatment center license,” Coffield said.

That’s a loophole that Coffield said could easily be closed by the state without having a large effect on women’s access to abortion.

Tennessee currently has strong abortion rights protections in place. In the 1990s, the Tennessee General Assembly passed four restrictions on abortion — parental consent, a 72-hour waiting period, a requirement that second trimester abortions had to be performed in hospitals, and a requirement that physicians counsel patients with a script crafted by the state government.

In 2000, Planned Parenthood in Memphis and Nashville challenged those restrictions, and only the parental consent requirement was upheld. The other three were struck down on the basis that the Tennessee Constitution guarantees the right to privacy, even when it relates to a woman’s right to terminate her pregnancy.

Categories
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.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fed Program Puts Little Military Gear in Memphis

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Military fighting gear has made its way from the Department of Defense to the Memphis Police Department (MPD) over the past decade. But Mayor A C Wharton said the city has only “what we need” with access to more gear if a situation arises. 

When officers from the Ferguson Police Department in Missouri clashed with protesters there earlier this month, the nation got a good look at some of the gear that has flowed from the military to local police agencies over the past decade. Police in Ferguson drove armored vehicles, wore body armor, and pointed high-powered rifles at crowds of protestors. The sights made federal leaders uncomfortable, and they are promising action. 

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen, of Memphis, demanded a House hearing on the militarization of police forces two weeks ago. U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, of Missouri, promised a similar Senate hearing next month. Obama administration officials said they will review the federal military surplus program and training programs that go with them.

Since 2004, MPD has received five automatic rifles, two boats, and two armored personnel carriers from the Defense Department’s 1033 surplus program, according to the Tennessee Department of General Services. 

Jackson Baker

Memphis Police don body armor for last year’s KKK rally.

MPD public information officer Sgt. Karen Rudolph said the M14 rifles are kept in storage and have never been used. 

The two bridge erection boats, she said, are “basic, flat-bottom, metal boats” that would be used to patrol the Mississippi River, the Port of Memphis, or to rescue passengers from a river boat. But the boats sit in surplus storage, she said.

The MPD’s two armored personnel carriers, which look basically like Army tanks, were built in 1979, Rudolph said, but the department has never used them since they arrived here in 2004. MPD has them, she said, if the need arose to carry officers into a dangerous zone with an active shooter. Also, the carriers’ tracks can travel over terrain too rough for trucks or ATVs. 

Wharton said he oversaw the acquisition of all of the surplus military gear here when he served as the district chair of the Tennessee Homeland Security Council. Though he said he “was a bit concerned about it” at the time, he didn’t see “what I would call excesses.”

“Perhaps [using military gear] ratchets things up, things that wouldn’t reach such a fever pitch if it weren’t for the introduction of that kind of foreboding, frightening equipment that makes folks want to take you on, quite frankly,” Wharton said. 

He preferred to keep police responses “toned down,” he said, but noted that the city could get more heavy response gear from neighboring communities if it was needed. 

But the show of force displayed last year during the Ku Klux Klan’s protest at the Shelby County Courthouse was anything but toned down. It was “overwhelming,” according to an on-the-scene report from Memphis Flyer reporter John Branston.

“There were hundreds of officers in riot gear, scores of vehicles, canine units, horse-mounted units, TACT units, armored vehicles, motorcycles, fire trucks, mobile command posts, and enough firepower to repel, or at least mount a fair challenge, to General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Virginia,” Branston reported.

Rudolph said she would not compare MPD officers to those in Fergurson but defended last year’s response.

“However, as seen during the KKK rally, the Memphis Police Department is adequately equipped with the personnel, equipment, and training needed to address any incident that may occur within our city,” she said. “Our primary goal is to keep our citizens safe.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Cohen, Memphis Activists Turn Attention to Ferguson

CREDIT: Memphis United Facebook Page

U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen of Memphis signed on to a letter issued last week demanding a hearing on the use of force by local law enforcement officials during the protests in Ferguson, Missouri.

Cohen, and Reps. John Conyers and Robert Scott issued the letter to Rep. Bob Goodlatte, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, after Ferguson police broke up a protest last week with “brutal force: confronting demonstrators in riot gear and armored vehicles, arresting journalists, and firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd.”

The protests in Ferguson, a St. Louis suburb, were sparked when local police shot and killed an unarmed African-American teenager, Michael Brown, more than a week ago. 

Protests there briefly calmed after the initial show of force by police officers outfitted in riot gear and driving armored vehicles. Security of the protest was handed over to the Missouri state police last week, who shed the riot gear and walked among the protestors. Violence picked up again Sunday and Monday nights as some protesters threw Molotov cocktails at police and several people were shot. The National Guard was called in to Ferguson on Monday. Cohen and others want an investigation into the events “as soon as possible.”

“These incidents raise concerns that local law enforcement is out of control, and, instead of protecting the safety and civil liberties of the residents of Ferguson, is employing tactics that violate the rights of the citizens and hinder the ability of the press to report on their actions,” the letter reads. “This situation requires immediate congressional scrutiny.”

The congressmen want to discuss “what appears to be a pattern of the use of deadly force by police against unarmed African Americans in cities around the nation.” They also want an investigation into the arrest of two journalists — Wesley Lowery of The Washington Post and Ryan J. Reilly of The Huffington Post. Finally, Cohen and the others said they want to address the “extensive militarization of state and local police.”

“In Ferguson, why do local police dress in military-style uniforms and body armor, carry short-barreled 5.56-mm rifles based on the M4 carbine, and patrol neighborhoods in massive armored vehicles?” the letter reads. “In all likelihood, the decision to adopt a military posture only served to aggravate an already tense situation and to commit the police to a military response.”

The protests in Ferguson have sparked action in Memphis. Vigils, gatherings, and marches sprang up all over town last week at parks, major intersections, and the National Civil Rights Museum.

Memphis United Facebook Page

Supporters took to the main intersections along the Poplar corridor on Monday holding signs that read “#handsup” and “#dontshoot,” Twitter hashtags inspired by Ferguson protestors. That protest was organized in part by Memphis United, the Mid-South Peace & Justice Center, and others.

Memphis United wants to use the energy surrounding the events in Ferguson to push for a slate of changes in Memphis. The group wants body cameras on all local police officers, action on the city’s backlog of untested rape kits, and an end of militarization of the Memphis Police Department and private security officers, among other things.

“We are all outraged by the events in Ferguson and around the United States, where we see people of color disproportionately targeted by police violence,” says the group’s Facebook page. “We should be outraged, and our voices should be heard.”

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Insularity Breeds Defeat for the Democrats

CREDIT: JB

JB

Last March the Shelby County Democrats’ executive committee formally censured several party members for consorting with Republicans.

“I wish those Democrats would go ahead and just sign up and be Republicans. Go ahead and join the party because we don’t need you. You don’t support us.” — Bryan Carson, August 8, 2014

Sure, this day-after-election statement about Democratic crossover voters by the youthful Shelby County Democratic chairman — quickly withdrawn and apologized for within a day — reflected the strain and frustration of a losing race. But it also contained evidence of the virus that has infected the local party for years — and that reached the life-threatening stage this year.

The fact is that, over the past generation, many a Democrat has gone ahead and just “signed up” to be a Republican. The throngs that swell the annual functions of the local GOP — the Lincoln Day Dinner, the Master Meal, and the other large-scale affairs that require significant ballroom space — are loaded with former Democrats, many of them office-holders.

The crowds that attend the Kennedy Day Dinner and other gala functions of the Democrats — the same Democrats who used to number most of the county’s movers and shakers — grow smaller year by year, as do the venues rented to put them on.

Four years ago, Shelby County’s Democrats, conscious of demographic population numbers that seemed to guarantee them an electoral majority, girded for a sweep in the August county election and got one; only it was they who were on the losing end of it.

What happened? One explanation, still popular among the party’s strategists, was that Republican turnout was inflated by the intensely competitive race going on that year among Republicans in the 8th Congressional District and, even more so, by a governor’s race featuring three GOP candidates who spent large and seemed to be making Shelby County a second home.

Another explanation, still widely accepted among Democratic activists and on the street, was that fraudulent or incompetent oversight of the election by the GOP-dominated Election Commission had cheated Democrats out of several possible victories.

 In the election just concluded on August 7th, neither of these conditions applied: It was the Democrats who had competitive races — for the 9th District congressional seat between victorious incumbent Steve Cohen and challenger Ricky Wilkins and for the U.S. Senate nomination between impressive newcomers Gordon Ball, the winner, and Terry Adams, the near-thing loser.

Thanks to significant pressure from local Democrats and their governmental allies, federal monitors were on hand to prevent any possible hanky panky at the polls.

Yet it was the same old same old when the votes were counted. Republicans had won everything except for the assessor’s race, won by respected  Democratic incumbent Cheyenne Johnson, who kept her campaign mostly separate from the “coordinated campaign” run by the Shelby County Democratic Party and who was, in effect, having to reenact her off-year victory of two years earlier, thanks to a change in the state election calendar.

Of course, the outcome could be partly explained by an apparently disproportionate turnout, especially in early voting, by white suburban Republicans and a lesser-than-expected turnout by inner-city black Democrats. But that argument amounts to what logicians call a tautology, which is a rhetorical first cousin to circular reasoning — as in: “The reason for the lower Democratic vote was that fewer Democrats came to the polls.”

And the fact is, there was more to it than that. Of the Democrats who did come to the polls, it is estimated that perhaps 20 percent of them cast their votes not for party mates but for Republican candidates on the ballot.

These are the ones — the difference-makers castigated by Chairman Carson the morning after — who swung the election. His implication was that these voters were disloyal, and demands for absolute loyalty had all too clearly dominated local Democratic proceedings in the lengthy run-up to the August election.

“Disloyalty” by party members had in fact become a third reason cited by disgruntled Democrats for the election debacle of 2010 — and grounds for punitive action.

Last September, the device of censure was trotted out by the party executive committee to stigmatize James Harvey, chairman of the county commission, for allegedly colluding with GOP commissioners on committee assignments.

Then, in January, at what was a reasonably successful Kennedy Day Dinner, Carol Chumney, the former state representative and city councilmember, delivered an impromptu oration against what she called “Republi-Democratic” behavior — specifically the refusal of “one of our congressmen” to support her in a losing special election race in 2012 for district attorney general.

The congressman in question was Cohen, who had stayed out of that 2012 race. Other prominent Democrats — notably City Councilmen Jim Strickland and Shea Flinn — had actively backed Republican Amy Weirich. In any case, the applause for Chumney’s remarks seemed to transcend particular cases.

Then in early March, several prominent Democrats — former Chairman Sidney Chism, state legislators Reginald Tate and Joe Towns, and well-known Whitehaven activist Hazel Moore — were formally censured by the local party’s executive committee for “disloyal” actions.  

Chism’s offense was that of being partial to Republican Sheriff Bill Oldham and discouraging a run for sheriff by eventual Democratic nominee Bennie Cobb. The other three were cited for courtesy visits to a fund-raiser for Republican Circuit Court Clerk Jimmy Moore. 

Moore, a onetime Democrat noted for his friendships (and campaign donations) across party lines, was a case in point — a nominal Republican who, like other elected county officials, was forced to choose a party label after the advent of local party primaries in the early 1990s.     

The Republican Party, which had already swelled its ranks statewide by attracting erstwhile Democrats to the fold, had begun doing the same thing locally — actively soliciting Democrats and pointedly discounting their former votes and political activity.

For whatever reason, Democrats had taken the opposite course, erecting rigid obstacles to potential members and party candidates with even a hint of Republicanism in their past. 

When, in the wake of the Tennessee Waltz scandal of 2005, Matt Kuhn was elected local Democratic chairman at the head of a reform slate, he was forced by a vocal minority to rescind invitations to interested Republicans who wanted to attend that year’s Kennedy Day Dinner.

And that attitude has persisted and even hardened in the exclusionary actions of election year 2014 — one manifestation of which was the embarrassingly rowdy session in which the Democratic Executive Committee voted its endorsements for judicial candidates, making choices so exclusively based on hearsay claims of Democratic loyalty that numerous deserving candidates vetted by a party screening committee were summarily rejected.

That most of these endorsees went down to defeat in the election was consistent with the fate of the party’s nominees in other races, which, more often than not, were based on insular thinking and devoid of significant efforts at outreach.

It is no coincidence that the series of self-destructive actions that damned the once-promising election hopes of Juvenile Court Clerk candidate Henri Brooks began with a County Commission session in which Brooks brow-beat an Hispanic witness and seemed to impute Klan membership to a white colleague.  

 Then there was the promise of “Judge” Joe Brown, the party’s candidate for district attorney general, to teach the the county’s white population, now out-numbered by African Americans, “how to be a good minority.”

That was actually one of the least impolitic of Brown’s presumably well-intentioned off-the-cuff public remarks, but it reflected a reliance on sheer census numbers that seemed to infect the whole Democratic ticket.

Democratic mayoral candidate Deidre Malone, who resisted such thinking, lacked the funding to escape the back-wash of it and lost by a larger margin than need have been to the GOP’s placidly centered Mark Luttrell. Ditto with Juvenile Court judge candidate Tarik Sugarmon in his formally nonpartisan race with Republican Dan Michael.

Other Democratic candidates —  Wanda Halbert, Rhonda Banks, William Chism — fell just short.

One highly tempting conclusion is that the 20 percent of Democrats who forsook the ticket included significant numbers of African Americans as well as whites. But that’s another story.

To be continued.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From the Editor: Beyond Binary Thinking

There have been numerous analyses and breakdowns of the results of last week’s election in Shelby County. The bottom line is that Republicans once again waxed the Democrats in the contests for most local offices, from county mayor on down to lesser functionary titles such as assessor, trustee, and recorder of deeds.

The thing that seems puzzling on the surface is that Shelby County is majority African-American, and Democrats outnumber Republicans by a substantial margin. The Republicans ran no black candidates. So why did the GOP dominate the local ballot?

Some black Democrats blamed white members of their party for “crossing over” and voting for Republicans. They were castigated because they weren’t loyal to the party. The local Democratic party chairman said in a post-election interview that crossover voters should just go ahead and “join the Republicans.” He later apologized for that short-sighted sentiment.

This muddle-headedness is a result of old-school, binary thinking: dividing the electorate into arbitrary categories of black or white, Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative. The problem with that is that fewer and fewer of us are binary creatures. The same electorate that reelected a white Republican, Mark Luttrell, as county mayor, twice elected a black Democrat, A C Wharton, to that same office just a few years back. Steve Cohen got 66 percent of the vote in a majority black district.

Binary thinking doesn’t take into account that we’re no longer divisible into two neat, predictable packages, one black, one white. Voters are getting smarter. Ophelia Ford got trounced; Henri Brooks and Judge Joe Brown got stomped. They were rejected by thousands of Democrats and Republicans, black and white. And there’s a Hispanic vote now, which seems totally overlooked by both parties.

Sure, there are those who’d vote for a “yellow dog” if the party label is right. But the era of party loyalty trumping all else is in rapid decline. Most of us are independents with a small “i.” We don’t care what party holds the office of recorder of deeds, we just want the job done right. To turn that office over, you need a compelling candidate with a compelling message. (Suggestion: “Lemme record your deeds!”) But the fact is, if the guy in office hasn’t screwed up, he’ll likely get reelected.

In local politics, the only people still keeping that binary score of party winners and losers are those running the political parties and those who report on the process. If the Democrats want to win more elections, they need to start respecting the electorate’s intelligence. They need to find more candidates like Lee Harris and Cheyenne Johnson and Steve Cohen — and they need to stop thinking in black and white.

Categories
Opinion The BruceV Blog

Election Results Give Reason for Optimism

It’s been a long time since I woke on the day after an election in Shelby County feeling as optimistic and grateful as I do today. Let me count the ways:

First, my state senator, the mentally and physically impaired embarrassment, Ophelia Ford, was soundly defeated in the Democratic primary by Lee Harris, a smart, young law school professor with, I suspect, a bright political future hereabouts. This was the result I wanted most from this election cycle. Win.

Across the state in Knoxville, GOP primary voters turned out in droves to demolish the re-election bid of lunatic state senator Stacey Campfield, aka “Mr. Don’t Say Gay.” Thanks, Knoxville. Love ya. For grins, check out Campfield’s reaction to his defeat on his blog.

Perhaps the result that surprised me most was the defeat, statewide, of Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey’s attempted purge of three Tennessee Supreme Court justices. The upshot: Ron spent a few hundred thousand dollars to let Tennesseans know the names of three Supreme Court justices. Epic fail. Couldn’t happen to a sleazier jackass. This vote, and Lamar Alexander’s victory over anti-immigration nut Joe Carr, gave me some real hope that the Tea Party tide may have finally turned in Tennessee. I hope so, anyway.

Joe Brown and Henri Brooks were resoundingly trounced in their races for attorney general and Juvenile Court clerk, respectively. I’ve had my issues with Brown’s opponent, Amy Weirich, but Brown, like Brooks, simply self-destructed, making Weirich the winner by default, and by a landslide.

To recount, Memphis purged itself of Ophelia Ford, and along with other Shelby County voters, soundly rejected two potential lightning rods/potential embarrassments for public office.

On the other hand, Germantown and Collierville re-elected self-promoting loon Brian Kelsay and public drunk Curry Todd to the state legislature — without opposition. Shades of Ophelia Ford. The next time you hear some suburbanite snarking on Memphis politicians, remind them to check their own backyard.

And I was glad to see Steve Cohen retain his 9th District Congressional seat. Some advice: If local Democrats want to win county-wide races, they would do well to figure out how to organize behind Cohen and his presidential support and national clout, instead of lobbing a futile and divisive primary challenge at him every two years. The muddle-headedness of the SCDP is self-defeating.

There also needs to be serious state legislation passed to crack down on the illicit fake “official ballot” business hereabouts. It’s scandalous. But, all in all, not bad results to wake up to, IMO.

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Letter From the Editor: Endorsement Gate

“Lamar was proven right.” That’s the tagline at the end of one of Senator Lamar Alexander’s political ads. It follows a clip of Alexander and President Obama arguing over the cost of the Affordable Care Act. Alexander says premiums will go up. The president says it’s “not true.” So who’s right?

The Congressional Budget Office report on the health-care law says that premiums have gone down under Obamacare for comparable health insurance to that available before the law was passed. However, when you factor in people who didn’t have health insurance and therefore were paying nothing prior to the law’s passage, then yes, their rates have gone up — from nothing to something. In states that have opted in to the federal plan, rates have gone down, and the number of people who now have health insurance has dramatically risen. In other states, not so much.

So Lamar wasn’t “proven right.” In fact, a Washington Post “Pinocchio Test” of the ad says, “Alexander mixes up so many apples and oranges here that the ad is a virtual fruit basket,” and gives Lamar “two Pinocchios.” Meaning the ad has a high bull caca quotient.

Meanwhile, Alexander’s primary opponent Joe Carr is running ads condemning Alexander for supporting Obamacare. Oy.

And then there are Lieutenant Governor Ron Ramsey’s well-funded attack ads on three Tennessee Supreme Court justices, ads that link them to supporting, yup, Obamacare. The Tennesse high court has never issued a ruling of any kind on the subject. It’s a lie so blatant and low-down I’m amazed Ramsey can look at himself in the mirror.

Obama and Obamacare have become the ultimate stinkbombs for GOP candidates. Want to smear your opponent? Accuse him of supporting the president and/or the Affordable Care Act. It’s the new “He wants to take away your guns.”

And let’s not forget the “endorsementgate” brouhaha, as Flyer writer Chris Davis dubbed it. Ninth District Democratic congressional candidates Steve Cohen and Ricky Wilkins have spent the past two weeks sniping at each other over who is endorsed by the ACSFME union. This week, the ante was raised when a rogue fake “ballot” emerged wrongly suggesting Wilkins was endorsed by President Obama. The Democrats, unlike the Republicans, are actually seeking to be connected with the president.

I’m beyond weary of seeing and hearing this stuff. Thursday can’t come soon enough. No more signs, at least until October. No more duplicitous, hateful ads for a blissful couple of months.

I’m so confident that the entire electorate shares these sentiments, that I’m preparing a bumper sticker: “Bruce Was Proven Right.”