Tag: Steve McManus

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Covington’s Rose Easily Wins GOP Nomination for State Senate District 32

CREDIT: JB

On a flood of Tipton County votes, most of them from  JB

THE AGONY OF DEFEAT: Lonnie Treadaway, who recently lost his bid to join the Memphis City Council, consoles Heidi Shafer as she confronts the numbers at her election-night party at Exline’s Pizza on Stage Road. Shafer was one of three Shelby Countians to lag behind GOP nominee Paul Rose of Tipton County in voting for the Republican nomination for state Senate District 32.

early voting, Covington businessman/farmer Paul Rose easily won the Republican nomination to succeed federal judge Mark Norris in the vacated District 32 state Senate seat.

Three Shelby Countians —former County Commissioners George Chism and Heidi Shafer, and former state Representative Steve McManus — brought up the rear behind Rose, all trailing the Covington candidate even in Shelby County. In Tipton County, Rose’s margin was 83 percent. Cumulatively, he won something like two/thirds of the overall vote in both counties.

None of the Shelby County candidates had anything but marginal vote totals in Tipton. Rose won 4,132 of the 4,632 votes cast there. In Shelby the vote went this way: Rose, 2,266; Chism, 1,512; Shafer, 1,322; McManus, 1,055.

Given the fact of the much larger overall pool of voters in Shelby County, it would seem obvious that a much higher turnout rate in Tipton County, coupled with an apparent determination of voters there to elect one of their own, figured large in the outcome.

Democrat Eric R. Coleman, with 377 votes in Shelby County and 166 in Tipton County won his nomination without opposition and will be matched against Rose on the March 12th general election ballot.

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Politics Politics Feature

Works in Progress

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

“Nine days! That’s all we’ve got!” Thus did George Chism exhort the supporters gathered around him last Wednesday for a meet-and-greet/fund-raiser at the Bank of Bartlett branch on Highway 64. The reference by Chism was somewhat obscure, since voting in the special-election primaries for the vacant District 32 state Senate seat, which he and four others are seeking, won’t end until primary-election day on January 24th.

What former Shelby County Commissioner Chism apparently meant was that the climax of the special-election primary race would occur between January 14th, when ad hoc neighborhood voting sites became active, and January 23rd, election eve.

Chism, former state Representative Steve McManus, and former County Commissioner Heidi Shafer are competing for the Republican nomination for the seat vacated by former state Senate majority leader Mark Norris, a federal judge now, by appointment of President Trump. Meanwhile, the sole Democrat on the primary ballot, Eric Coleman, is assured of a chance to run against the GOP winner on the special general-election date of March 12th.

In any case and by any arithmetic, time is scarce, and all the candidates are hustling up multiple occasions to create or augment voter awareness of their identity and credentials. Chism claims among his supporters several of Shelby County’s suburban mayors, including Bartlett Mayor Keith McDonald, who was on hand for his fund-raiser. Also there was David Reaves, who, like Chism served a single term on the County Commission and, again like Chism, was something of an outlier there, dedicated, or so said both of them, to the gospel of fiscal solvency.

Verbal homage by Chism and several other speakers was paid both to the idea that the seat, formerly held by Republican Norris, should remain in the GOP fold and to the idea that attention should also be paid to the Democratic voters in the district, which incorporates large parts of northern and eastern Shelby County, and Tipton County as well.

Similar concepts were to be heard a day before Chism’s event, when McManus had held a meet-and-greet at the Bartlett household of Republican state Representative Jim Coley. McManus was well aware that Democrats are beginning to gain a foothold in District 32. After all, he had been upset in 2016, losing his seat as state Representative for House District 96, in the southeastern suburbs of Shelby County, to Democrat Dwayne Thompson, who held on to the seat against the GOP’s Scott McCormick in November.

In the judgment of many observers, McManus had started slow in 2016, taking his victory for granted. Not so this time around. Advised by consultant Becky West, he was first among the candidates to air a TV spot and first also to sprout billboards in the district. Among the topics McManus discussed with visitors to his event were non-doctrinaire aspects of his prior service in the General Assembly, like his involvement in the legislation enabling the creation of tax-increment-financing districts (TIFs).

Another Republican candidate, former Commissioner Shafer, would hold a well-attended fund-raiser last Friday in Memphis, where her Commission district was located and where she lived until a family move to Lakeland last year. Like Chism and McManus, Shafer is unmistakably Republican in ideology, but her Commission service, both in 2018, when she served as the body’s chair, and beforehand as well, was marked by an obvious ability to work across the partisan aisle. She was the acknowledged leader of bipartisan efforts to mount the now ongoing legal effort both to curtail the ravages of opioid addiction in Shelby County and to compensate the county for damages caused by careless and unscrupulous over-prescription.

There was a bipartisan flavor, as well, to Shafer’s remarks at her Memphis event, at which she staked out positions for remedial action on both the education and health fronts. While not espousing previous Medicaid-expansion formulations as such, she made it clear that she would seek some means of remedying a circumstance whereby the state had not claimed its share of federal health-care funding, allowing it to go to other states by default.

Perhaps more than the other Republicans running, Shafer has a foothold in Tipton County, especially in the southern portion of it, a de facto bedroom suburb of Memphis. But she, like Chism and McManus, is aware of the vote-pulling power in Tipton County at large of a fourth Republican, Paul Rose of Covington. Rose, a businessman and a well-established presence in Tiption County, is a conservative who has emphasized his strong religious faith.

As of now, Rose is weaker than the others in Shelby County, but he would clearly stand to gain from anything resembling an even vote split between the other three.

Coleman, the sole Democrat running, is a business logistics specialist and evidently quite successful as such. He is an African American and a Navy veteran, severely wounded in the service of his country, and as such has a compelling backstory capable of winning him votes across party lines.

Coleman is not as hyper-active yet as the Republicans seeking the state Senate seat, but he has more time to develop his profile before testing it at the polls in March.

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Politics Politics Feature

Candidates Vie for Vacant Norris Seat

It took a while for Mark Norris to become a federal judge. He was nominated by President Trump last year but was only recently confirmed by the U.S. Senate after numerous gridlock-imposed delays. It took a while, too, for Governor Bill Haslam to call for a special election to replace Norris in his vacated District 32 state Senate seat.

But now that things are under way, Republican candidates to fill the vacancy are wasting no time getting their campaigns under way. Former two-term Shelby County Commissioner Heidi Shafer, who was one of the first to indicate her desire to seek the seat after Norris was nominated, made haste to get out of the gate, filing to run at the Election Commission on Monday morning. She indicated later Monday that she already has three fund-raisers scheduled for the near future.

New Democratic House Leader Karen Camper

Shafer, who represented an East Memphis district on the commission and chaired that body this past year, displayed some serious legislative skills there. Even before the District 32 opportunity opened up, she had expressed a desire to run for the legislature and at one point had her eyes on a race this fall for the District 96 state House seat won in 2016 by Democrat Dwayne Thompson in an upset of then GOP incumbent Steve McManus.

The Norris seat became a more inviting target, however, and she and her husband Carl subsequently turned their Memphis home over to their college-age daughter and moved into a new Lakeland residence, well within the District 32 limits.

In something of an irony, or at the very least an interesting coincidence, one of Shafer’s rivals for the District 32 seat is the aforementioned McManus, who forwent the option of trying to regain his House seat from Thompson (who won again over the GOP’s Scott McCormick) and was himself attracted by the prospect of the Norris vacancy.

McManus, too, is off and running, having already run a commercial for his candidacy on local TV this past weekend. In 2016, he had, in the judgment of many, demonstrated a palpable over-confidence in his race against the hard-working Thompson, and his defeat then may have amounted to something of a wake-up call for his future.

In any case, he is unlikely to be taken by surprise this time around and has significant leftover campaign cash from two years ago that will stand him in good stead for the current race.

Both Shafer and McManus are counting on support in East Shelby County, the heartland of the local Republican constituency, as was demonstrated by the weight of Republican voting in last August’s primary.

Shafer’s commission work, much of it in alliance with Terry Roland of Millington, would appear to give her a headstart with the GOP voters of North Shelby County, and she is also well acquainted with the GOP base in the southern part of Tipton County, also part of District 32.

Both Shafer and McManus have to worry about a third candidate, construction executive Paul Rose of Covington, who is well known in Tipton County and moreover has significant contacts with the Shelby County Republican establishment as well.

Rose has indicated he intends to run hard on conservative themes, stressing Christian values and his support for the 2nd Amendment, a focus that should help him in the district’s rural areas.

Yet a fourth potential GOP candidate, not yet announced, is George Chism of Collierville, who served one term on the Shelby County Commission, then gambled on a run for county trustee this year but was defeated by Democrat Regina Morrison Newman, after winning the Republican primary.

So far, one Democrat, Eric R. Coleman of Bartlett, has picked up a petition to run for the District 32 seat. Coleman, a veteran of Naval service and a Wounded Warrior, is a business logistics specialist.

• Shelby Countians are prominent in legislative leaderships positions, at least among the General Assembly’s minority Democrats. In recent elections, District 87 state Representative Karen Camper was elected as the Democrats’ minority leader in the state House, thereby achieving a dual milestone as the first African-American woman to lead a major party in the legislature.

Shelby County Democrats dominated in leadership elections for the state Senate, capturing three of the spots available for the five Democrats in that body. Raumesh Akbari, a former state representative who won election to the Senate’s District 29 seat in this year’s election, was named caucus chair for the Democrats, while Sara Kyle of District 30 was elected vice chair, and Katrina Robinson of District 33, was named party whip.

• Local Democrats also made an impact, though one they surely regarded as less desirable, with the state Election Registry, drawing fines for late financial disclosures. Incoming freshman House state Representatives London Lamar of District 91 and Jesse Chism of District 85 were fined $8,175 and $5,000 respectively, while veteran state Representative Joe Towns of District 84, a perennial collector of fines from the registry, drew a total of $20,000.

• Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, who has demonstrated an innovative bent during his first few months in office, has announced a “Health and Fitness Initiative” to begin on Wednesday of this week, with a “City Silo Vegan Barbecue” meal to be served at noon in the 6th floor lobby of the Vasco Smith County Administration Building to members and staffers of the county commission, members of the Healthy Shelby board, and the media.

The initiative will continue in January with what is billed as a “mini” five-minute bootcamp for the commissioners and media members, conducted by Memphis Tiger basketball star Will Coleman.

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Politics Politics Feature

Suburban Showdowns in Germantown and District 96

Dwayne Thompson on the stump. Photo: Jackson Baker

Even if, as is currently being assumed by observers in both major political parties, Democrat Hillary Clinton should win the presidency over Republican nominee Donald Trump, and win in a landslide, how might that affect down-ballot races in Tennessee, where the GOP, almost everywhere, remains in the ascendant?

One test case might be the race in District 96 of the state House of Representatives between incumbent Republican Steve McManus and Democratic challenger Dwayne Thompson. The district, a suburban one incorporating parts of Cordova and Germantown, is considered safely Republican by most observers.

Thompson, a self-described “human resources professional,” disputes that, citing what he says are significant turnouts for Democrats in past statewide and presidential races in the district, as well as  a mix of upscale, middle-class, and working-class populations that he thinks is ready for change.

Among other things, Thompson hopes for a backlash against legislative Republicans for their opposition to Governor Bill Haslam‘s Insure Tennessee proposal for Medicaid expansion. At a recent forum sponsored by the Tennessee Nurses Association, Thompson accused opponent McManus, an investment counselor and chairman of the House Insurance and Banking Committee, of having “bottled up” consideration of Insure Tennessee in the special legislative session of 2015.

McManus’ committee, which did hold an abbreviated hearing on Insure Tennessee in which McManus’ skeptical views on the proposal were obvious, did not administer the proposal’s coup de gras, however; that came from the Senate Health Committee, which had been specially expanded for the purpose by GOP Speaker Ron Ramsey.

McManus subsequently was named by Republican House Speaker Beth Harwell to a special task force on health-care which met several times this year and emerged with a scaled-down health insurance proposal, called the “3-Star Health Insurance Pilot,” that would expand TennCare for uninsured veterans and mental health patients as a prelude to possible general expansion in the future.

Thompson dismisses that plan as too little, too late, and says he will, if elected, continue to push for Insure Tennessee or some close variant.

McManus has more financial resources at his command, by far — $155,7543.59 in campaign cash as of the third-quarter filing, compared to a mere $5,088.20 for Thompson. But Thompson, whose ads — stressing that he is both a veteran and a cancer survivor — have begun to appear here and there, especially online, with a frequency unusual for a Democrat running in the Memphis suburbs.

And, in fact, Thompson’s campaign expenditures for the third quarter of 2016 come close to matching McManus’, with outlays of $9,524.83, compared to $11,871.61 for the incumbent. He is also working hard at outreach to independent voters, like members of the nonpartisan Asian-Americans for Tennessee, who showed up en masse last week at a meet-and-greet for Thompson sponsored by state Representative Raumesh Akbari (D-District 91) at her family’s hair research facilities in East Memphis.

JB

Dwayne Thompson on the stump

Thompson is giving McManus  a run for his money, but the GOP incumbent, no slouch himself at campaigning and possessed of those aforesaid financial advantages as well as help from the Shelby County Republican Party’s vaunted Get-Out-the-Vote network, is sure to be heard from in the campaign’s home stretch.

• Apropos that home stretch: As of Tuesday morning, turnout in Shelby County had been higher than usual for early voting, which began last Wednesday and will end on Thursday, November 3rd. Much of the increase was due to the fact of the ongoing presidential election, of course, but, even allowing for that fact, voter interest seems to be unusually high.

Totals for Wednesday were 16,655; for Thursday, 14,892; for Friday, 15,249; and for Saturday, 9,819. In all cases, the turnout outstripped previous early-voting records, set in 2008, the year of President Barack Obama’s first election.

• Several of the Shelby County suburbs are having spirited local campaigns. In Germantown, there are races for the city’s board of aldermen as well as its school board, which, in both cases, come down to pitched battles between organized slates of incumbents and challengers — the Ins versus the Outs, as it were.

Three alderman seats are up in Germantown. Incumbents Dave Klevan (Position 3) and Rocky Janda (Position 5) are opposed by Dean Massey and David Nischwitz, respectively, while incumbent Forrest Owens has a free ride in Position 4.

Three of the seven school board seats are also on the ballot. Incumbents Linda Fisher (Position 1) and Natalie Williams (Position 3) are opposed by Laura Meanwell and Suzanne Jones, respectively, while Amy Eoff and Mindy Fischer are vying for the Position 5 seat vacated by outgoing member Ken Hoover.

All five incumbents, as well as Fischer, are being supported by current Germantown Mayor Mike Palazzolo, who spoke on their behalf at a meet-and-greet affair on Sunday at the home of Naser and Shila Fazlullah.

• For the first time since the Democratic gubernatorial field melted down in 2010 to a single serious candidate, Mike McWherter of Dresden, the state’s Democrats seem able and determined to up the ante and make a valid run for governor in 2018 against the now-dominant Tennessee Republican Party.  

• Bill Freeman, well-known Nashville businessman, former mayoral candidate, and prominent donor and activist in Democratic circles, will be the special guest and principal speaker at what is being billed as a “Reception for Senator Lee Harris & Rally for Our West Tennessee Candidates,” to be held in Memphis at the home of Democrat Linda Sowell on November 3rd.

The current co-chair of Hillary for Tennessee and a member of Democratic presidential candidate Clinton’s national finance committee, Freeman is scouting support for a possible race for governor in 2018. Former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean has also been criss-crossing the state as a prelude to a governor’s race.

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Memphis Gaydar News

LGBT Equality Advocates Thank Steve McManus

Steve McManus

  • Steve McManus

Last week, Memphis Gaydar reported that Franklin, Tennessee Republican state representative Glen Casada withdrew his bill banning Tennessee cities from passing non-discrimination ordinances protecting LGBT employees of city contractors.

Casada’s decision to withdraw the so-called “Special Access to Discriminate” Act is a temporary move giving him time to lobby the bill’s opponents, one of whom is Cordova Republican Representative Steve McManus.

Now the Tennessee Equality Project is urging LBGT equality advocates to sign a petition thanking McManus “for opposing big government intrusion into local affairs.”

Apparently, the Memphis Tea Party and the Family Action Council of Tennessee are actively pressuring McManus into voting for another version of the act in the House Subcommittee on Commerce. According to an email from TEP, “[McManus] needs to hear from equality and labor advocates and proponents of small government alike that we support his firm stand against HB0598 and HB0600.”

Click here to sign the petition.