Tag: Steve Steffens

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Tear Down the Shelby County Democratic Party and Start Over

What separates the current version of the Shelby County Democratic Party (SCDP) into camps is that we have no clue what we stand for. You have the old-guard white liberals who fought against the county-primary idea in the ’80s, and there are the people who came into power with Mayor Willie Herenton in the ’90s who want to hire their folks over the old folks.

Willie Herenton

Say you are in the middle of a countywide campaign, and you are attempting to ask a friend or neighbor to vote for a Democratic candidate for one of the county offices. You get into the spiel before you are stopped and told this: “Look, I vote Democratic in the legislative and executive races, but I have a spouse/child/sibling/parent/friend who works in that office, and if the Democrat is elected, they lose their job, and they really need it. I just can’t go there with you.”

What on earth can you say to that?

Let’s look at another major problem we have: Because of the way legislative districts are drawn, there are rarely competitive races in the general elections any more. Look at this year. Outside of District 96, where Democrat Dwayne Thompson will be challenging Republican incumbent Steve McManus, what seat has the possibility of changing hands in November? None.

The races are all in the primaries, which hurts because Democrats do not turn out in the primaries, thinking that the only races that matter are in November. Because our countywide races are in August, we start out at a disadvantage. Not only that, but our incumbent legislators, who are trying to turn out their voters but not those of their primary opponent, aren’t really much help. Frankly, they don’t turn out their folks in November any more, because they have already been reelected at that point.

So what does all this have to do with the SCDP? With no real strong figure in charge, the party’s executive committee is filled with the people who are looking to make money off the party on one side, and, on the other, the Old Guard who want to elect Democrats but are outvoted and overrun by those who obsess over procedural matters.

Because we have no power in Nashville and no power in the Shelby County administrative building (where there are a couple of Democratic commissioners willing to sell out the party at a moment’s notice) and because — as all who can read a newspaper know — we apparently cannot keep financial accounts, who in their right mind would give the SCDP one red cent?

This issue has been exacerbated in recent weeks by further negative publicity about unexplained financial shortages under a previous party administration and with the resignation of SCDP chair Randa Spears, who left due to an increased workload at her day job.

Yes, in seven of those years (1997-2003 and 2014), I sat on the executive committee, and I have to take partial responsibility for what has occurred. The fact remains that, with no money coming in or any real reason for there to be any money coming in, the local party, in a county with the largest Democratic voting bloc in the state, finds itself completely irrelevant.

This is why I respectfully request that the Tennessee Democratic Party and its very able current chair, Mary Mancini, put this body out of its (and our) misery and pull its charter. We really have to destroy the Party in order to save it. Get a group of good Democratic lawyers, along with solid Democrats, young and old, who have campaign experience, to rewrite the bylaws in order to drive out the leeches of the party and, for stability’s sake, to have the same number of Executive Committee members season after season.

And let’s give them time to do it. For heaven’s sakes, the Party nominee for president will carry Shelby and four other counties regardless if there is a SCDP structure in place. Same with the legislators, same with the Congresspeople.

Every second we wait is a second that we fail to have a real Democratic Party structure in the largest Democratic Party in the South outside Atlanta (Florida never counts), and we cannot truly hope to reestablish Democratic strength in Tennessee until this happens.

Steve Steffens is a longtime Democratic activist and proprietor of the well-read blog leftwingcracker.blogspot.com, where a lengthier version of this essay first appeared.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

No Female Mayors?

Nashville voted heavily on September 10th, doing what Knoxville did four years ago, and what Memphis and Shelby County have, so far, refused to do: They elected a female mayor for the first time. And, no, I don’t see this as leading to a groundswell for Memphis mayoral candidate Sharon Webb.

Nashville Mayor Megan Berry

Congratulations to Mayor-elect Megan Barry, who was also the first sitting metro councilor to be elected mayor. She beat David Fox, who seemed to be doing well, until he started campaigning like a Tea Partier, which turned off the city’s voters in short order.

Of Tennessee’s five largest cities, three of them will have female mayors: Knoxville (Madeline Rogero), Clarksville (former State Representative Kim McMillan), and Nashville with Barry. 

Memphis and Shelby County have certainly produced women who are qualified to lead the city and/or county, yet it has not happened. One of the several undeniably qualified female candidates was Republican Commissioner Carolyn Gates, who ran for the county mayorship in 1994, losing to Jim Rout in a crowded field.  

City Councilwoman Mary Rose McCormick ran unsuccessfully in the packed 1999 mayoral race in which then Mayor Willie Herenton won a third term. Wanda Halbert, a veteran of the Memphis School Board and the City Council, ran unsuccessfully in the 2009 race to fill the vacated fifth term of Herenton, which was won by the current incumbent, A C Wharton.

Several shots. No basket. Why not? The largest voting bloc in the city of Memphis, and Shelby County, for that matter, is African-American women. These women have gladly supported their sisters of all colors for legislative positions, giving us great fighters like the late Lois DeBerry and Kathryn Bowers, as well as current leaders such as Karen Camper, Raumesh Akbari, Barbara Cooper, and Senator Sara Kyle.

However, when it comes to electing women to executive positions such as Memphis mayor or Shelby County mayor, nada.  

While it is easy to see how Carol Chumney’s 2002 loss to A C Wharton in the Democratic primary for county mayor could be attributed to the excitement that Wharton would be the first African American elected to that office, she didn’t get much help from African-American women to break the glass ceiling in 2007 when she challenged Herenton (whose ceiling was long since shattered) in his final run for city mayor.

And if you wish to suggest that race was a factor in those elections, then what of the well-credentialed Deidre Malone, who lost a Democratic primary to Joe Ford, a fellow African American, for county mayor in 2010, and then lost the general election for that office to Republican incumbent Mark Luttrell in 2014? Why can’t a woman be elected mayor in this town or county?

Like Barry, who had served on Nashville’s Metro Council for eight years prior to her election, Malone had served on the Shelby County Commission for eight years. Malone had served as chair of the budget committee and was the first African-American female to serve as chair of the entire commission. There should have been no questions as to her qualifications to serve as the county’s mayor, especially when one factors in her work with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and her successful business, The Carter Malone Group.

Is it possible that one reason is that local African-American women are not comfortable voting for women for executive positions because of religious reasons?  

There are black churches in this town, lots of them, that are to the right of Bellevue Baptist on social issues, and these conservative (in the religious sense) women may be simply unwilling to elect a woman to an office that they believe should remain in the hands of a man. 

It’s 2015, and one has to wonder why this could even be an issue, but we know from experience that social achievements often take longer to take hold in the Mid-South. It does suggest to me, however, why it is so difficult for a woman to achieve that office in Memphis or countywide. Our suburban neighbors, Germantown (Sharon Goldsworthy) and Collierville (Linda Kerley) have elected female mayors, but those are mostly white, more affluent towns.

I wish that, when running a poll of the city or county, the media outlet doing so would include these questions to all surveyed voters: Would your beliefs prevent you from voting for a female for mayor of your city or county? If so, why?

It’s not scientific, but even reader comments to this article might provide an answer to this mystery. And, really, I am mystified. 

Steve Steffens is proprietor of the local political blog, Left Wing Cracker.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said (December 25, 2014) …

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Joe Boone’s music feature, “Venerable Studio Changes Hands” …

What did they do with the hundreds of pictures of Sai Baba that were hanging everywhere?

Yeah Man

About Steve Steffans’ Viewpoint, “Southern Democrats: Down, Not Dead” …

I’m going to get this article tattooed to my forehead so I don’t have to keep saying this over and over again when I talk to any Tennessee Democrat who isn’t from Memphis.

Autoegocrat

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s letter from the editor, “Good Cop. Bad Cop” …

I’ve been an advocate of a constitutional ban on union representation for public employees for quite a while.

But I have to admit, if I were a police officer and had heard and read all of the idiots and their mindless followers blaming “economic inequality” as the root cause for the recent highly publicized police incidents, I’d probably want a good union steward, too.

Nightcrawler

Your call for police departments to “man up and acknowledge their bad apples” is one of the best positioned arguments on the issue I have read. Unfortunately, this posture of “protect your own no matter what” permeates so many organized labor organizations, to the detriment of the reputation of the organization overall. From teachers to bus drivers to NFL players, the representing labor organizations seem to go out of their way to protect even the most obviously unqualified or, at times, criminally inclined members at the expense of the reputation and good work of its majority.

There are bad people in every profession. If others in those professions would acknowledge that and help clean house, it would benefit everyone — fellow professionals and the customers of those professions alike.

rjb

I’m still wondering why no one is talking about the fact that Ohio has an Open Carry law. In fact, the city of Cleveland’s ban on open carry was overturned by the Republican legislature — something the NRA praised. And before you say, “Well, kids are not covered by open carry!” Remember that the officers after the shooting called in: “Shots fired. Male down. Black male, maybe 20.”

Charley Eppes

About Wendi C. Thomas’ column, “The Roots of Protest” …

It appears Obama and the Democrats are going to fix the black unemployment problem by opening the borders to millions more illegals and giving amnesty to those already here. I’ll admit I don’t understand how flooding the job market with an unending supply of cheap labor is going to help African Americans get jobs, but I’m sure all of the black Democratic politicians have it figured out because none of them are complaining.

GWCarver

Every Republican and Democratic administration in the past 30-plus years has refused to enforce the laws that would have fined employers of illegals thousands of dollars per hire. That simple upholding of their sworn duty would have saved those jobs that big business couldn’t export via the myriad of free-trade agreements. It ain’t a Democrat vs. Republican thing.

CL Mullins

The prospect of low-cost labor has been very appealing to both Republicans and Democrats alike. And the lack of any sort of sustained protest from the general public who enjoyed those lower priced goods produced by that cheap labor was also a factor. Call it the Walmart Factor. There are many who scream about what they consider Walmart’s “slave” wages, but they also enjoy the low prices, so they really don’t complain too much.

Arlington Pop

I can agree that public investment in Graceland is nonsense, but what other economic development plans are on the table for Whitehaven? Southbrook Mall? That is even more nonsensical by a large margin.

If it’s all going to boil down to race for everything that occurs, then the point that the money is being spent in Whitehaven rather than downtown or in East Memphis should amount to something. But it is conveniently forgotten in this column.

Brunetto Latini