Tag: Terry Roland

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Politics Politics Feature

Crossing Party Lines

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The election lists are still forming, but already the number of unusual developments in the 2018 election season are way beyond the norm. Several of them cast a bit of light on the question of partisan identity. Where to start? 

SHELBY COUNTY CLERK: Well, there was the fact that Danny Kail and his wife Sohelia Kail, both veterans of county government and both political activists, had each drawn petitions to run for Shelby County clerk as Republicans.

Note the verb form, “was.” Danny Kail is well known in political circles as an active Democrat, who over the years has run unsuccessfully for both Probate Court clerk and Probate Court judge, losing the Democratic primary for clerk in 2010 in the first instance and gaining the Democratic Party endorsement for judge in 2014, though his opponent, incumbent Judge Karen Webster, somehow ended up being listed as the party choice on a semi-official local Democratic newspaper.

The two experiences combined to sour Kail, the county’s former liaison officer on labor issues, on his future potential as a Democrat and led him to declare last fall, when he was serving as CAO for the Criminal Court clerk’s office, as a GOP candidate for the county clerk’s job. 

To the surprise of many, Sohelia Kail also drew a petition for the Republican primary for the same position.

The bottom line, explained Danny Kail this week, was that he decided to yield to his wife, whom he said he deems to be a superior candidate as a longtime budget analyst with the Sheriff’s Department. So he is dropping out, and she was, at mid-week, scheduled to formally file for county clerk.

Others drawing petitions for the position are Republicans Arnold Weiner and Donna Creson and Democrats Shelandra Ford, Jamal Whitlow, and Mondell B. Williams. Weiner, Whitlow, and Williams have completed their filing.

SHELBY COUNTY COMMISSION, DISTRICT 10: This is another case of blurred political lines. Incumbent Commissioner Reginald Milton, a Democrat, seems destined to face an opponent in the party primary, one Vontyna Durham White, who has not only drawn a petition but has filed for the commission seat.

The surprise is that White has also identified herself as an adherent of the campaign of County Commissioner Terry Roland, a Republican, for Shelby County mayor. She turned up in Roland’s company last week when the commissioner formally filed for mayor at the Election Commission, and she posed with Roland, along with other supporters, for a widely distributed photo of the event.

This sparked an immediate and impassioned thread on Facebook, initiated by a Democratic activist. Other Democrats joined in with their own negative reactions, to which White eventually responded defiantly, telling one critic: “I’m not colluding. I chose and have a voice to make my own decision to vote like I want to. … I don’t care who you vote for. Your voice is your voice.” 

However unprecedented, White’s public endorsement of Roland would not seem to violate any stricture of the election code. But the local Democratic Party has a primary board, appointed just last Saturday, which apparently has the authority to declare her an invalid contender in the party primary. That board has not yet met to consider the issue but almost certainly will at some early point.

STATE SENATE, DISTRICT 33: The question of party fidelity is also an issue in the reelection race of Democratic Senator Reginald Tate, who has drawn the ire of his party colleagues over the years for what some of them see as his collaboration with Republicans in the General Assembly.

Tate for some years held an office with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a conservative think tank which mass-produces sample legislation for its members in the legislatures of various states. Responding to criticism from fellow Democrats, Tate resigned his affiliation with ALEC. But he had acquired a primary opponent, health-care executive Katrina Robinson, who would seem to have hearty support of those Democrats alienated by Tate’s political coziness with the GOP.

On the matter of association, Robinson has a potential problem of her own, though it has nothing to do with any choice on her part or actions of hers. Her sister Sherra Robinson Wright, was recently arrested in California in connection with the 2010 murder of her then husband, ex-University of Memphis basketball star Lorenzen Wright.

Robinson herself has not been implicated in any part of the legal proceedings, and says she has had very limited contact with her sister. She vows to run a viable campaign, steering clear of any publicity or distractions resulting from the Wright case. 

SHELBY COUNTY COMMISSION, DISTRICT 5: This East Memphis enclave — currently represented by Commission chair Heidi Shafer, a Republican — may be on its way to becoming a swing district on the 13-member commission (currently consisting of seven Democrats and six Republicans), and one sign of that is the fact that the four persons who have so far drawn petitions to run for it divide equally between the parties.

The two Republicans are Geoffrey Diaz and Richard Morton, both with activist backgrounds. The Democrats are Michael Whaley and the aforementioned Shelandra Ford, who is considering more than one race.

What makes this district somewhat striking is that two of the candidates — Republican Diaz and Democrat Whaley — are staking out centrist positions. Realtor Diaz, who has an Hispanic background, maintains a core group of Latino residents of the district, with whom he meets to discuss issues of diversity and programs for economic opportunity. Diaz is willing to declare himself a “moderate,” something virtually unheard of these days among Republicans, who tend to prefer the self-description of “conservative.” And Whaley, Tennessee director of an education-related non-profit agency, has engaged consultant Steven Reid, a prominent force in the past campaigns of Mayor Jim Strickland and GOP 8th District Congressman David Kustoff; Reid stresses his own candidate’s intent to reach across party lines.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Roland, Harris Celebrate Veterans Day Together in Millington

CREDIT: JB

JB

County Commissioner Terry Roland (seated, left) and state Senator Lee Harris (seated, right, behind flag on table), candidates for County Mayor and co-sponsors of an annual Veterans Town Hall and Luncheon in Millington, listen as Millington Mayor Terry Jones, dressed in his Naval reservist’s uniform, speaks to the occasion.

One of the several Veterans Day events going on Saturday was the third annual edition of the Veterans Day Town Hall and Luncheon, held at the Hampton Inn in Millington. As always, the event featured a color guard, patriotic recitations and songs (some of the latter enacted by some energetic high school students from Rosemark), fried chicken and fixings, and tributes to the armed services, as well as to specific military veterans from the area.

Perhaps uniquely this year, it also featured two serious candidates for Shelby County mayor. Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland and state Senator Lee Harris, both of whom represent the Millington area, are the normal sponsors of the Town Hall and Luncheon. The fact that they both happen now to be announced candidates for mayor (and, in some reckonings, possible opponents in the 2018 general election) was either a coincidence or a serendipity, or both.

In any case, Republican Roland and Democrat Harris — along with Millington alderman Frankie Dakin, a Harris campaign aide — were sponsors once again and were all intent upon describing Saturday’s event as “beyond politics.”

As Harris put it, formally convening the program, “We all believe that this is a special day and, although we are not all the same political party, we think honoring our veterans is one issue where party doesn’t matter.”

The senator also paid tribute to the event’s regular partner organization, Alpha Omega Veterans Services, and to several dignitaries on hand: Matt Van Epps, the Assistant Commissioner at Tennessee Department of Veterans Services; Lt. Commander David Mowbray, chaplain at Naval Support Activity, Mid-South; and NSA Mid-South Commander Captain Michael Wathen.

For the most part, the Town Hall and Luncheon did, as all the principals promised, steer clear of politics, with one, probably inadvertent, exception. That was when Millington Mayor Terry Jones, dressed in Navy dress blues to commemorate his 24 years of active plus reserve service, was conveying his gratitude to Harris, Roland, and Dakin for putting on the event.

The first two acknowledgments went this way, verbatim: “Senator, I appreciate you putting this on every year. It’s our third year in public. Commissioner Roland, thank you, can we call you mayor yet?”

That last statement, which drew a nervous chuckle or two from the attendees, was surely unintentional, a case of what the textbooks call a Freudian slip

In any case, Roland did not seem displeased. It was his duty to close out the affair, and he did that with his patented mix of humility, good humor, and roughneck directness.

After telling a few tales about his own involvement with the military tradition, including one reminiscence of his father’s “pushing an ice cream wagon” at the old Naval training base at Millington and another of taking a pilgrimage with his Dad to the ancestral home of Sergeant Alvin York, a famed World War I hero from Tennessee, Roland made a point of professing himself “so grateful to Senator Lee Harris and alderman Frankie Dakin,” his event co-sponsors.

He unabashedly added, “Senator, I love you; Frankie, I love you.”

But, given the patriotic nature of the occasion, Roland could not resist (in any case, did not resist) recalling out loud his passionate resentment of a an official statement from Shelby County Schools, made in the wake of the controversy surrounding NFL athletes kneeling rather than standing for the national anthem.

The SCS statement evidently expressed a willingness to permit that form of expression from students. Roland recapped for the attendees his angry reaction, a threat to “take away every bit of funding” from the school system, easing up to say with a wink, “knowing I couldn’t do it.”

The commissioner said that people had “a right to protest but not during that national anthem and not on that flag.” and ended by saying that the anthem and the flag were “two things that we must stand for and stand behind.”

That might or might not be regarded as a case of allowing politics into the event, depending on one’s point of view. In any case, the muffled shout or two of assent from the audience during the heated part of Roland’s statement indicated that nobody who was there on Saturday had much complaint about it.

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Editorial Opinion

Should Shelby County Raise Officials’ Salaries?

The old bugaboo of pay raises for public officials rose again at Monday’s regular meeting of the Shelby County Commission, and, perhaps because of the proximity in time to Halloween, enough members of the commission were spooked by the prospect of raising their own salaries and those of several other elected county officials that the proposal — actually, three separate proposals in as many formal ordinances — went nowhere.

Technically, the votes taken Monday were on second reading, and there is one more final reading to come, presumably at the commission’s next meeting, scheduled for November 13th, but nobody needs a crystal ball or consultation with either a pollster or a necromancer to see that the ordinances are doomed to defeat in two weeks’ time, as well.

In point of fact, there is a commission majority in favor of the pay raises, but the county charter prescribes that issues of this kind require a supermajority of the entire commission.

That would be nine votes, and the ordinances fell short Monday by identical votes of seven for, four against, and one abstention. The seven aye votes belonged to six of the seven commission Democrats — Willie Brooks, Walter Bailey, Justin Ford, Reginald Milton, Eddie Jones, and Van Turner — and one Republican, Steve Basar. The four naysayers were Republicans Terry Roland, David Reaves, George Chism, and commission Chair Heidi Shafer. (GOP Commissioner Mark Billingsley would later ask that his vote be added on as a fifth no.) The one abstainer was Democrat Melvin Burgess Jr., who, as a declared candidate for Assessor in 2018, might have been concerned that, as a would-be tax collector for the county, his vote would draw special attention from opponents in next year’s election.

Under the proposed pay hikes, the salary of the county mayor would rise from $142,500 to $172,000; the sheriff salary from $116,995 to $154,890, and those of county clerk, trustee, register (all now pegged at $109,810), and assessor ($110,465) to go to $126,000. The commissioners’ salaries (currently $29,100, with the chair getting $31,100) would go to a uniform $32,000.

The votes essentially fell along predictable lines, with Bailey, speaking for the Democratic contingent of aye voters, pointing out the obvious, that the cost of living was continuing to rise and wondering if the objectors were contending that the pay of officials could never rise accordingly. Roland protested with insistent righteousness that commissioners should serve the public, not themselves, and he and Reaves professed themselves open to a public referendum to change the charter and tie future raises for the affected county officials to pay raises for rank-and-file county employees. As Democrat Turner noted, that was basically a way to put things off for the present.

For the future, such a referendum is not a bad option. Though prospects for passage might be remote, they are no worse, and could be better, than the existing odds for such proposals on the commission itself. We know all the political arguments against pay raises for public officials, and we regard it as unfortunate that the arguments for them cannot be evaluated on their own merits, the same way that pay matters out in the regular marketplace are, or should be.

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Politics Politics Feature

Waiting for Shoes to Drop

Though competitive races for governor and senator in both major parties will dominate public attention in 2018, the other marquee race on the local ballot for 2018 remains that for Shelby County mayor.

As of now, it’s a three-way on the Republican side, with the contenders being Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland, County Trustee David Lenoir, and Juvenile Court Clerk Joy Touliatos. Democrats running include state Senate Majority Leader Lee Harris and former County Commissioner Sidney Chism.

But, conspicuously, not all the shoes have dropped. Two major figures are on the cusp of decision: former City councilman and current Chamber of Commerce vice president Shea Flinn, and Harold Byrd, president of the Bank of Bartlett and a well-known former public official.

If Flinn runs — and that’s still a serious prospect — it will not be as a Democrat, though he served a brief interim term as a Democrat in the Tennessee state Senate, where, among other things, he broke away from orthodoxy by introducing the first serious measure to legalize marijuana.

He would run as an independent because he believes that partisanship is ruining American politics, that a combination of gerrymandering and low turnouts has ensured that a politics built upon genuine debate and constructive compromise is increasingly impossible, and that the two-party system itself has become unfeasible.

If Flinn runs, it will be a way of asking, as he has expressed it, “Have moderates had enough?” His thinking is that party nominees these days, in local elections as well as statewide and national ones, are determined by the most militant and committed members of both the Democratic and Republican parties, and that, consequently, winning candidates are beholden to relatively extreme views that are bound to be resisted by militant elements in the opposition party, and that governmental gridlock is the inevitable consequence.

His views on these matters are no secret; he has expressed them in radio interviews, and he holds them intensely enough to be on the verge of making an independent run for county mayor as an act of defiance against the intrinsic negativity of  partisan politics.

There have been previous quasi-independent or third-party electoral efforts at the national level — Ross Perot‘s 1992 candidacy for president against Democrat Bill Clinton and Republican George H.W. Bush being a case in point — but these have ultimately come to naught, Flinn believes, because, as he sees it, these have been trickle-down movements lacking real grass-roots involvement. He thinks that reformation of the current two-party system can only begin to happen at the most basic, local level.

In other words, Flinn as a candidate would see himself as someone pursuing a reformist mission against a two-party politics that is endangering the country, but he also believes that he could win — particularly if the two major local parties nominate candidates from their militant wings.

To put that in concrete terms: a race in which the Republican nominee would be, say, Roland, the self-styled populist from Millington, versus Democrat Harris, a legislator from his party’s progressive wing.

But Flinn, who is confident of having significant financial backing, would see his independent mission still being relevant, and viable, if the party nominees turn out otherwise — that is, if the GOP nominee ends up being either Trustee Lenoir or Juvenile Court Clerk Touliatos, both regarded as mainstream Republicans, and if the Democratic nominee should become either Chism, a well-known political broker who has been a declared candidate longer than anyone else, or Byrd, whose intentions are still a matter of speculation.

At the moment, Byrd’s intentions remain, along with Flinn’s, the most significant unknown element in the developing mayoral picture.

As mentioned before in this space, Byrd has uncooked seeds remaining from his prior political experience. He was a longtime state Representative who thought long and hard about running for Congress and finally took the plunge in 1994, winning the Democratic primary for the 7th District seat fairly easily but coming up short against Republican Ed Bryant, the victor in a year which saw a Republican sweep and a GOP takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Thereafter, Byrd’s home bailiwick of Bartlett became progressively more Republican, though he and other members of his family remained pillars both of the Bartlett community, through their ownership of the Bank of Bartlett and prominence in numerous civic endeavors, and in the Democratic Party, where brother Dan Byrd had continued to represent Bartlett well into the 1990s.

Harold Byrd first prepared to mount a serious race for county mayor prior to the race of 2002, organizing a coalition that included basic elements of the urban Democratic constituency along with suburban supporters in a campaign that would draw on significant IOUs, both political and financial, owed Byrd from decades of his involvement in public life. In a sense, that 2002 campaign, though Byrd would have been run as a Democrat, was aimed at being the kind of omnium gatherum of political opposites that Flinn may be contemplating for the campaign year of 2018. But it was forced to a halt mid-way by the unexpected entrance of then Public Defender A C Wharton, who was also able to draw on similar bipartisan sources of political and financial support.

For a variety of reasons that seemed practical to Byrd at the time, he withdrew, if reluctantly, and Wharton went on to win and serve one term and the better part of another before ascending to the mayorship of Memphis via a special election in 2009.

By general consent, the county mayor’s job might have been Byrd’s for the asking in the election of 2010, when the other major likely claimant, then Sheriff Mark Luttrell, a Republican, let it be known that he would defer and not run if Democrat Byrd chose to. But by then Byrd, a well-known fitness advocate, was recovering from a bout with cancer, and the bank he administered was having to deal with the aftershock of the Great Recession of 2008-2009.

Both factors kept Byrd from being a candidate that year, and Luttrell went on to run and defeat Democratic nominee Joe Ford.

But here it is, late 2017, and Byrd is once again looking seriously at running for county mayor. He has formed a Political Action Committee (Friends of Harold Byrd) for the purpose, and he has been steadily reaching out for assurances of support from well-known Democrats, both urban and suburban, who are either in office now or likely candidates for various positions next year.  

Moreover, Byrd believes he still has, uniquely for a Democrat, significant support in areas of Shelby County where Republicans are used to dominating. And he is confident that he, more than any other Democrat, can raise the money necessary to run a fully empowered mayoral campaign.

The question remains: Will either Shea Flinn or Harold Byrd actually run for county mayor? Though nothing is absolutely certain, the likelihood is that both will — Byrd as a Democrat and Flinn as an independent.

Flinn had come very close to making an announcement this week, the Flyer has learned, and the odds — once rated by him as 70-30 in favor — still tilt toward his making the race. For his part, Byrd has set the end of the year as a personal deadline for decision, with the likelihood, he says, that one will come even sooner.

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Politics Politics Feature

Filling in the Blanks

If Rip Van Winkle happened to be not a fictional character from a previous century but  a current resident of Shelby County, Tennessee, he would not have had to nod off for a full score of years to wake up to a drastically changed landscape.
If he’d just blinked his eyes about midway through last week, he might have missed significant doings in the race for Shelby County mayor and that for United States senator.

State Senator Lee Harris

The first major change in the projected 2018 political lineup occurred on Wednesday with the carefully stage-managed entry into the county mayor’s race of Lee Harris, a Democratic state senator and former Memphis City Council member whose ambitions to keep on moving up in the political hierarchy were clearly signaled back in 2016 when he flirted with the idea of challenging 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen in that year’s Democratic primary but thought better of it.

As the senator confided in a recent conversation, “I can serve anywhere” — the choice of a particular political office being something of a pure variable.
Harris’ interests in running for county mayor had been obvious for most of the current year but were screened somewhat by an elaborate Alphonse-Gaston scenario in which he appeared to be deliberating along with close friend and University of Memphis law faculty colleague Steve Mulroy, a former county commissioner and a mayoral candidate in 2014, as to which of them would actually make the 2018 race.

The veil was dropped abruptly on Wednesday via an interview in The Commercial Appeal, a venue choice made after scouting out the possible advantages of announcing in other media.

Harris has a reputation as a progressive but one adept at working across the aisle, a fact indicated by his partnership with Republican lawmakers on criminal justice issues and with GOP state Senator Brian Kelsey in seeking to safeguard the Memphis Sand aquifer.
As of now, Harris would appear to be the likely Democratic nominee against the winner of the three-way Republican mayoral primary between County Commissioner Terry Roland, County Trustee David Lenoir, and Juvenile Court Clerk Joy Touliatos.

But two other eminences with credentials both with Shelby County Democrats and with the civic and social universe at large are still meditating on a possible mayoral entry. Bank of Bartlett president Harold Byrd holds numerous political IOUs as a political donor and broker, a holdover following from his past as a Democratic state representative and two previous near-runs for mayor, and ample access to financial support.

Equally well-positioned is Shea Flinn, currently an influential Memphis Chamber of Commerce vice president and a former progressive spark-plug on the city council. Flinn’s access to funding, too, would be considerable, and, in a political environment not over-stocked with charisma, he has more than his share.
Either one of these figures, running in the Democratic primary or even as an independent, would have a dramatic effect on the outcome.
The other major development last week was in the race for the seat being vacated by Republican U.S. Senator Bob Corker, whose decision not to seek reelection did not prevent him from continuing to make political waves. (See Editorial, p. 8) To no one’s surprise, 7th District U.S. Representative Marsha Blackburn, an arch-conservative, quickly announced as a GOP candidate, though she withheld her announcement until Governor Bill Haslam, a favorite of moderate Republicans, publicly opted out.

Another conservative GOP prospect is former 8th District Congressman Stephen Fincher. And the party’s centrist wing still hopes to convince Memphis philanthropist and longtime party eminence Brad Martin to make the race.

The state’s Democrats may end up fielding a serious candidate, as well. Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke is seriously contemplating a Senate race, while Nashville lawyer and Iraq war vet James Mackler is already in the field.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

David Lenoir Makes It Official: He’s a Candidate for County Mayor

CREDIT: JB

JB

Trustee Lanier, announcing for Shelby County Mayor on Thursday

County Trustee David Lenoir, wearing a dark business suit, cap-toed shoes, and a composed, no-nonsense mien to match, strode to the lectern set up in the lobby of Crye-Leike Realtors on Poplar, acknowledged the generous introduction of him by host Dick Leike, nodded appreciatively to a heartily applauding gathering of supporters, many of them prominent members of the business community or the local Republican rank and file, and proceeded to present the case for his election as Shelby County Mayor.

He began by characterizing himself as “the county’s banker” and as a “bottom-line kind of guy.” He spoke of boyhood experiences cutting grass and helping his parents with a start-up business, of going to the University of Alabama on a football scholarship and getting an accounting degree, and later operating three small businesses of his own, while his wife Shannon, who had been his sweetheart both in high school and at ‘Bama, would end up as a small-business owner herself.

A little bit of Horatio Alger that, updated to the 21st Century standards of the nuclear family (the Lenoirs have sons, “our two young men).

Lenoir said three objectives — or “issues,” as he referred to them — should predominate in the mayoral campaign: “great schools, great jobs, and a mayor who understands how to run an efficient operation and can reduce the tax burden.”

If the last part of that triad was meant to indicate either of his two GOP primary opponents — Millington County Commissioner Terry Roland or Juvenile Court Clerk Joy Touliatos — it did so very obliquely.

In fact, Lenoir seems to be proceeding on the assumption that his record of low-keyed professional competence in his two terms as Trustee (involving a progressive shrinkage of the county debt from $1,800 per capita to $1,000) and his status as a mainstream, vaguely middle-of-the-road Republican should speak for themselves. And, in particular, he apparently intends to ignore the ad hominem provocations of opponent Roland.

Two facts in evidence of that: 1) It was clear to all observers during the County Commission’s climactic budget sessions in early summer that Roland meant to indict Lenoir’s performance with his highly public proposal to re-designate for other purposes money earmarked for lawyer Lang Wiseman, an employee of the Trustee’s office. “He don’t show up for work!” Roland claimed via his characteristic vernacular. (He also challenged the line items of Juvenile Court clerk Touliatos.)

For his part, Lenoir ignored the obvious political context and professed an ignorance of Roland’s charges when he turned up at a later commission budget session and simply made a detailed, mathematically based explanation of his employees’ salaries and workloads, including Wiseman’s. He kept all his budgeted money.

More recently: 2) Roland suggested at a recent fundraiser that Lenoir was the candidate of the county’s political/financial establishment and made it all sound like the machinations of a cabal. Alluding to the banker character in “The Beverly Hillbillies” TV sitcom, the Commissioner affected a shucksy mode and said, “I didn’t know I was going to be running against Mr. Drysdale, but I guess I am.”

Asked about that after his announcement on Thursday, Lenoir maintained a poker face and said, “I don’t know his comment. I’m proud of my background… I worked in the business community for 20 years. As far as his comments, I’m not familiar with them.”

Maybe so, maybe no. But it seems clear that Lenoir in any case has no intention of responding to Roland on the commissioner’s own terms. And, in fact, the basic line of Lenoir’s campaign staff, as expressed by one of its prominent members on Thursday, is: “We see our main opponent to be Touliatos.”

Again: maybe so, maybe no — though another of Lenoir’s statements Thursday, that the next mayor should be someone “tested in various arenas and cool under pressure,” would seem to be directed elsewhere.

As did Lenoir’s skepticism, during a Q-and-A with reporters, that the tax-rate reduction achieved this year by the County Commission (a point regularly touted by Roland) did not necessarily equate to an actual reduction of the tax load.

In any case Lenoir’s long-awaited declaration of mayoral candidacy is now official, he will definitely have significant financial and GOP-network support, and his major task now, one shared with Touliatos, is that of profile-raising. Roland long ago succeeded, for better or for worse, in getting people to know who he was.

It’s up to both Lenoir and Touliatos to achieve a wider degree of public awareness ,too. There’s little doubting that David Lenoir will have the means and the opportunity to do that.

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Politics Politics Feature

On the “Mr. Drysdale Effect” and Other Political Doings

In the same way that subtle changes in the color of leaves signal the onset of a new physical season, the increased number of fund-raisers in Shelby County — several each week and sometimes overlapping — are a reliable harbinger of the approaching 2018 election season.

A case in point was the fact that Shelby County Republican rank-and-filers had to choose Thursday of the week before last between paying homage to county sheriff candidate Dale Lane, beneficiary of a fund-raiser in Whitehaven, and rendering an ear (plus coin of the realm) to mayoral candidate Terry Roland at Southwind Country Club.

To be sure, neither candidate is yet assured of being the Republican nominee next year, although the chances of Lane, who has no name GOP opponent on the horizon yet, are better in that respect than those of Roland, who knows he has a serious race for county mayor, with fellow Republicans David Lenoir and Joy Touliatos as primary opponents, and very likely a name Democrat if he gets to the general.

But there are some card-carrying Republicans who want to support both Lane and Roland, and, unless they could clone themselves on Thursday, there was no way they could do both — not in person, anyhow. Both are looking not just for an audience and a vote, but for the fund-raising dollar.

As Roland said in his pitch to the crowd at Southwind: “I need the money, the money to get our message out. The people I’m running against are some very wealthy people.”

And, lest that appeal come off as too abject, Roland rephrased it with a cultural allusion: “I didn’t know I was going to be running against Mr. Drysdale, but I guess I am.”  

The “Mr. Drysdale” in question would be the wealthy banker/bankroller played by actor Raymond Bailey in the vintage ’60s TV sitcom The Beverly Hillbillies. That many members of Roland’s fund-raiser crowd guffawed in appreciation is some indication perhaps of one of the demographics he is counting on for support.

County Trustee Lenoir was being cast by Roland as someone in league with the county’s political/financial establishment. Nor did the commissioner overlook his other GOP opponent, Juvenile Court Clerk Touliatos, about whom he said this, clearly tailoring his remarks to a suburban constituency:

“The other one that I’m running against, if you look at the people that’s supporting her, it’s the people you’re fighting right now; it’s the pro-consolidation people, okay? And Jim Strickland is one of her lead dogs. Let me tell you this: If she gets to be the mayor, then you might as well say that Jim Strickland will have free run of the whole county.”

This attempt at drawing a connection between city Mayor Strickland and a candidate running for county mayor foreshadows what could become a serious leitmotif in the politics of 2018. On Monday of this week, Roland, in his guise as county commissioner, had no difficulty persuading fellow commissioners to hold off on approving an interlocal agreement with the city on financing a new sports arena.

Right now, as it happens, the city and county are at loggerheads on several issues — that of de-annexation, for one (a co-speaker at the Roland fund-raiser was Patty Possel, an activist in that movement and a forthcoming GOP candidate for the District 96 state House seat now held by Democrat Dwayne Thompson). Another is the recent decision announced by Strickland shutting off any new taps on the city sewer line by county developments.

• Across town, on the same day that week, in Whitehaven, a former county commissioner, James Harvey, was hosting an event for Lane, the county director of homeland security, who is the odds-on favorite to be the Republican nominee for sheriff next year.

At least half the crowd was African American, a good sign for a Republican candidate, especially one likely to be facing a credentialed black candidate, Chief Deputy Floyd Bonner, as the Democratic nominee for sheriff. And Bonner, let us remember, drew an appreciable number of white folks to his recent kickoff at the Racquet Club, among them current Sheriff Bill Oldham, who was elected eight years ago as a Republican and who made a point of endorsing Bonner.

While clearly we are not yet in a post-racial political environment — and may never be — both candidates will be pitching in all directions. A good thing, that.

Incidentally, Harvey, who was elected to two terms as a commissioner as a Democrat, spoke at some length in his introduction of Lane, making the point that he himself had crossed the party line and was now a Republican. Make of that what you will.

In his remarks, Lane, as usual, stressed his intention to focus on combatting youth violence.

 

• Another recent fund-raiser was the one held last week at the Donati law office on Union for County Commissioner Van Turner, who is unlikely to attract any serious opponents of his reelection next year but is taking no chances.

A goodly crowd showed up for that one, and, as is fairly often the case, much of the drama lay in who was there to see and be seen. In the case of the Turner event, it was Bank of Bartlett president Harold Byrd, a former state representative and Democratic congressional candidate who, as was noted recently by the Flyer, has signaled an interest in re-entering active political life as a candidate for county mayor.

More show-and-tell is due this week, with Germantown Democrats awaiting an appearance at their monthly meeting on Wednesday night by state Senator Lee Harris, who is also floating a possible mayoral bid (actually co-floating one with his University Memphis law school colleague and former County Commissioner Steve Mulroy; don’t ask).

And, apropos that aforementioned city/county dichotomy, two potential cross-overs are in play: City Councilman Ed Ford has a fund-raiser Wednesday night for his bid for county commission District 9 (now held by the term-limited Justin Ford). And conjecture continues about a possible Democratic primary race for county mayor by former council stalwart, now Chamber of Commerce veep Shea Flinn.

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Politics Politics Feature

Byrd and Flinn Looking to County Mayor’s Race?

UPDATED to correct the order of finish in the 2014 Democratic primary for Shelby County Mayor.

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Last week, Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland, speaking at a fund-raiser in his honor at Southwind Country Club, let loose with typically strenuous blasts against his two major Republican opponents in the forthcoming 2018 race for Shelby County mayor — characterizing County Trustee David Lenoir as basically a tool of the political/financial establishment and questioning Juvenile Court Clerk Joy Touliatos‘ bona fides on de-annexation matters.

The Republican three-way battle royal is an open and settled proposition. It is on the Democratic side that intrigue (in every sense of that word) and potential surprise are major factors behind the scenes. 

Sidney Chism, the ex-Teamster leader, former local party chairman, two-time county commission chairman, interim state senator, and political broker nonpareil, has long advertised his availability for the office, but, though Chism continues to preside over a well-attended annual political picnic, it is an open question whether and to what degree the major clout he once enjoyed in Democratic circles has been diminished. 

Now employed by Sheriff Bill Oldham, Chism has had to weather criticism from party purists for his past electoral support of Oldham, who ran for office as Republican, and though he was eventually cleared by an ethics panel, had to withstand formal conflict-of-interest charges from then commission colleague Roland for having voted on appropriations measures that contained wraparound benefits for his day-care operation.

Meanwhile, other Democrats continue to ponder the idea of running. Two possibilities are University of Memphis law professors Steve Mulroy and Lee Harris, who have long been supportive of each other’s political careers. 

A liberal’s liberal in the manner of Memphis congressman Steve Cohen, Mulroy served two terms on the county commission and was a candidate for county mayor in the 2014 Democratic primary, finishing third a three-way race involving eventual nominee Deidre Malone and the Rev. Kenneth Whalum Jr. , who finished second despite being out of the country during the latter part of the race).

Until the surprise election of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump last year drastically altered his prospects, at least for the immediate future, Mulroy’s chief ambitions concerned the possibility of an appointment to the federal judiciary. Now Mulroy’s options have once again become more expressly political.

Harris has always leaned in the direction of political office. As a political unknown in 2006, Harris was one of the also-rans in the 9th District congressional primary of that year, won eventually by Cohen. By 2011, he had enough name recognition to run for, and narrowly win, a Memphis City Council race against Kemba Ford.

Harold Byrd and Shea Flinn

Nor did Harris’ ambitions end there. He was active in pursuit of cutting-edge issues and was the chief sponsor of an ordinance prohibiting job discrimination against members of the LGBTQ commmunity. In 2014, he ran in the Democratic primary against another member of the Ford political clan, state Senator Ophelia Ford, and was able to unseat her.

Harris got himself elected leader of the shrunken five-member Democratic corps in the state Senate and made the most of his position, becoming an active spokesman for the party’s issues, and meanwhile working across the aisle with Republicans like state Senator Brian Kelsey on nonpartisan matters.

Ever on the move, Harris meditated seriously on another race for Congress against incumbent Cohen but thought better of it, publicly dropping the idea in early 2016. His latest initiative, the Tennessee Voter Project, serves the dual purpose of revving up Democratic energy in general and keeping his name before the public.

And now opportunity beckons once more with the county mayor’s race. It seems almost inevitable that either he or Mulroy, still functioning as a mutually supportive duo, will make the race, and that coin flip will likely happen fairly soon.

Nor does the guessing game end there. The latest rumors in Democratic Party circles concern the possible mayoral candidacies of two other big names — Harold Byrd and Shea Flinn. 

A core member of the politically active Byrd family, Byrd is president of the Bank of Bartlett, essentially a family enterprise. A longtime state Representative and a political broker in his own right, Byrd was the Democratic nominee for Congress in the 7th District in 1994, losing that year to Republican Ed Bryant.

He prepared a race for county mayor in 2002 but reluctantly withdrew when then Public Defender A C Wharton became a candidate for the nomination, transforming that year’s Democratic primary into a three-way affair that also included then state Representative Carol Chumney.

By 2010, Byrd’s reputation and popularity, both in Democratic circles and across the party line, were such as to make him an odds-on favorite to be elected county mayor that year. Pointedly, Mark Luttrell, the ultimate winner as a Republican nominee, had let it be known that he would eschew the mayoral race and seek reelection as sheriff if Byrd ran for mayor. But a combination of a personal illness and a post-recession duty to see to the needs of the family banking business kept Byrd from running that year.

Now, the word is that Byrd, with both his own and the bank’s health in seemingly good order, is looking at one last chance at gaining the office.

Then there is the chance of a candidacy for the office by Shea Flinn, yet another former political figure with a high profile, both in Democratic Party ranks and in bipartisan circles. A prominent member of the city council after his election in 2007, Flinn resigned his seat in 2015 to become senior vice president for the Greater Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce.

That Flinn was considering a re-entry into political ranks was first signaled recently when his name was prominently featured in a telephone robo-poll of potential candidates for county mayor. That was amid rampant speculation that Flinn had a hand in the sponsorship of the poll.

If Flinn should become a candidate he is sure to have the full support of his father, wealthy radiologist/broadcast executive George Flinn, whose resources are such as to have paid for numerous political races by the senior Flinn himself, a one-time member of the County Commission but a so-far unsuccessful aspirant for a variety of other offices.

That George Flinn is a conservative Republican and Shea Flinn is known as a progressive Democrat is an anomaly of the James Carville-Mary Matalin sort that troubles neither father nor son.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Touliatos Announces for Shelby County Mayor

CREDIT: JB

JB

Joy Touliatos announces for County Mayor as prominent backers John Bobango and Brent Taylor look on.

As of Thursday, there’s a race on for the Republican nomination for Shelby County Mayor. With conspicuous backing from some GOP luminaries of the past and present, two-term Juvenile Court Clerk Joy Touliatos, stressing the issues of public safety, taxes, and education,  announced for Mayor at a press conference at Waterford Plaza.

Among the family and well-wishers looking on were former Memphis City councilman and Shelby County Commissioner Brent Taylor and former Councilman John Bobango, both of whom will have major roles in the Touliatos campaign (as treasurer and co-chair, respectively), her political consultant Steven Reid, and Shelby County Clerk Wayne Washburn.

In her announcement statement, Touliatos had this to say about her major  campaign priorities: “First and foremost crime and public safety will be the most important priority of my administration. Second, we need to lower property taxes by making Shelby County Government smaller and more efficient. Third, we must attract new business and create new jobs. And that requires an education system that prepares our kids for college but also recognizes the need to prepare young adults for the workforce. “

Acknowledging the head start, campaign-wise, of Shelby County Commissioner Terry Roland, who announced for mayor more than a year ago and maintains a high public profile, Touliatos expressed confidence in her ability to bridge the name-recognition gap.

It has long been assumed that County Trustee David Lenoir will also be a candidate for County Mayor, though Lenoir has not yet announced and is rumored also to be looking at the state Senate seat currently held by Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris of Collierville, who has been nominated for a federal judgeship by President Trump.

It is probably not coincidental that, during the course of budget negotiations on the County Commission this year, Roland found occasion to fault the spending priorities of both the Trustee’s office and the Juvenile Court Clerk’s office.

In a three-way contest with Roland and Lenoir, both high-powered political figures with presumed support in influential Republican Party circles, Touliatos, who can make claims of her own on GOP loyalists, would conceivably have an advantage with female Republican voters.

Meanwhile, as the blanks are being filled in on the Republican side, the picture among potential Democratic aspirants is more opaque, Former County Commissioner and erstwhile political broker Sidney Chism has advertised his likely candidacy, and outgoing Commission chairman Melvin Burgess has also expressed an interest in running.

Two other possible Democratic candidates, University of Memphis law professor and former County Commissioner Steve Mulroy and state Senator Lee Harris, are apparently both deliberating on an entry into th e mayoral race. Whichever one makes the plunge can count on the support of the other.

And there could be a Democratic wild card — former City Councilman and current Chamber of Commerce vice president Shea Flinn, whose name was prominent among those of candidates being asked about in a recently run telephone robo-poll.

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Politics Politics Feature

Roland “Rolls Um Easy” on Campaign Trail

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

The county mayor’s race is still some distance down the calendar, but at least one candidate — Republican Terry Roland, a Millington store-owner and Shelby County commissioner — has been running in public for a year or more.

On Saturday, he brought his campaign to the newly renovated Houston Levee Community Center in North Cordova, where he gave a fair-sized crowd his patented mix of country vernacular, governmental shop-talk, class-action rhetoric, and, where need be, a little topical pop talk.

Before he got started, he and his helpers fired up a grill and laid out a generous supply of hot dogs, hamburgers, and what Roland described as some “great Italian sausage.” Campaign associate Cary Vaughn — who would follow up Roland’s remarks later on by likening him to Joe Montana and calling him “the only candidate who understands urban and suburban” — jested on the front end that “we’re picking pockets all over Shelby County.”

That was an apparent tongue-in-cheek reference to the fact that the late-morning rally, fifth in an ongoing series across the county, would double as a fund-raiser, but there would, in fact, not be much of a hard sell to the attendees, most of whom seemed to be Roland loyalists already.

In his talk, Roland ran through a miscellany of his platform planks, including a boast on behalf of the commission’s recent two-cent property tax decrease, a recommendation of de-annexation as a way for Memphis to conserve its resources and pay for more police (and to avoid having to borrow deputies from the Sheriff’s Department), a ringing endorsement of TIF (tax-increment-financing) projects as an alternative to PILOT (payment-in-lieu-of-tax) arrangements, a pledge that his would be a “blue collar vs. blue blood” campaign, and finally some Lowell George.

Roland, a onetime country/rock singer himself, quoted some lines from “Roll Um Easy,” a favorite lyric by the Little Feat lead singer:

“I have dined in palaces, drunk wine with kings and queens,

But darlin’, oh darlin’, you’re the best thing I ever seen. …”

Except that Roland, to accommodate the plurality of his audience, made that “y’all are” rather than “you’re.”

At the moment, Roland remains the only formally announced mayoral candidate, though County Trustee David Lenoir is known to be planning a county mayor’s race on the Republican side, and former commissioner Sidney Chism has informally touted his own candidacy as a Democrat. Roland has wasted no time in gigging Lenoir. He made an effort during the recent budget season to defund part of the trustee’s budget, and on Monday afternoon — in a session called to discuss a draft of a “Strategic Agenda 2017-20” — he complained about what he said was the trustee’s laxity in selling off tax-defaulted property.

The Strategic Agenda project was overseen by the 2016-17 commission chair, Democrat Melvin Burgess Jr., who has let it be known that he, too, is likely to become a candidate for county mayor. “We’ve got to have a plan,” he said over and over on Monday, both in his public remarks and in private conversation.

• To no one’s surprise, GOP Commissioner Heidi Shafer, the past year’s vice chair, was elected county commission chair for 2017-18. The vote was by acclamation, and the sense of unity was underscored by the fact that her nominator was fellow Republican Steve Basar, with whom Shafer has often been an odds.

The vote for vice chair went to Democrat Willie Brooks, also by acclamation after the withdrawal from contention of fellow Democrat Eddie Jones. Brooks’ victory owed something to his bridge-building endorsement of a formal resolution by Republican David Reaves opposing a proposed charter school in Bartlett.