Tag: Van Turner

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Showdown Monday on Voting Machines

From left: Steve Mulroy, Eddie Jones, Erika Sugarmon, Sarah Wilkerson Freeman. (Photo by Jackson Baker)

Proponents of hand-marked paper ballots held a press conference Friday on the eve of Monday’s Shelby County Commission meeting, where a vote is scheduled to approve or reject a rival system employing ballot-marking devices.

The ballot-marking devices are being insisted on by a majority on the Shelby County Election Commission, which pleads that timeliness demands a favorable vote. If the County Commission provides one, the county would spend $5.8 million on new machines supplied by Election Systems & Software, LLC (ES&S) and, says the Election Commission, the ballot-marking devices would be ready in time for the August county election. 

Opposing such a vote at Friday’s press conference (held at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church) were two active County Commissioners, one former County Commissioner, one County Commissioner-elect, and a member of the Democratic Party’s state committee.

Steve Mulroy, a County Commissioner from 2006 to 2014 and currently a candidate for District Attorney General, characterized the issue to be voted on Monday as follows:  “We are getting ready …to quite possibly decide what election and voting system we’re going to use for the next 20 years. There is a chance that we’ll be making the wrong decision that we will be spending $6 million on an overpriced, glitch-vulnerable, hackable, less secure voting system that will erode further the public’s already low confidence in the integrity of our elections, when there is a much more secure, less expensive, low-tech solution, easily available, that the County Commission has already repeatedly said by resolution they’re in favor of.”

He added that if the ballot-marking machines are approved, “rather than using a 10-cent pen to mark the ballot, we have to use a $5,000 ballot marking device which is touchscreen and computerized and which election experts say can be hacked or is prone to glitches. So we are paying $4 million more for a less secure system. We are here today because the Election Commission has taken yet another run at trying to force the County Commission to fund this overpriced, less secure system.”

As Mulroy indicated, the County Commission has voted repeatedly to use hand-marked paper ballots for the badly needed new machines rather than the ES&S devices. Concurring with Mulroy’s statements and speaking remotely by phone, Commissioner Van Turner said, “The commission has spoken to this issue … I will again be supporting having paper ballots be the primary voting mode in Shelby County.” 

Commissioner Eddie Jones, calling the Election Commission’s action an example of Election Coordinator Linda Phillips’ “Jedi mind tricks,” said of the Election Commission majority, “These are appointed people trying to step beyond their legal authority and go beyond us.”

Although Mulroy had noted, correctly, that the County Commission is majority-Democratic and the Election Commission majority- Republican, County Commissioner-elect Erika Sugarmon declared, “This is a non-partisan issue. Republicans, Democrats, and libertarians have been going to the commissions. We’ve been going to the Election Commission, and the Shelby County Commission, voicing our concerns, and stating our desire to have hand-marked paper ballots. We want hand-marked paper ballots like they have in Knox County.” Sugarmon added, “Ballot-marking devices also are a way to suppress the voters rights. For example, in disadvantaged, marginalized, minoritized, and working class communities, they  cause long lines.”

Sarah Wilkerson Freeman, a member of the Democratic state committee, said the Election Commission’s attempt to force an approval of ballot-marking devices was “troubling, very, very troubling, because it is voters who put the County Commission in, and they have repeatedly said ‘no’ to these proposals from the Election Commission. And what is going on is that the administrator is dragging her heels and dragging our heels until the whole system becomes increasingly broken and broken and broken.”

Mulroy said that the County Commission, on Monday, could not only reject the Election Commission’s desire for ballot-marking devices, it could go ahead and vote for hand-marked paper ballots.  “The state of the law is we have a [Chancery] Court ruling that has not been overturned, [and] the County Commission can go forward, if it wants to. The Election Commission has appealed the Chancery ruling, but the pendency of the appeal does not prevent the county commission from going forward.”

He recommended “that people call their county commissioners between now and Monday, tell them that want to spend less money and be more secure.”

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Politics Politics Feature

A Practical Case for IRV

Reginald Boyce (Photo: Facebook)

Van Turner, the two-term holder of the District 12 seat on the Shelby County Commission, a former commission chair, and one of the body’s most influential members, is term-limited and thus ineligible to run for re-election. Turner, who is also president of the Memphis chapter of the NAACP, has declared himself to be a likely candidate for mayor of Memphis in 2023 and, in the judgment of many observers, is a probable front-runner in the race to succeed Mayor Jim Strickland, who is himself term-limited.

Meanwhile, four candidates have successfully filed for election to the District 12 (southeast Memphis) commission seat, and all of them, at one point or another, had asked Turner for his support — and why shouldn’t they want the backing of the current, much-respected seat-holder?

Erika Sugarmon (Photo: Courtesy Erika Sugarmon)

At least two of them have been publicly rumored to have gained Turner’s support — a fact clearly demanding of some clarification. Which of the two — the Rev. Reginald Boyce, the well-regarded pastor of Riverside Missionary Baptist Church, or Erika Sugarmon, a teacher and voting-rights activist — actually has Turner’s endorsement?

The fact is, they both do. Early on, Boyce asked for, and got, a pledge of support from Turner, who offered him both verbal and financial backing. Then Sugarmon, member of a family renowned for its role in local civil rights history, filed closer to the deadline and reminded Turner of a tentative commitment he had made to her some months earlier.

It was a predicament familiar to many of those Shelby County citizens — in business and civil life in general, as well as in politics — who are asked to underwrite the electoral efforts of others and whose support, in races as close as the one in District 12 is said to be, can be all-important.

Turner decided that he couldn’t renounce the support he’d already offered Boyce, nor could he see himself turning Sugarmon away.

He determined that both candidates were equally deserving and is at present underwriting both their campaigns, verbally and financially. Moreover, he has kind words as well for the other two candidates in the race — David Walker, a former high school classmate of his, and James Bacchus, a retired principal who served at both Whitehaven High School and Hamilton High School. A fifth possible candidate, who ended up not filing, was Ronald Pope, with whom Turner also had good relations.

“It’s difficult when my friends end up running against each other,” says Turner, and his dilemma is, after all, similar to the one we all have when we look at a candidate list and have a hard time deciding which way to go with it. The fact is, the election roster of 2022 offers several such conundrums — races in which more than one candidate has impressive enough credentials to warrant a vote.

(And, yes, of course, there may be one or two races in which nobody seems to measure up.)

In any case, somebody has to win, and everybody can’t.

There are ways of mitigating the perplexities of choice, and one of them — ranked-choice voting — allows for ranking one’s preferences so as to acknowledge the ambiguities of choosing between alternatives and, collectively, to help resolve them. Our betters in the Tennessee General Assembly have just banned that process, though, taking away a tool that we voters of Shelby County had twice approved at the ballot box without much head-scratching at all.

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Politics Politics Feature

The County Commission’s New Map

Source: Shelby County Government

Although various rules of parliamentary order caused Monday’s special called meeting of the Shelby County Commission to open by fits and starts, the needed result, a final vote on commission redistricting, was achieved with relative dispatch. But that was after — in order — a commission meeting, an adjournment, a meeting of the general government committee, another adjournment, and a final commission meeting.

Still and all, it got done, and on the November 9th deadline set by the Election Commission. Accommodations were made via amendment to oblige commissioners from Germantown and Collierville. Some precincts were shifted around in the area of East Memphis and western Germantown so as to keep incumbents Brandon Morrison, a Republican, and Michael Whaley, a Democrat, from having to run in the same district.

Morrison has a district to herself, though it is fundamentally changed from the old District 13 she has represented — a conglomerate of largely East Memphis precincts. She objected last week that too many precincts from her original district were being shifted to District 4, essentially the Germantown district.

In the amended version, those precincts are still moved east. But at least her own home precinct, the one she lives in, has moved along with them. District 4, containing a reliably Republican voting base, is now her district to run in, for better or for worse.

District 5, Whaley’s designation in the old configuration, has become a brand-new district consisting essentially of Cordova (the creation of a Cordova district being one of the stated aims of Commissioner Van Turner and other members of the Commission majority).

The district Whaley inhabits, meanwhile, renumbered as District 13, is still situated at the junction, more or less, of East Memphis, Midtown, and Binghampton, and its population is presumed to be majority-Democratic, as his old district was.

If the interested parties did not get all of what they wanted, they may have gotten the best of what was possible.

Among the several parliamentary maneuvers pursued during this important but relatively brief commission meeting was a last-ditch effort by Morrison to get a previously discarded map (known for its original sponsor, District 2 Republican David Bradford of Collierville, as “the Bradford map”) up for a vote.

In the amended map, Bradford had gotten the return of the Collierville High School precinct from its earlier proposed relocation in District 12. But he and Morrison evidently felt obliged, for the record, to get a more idealized version of their hopes up for a vote.

They did, but “Map 4,” as it was entitled, unsupported by any precinct data, went down to defeat predictably, with only 5 votes, only those of the commission’s Republicans, supporting it. (In the debate over Map 4, Democrat Tami Sawyer charged that the map had been shaped by Brian Stephens of Caissa Public Strategy, a conservative-oriented consulting firm.)

The final vote for the amended redistricting map, a version of the CC4A3 map voted on last week, was 8-5, with Democrat Edmund Ford Jr. joining four Republicans as naysayers. The approved map will probably yield nine Democrats and four Republicans in the next elected commission.

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News News Blog

Black County Commissioners Oppose Lee’s Order on Masks in Schools

Members of the Shelby County Commission Black Caucus spoke out Tuesday against Gov. Bill Lee’s executive order allowing parents to opt their children out of school mask mandates.

Commissioner Tami Sawyer said the group stands with the parents in Shelby County who are concerned with the “distasteful” executive order.

“Parents are reeling from this decision,” Sawyer said. Based on pictures she’s received of school hallways, she said it’s unlikely that students are social distancing between classes. With students able to opt out of wearing masks, Sawyer said there will be an even greater spread of the virus. 

“It gave me the heebie jeebies to think about how that’s going to work without masks,” Sawyer said. “It’s not just the kids and that’s the point that needs to be driven home. When you think about the economic crisis that Shelby County is in, a lot of children are being raised in multigenerational homes. So they are taking this virus to their ailing grandparents, to their mother who is then taking it to work, to their younger siblings taking the virus to middle school or kindergarten.” 

Sawyer also noted that the executive order is another example of the state undermining local government. The local government cannot make decisions for itself without fear of litigation or punitive measures by the state, Sawyer said. 

“That is not the way state and local governments are supposed to work together,” Sawyer said. “Whenever Shelby County makes a decision that’s best for them, we have to be afraid or concerned that the state is going to come back and reverse it or punish us because of our decision, especially when it comes to our children and education.”

Commissioner Mickell Lowery, who has two school-aged children, said protecting children should not be political. 

“It’s hard to tell children to stay separated and social distance when they’re just being kids,” Lowery said. “It affects all of us.”

Lowery added that the group supports any method, “by any means,” to keep children safe. 

Commissioner Reginald Milton said the executive order is using students as “political pawns.” 

“I will not play politics or games with their lives,” Milton said. “I ask all of you to stand with us and say ‘this is wrong and the governor is wrong.’”

With three children in school, Commissioner Van Turner said as a parent, “it’s nerve wracking.” 

“I think parents have rights, but they don’t have rights to endanger the lives of other children in other households,” Turner said. “If that’s the case, why don’t we allow children to smoke at school. Here we are dealing with real life situations where people are passing and the governor is doing something opposite of what’s going to protect our young people.

Turner said the group supports all efforts to pursue legal action against the executive order. 

Shelby County Schools superintendent Joris Ray said Monday that he, along with the SCS board members and its general counsel, are reviewing the legalities of the executive order. In the meantime, he reiterated that masks are still required for all school employees, students, and visitors. 

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News News Blog

Attorney Ben Crump: Kroger Shooting Result of Racial Profiling

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump demands that the Kroger security guard who fatally shot a Black man over the weekend be held accountable. 

Alvin Motley was shot and killed by a security guard at an East Memphis Kroger fuel station Saturday after a dispute over loud music. A day after the shooting, the shooter, Gregory Livingston was charged with second degree murder. 

Crump, who has been retained to represent the Motley family, said at a press conference Tuesday the death of Motley was preventable. Playing music should not be something that’s fatal, Crump said.

“Another unarmed Black person was killed because he was profiled, because of the color of his skin,” Crump said. “How many more times will we have to face these tragedies — these senseless unjustifiable tragedies that leave our children in the morgue and families with holes in their hearts?” 

Crump also added it is Kroger’s responsibility to hire security guards who respect Black customers. 

Crump called for people all over America to go to Kroger and play music for Motley to let Kroger know “our music should not prove fatalities for our children.” 

President of the Memphis NAACP chapter Van Turner was also at Tuesday’s press conference. Turner called the shooting a “cold-blooded murder.”

He invited those in attendance to “say his name.” 

“Let’s make sure that name means something in this community,” Turner said. “We have to let this family know that we aren’t going to forget Alvin Motley. His murder will not be in vain.” 

Turner said Livingston and Kroger need to be held accountable. 

“We’re here today to resurrect justice,” Turner said. “We’re here to resurrect justice for this family and for Black people who have been dying in this country since we stepped foot on these shores unjustly.”

Senator Katrina Robinson, also present, said Motley’s death was a result of systemic racism. 

“Black people, we have to stop meeting like this,” Robinson said. “One may look at this incident and think that it’s isolated. Nothing about this is isolated. This is a result of systemic racism bleeding all the way down from a Kroger security guard.”

Kroger released a statement on Motley’s death Tuesday. 

“We are deeply saddened, extremely angry and horrified by this senseless violence,” the statement reads. “Our hearts are with the Motley family. This tragic incident involved a third-party contractor onsite to provide security services at our Poplar Avenue Fuel Center. We ask all third-party contractors to respect and honor our core values which include respect, diversity, and inclusion. We want to thank the Memphis Police Department for their swift action. The only outcome we seek is justice.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Turner’s Interest in ’23 Memphis Mayor’s Race Highlights Weekend Announcements

State Rep. London Lamar (right) chats with her mother (left), Mayor Jim Strickland, and state Sen. Sara Kyle (Photo: Jackson Baker)

Things are moving fast now. Though it is only midyear of 2021, a year ahead of time on the calendar, election 2022 is beginning to take form as candidates start to declare their availability and to shape their campaigns. In one notable case, in fact, that of Memphis mayor, which won’t be voted on until 2023, a major candidate has already made his intentions known.

That candidate would be Van Turner, a lawyer of consequence, a county commissioner and former Shelby County Commission chair, head of the NAACP, and president of Memphis Greenspace, the nonprofit, ad hoc organization that now administers several Downtown parks after coming into being to purge them of their Confederate identities and memorabilia.

Turner had been talked up as a possible future mayor of both Shelby County, which will cast a vote for mayor next year, and Memphis, which will do so a year later. At a well-attended fundraiser in his honor on Saturday at the Cordova home of activist Lexie Carter, Turner made his choice known.

He declared that he is forming an exploratory committee to run for mayor of Memphis in 2023, when current Mayor Jim Strickland is term-limited out. And he is likely to inherit a good deal of the Strickland support group, since the Memphis mayor has made no secret of his regard for Turner.

Turner’s declaration solves two problems. Simultaneously he puts other possible contenders for city mayor on notice that he will be in that race as a likely favorite in 2023, and he dissociates himself from the idea of running for Shelby County in 2022 under any imaginable circumstance. Turner had already made it clear he would not oppose the current county mayor, fellow Democrat Lee Harris, who has yet to make his own decisions about his political future.

Melvin Burgess speaks at fundraiser (Photo: Jackson Baker)

• Turner’s was not the only candidacy that got launched over the weekend. Two incumbents running for re-election in 2022 had their coming-out parties — state Representative London Lamar and Shelby County Assessor Melvin Burgess.

Lamar had her initial announcement for a re-election race in House District 91 on Friday at the Allworld Project Management building on B.B. King Street Downtown. She did so with introductory support remarks from both Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and respected activist and businessman Calvin Anderson.

Lamar spoke frankly about her evolution from freshman status into a role of responsibility and outreach in the delegation at large.

Also making an impact at a Sunday event at his home in the Evergreen district was Burgess, who proudly cited his honor as Tennessee Assessor of the Year and his success in persuading the Shelby County Commission to conduct property appraisals on an every-other-year basis.

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News The Fly-By

MEMernet: Hat Flap at Memphian Hotel, Pass the Phone, and a Target Fire

A roundup of Memphis on the World Wide Web.

Memphian Hat Flap

Nextdoor user Lisa Boling called out what she believes is a double standard at The Memphian Hotel over the weekend.

She claims her daughter and her boyfriend were asked to remove their full-brim hats before they could enter the hotel’s rooftop for drinks. They declined and left.

They came back later, took their hats off, entered the rooftop area, and found “older white men” wearing baseball caps. For this, Boling said the hat rule depends “on who you are” and wondered if “this fits into our artsy eclectic personality of our neighborhood.”

Posted to Nextdoor by Lisa Boling

Pass the Phone

“I pass the phone to someone who asks the nurse, ‘Are you ready for the gun show?’” That was Germantown Mayor Mike Palazzolo in a new public service announcement advocating for COVID-19 vaccines.

The YouTube video is styled after the popular “Pass the Phone Challenge” that permeated TikTok and Instagram recently. The #PassthePhone901 post features Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, Register of Deeds Shelandra Ford, Shelby County Commissioner Van Turner, and more.

Target fire

A weekend fire at the Collierville Target had some members of the Memphis subreddit perplexed. One heard someone set the chip aisle ablaze. Another heard multiple fires were set on purpose. Someone heard it was just an electrical fire.

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Politics Politics Feature

‘Just a Park’

Millar, Turner, and Taylor at Health Sciences Park (Photo: Jackson Baker)

In the wake of a previous circumstance of tenseness and hostility at Health Sciences Park involving the disinterment of Nathan Bedford Forrest and his wife Mary Ann Montgomery Forrest, a press conference at the park on Friday, June 11th, was at least partly designed to clear the air, and to a large extent it may have.

The three principal speakers at last Friday’s press conference were County Commissioner and NAACP leader Van Turner of Greenspace, the nonprofit which now controls the large tract formerly known as Forrest Park; Lee Millar, president of the Memphis branch of the Sons of Confederate Veterans; and Brent Taylor, a longtime public official and the local funeral director who satisfied the state requirement for a technical advisor regarding the disinterment of the Forrests, destined now for a new gravesite at a Middle Tennessee site honoring Confederate history.

As Turner expressed it, “Hopefully, all sides were satisfied” — meaning the Black Memphians for whom the removal of the graves and monument meant a “full circle” expungement of former injustice and disregard as well as those whites who equated Confederate General Forrest with glory and their heritage. “I think the Forrest family wanted their ancestor to lie in peace, and there was never going to be any peace here,” Turner said.

Millar attested to the friendly cooperation and a general meeting-of-the-minds between himself and Turner, and Taylor, who saw himself as situated “in the middle” between communities, agreed that “all sides are happy with where we are. Both communities believe that we did this right.”

Asked what the future disposition of the park might be, Turner said he’d received “many recommendations,” but “Right now, we just want this to be a park, not to have any more symbolism here for a little while. We’d like people to just enjoy the park”

• Ellen Hobbs Lyle, the Nashville chancellor who ruled in favor of expanding mail-in voting last year at the height of the pandemic and subsequently incurred the wrath of the state Republican establishment, said last week that she wouldn’t seek another eight-year term in 2022. The suit that she ruled on was pressed by the ACLU and by a group of Memphis petitioners, and Lyle’s ruling was stoutly resisted by the state’s election authorities, who managed to get its scope reduced somewhat in an appeal to the Tennessee Supreme Court. Subsequently, measures to punish Lyle were pushed by GOP legislators in the general assembly but were rejected.

• Governor Bill Lee announced last week that his administration would go ahead with a 37-mile wastewater pipeline connecting the still dormant Haywood County industrial megasite to the Mississippi River. Construction of the $52 million project could begin in the first quarter of 2022.

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News News Blog

Local Leaders Oppose TN ‘Stand Your Ground’ Bill

CREDIT: Tn.gov

Local civil rights leaders are opposing a new bill that will allow the use of deadly force to prevent personal — or personal property crimes. 

House Bill 11 would allow citizens to take matters into their own hands if their personal property is being violated. At first glance, the bill seems reasonable, but local civil rights leaders fear that it will put innocent people in direct danger.

“Similar to what happened to Ahmad Arbery in Georgia, they perceived him to have stolen something in that house then they chased him down and killed him,” said Rev. Walter Womack of the Southern Christian Leadership Council. That incident turned out to be a case of mistaken identity, where neighbors thought a man jogging in their neighborhood was a criminal. 

ShelbyCountyTn.gov

Van Turner

Van Turner, president of the Memphis chapter of the NAACP, raised the same concerns.
“This is a piece of legislation that comes from nowhere in the midst of a pandemic,” he said. “Every day, for the last two weeks, I’ve gotten a report of someone that I know who has passed from COVID-19. In the midst of all this death and despair, the efforts of our Tennessee General Assembly should focus on relieving folks from this.” 

The Tennessee bill seems much like the Castle Doctrine Law better known as the ‘Stand Your Ground law,’ where individuals have the right to use reasonable force, including deadly force, to protect themselves against an intruder in their home. 

The difference in the House Bill 11 and the Castle Doctrine is that the language states  “When and to the degree the person reasonably believes deadly force is immediately necessary to prevent or terminate the other from committing or attempting to commit the following offenses …” This means that the person being violated would not have to be in immediate danger, themselves. 

Under current law, if a suspect is running away from the scene of the crime, you cannot legally shoot at them. If this bill is passed, a citizen can do so without penalty. 

Tn.gov

Jay Reedy

Rep. Jay Reedy, who sponsored the bill, argues that citizens should have the right to protect their possessions. “I would like to understand why people should not be able to protect their property, and I’m waiting for a returned phone call from the NAACP.” 

As soon as the NAACP posted their grievance about the law, Reedy says his office tried to to call and set up a meeting to hash out the language in the bill. Turner said that he has not received a call from Reedy’s office. 

“The bill is so vague that if you thought that someone stole from you, then you can kill them,” said Vickie Terry, Executive Director of NAACP, Memphis. “It’s racially based and since it is a statewide law, it’s a kind of loophole for shooting unarmed people.” 
    

The law raises the case of Trayvon Martin, where George Zimmerman took it upon himself to profile and shoot the unarmed teen because of his perceived threat against the community. “You can’t allow people to just go and deputize themselves and take the law into their own hands,” said Womack.

The timing isn’t appropriate. Plus, the focus should be on people and not things” said Turner. “The measure would promote even more violence in the city.” 

The bill, which was filed several weeks ago, is slated to go to the state house floor in early 2021. The session starts January 12th and probably won’t be heard in committee until the end of January or early February.

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Food & Drink Hungry Memphis

Shelby County Bars Eligible for $10,000 ‘Share the Tab’ Grants

Justin Fox Burks

Cady Smith with a blazing cocktail

Limited service restaurants (or bars) impacted by COVID-19 shutdowns can now access $450,000 in grant funding from the Shelby County government’s Share the Tab program.

The program was announced Tuesday, September 22nd, and is supported by federal CARES Act funding. County officials said the $10,000 grants are available for rent/mortgage, payroll, sanitization, expenses related to switching to a full-service restaurant, and more.

“Limited service restaurants, or bars, as they are most commonly referred, have taken a profound and significant hit to their businesses,” said Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris. “These businesses are often locally owned. They employ thousands of workers in our community. They give back to our community in countless ways. This new program is about trying to help these businesses get on the path to recovery. Although we continue to fight COVID, we also have to move towards a safe economic recovery.”

Nearly 45 limited service restaurants were required to close their doors at the beginning of the summer and, for the most part, remain closed. Shelby County Health Department officials announced Tuesday that — thanks to steady virus data here — bars, wine bars, pubs, taprooms, and more could open Wednesday.

“The Share the Tab fund supports the restaurant and hospitality industry in a tangible way,” said Shelby County Commissioner Van Turner. “We know that social distancing requirements make it difficult for social clubs and bars to operate as they did before. I hope that every qualifying business applies for the funds.”