As no one needs to be reminded, the year 2025 is starting off with near-arctic temperatures, but enough political action is ongoing or forthcoming in the near future to generate a bit of heat.
• The executive committee of the Tennessee Democratic Party will convene in Nashville on Saturday, January 25th, to pick a new chairperson, and no fewer than seven candidates have been nominated for the honor. They are:
— Rachel Campbell of Chattanooga, currently serving both as party chair of Hamilton County and vice chair of the state party. She is one of two co-favorites in the race.
— Gloria Johnson of Knoxville, a state representative and, most recently, the Democrats’ unsuccessful candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2024. The other co-favorite, she has good name recognition and a residual network within the party, but there is some question as to whether her legislative service would disqualify her from the fundraising duties required of a chair.
— Brian Cordova of Nashville, the state party’s current executive director, and a veteran of numerous Democratic electoral campaigns. In the event of a deadlock between Campbell and Johnson, he is seen as a possible fallback choice.
— Vincent Dixie of Nashville, another state representative and a former chair of the party’s legislative caucus. Like Johnson, he, too, might be conflicted on the issue of fundraising.
— Alec Kucharski, a veteran of Tennessee political campaigns and currently a resident of Chicago, where he serves as a liaison with the Democratic delegation of the Illinois legislature.
— Todd Frommeyer of Pulaski, an activist, lawyer, and Navy vet.
— Edward Roland of Chattanooga, said to be a salesperson.
All these candidates will participate in a forum at 1 p.m. on Saturday, to be streamed on Facebook via the Tennessee Democratic County Chairs Association.
• It will be noticed, by the way, that this fairly sizeable field of Democratic candidates contains no aspirants from Memphis.
One longtime member of the Democratic state committee from Shelby County, David Cambron, takes note of this, saying in a text, “We are not Big Shelby any more.”
Cambron maintains that the Memphis area’s “last chance of relevancy” was lost in the 2006 U.S. Senate election, which saw Democrat Harold Ford Jr. lose to Republican Bob Corker.
And, in Cambron’s view, the problem has bipartisan dimensions. “It’s the same reason every statewide discussion of possible Republican gubernatorial candidates doesn’t mention Brent Taylor.”
The reference is clearly to state Senator Taylor’s seemingly nonstop campaigning for more assertive state authority over law enforcement in Memphis and Shelby County. Often, such intentional omnipresence in media attention bespeaks an intention to seek higher office.
Yet, as Cambron points out, Taylor’s name is rarely to be found in public speculation about the 2026 governor’s race.
(In fairness, it should be pointed out that when the Flyer queried Taylor about a possible ambition to run for governor, the senator replied, “The short answer is no. The long answer is hell, no.”)
• As it happens Saturday, January 25th, is also the date for a GOP chairmanship decision, this one for the leadership of the Shelby County Republican Party, the issue to be decided at the Venue at Bartlett Station.
The two declared candidates are former Memphis City Councilman Worth Morgan and longtime GOP activist Naser Fazlullah. As noted previously in this space, Morgan has been the beneficiary of a hyped-up PR campaign involving numerous public endorsements from influential local GOP figures.
All of that has gotten the goat of one prominent Republican, however. Former County Commission Chairman Terry Roland of Millington, who praises Fazlullah’s “selfless” service to the local party, denounces the pro-Morgan faction’s “Revive” campaign as nothing more than an “elitist” plot to suppress grassroots Republicans.
And Roland, who has headed up local campaign efforts for Donald Trump from 2016 on, levies what may be the worst charge in his vocabulary against Morgan, whom he calls a — wait for it — “Never-Trumper.”
Tennessee General Assembly 
