Tag: Willie Herenton

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

About That Cover …

Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer (Source: Shelby County Commission)

Last Friday, I received a direct message on Twitter from county commissioner and mayoral candidate Tami Sawyer. I don’t know Sawyer well, but we’ve met and communicated a few times in recent years. I’ve always found her to be direct, genuine, and likeable.

Sawyer was asking me for contact information for the CEO of Contemporary Media, the parent company of Memphis magazine and the Memphis Flyer. She was upset about the cover of the September Memphis magazine. I told her that I hadn’t seen the magazine but that I knew it was about the mayoral race. She messaged me an image of the cover, which consisted of caricatures by artist Chris Ellis of mayoral candidates Jim Strickland, Willie Herenton, and Sawyer.

“Lord.” was my response.

It was horrible. I made a remark that all three candidates looked equally weird, but there was no getting around it: It was an offensive cover. Sawyer’s face had been distorted with the sort of stereotypical African-American tropes favored by racist cartoonists of the Jim Crow era. It did not look like her, even as caricature.The firestorm around the cover quickly consumed local social media and from there migrated to articles and columns in the Commercial Appeal and Daily Memphian and coverage by local television stations.

Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer

The magazine editor initially issued a statement on the publication’s website, but it was weak sauce — asking readers to judge the magazine on its progressive history and issuing a more or less “sorry if we offended” apology. The next day, Contemporary Media CEO Anna Traverse issued a full-fledged formal apology, also on the magazine’s website. It was entitled “We Failed Memphis” and acknowledged the offensiveness of the cover images and the responsibility of the magazine to do better. Traverse also announced that newsstand copies of the magazine would not be distributed.

Many critics pointed out, correctly, that the Memphis magazine editorial staff is not diverse and that if, say, an African American were on staff, that cover decision might have been questioned and its intrinsic offensiveness pointed out. They are probably right.

We are well aware of the lack of diversity among editorial employees at CMI. Contemporary Media is facing the same issues that are plaguing many print magazines and newspapers around the country. Shrinking revenues have forced publications to reduce staff sizes. It’s not a great time for making hires, as much as we’d like to. Some publications have forced out older employees via buyouts and layoffs. It’s painful for those employees, but it does open the door to hire a younger and more diverse staff.

Contemporary Media has taken a different approach: keeping our staff but, in some cases, reducing their hours. Several editorial staffers have gone to four-days-a-week employment. Other full-time positions have been replaced with permanent part-time jobs, such as those of film editor and music editor. Five years ago, the Flyer had eight full-time editorial employees. Today, we have four — and I’m not one of them. (I voluntarily opted to work four days a week, beginning last January.) That said, the last four people I’ve hired to write for us (all in the last three years) are Maya Smith, staff reporter; Anthony Sain, Grizzlies beat writer; Andrea Fenise, fashion editor; and Aylen Mercado, monthly columnist. Three are African American; one is Hispanic.

We are aware of the problem and are trying our best to diversify our editorial voice at a time when we aren’t making full-time hires. It’s a struggle, but we’ll get there. The Flyer, for want of a better term, has been “right-sized,” consistent with its revenue.

We need to do better, but I’m convinced that under Traverse, who’s been our CEO all of 11 weeks, Contemporary Media is headed in the right direction. We are determined to continue to serve this community and do right by our readers — all of them.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Realpolitik and the River

In five weeks, more or less, Memphians will be voting for a mayor and city council. The three most recognizable mayoral candidates are the incumbent, Jim Strickland, longtime former Mayor Willie Herenton, and activist and County Commissioner Tami Sawyer.

Strickland touts the city’s “momentum” and its surging economic developments. Herenton wants Memphis to “do it again” and send him back to the office he held for several terms during the 1990s and early 2000s. Sawyer, perhaps best-known for her “Take’EmDown901” campaign to remove the city’s Confederate statuary, is raising hell, poking at Strickland’s record, trying to elevate her profile.

A debate between the three of them would be an interesting exercise in democracy and would give the public a chance to see how the candidates handle themselves in the heat of the moment and where the fissures between them exist.

But it doesn’t appear it’s going to occur. Herenton was the first to opt out of a scheduled debate sponsored by The Commercial Appeal and WMC-Channel 5. Strickland then withdrew, saying, via a spokesperson, “without the top challenger in the race participating, an informed and balanced debate could not happen.” Sawyer responded as you might expect: “Mayor Strickland and Herenton are denying taxpayers the right to hear where we all stand on the issues and make an informed choice on who will lead our city over the next [four] years.”

Sawyer is correct, but she’s battling realpolitik. Neither Herenton nor Strickland perceive that they have anything to gain from a debate (see Politics), so any opportunity to avoid such an event will be taken. And that’s too bad because there are a number of issues that could stand a public airing, including the ongoing battle between Memphis in May and the proponents of the redesign of Tom Lee Park by the Memphis River Parks Partnership.

Last week, Memphis in May issued its report on the 2019 festival, citing a month-long economic impact of festival events totaling $149,112,480. MIM also cited tax revenues for the city at $4.6 million and an attendance of 107,153. Impressive stats, no doubt. Well done, Jim Holt and crew.

A couple days later, a group representing 70 Downtown businesses released a letter they had written to Strickland in June, citing their support for the MRPP redesign: “We believe a revitalized Riverfront, and in particular, the effort to build a bold new Tom Lee Park, is critical to maintaining and capitalizing on [the city’s economic] momentum, and we believe the time to make that happen is now.” Straightforward enough. A simple statement of support.

In response, Amy Howell, a spokesperson for a group called Get Our Riverfront Right and MIM, issued the following statement to the Daily Memphian: “While the taxpayer funded RDC/MRPP may not be competent is [sic] running our park system, they are good at PR and swaying public opinion to fit their agenda(s). Our group of volunteer tax paying citizens comprised of a diverse group of well intentioned Memphians have [sic] amassed almost 7,000 signatures against what RDC/MRPP has planned for Tom Lee Park as well as letters from the MRA and Hotel/Motel Association. We know there have [sic] been no operational strategy, budgeting and plan to maintain our park system.”

Grammar aside, the attacks on MRPP staff and their motives by Howell and various ad hoc social-media groups have often been clumsy and mean-spirited. And frankly, pointless. I have news for MIM and those who want Memphis to “leave Tom Lee alone.” Tom Lee Park is going to get a redesign, though it may be modified to some degree. Mediation is ongoing, though I don’t believe any decision will be made public until — wait for it — after the mayoral election. Rather than publicly assaulting the integrity of the other side (and dozens of Downtown business owners), it might behoove Howell and MIM to tone down the public rhetoric and continue to quietly work together to create a park that will accommodate the MIM events, even if it means some adjustments must be made.

In a world where the Amazon is burning and climate change is uppermost on the minds of serious world leaders, opposing the planting of trees and the installation of water features and a shelter in a treeless, blazing-hot public park is a bad look. Trashing the integrity of fellow Memphians who support creating a new riverfront is a bad look. Nobody wants Memphis in May to go away. The city welcomes the friendly May invasion of barbecuers and music lovers from around the world. But we also want to welcome tourists and locals to the river the rest of the year.

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Politics Politics Feature

No Mayoral Debates; Herenton and Strickland Opt Out

With little more than a month left in the city election contest, the bad news is that there will almost certainly be no public debate featuring the three major candidates for mayor against each other.

The key point is that former Mayor Willie Herenton will not debate. He has made his position clear, most recently last Friday night, on the occasion of the Shelby County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day banquet, which both he and Mayor Jim Strickland attended. (Mayoral candidate Tami Sawyer harshly criticized them both for doing so.) 

In between bouts of glad-handing with the GOP gentry, Herenton engaged in a running criticism of the local news media, which he maintains have never treated him fairly. He somehow drew a connection between that highly arguable premise and the concept of facing off, even if independently of any direct control by the media, against his mayoral opponents.

Herenton shmoozing at GOP dinner

“I understand the idea of ‘fake news,'” said Herenton. “I’ve always had to deal with it myself.” He said he was writing a book about his public life as superintendent and mayor, one that would feature numerous instances of bad faith treatment of him by the media.

The former mayor formally rejected an invitation to appear in a now-aborted September 19th debate co-sponsored by several local entities, including The Commercial Appeal, the NAACP, and WMC-TV, which had planned to televise it. He seemed to be irritated by the fact that the affair was established as to time and place before he was notified of it, though he indicated that he would have been disinclined to participate in any case.

Herenton’s refusal to be involved led to the cancellation of the event, inasmuch as Strickland had made it clear that he would not consent to any debate format involving Sawyer that did not also involve Herenton. Strickland had initially accepted the debate invitation “conditionally” but withdrew his willingness to participate in the wake of Herenton’s refusal.

Only Sawyer and LeMichael Wilson, the other two candidates who had met the benchmark requirement of having raised at least $30,000, had made unqualified acceptances of the debate invitation. And Sawyer has been especially avid for an opportunity to appear on the same stage as Strickland, who has been just as determined to avoid any situation that had the appearance of being a one-on-one with her, or anything close to it. A debate sans Herenton would, in his estimation, have created that situation.

Photographs by Jackson Baker

Strickland at GOP Lincoln Day dinner

Bad feeling between Strickland and Sawyer has persisted at least since the prolonged public debate involving removal of the city’s Downtown Confederate monuments. 

As a councilman, Strickland had voted in favor of removing the statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest and Jefferson Davis from their pedestals in Downtown parks. And, as mayor, he worked through existing legal channels to have them removed, until, repeatedly rebuffed by the state Historical Commission, he and legal advisor Bruce McMullen hit upon the expedient of deeding the parks over to an ad hoc nonprofit organization, which then removed them.

But Sawyer, whose Take ‘Em Down 901 organization was at the forefront of public protests demanding removal of the monuments, had been dissatisfied with the mayor’s leadership in the process of removal, deeming it slow, over-cautious, and too accepting of existing legal obstacles. She oversaw daily vigils at the site of the Forrest statue, demanding radical and immediate action.

In the aftermath of the statues’ removal, both Strickland and Sawyer received their share of kudos, but each felt that the other had received too much credit. 

In the current campaign, Sawyer has continued her harsh criticism of the mayor and what she considers his unresponsiveness to social needs in the community at large. She campaigned locally with CNN pundit Angela Rye and did not repudiate Rye’s statement that Strickland was a “racist.”

As of now, in any case, the three major mayoral campaigns are all proceeding along separate pathways, with no opportunity for joint appearances or collegial presentations. Another likely casualty of this circumstance is a Mayoral Candidate Meet-and-Greet, co-sponsored by the League of Women Voters and the Tennessee Nurses Association and set for Friday, September 6th, at the National Civil Rights Museum. Herenton had also reportedly turned down an invitation to debate from the Urban League.

While at the Lincoln Day dinner on Friday night, Herenton explained to the Flyer and Peg Watkins of the League of Women Voters, which is continuing to seek his participation in its meet-and-greet, that his campaign strategy would be based on a series of meetings which he would control — an instance of which was a Women for Herenton rally held on Saturday in South Memphis. 

At the rally, attended by upwards of 1,000 women, virtually all African-American, Herenton told the attendees, “I don’t mind telling you what part of our strategy is. We’re going to win the election in early voting. We’re going to have a caravan of buses. We’re going to have vans called the Herenton Express. We’ll do an early voting like they have never seen before.”

Sawyer, who has been holding a series of neighborhood meet-and-greets, has built up something of a Midtown base. She also got a boost this week with a public endorsement from Our Revolution, the national progressive organization that was founded as an offshoot of the 2016 presidential campaign waged by Bernie Sanders. She also tweeted with justifiable pride an endorsement by Hillary Clinton via the progressive vehicle Run for Something.

Strickland, meanwhile, has launched an extensive series of radio and TV ads touting his accomplishments and has indicated he is prepared to spend every penny of the $1 million in his campaign budget in the course of this election battle.

Editor’s note: In an earlier version of this story, it was inferred that candidate Tami Sawyer was connected to a protest by a group of activists who intruded on Mayor Strickland’s lawn. Sawyer was not a participant in that event. — BV

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Herenton Rouses Women Supporters with Promise of Victory

CREDIT: JB

Willie Herenton won’t be, as Gail Floyd-Tyree called him on Saturday, “the first boss to go back in that chair.” Several others, including three-time Mayor Ed Crump (who once literally owned the name “Boss”) have managed to get back into the JB

Herenton at his Saturday rally

office of mayor after serving in it previously.

But Herenton — who, as several speakers (including himself) noted at a jam-packed “Women for Herenton” rally, was there from 1991 through 2009 — agrees with Tyree, the executive director of Local 1377 of the AFSCME union, who gave him a rousing introduction. He, too, believes strongly that he can get back into City Hall in the role of mayor.

And there was much about Saturday’s rally, held in a cavernous warehouse-sized space on South Third Street, that could just about convince anybody.

First, there were the numbers, upwards of a thousand women, all patently excited and happy to be there. Then there was the enthusiasm, simmering to begin with, and periodically fired into high decibels in the course of the event. Finally, there were the obvious signs of organization and preparation — a forest of large-sized “HERENTON” signs handed out by helpers at appropriate moments, much in the manner of a national political convention.

And, perhaps most convincingly, there were the several voter-registration tables around the sides of the hall, staffed by teams of women supporters who, from time to time, appeared deluged by new applicants.

JB

Women supporters came out en masse.

The event was so emotionally rousing as to remind onlookers of the first Herenton campaign in 1991, the one that, by a razor-thin margin of 142 votes over incumbent Dick Hackett, made Herenton the first elected black mayor in Memphis history. And it more or less overpowered the more recent memory of the half-hearted Herenton run for Congress against incumbent Steve Cohen in 2010, a Democratic primary race Herenton lost by a margin of 4 to 1.

Both Herenton’s campaign manager, Robert Spence, and AFSCME’s Floyd-Tyree, generated some abundant advance energy on behalf of Herenton. Said Spence: “I heard our opponent’s theme” (meaning current Mayor Jim Strickland, running for reelection).

“‘Good at the basics.’ What is that? When did somebody come to office saying the best they could do was mediocre? … We can do better than that,” said Spence. “And the basics don’t even get good. Trash on the streets. Potholes. Crime. … We know who ran the city in an exceptional and extraordinary way. … The Lion is walking in the jungle, and they can’t stop it.”

Spence was outdone and then some by Floyd-Tyree, whose union is one of several that have endorsed the former mayor. Saying that she was “confirmed in my soul that this is divine intervention,” Tyree concluded a passionate speech thusly: “You can’t be in the presence of Willie Herenton and not know he’s a boss. Walks like a boss, talks like a boss. He’s the boss!” And: “Where we taking our boss?” The answer came back: “City Hall!”

Expectations in the hall were so high that it would have been virtually impossible for Herenton himself not to deliver. And he did.

After some pro forma early praise for his volunteer workers and an expression of his belief in the power of the spiritual realm, Herenton said, “There’s power in the vote of women, too. We made history in 1991 when you elected Willie Herenton as the first African-American mayor. You didn’t stop there. You reelected me in 1994, you reelected me 1997, in 2000, in 2004, and 2007. And guess what, you’re going to elect me in 2019!”

Herenton was wrong. The actual reelection sequence was 1995, 1999, 2003, and 2007. But it hardly mattered. The women roared their agreement.

Herenton continued. “Someone asked me a question: Willie, can you do it? I took them to the book: Philippians 4:13.” There was a roar. “I see we’ve got some church folks in here,” said Herenton, who then quoted the scripture: “‘’You can do all things through Christ!’

“Sometimes the Lord makes the lowly overcome the highly,” Herenton said. He made note of opponent Strickland’s much-touted $1 million campaign budget. “They’ve got the money power. But we’ve got people power. That’s what’s going to take us over the top on October 3rd.

“This crime problem is deep. It bothers me, this present administration is weak on crime. A lot of people in our community, they have no hope. They’ve given up. They have no inspiration. We’ve got to embrace the values that our parents gave us.” With a nod to his sister in the audience, he said, “Our mother taught us: Work. Education. Church. Work hard and you can be successful. Somehow or another we’ve got to bring those values back. … There’s so much hatred, so much jealousy, so much envy among our people.

“I want you to know that this election is very critical to the future of our city. You’ve asked the question of why am I going back into public service. Because it’s late in the evening for me. I want to tell you. I want you to hear me. It’s late in the evening, but the God I serve is still using me.”

The whoop from the crowd was so great as to befit one who had freshly emerged from Sinai with brand new tablets.

And indeed, Herenton had a revelation of sorts for the women. But first there was another Biblical reference, one that might not have gone down well amid a group of feminists but one that scored well with this audience.

“When I look in the Bible,” Herenton said, “I see that first God made man, and he made women, the helpmate. There were great women in the Bible. Esther, Ruth … I could go on and on. … Since the beginning of Biblical times, there have been women of value, women of courage, women who nurtured civilization. And today women are still relevant.

“I am appealing to you. You have been there for me in every election. Women have voted overwhelmingly for me. And I’m asking you to do it again.”

The women shouted their assent. Then Herenton favored them with the great revelation:

“Before I take my seat, let me tell you what we’re going to ask you to do. This is real strategic. Early voting starts September 13th. We have you guys in our database, and we’re going to reach out to you, because I don’t mind telling you part of what our strategy is. We’re going to win this election in early voting. We going to have a caravan of buses. We’re going to have vans called the Herenton Express. We’ll do an early voting like they have never seen before.”

And there was a warning: “Let me tell you why we have to overwhelm in early voting. In Memphis, with technology, they can steal the election. We’re going to win so overwhelmingly that they can’t steal this election. We need to come out in record numbers.”

Apologizing “for my emotionalism,” Herenton said, “I don’t know how to do a fake. I’ve just got to be real.” And, with another exhortation to “go back to our values,” he proclaimed, in the words of “that old church song we used to sing, ‘Victory is ours!’”

Altogether, a boffo performance. If Herenton can continue to generate energy on this scale, Strickland, opponent Tami Sawyer, and the rest of the 11-candidate field will have something to take very seriously.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Strickland Opens Up

CREDIT: JB

JB

Mayor Srickland in the center of supporters (top) and being buttonholed by them (bottom)

On Tuesday afternoon, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, freshly introduced by School Board member Michelle McKissick (who in turn had been introduced by County Commission chair Van Turner) took a look around the crowd that surrounded him on the vacant floor of the former Spin City on Poplar Avenue and professed himself “humbled to see so many people from all walks of life.”

That was how Strickland formally opened his 2019 reelection campaign, clearly trying to present himself as a man for all seasons and factions.

The Mayor promised the crowd “a few words,” which turned out to be a semi-lengthy recounting of what he considers his accomplishments over the 3 ½-year period of his tenure so far.

These included an accelerated hiring of police officers, a doubling of the city’s paving budget, and the use of “data” to “drive government decisions.” He would quickly amend that formulation to “data and good people,” working in a brag on city employees.

Apropos that matter of data, Strickland served up more stats, claiming : a quickening of the city’s 911 response to an average of 7 seconds per call; an enhanced survival rate at the city’s animal shelter; an increased MWBE percentage (rate of contracting with firms owned by women and minorities); a 90 percent increase of summer jobs for youth; 22,000 new jobs in 3 ½ years; etc., etc.

“All of that without a tax increase,” Strickland proclaimed promising more via his administration’s Memphis 3.0 growth plan. “Memphis does have momentum,” he said.

The Mayor cited some encouraging appraisals from the Bloomberg organization of Manhattan and got a rise out of his crowd of supporters when, in boasting the rate of job growth in Memphis, he said it surpassed that in such other major cities as Houston, Dallas, and “a small town east of here called Nashville.”

There was more such upbeat boasting, some of it borrowed from other governmental jurisdictions, as when Strickland cited state government’s provision of free education at community colleges and tech schools.

All in all, the Mayor’s presentation was rhetorically lean and in line with his oft-stated concept of his job as essentially that of handling the “basics.”

He is making a point of running on his record, and it will be up to his several opponents to question his data and his conclusions and to offer arguments of their own as alternatives. At least two of them — County Commissioner Tami Sawyer and former Mayor Willie Herenton — seem prepared to make such an effort, but they are both well behind with respect to one important piece of data not mentioned by Strickland on Tuesday.

That would be in the matter of campaign budgets, where the incumbent Mayor has an amount on hand close to one million dollars. That is one “basic” that will be hard to counter.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Tami Sawyer Won’t Wait; Enters Memphis Mayoral Race

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

It has been no secret that Tami Sawyer is disinclined to wait on events. Clearly, the progressive activist and first-term Shelby County commissioner would rather influence events — or, even better, take charge of them. She was that way about the lingering problem of monuments to the Confederacy, she is that way about social-justice issues on the commission, and, most recently, she is that way about advancing her own political star (though she would prefer to see her impatience as being directed at a cluster of pending civic issues rather than at her own ambitions).

In any case, after taking the counsel of numerous acquaintances, including several established figures who advised her to hold up until she at least acquired more experience in public office, the youthful commissioner has now declared her candidacy for mayor of Memphis.

Although she had leaked the information beforehand, Sawyer made her declaration most vividly and formally at a public rally on Saturday night, billed appropriately under the head “Memphis Can’t Wait,” at the highly symbolic Clayborn Temple Downtown. It was there that sympathizers with the goals of striking sanitation workers and of Dr. Martin Luther King gathered before marching in 1968. And it is there that Sawyer hopes to have begun her march to power.

The venerable old church was nearly filled with enthusiastic supporters chanting “We Can’t Wait!” Alison Smith, a senior at White Station High School, said she couldn’t wait. So did veteran activists Mike Moseley and Danny Song. So did the self-identified “queer woman” who got cheers for that acknowledgment and cheers again for the declaration that she couldn’t wait for the development of a truly viable transit system because, among other things, she was tired of the lack of one making her late to work.

And there was TaJuan Stout-Mitchell, the former Memphis City Council member and veteran of local government who was the closest thing to a senior political eminence on hand. She couldn’t wait, either, and threw her support to the young “flipper” she described this way: “She is unbought, she is unbossed, she is uncompromised!”

And then the stage was all Tami’s … There is no doubting Sawyer’s appeal as a change agent, proven during her direction of the long and ultimately successful Take ‘Em Down 901 campaign to divest the city of its most prominent Confederate memorials. It remains moot whether that is translatable into an ability to marshall a majority of eligible Memphis voters, across all sorts of age, gender, class, racial, and political lines, on behalf of an agenda that would necessarily be far more sweeping and diffuse.

Although “she’ll split the black vote” was one of the tease lines sent up for disbelieving ridicule by Sawyer’s supporters at the rally, that concern is part of the reckoning, old math or not, that has to be applied to her effort. After all, the field of mayoral candidates already includes, besides the established Mayor Jim Strickland, another challenger whose relationship to the African-American majority of Memphis is nothing less than historic.

That would be Willie Herenton, a pathfinder twice over, as the first black superintendent of Memphis public schools, and then, as the man who in 1991 broke the racial barrier with his election as mayor, an office he would hold for for 18 years.

Granted, Herenton’s mayoralty had lost luster toward the end, as his enthusiasm for the job and his attention to it both dissipated. Granted, too, his attempt to mount a political comeback by running for Congress in 2010 floundered in the wreckage of a 4-to-1 loss to incumbent 9th District Representative Steve Cohen. It remains a fact that, even at 78, Herenton retains an innate formidability and an eminence, however tarnished, that make it hard to estimate his vote potential.

There is no doubting one thing: The Herenton camp has already evinced its displeasure at Sawyer’s entry and no doubt will continue to. Thaddeus Matthews, a free-booting critic in the black community of all things establishmentarian, has been both off and on an ally of Herenton. Right now he is on, and is using his various cyber and broadcasting platforms on behalf of the once and would-be future mayor.

In a recent online post, Matthews treated it as a given that Sawyer has been “put in the race by current mayor Jim Strickland to take votes away from his most formidable opponent, W.W. Herenton.” Matthews posits a sibling relationship between Sawyer and Michael Hooks Jr., a contractor who, he says, has been the beneficiary of city contracts. “Now I understand why she wants to run,” says Matthews, “to make sure that her brother continues to be fed by Strickland and other power brokers.”

The credibility of a putative hand-in-glove collusion between candidates Sawyer and Strickland would seem to be undermined by the all-too-obvious tension between the two during the runup to the final uprooting of the statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest and Jefferson Davis, when Strickland was challenged to act, relentlessly and not always with tender respect, by Sawyer and her Take ‘Em Down 901 movement.

And it is clear that Sawyer’s base constituency is made up of individuals, black and white, who have modest regard for Strickland and his accomplishments and whose claims of “we can’t wait” as applied to their personal and politically progressive goals seem real enough. The fact is that, while Herenton’s electoral base is obviously the most likely to suffer drainage from the Sawyer candidacy, Strickland’s is, to some degree, vulnerable as well.

In getting 81 percent of the vote in the 7th County Commission District against moderate Republican Sam Goff in 2016, Sawyer more than held her own in the upscale Evergreen area, and her enthusiastic audience in Clayborn Temple on Saturday was more than moderately impacted with pockets of white Midtowners.

Still, name-recognition polls — hers and Strickland’s, for sure, and perhaps even by Herenton — indicate a serious deficit on her part. It’s a problem that this race will help resolve for the long run. In the shorter run — which is to say, by October 3rd, it’s chancey, especially since her dollar deficit to the well-funded Strickland is enormous.

Still, Tami Sawyer has chutzpah, she has ideas, she has some quality midway between charm and charisma. She has determination, and she has a following. She and they can’t wait to see how this turns out, and neither can we.

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog

Herenton Contends Term-Limits Referendum a “Fraud” Aimed at His Candidacy, Will Sue

CREDIT: JB

JB

Herenton and Spence at press conference

Although the office of Memphis City Attorney Bruce McMullen disclaims any responsibility for the wording of Referendum #5676 on the November 6th ballot, former Mayor W.W. Herenton is charging that the referendum is illegal and fraudulent and designed expressly to prevent his intended 2019 race for Mayor.

Herenton and his attorney, Robert Spence, announced at a press conference in Spence’s office, Wednesday morning, that they would be filing a lawsuit against the city and those officials (unspecified except for council Chairman Berlin Boyd) who, they say, doctored the originally intended referendum.

Spence displayed three different versions of the term-limits referendum on a screen. Version One, approved on January 23rd by the city council, says the following:

Shall the Charter of the City of Memphis, Tennessee, be amended to extend the number of terms [that one] may be eligible to hold or to be elected to the office of Mayor or Memphis City Council from two (2) consecutive four-year terms to three (3) consecutive four-year terms and to repeal all provisions of the city’s Charter inconsistent with this amendment?

Version Two, approved by the council on the same date, and later certified by the Comptroller’s office, to be on the ballot:

No person shall be eligible to hold or to be elected to the office of Mayor of Memphis City Council if such person has served at any time after December 31, 2011, more than three (3) consecutive terms, except that service by persons elected or appointed to fill an unexpired four-year term shall not be counted as a full four-year term.

On April 5th, in between those versions and a final one sent to the Election Commission, Herenton announced his intention to run again for mayor.

Then, on August 23rd, the following version was signed by council chair Boyd and sent to the Election Commission:

Shall the Charter of the City of Memphis, Tennessee be amended to provide no person shall be eligible to hold or to be elected to the office of Mayor or Memphis City Council if any such person has served at any time more than three (3) consecutive four-year terms, except that service by persons elected or appointed to fill an unexpired four-year term shall not be counted as full four-year term?

As Herenton and Spence noted, the date of December 31, 2011, specified in the version approved by the council, is deleted in the version forwarded to the Election Commission and included on the ballot.

Speaking for the city attorney’s office, Deputy City Attorney Jennifer Sink said that the wording of the resolution was a matter decided upon by the council and that the administration’s responsibility was only to certify such fiscal impact as was carried by the referendum.

Herenton and Spence, however, were insistent when asked that no other interpretation was feasible except that the referendum was changed to preclude his race for mayor and that a lawsuit would be forthcoming against all those responsible for the deception.

Said Herenton: “This is not fake news. The Russians are not involved. This has taken place … It involves officials in high places. … Someone threw a rock at Willie Herenton.  This is deception, it’s conspiracy, it’s fraud.”
Herenton said that “common sense” told him that the referendum wording was revised “with one clear intent” and that was to prevent his candidacy. Herenton said the “illegal” word change affected only “a class of one,” himself.

“Why didn’t they just say, ‘This is the Willie Herenton ordinance designed to prevent him from being a candidate for Mayor in 2019.” He blamed the administration of current Mayor Jim Strickland and said someone in the Election Commission office might also be involved.

Pending a legal resolution of the issue, Herenton said he would be recommending a “No” vote on the term-limits referendum. He noted that Chancellor Jim Kyle had withheld issuing a pre-election ruling against the term-limits referendum and two others that had been challenged by plaintiffs on the grounds that the referenda were confusing.

Kyle ruled that a post-election challenge would be more appropriate and that he would reconsider the matter then. The new challenge from Herenton could alter that timetable.

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Politics Politics Feature

Herenton and Others Look to Challenge for Mayor

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

It would seem to be a fact that former Mayor Willie Herenton, who headed city government from his election in 1991 as Memphis’ first elected black chief executive until his retirement in 2009, amid a fifth term, will make another try for the office in 2019.

Earlier this month, Herenton, who first announced he was considering another mayoral race in the wake of the MLK commemorations of April 4th, made things semi-official with a formal statement of candidacy on Facebook. The venue was modish for a political figure of Herenton’s vintage, who made a point of saying, in his online announcement, that “age is just a number, and I am physically fit, mentally sharp, and quite healthy.”

Justin Fox Burks

Willie Herenton

Still, circumstances beyond those of age would not seem exactly propitious for the former mayor, who just learned that three of his remaining four charter schools will be forced to close, having landed on the Priority List of schools unable to meet state standards for two years running. Two other Herenton-operated schools were closed earlier, and the net result of it all would seem a crippling omen for the onetime city school superintendent’s desire to rekindle his educationist’s vocation.

The school closures give a sense of irony to the statement, “My record of achievement speaks for itself,” Herenton made in his announcement remarks. Indeed, Herenton had much to boast of from his 17 years of ascendancy in government, although much of the positive aura attaching to his tenure had dissipated toward the end of his mayoralty, and a run for Congress in 2010 against incumbent 9th District U.S. Representative Steve Cohen ended disastrously.

Aside from other factors, that loss, in which Herenton’s share of the vote was only 20 percent, owed much to Herenton’s painfully obvious lack of resources, and it is difficult to see where his money would come from in a challenge to Mayor Jim Strickland, who is sure to be well-funded. (The current mayor has not yet declared for reelection, but no one seriously doubts his intentions to run again.)

The chief effect of a Herenton candidacy — should it come to pass — would be to inhibit the likelihood of another serious opponent to Strickland’s reelection. As of now, the only known challengers are Memphis Police Association president Mike Williams, a 2015 candidate who has indicated he will run again, and a relative unknown named Lemichael Wilson.

Others who have received at least tangential mention as possible mayoral contenders in 2010 include Harold Collins, director of community engagement for the Memphis-Shelby County Crime Commission; City Councilman Martavius Jones; and the Rev. Keith Norman, a prominent clergyman with numerous civic and political connections, including the past chairmanship of the Shelby County Democratic Party.

Collins, however, has just accepted an appointment by county Mayor Lee Harris to become Director of Re-entry for Shelby County government. Jones seems satisfied to explore the potential of his council career, and Norman would presumably have to vacate a well-paid position with Baptist Hospital to make a run.

Two other local figures with acknowledged interest in the mayoralty are, almost by definition, future-tense in their ambitions. They would be Van Turner, chairman of the Shelby County Commission, and uber-activist Tami Sawyer, a newly installed member of the commission.

Turner, who at 43 has the right balance of seasoning and relative youth to make a race, acknowledged to the Flyer that a mayoral run has crossed his mind, but says his candidacy is more likely to occur in 2023, when he will have concluded his permitted two terms on the commission. At the moment, he is still classified as a Strickland supporter and, as head of Memphis Greenspace, which purchased and removed the city’s downtown Confederate monuments, is an effective partner of the mayor.

Sawyer, who, as Turner notes, “has a great following among millenials,” is also apparently looking down the road to 2023, when the mayor’s race will seemingly be wide open.

Meanwhile, for Herenton and whoever else might be thinking about running in 2019, Strickland’s camp is floating a recent poll showing the incumbent mayor’s favorable rating among whites to be 66 percent, and that among African Americans to be 68 percent.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Weekend Review: Focus on Willie Herenton, Phil Bredesen, and Bob Corker

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Jackson Baker

Bredesen, Corker, Herenton

Willie Herenton became an epochal cultural figure upon his election in 1991 as Memphis’ first elected African-American mayor. He went on to run the city for 18 years before retiring under pressure in 2009. He tried a comeback in 2010, with a race for the 9th District Congressional seat, but lost by a 79-to-21 percent margin to Congressman Steve Cohen in the overwhelmingly black district.

Now Herenton is embarked on a new race for mayor in 2019, announced last Thursday in the wake of the MLK50 commemorations in honor of the 1968 sanitation workers’ strike and assassination in Memphis of Martin Luther King Jr. Though the former mayor’s announcement engendered real excitement for many of his former supporters, some political observers see his race against Cohen — haphazard, impulsive, underfunded, and ill-prepared — as foreshadowing the likely result of the 78-year-old Herenton’s latest surprise comeback attempt.

Herenton’s declared reason for running again is to “complete the mission” of Dr. King, and the difficulty of his undertaking is amplified by Mayor Jim Strickland’s relatively good 2015 showing among black voters and by Strickland’s success in increasing black business contracts with the city and in removing Confederate war memorials.

Herenton disclosed some of his views in an interview this week with podcaster Brian Clay at Crosstown Concourse: “I had the privilege of marching with Dr. King on two occasions when he came to Memphis, 28 years ago,” said Herenton, then a Memphis city schools principal and later schools superintendent. “I stood in front of City Hall wearing an ‘I Am a Man’ sign. I always had a social conscience. I’m always addressing injustice.”

The former mayor said that “50 years later, I had to look in the mirror again.” He quoted the Socratic axiom: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Herenton added, ”We have become a very, very poor city. … We cannot separate economics from education, history has taught me.” He spoke of “a correlation” between failing schools, failing health care, housing, and numerous other issues.

But Herenton cautioned voters to have “reasonable expectations” and said that, while he could promise to “give the very best managerial skill, vision, and boldness” he had, “no magic wand and could not by himself, cure ‘generational poverty.’” He said, “I’m not going to promise you that poverty is going to go away or that people will stop killing each other.”
The former mayor faulted himself for not having prepared a proper successor during his 18 years as mayor. While making a point of not criticizing the current administration of Strickland, Herenton said he had the “energy and passion now to make some needed changes. It’s a new economy now. … Memphis cannot be a growth city paying people starvation wages.”

In addition to earlier reports in the Flyer, here is additional information on recent appearances and statements in Memphis by former Governor Phil Bredesen and retiring U.S. Senator Bob Corker:

In an interview with the Flyer last week, Bredesen, now a Democratic candidate for the U.S. Senate, made it clear that his middle-of-the-road campaign rhetoric is no accident: “In our state, I need to capture a lot of middle-of-the-road voters — even a few of what I would call economic Republicans.” To that end, the former governor acknowledged he was “not crazy” about the Affordable Care Act, but “it’s on the books, and we’ve got to try to make it work.”

In general, said Bredesen, the Democratic Party has “narrowed too much” and adopted “too many litmus tests. … We have to win if we want to govern again.”

Bredesen theorized about the desirability of having a close working relationship with Republican Senator Lamar Alexander, if elected: “I haven’t talked to Lamar about linking, but he’s a good example of people in both parties who, if they got together, could make a comprehensive start to be a block of 10 or 12 to start to do something. I’d like to be a part of a movement like that.”

Two days later, Alexander announced his support in the Senate race for fellow Republican Marsha Blackburn.

Referring to retiring GOP Senator Bob Corker as “a thought leader in the Senate” and a “straight shooter,” Mayor Strickland introduced Corker at a luncheon meeting of the rotary club of Memphis at Clayborn Temple last week.

Corker said he continued to have disagreements with President Trump, though he hadn’t made a point of emphasizing the fact on each occasion. But, among other things, the Senator declared that the president’s tweeting habit was “very harmful, and he expressed concern about the strong likelihood that Trump intends to abrogate U.S. adherence to the current multinational agreement withholding sanctions on Iran if that nation maintains a freeze on its development of nuclear-weapon capability.

Corker said that Iran could be “off and running” on a nuclear pathway if the agreement ceased to be, and he said a better course than renouncing the agreement would be to seek modification, in tandem with America’s European allies, of the pact’s current 10-year “sunset” provision. Otherwise, he said, it was doubtful that the Europeans would follow Trump’s lead in scrapping the agreement.

“I personally think we’d be better off keeping the agreement in place,” Corker said.
The senator also deplored Congress’ recent passage of a $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill but said, “The system works better than you think. … Believe it or not, Washington reflects the country much more fully than you think.”

And he said he’d been “terribly impressed” by the vigor and commitment of the students from Parkland High School who have launched an ongoing national campaign for anti-gun legislation.

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

The Circular Firing Squad

CREDIT: Featureflash | Dreamstime

It’s really hard to believe that the mayor of Memphis would denounce “outside agitators” and make a stand against activists wanting to take down the city’s confederate statues. I mean, how tone-deaf can you be?

I’m speaking, of course, of former Mayor Willie Herenton, who, in 2005, used that epithet to describe the Rev. Al Sharpton, who’d come to Memphis to support local activists who wanted to remove the Nathan Bedford Forrest and Jefferson Davis statues and rename the city parks where they stood.

Sharpton’s response to Herenton: “You need outside agitators when you don’t have enough inside agitators. Don’t get mad at us for doing your job.”

I think it’s safe to say Memphis now has a sufficiency of “inside agitators.” The persistent and vocal push to remove the Forrest and Davis statues has reached critical mass, having gained support from current Mayor Jim Strickland, the Memphis City Council, and even Governor Bill Haslam.

It’s been a long time coming. I did a little casual research on the Flyer website and noted that the paper has been reporting on and editorializing about this issue since at least the mid-1990s, when we first began putting our content online.

There have always been those who took a stand against the statues, but for years their voices were buried by bureaucracy and stymied by local politics and well-organized and well-funded opposition from confederate supporters. No more.

It seems inevitable now: The statues will come down in Memphis, as they are coming down all over the country. The devil is in the details and the timing.

We would not have gotten to this point if not for people willing to take a stand; people willing to make other people uncomfortable; people willing to confront the status quo. Through their persistence and courage — and the inadvertant “help” of those using confederate symbols in conjunction with acts of terrorism and murder — more and more people are coming to realize that too often it’s not “heritage” that’s being served by these symbols and monuments — it’s racism and tacit veneration of white supremacy and slavery. And more people are supporting the idea that decisions about such symbols should be made by local municipalities, and not subject to the whims of rural state legislators whose values are not those of most Memphians.

I think it’s important at this juncture that the disparate forces moving to make the statues come down do all they can to avoid the “circular firing squad.” The goal has been agreed to. The agenda is no longer in question. How and when we get there is what is still in dispute. But those with a mutual goal should avoid demonizing each other. That just muddies the water, weakens the process, and strengthens the opposition.

The mayor and the administration seem bent on taking the battle to court, challenging the Tennessee Historical Commission’s 2016 ruling against the city. Activists want more immediate measures taken — ceding the park land to private conservancies, for example, or just removing the statues and dealing with the legal consequences afterward.

It would help if, instead of attacking each other and creating more divisiveness between folks who have a common stated goal, the various contingents could work together to find mutual ground, say, agree upon a date by which the statues must come down, one way or another. A good target, in my opinion, would be March, 2018, at the latest — prior to the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in our city.

Let’s all agitate in the same direction. We’ll get there faster.