Anyone who owns a set of wheels and can afford the
ever-rising cost of gasoline can drive around Shelby County these days and
encounter almost everywhere, especially in predominantly African-American areas,
an impressive number of portable billboards and other signs touting the
candidacy for county Trustee of one M. LaTroy Williams.
In some of these broadsides Williams is identified as “the real Democrat,” a
claim that he attempts to buttress with an elaborate and cramped-looking
full-color campaign flier that bears the imprimatur of something called “the
Memphis and Shelby County Democratic Club.”
That no such Democratic Party organization exists has been established by
numerous sources, ranging from aggrieved principals of Shelby County Democratic
Party itself (whose party primary Williams skipped) to the blog offerings of
Thaddeus Matthews, who proudly boasts a quarter century of dedicated enmity
to Williams.
Among the signatures listed on candidate Williams’ mystery flier are one,
“Minerva Jonican [sic],” which has been disowned by the real Minerva Johnican,
a well-known former office-holder with a lengthy pedigree in Shelby County
Democratic politics, and two more, “J. Chism” and “N.H. Ford,” unknown
personages whose names are clearly meant to suggest Shelby County Commissioner
Sidney Chism, a longtime force in Democratic Party affairs, and N.J.
Ford, the late funeral-home owner and patriarch of an entire line of
politically prominent Fords.
So far as is known, no member of the political Ford clan is supporting Williams’
bid for office. As for Chism, he pointedly asked Williams to leave the South
Memphis grounds of the commissioner’s well-attended annual political picnic two
weekends ago when the candidate, who appears on the August 7th
general election ballot as an independent, got involved in altercations with
other attendees.
Chism, in fact, is an active supporter of Paul Mattila, the Democratic
Party nominee and current interim Trustee whose appointment by the commission to
succeed the late Bob Patterson was shepherded by Commissioner Chism
himself.
Mattila’s foremost opponent is Republican nominee Ray Butler, a CPA who,
like Mattila himself, was a longtime intimate of Patterson’s. As a white
Democrat with numerous Republican associates (many acquired during his long
service as an aide to Patterson), Mattila would have to be favored in a simple
one-on-one contest with Butler. What makes the race problematic for him is the
presence in it of Williams, with his direct appeal for a share of Shelby
County’s sizeable and traditionally Democratic black vote.
An interesting and ironic sidelight to sometime businessman Williams’ effort is
the fact that a now-defunct company of his, First Supreme Trust Company, Inc.
owes some $67,000 in back taxes to the very Trustee’s office which Williams
hopes to direct. This well-documented fact is reminiscent of a previous
candidate’s run for the Trusteeship, that of then state Senator John Ford in
1990. Back then Ford, now serving time on one felony charge and undergoing
trial for another, was the presiding official of N.J. Ford & Sons Funeral
Home, which owed substantial sums to both the Trustee’s office and the city
Treasurer.
Under the circumstances, inquiring minds want to know just exactly how all those
billboards, signs, and fliers advertising Williams got paid for. They may not
get to know, even though the next financial-disclosure deadline for countywide
candidates is July 10. An employee of the Shelby County Election Commission
explains that disclosures are unnecessary if a candidate for office does not
appoint a treasurer, something that the law requires if campaign funds are
raised – as they normally are – from third-party sources.
The only assumption consistent with legality is that Williams’ campaign is
self-financed – a circumstance that fairly cries out for some sort of
verification.
