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.
• 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.
