I can no longer defend the indefensible

What the hell, Commissioner Brooks?   It's one thing to alienate potential supporters when trying to make an otherwise valid point about the awarding of county contracts, but THIS?  Really?

As I have noted before, you are due great praise for your efforts to force necessary change upon Shelby County Juvenile Court, which resulted in the intercession by the US Department of Justice.  I understand that you wish to continue this change with your election to the Juvenile Court Clerk position.

How, then, are we supposed to approach potential undecided voters when you, well, keep acting a fool in public?  Threatening someone over a PARKING SPOT??  Really? It's going to be hard enough to get Democrats to vote for you when this kind of thing happens, much less independents or Republicans.  This incident pretty much ends your chances of winning, and we NEEDED you to win.

This, frankly, hurts the whole ticket, but I doubt you thought of that.  Commissioner Brooks, you have been a dedicated public servant during your years in the General Assembly and on the County Commission, but events like this are going to prevent you from serving in the future.  Sure, there will be some folks voting for you simply because there's a D next to your name, but not enough of them to win this race.

This is the sort of thing that makes the Democrats in Shelby County look like laughingstocks, and it just can't be tolerated any more.  I really don't know what else to say here.

Give me some RED MEAT, y'all!

As Kyle Veazey noted in his coverage of last night's Democratic County Mayoral debate, (sorry, behind a paywall) there was not much disagreement among the candidates, other than Rev. Kenneth Whalum calling, as he has throughout, that NO SCHOOLS should be closed in the city.  It got to a point where my co-blogger Jon and I figured that if we had taken a shot of whiskey every time he suggested this, our livers would have fallen out of our bodies before the first hour had ended.

I believe he is sincere, and I agree that we have to focus on the inner city in order to turn the city around, I just don't know how you fund that, since it will take a hell of a lot more than the $57 million that the courts say the city owes Shelby County Schools.  To be blunt, if a school is closing in a neighborhood, that is a real sign that the neighborhood is dead anyway, with anyone who could leave having done so.

Enough on that.  Even with all of that, all three of the candidates, including outgoing Commissioner Steve Mulroy and my favorite candidate, former Commission Chair Deidre Malone, would be a dramatic improvement over the incumbent, Mark Luttrell, who runs the County like it was a jail, something that I wish all three candidates would point out.

Y'all, PLEASE give us some red meat, will you??  All three of you need to beat up Mark Luttrell and point out his failures, because you are asking the electorate to reverse a decision they made four years ago, and that's not easy.  This means you A) have to point out why continuing his employment would be a costly mistake for Shelby Countians, and B) you then have to prove why YOU are the proper replacement.

AND YOU NEED TO STOP BEING SO DAMNED NICE ABOUT IT.  HIT HIM, WILL YOU?

Not physically, of course, that would be assault!   But ALL three of you need to attack him and attack him HARD and stop worrying about whether you are offending anyone.  If you are doing your jobs properly, SOMEONE will be offended, you just have to make sure it's the people who deserve to be offended!  I can't imagine that there are that many people who are voting in our primary that worry about Mark Luttrell's feelings.

Once this primary is over, you have to go HARD every day whacking the incumbent about the head and shoulders, and it's not like there's not a litany of reasons to do so: Title X, the anti-blight plan, Head Start, screwing over the city of Memphis, and on and on and on.

And when the Mayor shows up at Sidney Chism's picnic in June, whomever the winner is needs to be all up in Luttrell's grill about this stuff.  If you can't go after the REPUBLICAN County Mayor in Southwest Memphis, where the hell ARE you going to do it?  We need to be sure that any GOP candidate who shows up down there (and they ALL do) is confronted about their performance in office (or lack thereof).

Oh, and Early Voting starts downtown on April 16, and in the satellites on Friday, April 25.  Be ready, and go vote.

In the interim, Mayoral candidates, GO KICK LUTTRELL'S BUTT. REPEATEDLY.  LEAVE BOOTPRINTS!

You can thank me later.

One last note:  Since my last post, this blog has not one, BUT TWO, writers that are now members of the Shelby County Democratic Party Executive Committee.  I replaced the legendary Steve Ross in House 90, and Jon Carroll is now representing House 93, along with our friend John Marek.  Thanks to all who voted for us to be there; we promise to raise hell, take names, and elect Democrats.

Deidre Malone for County Mayor

I know, a lot of you probably thought I would jump on the Steve Mulroy bandwagon.  Why?

I supported Deidre 4 years ago, because I thought she was the best candidate running then, and I still do.  She is as solid a Democrat as there is, I served with her on the SCDP Executive Committee, and I was impressed then with her abilities to manage and coordinate while standing up for those issues that we as Democrats support.

She has been involved with large businesses, having served as a Vice President while at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, and small businesses, working with them for her public relations firm the Carter Malone Group.  She has served two terms on the Shelby County Commission, chairing the Budget Committee and the Commission itself.

It is one thing to be a good advocate, as Commissioner Mulroy has been, for the most part, and as Reverend Kenneth T. Whalum Jr. was on the School Board.  That is what good legislators do, and Deidre did that as well.

It is quite another to build consensus, to manage large projects, and coordinate diverse efforts, and that is why Deidre, in my opinion, stands head and shoulders about the other candidates in the Democratic field.  Deidre is the only candidate in the Democratic field that can show her abilities in this skill set, the ADMINISTRATIVE skill set, and she will prove why she can defeat Warden, er, Mayor Mark Luttrell in the August County General Election.

Look, I like Steve Mulroy, he stands up for a lot of the things I believe in, and he 's a great advocate.  I appreciate the Kellogg's campout, it's something that all Democrats need to be involved with, supporting our workers.

However, I have a question for him:  Do you remember back in October 2011, when Luttrell pulled the Title X funding from Planned Parenthood Greater Memphis Region and got the Commission to approve a contract for Christ Community Health Center, which was about the least-friendly option for reproductive rights for indigent women?  Remember how you wound up voting for that, which led to an angry call from me and we talked about it?  You even posted your reasoning on Facebook, which appeased a lot of people because you said that you would be able to get oversight for the CCHC operations to ensure that indigent women would get the reproductive services that had been provided by PPGMR.

My question is twofold, Commissioner.  First, where's the oversight?  I don't remember seeing ANYTHING in the CA, the Flyer, the Daily News, the MBJ or the TV stations about any oversight being done.  Has there been any oversight?  If so, what happened?

The second part of the question is this:  If you were to be elected Mayor, and the contract came up for renewal, would you support giving the contract back to PPGMR?  I think a lot of your potential supporters would love to know the answer to that question.

While we are waiting, let's talk about the Reverend Kenneth Whalum, Jr, whom I like and respect as well.  He knows how to advocate against something, as his pointed attacks on the poor campaign done by the Memphis Pre-K Initiative sank it.  His use of free media overcame the huge sums of money spent by the Pre-K folks, and he was smart about it.

One of the reasons that he is in this race, I believe, is that he is upset with Deidre for her support of the pre-K Initiative and for her support of the MCS-SCS merger, which I also supported and proudly so.  Yes, the Reverend has screamed about the $57 million supposedly owed by the City of Memphis to MCS/SCS (Shea Flinn can prove that the schools actually owe the city, but I digress), and he was on the Board when that was going on, so what happened?

It is also important to remember WHY MCS surrendered its charter.  The GOP-dominated legislature was going to allow the then-suburban based SCS to draw a hard boundary and create a Special School District, which would have forced MCS to rely on just the tax money from within the city, which would have starved it to death.  (yes, I agree that MCS was overly layered with bureacracy, but that's an argument for another day).  SCS would have gotten richer, MCS would have gotten poorer, and the downward spiral would have escalated quickly.

Now, since the merger took place, all the schools in MCS receive money from the ENTIRE county as the unified district, while all the folks living in the burbs with their own MSDs have to pay for TWO systems, like Memphis used to do.  The problems in SCS now have far more to do with the GOP agenda to force excessive testing on the system in their never-ending attempt to destroy public education.  You know that to be true, Reverend, why don't you mention that?

You say you want to retire and replace ineffective politicians; I can appreciate that.  So why are you opposing someone who has actually been EFFECTIVE?   You have to be more specific in your advocacy and you need to tell us how you're going to do this.

And all of you need to tell us why Luttrell needs to go, because the media, especially TV, seems be in the tank for him.  It's one thing for me to tell people why he runs the county like a jail, but you ALL need to do it.

Since I believe Deidre Malone is not only the best candidate for doing just that, by governing this county and working with the Commission to achieve a higher standard, I am supporting her for Mayor, and I hope you will as well.

In which I lead a round of cheers for......Wyatt Bunker?????

I am just as shocked as you, my friends.  I have been opposed to this person holding office, well, ever since he has HELD office.  I now admit freely that I took pictures used in a TV spot for EC Jones when Mr. Bunker ran for a City Council position from a storage space on Highway 64.  Mr. Bunker lost that race, but was elected to other offices, including the one he is vacating on the County Commission and the one he is moving to as the newly-elected Mayor of Lakeland.

So, why, pray tell, am I leading hosannas for someone whose politics I find abhorrent 99.9% of the time?  Because only he, among all elected Republicans in Shelby County, realizes the damage that Shelby County Elections Administrator Richard Holden is doing to the elective process, and secondarily, to the image of the Shelby County Republican Party.  On his way out the County Commission door to Lakeland, Mr. Bunker is trying to get a VOTE OF NO CONFIDENCE from the Commission in the abilities of Mr. Holden as Administrator.

One can speculate at will as to Commissioner/Mayor Bunker's motives all you want, but I salute him for doing what no other Republican has had the guts to do: recognize the absolute mess that Holden has made of the Election Commission, resulting in a lack of confidence that they can hold an election free of doubt and controversy.

Of course, getting the SCEC to do something about Holden is another matter entirely.  Election Commissioner Dee Nollner, per the linked Jackson Baker article above, has attacked Bunker and defended the indefensible Holden, leading Bunker to suggest that Nollner has "drunk the Kool-Aid".  One expects in an Election Commission populated by three Republicans and two Democrats that the GOP will receive the benefit of the doubt.  However, when the Commission has been shown to be downright incompetent and inept, and the SCEC ignores its Democratic members and does what it wants, that does NOT provide confidence to the public that they know what they are doing or that we will have safe, secure and accurate elections.

For whatever reason Commissioner/Mayor Bunker is doing this, I still salute him for his actions, because this needs to happen, and YESTERDAY, if possible.

OK, time for Big Shelby's Democrats to get off their butts

In case you were doing other things yesterday, the Gov-elect, Bill Haslam, swooped into town long enough to grab our Attorney General, Bill Gibbons, and take him to Nashville as the state's incoming Safety & Homeland Security Commissioner.  Deputy AG Amy Weirich, who has served as deputy since August of this year, was named to succeed AG Gibbons, and she announced right then that she would seek a full 8-year-term in 2012.

All right, Democrats, what the hell are you going to do about this?  I yelled and screamed the last time Gibbons was up that someone needed to start raising money early and get ready to run.  No one did, Gail Mathes got in at that last minute, did what she could with little cash, and was summarily squashed.

What we do NOT need is some fool getting in the AG race with no money who thinks that just having the Democratic nomination will guarantee them victory; how did that work last August?  The SCDP, RIGHT FREAKING NOW, needs to start screening candidates, even though the actual election will not be until August 2012.  They need to find good candidates who understand how to run county-wide, and can raise the money to do so.  They need to find people who are WELL-QUALIFIED for the position, and tell those who have no money and are just looking for a job to stay the hell out of the race.

Yes, they DO need to do that.  Technically speaking, Democrats make up a majority of this county, yet our county offices are almost all held by Republicans.  Why?  Because even the good candidates that we had last year (and there weren't that many of them) couldn't raise any freaking money and depended on the Party to carry them.  Again, how'd that work for them?

(Ahem.  I am certainly aware of the problems with the Election Commission.  Yes, the machines sucked.   Yes, there were enough questions that the election should have been tossed.  But that was NOT why our African-American Democratic base did not turn out, and if you think so, you are deluding yourselves.)

So, Van Turner and the ExecCom, whatcha gonna do about this?  This is EXACTLY the type of thing that you folks need to be looking into.  Start recruiting candidates and doing what it takes.  By the way, you can find more than one; your job is to get as many as you can so that the base will be EXCITED about voting, and to discourage the people who run because they need a job from running.

Find candidates who won't be afraid to go to the eastern parts of the county to campaign (and not just at the G-Town meetings, either).  Find candidates who will do targeted mailings and knock on doors and not just go to rallies in the home areas.

Happy Holidays, SCDP, you have a big job to do, and you need to start NOW.

Um, no, this is NOT a good idea, folks

Matt Kuhn, former SCDP Chair and aide to outgoing County Mayor Joe Ford, who has been in politics a while now, argues in the Flyer that partisan primaries should be eliminated in Big Shelby:

I must agree with local Republican leadership, which has recently indicated a willingness to dispense with local primaries for county office. As a former chairman of the Democratic Party, I'd implore both parties not to request a call for primaries for local county office. It isn't mandated, and 43 of 95 counties in Tennessee do not conduct county primaries. Shelby County needs to join the list.

That may be an inconceivable statement for a former Democratic Party chairman to make, but local partisan primaries in a state that has an open primary system just doesn't work. Even if we had a closed primary system, partisan primaries for local office are an inefficient way for political parties to select candidates.

Please don't misunderstand me. We don't need to return to the smoke-filled backroom to choose our candidates. What is important is that spending roughly a million dollars every two years to allow five to 10 percent of the voting public to decide the two parties' candidates is a waste of taxpayers' money as well as of local political leaders' time.

At the risk of being called an old hack, which, well, I AM, I have to say, why?  Surely Matt remembers why the GOP called for them in the first place, which many of us fought against years ago: They did it because they had the NUMBERS.  Now that they don't, now the GOP appeals to a "higher calling"?

Bullshit.

I can tell you exactly what will happen if we eliminate county primaries: In each race you'll have 5-6 African Americans, 1-2 whites, and the good ole boys will stay in power forever, and the plantation will continue unabated.  Now, I don't think for a second that is what Matt has in mind, but I am telling you that is what will be the result, because that's how it was in the pre-1994 days.

Only three African-Americans were elected countywide under the old system, and all only lasted ONE TERM each: Michael Hooks as Assessor, Minerva Johnican as Criminal Court Clerk, and John Ford as General Sessions Court Clerk.  It was only under the current system that Democrats and African-Americans began to break through, beginning with Rita Clark, then AC Wharton and now Cheyenne Johnson and Otis Jackson (sigh, you can't win them all, I guess).

In a county that will soon officially become majority African-American once the Census figures are in, returning to a non-partisan system is good ole boy heaven.  It will ensure that the powerful keep their positions and inflate the influence of the Poplar Corridor way beyond their percentage of the population.

In short, it's ANTI-little "d" democratic, even more than it is anti- BIG D Democratic, and that's what makes this idea disreputable, no matter the source.

As I have said before, if you want to get the elections right, change the Tennessee Constitution to combine ALL primaries for August and ALL General elections for November.  Thus, you eliminate a superfluous election in May yet allow the parties to pick candidates across the board, allowing for party-building at every level.

Matt's a good guy, always has been, but he is simply wrong here.

Not one, but TWO Convos With Mario!

Last, night, Mario Latilleon and I spent two hours talking on a podcast discussing Memphis politics, so it was broken into two segments.

Segment One

Segment Two

The first is 57 minutes, the second runs roughly one hour and 9 minutes.  We talked about Memphis politics, the 2000 election, the 2007 Mayoral election (on which we never quite convinced each other of our own candidates electability, Mario supported Herman Morris, I supported Carol Chumney), the (so-far) lower turnout of African Americans in Early Vote this election, and Cohen versus Herenton.

Go listen to it, thanks to Mario for a fun two hours!