by Jackson Baker
aving handily dusted off two opponents in last week’s countywide
Republican primary, Marilyn Loeffel, the GOP’s new nominee for
the County Commission’s District l, Position 1 seat, was looking
forward to a similar two-way split of opposition votes in the
forthcoming August general election.
As of last week, when the vote-count from Tuesday’s primary showed Loeffel’s vote to have constituted a majority over both her Republican foes, Paul Stanley and Scott McCormick, she was due to have two opponents on the August 6th general election ballot, Democrat Irma Waddell Merrill and independent Charles Burch.
Both Merrill and Burch seemed to enjoy a fair degree of advance
backing, though that still left something to be desired in the
heavily Republican lst District, which combines hunks of Midtown
and East Memphis with portions of Memphis’ near suburbs.
PHOTO BY JOHN LANDRIGAN
Merrill and Loeffel go one-on-one.
A voter split between the two would certainly have undermined even a remote prospect of defeating Loeffel, who said last week she wouldn’t be concerned even if one of her general election opponents dropped out.
Well, one has – an outcome due largely to the involvement of State Senator Steve Cohen as a broker between attorney Merrill and businessman Burch. After Cohen initiated three-way conversations over the weekend, Burch bit the bullet and opted out of the race in Merrill’s favor.
“I was the first on the block to take on the Republicans,” said Burch on Monday. “I saw it as a very real threat that Marilyn Loeffel could win in the district, and I didn’t think her outlook would serve the district well.”
Loeffel, a former president of the activist group FLARE, has in the past been identified with a variety of conservative Christian causes and has been an opponent of legal abortion. Though she has indicated that her general election campaign will downplay such positions in favor of a more orthodox Republicanism, there is at least a theoretical possibility that disaffected moderate Republicans might look for someone else to vote for in August.
“I didn’t want to muck it up for Shelby County. We knew that one of us should stand aside. After Irma and I talked, I weighed all the issues of money and organization and timing and decided that it was in my best interest and her best interest that my campaign should be sacrificed rather than hers,” Burch said on Monday.
But, he vowed, “I’ll be back.”
Merrill happily agreed. “What Charlie is doing shows that he has his eye on the ultimate goals of moderation, practicality, and nonpartisanship in government. He has a bright future, and he will be in an elective office someday.”
Even before Burch decided to withdraw from active campaigning in her favor, Merrill had resolved to make her commission race more as a political centrist than as a Democrat per se. Nevertheless, she will have some of the party-label advantages to draw on – existing financial-support networks and experienced party activists – that Burch would have lacked.
Though last week’s primary turnout was disappointingly low,
with less than 10 percent of Shelby County’s registered voters
bothering to cast ballots, women and social conservatives seem
to have been voted in disproportionate numbers. That would partly
explain Loeffel’s strong showing, and the turnout of conservatives
in particular would account for Probate Court Clerk Chris Thomas’
unexpectedly easy (almost 2 to 1) victory over his primary challenger,
city council member Pat VanderSchaaf.
Another easy winner was incumbent Register Guy Bates, who won
out over challengers Layne Provine and Tom Watson in the GOP primary.
Democrats backing former University of Memphis basketball coach
Larry Finch in the August general election are beginning to worry
that their man, who has raised only $4,000 thus far and has seemed
reluctant to practice glad-handing and to put the arm on potential
donors, may prove a disappointing candidate, his rosy early prospects
notwithstanding.
Okay, so maybe the Battle of the Board of Equalization, which seemed to be on the way to resolution with a virtually total turnover of its personnel in recent weeks, isn’t over after all.
Thanks to legislation shepherded through the 1997 General Assembly by lobbyist/tax rep Jerry Caruthers, the City of Memphis ended up with an additional appointee to a board whose total membership has expanded from seven members to nine. The Board of Equalization has the job of hearing – and adjudicating – property owners’ appeals of their tax assessments.
The legislation seems to give the final call over the city’s three board appointees to the city council, rather than to Mayor Willie Herenton, whose two most recent nominees, Lilly White and Ervin McKay, were confirmed by the council recently as replacements for two former members, without much in the way of incident.
Mayor Herenton has so far not indicated his choice for the new third city position on the board, but Caruthers has lately been mounting an energetic campaign with the mayor and the council on behalf of one Clayborne Taylor.
The catch (if it is one): Taylor was formerly one of the Shelby County Commission’s three appointees to the board. Taylor failed to win enough votes for reappointment last year when the commission heard him and other candidates for the post in open session.
Caruthers professes great confidence in Taylor, however, and last week, in an effort to persuade the council to make a nomination on its own for the third city position, presented council members with letters of endorsement of Taylor from Johnnie R. Turner, local NAACP executive secretary; Pete Aviotti Jr., a local mega-executive and one of Mayor Herenton’s main men; and Irby Cooper, a politically active local hotelier with diversified other business interests.
The letters were all addressed to Mayor Herenton, who, said spokesperson Carey Hoffman early this week, has not yet made a call on the city’s third appointee.
According to one council member, Caruthers made an effort to get the council to suspend its rules and approve Taylor during the full council session, sans discussion. What happened instead was the matter got referred to the personnel committee of councilman John Bobango, for possible action this week.
And it may get put on indefinite hold – to judge by the less than enthusiastic response to the proposed appointment by some council members – notably John Vergos and Barbara Swearengen Holt, both of whom expressed reservations last week about moving ahead.
“Here’s a guy [Caruthers] I’ve never met before, approaches me, tells me he just trotted up to Nashville, got himself a bill passed, says here’s our nominee, wants it squared away with the council and asked me to take care of this. And I don’t know this guy [Taylor] from Adam,” was Vergos’ reaction.
Noting that the board possessed “extremely significant powers,” the councilman suggested that the council would be better off taking its time and reviewing several candidates for the appointment, even placing advertisements seeking applicants for it.
Vergos also wondered out loud why the city should be in a haste to nominate Taylor, when the commission had decisively exercised its option not to reappoint him.
“If we can nominate a board member legally,” said Vergos, “then let’s all keep each other abreast of what the screening period is and what background we are looking for, instead of having some lobbyist-slash-property-tax eager beaver try to ram some nominee through that the county chose not to nominate. [Taylor] may be perfectly qualified, and he may be the best there is, but this kind of a process stinks.”
Caruthers seemed to take Vergos’ criticism in stride and responded, “I’m just trying to make sure that the city gets the other representative on the board to which it’s entitled by the new law. I suggested Mr. Taylor because he’s a seasoned man, and we have so many new people on the board that there really ought to be somebody seasoned on there for balance and guidance.”
Noting that he had served as a tax appeal representative for Vergos’ restaurateur father, Charles Vergos, Caruthers suggested that if Taylor didn’t pass the council’s muster, then the senior Vergos might make a good choice. “I think he’d be good. He’s a fair man who understands property values,” Caruthers said, adding, “The council can name who it wants to. I just want to see them fill the vacancy with somebody seasoned and qualified.”
The emergence of Caruthers in a local controversy is an unaccustomed variation on his usual role in the informal Mutt-and-Jeff tandem that he comprises along with fellow tax rep David Scruggs.
Scruggs and Caruthers are sometime rivals who have had their own clashes, but more often in recent years they have maintained an alliance against forces in local government whom they have perceived as trying to weaken the influence of tax appeals representatives in the assessment process.
Generally Scruggs, a lawyer, gets involved in the Sturm und Drang of local controversies, while Caruthers prefers to work in the background or to ply his lobbying skills in the General Assembly on behalf of the “Tennessee Taxpayers Association,” Caruthers’ own creation.
Caruthers confided this week that he had thought Scruggs had tried to lobby some of the council members he had not talked to himself about Taylor, including Vergos and Holt, but Scruggs has apparently been on vacation of late.
Whatever the case, both tax reps may have ample time to complete
their lobbying, for it would appear that the matter of a third
city appointee to the Board of Equalization is likely to be in
abeyance for a while.
(Phil Campbell contributed to this item.)