by Jackson Baker
he Shelby County Election Commission’s filing deadlines always
occasion a good deal of last-minute maneuvering, as avowed candidates
and would-be office-holders employ various stratagems in an effort
to deter possible opponents from running or to psyche them out
in case they do.
It’s a shell game with high stakes, and – though Thursday’s withdrawal deadline for the August 6th general election presents the potential for further complications – this year’s prize for artful brinksmanship should, as of now, go to Tarik Sugarmon, a member of the Shelby County Public Defender’s staff, who filed a last-minute petition to oppose Criminal Court Judge Chris Craft in Division 8.
It had been an open secret for some weeks that Sugarmon was meditating on a challenge to Craft, not only the incumbent but the candidate clearly destined to receive the endorsement of the Shelby County Republican Party’s steering committee, which was formally rendered last week.
As it happened, Craft was not the only incumbent concerned about a potential challenge to his reelection; so was Russell Sugarmon, Tarik Sugarmon’s father and the incumbent judge in General Sessions Civil Division 4.
The elder Sugarmon had once been a red flag to the Shelby County political establishment – back in the ’60s when he was one of the first African Americans to make a serious run for elective office. But, as his son acknowledged in a moving speech to members of a whites-only senior citizen’s home during his father’s reelection campaign in 1990, Judge Sugarmon had long since settled into the status of beloved elder statesman, liked and respected by virtually all members of the legal and political communities, regardless of race or party.
Tarik Sugarmon’s own judicial ambitions threatened to disturb that equilibrium. Or so thought Judge Sugarmon and other members of the extended Sugarmon family, who feared retaliation, in the form of an opponent to the incumbent from within Republican ranks.
The younger Sugarmon himself acknowledged that possibility and did his best to prolong the guessing game as long as he could. By the time he filed against Craft last Thursday – literally at the last minute – his father had already become the GOP’s endorsee, and he would make it through to the noon hour without opposition.
PHOTO BY DANIEL BALL
Larry Parrish hopes to unseat Circuit Court Judge Joe H. Brown.
Although arch-conservative Shirley Beck-Vosse’s unexpected Republican
primary challenge to Governor Don Sundquist is unlikely to invoke
gender politics (the challenger is, if anything, conspicuously
to the right of the incumbent, himself a traditionalist), the
1998 election year in Shelby County will find some interesting
variations on that issue – some of them not apparent on the surface.
•There is, for instance, the race for Circuit Court, Division
6, between incumbent George H. Brown Jr. and challenger Larry
E. Parrish, who filed his petition last Wednesday. As has been
noted elsewhere, Parrish has a grievance of his own – a ruling
by Brown voiding one of Parrish’s prosecutorial efforts against
a local topless club.
But there was an additional motive for Parrish’s entry into the race. G.A. Hardaway, a member of D.A.D. (Dads Against Discrimination), confided last January, while lobbying in Nashville for legislation on behalf of divorced fathers, that Brown was on a small list of judges his organization regarded as insufficiently protective of fathers’ rights. Consequently, said Hardaway, feelers had been put out to Parrish asking him to challenge Brown, who denies any gender imbalance in his decisions. (Hardaway’s divorce case, as both acknowledge, was tried in Brown’s court.)
•And there is the race for State Representative, District 89,
where incumbent Democrat Carol Chumney faces opposition in the
fall from one of two Republicans, Randy Capps and Jim Jamieson.
Though Chumney has feminist credentials of her own, Jamieson,
a former professional wrestler and airport baggage handler, has
the backing of some prominent women’s-rights advocates – notably
Karen Shea and Paula Casey, principals in a public disagreement
with Chumney concerning the administration of the state Women’s
Suffrage Commission.