Rick Maynard
Former Tiger and Grizzlies player Antonio Burks (right), a recent gunshot victim, appeared with his mother, Connie, at her North Memphis rental home Monday to solicit county commission support for builder Harold Buehler’s efforts to develop new lots.
So who will mayor-elect A C Wharton bring with him to City
Hall? So far Wharton is playing it very close to the vest.
Mayoral assistants Bobby White and Kelly Rayne, among
others, are almost certain to go there in some or another role.
Dottie Jones, who was cityside once and came over to county, may
head back the other way. Elder statesman Bobby Lanier will be
close by the new mayor’s elbow, whether officially or unofficially.
County CAO Jim Huntzicker may come over, though he is said to
be contemplating retirement. County finance director Mike Swift
might have a role. Mike Carpenter, the Shelby County
commissioner who was named by Wharton to co-chair his transitional team
(along with Cato Johnson), is a serious possibility for a
serious position.
And then there is Jack Sammons, the former longtime city
councilman who has served Mayor Pro Tem Myron Lowery for the
last two months and has been the subject of nonstop rumors about
continuing in that capacity under Wharton.
All of that still remains to be seen. But another job prospect may
be looming on the horizon for Smilin’ Jack, and it’s an electoral
one.
Shelby County Republicans, who for a generation had prevailed in
elections for countywide office but have now clearly lost their
demographic edge, are desperate to find a candidate to run for Shelby
County mayor.
Ironically enough, given that Sammons once bucked the party brass
with an independent candidacy for county mayor in 1994, he now finds
himself the object of semi-public longing from mainstream Republicans
who would like him to consider running for the job in 2010 under the
party label.
Therein hangs a tale of how political winds have shifted the power
balance. Back in 1994, when Jim Rout was the official GOP
nominee for county mayor, Sammons, then a city councilman, not only ran
as an independent, he did so with the formal support of then 9th
District congressman Harold Ford Sr., a Democrat and a political
broker with enormous control over inner-city voters.
When Rout prevailed anyhow, the GOP powers-that-be levied
retribution on nominal Republican Sammons, finding a respectable
opponent for him in lawyer John Bobango, who went on to defeat
Sammons.
Instead of sulking, Sammons did his best over the years to mend
fences with his estranged party-mates and succeeded so well that he
would become the Shelby County Republicans’ finance chair. And, with
considerable support from Republicans as well as Democrats and
independents, he was able to regain his council seat.
Meanwhile, enough demographic change occurred that Democrats now
predominate among county voters as well as in the city, and a political
crossover type like Sammons, particularly now that his star is again in
the ascendant, could give the GOP a fighting chance.
• Another possible Republican candidate for county mayor is
George Flinn, who currently sits on the county commission. Flinn
was the Republican nominee for the office in 2002, the year Wharton,
running as the Democratic nominee, first won the county mayor’s
job.
The wealthy radiologist/broadcasting magnate was a political novice
that year, and he, like Sammons eight years earlier, bucked the GOP
party brass, who had already settled on well-liked attorney Larry
Scroggs, then a state representative, as the rightful party
nominee. Flinn went all-out in the Republican primary, pouring his
resources into a campaign that became bitter and divisive enough that,
when he won the primary, it left him saddled with a fractured party
base.
Handicapped by a split in GOP ranks, by a relative lack of political
and governmental background compared to Democratic nominee Wharton, and
by population shifts that were beginning to loosen the Republican hold
on the county at large, Flinn lost.
Again like Sammons, Flinn promptly began to pull his oar in
Republican causes, and by the time he was named to the commission to
fill a vacancy in 2004, he already had paid his dues — in more
than one way, since he had meanwhile become a major donor to GOP
candidates.
Moreover, as a sitting commissioner, Flinn began to acquire the
expertise he had conspicuously lacked in 2002. He was unopposed when he
ran for reelection in 2006.
Flinn is a declared candidate for interim county mayor after
current commission chair Joyce Avery finishes a 45-day term as
interim mayor. He has been somewhat vague about his intentions beyond
that, but an interesting rumor keeps surfacing in county government
circles.
According to this tale, Flinn is indeed considering relinquishing
his commission seat, which is up next year, in order to make a formal
run for county mayor.
In the event that he does, goes the story, he will support his
current all-purpose assistant, Heidi Shafer, a fixture at every
commission meeting, as the successor to his seat.
That scenario is not as far-fetched as it might seem. Before she
settled into her role as an aide to Flinn, Shafer had attracted
considerable public notice as the activist who galvanized public
opposition to the then pending Grizzlies-FedExForum deal in 2001.
Asked about the rumor this week, Shafer said merely that she had
“heard it” herself, acknowledged that she still was an “ideologue” with
acute interest in public issues, but, in the accepted idiom of
political circumlocution, disclaimed having any “plans” to run for
office.
• Meanwhile, there is no change on the Democratic side of the
ledger, where Commissioner Deidre Malone and Bartlett banker
Harold Byrd remain the only declared candidates for county mayor
in 2010.
At the time Malone formally announced her candidacy for county mayor
last month, she predicted that other candidates would emerge from among
the losers in the just concluded city mayor’s race. And they could come
from other parts of the woodwork as well. A dark-horse possibility is
Commissioner Steve Mulroy, who is also a potential compromise
choice for interim county mayor should current main contenders Joe
Ford and J.W. Gibson deadlock.
As of this week, too, Mulroy was still being courted by local
Democrats as a potential party candidate to fill the District 83 state
House seat vacated by Republican Brian Kelsey, now his party’s
nominee for the District 31 state Senate seat.
Given the fact that the District 83 seat has been Republican for
decades, Democrat Mulroy would be a long shot for it, but, with filing
deadline for the race beckoning this week, he was still considering the
prospect at press time.
• The two declared Republican candidates for the District 83
seat are Mark White, who was the beneficiary of a fund-raiser
last week, and John Pellicciotti, who is the latest candidate to
mount a full-fledged presence via Twitter. Both White and Pellicciotti
are former legislative candidates, though Pellicciotti’s prior efforts
were in nearby District 93, represented for more than a generation by
Democrat Mike Kernell.
The party primaries in District 83 will be held on December 1st,
with a general election to be conducted on January 12th, one day before
the next legislative session convenes.
• Fed Ex founder Fred Smith is much sought after these
days by candidates and causes in need of a financial boost. Smith
reportedly played host two weeks ago at the Hunt and Polo Club to
George W. Bush, who came into town quietly to enlist Smith’s aid
in funding the former president’s official library.
And Smith played host to U.S. senator Richard Burr (R-North
Carolina) last week in a big-ticket fund-raiser at Owen Brennan’s
Restaurant on Poplar Avenue.