The Memphis Mayor’s race already has a fair number of announced candidates, some well known, some not. But it may be about to attract a candidate who is renowned to many Memphians and deeply controversial to others.
This would be none other than Willie Herenton, who has run for Mayor six times, winning five of those contests in the period 1991 to 2007 and losing one in 2019. Herenton’s first victory, in 1991, made him the first elected Black chief executive in the city’s history.
On Tuesday of this week the former Mayor dropped a video post on his Facebook page that pretty directly suggests he intends one more run for the mayoralty, this year
The post — a heavily stylized mix of sound and images — begins with an announcer’s voice saying, “This is the one you’ve been waiting for,” and continues with repeated reminders of a time, during Herenton’s mayoral tenure, when he ordered an impetuous reporter out of his work space, saying, in a refrain that is visually noted several times and recapitulated directly once from an old audio, “Get the hell out of my office!”
The video ends with panels (here combined) that say, in succession, “Campaign Coming Soon, and “2023.”
Recently we noted in this space that Herenton has imminent plans to publish a political and personal memoir entitled From the Bottom. Asked this week, in an exchange of texts, about the book and about his possible campaign plans, he responded, “Working hard to meet some deadlines for the book,” and he promised to reach out soon so “we can talk politics.”
