Monday’s regular meeting of the Shelby County Commission, the second of 2022, provided an indication of how partisan politics will impact the actions of that body in the new year.
As the GOP-majority cartographers of the state’s reapportioned legislative and congressional districts have just discovered, their virtually absolute one-party power can’t do everything. For example, though they could split up the Nashville metropolitan area so as to ensure that no Democrat is likely to get elected to Congress from there, they couldn’t do the same to Memphis, where the Democratic tilt of the city’s heavily African-American population is gerrymander-proof.
Memphis has a Democratic congressman in Steve Cohen, and he — or anyone else who could conceivably win that seat — will continue to be able to make the case for Democratic Party positions, regardless of who gets a majority in this fall’s congressional elections.
That’s something like the situation on the Shelby County Commission — with the party positions reversed. Two votes taken by the commission on Monday indicate fairly accurately how partisan positions — at least the ideological ones — will be disposed of this year.
As of now, there are eight Democrats and five Republicans on the commission, and the redrawn map of commission districts (overseen essentially by the body’s Democratic majority, though with an eye on the county’s ever-changing demographics) makes it probable that this fall’s elections will render that ratio nine to four.
On Monday, there were two issues on the commission’s agenda that were guaranteed to create vote totals split down the party line. The first was the matter of a proposed CEP (Community Enhancement Program) grant of $25,000 to CHOICES Memphis Center for Reproductive Health — dubbed “a charitable organization” in the text of the enabling resolution, though that description stuck in the craw of a long list of people who came to the dock of the commission to decry it as a giveaway of taxpayer funds to “abortionists.” CHOICES does perform abortions, among other services, though the money was destined for the creation of a playground for the children of the center’s visitors.
An impressive number of proponents also came to the dock to make their support on behalf of the outlay, which came from discretionary funds allotted to each member of the commission. The sponsors of the resolution (and its principal endowers) were Democratic Commissioners Tami Sawyer and Mickell Lowery. The process of citizen comment was an extended one in its own right, but not quite as lengthy as was commission debate beforehand as to whether the public discussion should be allotted into pro and con segments or allowed to proceed in random order. Ultimately the latter solution prevailed.
When it came time for the commissioners to vote, the eight to five spread, with Democrats prevailing on the pro side, conformed explicitly to Commissioner Van Turner’s advance advice to expedite the vote, “since we all know how we’re going to vote. This is politics.” Indeed it was. A basic fact of contemporary politics is that the Democratic Party coalition tilts “pro-choice,” while the Republican Party aligns itself with professed “pro-life” sentiment.
The day’s second party-line vote occurred on the matter of whether the commission should formally endorse, as part of its legislative agenda, a request for a renewed review by the U.S. Justice Department (following the first one of a decade ago) of possible continued racially based shortcomings at Juvenile Court. The vote here was five Democrats for, four Republicans against, and one abstention (the GOP’s Mick Wright, who recused because the firm he works for does business with the court).
In the case of both votes, there was little heated argument as such. With the outcomes known in advance, both sides basically just made their usual case.