It remains to be seen whether Shelby County Republicans can find someone to carry the parity banner in the county mayor’s race — or end up shifting their hopes to deposed schools superintendent Marie Feagins as their most acceptable Democrat, should the Democrats’ primary become this year’s “tantamount” election.
That lingo is a throwback to the now long-gone years of a solid Democratic South when Democratic primary outcomes down in Dixie were regarded, in the realities and media vocabulary of the time, as being “tantamount to election.”
Shelby County, and the 9th Congressional District — overlapping electoral entities in the Venn diagram sense — are arguably the only political jurisdictions in Tennessee (and certainly among the few in the South) where a Democratic primary win could earn the “tantamount” label anymore.
A reader might ask: Could not a well-credentialed and credibly financed Republican mount a serious challenge in the mayoral race?
Well, that issue was conceivably tested in 2022 when incumbent Mayor Lee Harris, a Democrat, easily defeated Republican nominee Worth Morgan, who was well-liked across party lines, had been a prominent Memphis city councilman, and had money to burn, much of it his own.
Nevertheless, the name of Morgan, who subsequently became chairman of the GOP, was the main one being seriously floated in local Republican circles as a potential mayoral run again in 2026.
But such a prospect was surely reduced to nought last week when Morgan tendered his resignation as GOP chair after explaining that he intended to focus on dealing with his wife’s serious battle with cancer and with the care of his infant child. (Rachel Wall will serve as interim Shelby County Republican Party chair, and the county GOP’s steering committee will choose a permanent successor as chair on January 20th.)
As has been noted several times here and elsewhere, the Feagins bubble, if such it is, came into being via the intensity of the post-firing support she received from the normally disparate blocs of upscale and middle-class conservatives who normally vote Republican and inner-city citizens who dependably vote Democratic.
Whoever wins the Democratic mayoral primary, whether Feagins or any of her more establishment-oriented opponents, will probably have an easy romp in the general election, demographics being what they are. The “tantamount” label still applies locally. There simply won’t be enough Republican votes, especially in the absence of a galvanizing and well-known GOP regular at the head of their ticket.
That being the case, Republicans, on the basis of what they saw as Feagins’ austerity policies as superintendent, seem acquiescent to a victory by her in the Democratic primary.
Alternately, some GOPers are girding for what many observers regard as an inevitable effort by Democratic Party regulars to purge Feagins from their primary contest on the basis of party bylaws requiring more past party votes than newcomer Feagins can show.
In that event, Feagins would have to run as an independent, with at least an outside hope of putting together an outlier coalition of discontented Democrats, Republicans, and independents.
At the moment, these alternatives appear to be the best outcomes devoted Republicans can hope for.