Omicron permitting, get ready for a potential stampede of political candidates announcing their intentions to run for office in 2022.
The Shelby County Election Commission set December 20th for the initial date for picking up candidate petitions or to file for office in the May 3rd primary elections for county offices, and, in that sense, the race is now on. The deadline for filing as a Democrat or a Republican is February 17th, and the last opportunity to withdraw from a primary race will be February 24th, a week later.
There will be 24 offices on the primary ballots, though the Republican Party, husbanding its resources, has declared it won’t include the sheriff’s race on its primary list. In effect, that gives Democratic incumbent Floyd Bonner an uncontested walk-in.
Candidates intending to run as independents, either in the county general election or in the November election for federal and state offices, have a little more time to make up their minds about running. They can pick up petitions beginning on February 7th. The qualifying deadline is April 7th, and the withdrawal deadline is April 14th.
Sensibly, both local parties have decided not to follow the lead of the state legislature, which, in last year’s special session, enabled partisan primaries for school board races. Those races will remain nonpartisan and subject to the deadlines for independents, as will the myriad of judicial races on the county ballot.
Generally speaking, independents who file for offices that are also on the two parties’ primary ballots have not fared well in the general election against their partisan opponents. There are numerous reasons for this, including the established thinking habits of the electorate. But the root problem is that such candidates lack the standing resources, data lists, and network potential available to party-backed candidates.
There may be one serious test of that thesis in 2022.
Former County Commissioner Terry Roland has kept his powder dry since his last political effort, a race for Shelby County mayor in 2018, which saw him finish well behind then Trustee David Lenoir in that year’s Republican primary. He’s thinking of running for the office again, and — wait for it — as an independent.
Roland owns an unusual political profile. Ideologically, he positions himself well to the MAGA side of the GOP spectrum, doling out to his online network a seemingly never-ending supply of Trump-flavored, anti-Biden texts and graphics, some of them challenging the thresholds of acceptable political discourse.
But, with some justice, he claims an ability not only to work across the aisle as an office-holder and can boast that, as chairman of the commission in 2015-16, he supported studies of workplace discrimination and arguably led the commission’s fight against state-imposed private-school vouchers.
Roland, who now heads the Millington Chamber of Commerce, has game-planned a three-way race for mayor between himself and the likely party nominees, Republican nominee Worth Morgan, and incumbent Democrat Lee Harris.
Far-fetched? Maybe. But certainly interesting, if he’s still serious about that as of April 7th.