As of last week, when the Shelby County Election Commission began making candidate petitions available for would-be office-seekers, the 2023 Memphis city election can be said to have officially started.
In reality, numerous campaigns, both for mayor and for city council, have been proceeding for some time. The mayoral field would seem to be all but set, and council hopefuls, many of whom have been lying back, waiting to be sure about the council’s still unofficial district lines, have begun filling in the blanks as well.
Two candidates for mayor — both destined, one way or another, to have a major impact on the election results — chose last week to enact rollouts of a sort. One was 83-year-old former Mayor Willie Herenton, who had a campaign kickoff event last Thursday at the University of Memphis Holiday Inn on Central. The other, some 40 years his junior, was Downtown Memphis Commission CEO Paul Young, who formally opened his campaign headquarters last Saturday at Poplar Plaza.
Herenton is the senior eminence of this race (or, in some quarters, where his tenure wore too long, the éminence grise). He was elected mayor in five previous elections, the first being his 1991 epochal victory as the city’s first elected African-American chief executive. For better or for worse, his name is known to virtually all Memphians who pay attention to their social or civic circumstances.
Young is, by contrast, a newcomer to most Memphians, despite having held numerous positions of importance in city and county government. Though he has significant backing among the city elite and is the leading fundraiser among all mayoral candidates, with cash on hand of roughly half a million dollars, Young acknowledges being a relative unknown to the public at large. In an effort to build up his name recognition, he has dutifully attended almost all the preliminary events, both large and small, that have been held so far for mayoral candidates.
In his own words last Saturday, “We can’t just play this as politics as usual … just to [select] whatever name you know. … We’ve got to do it differently this time. … History is made when people step up to the plate, to do the thing that needs to be done to elevate our community.
“I’ll say it again. It’s not about the name, you know. It’s about what results those individuals created. As a result of the work that they’ve done in their present or previous role. I could care less about politics. I want to do the work. … For the past 20 years, I’ve been doing the work. I’ve been the person behind the scenes doing the work. It’s time to step up. I represent the next generation.”
Herenton, too, spoke of a “New Path” for the city and promised to unveil this week a package of proposals, including one for a “multi-million dollar restorative justice campus.” He pledged a “tough love” approach to public safety and advocated that the council repeal several recent actions restricting police actions.
As a token of his “strong-mayor” attitude, Herenton reminded his listeners that he had as mayor resisted calls for a public referendum on the financial deal that brought the NBA Grizzlies, “a great team,” to Memphis.