If the Democratic presidential contenders are going to come the city’s way in a serious bid for votes in the March Tennessee primary, they will start moving this way after the Monday Feb. 3 Iowa caucuses.

The Trump re-election effort has already come through the city with a controversial appearance by Vice President Mike Pence at the National Civil Rights Museum and a Raleigh church during the MLK day holiday weekend.

Those who come will find a majority Democratic city that nevertheless has significant political divisions. Those divides become bigger with more fissures when they extend to the city’s representation in the Tennessee Legislature and Washington, D.C.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen of Memphis isn’t sure the city will see much of the political contest, either in the Democratic primary or in the presidential general election.

“The electoral college says all of the votes don’t count,” Cohen said at a Jan. 17 meeting with constituents when asked specifically about the state-by-state method of electing a president.

“In Tennessee, we don’t count because Tennessee is a red state,” he said. “Right now, this race for president is only in battleground states.”

Cohen makes Trump impeachment trial prediction at town hall meeting

Cohen counts eight to nine battleground states with other states the focus of fundraising appeals by the presidential campaigns to finance the races in states where the results are close.

The city’s Democratic base is being used already in the Democratic presidential skirmish. As Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren shuttles between the Senate impeachment trial and the Iowa political battleground, her campaign is holding a phone banking event Tuesday, Jan. 28, in Memphis. The phone bankers will be calling potential caucus goers in Iowa.

Rev. Regina Clarke of the UpTheVote 901 group, seeking to grow local voter registration numbers and turnout in elections, said the group now pushes past citizens who respond by saying they didn’t vote in the last election to ask why.

She said the most frequent answer by far is “because they don’t think it’s going to matter.” UpTheVote is planning focus groups in March to better gauge specific issues of interest and “helping people to understand that’s your voice.”

Monday’s Iowa caucuses are a busy day on the Memphis political calendar for other reasons.

It’s the day candidates on the August ballot of state and federal primaries can begin pulling and filing qualifying petitions in races for the Tennessee Legislature, Congressional seats and the U.S. Senate seat, not to mention five nonpartisan Shelby County School board seats up for election this year. It also marks the last day to register to vote in the March 3 presidential and General Sessions Court Clerk primaries in Shelby County for those who aren’t already registered to vote.

Fields set for March Tennessee presidential primaries

Early voting in advance of the March election date runs Feb. 12-25.

In Memphis, the biggest patch of blue in what has been a red – or Republican – state since the 2000 presidential general election, the divisions seen across the nation are just under the blue surface painted by past election results.

A week and a half after the nonpartisan city elections in October, activist Andre Johnson was among a small group gathered around the I Am A Man sculpture south of FedExForum.

Traces of election still linger as business of City Hall resumes

Many in the crowd were part of the city’s recent activism over the past five to six years including Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer, who finished a distant third in the October nonpartisan race for mayor to Jim Strickland and former mayor Willie Herenton.

The gathering in the plaza was specifically to protest the Fort Worth, Texas, police shooting of Atatiana Jefferson in her home.

The gathering reflected some of the fresh frustration from the campaign. It also reflected how campaigns and the elections that follow are viewed as decisions on issues.

“For all that is holy and good, where you at, mane,” Johnson said in a prayer at the outset of the gathering. “It seems that you have forgotten us. It seems that you do not care. It seems that you do not even like us.”

“We come with all of our pain, all of our suffering, with all of our anguish throwing it at your feet, hoping that you can hear us,” he said. “But in the back of our minds, we understand and we know – as we feel that maybe you just don’t.”

Two days later, a group of about the same size gathered outside the Clifford Davis-Odell Horton Federal Building on the other end of Downtown to rally support for Trump.

Bergmann rallies Trump supporters Downtown as first step in Democratic county

“We have so many people who care about this country,” said organizer Charlotte Bergmann, who is running in the August Republican primary for Congress. “And they feel like they are all alone, that no one else support and share their beliefs.”

Goff leaves Republican fold over impeachment

Speakers at the Memphis Women’s March earlier this month expressed frustration over the majority Republican Tennessee Legislature starting the state’s education savings account or school voucher program in Shelby and Davidson counties, the state’s two majority Democratic counties.

Memphis Women’s March reflects ongoing reaction to Trump presidency

Democratic State Sen. Katrina Robinson urged the several hundred people present to pay attention to races for state legislative seats starting with the August primaries. Among her reasons was the first bill to clear the legislature this year and become state law with the signature of Republican Gov. Bill Lee – the bill allowing private adoption agencies to refuse adoption requests by same sex couples.

The next day, Bishop Jerry Taylor of Holy City Church of God In Christ described homosexuality as a “demonic spirit” after welcoming Pence to the church.

“God didn’t make us for that,” he said.

Pence links Trump administration policies to King’s legacy

Visiting COGIC Bishop Vincent Matthews of West Angeles Church of God in Christ said Pence has been “persecuted” for his conservative religious views.

Robinson is one of the newest members of the Shelby County delegation to the Legislature. She won her seat by upsetting Democratic incumbent Reginald Tate in the 2018 primaries. This year’s primaries will include another skirmish in the August primaries as some in the party try to unseat veteran Democratic state Rep. John Deberry for the third time in as many elections in the two-year cycle of state House seats.

Shelby County is home to the largest Democratic base of voters in a single county in the state. That base is mostly within Memphis. The county is also home to the largest Republican base of voters in a single county in the state. That base is mostly in the suburbs outside the city.

Among the city’s four representatives in Washington – two members of the U.S. House and two U.S. senators – Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Cohen have defined the divide over the ongoing impeachment proceedings.

Both continually Tweet about Trump from very different perspectives.

Tweets from Blackburn as Democrats were presenting their case for Trump’s conviction in the Senate where Blackburn is a juror attacked National Security Council aide Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman. Excerpts from Vindman’s November testimony before the House were played as part of the House’s case against Trump.

“How patriotic is it to badmouth and ridicule our great nation in front of Russia, America’s greatest enemy?” the tweet on Blackburn’s account read Thursday.

Adam Schiff is hailing Alexander Vindman as an American patriot. 
 
How patriotic is it to badmouth and ridicule our great nation in front of Russia, America’s greatest enemy?
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) January 23, 2020
 

Later, Blackburn accused Vindman of leaking knowledge of a key July phone call between Trump and Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to a whistleblower.

It makes sense that Alexander Vindman leaked the July 25th phone call to his friend (aka the “whistleblower”). 

They both have lots in common:
 
—Held the same NSC job
 
—Liberals who worked under Obama
 
—Wanted to take out Trump
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) January 23, 2020
 

Even before the Vindman attacks, Blackburn has been a continual presence on social media with multiple videos daily and plenty of appearance on Fox News.

Cohen is just about an even match on the other side with Twitter links that feature his appearances on CNN and MSNBC as well as his observations on the Senate trial from the outside.

Trump & his allies are making contradictory arguments because there is no justification for their actions. Their obstruction of Congress is unprecedented, unconstitutional & a threat to separation of powers that make our government function. #TrumpImpeachmentTrial #Impeachment
— Steve Cohen (@RepCohen) January 25, 2020
 

When Trump deferred to Putin over our intel in Helsinki in front of the world he embarrassed our nation and subjected us to ridicule and defiled his predecessors work from FDR and Truman to JFK and Reagan and the Bushes and all the other American Presidents who led the free world https://t.co/jHW2KMCWa7
— Steve Cohen (@RepCohen) January 27, 2020
 

Through the weekend, Cohen reserved most of his criticism for Trump’s attorneys making the case against conviction in the Senate. As Blackburn questioned Vindman’s patriotism, Cohen responded without mentioning Blackburn by name.

Republican U.S. Rep. David Kustoff of Germantown is a close third in the rhetoric around Trump although usually not on social media.

While he is no match for the Twitter volume of Blackburn and Cohen, he is a staunch defender of Trump and a vocal critic of the impeachment.

That’s been the case since Trump and Kustoff each took office in 2017. Eight months into his first term, as investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 elections were underway, Kustoff told the Memphis Rotary club that his constituents across 15 counties in West Tennessee including parts of Memphis and Shelby County didn’t care about the allegations.

“I don’t hear one person talking about Russia,” he said. “I pay very little attention to Russia because, frankly, if anything is going wrong it is being investigated.”

Kustoff’s Twitter feed during the Senate trial has focused on his visits with constituents.

It was great to stop by @TLMAssociates in downtown Jackson and speak with President Randy McKinnon about business and the great economy under @realDonaldTrump. Thank you for letting me stop by! pic.twitter.com/rz3AzalXjw
— Rep. David Kustoff (@RepDavidKustoff) January 24, 2020
 

Somewhere ahead of Kustoff in social media rhetoric is Republican U.S. Senate contender Bill Hagerty, the former Mitt Romney supporter in the 2020 presidential race who four years later was Trump’s Tennessee campaign chairman and Trump’s U.S. Ambassador to Japan.

Hagerty’s Tweets continue to include the word “socialist” with any reference to Democrats and include links to stories from Breitbart and other conservative news outlets.

Today, President @realDonaldTrump’s legal team destroyed Nancy Pelosi’s impeachment managers’ case within 2 hours. You can’t impeach a president over half-lies and hearsay.
— Bill Hagerty (@BillHagertyTN) January 25, 2020
 

On the edges of the social media fray is outgoing Republican U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander. Hagerty is running, with Trump’s endorsement, for the Senate seat to which Alexander said last year he would not be seeking re-election.

On the first day of the Senate trial, Alexander defended his vote for a rule that initially barred calling witnesses or additional evidence at the outset of the trial. Alexander insisted the door is still open to that.

Except for not including a motion to dismiss after senators have asked questions, the resolution establishes fundamentally the same rules that the Senate approved by a vote of 100-0 for the Clinton impeachment trial in 1999.
— Sen. Lamar Alexander (@SenAlexander) January 21, 2020
 

Since then, his Twitter feed has been about briefings on the coronavirus outbreak, praising the Trump administration for rolling back provisions of the waterways act protecting wetlands and the FUTURE act, reauthorizing government funding to historically black colleges and universities.