Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner formally opened his re-election campaign this week, emphasizing his record as the head of law enforcement in the unincorporated county and keeper of the Shelby County Jail as well as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bonner’s expected bid for a second term in the 2022 elections comes less than three months before candidates can begin pulling and filing qualifying petitions with the Shelby County Election Commission to get on the ballot, starting in Bonner’s case with the May county primary elections.

Other contenders in the 2022 elections are also raising their profiles as they announce and raise money for a more public and sustained push for votes.

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“Every year we’ve reduced crime in unincorporated Shelby County,” Bonner told a group of several dozen supporters Wednesday, Sept. 22.

“Moving forward, we want to continue to work with our communities to build that trust, that bond with the community as well as law enforcement,” he said. “I work extremely hard being there for the community, talking to the community, being a role model, being a member. We can’t do this alone. I can’t do it alone.”

Later Wednesday afternoon, Division 3 Circuit Court Judge Valerie L. Smith welcomed a group of 30 to a fundraiser at the Glankler Brown law firm in East Memphis with a football tailgating theme.

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A long table was decorated with paper borders simulating a football gridiron, and several supporters twirled batons after another supporter in a striped referee’s shirt blew a whistle to briefly break up the one-on-one conversations.

“This is the season of campaigning,” Smith said of the football theme. “I thought maybe something more lighthearted was in order. A tailgating thing is something you do for your team, and I ask lawyers and citizens to be on my team.”

Like the other contenders for the several dozen nonpartisan judicial races on the August 2022 ballot, Smith is limited in what she can say in her campaign appeal by a code of ethics for attorneys and judges. Most in the crowd were attorneys with a sprinkling of other judges.

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Smith was appointed to the civil court in 2016 following the death of Judge D’Army Bailey and ran that year for the remainder of his eight-year term.

She is seeking re-election next year for a full eight-year term.

“It’s important that people know these are the positions that make decisions that affect your everyday lives,” Smith said. “We hear divorce matters, child custody matters. These are the things that affect everyday people and their lives.”

The addition of the judicial races makes 2022 what politicos call a “big ballot” election year with the August ballot being the longest of any election cycle in Shelby County politics.

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The day before Smith’s fundraiser, fellow Circuit Court Judge Mary Wagner launched her re-election campaign at the Crescent Center, across Poplar Avenue from Glanker Brown.

“We try to support each other when we can,” Smith said. “We’re all part of one judicial family.”

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Circuit Court Judges Yolanda Kight Brown and Felicia Corbin-Johnson also have indicated they will seek re-election next year.

So has Chancery Court Judge Jim Kyle, Probate Court Judge Kathleen Gomes, Juvenile Court Judge Dan Michael and General Sessions Civil Court Judge Betty Thomas Moore in campaign finance paperwork filed through Wednesday.

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Bonner, a career law enforcement officer, won the sheriff’s office in 2018 as the Democratic nominee in what was a sweep by the local party of every countywide race on the ballot over Republican contenders.

Bonner succeeded Republican Sheriff Bill Oldham, who crossed party lines to endorse Bonner as the county’s first Black elected sheriff.

Bonner’s term so far has included a worldwide pandemic that, in the case of his duties, translated to a federal court lawsuit that faulted his administration for its handling of prisoners in the jail in the health crisis.

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The death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody in May 2020 also put Bonner and his department on the front lines of weeks of local protests.

The protests saw some use of chemical agents for crowd control and more than 100 arrests of protesters in the joint response by the SCSO, Memphis Police Department and Tennessee Highway Patrol despite the protests remaining peaceful for the most part.

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“We’ve got to get past COVID,” Bonner said Wednesday of ongoing challenges his department faces. “COVID has not allowed us to do a lot of things that we wanted to implement. … We are trying to move past that.”

Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Sheryl Lipman kept in place a consent decree governing pandemic precautions at the jail.

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Lipman was critical of the county and Bonner in particular for what she termed “box checking” in complying with the court decree instead of “meaningful protection” for “a medically vulnerable group” of citizens who are awaiting trial.

In January, the Shelby County Commission approved a heavily negotiated and amended resolution that requires the Sheriff’s Office to get commission approval to acquire most surplus military hardware from the federal government.

Bonner had said during the local George Floyd protests that he had ended the practice for most of the hardware upon taking office in late 2018 but that some gear for officer safety and for search and rescue operations should be permitted.

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The commission’s resolution was worked out after lots of discussion between Bonner and the commission’s eight-member Democratic majority.

So far in his re-election effort, Bonner faces opposition from SCSO employee Keisha Scott, a sergeant in the patrol division, who, like Bonner, lives in Bartlett.

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Scott has indicated in her campaign paperwork so far that she intends to run as an independent on the August county general election ballot.

Scott’s most recent and only campaign finance disclosure so far from July shows a campaign balance of $500.

That compares to an amended financial statement from Bonner’s campaign filed in September showing a balance of $86,799 through the end of June with $2,800 raised since the first of the year.

Bonner also has an outstanding loan balance of $8,965 as of May 2021 from a loan to himself.

Scott is the only challenger so far to take a formal step toward running.

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Other early campaign declarations include:

• Rev. Reginald Boyce, senior pastor of Riverside Missionary Baptist Church, running for the District 12 seat on the Shelby County Commission, the seat held by Van Turner. Turner is serving his second consecutive term and is limited by the county charter from seeking re-election. Turner has endorsed Boyce.
• Kathy Temple, a Black Lives Matter activist, is running in the Democratic primary for District 7 on the commission, the seat Tami Sawyer is leaving after one term.
• Dr. Daniel Chatham, a Germantown pediatrician, is running in the May Republican primary for County Commission District 4, the seat Mark Billingsley is leaving because of term limits.
• Candice Jones, a county government appeals coordinator and local party activist, is running in the May Democratic primary for County Commission District 11, the seat Eddie Jones is leaving after two terms, also because of term limits.
• Will Frazier Jr. has filed a form to appoint a treasurer in the Democratic primary race.
• Arriell Q. Gipson, a public health coordinator with Shelby County government, is running in the Democratic primary for Shelby County Clerk in what could be a May primary challenge of Democratic incumbent Wanda Halbert.
• Attorney Christopher Lareau has appointed a treasurer to run for Criminal Court Judge Division 5, the seat held by Judge James Lammey. Lammey was reprimanded in November 2019 by the Tennessee Board of Judicial Conduct for a 2016 Facebook posts he shared that was critical of Black Lives Matter activists, the news media and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
• Attorney Erim Sarinoglu is running for General Sessions Criminal Court Judge in Division 10, held by Judge Chris Turner.