Janika White opened her campaign for District Attorney General Saturday, Feb. 26, in Hickory Hill with a call for change in the prosecutor’s office and a hope the May Democratic primary race will draw more than the normally low turnout.

“We normally expect low primary turnout, and that’s what I’m trying to prevent,” White told The Daily Memphian at the conclusion of the event that drew more than 100 people.

“I believe that I will bring out a new voter base that we normally don’t see specifically in primaries,” she said. “Young people are excited and if we look at our voter rolls, young people historically haven’t been voting.”

Attorney Janika White joins Democratic primary for DA

The campaign opening was part of a busy weekend of politics, both locally and nationally. 

Turnout in the county primaries is usually well below 20% of all voters in the county.

White is one of three Democrats in the primary seeking to challenge incumbent Republican District Attorney General Amy Weirich on the August county general election ballot.

Her rivals are former federal prosecutor Linda Harris and former Shelby County Commissioner Steve Mulroy.

All three are campaigning on pledges to depart from Weirich’s record that has recently emphasized proposed “truth in sentencing” laws at the state level that would eliminate probation and parole. She also supports tougher measures to rein in violent crime.

White said she would also focus on the city’s violent crime problem.

“The part we are lacking is the community work around it,” she told supporters, including former Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton.

WATCH: Conversation about violent crime about to heat up

Herenton said the challenge for Democrats is to “galvanize all of the people who want to make a difference in that unique office.”

That depends on supporters of the two candidates who don’t win in the Democratic primary voting in August for the third candidate who does win the primary.

“We are tired of making national news for all of the wrong reasons,” White said of violent crime and its impact, including the low percentage of Memphis-Shelby County Schools students reading at grade level by the latest statistics.

MSCS reveals new logo, teacher bonuses, academic programs

“This is so much bigger than this office,” White said. “We want to dismantle the school-to-prison pipeline.”

Weirich is running unopposed in the May Republican primary. She kicked off her re-election effort early last year. The local Republican Party has made her re-election one of its highest priorities.

Weirich is the only Republican holding a countywide partisan office after the Democratic sweep of countywide offices in the 2018 elections.

The ballot four years ago did not feature a race for District Attorney General because the office has an eight-year term.

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Weirich has said she favors some reforms and has enacted some during her time as the county’s chief prosecutor. But she has rejected the wholesale changes advocated by each of the three Democratic contenders in the May primary.

Weirich has also said cited the need for stronger laws and penalties to combat a rise in violent crime during the pandemic.

Bonner Unopposed

When Shelby County Election Commissioners approve the May county primary ballot Monday afternoon, Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner will be the only unchallenged Democratic countywide incumbent without a primary challenger.

Would-be primary challenger Keisha Scott, a sergeant in the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, was the only contender who filed by the February deadline in either primary to have withdrawn her qualifying petition.

Watch: Sheriff Bonner downplays discord over juvenile detention, welcomes federal oversight

Scott instead filed another petition to run as an independent contender for Sheriff, automatically advancing to the August ballot where she and two other independent candidates — Jon Burleson and Donald Taylor — will meet Bonner.

There is no Republican primary for Sheriff. The Shelby County Republican Party’s steering committee decided last year that the party would not hold a primary for sheriff — the first time the local party has passed on a primary for any county office in the 30-year history of partisan county primary elections in Shelby County.

Shelby County Commissioner Mickell Lowery is the only one of the three Democratic county commissioners seeking a second term who has no opposition in the May primary and the August county general election.

Hagerty at CPAC

Republican U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee was on the same bill Saturday with former President Donald Trump at the Conservative Political Action Conference — or CPAC — in Orlando held by the American Conservative Union.

With author and former Trump administration deputy national security adviser K.T. McFarland, Hagerty was critical of the Biden administration’s response in advance of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“We needed to give Vladimir Putin a taste of what was to come— let him know that America did indeed have resolve,” Hagerty, a former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, said. “That would have had a deterrent effect. Well, the Biden administration fought that.”

Rep. Steve Cohen near Ukraine as Sen. Marsha Blackburn meets with Trump

The White House specifically opposed sanctions at that point that would have cut off any move to start the $11 billion Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that is owned by the Russian firm Gazprom.

Germany initially opposed the sanctions but on the day of the invasion halted the certification of the pipeline beneath the Baltic Sea at Germany’s Baltic coast. And the U.S. has since imposed sanctions on Gazprom and its subsidiary on the project.

Hagerty said it amounted to “negotiating from a position of weakness, appeasement.”

“They’ve weakened us dramatically. And this is something we’ve got to come back from and evaluate now,” he said. “The Biden administration has certainly indicated a willingness to impose sanctions at this point.”

“They want to increase the cost on Russia. I’m not against that,” Hagerty said. “But I would certainly have been in favor of actually having a deterrent effect by moving sooner.”

Cohen Pushes ‘Counter-Kleptocracy Act’

Democratic U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen of Memphis said Saturday that he and other Democrats as well as Republicans in the House intend to push for a vote on a “Counter-Kleptocracy Act.”

The bill is a set of measures that includes:

• Visa bans on those from other countries who use state power to engage in acts of corruption against private persons in the U.S.
• Makes bribery by foreign officials a crime.
• Establishes a database of U.S. visa denials that blocks “investor visas” from being used to travel the U.S. by those denied visas for corruption.
• Creates a U.S. Justice Department website that lists the amount of money stolen by foreign leaders and recovered by the U.S.

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Cohen was in the Baltic region as well as Vienna as the invasion began in his role as cochairman of the Helsinki Commission, a U.S. agency created by Congress to uphold human rights pacts with European allies.

He met with U.S. troops in Lithuania at the border with Belarus and chaired a session of European leaders in Vienna.

Russian leaders made their case for the invasion before the body and were met with opposition by Cohen and others at the gathering.

“Corruption is the lifeblood of the Putin regime and the system he seeks to export,” Cohen said in a statement announcing the move to House leadership for a vote on the act. “We must become deadly serious about exposing the blood money that fuels Putin’s wars and repression.”