Business was brisk at the Shelby County Election Commission Monday, May 22, as candidates began pulling petitions in the Memphis elections to be on the October 2023 ballot.

Candidates for mayor, city council and city court clerk came in at different times to the commission’s Downtown office.

At times, as many as five candidates were together on one side of the plexiglass from Election Commission staff Downtown.

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The area included posters encouraging people to register to vote and several sets of long pens with red, white and blue artificial flowers on one end that the candidates used to fill out the forms.

The conversations among candidates and even rivals was friendly.

“Welcome to the club,” council candidate Brian Harris said at one point to mayoral contender Karen Camper.

And when the inevitable question came up of what someone was pulling a petition for, it sometimes changed plans.

Davin Clemons showed up to pull his petition for a second run in council District 6 and quickly amended his plans when he introduced himself to a woman who was pulling a petition for incumbent council member Edmund Ford Sr. in the same race.

Ford had said earlier he was uncertain about seeking another term.

Clemons wound up pulling for not only District 6 but also for Super District 8 Positions 2 and 3.

“Kind of, sort of, a little bit” Clemons said when asked if the confirmation at the election commission counter that Ford was running shaped his decision to pull several petitions. “I respect Mr. Ford for the work he’s done. I appreciate him. But I believe we can do better all around on the City Council.”

Clemons can only file one of the petitions.

“Last time, I learned that politics and the political game is a very dirty game,” said Clemons, who finished second to Ford in 2019 by more than 7,000 votes in a field of six. “I learned the dos and don’ts. I learned a lot.”

Harris, who kicked off his campaign for Super District 8 Position 3 in February, showed up with a party bus and supporters who were the first to sign his petition after it was issued.

“This district goes as far east as Hickory Hill, as far west as Boxtown. I’m from that area, grew up in that area, live in that area,” Harris said.

The regulation of party buses has been a hot topic for the council lately with a third and final vote on the ordinance setting those rules scheduled for next month.

Harris stuck to crime as one of his core issues in a campaign that will see the winners take office in January to begin four-year terms of office.

“I want to continue to build on some initiatives that the City Council has done but also create new opportunities,” he said. “Making sure we take funds back to the community to focus on public safety, youth advocacy, the elderly and also homelessness.”

Harris and incumbent council member Ford Canale talked as they waited on their petitions. Canale is seeking re-election to Super District 9 Position 2.

Canale comparing the experience of being new to the council to “drinking water from a fire hose.”

He will be the longest serving council member on the body if he is re-elected, having been appointed to a vacancy on the council and then winning a special election – both in 2018 -- before winning a full term in 2019.

“I was lucky to have a year and a half bonus years. … I felt like I had a head start,” Canale said later.

“I don’t take anything for granted. I expect to have an opponent,” he said. “But I think it’s easier having some knowledge, having gone through this now twice.”

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Shelby County Elections Administrator Linda Phillips counted 17 petitions pulled by 1:30 p.m. Monday afternoon, most in the council races.

“It’s been a busy day with most folks having picked up their petitions at our Downtown location,” she told The Daily Memphian by email.

Among the morning group was mayoral contender J.W. Gibson.

“You are going to start seeing a whole lot of J.W. Gibson throughout this community,” Gibson said of the campaign milestone. “Not only physically, but on social media. You are going to see traditional TV, radio. We are going to do it all.”

“I think the most important part is making sure people know who J.W. Gibson is,” he said, talking about using that to also talk about “what we need to do to take Memphis to a different level.”

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A full list of those who pulled petitions on opening day wasn’t expected on the Election Commission website until sometime Tuesday. The Downtown office was still issuing petitions close to the 4:30 p.m. closing of the office.

The elections operation center at Shelby Farms Park is the other place candidates can pull the petitions.

Pulling petitions is the first step for candidates, who must have the signatures of at least 25 voters who live in the city or the city council district they are running in. And they must put up a $100 fee that is refunded if they withdraw from the race before July 27. The deadline to file petitions for the races is noon July 20.

There are also several uncertainties beyond who will get into which races on the ballot.

The boundaries for the council districts are still a work in progress.

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The council takes final votes next month on two competing maps for the seven single-member districts that cover the city.

The council is also considering making the clerk’s office an unelected office by an ordinance that has cleared the first of three votes.

Mike Williams, a 2015 mayoral contender who now works in the General Sessions Court Clerk’s office, pulled two petitions – each for an office in flux – City Court Clerk and council District 1.

One of the two sets of district lines the council is considering would dramatically change District 1, which is now primarily Raleigh and Cordova.

The Cordova part of District 1 would become part of District 2 in a shift to what would be a Cordova-centric council district.

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Williams says if that happens, he would simply pull a petition to run in the new District 2 because he lives in Cordova.

Williams appointed a treasurer for the City Court Clerk’s race a week before the council moved to take the race off the October ballot and make it a position appointed by the three city court judges.

For Williams, pulling a petition is about trying to change the council’s trajectory on the issue.

“I think those positions were made autonomous for a reason because they collect money and they need to answer directly to the citizens of Memphis or Shelby County, whichever one,” he said. “I think the clerks have got to be careful because this may be a test. … If this is successful, what’s to stop them from looking a little bit deeper and trying to roll that over to the county and take over those seats as well.”

By contrast, Meggan Kiel looked at the two council redistricting proposals closely before taking the dive as a candidate earlier this spring in District 5.

“Even though we are still waiting to see what the outer boundaries look like, we know the university district … is right in the heart of the district,” she said. “We are excited to get our team together and to start building this movement so we can go for change.”

Kiel, a cofounder of the social justice group Memphis Interfaith Coalition for Action and Hope (MICAH), and her family pulled the petition Monday, an hour ahead of a campaign kickoff rally in the University of Memphis area.

District 5 incumbent Worth Morgan is term-limited. Former council member Philip Spinosa is also running for the seat along with restaurant owner Nick Scott.

“There’s nothing that I will ever take for granted in this,” Kiel said. “We are going to be working until the polls close at 7 p.m. Oct. 5.”

Pearl Walker showed up during the noon rush to pick up her petition in District 3 and came back later for some more maps of the District and the city for her campaign staff.

“I feel like I’ve learned a lot that I didn’t know. And I feel like there’s a lot that I still don’t know.”

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“I ordered two copies of District 3 with all the streets and all the precincts,” she said. “I decided that someone else on the team needed their own maps. … These maps are very important. You get to see your district almost in real time. It’s just good for planning, for strategy.”

Just before her second visit to the Election Commission, Ricky Dixon, who has run for several offices over the years, pulled for District 3 as well.

“I think it’s going to get pretty crowded, maybe six or eight; who knows?” Dixon said. “I had no intention (of running), but the state of this city is we are on life support. Something’s got to be done.”

Earlier in the day, Towanna Murphy, who has worked for plenty of other candidates in lots of other campaigns, pulled a petition for City Council District 3 – one of four open seats on the 13-member body.

Fellow Super District 9 Councilman Jeff Warren pulled for re-election to Position 3 about a half hour before Canale.

“I feel like I’ve learned a lot that I didn’t know,” he said of his first term on the council. “And I feel like there’s a lot that I still don’t know.”

“Right now, I think our issue is what are we going to do about the crime problem we have,” said Warren, who ran for council four years ago because of the city’s murder count.

“Now, we’ve seen not only the murder rate spike, but we’ve seen general crime spike,” he said. “I think we are going to have to do something as a council to make sure we bolster our police presence to 2,500 officers to get back to community policing again.”

Former County Commissioner James Harvey talked about meeting the same goal after he pulled a petition for the mayor’s race.

“We must hire officers. We must train them. We must pay them well and we must make sure our officers are protected,” Harvey said as he also pledged to work to remove officers who violate the rights of citizens.

“However, I believe in policing. I believe in covert operations. I believe in undercover operations. I believe in drones,” he said. “We have to do something with crime.”