The race for Memphis mayor is too big by the admission of several of the 17 contenders on the October ballot, their campaign managers and by one of the two contenders who dropped out last month.

Whatever talks were underway privately among the candidates now include appeals from the candidates for voters to sort out who is a real contender and who isn’t.

“A lot of them know they haven’t got a chance in hell of winning this thing,” J.W. Gibson told a group of 50 people Saturday, Aug. 5, at his campaign headquarters opening in southeast Memphis.

The Daily Memphian to co-host mayoral debate Aug. 15

Gibson says some of the 17 contenders aren’t necessarily in the race to win but are expressing their frustration with the political status quo.

“They want to have their voices heard. They want you and everybody to know that they are dissatisfied with how this city is being run,” he said. “It’s a lot of people in this race —unnecessarily so. But they are making a voice, which I so appreciate.”

Gibson directed much of his criticism at those with better name recognition from holding other offices.

“The game that they are playing of jumping from one position to another position — that’s crazy,” he said. “That has to stop and the only way that’s going to stop is by you guys — citizens of Memphis — us — stepping up and having our voices heard.”

Gibson was also critical of Sheriff Floyd Bonner for moving inside the city during his bid for mayor after living outside the city for several decades.

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He didn’t refer to Bonner by name but talked about candidates who moved out of the city decades ago.

“Then all of a sudden before this election they want to move back into your city and run for the highest office in the city — that makes no sense,” Gibson said. “To me, that’s a true sign of them not caring about who we are, what we think, what we feel. And that’s a true example of the leadership we’ve been having for the last two or three decades.”

Bonner has said he moved from Whitehaven to unincorporated Shelby County while he was a deputy working undercover in a drug unit.

Bonner said one of those he helped put in prison approached him at a shopping mall while he was with his family. Nothing violent happened, but Bonner said the encounter prompted him and his family to move out of the city.

The unincorporated part of the county was later annexed by the city of Bartlett.

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Gibson also told supporters crime is a bigger problem than what the police department should be doing.

He said it is threatening the city’s identity.

“As important as I think crime, as important as we all think and understand crime to be — just within the last week I’ve had a lot of people to say, ‘Crime is number one but don’t allow crime to take over our community. Don’t allow it to take over who we are as Memphians,’” he said.

“I will aggressively advocate for tougher sentencing and a process for which we do our bail bonds that is consistent and fair,” Gibson added. “We’re going to spend money on technology that’s going to help us be more efficient in fighting crime.”

Gibson also said the city should fund Memphis-Shelby County Schools but not with an annual allocation that the city would be required by state law to continue at that level under the state’s “maintenance of effort” standards.

George Flinn joins Frank Colvett in dropping out of mayor’s race

“Not at the same mandated level that we once upon a time were required to,” he said. “But we are going to make contributions around programming that we think we can have a say about — programs we believe we can attach so that we can assure accountability occurs.”

The Memphis City Council cut funding to Memphis City Schools in 2008, prompting a lawsuit by the school system decided in favor of MCS and the “maintenance of effort” standard.

The standard was abandoned as the past money owed was being paid by the city and as the school system surrendered its charter in a merger with Shelby County Schools that lasted a single school year.

The maintenance of effort standard still applies to Shelby County government’s annual funding of all seven of the county’s public school systems created in the de-merger of public education that followed the merger.

Before the merger Memphis city government had no line-item control on how the school system spent the city funding. Shelby County government has no line-item control over its funding of the school systems as part of the county property tax rate.

The People’s Convention and its dilemma

When the Memphis People’s Convention meets Aug. 10-12 at the Memphis Sports and Event Center at Liberty Park, the size of the mayoral field and what to do about it could be the dominant topic.

The gathering is across Early Maxwell Boulevard from the now dormant Mid-South Coliseum — where the 1991 African-American People’s Convention was held that was among the factors in slimming down a field of potential challengers to incumbent Mayor Dick Hackett.

Willie Herenton emerged from the convention and its aftermath as the consensus Black challenger and beat Hackett by 142 votes in a three-way race — that included Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges — to become the city’s first elected Black mayor.

Rev. Earle Fisher was among those who organized a modified version of the People’s Convention in 2019, which was held at the Paradise Entertainment Center, site of the old Club Paradise nightclub in South Memphis.

“Hopefully we can build towards a consensus candidate and regretfully we won’t be able to shrink the field on the ballot from 17 to whoever is more or less viable,” Fisher said on The Daily Memphian’s “On The Record” podcast.

Frank Colvett drops out of mayor’s race, says field is too crowded

“I come from a faith tradition that says with God all things are possible,” said the pastor of Abyssinian Missionary Baptist Church in Whitehaven. “But it doesn’t say with God all things are probable.”

Fisher and others organizing the convention have been vocal in their concern that the size of the field for mayor — without a runoff provision or partisan primary elections in city elections— will split the Black vote.

Fisher is urging voters to judge the slate of contenders on a combination of factors that do not include ideology or specific issues. They are: name recognition, favorability, fundraising capacity, endorsements, the state of their campaign and polling.

Last month, he wrote, “This is about probability, not ideology.”

“We have to be realistic,” Fisher said on the OTR podcast. “You have to look at how name recognition lands in the general public and how candidates use that as a tactic.”

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Fisher says the onus is on voters to make their own judgments about who is viable and the convention could help with that conversation.

“I might have a personal favorite. But if their personal favorite has a 10% chance in terms of viability, we have to communicate that to the public if we actually want them to be adequately engaged and equipped and educated on the issue,” he said. “That’s the rationale. And so far as viability is concerned, it’s not about what is possible.”

For two hours each day, the convention that starts Thursday will weigh endorsements in the Memphis Mayor’s race as well as the 13 city council races also on the ballot.

Those who attend will hear from candidates on the ballot — possibly as many as 7 of the 17 contenders for mayor — and other political figures not on the ballot, including Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris.

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The convention comes after the deadline for candidates to withdraw from the October election and thus have their names removed from the ballot. That means the convention will likely embrace some political realities with names attached.

Fisher mentioned Sheriff Floyd Bonner and Herenton by name— candidates the convention has tried to get to speak or engage in its activities up to the convention including a series of “meet and greet” gatherings starting this past spring at various locations.

Fisher believes both are relying to a greater degree on just their name recognition.

The two major white contenders in the race — City Council member Frank Colvett and former County Commissioner George Flinn withdrew from the race at the withdrawal deadline.

Both were expected to compete with Bonner for white Republican support in particular.

Political Roundup: Conventions, a mayor’s race reshuffle and residency notes

In announcing his exit from the race, Colvett said there are too many candidates in the race without mentioning any by name. He also said he would be talking with the remaining contenders but did not say whether he would make an endorsement.

Fisher said some may see Bonner as “the great white hope in Black face.”

“I don’t know if that’s true. I think that remains to be seen,” he said. “I think even Sheriff Bonner needs to say something about what that may mean about his particular campaign. I don’t think he’s discussed much regarding the issues of racial demographics and the electorate.”

Fisher also said he thinks Herenton could play a major role in the race by getting out even though at this point his name would remain on the ballot.

“I have heard Mayor Herenton articulate his desire to raise up a new leader,” he said. “What I have been thinking is he has the power right now to name whoever the next mayor is except for naming himself. … I think whoever he names would become the front runner instantaneously and, in all likelihood, have the momentum needed to organize the Black vote.”

New mayoral poll shows Bonner, Herenton, Turner in lead, Young gaining

“But again that would require unprecedented courage and selflessness,” Fisher said. “And I think there is too much blind ambition in the political infrastructure right now and that’s not limited to the mayor’s race.”

Herenton, the longest-serving mayor in the city’s history who has won election as mayor five consecutive times, has been openly critical of Bonner and Downtown Memphis Commission president Paul Young — the top two contenders in the mayoral field in terms of fundraising.

Fun with turnout percentages

A majority of the city’s voters haven’t shown up for a Memphis election ballot since 1991 and the Hackett-Herenton matchup topped the ballot.

The election came months after a federal court decision eliminated the runoff provision in the citywide contest — the requirement that if no candidates gets a simple majority of the votes cast then the top two contenders advance to a separate runoff election.

The runoff provision still applies to races for the seven single-member district council seats.

The 65.1% turnout in the 1991 Memphis elections, by Shelby County Election Commission records, is the highest percentage turnout in any city election in the 55-year history of the mayor-council form of government. That includes the 1967 city elections that kicked off the form of government starting New Year’s Day 1968.

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From the 1967 city elections to the 1982 special election triggered by the resignation of Mayor Wyeth Chandler — a span of 5 races for mayor — all of them went to a runoff.

In three of those five runoffs, voter turnout was higher than it had been in the initial general election.

The 1979 runoff between Chandler and Otis Higgs that Chandler won posted a turnout of 66% — the highest runoff turnout. The runoff turnout that year compared to a 49.9% turnout in the election that led to the runoff.

The exceptions to a higher runoff turnout were the 1967 mayoral runoff between Henry Loeb and William Ingram that Loeb won and the 1982 special election runoff between Dick Hackett and J.O. Patterson Jr.

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Hackett won the 1982 runoff even though Patterson finished ahead of Hackett in the election that led to the runoff.

The 1982 special election was the last time before the current October ballot that there was no incumbent mayor on the ballot.

Patterson had served as interim mayor by virtue of being city council chairman.

But the city charter at the time set a limit on how long that tenure was. When Patterson’s time as interim mayor ended, city chief administrative officer Wallace Madewell became mayor until the special election results were certified.

Following the charter change, city council chairman Myron Lowery served as mayor following Herenton’s 2009 resignation — until a special election in which Lowery was a candidate — made AC Wharton the new mayor.