Editor’s Note: The original version of this story had the wrong information about the 2007 mayor’s race.

Memphis mayoral contender Michelle McKissack is looking to get her campaign on television where ads for rivals Floyd Bonner, Paul Young and Van Turner are becoming more plentiful.

She’s not looking for a big schedule of ads — $15,000 worth is what she asked donors to contribute toward that specific item Saturday, Aug. 26, as she opened her campaign headquarters Downtown.

Like those campaigns and others in the field of 17 candidates, McKissack has ads on social media.

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And like the other candidates, part of McKissack’s job is to make her case to voters who may be overwhelmed by the size of the field in a race that has no incumbent mayor running for the first time since 1982.

“People are saying there are so many candidates and how do you go about choosing? Choose the woman,” McKissack said. “Why not? We’ve had 200 plus years of men.”

McKissack is one of seven women in the mayor’s race. She and state House Democratic leader Karen Camper are part of the pack of eight contenders who have raised the most money, have the biggest campaign presence and have some level of political experience.

“We are at a turning point here in Memphis. Memphis has never had a woman mayor,” McKissack said. “I know people say that really is not supposed to matter. But it does matter.”

Her choice of campaign headquarters punctuated her call for changes in the criminal justice system.

“We have got to stop the revolving door of people getting back out on the streets as soon as they get arrested,” she told a group of 50 in the campaign headquarters in the shadow of the Walter Bailey Criminal Justice Center. The campaign has set up shop in a space that was a bail bond company for decades.

“We have to look at bail reform. We need to look at judicial commissioners who are the ones responsible for setting the bail,” said McKissack, who is a Memphis-Shelby County Schools board member. “Crime prevention is investing in our young people. … The city of Memphis has got to get back in the business of caring about its young people.”

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City funding of MSCS on a recurring annual basis ended with the 2013 merger of public school systems in Shelby County for a single school year followed by the demerger into seven public school systems in Shelby County.

The question of city funding of MSCS is one of details. If the city were to devote a part of the city property tax rate to the school system or allocate an annual amount for schools, the recurring funding would be locked in for future years by the state’s maintenance of effort law.

The city would also give up any line-item control of the funding in the process.

“I’m not talking about them being the funding body for the school system but providing internships and apprenticeships,” McKissack said. “We need to scale that up significantly. We need to say, ‘We are going to invest in you. We’re going to help with career training.’”

How many votes does it take to be mayor?

In our previous roundup we looked at percentages it has taken to win past races for Memphis Mayor.

Since then, some of the speculation among the campaigns has turned to expectations that turnout in the current race, once the polls close the evening of Oct. 5, will be in the ballpark of 100,000 voters.

And it’s likely that is a ballpark that has some nooks and crannies that could cause that number to go higher or lower – think the outfield monuments in old Yankee Stadium.

In opening his campaign headquarters a week ago, former County Commissioner Van Turner told supporters that all he might need to win would be about 25% of that or 25,000 votes, given the field of 17.

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Sometimes the speculated winning percentage has gone as high as 30%.

Comparisons to past mayor’s races always come festooned with key differences that set each race apart from the ones before and the ones after.

But they can be useful for setting some general bars on how low or how high the numbers for the next election in the cycle may go.

The first point is one made last time.

No city election has seen a majority of the voters in Memphis show up since 1991 when Willie Herenton upset incumbent Dick Hackett by 142 votes in the first city elections under the mayor-council form of government where there was no runoff provision for the citywide contest.

Turnout has been at around 100,000 or below in the last 4 mayor’s races, including the 2009 special election following Willie Herenton’s resignation that year. None of those four races saw the turnout percentage go above 28%.

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2009: The race had a record field of 25 mayoral contenders for the 55-year history of the mayor-council form of government. A total of 109,879 voters cast ballots in the race for mayor. AC Wharton, who was then in his second term as Shelby County Mayor, won with 65,529 votes which was 59.8% of the vote. That in a field that included seven name opponents with political experience including holding elected office. That included interim mayor Myron Lowery.

2011: With a ballot of 10, the turnout in the mayor’s race was 74,436. Wharton claimed a full four-year term of office easily with 48,465 votes or 65.3%. That was with three challengers with political experience.

2015: Wharton went for a second full term and again there was a field of 10. The turnout was 100,687 votes. Jim Strickland upset the incumbent with 41,829 or 41.5%. In addition to Strickland, who was on the city council, the field included fellow council member Harold Collins and Memphis Police Association president Mike Williams.

2019: This time Strickland won a second term with a majority of the votes cast. The race drew a turnout of 96,455 voters and Strickland’s 62.1% came out to 59,904 votes. This was a field of 12 with County Commissioner Tami Sawyer and Herenton, 10 years after he resigned, being the name challengers.

Footnotes: The 2003 election posted the lowest turnout of the 16 races for mayor under the mayor-council form of government at 17.4%. Herenton easily won his fourth term of office with a majority of the votes against County Commissioner John Willingham as his most prominent challenger of 7. Turnout rebounded to 37.7% four years later.

Observations: The lowest turnout in the last four city elections was in years that were in the aftermath of a new incumbent emerging from hard fought races — the 25-candidate scramble in the 2009 special election and the upset of Wharton in 2015.

What makes comparisons difficult is this year’s race is this is the first without an incumbent mayor since 1982’s special election following the resignation of Wyeth Chandler. And comparisons to that are difficult.

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The runoff provision was still in effect.

J.O. Patterson, who lost to Dick Hackett in the runoff, had been interim mayor for a month before chief administrative officer Wallace Madewell finished up in the gap between Patterson’s month and the special election. But Patterson was campaigning on having been the interim mayor as well as his council experience.

This time around, the incumbent, Jim Strickland, is hitting the limit of two consecutive terms in effect since the winners of the 2011 election were certified — just in case you were wondering about Herenton’s four-and-a-half consecutive terms in office. Consecutive is a very important detail in that.

In Herenton’s 4 winning reelection bids for Memphis Mayor, he finished with less than a majority of the votes cast in 1999 and 2007.

1999: Herenton faced a field of 14 challengers that included four elected officials — Joe Ford, Pete Sisson, Shep Wilbun and Mary Rose McCormick as well as professional wrestler Jerry Lawler, who finished ahead of Sisson, Wilbun and McCormick. Herenton won with 74,896 votes or 45.7%.

2007: This time Herenton faced a field of 13 challengers with then-City Council member Carol Chumney finishing 7 percentage points behind Herenton and former MLGW president Herman Morris in third.

Herenton won with 70,192 or 42.4% of the vote.

The thinking on 100,000 votes divided among more than a dozen contenders is not unprecedented. And there are eight known political players in a race with no incumbent — who have won elections in the past. Make that the recent past and that comes to five which is high but not as high as the 2009 free for all.

A winner and mayor-elect with 25,000 or so votes seems very low given previous races even at or below a 25% turnout. But every trend in the politics of getting elected starts somewhere.