The results from the Thursday, Nov. 16, Memphis City Council runoff elections still await certification.

But the unofficial results are enough to flesh out what the new council will look like before it takes office Jan. 1, 2024, with Memphis Mayor-elect Paul Young.

The body of 13 will have five new faces and eight returning members. All of the five new members won their seats in races where the incumbents holding the seats did not run for reelection.

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Four of the departing council members were serving their second consecutive terms and were term-limited.

In the 55-year history of Memphis’ mayor-council government structure, the highest number of council seats to change hands at one time was nine in 2007. Four years later marked the largest return of incumbents — 12 of 13.

New Council Overview

• Here is the council district map
• Seven single-member districts, two super districts with three positions in each.
• Five new to the council.
• Seven starting their fifth year.
• One starting her first full term after winning a special election to fill a vacancy in late 2022.
• Seven women, six men.
• Eight Black and five white members.
• Three attorneys.

District 1

Rhonda Logan returns for a second term. One of the more inquisitive council members in the last four years, Logan has also staked out a claim as a negotiator on complex issues through the use of ad hoc committees.

The committees combine council members with others within the administration or directly involved in the issues at hand.

The first foray into the process was an ad hoc committee on the Memphis Police Department. That group reached a consensus that the city should move toward a goal of a 2,500-officer force with enhanced recruiting.

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That consensus, between the council and the administration, had previously eluded both. It also put into perspective that most critics of police practices agreed on the need for more officers in concert with reform.

Logan has been attentive to her district and began her council tenure as the new Raleigh Springs Town Center opened with a new police precinct and public library on the site of the former Raleigh Springs mall. She advocated for the project at the helm of the community development corporation.

Logan also held the administration accountable for the chronic problems in solid waste services. The problem first surfaced in the sector known as Area E, which took in a good part of Cordova and was served by a private garbage disposal contractor. At one point, Logan pushed unsuccessfully for a refund of Area E’s monthly solid waste fee.

She also favored changes to the district’s boundaries that would have jettisoned the Cordova portion of her district to District 2. She initially opposed the change but cited vocal constituent support for the idea of a fully Cordova council. The redistricting proposal ultimately failed.

District 2

Newly elected, Jerri Green is an attorney and senior policy adviser to Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris.

Her runoff victory over former council member Scott McCormick was one of two attempts to change the council’s ideological mosaic in a pair of districts known for conservative, pro-business representation over several decades.

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In this case, the seat flipped. Green brings her legal background, work on gun-control measures through Moms Demand Action and a 2020 bid to unseat Republican state House Rep. Mark White.

Combine the council with her duties in the Harris’ office, and Green is fully plugged into local government.

She has already weighed into the deep end of the policy pool, crafting local measures and policies reflecting Harris’ focus on national issues like juvenile justice, which are connected to county government agencies and divisions.

Previous council policy efforts so far have stuck close to resolutions expressing opinions. That could soon change.

District 3

Pearl Eva Walker lost her council run four years ago. She followed a familiar blueprint to take the District 3 seat last week.

The field was crowded, and the runoff was the closest race of the entire city political season: Walker won by 14 votes over retired Memphis Police officer James Kirkwood.

Walker already had credentials as an activist, business owner and civic promoter of the Whitehaven community and commerce.

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Those connections made Walker a candidate with roots and the ability to work smart and hard in her bid.

She also has represented the Memphis Branch NAACP on issues such as the crude oil Byhalia Connection pipeline slated to run through southwest Memphis.

A coalition’s successful opposition to the pipeline was a watershed environmental campaign.

The district splits Whitehaven with Edmund H. Ford Sr.’s District 6. However, District 3 is known as “the Whitehaven district” mostly because of the area’s political power and its status as a barometer of the city’s overall mood on major issues.

Walker brings a broad reach to her council seat, which has been held by some of the body’s most critical swing votes on closely divided issues.

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District 4

Jana Swearengen-Washington begins her first full four-year term. She won the remainder of her sister Jamita Swearengen’s term in a 2022 special election.

She is an educator and supervisor with the Forrest City Schools system after working for Memphis-Shelby County Schools and Millington Municipal Schools.

Swearengen-Washington also has deep roots in Memphis, particularly the grassroots politics of Orange Mound and South Memphis.

In one year on the council, she has focused on grant funding, ribbon cuttings and groundbreakings in her district. Those projects include the ongoing Fairgrounds redevelopment as Liberty Park.

Swearengen-Washington has watched planning and development items closely.

She has also started digging into citywide issues and become more vocal in council debates.

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District 5

Philip Spinosa returns to the council five years after resigning a seat in 2018 to take a job with the Greater Memphis Chamber. He had about two years left in his four-year term.

To win his seat, Spinosa battled Meggan Kiel in the most expensive council race on the ballot. Each candidate raised more than $1 million.

Spinosa is the only one of three former council members seeking reelection this year who won.

During his previous tenure, Spinosa picked up the call for a larger police force.

Throughout the campaign, he pushed the assertion that Kiel favored defunding police because of a 2020 letter she signed calling for police reform in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death.

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Kiel was one of more than 100 local nonprofit leaders who signed the open letter, which called for broader policing approaches coupled with civilian mental health assistance and similar social services.

Kiel pushed back, saying the appeal wasn’t calling for an end to police but for changes in methods.

Spinosa returns to a council that, in the last four years, has had a majority back calls for similar police reforms. The same council approved pay raises for cops as well as recruitment and retention bonuses and agreed to a staffing goal.

The first indication of the new council’s police philosophy could come if Mayor-elect Paul Young asks the council to appoint a new police director.

District 6

Edmund H. Ford Sr. begins his second consecutive term on the council and his fourth overall. Ford was first elected as a council member in 1999 and served two terms through 2007.

Ford’s first two terms came before the enaction of term limits in 2011. 

Ford’s emphasis is on funding and city projects for his district, which encompasses part of Whitehaven and all of southwest Memphis.

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And he is a master of the move, including finding additional funding to make proposed initiatives larger. He never tries to block original asks but instead works to find money for his district, too.

Ford’s major project so far has been a new use for the old Southwest Twin Drive-In movie theater on South Third Street — a project he has pursued for several years and which appears to be finally getting traction.

There is another side to Ford’s mercurial demeanor on the council that sometimes erupts and reflects a long-standing distrust of Memphis Light, Gas and Water, Memphis Area Transit Authority and Graceland.

Ford lives across Elvis Presley Boulevard from Graceland, and his mortuary business is a few blocks north of the Memphis landmark, which actually sits in District 3. 

Ford follows a practice of only speaking once, at the most, on matters, usually toward the end of a council discussion and just ahead of a vote. But he reacts to various points in the debate ahead of his remarks.

Most of Ford’s council clashes were with the body’s departing chairman Martavius Jones. But if returning councilman JB Smiley Jr. becomes chairman, he could inherit the mantle.

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District 7

Michalyn Easter-Thomas begins her second term after upsetting incumbent Berlin Boyd in 2019.

The most noticed project of her council tenure is a plan for a grocery story coupled with some social service agency tenants in the North Memphis part of her district that is currently a food desert.

The public-private deal has taken time to assemble.

Meanwhile, Easter-Thomas pursued a second bank of police reform ordinances following the January death of Tyre Nichols at the hands of Memphis Police officers. The first group of council measures came after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis.

Ultimately, the later ordinances could only request actions of the Memphis Police Department, and outgoing Mayor Jim Strickland had some legal concerns about those. But Easter-Thomas negotiated with MPD Chief Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis and changed the wording to pass legal muster.

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She had less luck heading up an effort to redraw council district lines before this year’s elections.

The goal was to use the Shelby County Commission’s 2020 process, which included more public input — a big departure from council attorney Allan Wade’s decades-long practice of meeting one-on-one with council members.

Easter-Thomas disputed that the changes approved in time for District 4’s 2022 special election were minor. She said Wade never met with her about the changes that affected her district.

The ad hoc group she led drew fire from other council members and a statement of concern from Wade.

Easter-Thomas could push for renewed discussion of those district changes. But that effort would be missing the passion that Martavius Jones showed for the discussions — which included talk of eliminating super districts in a move to 13 single-member districts.

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Super District 8 Position 1

JB Smiley Jr. will be in his second term and could be the new chairman of the body.

Smiley is also exploring a bid in the August U.S. Senate Democratic primary for the right to challenge Republican incumbent Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee, in November.

It would be Smiley’s second statewide campaign in as many years. He ran in the 2022 Democratic primary for Tennessee governor, finishing 1,400 votes behind eventual nominee Dr. Jason Martin of Nashville.

Smiley sees the City Council and its elections as partisan, even without the formality of partisan primaries that have been a feature of county elections and the county commission for the last three decades.

But he’s willing to settle for a possible return of the runoff provision to the city charter.

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To Smiley, the runoff would pare the field of Memphis mayoral contenders, which, in a red state’s bluest city, becomes primarily a competition among Democrats.

Smiley is already talking about the mandate he and other council members have by getting more votes in the October elections than Mayor-elect Young. But others on the council don’t see any mandates due to the election turnout of 23%. 

Nevertheless, Smiley might challenge the new administration. It would be a recurrence of the mayor-council tension that has been a feature of city government since the first council took office in 1968.

Super District 8 Position 2

Janika White begins her first term on the council. She is an attorney whose practice includes legal advice to the county commission. Along with Green, she is one of two council members with ties to the county building.

White claimed the seat with the backing of incumbent Cheyenne Johnson, who decided to not seek a second term.

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White ran for the council a year after making a strong bid for the Democratic nomination for Shelby County District Attorney General. While she didn’t win that race, the countywide run set the stage for her council election.

Based on the tact White outlined in her 2022 campaign, look for a methodical, data-based approach to complex issues.

Super District 8 Position 3

Yolanda Cooper Sutton filled out a card to speak at the end of the first City Council meeting after Oct. 5 Election Day, something she had done several times before becoming a council candidate.

The time at the end of the council session is a place for citizens to speak on whatever topic they care to address. Some speakers are frequent fliers, while others show up only once or intermittently.

Cooper Sutton fell in the intermittent category. At the council meeting in October, she thanked the council members for listening to her even if they didn’t necessarily agree.

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She’s a grassroots activist who emerged during the local reaction to Floyd’s death and again this year after Nichols’ death.

She’s also been vocal about the extent to which violent crime is affecting inner-city communities.

Her concerns are mixed with expressions of religious faith and, at times, a preacher’s tenor.

Cooper Sutton amped up her grassroots methods, honed connections made in small community gatherings and mixed those with a ubiquitous yard sign game her crowded race for the open super district seat.

How she makes the transition from activist to legislator, and the issues she picks to amplify, will be of interest.

Super District 9 Position 1

Chase Carlisle begins his second term as one of the outgoing mayor’s most outspoken critics.

Carlisle has brought his business acumen to bear since coming on the council four years ago, examining and, in some cases, amending the contract terms of public-private partnerships.

His provisions include requiring gas station convenience stores to return for council approval if the owners change the “flag,” or gas brand.

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He was a critic of the city’s sale of the old Union Avenue police precinct in Midtown and its staggered redevelopment plans that put a hotel first and residences second.

Carlisle fears the arrangement might see the residential development not materialize, leaving the key parcel with only a hotel and without the economic mixed-use punch that could catalyze other new developments nearby.

He’s watched the administration’s four-part arena package closely as it has been pared to state money for improvements and renovations at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium and FedExForum. If it isn’t resolved by the time Strickland leaves office, Carlisle will likely continue to weigh in on the matter.

He has questioned the complex financing of the conversion Fairgrounds/Liberty Park project and specifically the Tourism Development Zone sales tax revenues the mixed-use development on Central Avenue is supposed to generate to pay for the majority of the land’s public uses. He’s also questioned why the city cleared the land fronting Central without council approval of specific uses.

Carlisle’s relationship with the new administration is one of the biggest questions of the transition.

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Super District 9 Position 2

Ford Canale is the longest continuously serving council member via his special election victory in 2018. He is known for proposals to crack down on street drag racing and reckless driving, blending those efforts with companion items in the Tennessee Legislature the Republican majorities can support.

Canale’s ordinance aimed at loud cars with altered mufflers shows a skill for compromise.

Concerns about the financial impact of such policies are regular council considerations in a city with a high poverty rate.

Canale set up and found funding for a repair program for those cited for noisy mufflers.

In the law-and-order debate and dialogue of the last term, Canale also questioned the dismissal of reckless driving and similar citations in court.

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Super District 9 Position 3

Jeff Warren was the other incumbent council member who ran unopposed in this year’s elections. He also got more votes than anyone else on the ballot — 36,546 — including the mayoral contenders.

Warren is the council member whose out-loud reasoning during meetings and sessions can define critical junctures and compromises.

Warren pushed to delay starting construction on an expanded Memphis Zoo parking lot in Overton Park after the collapse of an earlier compromise that would have spared the park greensward. Strickland’s administration backed the delay, which saw another compromise take shape.

The biggest test of his approach to come is likely the referendum vote in August on several local gun control measures. Warren worked through several draft versions and added options as he went. If approved by voters in some form, the measures could set off a court fight with the state.

Meanwhile, just putting it on the ballot is the latest indication of a galvanized council response to Republican state legislature control.