The differences are obvious.

One is a woman and the other is a man.

She’s Black. He’s white.

She’s a Democrat. He’s a Republican.

One thing they do have in common?

Tami Sawyer and Mick Wright are Shelby County commissioners.

One of his friends, “one who’s more to her way of thinking, said after we were elected maybe we could be like the local version of Ginsburg-Scalia,” Wright said.

Remember the late Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia, a dedicated conservative, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a staunch liberal?

Remember how they managed to find dignity and humanity and, yes, a friendship despite rarely agreeing on the issues?

“We were best buddies,” Ginsburg said after Scalia’s death in 2016.

Now, with her passing in 2020, they are both gone. Sometimes, it seems like our civility is, too.

“We, as a society, are just so increasingly polarized and people feel we don’t have shared values and principles,” Wright said. “And that’s just not true.

“We do have a lot in common.”

It starts by listening

The next time Tami Sawyer sugarcoats something will be the first time.

She says straight out that much of what the GOP stands for is “for me, as a Black woman, against my existence.”

So, there’s your starting point for this unlikely Ginsburg-Scalia 2.0.

Each was elected in August 2018. Wright serves District 3, covering Bartlett, Lakeland and Raleigh.

Sawyer serves District 7, covering Midtown, Binghampton and part of North Memphis. She made an unsuccessful bid for Memphis mayor in 2019, running as a change agent and losing to incumbent Jim Strickland. Her campaign carried the tagline: “We can’t wait.”

In a sense, that was Wright’s mindset in approaching Sawyer after listening to her several times in commission meetings. She says he went out of his way to tell her that despite their disparate perspectives, he believed he had learned a lot by listening to her viewpoint and the way she expressed it.

“That’s somebody taking a step toward someone, letting them know they acknowledge them and see them as a peer,” Sawyer said. “That might open dialogue.”

Said Wright: “She is a very well-spoken, intelligent, person. And you hear authentic passion.

“If you step outside yourself for a second and truly listen, that can’t help but help you with your position, to understand the other person’s point of view, and to craft the way you approach them.”

Mick Wright 
Shelby County Commissioner

“She’s had a different background, a different set of challenges than I faced.

“I don’t want to minimize the issues, but if you step outside yourself for a second and truly listen, that can’t help but help you with your position, to understand the other person’s point of view, and to craft the way you approach them.”

The way forward

In essence, they have made their own personal peace accord.

Against all odds.

“I don’t always agree with her policy or the way she talks about things,” Wright said, “but she would probably say the same thing about me.”

She does.

“We get mad at each other (over issues),” Sawyer said.

But there is mad-in-the-moment and then there is personal, poisonous grudge-holding.

They don’t go there. At least, not with one another.

In fact, after Sawyer came up short in her race for Memphis mayor, Wright brought her a gift: a cell phone holder that had her name, her title as a county commissioner and the tagline from her mayoral campaign: “We can’t wait.”

“He extended a pretty big olive branch and didn’t just dismiss me when it seems I’m overly emotional, ‘an angry Black woman.' ... It’s sportsmanship.”

Tami Sawyer
Shelby County Commissioner

“He extended a pretty big olive branch and didn’t just dismiss me when it seems I’m overly emotional, ‘an angry Black woman,’” she said. “He probably couldn’t vote for me (for mayor) but, either way, it was an acknowledgement.

“It’s sportsmanship.”

For the record, Wright lives in Bartlett and couldn’t cast a vote for Memphis mayor. Told of Sawyer’s “angry black woman” comment, he said the idea that someone might have made her feel that way, like a mere caricature, “hurts my heart.”

Pressed on how he might have voted, Wright conceded that he likely would not have voted for her.

Their political differences, as with Scalia and Ginsburg, are simply too great.

End of the day, that wasn’t what mattered most.

“That tagline summarizes her point of view,” he said. “She’s always pushing us to do more and to do it faster, to be more reactive to the needs of the community.

“She is passionate. In that way, she really is doing her job.”