Republican State Senator Brent Taylor says his next goal in his campaign to “make Memphis matter” in Nashville is to “make (Shelby County District Attorney General Steve) Mulroy meaningless,” Taylor told a group of 300 local Republicans Sunday, June 23.

“Make no mistake, our community is less safe because of the Soros-funded DA with his social justice, restorative justice schemers ruining our justice system here in Shelby County,” Taylor said at the Shelby County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day Gala in East Memphis.

The description of Mulroy, which was also used by Tennessee Republican Party chairman Scott Golden, is a reference to philanthropist and major Democratic Party donor George Soros.

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Taylor told Lt. Governor and Senate speaker Randy McNally last week that he intends to file a petition with the legislature to oust Mulroy from office.

“If this DA who has repeatedly called for further gun restrictions on law-abiding citizens, while also saying he wants nonviolent convicted felons to have access to guns — if he believes that, then this DA needs to go,” Taylor said Sunday.

He got the night’s largest ovation, surpassing keynote speaker and South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem.

Mulroy said on June 10 that prosecutors in his office would use their discretion to determine if some convicted offenders found with guns might instead be recommended for judicial diversion programs instead of jail time. In response, Taylor and House Speaker Cameron Sexton began meeting with McNally and other legislative leaders last week to discuss attempting to remove Mulroy.

Mulroy later announced he was withdrawing the policy because it would not amount to that many cases in his office's overall work. He also was critical of Taylor, calling the attempted removal “disrespecting Shelby County voters by trying to overturn a local election.”

And Mulroy said his office will still prosecute the charges of being a felon in possession of a gun, as it currently does.

Tennessee Republican Party chairman Scott Golden underlined Republican party support for the effort to oust Mulroy in his introduction of Taylor at the gala.

Golden noted the presence of Tennessee Comptroller Jason Mumpower among the Republican officials from other parts of the state in the audience Sunday.

“If you guys are really nice to him, he will take over the city of Memphis on your behalf,” Golden joked to applause.

He and Mumpower came to East Memphis from a similar local party fundraiser in Fentress County, and Golden said the move to oust Mulroy came up there.

The Tennessee Democratic Party has joined the fray with a post last week on its X account calling Taylor “unhinged” and having “hopes of becoming county mayor.”

“We’re going to be a brick wall against your attacks on democracy,” the post read.

Chism Picnic and the 2026 race for Shelby County Mayor

Former County Commissioner Sidney Chism’s annual political picnic, held Saturday, June 22, in southwest Memphis, had more booths for city and county services than for candidates in the August and November elections.

Towanna Murphy, a Memphis-Shelby County Schools board candidate, came on her own with a purple umbrella bearing her campaign logo that she used as a parasol in the 90-plus-degree heat.

Another school board contender Jason Sharif focused on going to the crowd instead of the crowd coming to him. He walked throughout the event intent on finding voters as opposed to politicos from other campaigns.

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The turnout was low compared to past editions of the 24-year-old political tradition.

Most of the politics was at a more subtle level and some for offices on the 2026 county ballot — primary elections will be in May 2026 and a general election in August 2026.

Chism’s admittedly early list of possible contenders for Shelby County Mayor in 2026 includes several of Memphis Mayor Paul Young’s rivals from the 2023 city race — former county commissioner and business and philanthropy leader J.W. Gibson and former county commissioner and attorney Van Turner.

Chism also mentioned Shelby County Assessor Melvin Burgess Jr. as a potential county mayoral candidate along with county chief administrative officer and former Memphis City Council member Harold Collins who ran for Memphis Mayor in 2015.

Chism says whoever emerges as the Democratic nominee needs to follow the example of Young’s campaign in the nonpartisan Memphis Mayor’s race.

“Most of our candidates don’t have the resources to put on the kind of campaign they need to put on. … He was able to stay on TV. And because of that, he outpaced everybody,” Chism told The Daily Memphian. “Every day during the last three weeks of the campaign they were looking at his face. Either he was on TV or he was in their neighborhood. No other candidate had that.”

Turner, meanwhile, tested the premise that the city elections and county elections can be won with similar partisan appeals.

He ran a campaign for Memphis Mayor built on appealing specifically to Democratic voters who have rallied in the county’s partisan elections sweeping every countywide office on the ballot for Democratic nominees in 2018 and again in 2022.

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He finished fourth in last year’s race, suggesting the same voters that vote the Democratic ballot from top to bottom in county elections use different factors in deciding who to support in the nonpartisan city elections.

Elsewhere in the picnic’s crowd

On another political level, Young’s administration was out in force Saturday, some wearing t-shirts reading “Are you ready for change, Mane?”

A year ago, Young was one of several mayoral contenders at the picnic looking for votes.

“Now we’re in the work mode,” Young said Saturday of his administration from the same stage.

Interim city COO Antonio Adams talked with City Council members Dr. Jeff Warren and Yolanda Cooper-Sutton separately ahead of a Monday meeting of the council’s budget committee that is crucial to the council approving a budget and property tax rate for the new fiscal year that starts July 1.

Announcer Stan Bell plugged the petting zoo and food beneath a pavilion on what is known informally as “Chism Park” by politicos.

“We got goats. We got llamas,” Bell said. “You might even find a unicorn.”

Bell highlighted those in the crowd as he wandered through it with a wireless microphone, calling attention to Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Anthony Buckner and his son.

Buckner is considered a likely contender for sheriff in 2026, when Sheriff Floyd Bonner Jr. will hit the two-term limit.

Former Memphis Light, Gas and Water president and former city finance director Joseph Lee was wearing a polo shirt at the picnic with his campaign logo for County Trustee in 2026.

Lee is director of remittances in the trustee’s office, where he has worked for the last seven years.

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Incumbent Trustee Regina Newman is term-limited in 2026.

So is Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris and Shelby County Clerk Wanda Halbert, which may explain the early start and speculation surrounding those and other countywide offices.

By contrast, the upcoming August ballot features only one countywide general election — for General Sessions Court Clerk —where Democratic nominee Tami Sawyer upset incumbent Joe Brown in the March primary and faces Republican nominee Lisa Arnold on the August ballot.

Noem’s call to Republicans

Noem came to Memphis for the Lincoln Day event with Corey Lewandowski, Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign manager, who the Republican National Committee hired in May for management consulting in the former president’s current campaign.

Noem has been mentioned as a possible running mate for Trump in the 2020 general election with Trump expected to announce his choice close to, if not during, the July Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

That speculation has been dampened in the last month or so because of the fallout from Noem’s recently published memoir. The text included an account of her killing her hunting dog after the dog attacked a neighbor’s chickens and a claim that she met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The book has since been revised to delete any reference to the claim of a meeting with Kim.

Before coming to Memphis Sunday, Noem refused to talk about the controversy during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”

She said during the appearance that she has not received paperwork from the Trump campaign that other contenders for the vice presidential spot have been given to fill out in recent weeks as part of the vetting process.

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She urged the Memphis crowd to engage with those who have reservations about Trump and even oppose Trump by asking them questions and listening to them in an attempt “to win them back.”

“You have people you work with that you don’t talk politics with. You have people that you go to church with that maybe you don’t talk politics with. I need you to get over yourself and start having conversations again,” she said.

“I got so tired over the last couple of years of hearing people talk about the fact that they wished we could go back to the days of the Mitt Romneys and the Cheneys and the Bushes when everybody got along and everything was fine,” Noem said.

“There is no going back. Donald Trump broke politics, and I am incredibly grateful he did. Now we can have honest conversations about the corruption we see and candidates can be themselves.”

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The Shelby County Democratic Party will hold a Kennedy Day Dinner July 13 at Memphis Botanic Garden, the return of the local party’s annual companion to Lincoln Day after an absence of several years.