There was just enough of the partisan energy left Saturday, Aug. 24, from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that state House Democratic Leader Karen Camper of Memphis felt emboldened to alter the lyrics of the 1980s Culture Club hit “Karma Chameleon.”

Camper danced on stage in the Overton High School auditorium in East Memphis Saturday replacing the lyrics with Kamala — as in vice president and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris — drawn out to replace both “karma” and “chameleon.”

The gathering of more than 100 Memphis Democrats was one of four across the state — including Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga — at the same time organized by the statewide political groups “Indivisible Tennessee” and “Win With Black Women - Tennessee.”

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The rallies were aimed at get-out-the-vote organizers and strategists who will be carrying out a grass roots, canvassing, door knocking and phone banking effort that comes from the national campaign.

Tennessee Democratic Party chairman Hendrell Remus had just returned from the Chicago convention Saturday.

He told the Memphis group to keep some of the energy from the convention and apply it to what is expected to be a tough battle in a state whose 11 electoral votes have gone to every Republican presidential nominee starting in 2000.

“You need to feel like we are on a mission because we are,” Remus said. “We need to make sure that on election night it’s so bad that they (Republicans) start running and hiding forever.”

Remus pushed turning out the vote for a series of down ballot races from one of the state’s two U.S. Senate seats to several state House seats in the Shelby County delegation as part of a larger effort to flip Republican seats over the next six years and three election cycles.

State Rep. elect Gabby Salinas, who won the District 96 state House seat Democrat Dwayne Thompson did not seek reelection to, told the group, “We are not done.”

“Our communities are on the line” she said of laws made by the Republican supermajorities in the state House and State Senate. “It’s not going to be easy and we are going to lose. We are going to have to take small bites of a big House.”

Salinas won the House seat with the primary because she does not face a Republican or independent candidate on the Nov. 5 ballot.

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She was one of several speakers who said Republicans in the legislature are already carrying out parts of the Heritage Foundation blueprint Project 2025 with the move expected in next year’s session to try to oust Democratic Shelby County District Attorney General Steve Mulroy.

Trump’s campaign has denied links to Project 2025 despite ties between the campaign and several of those involved in the plan.

Germantown Democratic Club president Jeff Etheridge said he’s encountered local Republicans who are not avid supporters of Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump. But he warned that didn’t mean they would vote for Harris.

“Some of them are going to hold their noses. But they are going to vote,” he said. “That’s not good for us.”

Indivisible Tennessee leader Dave Cambron asked the Democrats to remember how bad they felt the day after the 2016 race when Trump won as an incentive to get out the vote eight years later in the county that is the biggest blue — or Democratic — county in a red state.

“Trump is a symptom of a sick democracy,” he said of those backing Trump’s campaign then and now. “He’s not the cause. … History is made by those who show up.”

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Shelby County Young Democrats President Amber Sherman was one of several speakers who said support of Harris in the presidential race should come with continuing to put pressure on her and the Biden administration for a ceasefire in Israel’s war with Hamas.

Sherman and the others also called for an end to U.S. arms shipment to Israel in the war that is nearing the one-year mark.

“Symbolism cannot be the only thing driving us to the polls,” she said.

White-Nordstrom race

The school auditorium was home turf for Democratic state House nominee Noah Nordstrom, a Spanish teacher at the high school.

Nordstrom is challenging District 83 Republican incumbent Mark White with an attack that is focused on Tennessee Governor Bill Lee’s school voucher proposal that would expand access to state funding for private school tuition.

Nordstrom referred to the proposal as a “voucher scam that would further defund public education.”

White has been hesitant to even mention Nordstrom’s challenge.

But in a speech Thursday to the Whitehaven Republican Club, White called Nordstrom by name and defended this year’s version of the voucher proposal that he expressed some concerns about.

He expects Lee to return to Capitol Hill with an amended version of the legislation in January.

White, the chairman of the House education administration committee, also denied vouchers would take money now going to public school systems. He pointed to increased state funding for public schools.

“I am an advocate of school choice. But we’ve got to be careful we don’t damage their ability,” White said. “You have to have money. But money is not the answer. Leadership is the answer.”

He also defended state laws that ban certain books from school libraries.

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“We’re not trying to ban books,” White said. “But what we are trying to do now is ban books that aren’t age appropriate.”

Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Gloria Johnson, who is an educator in Knoxville schools, has also been critical of Lee’s voucher expansion attempt and the book bans.

“There’s never been pornography in our schools. That’s a lie,” she said on The Daily Memphian’s “On The Record” podcast. “And they’re talking about books that were never in Tennessee schools. People know they’re being gas lighted. They know they’ve been lied to.”

Nordstrom was also critical of White and Republicans in general for other policies including restrictions on LGBTQ access to adoption and allowing school systems to arm teachers and administrators.

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“All of us are under attack,” he said to cheers. “It’s time for us to come together and say, ‘You are not going to mess with any of us.’”

White defended the guns in schools state law that became law this year, arguing that it doesn’t directly arm teachers but allows school systems to opt into it and requires approval by the school system as well as training.

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“It was a permissive bill,” he said. “We have rural communities with no school resource officers. They would like the opportunity.”

The legislation drew vocal opposition in Shelby County not just from Memphis-Shelby County Schools but also from leaders of the six suburban school districts.

Chalkbeat reported this month that it appears no school system — rural, suburban or urban — in the state has approved arming teachers based on dozens of school and law enforcement officials contacted by the new outlet.

The law does not require school systems to provide public notice of whether they have adopted the measure in their schools. And documents that would indicate whether a school system had adopted the measure are not open to the public.

A Whitehaven school district?

Among the 25 people at the Whitehaven Republican Club gathering was Whitehaven High School principal Vincent Hunter, to whom White referred several times.

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Asked by White if he agreed about limiting access to books in school libraries that aren’t “age appropriate,” Hunter said he was more concerned about access to social media by students.

White also said his proudest accomplishment in 15 years in the legislature is the passage of the state law that created a special school district for the University of Memphis campus schools.

White worked on the proposal for three years.

While University leaders have said they aren’t planning on expanding the district for now beyond the three schools that span kindergarten through 12th grade, White suggested the same state law that allowed the campus schools to become a public school system within the city might be used for Whitehaven’s public schools.

“I am working on some ideas,” White said, indicating he and Hunter have had some preliminary conversations.

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At one point, Hunter led a set of schools from his post at Whitehaven High School that took in the elementary and middle schools that fed students into the high school.

The STEM center to be built on the high school campus will be used not only by high school students there but also students in surrounding elementary and middle schools.

The campus schools at the University of Memphis qualified for a share of schools funding by Shelby County government that is required by state law and is distributed among what are now eight public school systems in the county based on their average daily attendance.

The ADA funding for the new school system began with the July 1 start of the current county government fiscal year.