Premium

Read the room: Push for county commissioners to ‘vote your party’ on school board gets chilly response

By , Daily Memphian Updated: August 17, 2025 1:47 PM CT | Published: August 17, 2025 4:00 AM CT

The 13-member Shelby County Commission has a nine-vote Democratic super majority.

So an appeal to vote the party line on any given issue would seem to be a lopsided 9-4 vote.

But it’s not that simple given the unique alliances and views on the current commission.

This is an excerpt of this story. To read more, please click here and subscribe.

Topics

Memphis-Shelby County Schools board Shelby County Commission Edmund Ford Jr. John Rose Jerri Green Subscriber Only

Thank you for supporting local journalism.

Subscribers to The Daily Memphian help fund our not-for-profit newsroom of nearly 40 local journalists plus more than 20 freelancers, all of whom work around the clock to cover the issues impacting our community. Subscriptions - and donations - also help fund our community access programs which provide free access to K-12 schools, community organizations, and more. Thank you for making our work possible.

Bill Dries on demand

Never miss an article. Sign up to receive Bill Dries' stories as they’re published.

Enter your e-mail address

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Bill Dries

Bill Dries

Bill Dries covers city and county government and politics. He is a native Memphian and has been a reporter for almost 50 years covering a wide variety of stories from the 1977 death of Elvis Presley and the 1978 police and fire strikes to numerous political campaigns, every county mayor and every Memphis Mayor starting with Wyeth Chandler.


Comments

Want to comment on our stories or respond to others? Join the conversation by subscribing now. Only paid subscribers can add their thoughts or upvote/downvote comments. Our commenting policy can be viewed here