Already there are calls for a return to the kind of runoff provision
that was abolished in 1991 on the eve of that year’s epochal city
election — proscribed by edict of the late federal judge Jerry
Turner in response to litigants who contended that such a provision was
manifestly prejudicial to the interests of Memphis’ African-American
population.
Blacks in Memphis were on the verge of achieving a majority but
still lacked experience in getting voters to the polls. That condition
seemed about to hold even into the stretch run of that campaign, which
pitted not just Willie Herenton against incumbent mayor Dick Hackett
but a plethora of worthy black council candidates against seasoned
white council members.
But the traditional gap was being closed by Herenton’s hard-working
voter-registration teams and by the galvanic late involvement in
Herenton’s campaign of his foremost rival, 9th District congressman
Harold Ford Sr., the inner city’s established political eminence.
For the first and only time, a continuing public nuisance, one
Robert “Prince Mongo” Hodges, actually had a decisive effect on the
city’s politics. The few hundred votes the self-described
extraterrestrial citizen was able to tease out of the Memphis
electorate would almost certainly have gone to Hackett otherwise;
Herenton’s 142-vote margin was all it took to shift the tectonic plates
of local history.
The era of white numerical dominance ended for good that year, and
almost immediately the ban against runoffs in municipal elections
seemed to have lost its raison d’être.
The fact is, the absence of a runoff in this year’s special mayoral
election could skew the results in ways prejudicial not only to voters
at large but to the self-same black citizens who sought the ban in
1991.
None of us needs a pollster or a political consultant to tell us who
the leader of the current mayoral field is. For a multitude of reasons
— his experience, his visibility, his declared support base, his
early start on a race (financial and otherwise), and, perhaps most
important, the perceived benignity of his placid public persona in a
time of turmoil — the ticket-leader is clearly Shelby County
mayor A C Wharton.
Because the sea change of 1991 ushered in an age of black dominance
among city officeholders and that same tide has now swept into Shelby
County proper, the current mayoral field is replete with
African-American officials and skimpy on whites who are credentialed in
the usual political sense.
Consider the nine hopefuls who qualified for last week’s crucial
first mayoral debate on WMC-TV: Six of them were African Americans with
certifiable governmental experience: Wharton; longtime city councilman
and current mayor pro tem Myron Lowery; Councilwoman Wanda Halbert;
city school board members Kenneth Whalum Jr. and Sharon Webb; and
lawyer Charles Carpenter, a longtime confidante of former mayor Willie
Herenton and veteran of several projects related to city
government.
Of the three white candidates, only one — former state
representative and Councilwoman Carol Chumney — could boast
governmental experience, and hers, as she freely acknowledged in the
debate, was that of the political maverick, the outsider on the inside.
Candidate Jerry Lawler’s experience is that of a celebrated
professional wrestler and commentator. And it would be flattering to
describe the aforementioned Mongo as anything but a street clown.
No wonder Wharton, before the early polls offered reassurance that
his lead appeared unassailable, fretted that the superfluity of
candidates, many of them dividing up the pie by drawing votes from
their own established constituencies (mostly in the inner city), could
cause a “fluke” result and an unanticipated winner. It is reasonable to
believe that Wharton’s uncertainties focused somewhat on both Chumney
and Lawler, the two strongest whites.
Most observers believe the county mayor’s lead over the others is
secure, but in a month’s time, after more debates and the vicissitudes
of campaigning, that may not be so clearly the case. It is unimaginable
that a highly qualified candidate like Wharton would finish lower than
second, but in a winner-take-all election, the fluke outcome he once
feared is not impossible.
Now that the arithmetic of race is a nonfactor or one that works in
a wholly different direction than it did in 1991, the issue of runoff
elections is in clear need of reexamination. And last fall we even
approved an instant runoff mechanism, just in case.
