Some potential candidates considering whether to run in a City of Memphis special mayoral election are starting to wonder if Mayor Willie Herenton will ever resign.
"Isn't this beginning to feel like Lucy and the football?" said Herman Morris, the former president of Memphis Light, Gas and Water Division who is seriously contemplating another campaign. "Don't you get the sense we've been here before?"
Morris, who finished third behind Herenton and declared candidate Carol Chumney in the 2007 mayoral election, said he will wait until there is clarity to make a final decision.
"I'm going to watch all of the flipping and flopping and stunts and somersaults until we are dealing with certainty and then we'll make some decisions," Morris said.
Circuit Court Judge D'Army Bailey said today that some businessmen in town have approached him and encouraged him to run, but said such support would need to grow much wider and deeper than it now appears to persuade him.
Bailey did say the uncertainty is not good for the city.
"I think it's unfortunate there is so much confusion about what is going to happen and such a short period of time for serious and less serious candidates to evaluate what they are going to do and whether there is going to be an election and plan for it properly," Bailey said. "This city has so many serious issues that have to be dealt with by whoever is going to get that job. The citizens of Memphis deserve a more orderly and steady process."
Tom Guleff, a Memphis blogger of the Republican persuasion behind the effort to persuade first-term City Councilman Jim Strickland (a Democrat) to run, believes the uncertainty will work against generating voter turnout.
"Regardless what Herenton does, the intensity of the candidate's voters will win the day in a special election- if it comes to pass," Guleff said in an email. "By the time a special election rolls around, you'll have to carry the dead to the polls. Memphians will be exhausted from all the drama."
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