Our story previewing this afteroon's vote on the interim county mayor by the Shelby County Commission floats two new names as possible compromise candidates -- Criminal Court Judge Otis Higgs and former City Councilman Jack Sammons, the current chief administrative officer of the city. Former City Councilman John Vergos, an attorney who runs The Rendezvous barbecue business, emerged last week as a possibility if the commission cannot break the stalemate between commissioners J.W. Gibson II and Joe Ford.
Higgs, 72, says that nobody has officially requested that he become a nominee, but made it clear he likes the idea. A lot.
"If someone did ask me to serve as mayor of Shelby County, it would be a fitting way for me to end my career," said Higgs, who has served 11 years as Division 2 judge and earlier in his career had been a Division 4 judge for five years.
Higgs was appointed interim sheriff in 1990 after county sheriff Jack Owens committed suicide and points out he has served county government in a number of other positions -- in the public defender's office, at The Regional Medical Center at Memphis, as a divorce referee, as criminal court clerk and as a member of a county charter commission.
"I have had so many positions with the county I can't remember them all," Higgs said.
Higgs said he had already planned to retire from the bench in September of 2010, and would not have a problem with leaving it early to manage the county for the remainder of former mayor A C Wharton's final term (Wharton, of course, resigned Oct. 26 after winning the City of Memphis's special election to succeed former mayor Willie Herenton).
"I'd be willing to accept that challenge," Higgs said. "To me it would be a matter of steering the county into smooth sailing for the next nine months."
Higgs ran for Memphis' mayoral post in 1975, 1979 and 1983, and in 1990 was the attorney who filed an ultimately successful lawsuit that challenged Memphis' runoff provisions in elections as racially discriminatory.
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