Memphis City Council bicker over what “Resign” means

I wasn’t at the meeting this afternoon, but I listened to the live stream online and followed VibInc’s live Twittering of the same feed.

I’m sure the CA will have a more complete description up soon (Update: Here it is!), but until then, here’s what happened. These notes are from my listening and the livetweet.

• The pension board has received Herenton’s resignation, but won’t vote on it until their meeting on July 30th. Lowery was a little bent out of shape because it hasn’t been voted on yet.
• Jim Strickland wanted to know whether the question of whether Herenton’s original resignation is enforcable in Tennesse has been answered. The city attorney, Allen Wade says no. Wade is considered on be on Herenton’s “side”.
• There was a small debate over
• Wanda Halbert, known Herenton allay, wanted to know “Why we’re even talking about this”. Lowery said to the effect of “We can talk about whatever we want. We haven’t voted on anything.” (That’s not a direct quote)
• Barbara Swearengen Ware (another Herenton buddy) wants the whole thing dismissed. She considers any action taken by the council today would be premature and they’re in no position to give direction to the election commission.
• Strickland (not a member of the Herenton fan club, and possible candidate to replace him) came after Herenton:  ”Nowhere in the charter does it say Council has to accept conditions of vacancy”. He read the defination of “Resign” from the dictionary.  He made a motion to accept the resignation, effective July 30th.
• After Strickland said his peace, someone (Wade or Collins?) started a brief argument over the defination of “resign”. It started to get dumb in there.

Another second tier candidate thinks they have a shot.

The Commercial Appeal is doing a good job of keeping the front page of their website updated throughout the day with the latest and “greatest” from Willie’s “Look at me” campaign, 2009.

They’ve got a story up announcing that Sharon Webb is adding her name into the mix for the special election for Mayor of our fair city.

Memphis City Schools board member Sharon Webb told The Commercial Appeal that she plans to run in the City of Memphis special mayoral election — if it does indeed happen.

Webb, pastor of Life Changing Word Ministries, ran in 2007 but finished a very distant fifth with 510 of the 165,397 votes vast (0.33 percent of the vote).

Webb had previously run successful underdog campaigns to serve on the Memphis Charter Commission and to unseat Carl Johnson on the school board

I’ll update the big list with her name soon. She’s going to finish near the bottom of the second tier candidates. She’ll get more votes than Prince Mongo and (maybe) Jerry Lawler, but she’ll be stuck in the pack with Charles Carpenter, Ken Whalum, James Harvey and Wanda Halbert. Sorry Sharon.

Betting odds updated

Added Ken Whalum and Jerry Lawler to the original post, along with updating Willie.

Spoiler Alert: Willie’s not going anywhere.

Mayor Herenton: Are you kidding me?

Willie Herenton isn’t going anywhere. There go my July 10th Memphis Independance Day party plans.

Myron Lowery and Herenton are having a “bigger desk” contest and the city of Memphis is the one who suffers for it.

Herenton has said repetedly he “wants to go out on his own terms”. He had a chance to do that. He just won an election he didn’t want to run in, for an office he doesn’t want to hold, for a city that doesn’t want him as Mayor. He decided to resign to allow enough time to prepare for his upcoming defeat by Steve Cohen. I didn’t make him resign. The city council wasn’t going to force him to resign. Now the city council may try and force him to abide by his original resignation date of July 10th.

Willie loves a fight and now he’s got one. The city council may give him a pass on this one, but when he tries to extend it AGAIN, past July 31st, I expect Lowery and the other non-cronies on the council to come out swinging.