Candidates talk jobs, but is that enough?
Well over 600,000 residents of Greater Memphis worked in January, the most in any January in any year.
Finally, we have climbed out of the deep recession.
Employment records are now set almost every month.
Just listen to candidates for the office of Shelby County mayor, though, and you’ll hear a common theme:
Memphis needs higher wages, better jobs, more jobs.
We have not entered an election season with an unemployment rate this low in two decades.
Yet economic development stands front and center for many candidates.
“Everybody is suddenly for more jobs,’’ said Marcus Pohlmann, the political scientist at Rhodes College in Memphis. “Even in the worst of the recession jobs never became a big local issue in any way.”
Earn your keep
Half a dozen candidates are running for Shelby County mayor.
It’s a big job, paying $142,500 every year. That’s a nice chunk of cash. Hardly anyone around here makes that much.
All of the chief executive officers in metropolitan Memphis – the U.S. Census counts about 1,100 of them -- on average earn $161,000.
Memphis and Shelby County’s typical household averages $46,200 in annual income, although incomes vary greatly by race.
Asian households average $79,500, white households $66,000, black $34,000, Hispanic $33,000.
So yes, compared to everyone else the county mayor makes a nice chunk of money.
And what does the county mayor do to earn his or her keep?
Well, that’s the thing.
Mind your manners
A few weeks back, CNN political celebrity Angela Rye electrified a Memphis crowd with a black power salute.
This was her kick-Memphis-when-itsdown speech.
Coming into one of America’s poorest cities, she chastised established black and white leaders for the high poverty levels and called for $15 minimum wages to help alleviate the misery.
Preachers, politicians, philanthropists, activists and educators throughout Memphis have hammered at poverty for years.
Here was an outsider, though, and her message somehow rang more clear for the audience, even though she had said nothing new.
What stood out for me was the style. Rye was loud and brash. But that’s not Memphis’ way. We tend to be polite.
Once the federal army fought its way south in 1862 and 1863, closing the Mis-
sissippi to the Confederacy, liberated slaves moved to Memphis, the city at the head of the Delta.
For five generations level-headed black and white Memphians have tried to keep racial tensions from boiling over as the nation staggered from Reconstruction to Great Depression, and the $15 trillion War on Poverty, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and the Great Recession.
This history shaped Memphis’ public customs. Blacks and whites tend to talk quietly to one another about racial matters.
“Part of the style of Memphis politics is to not be particularly loud,” said Memphis lawyer John Ryder, a long-time Memphis observer.
“This city has the potential to blow up,” said Ryder, general counsel to the Republican National Committee. “It’s the responsibility of public persons to conduct themselves in such a way they don’t contribute to the making of what could be an explosive situation.”
Code words
Ever since nearly 1,000 protesters massed in July 2016 on the Hernando DeSoto Bridge spanning the Mississippi, the Black Lives Matter initiative has grabbed headlines.
This talk among the county mayoral candidates about jobs and poverty stands, in Memphis’ quiet way of going about business, as political code words for achieving racial progress.
For the candidates, the campaign messages are complex, though I’d say the main points turn on economic matters.
Among the Republicans, David Lenoir favors great jobs and schools, higher pay, safer streets. Terry Roland emphasizes high-paying jobs and technical education. Joy Touliatos would look out for citizens and, she says, buck the establishment.
Among the Democrats, Sidney Chism supports economic development. Lee Harris calls for a stronger focus on education and poverty.
Even if it is odd for the county mayor race to echo economic themes, the messages make sense for Bank of Bartlett vice chairman Harold Byrd, a Democrat who considered entering the county mayor race.
“If the economy hasn’t turned the corner from the recession, it’s almost turned the corner but isn’t quite there,” Byrd said. “As a bank, we don’t have enough loans. As a community, we need more jobs.”
So here we are, entering primary season.
Early voting starts April 11. The county primary is May 1. The general election is Aug. 2.
The candidates want to bring in better jobs, higher wages. That’s good. I say hold them to it. And if you’re not better off in four years, make them explain why.
Memphis might have a polite culture. It also tends to be a forgetting culture.
We don’t get a yardstick and measure the progress our leaders promise.
It’s a reason we took so long to climb out of the recession.
I talked about this to University of Memphis economist John Gnuschke. He explained the disconnect between politicians and economic development.
“We grade teachers, professors, workers, coaches, students and nearly all administrators in the public and private sectors. We grade elected officials at the ballot box,” Gnuschke wrote. “But we don’t grade our economic development agencies?”
Ted Evanoff, business columnist of The Commercial Appeal, can be reached at evanoff@commercialappeal.com.