Lee Harris, David Lenoir clash in mayoral forum
Shelby County mayor candidates Lee Harris and David Lenoir align on many issues, but their key differences shined when they faced off Wednesday in a forum at The University Club of Memphis.
The Kiwanis Club of Memphis gathering was the first time that Harris and Lenoir met since they won the Democratic and Republican primaries, respectively, in May.
Harris, 39, is a law school professor at the University of Memphis and has been a Tennessee state senator since 2014. Lenoir, 49, is an entrepreneur and has been the Shelby County trustee since 2010.
WREG anchor Stephanie Spurlock was the moderator and asked the candidates a series of questions.
The primary issues discussed were public safety, poverty and transportation funding.
After emphasizing the importance of strengthening the security at schools to prevent school shootings, Lenoir turned his attention toward his opponent. He said Harris voted against a law that would have placed stiffer penalties on criminals with guns.
Harris also said the number of criminals who have access to guns needs to be shrunk, which earned another reminder from Lenoir about his vote.
The Tuesday shooting death of a 12-year-old and Wednesday being the one-year anniversary of the death of 2year-old Layla Washington were used to present gun violence as a public health concern in Memphis. In his response, Lenoir tripled down on his assertion that Harris voted against punishing the violent criminals behind such deeds.
“Gun violence is definitely an issue in our community, and I am for locking up violent offenders for as long as we possibly can,” Harris finally countered. “What we do need to do, though, is make sure that we have a serious office of re-entry. We need to do something on the other side of the coin, which is prevention. We need to make sure that we invest in some of our communities and some of our children to make sure that they don’t have a reason to commit crimes in the first place.”
Lenoir said that poverty is something he’s been working at since he took over as trustee and listed creating community-wide wealth, jobs and financial education as the primary factors to addressing poverty on a large scale.
Harris backs public transit
Harris took the opportunity to introduce increasing the amount of public transit as a potential solution.
“If you can create a way for people to get to a job, then you can change lives,” Harris said. “That’s easy to do, to invest in public transit. It could be a game changer.”
Lenoir dismissed the need for expanding public transit, claiming that the infrastructure already exists to solve the problem.
In his closing statement, Lenoir gave Harris one last jab, stating that Shelby County needs someone with proven executive leadership experience and who’ll be committed to addressing and being tough on violent crime. Harris wasn’t adverse to giving a response.
“I think we’ve got a rare opportunity in my campaign to get somebody into a top job who’s not from one of the traditional political families, who doesn’t have a bank account to fund his own campaign and someone who is fiercely independent,” he said. “It means we have a rare opportunity this cycle to get someone into office who owes no favors except for advocacy on behalf of the public interest.”
The Aug. 2 general election will decide the successor for Mark Luttrell, who’s at the end of his second term as mayor.