2 plead not guilty in political ballot case
Two Memphis-area business owners pleaded not guilty Wednesday morning to criminal contempt charges that they continue to violate a court order against distributing political literature that looks like official Democratic Party ballots.
The business owners, Greg Grant and M. Latroy Alexandria-williams, appeared via video conference in a virtual meeting before special judge William Acree. The judge set a contempt hearing for Oct. 2. The two business owners could face penalties including fines and jail time.
The situation reflects broader issues: Facebook and Twitter warned this week that the Russian government is trying to influence this year’s federal election by spreading disinformation articles online.
The Shelby County Democratic Party alleges that the Memphis-area business owners are pumping out election disinformation at the local level, too, including making endorsements of Republicans as though they were Democrats.
Lawyers for the two men say the complaints against them are baseless and that they haven’t violated the court order.
The Shelby County Democratic Party does not endorse candidates in nonpartisan elections or in primaries. That leaves an opening for businesses that appear to offer candidates a “Democratic” endorsement.
Grant’s company is called the Greater Memphis Democratic Club, and Alexandria-williams’ company is called the Shelby County Democratic Club. Both groups print up lists of endorsed candidates and distribute them.
The roots of the current lawsuit date to September 2019, when Democratic Party leaders filed suit to stop distribution of the companies’ look-alike ballots. An investigation by The Commercial Appeal last year found that Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and many other candidates had paid for a spot on Grant’s ballot in the run-up to the October municipal election.
On the morning of the Oct. 3 municipal election, the judge issued a temporary restraining order stopping ballot distribution.
Workers kept distributing the documents anyway for hours that day and have done so again in elections this year — for instance, a campaign worker handed one of the Greg Grant ballots to a reporter with The Commercial Appeal on the day of the Aug. 6 election.
The party is asking a judge to impose fines and attorney costs, and to force the companies to give up any profits and to put the business owners behind bars.
Jake Brown, an attorney for the Democratic Party, said the two businesses have ignored the court’s order.
“What these defendants did was blatant and egregious,” Brown said. “You do not see violations of court orders like that with any kind of regularity, particularly not from parties who are represented, who have attorneys representing them. You do not see such a blatant disregard for the authority of the court.”
Julian Bolton, a lawyer for Grant, said his client’s ballots clearly disclose who paid for the literature and which organization distributed it. The August version of the ballot includes a disclaimer that says it’s not an official Democratic ballot.
“They’re just trying to squish ’em like a roach — that’s the attitude that they have to squish the grassroots people like they’re roaches, so that the Democratic Party will then be more predominant,” Bolton said.
He said Grant is a loyal Democrat “who has served the public as a Democrat.” “He does have a for-profit corporation, but what’s wrong with that? That’s the American way, too,” Bolton said. “And he helps these candidates get to the people, which is what the Democratic Party does not really do as well as they could.”
Paul Robinson, an attorney for Alexandria-williams, said his client didn’t violate the court order. “There was no contempt,” he said.
He also said the documents that the Democrats say his client distributed weren’t the ones that his organization actually handed out.
“And that’s what we intend to show at the hearing,” he said.
It’s not clear how much jail time Grant and Alexandria-williams might face. Tennessee law calls for fines of up to $50 and 10 days in jail for each criminal contempt violation, but it’s unclear how the judge might interpret the number of violations in this case.
Brown, the attorney for the Democratic Party, said his side hasn’t yet decided how many violations to allege. He said the main thing the Democrats want is for the court to impose sufficient penalties so the violations of the court order will stop.
The newspaper learned last year that political lobbying group Caissa Public Strategies had paid workers to distribute the Grant ballot and that some workers had done so after the court order. Caissa is not named in the current lawsuit.
Investigative reporter Daniel Connolly welcomes tips and comments. Reach him at 901-529-5296, daniel.connolly@commercialappeal.com, or on Twitter at @danielconnolly.