Strickland running for a second term as Memphis mayor
Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland will make official his reelection bid on Tuesday, four years to the day after announcing his first mayoral run.
“My goal is to have one of the biggest grassroots mayoral campaigns this city’s ever seen,” Strickland said Monday in an exclusive interview with The Commercial Appeal. “I’m knocking on doors myself, and really talking to people in every neighborhood in this city. I’m a hard worker and I plan to outwork anybody else in this race.”
Strickland posted a large margin of victory over his opponents in 2015, including then-incumbent A C Wharton. Strickland’s campaign has already raised more than $750,000 toward the 2019 re-election effort, he said.
“Memphis has momentum” is one of Strickland’s oftused phrases. But making sure the momentum reaches a wider swath of the city is a focus for the mayor.
“I think it’s a fact, and everywhere I go people feel it,” Strickland said. “But they also agree with me it’s not reached every neighborhood. They agree with our position that every neighborhood needs to feel a benefit from the
economic revival that’s going on.”
Priorities for second term
The bulk of Strickland’s major priorities for a second four-year term have the word “continue” in front of them — continue to rebuild the Memphis Police Department, continue the growth of “livable wage jobs,” fully implement universal pre-kindergarten and drive down violent crime.
When Strickland took office, the city had roughly 1,900 police officers, down from about 2,400 several years earlier. Strickland projects the department will have 2,100 officers later this year, on its way towards a goal of 2,300 officers in by 2020.
“The data clearly shows when we had 2,400 officers, violent crime was lower,” Strickland said. “And before I was mayor, as we lost those police officers, violent crime went up. There’s a correlation there and we’re committed to continuing to recruit and retain officers by improving the pay, benefits and promotions.”
Memphis officials are asking the Tennessee General Assembly to strengthen the law on road rage violence and to increase Tennessee Highway Patrol’s presence in Memphis, to free up Memphis Police Department officers to patrol city streets.
Strickland wants to ramp up city efforts to reach “opportunity youth,” Memphians aged 16 to 24 who aren’t in school and don’t have a job.
The city offers free summer and spring break camps with literacy components, and has grown its summer job program and programs in community centers and libraries. However, he doesn’t believe those programs are reaching many of the people in that group.
“That doesn’t mean we slow down. We’re still going to do all those things,” Strickland said. “But we need to make a concerted effort to reach out and try to help opportunity youth.”
Strickland wants to build up the sixweek Manhood University program to include “a more robust” job placement service and follow-up with graduates, and a program for women, he said.
Strickland counts Servicemaster’s decision to stay in Memphis and move the company headquarters downtown, hiring and rebuilding the Memphis Police Department and coming up for a plan to fund universal pre-kindergarten among his proudest accomplishments over the past three and a half years, he said.
The pre-kindergarten plan, announced last year, dedicates dollars from expiring tax incentives and existing property tax revenue to a pre-k fund.
During Strickland’s tenure in 2017, the city sold the pair of public parks that housed controversial Confederate statues to nonprofit Memphis Greenspace LLC, which promptly took the monuments down.
Strickland called their removal “symbolic” of Memphis moving forward, and “the right thing to do.”
“We still have the challenges that we had before the statues came down,” Strickland said. “And that’s generational poverty, a violent crime rate that’s too high, an educational achievement rate that’s too low, and we all need to work on that.”
Former Memphis mayor Willie Herenton, who was in office from 1992 to 2009 and was the city’s first elected black mayor, announced last year his plans to run again in 2019.
“We have a lot of work left to do,” Strickland said. “And I’d like the public to give me another four years.”
Jamie Munks covers Memphis city government and politics for The Commercial Appeal. She can be reached at jamie.munks@commercialappeal.com. Follow her on Twitter @journo_jamie_.