- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind The Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- Redistricting, another round of elections, and much more tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm joined tonight by a roundtable of journalists talking about some of the biggest stories of the week, including Kailynn Johnson from The Memphis Flyer.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you.

- Mary Cashiola is Editorial Director with The Daily Memphian.

- Thanks for having me back.

- Absolutely.

And Bill Dries is a reporter with The Daily Memphian.

We'll talk a lot about redistricting until we can maybe talk about it no more, although we could probably do the whole show on it.

But we'll get to elections, we'll get to some school updates, county budgets, maybe some other things.

MATA and ACLU has a lawsuit.

But let's start, Bill, just, I mean, I think most people watching this know, and we're gonna put some maps up eventually here where it kind of narrows down into the Memphis area but also shows the changes statewide, I think let's assume everybody knows that Memphis has been sort of subdivided into three districts.

What are the things that really stand out to you right now?

What, is it a week, is it two?

It's not even two weeks since they did this.

- Well, what stands out is Shelby County has been covered by three congressional districts before.

But what makes this fundamentally different is, Memphis is part of three congressional districts that all extend into rural West Tennessee and even into parts of Middle Tennessee.

- With the map that's up, people will see that there's sort of this whitish yellow kind of going up the river, and then over into rural and Middle Tennessee, you've got sort of this district that goes from East Memphis up through Fayette County and Tipton County and into, again, up towards Jackson.

And then you've got the other district, 9, which used to be the heart of Memphis, that 9 now goes along the lower border and stretches, again, all the way basically to Nashville.

- Right.

- Keep going, Bill.

Just to orient people.

- And the 9th District, before this plan, has always been, even when it was the 8th District, that's another story that we won't get into here, but that district has always included most of Memphis into parts of Shelby County, and that's it.

You know?

And then the other two were basically suburban Shelby County going into other areas of West Tennessee.

- And the other thing we've zoomed in on the map here for people, on the left there is Shelby County, and it kind of shows how the districts now go right through the heart of Midtown.

I mean, you know, people have joked, or lamented, or however you want to take it as, you know, you've got I think the main campus of U of M in one district, and I'm pretty sure the Liberty Bowl's in a different district.

There's a bunch of sort of strange disconnections of places.

It's also good to have the highlight on Davidson County, which got changed in this redistricting, but it lost, Davidson County, Nashville, help me out here, Bill, lost a really dedicated district, what, two years ago or four years ago?

- It was four years ago.

And that was a redistricting by the Census from 2020.

This one just popped up out of the blue.

And as we speak, on Thursday, tomorrow, Friday at noon, is the filing deadline, the reopened filing deadline, for all three of the congressional seats affecting Memphis.

- Yeah.

But is that the deadline, and then we'll go to Mary and Kailynn here, is that the deadline for all the districts, the districts across the state, or is this specific to the Memphis district?

- It's really specific to the Memphis district.

Like Districts 1 and 2 on the other end of the state really weren't changed.

- Okay.

- The other seven were, so you could see some changes in them.

But there's a lot of people who have checked out petitions since the filing period here was reopened.

- And we'll go through some of who's filed in what districts in the Memphis area.

But let just bring in, let me start with Kailynn.

Thoughts on this, you've been covering this as well, thoughts, and reactions, and things you've heard from people as this has gone forward.

- Of course, many people, of course in the black community, and not just here in Memphis, but statewide, you've seen people come together to basically talk about how it's disproportionately affecting them.

You know, you have this majority of people who are already not represented in so many other ways of law enforcement, whether that's in state, local elections, anything.

And they're, of course, protesting, there were several protests last week, I think Representative Justin J. Pearson went viral on social media for some of his comments that he made.

His brother, Keshaun, was held by state troopers.

And we just saw a lot of black and African-American residents, as well as allies, promising to keep fighting.

You know, that wasn't the end of their fight.

- Yeah.

Mary, things that stand out to you.

And we'll go into some of the law, but what stands out?

- I think what stands out to me is how quickly this is all happening.

Obviously, the primary is in August, the federal election is November, so having this like, basically, week for candidates to get re-certified, I mean, it feels very chaotic to me.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Let me go through some basics here.

You mentioned August, so August 5th, or is it 6th?

- 6th - 6th.

Excuse me.

August 6th will be the primary for all these federal positions.

- State and federal.

- State and federal.

But yes so, specific to redistricting, everything we're talking about on redistricting, the Democratic primary and the Republican primary on August 6th, and the General will be November 3rd.

We'll talk more later on August 6th.

Also, you'll have all the final races for county seats, and you'll have the primaries for state seats, which may be more affected by this, not in terms of boundaries, but kind of interest level.

Right now, in terms of the three districts, five, eight, and nine, and maybe the folks can put the map back up, District 8 is where the least action is.

Is that correct?

- Yes.

- I mean in the sense that that is current of David Kustoff, who's a Republican who's represented that area, basically that area for some time now, that district changes, but it's still like, I don't know that many other people have filed yet, and generally not a lot of action or expectation that there be much challenges in District 8.

Is that correct?

- You've seen some more Democrats get in, but it's more a reaction to the redistricting as a whole than it is, "Hey, let's take out Kustoff."

- So then there's the District 9 that Steve Cohen has held for many, many, many years.

Justin Pearson, Kailynn mentioned, the State House member who is challenging.

And we were gearing up towards a very heated, what was expected to be a heated primary that would settle it.

Now, with this redistricting, Cohen and Pearson are still, although they live in what is now the 5th District, they'll be running in the 9th.

If they win at the General, they have to move into the new district, but that happens, that's allowed.

I don't know, I mean, was there any sense that Cohen would step out or that Pearson would step out?

They're very competitive people, raised a lot of money, so it would seem unlikely.

- There was, but there's a lot of waiting, or there was waiting.

At this point, it looks like there will not be any kind of hearing on an injunction ahead of the filing deadline.

- Yeah.

- So the next hearing is basically on the 21st.

And a judge in that case, or the other two cases, could say "No, this is on hold until there's a full hearing and decision on it."

But as to what's motivating this, you know, after the Supreme Court decision.

- And I should mention, I'm sorry to interrupt you, Brent Taylor, friend of the show.

- Yes.

- Possibly watching.

I should mention that Brent Taylor has filed on the Republican side.

And I would say, generally, the current State Senator is really favored to be the Republican winner on that side of things.

There are other Republicans who filed.

I don't mean to leave that out, it's just we've got more competition within the Democratic side of things.

I didn't mean to leave out the Republican side in the 9th.

- And we should note, on the Republican side, you also have a MAGA Republican legislator, another MAGA Republican legislator, who has pulled a petition, named Warner, who wants to get into this race too.

You may remember him as during the special session, the legislator who wore a Trump cape.

- Oh yeah.

- Into the House session on this.

So that may be a competitive primary as well.

State Senator London Lamar has also pulled a petition, I'm sorry I don't remember whether that's 5 or 9, I think it's 9.

- I think it was 9.

Apologies if not.

London Lamar, who's also friend of the show who's been on and is a Democrat State Senator.

- Yes.

So, lots of things going on with this.

This began as a Supreme Court ruling in a Louisiana redistricting case, where the high court said, basically, that Democratic district was gerrymandered, so it's out, weakening a key section of the Civil Rights Act.

Within hours of that decision, Senator Marsha Blackburn and Congressman John Rose, both running for the Republican nomination for governor, were posting online about needing to flip Memphis from the state's only Democratic district to a Republican district.

- Right.

Again, Kailynn, or Mary, or both of you, I mean, thoughts on this, the lawsuits, there's three lawsuits involving what?

NAACP, ACLU, the candidates.

- I'm sort of interested in District 5 actually, which we haven't spoken a lot about.

Obviously, that is Andy Ogles' district, but now Pearson and Cohen both live in that district, hypothetically, they could run for that district, I think they both opted not to.

Which I think is sort of interesting.

In District 9, you're looking at 15 candidates right now.

People seem to be jumping in.

I just feel like it's a wild card.

The whole thing feels to me sort of like a wild card.

- And 5, again, we'll bring the map up, 'cause we're orienting anyone, five includes a whole big swath of South Memphis, downtown, North Memphis, up through rural, you know, West Tennessee, into Middle Tennessee, and really, basically on the doorstep of Nashville.

- The legislature basically moved 5 from being Nashville, parts of Nashville, up to the Kentucky state line.

They basically moved that down here and moved the 7th District, which had been bordering Shelby County, but not in Shelby County, moved that to where 5 had been.

For Democrats, I think there's a balancing act going on here because Chaz Molder, the mayor of Columbia, had been making some inroads on Ogles in the polls.

So there's the thought among Democrats, "Leave him alone."

But obviously, it's a new district, so that's kind of an irresistible force.

- And Ogles has been in office since the redistricting in the Nashville area.

Is that right?

So four years now.

And there's a lot, I mean, incumbents tend to win because of just the advantages of name recognition and money.

But as you say, it kind of changed everything up.

Let me touch on a couple other things if we haven't here.

I mean, obviously, we will be covering this, The Flyer we'll be covering, The Daily Memphian, and other outlets, we may do other shows, we certainly will do other shows on the elections as we move towards, again, the primary for these races on August 6th.

There's an interesting thing, someone mentioned it, I think it was you, Bill, and there's a guest column coming out in The Daily Memphian from a local lawyer that does raise some questions that, potentially, of the three lawsuits, the state lawsuit probably, if any, this is one lawyer's opinion, has maybe the best bet to slow things down.

That there's some issues with the state law that could easily be fixed in a next session, and maybe they would do a special session to clean it up.

Who knows?

But the federal, I mean the things I've heard, the Supreme Court, U.S.

Supreme Court, kind of came down and said, I'm looking at Mary's face, like, I mean, they kind of said what they said, right?

It seems unlikely, I mean, they're moving really quickly.

There was a quick, there was a filing in Alabama about, a nuance of all this, I shouldn't call it nuance, but a technicality of all this stuff.

Supreme Court, within days, came forward and said, "Nope, you can redistrict that."

It just doesn't seem like the federal government is, and, you know, there are people out there who are happy about that, or may say otherwise, It's just like you were saying, Mary, the speed and so on of it.

- Yeah.

I mean, it is interesting, sort of the distinction that the court is making between black voters and Democratic voters versus the, race versus political leanings.

It just is, it's interesting how they are splitting that hair.

- Yeah, yeah.

There was an interesting quote, maybe didn't write it down, but, oh, Justin Pearson, we mentioned, talked about that we, in Memphis, we, in the areas he's running, "We've got a lot more in common than we do apart with rural areas," I'm paraphrasing this, "They don't want us to know that."

We talked about this when you were on, and Bill, this seemed likely to happen two weeks ago.

I mean, separate from Republican, Democrat, and all those things.

I do wish that we had coherent districts that were competitive, and people ran, and the best person won.

The best person in the sense that they made the case.

Versus all this gerrymandering, which has existed forever, Democrats have done it, Republicans have done it, here and in other states, Bill wrote a good history on that.

It just seems like, I mean, and also this is the other thing, and you talked about this, Bill, and I saw like the headline or the subhead, it was "The Highest Voter Turnout in May 5th in 32 years."

Sixteen percent, second highest, Sixteen percent of Shelby County eligible voters came out and voted.

- Yeah.

- Versus 18% some years ago.

So, I mean.

- In 2002.

- I mean, so I don't know, I mean, who do we have to blame?

If you don't like this or you like it, who do you have to blame?

Ain't nobody voting.

- Right.

Please vote.

[all laughing] - Please vote.

I mean, you know, whatever the outcome, I wish, and I do think that's what, when things are set up this way that just seems inevitable, that there's no chance, it sort of defacto depresses vote, which I don't think is healthy for democracy.

That's my speech, my take on it.

- But it's not all a symptom of everything happening just recently.

- Yes.

Thank you.

- I mean, a good part of this is, in Shelby County, a lot of voters don't like having to go in and say, "I'm a Republican" or "I'm a Democrat."

- Yeah.

- That just, for some people, that's a deal breaker about voting in primaries.

- Yeah.

And yeah, and people lose track of that, that so much is decided.

And it was fun, I mean, I don't know if fun is the right word, but from a news point of view, it was fun, that whatever it was, two, three years ago, the city mayor's race is nonpartisan.

I mean, you know who, party affiliation.

But it makes it way more interesting where people are running on their policies and what they want to do, and you have disagreements among all the Democrats running, and you get to sort of get this fair hearing.

Mary?

- I definitely am not a fan, hot take here, of primaries actually, because I think that what they do is the people on the right are voting for the most right candidate, the people on the left are voting for the most left candidate, and you get these two extremes, and it's very difficult to find a middle ground.

- And that's who's on the General Election ballot.

- Right.

- Which will have a higher turnout, relatively.

- Ten minutes left in show, we'll try to get to some other things, 'cause there actually are other things going on here.

[Mary laughing] One of which is MATA, which, what, was it a year, a year and a half ago?

Was very much in the news, as the board was kicked out, the CO was jettisoned.

It's been a bit of a disaster for many years, but the City, essentially the City Council, Mayor's Office, took over over the board.

There's some updates coming up, Kailynn, that you're covering.

Where are we with MATA and its future?

- Yes so, recently, MATA announced that they would be putting service changes in on the 17th.

And the way that they notified the public was, of course, through public meeting to notify them, which the public was happy about that.

But what many bus rider advocacy groups noted was that there is no MATA board to place these changes in front of, which it's in the city charter that they must go before the board.

There are about, I believe, three board members listed on the website, but like you had mentioned, the City Council and the City has actually taken over MATA's leadership following the CO search and everything being canceled.

So bus riders are asking the City to at least intervene by at least instituting a new board before these changes go in place, and some even wrote letters to City Council and the Transportation Committee.

- And this route change, do you have a sense of what the route changes are?

They put those, I mean, are they dramatic changes, are they tweaks?

- There are different tweaks.

I know that bus riders have even gone as far as saying what they want for the headways to be, and they've gone as far as saying, take a right here, take a left here, to so many different changes.

I know that there are some changes in Boxtown, which, of course, residents are concerned about.

- Yeah.

Bill, we were talking a bit about this before the show, you said maybe City Council doesn't fully, was fully alerted to what's coming down the pike, or walk through that part of this.

- Well, City Council members are kind of the first line in hearing resistance to this.

People are gonna call their council members on this, and the Council does not like to be surprised.

In fact, anyone that I cover in politics pretty much does not like surprises.

- Yeah.

- You know?

So this also comes as the Council is in budget season, so I think you're going hear a lot of grousing from the Council about these changes.

- Let's talk schools for a bit.

There's a lot going on, but with Memphis Shelby County Schools, obviously it kind of almost got lost in the news of the redistricting.

But the state passed this takeover plan, there's a board that's appointed by state officials, Shelby County residents, but state officials are appointing it.

That hasn't been announced.

I talked to someone who talked about, I think three or four names that I can't say, who are likely to be on it.

It was a surprisingly interesting mix for people who are very opposed to this, or if, you know, this is the state, these are very Memphis people, very Shelby County, Memphis people, that, again, if they come forward as part of the proposal, which I think we expect in a few weeks.

So, it'll be interesting to see how that goes.

Meanwhile, the Memphis Shelby County School Board voted to extend their lawyers' contract through February 2029 as they gear up, you know, with lawsuits.

County Commission approved what, $200,000, Bill?

- $200,000.

- Towards any sort of lawsuit.

And that's where we are with Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

I mean, it's kind of like what comes next with the lawsuits and so on, which we'll obviously be covering.

But I wanna talk about suburban schools, and we're gonna try to get some suburban school leaders on the show in the coming weeks.

We had a couple articles about this, Mary, and an article from Chalkbeat, the kind of intersection of where are we with enrollment in the suburban schools.

- Right, right.

- And some questions about, is it declining?

Is it just a blip in the trend?

What's going on?

- So, Abigail Warren and Waddell, I'm sorry, Michael Waddell, I call him Waddell.

Michael Waddell wrote this story for us.

And essentially what they looked at is that the suburban school districts are seeing fewer kindergartners come in than seniors graduating.

And, you know, there could be different trends inside that, but that basically says that they are declining enrollment.

They did not attribute that to the Tennessee vouchers.

Now, I'll say separately, we don't really have a lot of great data on the vouchers.

We don't know where the students who are getting the vouchers are actually coming from, like what schools they are in, because the state has not required that, has not had that information until now.

They should be coming out with that information in June.

So, we don't know.

But what the school systems are saying is that this has to do with the birth rate.

So the birth rate peaked in 2007.

- Nationally.

- Nationally.

And we know what happened in 2008, we know what's happened since then.

So you had this high birth rate, and now we're still, I mean, COVID, all the things, we're still in this low birth rate.

And we've also seen this nationwide in college enrollment.

Like, colleges have been struggling.

- It's, what do they call it?

The cliff.

I mean, it's been huge.

- Yes.

The enrollment cliff.

- The enrollment cliff.

Small colleges around the country that are actually closing.

I mean, it's a big, big problem.

- Because there's just not enough kids.

[chuckles] Like, that's what's happening.

- Right.

- So, obviously, that is something that the suburban school districts are watching, because funding is in some ways tied to student enrollment.

- It's interesting.

I mean, so a couple things.

One is, I mean, nationally right now, some people like this, some people don't, immigration has been a big part of population growth nationally and in the Memphis area, and, obviously, that has been curtailed.

And it's been curtailed by Obama in the past, by Biden, by Trump.

I mean, there's different ways it's been done, so I don't wanna get political about it, it's just the fact immigration has been declining lately.

There was some numbers that Chalkbeat, which covers education nationally and has a presence here in Memphis or in Tennessee, that of the 17,000 new vouchers with this year's program, about four only, or however you wanna say it, our thousand of those went to low-income people.

The rest went to middle and higher income people and people who were renewing.

Again, we don't have specifics about where those 17,000 are, a lot of 'em are definitely in Shelby County, but we don't know those numbers until June.

And you also have things, and we'll get into this in future stories, in a show hopefully, of some fighting in Germantown about funding, and, you know, it's 13 years since Bill and I did about 197 shows on consolidation and deconsolidation of the school system.

- Even parents complained about it.

- Parents, people in Walgreens, friends, family, saying stop talking about it.

But it was huge, people, you know, it was 13 years ago now, it's kind of hard to believe.

But there's a lot of pressure, and the competition between the school systems, suburban school systems particularly, is interesting.

- Right.

In Germantown right now, what they're looking at is that the funding should be I think 15 cents per every $100 of assessed value.

That was when it started, that was when the Germantown School System started.

And there's some discrepancy over what the City is actually giving the school system.

The school system is saying it's owed about maybe $1.3 million, so.

- And, you know, I mean, Germantown School has come forward with a proposal for a $100 million renovation to Houston High.

I think the board of alderman there, the board there has made a $10 million commitment, but that hasn't been paid.

And there's a kind of arms race between, I mean, Collierville built a $100 million high school, you've got the vouchers, which could pull parents out, the private schools, many of them putting a lot of money.

You know, if people wanted competition among the schools, they got it.

Real briefly, I'm gonna go back to Kailynn here.

ACLU lawsuit, like 30 seconds, walk us through what's going on with the ACLU and the Memphis Safe Task Force.

- Yes so, the ACLU has filed a lawsuit against the Memphis Safe Task Force on behalf of several community members who feel like the Memphis Safe Task Force has retaliated against them in terms of Neighborhood Watch, basically recording with their phones, uploading to social media, anything, this could be maybe pulling them over for traffic stops later after seeing them or things like that.

- Okay.

And more about that, we had a story about it, The Flyer had a story about that.

Let me take a moment and talk about upcoming shows because we do have, related to the election, we have Mickell Lowery, who is the Democratic candidate for county mayor, he'll be coming up, I believe that's next week.

John DeBerry, the Republican candidate for county mayor will be coming up, I believe, the week after that.

And we wanna do profiles, we did this with the city mayor's race some years ago, is just get one of them on at a time to fully walk through as many issues as we can in half an hour.

We also have Anthony Buckner, the Democratic candidate for county sheriff coming up.

I believe that's June 4th.

And Brad Less, we've reached out to, he's the Republican candidate for sheriff.

We'll hope to get him on in the coming weeks, and certainly before the General Election for county seats.

That is all the time we have this week, if you missed any of the episode, you can go to wkno.org, The Daily Memphian, or YouTube to get the full video, or download the show as a podcast wherever you get podcasts.

Thanks very much, and we'll see you next week.

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