It's a week after the election in Shelby County and people standing in line at the clerk’s office might be experiencing some voters’ remorse.
On Monday, the Shelby County Commission not only expressed a lack of confidence in newly re-elected clerk Wanda Halbert, commissioners also invited the state Comptroller to overseeHalbert’s operation, beset with long lines at offices and lengthy delays getting license plates in the mail.
Why, when many of these problems were known ahead of the election, did voters check the box for someone whose competence was already in question?
Political analyst Otis Sanford says it’s because she’s a Democrat and local voters are more party loyal than ever.
At the same time, an effort by some Memphis City Council members to add partisan primaries to local elections has stalled out -- perhaps because less partisanship, at least on the local level, is more conducive for a smooth-running government.
In other news this week, a group of Rhodes College alumni made national headlines by petitioning to have Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett removed from the institution’s Hall of Fame. She would be the second high court judge to have a Rhodes pedigree. Abe Fortas -- who resigned during the Nixon administration as a consequence of ethics concerns -- graduated from Rhodes (then Southwestern) in 1930.
Sanford -- himself a Hall of Famer at Ole Miss -- says unless an alum was involved in criminality, this is one idea that should probably be dropped.