"If you ain't from my Hood": The Memphis Mayoral Residency Debate

One of my favorite Project Pat songs is If You Ain’t From My Hood. Ironically, I used to sing it while living nowhere near North Memphis (Fayette County to be exact lol). When Project Pat raps “Say you from the North Memphis Tenn, but I doubt that,” he could be talking to some 2023 mayoral candidates. Before we can even get to folks pulling petitions to run, the hot debate is whether you should live in Memphis or not to run for Mayor. Sheriff Floyd Bonner, Van Turner, and Willie Herenton find themselves at the center of this debate.

Here’s the rundown, and I feel like a messy person writing this because it’s such a mess. After completing his term as a Shelby County Commissioner in 2022, Van Turner moved from Cordova to Memphis. Floyd Bonner, re-elected as Sheriff in 2022, moved to Memphis earlier this year from Bartlett. Willie Herenton…lives somewhere…Whitehaven, Crump, Collierville…no one really knows.

The city’s charter says a mayoral candidate must have resided in Memphis for five years before running for the seat. All three candidates impacted by this rule HAVE lived in Memphis at some point, but when they decided to run for mayor, they were no longer residents. Bonner and Turner have sued the Election Commission to allow them to run for office though they don’t meet the five-year residency requirement. Herenton has not made himself a party to the lawsuit because he believes wherever he lives, he’ll always be a Memphian (lol).

The City of Memphis government has tried to avoid being a part of the decision process. I believe that’s because, as rumor has it, Mayor Jim Strickland supports Bonner, whose campaign is being run by Strickland’s former campaign manager, Steven Reid. Strickland refused to be subpoenaed (shocker) so that he wouldn’t have to go on record in the case. However, this past Monday, the city attorney said the city stands by the five-year residency. This is an interesting development and could sway the decision that is slated to be made by the court on May 16th.

One of the questions that has been raised is, “Why is this coming up now? Why didn’t this get raised in the 2019 election?” Rumors of Herenton’s Collierville residency abounded in 2019, but his candidacy was not challenged. However, I was actually challenged by another candidate, who said that I had not been back from DC long enough to be Commissioner or mayor. After my phone and US postal records were subpoenaed, the Tennessee Ethics Bureau found that I met the one-year requirement for County Commission and the five-year requirement for City Mayor. (I moved home on December 19, 2013…more than five years before the October 2019 mayor’s race.) None of this was news as we continued to focus on our race throughout the process. Anyway, enough about me, but now you have the context that this is NOT a new issue, as some have tried to state.

A portion of the complaint to the TN Ethics Commission regarding my residency in 2019.

All-in-all, the residency debate is a big distraction from the serious issues up for debate in this election. However, I believe the mayor should be a Memphian, not a Bartlett or Collierville resident. If not, then what’s next? TN House Speaker Cameron Sexton or Gov Bill Lee running for mayor from rural Tennessee so the TN GOP can fully control Memphis? God help us if that ever becomes the case.

What do y’all think? Should the Memphis Mayor have a residency requirement? If so, for how long?