MEMPHIS: Criminal records, bankruptcies among burdens being carried into elections

Young and idealistic, Reid Hedgepeth says he's running for Memphis City Council to restore integrity to a government derided in recent years as a den of waste, inefficiency and graft.

Hedgepeth was delinquent on his city and county property taxes, with arrears exceeding $33,000 Tuesday before he rushed Downtown to pay off a chunk of it after speaking with a reporter. On Wednesday, he paid off the rest.

Hedgepeth's urgency stems from an obscure provision in the City Charter that says anyone "in arrears for taxes'' is ineligible to hold elective office.

Background checks by The Commercial Appeal found 10 candidates who were behind this week on their property tax bills. They range from incumbent Councilwoman Barbara Swearengen Ware, who owed $1,300

in back taxes on a rental property, to City Clerk candidate Latroy Williams, whose $124,000 in tax arrears began accumulating in 1997.

The newspaper found much more than unpaid taxes, however. Among 93 candidates running in next Thursday's mayoral, council and clerk races, 48 of them had some blemish in their past. That includes either a criminal conviction, a bankruptcy, an unpaid judgment, a loan or contract default, child support arrears, delinquent property taxes or a federal tax lien.

Some, like Veronica Castillo, had a multitude of financial woes. A leading candidate for the District 7 council seat, Castillo has filed for bankruptcy five times since 1995. She tops a list of 20 candidates who've sought protection from creditors in bankruptcy court at some point in their past.

And at least 14 candidates have local arrest histories, ranging from council candidate Tiffany Lowe, a felon convicted of forgery and reckless endangerment, to incumbent Mayor Willie Herenton, who paid a $50 fine for disorderly conduct following a 1960 arrest involving an alleged sexual encounter.

"Memphis voters are very forgiving,'' said University of Memphis professor Larry Moore, who sees a variety of factors behind the large crop of candidates, many carrying baggage from their pasts.

Shifting American political standards, lowered expectations of elected leaders and a mass exodus out of corruption-tarnished City Hall have converged in a perfect storm that's cast a tidal wave of 76 candidates seeking 13 City Council seats.

Forty-eight contenders are vying for a record seven open seats, and the six incumbents seeking re-election have between one and seven challengers.

Top of mind for Moore is outgoing Councilman Edmund Ford, who was broke and desperate -- he had filed three bankruptcies in two years -- when first elected in 1999.

On the council, Ford found a $30,000-a-year job along with developers willing to give him loans and help him buy luxury cars -- and eventually an indictment charging him with bribery.

"Memphis is basically ground zero for all the major corruption in the state for the last two years. That will be a major factor for how voters will look at these things,'' said Moore, a longtime political consultant.

"It may make Memphis voters a little more critical (and decide) you don't want to put into office the same kind of person who just left who will give you the same kind of problems.''

A more immediate concern may be whether some candidates now delinquent on property taxes are legally qualified to run in the first place.

The City Charter states that "no person shall be eligible'' for mayor or a seat on the council "who is in arrears for taxes.''

The obscure provision stemming from an 1879 law poses potential trouble for candidates like Hedgepeth, a homebuilder who was behind on taxes on several properties he's developing.

"I try to do the right thing,'' said Hedgepeth, 30, owner of Hedgepeth Construction. He said he typically pays off late taxes when he closes a sale on a home he's built.

"We've been building for a while, and that's how we've always done it,'' he said of a business decision echoed by his campaign manager, City Councilman Jack Sammons.

"It's industry practice for a builder to pay the taxes on a house at closing,'' Sammons said.

However, records reviewed earlier this week show Hedgepeth's tax debt also included $8,400 in delinquent city taxes, penalties and interest owed on his personal home in East Memphis -- something he disputed at first when speaking with a reporter.

Hedgepeth did pay most of the 2006 county taxes owed on his home on Aug. 7 -- five months late, said Paul Mattila, a top aide in the County Trustee's Office.

After speaking with a reporter Tuesday afternoon, Hedgepeth went down to City Hall and paid the delinquent city taxes on his home -- $8,402 in all, records show.

On Wednesday, Hedgepeth paid off his remaining city and county delinquency -- about $24,000. "He didn't want there to be any doubt about the issue so he went ahead and paid it,'' Sammons said.

Still, it's unclear exactly what legal ramifications such delinquencies pose under the City Charter. Court decisions challenging similar city laws in other parts of the country have been mixed, and authorities contacted by the newspaper said they were unsure if the Memphis law had ever been enforced or ruled on by the courts. Sammons said he and colleagues seem to recall that the charter provision was overturned about 20 years ago.

Politically, however, tax delinquency is a no-brainer, said Sean O'Brien, executive director of the University of Virginia's Sorensen Institute for Political Leadership.

"Do you really want someone who doesn't pay their taxes to collect your taxes?'' said O'Brien, summing up an argument often made by candidates whose opponents owe delinquent taxes.

Shelby County Trustee Bob Patterson, the elected official charged with collecting property taxes here, has heard arguments like those by Sammons and Hedgepeth before and he rejects them.

"Running for an elected office, you have an onus to pay your taxes,'' Patterson said. "You have to set the example.''

No candidate has a bigger delinquent property tax bill than city clerk candidate Williams, whose First Supreme Trust Co. owes $124,000 in delinquent city and county property taxes on a commercial building in Whitehaven. Arrears on the building date back to 1997. Properties generally are put in a delinquent tax sale after three years, yet Williams has filed a number of legal challenges to block that, Patterson said.

Still, Hedgepeth and Williams have plenty of company. City and county records reviewed by the newspaper this week include these candidates and delinquent taxes, interest and penalties:

Council District 8 Position 1 candidate Ian Randolph, $6,846, on his Midtown home and a second vacant property.

In some council contests there's hardly a horse in the race that doesn't come with some baggage, financial or otherwise.

So it is in District 7 where 13-year incumbent Barbara Swearengen Ware, already criticized as a cog in the old City Hall machine, owes $1,379 in delinquent city and county property taxes as of Wednesday on a house she owns in the Cooper-Young neighborhood.

Challenger Veronica Castillo said she asked the Election Commission Wednesday to remove Holt from the ballot because of those unpaid taxes.

"I asked them to investigate the issue and talk to the attorney regarding her status, if she's qualified to run," said Castillo.

But Shelby County Election Commission administrator James Johnson said that was an issue that would have to be decided by the city attorney.

Records show Castillo and another of Ward's challengers have their own financial troubles.

With four previous bankruptcies on her record, Castillo, 46, filed for bankruptcy again in January, seeking protection from six creditors who are owed $180,000.

Preston Poindexter, 51, a pastor who vows to "bring honesty and integrity back to government'' has filed for bankruptcy twice in 12 years. He recently moved into a Downtown apartment, having lost his Raleigh house in March in a foreclosure sale. Nonetheless, his campaign found the means to launch a vigorous fight.

Bigger than life he smiles from a giant rented billboard overlooking Interstate 40, framed by a red-white-and-blue background and an inspiring campaign message, "A Change Is Coming!''

"A lot of us go through (financial) issues and have problems,'' he told a reporter, saying he doesn't believe his struggles will bother voters. "It doesn't make us any different than others in Memphis.''

Memphis often leads the country in bankruptcy rates, and just about everybody knows someone who's taken a bankruptcy at one time or another. Yet some say City Council members -- fiduciaries who vote on a $537 million annual budget -- should be held to a higher standard.

And someone who's filed multiple bankruptcies should get even less benefit of the doubt, said George Stevenson, Chapter 13 trustee for the federal bankruptcy court in Memphis the past 25 years.

The Sorensen Institute's O'Brien said marginal candidates are getting into politics in greater numbers because the best and the brightest have been driven away by fear of scandal and media scrutiny.

But there are more pieces to the Memphis puzzle. First there was the sense of Mayor Herenton's vulnerability -- he has 13 challengers -- and the decision of seven council incumbents to not seek re-election. And the bar for getting on the ballot is low: Mayor and council candidates need only collect 25 signatures and pay a $100 fee.

Laura Davis Aaron bills herself in campaign literature as a proven leader who's doing double duty running for mayor as well as president of the United States.

What the long-shot candidate doesn't tell voters is that she has a criminal rap sheet and a history of financial troubles. As Laura Carter, she pleaded guilty to common assault in 1980 after shooting a man in the leg, and she pleaded guilty to open and notorious lewdness in 1985. She's filed for bankruptcy protection four times, including once in Memphis as Laura Davis; in Chattanooga as Laura Carter; and again in Memphis as Laura Ibitoye.

Aaron, 56, couldn't be reached because the number listed for her campaign headquarters was disconnected. Yet others were readily available to talk about their pasts, like mayoral candidate James McKay, who had a string of alcohol- and drug-relatd arrests in the 1980s and '90s.

"That was a long time ago,'' said McKay, 60, who's running for mayor out of his Downtown apartment. Judging by a mug shot from a 1991 arrest -- he appears half dead, droopy-eyed and slouching -- it's hard to know why McKay wants to be mayor or why he thinks he has a snowball's chance.

"My platform is literally law and order and political reform,'' said McKay, a self-described born-again Christian who says he has a legitimate shot at winning. "I have people in high places who have promised their votes to me.''

Among 14 candidates with at least one local conviction, the newspaper could find only one, Lowe, with a felony.

A couple with a misdemeanor in the distant past include Myron Lowery, who's seeking a fifth term in the council's District 8 Position 3 seat. Records show Lowery pleaded guilty to assault and battery in 1982.

"People know me in my calm demeanor as a councilman,'' Lowery, 60, said this week, explaining the incident stemmed from an emotional child custody battle.

"Had that not been a child custody case, it would have never come up. She (his ex-wife) filed charges to gain leverage.''

Even less known is Mayor Herenton's 1960 arrest when he and three friends were picked up by police after they were accused of a sexual attack.

Herenton suggested to The Memphis Flyer in 1991 when he first ran for mayor that his arrest stemmed from racial bigotry.

"Being picked up and hauled off in a patrol car was a way of life in the South in the neighborhood where I grew up,'' Herenton told The Flyer.

Records show Herenton was arrested after two women said they'd been abducted by a group of four young men. According to the report, at least one alleged she was sexually assaulted.

The women told police the men forced them into a car in South Memphis and took them to T.O. Fuller State Park, according to the report of the Aug. 20, 1960, incident.

Herenton and his friends "admitted taking these girls to the park and told the same story as the two'' women, the report said, "except that no force or threat was used.''

The records don't explain how police worked through the conflicting stories and decided to not file more serious charges.

Jeff Bailey (left) Dist. 5 City Council candidate, Patronizing prostitution; Veronica Castillo (right) Candidate Dist. 7, Five bankruptcies since 1995.

Del Gill (left) Candidate Dist. 8 Pos. 3, Bankruptcy, reckless driving conviction; Tiffany Lowe (right) Candidate Dist. 8 Pos. 1, Felony forgery and assault convictions.

Reid Hedgepeth (left) Candidate Dist. 9 Pos. 3, $33,202 in delinquent property taxes; Jesse Jeff (right) Candidate Dist. 1, Three bankruptcies since 1997.

James McKay (left) Mayoral candidate, Convictions for possession of controlled substance, violating probation, DUI, disturbing the peace; Scott Pearce (right) Candidate Dist. 2, Unpaid $552,000 judgment.

Preston Poindexter (left) Candidate Dist. 7, Two bankruptcies since 1995, lost home in March foreclosure; Kerry Rogers (right) Dist 5 City Council candidate, Drugs, reckless driving, bankruptcy.

Barbara Swearengen Ware (left) Incumbent Dist. 7, $1,379 in delinquent property taxes; M. Latroy Williams (right) Candidate, city clerk, $124,000 in delinquent property taxes.

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