Lee Harris and Worth Morgan both want a better Shelby County. They disagree on how to get there.

Solidifying healthcare access. Decreasing gun violence. Creating better lives for Shelby County residents.

These are all pillars of the campaigns of two men, incumbent Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, a Democrat, and his challenger, Memphis City Councilman Worth Morgan, a Republican.

But on how to achieve those goals, the two men vying to hold the position of Shelby County mayor for the next four years differ dramatically.

Since announcing his campaign in October 2021, Morgan has waged a fierce fight against Harris, who announced his bid for reelection in December.

A fifth generation Memphian, Harris, 43, was sworn in as the sixth mayor of Shelby County on Sept. 1, 2018. In 2014, Harris was elected to the State Senate, becoming the youngest senator in the state of Tennessee at the time. Democratic senators selected him to serve as the Senate Minority Leader. Before that, he served on the Memphis City Council, starting in 2011.

With a law degree from Yale, Harris was a professor at the University of Memphis for 14 years.

Morgan, 35, has served on the City Council, from 2016 to today. He’s also a native Memphian, the son of Allen Morgan, a founder and former chairman of investment firm Morgan Keegan.

A Memphis University School graduate, Morgan’s college career at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was derailed when he was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease, forcing him to undergo six surgeries over the course of months. He didn’t graduate college, but returned to Memphis for other opportunities.

Today, Morgan is a private investor.

“I absolutely love this community,” Morgan said during a June interview in his campaign headquarters. “This community that I’m still getting to know and explore and to meet every day and fall more in love with. There are a lot of ways that people give back, whether it be through a nonprofit, whether it be through the faith community … For me I have found a very fulfilling home of being able to serve Memphis and Shelby County through public policy.”

Public safety central to both campaigns

At the heart of Morgan’s campaign against Harris is the issue of public safety.

On his Twitter account, Morgan has posted stories of crime victims: a three-month-old injured in a crash caused by drag racers, a 49-year-old shooting victim whose death is unsolved, a man shot in a robbery.

“We have not forgotten,” he tweeted with one of the posts. “As crime continues to impact our communities, we must ensure our law enforcement has the necessary resources to protect us.”

If elected, Morgan has said he would prioritize public safety initiatives in the county budget. He has garnered the support of the law enforcement unions, both the Memphis Police Association and the Shelby County Deputy Sheriffs Association.

The sheriff’s office is understaffed, Morgan said, with “tens of thousands of outstanding warrants” and also has needs in its investigative units.

“The first question you need to be asking is, is the job getting done?” Morgan said. “(If the) answer is no, what will it take to get the job done? OK, what will it take to fill that bucket?”

In an advertisement arguing that Harris cut $4.8 million from the sheriff’s budget, Morgan’s campaign showed a clip of a person wearing a hoodie pointing a gun at an employee behind a register, and later a car turning donuts in the street.

The ad was factually inaccurate — Harris did not cut that funding from the sheriff’s office — but it was the image of the Black man in a hoodie that Harris focused on during a small fundraiser in June at former Commissioner Walter Bailey’s home.

“The worst part of my opponents’ commercial is the man in a hoodie with a gun at the beginning of the ad,” Harris said. “It turns my stomach, because I have three kids, two boys, and one of my boys is a teenager, a teenager who almost always insists on wearing a hoodie. But that doesn’t mean he’s going to pick up a gun and rob someone.”

Harris, too, has promised to focus on combating crime if reelected. But instead of pointing mainly toward funding for the sheriff’s office, he’s said he will “continue to advocate to keep illegal firearms off our streets, increase public safety, and address the root causes of crime.”

In his past four years in office, focusing on the "root causes of crime" has included removing barriers to employment in county government for felons through “ban the box” initiatives and strengthening Shelby County’s Office of Reentry, which interacts with every individual mandated for parole and released in Shelby County.

And, on the last day in June, Harris also announced a Council on Gun Safety.

Vaccine disaster drove Morgan to consider running

The rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in Shelby County was “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” Morgan told The Commercial Appeal.

Morgan, acting as a regular volunteer, was one of many who helped direct traffic in the early days of people trying to get vaccinations.

Then, he saw an “absolute lack of leadership on the ground, the lack of communication and expectations, and people were out there in line for hours and then still not getting the vaccine,” he said.

In February 2021, the state cut Shelby County out of vaccine distribution, turning the work over to the City of Memphis. Shelby County didn’t regain the ability to distribute COVID-19 vaccines until December 2021. The state found deficiencies in Shelby County’s handling of vaccines, and both the director of the county’s health department and its chief of nursing resigned.

It was then that he decided Harris needed to be challenged, Morgan said.

“The vaccine distribution was a complete void in leadership,” he said. “It was difficult work. It was hard work, but it wasn’t that complicated and it was manageable. And the state came in and stripped the authority from the county, they handed it to the city and we were able to see it done.”

If elected, Morgan said he would want to do a full assessment of the health department, concerned about “mission creep.” The assessment would look at priorities and responsibilities, making sure that “limited resources” are appropriately allocated, he said.

When he looks back on the pandemic, one of his main takeaways is how he and others underestimated vaccine hesitancy in communities of color, Harris said in a March interview. If he’s given another four years, he wants to focus on ensuring access to primary healthcare providers, he said.

“If they just had a relationship, just had preventative care we could head off really serious conditions like heart disease, blindness and in some cases amputation and all manner of issues that could be changed just by having that relationship and a good sense of things you need to do to stave off having those illnesses,” he said in March.

It’s partly Morgan’s administrative skills that would make him a good fit for county mayor, said Shea Flinn, former member of the Memphis City Council and the Tennessee Senate.

“I think he is decisive enough to make decisions. He stands by his decisions and he’s been on the city council and got the requisite training in how government works, and I think he has the managerial temperament to be an effective county mayor,” said Flinn, who is supporting Morgan despite, in the past, having run as a Democrat and generally voting as such. “I’ve seen him stand up to council members from his own side, when he thought something was wrong. I’ve seen him, you know, make hard decisions and tell people he was making those hard decisions, when it might be politically unpopular for him.”

Harris garners support of labor organizations

For Harris, serving as mayor of Shelby County has been a chance to advocate for the needs of working families. A hallmark of Harris’ time in office became the fight for $15, with Harris supporting an increase to the minimum wage for both employees of Shelby County and those outside his direct authority, including cafeteria workers in Shelby County Schools and employees at the University of Memphis.

In the latter case, Harris tussled publicly with then-University President David Rudd in 2019, exercising his veto power for the first time and pointing out that the university had not committed to a timeline to raise its minimum wage. The university announced it would fully implement the $15 minimum in 2021.

He’s also proposed parental leave and childcare benefits for Shelby County employees, and ushered through what will likely be $34 million in funding for early childhood education over four years.

“I’m running for office because I believe we need someone in office who can be the voice for working families,” Harris said.

Harris’ work on behalf of “working families” has not gone unnoticed: He’s endorsed by numerous labor organizations in Shelby County — except for those related to law enforcement — including the AFL-CIO Labor Council, Teamsters Local 667, United Campus Workers, Ironworkers Local 167, SEIU Local 205 (representing healthcare workers), The Memphis Shelby County Education Association, The Memphis and West Tennessee Building and Construction Trades Council, CWA Local 3806 and the United Education Association.

Bailey, the former county commissioner and a renown civil rights attorney, said Harris signifies an extension of the movement that he came out of in the 1960s.

“I have such confidence and faith in his administration in terms of skills and abilities and foresight and vision,” Bailey said. “I came out of the movement during the 60s and once you get infected with that bug, it never leaves you. You’re always ready for a cause that represents your values. And he does. I see him as being a transition from the 60s in terms of progress and hope and opportunity.”

For Morgan, economic development is the issue that “is the rising tide that can lift all boats.”

And for the county mayor, that should include advocating for tax incentives to bring new businesses into the county, he said, something Harris has vocally criticized.

While the Shelby County Mayor doesn’t directly oversee a decision to offer a tax incentive to a company, he does have veto power over the final decision by the Shelby County Commission. Harris has not vetoed a tax incentive as mayor.

Tackling the issues

Morgan said he would be glad to throw his support behind someone else doing the job of county mayor — if he thought that job was being done well. As it is, he’s concerned about grant money going unused for things such as cleaning up litter, about relationships between officials at various county municipalities and about transparency.

“There is a job that is not being done and out of the genuine love to give back and serve this community, there’s an opportunity to step into this role and be that public servant that Shelby County deserves,” Morgan said.

For Harris, this campaign is about another four years of tackling the issues he’s begun to delve into.

A May campaign newsletter, sent out shortly before former President Donald Trump visited Southaven, touched on the issues of greatest importance to Harris and, he believes, of greatest importance to the people of Shelby County.

“Donald Trump is coming to our area in just a few days and, chances are, he’s not coming here to rally for living wages, paid family leave, childcare support, or public transit,” Harris’ email read. “Those are the issues that we are working to advance. The issues that matter to families and working women and men in our community.”

Early voting for the August county general election starts July 15 and ends July 30. Election Day is August 4, 2022.

Katherine Burgess covers county government and religion. She can be reached at katherine.burgess@commercialappeal.com, 901-529-2799 or followed on Twitter @kathsburgess.

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Lee Harris, Worth Morgan face each other in fight for Shelby County's future