Jim Strickland Biography, Career, Education, Age, Family. Wife and Net Worth.

Who Is Jim Strickland?

Jim Strickland is an American politician serving as the 64th mayor of Memphis, Tennessee since 2016. In addition, he is also a known lawyer a member of the Democratic Party. Prior to being elected to the mayoral position, he was serving as a member of the Memphis City Council. Moreover, he is an adjunct professor at Cecil C. Humphrey’s School of Law.

Career

Memphis City Council

He was elected for the first time to the City Council in October 2007. After that, he was reelected in 2011. Moreover, in 2013, he was elected as Vice Chairman, he was then subsequently elected to serve as the chairman in 2014.

Memphis Mayor

2015 election

Jim announced his intention to run for the mayoral position on January 15, 2015. Moreover, during his campaign period, he emphasized more on crime, poverty, and blight throughout Memphis.

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Jim went on and women the October 8th, 2015 election with 42% of the vote cast. In the election he was facing incumbent mayor AC Wharton who garnered 22% of the votes. In addition, the election was somehow uncommon to win over an incumbent, with the last case being in 1991. Furthermore, his win marked the first time in the history of Memphis since 1972, when a council member took the position of mayor.

For 24 years he became the first Memphis white mayor. In Otis Sanford’s book Boss Crump to King Willie: How Race Changed Memphis Politics. The author cited that Jim made history by receiving more of a percentage of the black vote than any winning candidate since William B. Ingram in 1963.

How Old Is Jim Strickland?

He was born on October 22, 1963, he is 57 years as of 2021.

Jim Strickland Family

Who are his parents?

He was born in Mishawaka, Indiana, however, due to his secretive nature, he has not yet revealed any information about his family background. In case of any information, we will update it as soon as possible.

Does He Have Siblings?

His siblings are still unknown, in case of any information, we will update it as soon as possible.

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Jim Strickland Education

He attended Christian Brothers High School where he graduated in 1982. He went ahead and graduated from the University of Memphis in 1989 with a JD.

Jim Strickland Wife

He is happily married to Melyn Strickland, however, much is not known about their marriage life.

Jim Strickland Kids

Together with his wife, they have been blessed with two children.

Tenure

First-term

At the time he was taking office he had several preceding problems: the threat of forced de-annexation for the Tennessee General Assembly, Million unknown financial obligations, and the looming risk of losing the city’s fourth-largest public company ServiceMaster.

Early on, Strickland conquered challenges by successfully avoiding de-annexation, which might have resulted in the loss of 111,000 citizens and $27 million to $80 million in tax revenue for Memphis. In an “unheard-of seven-minute” vote, he passed the first city budget unanimously. Strickland’s second budget contained a $5.9 million boost for recruitment and a $6 million increase for officer overtime for the Memphis Police Department.

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Furthermore, he managed to budget for the expansion of public libraries which consisted of the reopening of 10 branches. It was followed by another $2 million, which was put aside for street paving, bringing the overall total to $18.5 million, almost twice what is spent in the 2014 and 2015 financial years.

Furthermore, he went ahead and retained ServiceMaster by relocating the company to Downtown Memphis. The company marked a major win for the city, saving 1,200 jobs and $ 100 million in payroll. Mary Kay was the one who was in charge of the company at that and she described Jim as a chief influencer on their decision to stay in Memphis.

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Moreover, Jim still emphasized more contracts going to minority and female contractors. The percentage as of April 2017 is 21.1%. In return, the change was a 68% increase from January 2016 when Jim took the office.

As a result of the effort made up a part of a larger plan to reduce contract disparity and approach city government in terms of data. Moreover, the city of Memphis began to collect data. It also started to set goals so that to target other specific issues like successfully reducing 911 response times, which were reduced from over a minute wait time in 2015 to 14 seconds in 2016.

As a result of the expansion of companies such as ServiceMaster and non-profits such as St, Jude Children’s Hospital, there is an estimated $7 billion in current and future developments for the city of Memphis.

2019 election

Jim declared his bid to seek reelection in January 2019. This time around, he faced W.W. Herenton, a former mayor. He also competed against Tami Sawyer, a Shelby County Commissioner. He won the election with 62% of the vote cast, however, the election experienced low turnout. It was the first election in the history of Memphis to receive a low turnout since the current government was approved in 1966.