State Senator Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) said his focus since being elected to represent Memphis in the Tennessee Senate in 2022 has been focusing on the city’s “number one” issue: crime.
Taylor, who was elected in 2022, had a successful career in the funeral business and previous experience as an elected official in Memphis before arriving at the Tennessee General Assembly.
The state senator said he “never really looked back” after selling his successful business, which he had built into the largest family-owned funeral operation in the Mid-South, and running for the Tennessee State Senate.
“While it was early in my time in Memphis, I ran and served on the Memphis City Council, served on the County Commission and was chairman of the Election Commission for a while. But when I sold my business, my state senator decided he wasn’t going to run again, and so I had a lot of people ask me to run for the Senate because I had some political experience,” Taylor explained on Thursday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“I decided to run for the Senate and I won. It was great because I never got seller’s remorse from selling my business because I was busy campaigning right after I sold. I was elected and got busy serving, so I’ve never really looked back to ever regret selling. I’m glad to be in the position I’m in because I’m working very hard to make Memphis matter,” Taylor added.
Taylor said that after being appointed to serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee, his focus has since been working to combat crime in Memphis. He called crime the city’s “number one issue” that, if left unchecked, will lead to the “hollowing out” of the city.
“We had 400 murders in 2023. Crime is just out of control. If we’re not careful and if we don’t get crime under control, we’re going to witness the hollowing out of Memphis. The Memphis middle class will leave, and what will be left will be the extremely poor who couldn’t afford to leave and the extremely rich who can afford private security to stay. The middle class will be gone and most of the businesses are owned by middle class people. Businesses are leaving, businesses are closing, so we’ve got to turn this around,” Taylor said.
Taylor discussed his intent to file a Senate Joint Resolution requiring the removal of Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy during next year’s legislative session of the Tennessee General Assembly as an effort to combat crime in his district.
The state senator said his decision to work towards ousting Mulroy comes from the district attorney’s now-dropped idea to allow felons charged with unlawful possession of a weapon to be offered diversion.
“I’ve known DA Mulroy a long time, but he is a Soros-funded DA. He is doing exactly what they expect and that is that he has partnered with all of these restorative justice schemers to do what they can to try to keep people out of jail and I’ve met with him for two years trying to get him to turn that around. I told him he needed to focus on prosecutions…but he has ignored all that. Finally, he came out with a proposal that was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me and that’s when I decided I was going to pursue an ouster resolution in the next General Assembly to remove him as our DA,” Taylor siad.
“There is no reason for a convicted felon to have been in possession of a firearm, and for DA Mulroy, who wants more gun control, to be the guy that says, ‘I’m not going to prosecute a prohibited person from having a gun’ shows he is not a serious person when it comes to fighting crime,” Taylor added.
Watch the full interview:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
