Shelby County records show that Joe Brown, best known for his syndicated court television show Judge Joe Brown, which ran for more than a decade, was granted a petition last week to begin collecting signatures ahead of a potential campaign for the Republican nomination for Shelby County Mayor.
Brown will now have less than one month to gather the 25 signatures necessary for the former TV personality to submit his paperwork ahead of the March 10 deadline. The primary election will be held on May 5.
According to a 2002 WLBT profile of Brown, the potential candidate moved to Memphis in 1973 to work with Legal Services but was raised in “one of the toughest neighborhoods in South Central Los Angeles.”
Brown was first elected as a judge on the Shelby County Criminal Court in 1990, and he told the outlet that his childhood led him to pursue novel sentences for nonviolent offenders.
After holding the judgeship, Brown hosted his television show from 1998 until 2013, but returned to politics the next year, when he ran for Shelby County District Attorney General as a Democrat. He narrowly lost his race to the incumbent, former District Attorney Amy Weirich.
In 2020, Brown was elected as a Democrat to serve as the Shelby County General Sessions Clerk but lost the Democratic primary in early 2024. Brown also ran to become the Mayor of Memphis in 2023, but finished seventh in a 10-candidate race.
By the end of 2024, after vocally opposing the Biden-Harris administration and the brief presidential campaign of former Vice President Kamala Harris, the judge told Patrick Bet-David of Valuetainment that he had left the Democratic Party.
“I’m an independent now. I can’t stand the Democratic Party,” said Brown in November 2024. “They decided to be anti-family and anti-man, and I don’t buy into that.”
He added, “Something happened, they kind of got stuck over there in that far left corner someplace, and they forgot about the working people of this country.”
Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, a Democrat, is term-limited and cannot mount another campaign.
Watch Brown describe his departure from the Democratic Party in 2024:
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Tom Pappert is a 2025 recipient of the Dao Prize and the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star. He also reports for the Star News Network. Follow Tom on X. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Judge Joe Brown” by Judge Joe Brown. Background Photo “Memphis” by Thomas R Machnitzki. CC BY 3.0.
Well that oughta shake things up in Shelby County.
Joe Brown will clean up Memphis.