Yankee Doodle Dean

Davis—who at one time practiced law at Bass Berry & Sims and later at Neal & Harwell before retiring from corporate law after the couple’s third child was born to teach legal writing at Vanderbilt part-time—says she occasionally has bristled at the barbs leveled by her husband’s opponent(s) during the more than eight months he’s been campaigning, but that her husband always talks her down.

“Something might be said that I don’t like, and Karl’s like, ‘They’re good guys.’ ”

Dean says he makes a point to remind himself that these repeated swipes are just part of the process. Of Clement’s election night harangue, he says, “It bothered me a little bit, but I didn’t get real angry—I tried not to. I don’t take it personally in the sense that it’s directed at me as a political opponent, not as a person…. [Clement’s] an easy person to talk to. We’ve gotten along all during this process.”

Along the way, though, Dean has become more aggressive in defending himself. During the first week or two after the general election, Clement cast aspersion after aspersion on Dean—hammering on his work as public defender5, on his legal opinion saying a charter amendment requiring property tax increases to be approved by voters is unconstitutional, etc. Lately, Dean has begun to fight back, noting, for example, in Saturday night’s televised debate that Clement voted many times to raise taxes when he was a congressman. And earlier this week, Dean held a press conference to denounce Clement’s latest ad campaign essentially claiming that Dean is a Taxachusetts liberal (our words).

“My opponent has run for six different offices 13 times over the past 35 years, and he has a history of going negative when he’s behind,” Dean said Tuesday. “But I encourage him again to go back to talking about what the people want to talk about in this campaign and not to use the attack ads or the vicious politics that is common in Washington. I think the way candidates conduct themselves is a good indication of the way we’ll behave in office. This ad is a clear indicator of old-style politics. I hope the voters share my disappointment with this and urge him to get back to the discussion of the issues.”

On his public defender service, in particular, Dean is particularly animated as he rides around East Nashville scouting addresses for a swath of homes his staff wants him to reach. “I’m proud of it,” he says. “I’ve put it in all of my commercials. I’m not going to run from it.” He describes it, in fact, as the most rewarding work of his professional life. “I don’t think people realize that, you know, most of the cases you do are not high-profile publicized cases. And most of the cases you do, people have committed a crime and they’re being punished for it but they have no one in the world who’s supporting them, or if they do it’s family who’s just doing their best to get by. In many of the cases, substance abuse is obviously a part of it, making wrong decisions is a part of it, so really, on a day-to-day basis—this is where I don’t think people understand how rewarding the work can be—you do interact with people who need your help, you try to gear the case where they’re getting the help they need, be it on probation or if they’re sentenced to jail, a chance to get out and have treatment while they’re in jail....”

He characterizes a 1992 audit of the public defender’s office, which interest groups opposing Dean have tried to pass off as offering a devastating portrait of his management, as routine. The audit, released in October of that year, is 11 pages long and found some deficiencies in the way the department handled petty cash, internal assets, employee time off and personnel records. “Several individuals at the 1990 year-end had more vacation time accrued than is allowed by Metropolitan government,” the audit noted, for example.

“All audits make recommendations,” Dean says. “I don’t think there were any significant findings. I can’t remember what they were, but it was mostly procedural type issues. I don’t think the public defender’s office had been audited ever until they did that, and whatever they recommended we did. And the citizens re-elected me twice after that.”

Asked about his opponent’s prolific flak about Dean’s time as public defender, he launches into a primer about the criminal justice system. “I guess my response would be, it’s a criminal justice system where your job is to represent the client and do what’s best for him, and they’re guaranteed that by the Constitution. They’re guaranteed a vigorous, zealous defense. You give them their defense, and the district attorney’s job is to prosecute them and do what they think is in the best interest of justice and protecting the public.... And then the judge is like the moderator or the person in between who actually decides whether the person gets probation. A district attorney and a defense attorney may say we’re recommending probation, but a judge ultimately has to accept it.... So everybody does their part, and the system never entirely works perfectly, but it works as well as it can.”