Best Person To Be Mayor, Now That Bredesen Isn’t Running Again:

Davidson County Clerk Bill Covington

These days, every election in town bears the imprint of Covington’s size-12 wingtip. He also has influence on ordinances in Metro Council and appointments in Metro courtrooms. Perhaps the most gifted joke teller in Middle Tennessee, Covington maintains an East Nashville power base and ties to West Nashville. The word on the grapevine is that he’s already raising money for a mayoral race. Eventually, though, he’s going to have to answer one question: Why should a guy who hands out license plates be mayor? (BD)

Best Goo-Goo on Metro Council:

Chris Ferrell

Ah, youth. According to Winston Churchill, if you’re 20 and you’re not a liberal, you have no heart. Ferrell is a little over that, but he appears to be all heart. He wants to help people. He wants to build communities. He is concerned about spousal abuse. He voted against the Oilers. But he can be tough too. When it was time for a Metro Council member to face the angry customers of the Harpeth Valley Utility District, Ferrell got the job. Into the lion’s den he journeyed and out he came, alive. If good liberals need battle scars, he’s getting them. (BD)

Best Person to Control Our Urban Planning Destiny:

Stroud Watson, Riverfront/Downtown Planning and Design Center, Chattanooga

Watson and his crew have worked wonders in downtown Chattanooga, which was once an urban dead zone of the first order. As a faculty member at UT’s College of Architecture and Planning, Watson shares ideas with colleagues Jon Coddington, David Johnson and Mark Schimmenti. Any one of these urban design talents could make some Nashville magic, if we gave him the key to the city. (CK)

Best Bud Adams Look-Alike:

Mac Smith

They weren’t exactly separated at birth, but they could very well be cousins. Smith—the longtime political hack and former chairman of the Metro Fair Board—and Adams—owner of the Oilers and reviled Houston heavyweight—are both big guys. Each sports the big-sideburn look. Each has a big head of hair. They drawl, they fuss, they throw their weight around. Mac and Bud. Bud and Mac. Peas in a pod. Cut from the same cloth. (BD)

Best Next Full-Time Job for Bill Boner:

Third-Party Presidential Candidate

Ladies, gentlemen, Bill Boner feels your pain. Since he’s a Southern Democrat, he could potentially snatch votes away from President Bill Clinton. Since he’s not a draft dodger, he’d immediately short-circuit Sen. Bob Dole. He’s withstood plenty of abuse over the years without cracking, so he wouldn’t go nutzo on the campaign trail. You want a political insider? He’s been a congressman and a mayor, and he still knows every old-school wardheeler in the city. God knows he has the outsiders tied up. Now all he needs is a platform. Suggested running mate: Ludye Wallace. (JR)

Best Party Animal:

Paul Zamek

It isn’t how much booze a party animal can hold. It’s how much cheer he can spread. Wherever Paul Zamek is, there’s the party. Whether the South African native is escorting Dobie Gray from Nashville to Johannesburg for a command performance for Nelson Mandela, selling kitty litter at a pet convention in Chicago, or hosting a national country-music talent contest sponsored by a whiskey company, Zamek will be enjoying the time of his life. His openhearted abundance of wit, warmth and wild spontaneity brightens the world where he walks. (MM)

Best Non-Celebrity Woman in a Small Black Dress:

Karin Coble Eaton

While her tastes run more toward fashion’s cutting edge, Karin Coble Eaton stops traffic in something tiny, sexy and black. She spent her formative years modeling in Europe. Does that give her an unfair advantage? Don’t forget that, among the Coble women, chicness is a genetic trait. (KW)

Best Non-Celebrity Man in Black-Tie:

Aubrey Harwell

While a dinner jacket adds a little panache to even the frumpiest of men, in many cases it looks as if the tuxedo is wearing the man, and not vice versa. When Aubrey Harwell, Nashville’s most ineligible bachelor, goes black-tie, there’s no doubt who’s in charge. (KW)

Best Party Host/Hostess:

Tie—Julie Boehm/Nan Parrish

There’s an art to the art of entertainment. The best hostesses face the challenge with ease, elegance and enthusiasm. Whether they are chairing a party for 500 in a hotel ballroom or a dinner party for eight in their own dining rooms, Julie and Nan know how to make a guest feel welcome—and wanted. (KW)

Best Nerd:

Doug Brown, information systems engineer, Metro Nashville

In these days of techno-chic, it’s getting tougher and tougher to identify the nerds. Only a few of them wear horn-rimmed glasses anymore. And nobody wears a pocket protector. Instead, you have to look for the true hallmark of nerdiness: absolute, unerring knowledge. Brown manages Metro Nashville’s official World Wide Web site, which includes a laundry list of city agencies. From the arena to the Metro Charter, he simply knows how everything works. (JMoses)

Best Person to Beautify the City:

Betty Brown

Magazines flock to her house to photograph her expansive garden, and when she’s not knee deep in bulbs, she’s caught up in her passionate crusade to save our cities’ trees. The best time to plant a tree, she asks rhetorially? Yesterday. The next best time? Today.

Best Local Writer:

John Egerton

John Egerton’s love for the South is evident in everything he writes. The Americanization of Dixie, Generations: An American Family and Southern Food helped establish him as an expert on the region, but it was his most recent book, Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South, that won him the recognition he deserved. Awarded both a Robert F. Kennedy Book and Journalism Award and the Southern Book Critics Circle Award, Speak Now Against the Day struck a chord. Now Egerton is hot stuff on the campus lecture circuit. We’re glad for him, provided he always remembers to come back home. (GG)

Most Fascinating Local Sports Figure:

Don Meyer, David Lipscomb University

There’s a fine line between genius and insanity, and sometimes even Meyer’s basketball players aren’t quite sure which side their coach is on. Like some mad roundball alchemist, he takes the elements of his team and turns them into a powerhouse. Because he chooses to toil in the obscurity of a tiny school, few fans around the country have ever heard of Meyer. But other coaches know him. Even the big names like Dean Smith use his instructional videos to teach fundamentals to their own players. (RH)

Best Rising Celebrity Couple:

Kerry Brock and John Seigenthaler

Consider the big-name couples: Johnny and June. Lorrie and Fred. As individuals, they start out with fame and fortune; then they lump all that fame and fortune together. Nobody is the dead weight. Such couples go by first names only, in the grand tradition of Martha and Bronson, Sandra and Dick, Clare and Hunter, Annette and Irwin, Jamie and Spook, Jane and Dick. Now Kerry and John—each one tall, each one dark, each one handsome—take up the mantle. The Power Punch. The old one-two. (KW)

Most Respected Government Figure in an Appointed Position:

Bob Corker

He runs, he leaps, he flies. On an average day, Corker arrives at work before dawn, tackling a gnarly multi-billion dollar state budget, rescuing the Oilers deal, dousing a TennCare brushfire—doing in three hours what most mortals could only accomplish in three months. A successful Chattanooga businessman, Corker became Gov. Don Sundquist’s finance commissioner after the ’94 elections. Republicans love him, but so do legislative Democrats, who, jokingly, have been suggesting that he run for something on their ticket. (BD)

Best Mayor of East Nashville:

Jeff Ockerman

Ockerman, a former Council member, has taken some time off from politics to make a living, but he still knows every alley and pothole in the 6th district. One of the original pioneers in East End, where he is now co-president of the neighborhood association, Ockerman is savvy about urban design issues. He also has the moxie to conduct war games on the East Bank if the People’s Republic of East Nashville ever secedes from the Union. (CK)

Best School Crossing Guards:

Yolanda King/Deborah Farlan

Yolanda King has been guard on duty at the intersection of Fairfax and 25th Avenues for just over a year. Deborah Farlan has been at the corner of Blair and 24th for a decade. Both them, however, are fixtures. They call the kids by name. They wave at the parents, the parents wave back. Sometimes, the parents even bring coffee and muffins. But make no mistake, these women are not bought off that easy. You go faster than the 15-mph speed limit, and the whistles start screeching. It’s a sound that carries for blocks. For parents around Hillsboro Village, it’s music to their ears. (MJ)

Best Head of Hair on a Woman:

Cindi Earle

Cindi’s fine jewelry turns up on some of the finest necks, fingers and wrists in Nashville society. But her own crowning glory is a mane of chestnut hair that is the envy of every woman and the fantasy of many a man. Steve George at Trumps wields the scissors, but it’s Cindi who decides how to make the cut. (KW)

Best Head of Hair on a Man:

Vince Gill

His hair, thick and black with just the slightest hint of a curl, fairly begs to tousled. When he shaved his head several months ago, grown women wept, and a media hair commotion ensued. Thank God he’s growing it back. All is right again with the world. (KW)

Best Future Chancellor of Vanderbilt University:

Lamar Alexander

Ole Lamar is probably trying for a permanent gig on Crossfire, but his Tennessee plutocratic pals may soon come calling. One year ago the idea of Vanderbilt sans Joe B. Wyatt seemed heresy. Now, some of the town’s biggest bullies, people like Jim Neal, Tom Frist and Lou Conner, are on Wyatt’s case. Meanwhile, Lamar will need another $300,000-a-year job to tide him over before the presidential bug bites again. Hey, he’s got experience. He’s an alum. And boy, can he ever run a PR office. (BD)

Best Litigious Nashvillian:

Betty Bell

She went to a game, sat behind a goal and got hit by an errant puck. Now she’s suing the Nashville Knights for damages. For those of you who’ve never watched a hockey game, here’s a clue about the nature of the sport. Hockey games are action-packed. Sticks are raised, players are tripped, helmets are ripped off, and the puck often leaves the ice. A popular bumper sticker reads, “Give Blood, Play Hockey.” So if you go to a game, don’t expect the calm of the 1952 Wimbledon final. And if you sit behind a goal, listen to the pregame disclaimer. And heads up. (MJ)

Best Geek

Robert Beckett, Telalink

So you think you want to be a geek. Can you take it? Lots of times, Robert Beckett puts in 24-hour days, and he’s more likely to be up at midnight than between the civil hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For food, he relies on the neighborhood Arby’s. When he’s caught up in a repair job, he just orders takeout. Yessir, geekiness is hard work, but it does have its rewards. For one thing, other people treat you like a god. Here’s what somebody recently said about Robert: “I don’t exactly know what he’s talking about most of the time, but whatever he’s saying, I know I need to be listening.” What non-geek commands such respect? (JMoses)

Best Public Figure Likely to Pick up an Assault Rifle and Go on a Shooting Spree:

Bobbie Patay

Patay, lobbyist for the conservative Eagle Forum, is notorious for her temper, which one observer said “precedes her into a room.” A key supporter of the recent spate of morality legislation, she was especially furious when legislators refused to appoint more conservatives to the textbook committee. We hear state Sen. Steve Cohen is being fitted for a Kevlar jacket. (JR)

Best Model:

Karen Haffelfinger

She has a thousand faces—all of them beautiful, all of them available through the Harper Agency. Casting directors and fashion show coordinators adore Karen for the elegant lankiness of her limbs and for the easy good humor of her disposition. Karen gives her wry little model’s pout, and even the saddest rags look glad. (JB)

Best Millionaire:

Dr. Thomas Frist Jr.

So what if he’s not Joe B. Wyatt’s greatest fan? So what if he’s got more money than he knows what to do with? Tommy Frist plunked down a cool $2 million to help make the Oilers deal a reality. Then he turned around and guaranteed funding to convert the Broadway Post Office into a downtown art museum. That’s known as putting your money where your mouth is. Maybe some other folks should put up or shut up. (BH)