Next week’s election ballot is one of the largest primary ballots in Davidson County’s history, largely because it includes several newly created judicial seats. But that doesn’t mean voters are particularly curious about the positions at stake.

Voter turnout has been relatively low in Metro during the last few local election cycles. The only recent exception was the May 7, 1996, stadium referendum, which asked Nashville voters to decide whether to spend public dollars on a facility for the Houston Oilers. Even then, the turnout (42 percent of Metro’s 296,000 registered voters at the time) was healthy—but not staggering. The August 1995 mayoral and Metro Council races drew only 25 percent of registered voters. Eight years ago, the May 1990 county primary, which included the same judicial races that will show up on next week’s ballot, attracted only 37 percent of the county’s voters to the polls.

The Davidson County Election Commission reported earlier this week that only about 2,800 of Nashville’s 307,000 currently registered voters had turned out to cast early ballots.

The prospects for a lackluster turnout may stem from the sheer volume of candidates and races on the ballot. More than 70 candidates are competing for attention in three dozen races, some of them uncontested. The result may well be frustration, both for candidates and for voters.

“People are just confused,” says Parker Toler, one of six Democratic candidates for Register of Deeds. “With a lot of voters, when we call and ask them who they plan to support, they just say there are so many people in that race they don’t know.”

Toler and some of his fellow candidates in the Register of Deeds race have another source of frustration. In their election, the candidate to beat is state legislator and former Metro Mayor Bill Boner, a man whose charm and political acumen, combined with his widely publicized, colorful past, make him the best-known candidate in the field. He easily receives the most media attention, overwhelming many of his lesser-known opponents.

Meanwhile, the glut of local judicial races poses another set of problems. The judicial elections are important, not just because Davidson County needs qualified jurists on the bench, but also because judges are only elected every eight years. “There’s just so little interest, which is a shame, because it’s only every eight years that you have a chance to change the face of your judiciary, or if you like it, to keep it the same,” says Casey Moreland, who’s running for a newly created General Sessions Court judgeship. But Moreland and other candidates understand why voters are confused about the judicial races.

The May 5 ballot includes 12 contested judicial races involving more than 30 candidates hoping to fill various seats on Davidson County’s Circuit, Criminal, Chancery, General Sessions, and Juvenile courts.

Voters may actually be inside the voting booth before they realize that some of the attorneys they know and like are running against each other in the same race. It’s almost impossible for the average voter to keep up with which candidates are running in which divisions of which courts.

Shelby County public defender A.C. Wharton, who was recently in Nashville to speak to a local journalism group, says Memphis voters often have the same sort of rude awakening. In Shelby County, he says, the process of electing judges is even more confused because there are no primaries to weed out candidates.

Local General Sessions Court candidate Randy Kennedy says some Metro voters are confused about the various divisions of certain courts. Some voters, he says, don’t realize that all judicial positions are countywide seats. “Some of them think they can only vote in certain races,” Kennedy says. “That’s a sad commentary on the understanding within the community about the judicial system.”

The typical voter only learns the names of the candidates by seeing them on yard signs. In this season’s judicial races, many of the signs don’t even say what kind of court the candidate is running for. Some of them simply read, “Judge.”

But while the 1998 countywide election season is plagued by voter confusion, and threatens to be marked by voter apathy, it also marks some milestones.

For one thing, a number of popular, well-known black candidates are running in several local races, and some of them have particular reason to feel optimistic. Attorneys Carlton Lewis and Andrei Ellen Lee, both running for separate, newly created General Sessions judgeships, face stiff competition from better-known candidates. Nevertheless, each has come on very strong in his or her campaign.

A third black candidate, young marketing executive Jamie Isabel, is one of the six Democrats in the Register of Deeds race. In recent days, Isabel has begun putting up yard signs that feature his picture, reminding voters—intentionally or not—that there is a black candidate on the ballot in that race. Another black candidate, Democrat Aubrey Allen, is running against entrenched Juvenile Court Clerk Kenny Norman.

Davidson County voters have never elected a black candidate in any non-judicial, countywide race. Even black judges have been few and far between. Right now, Metro’s only black judge is Davidson County Circuit Court Judge Irvin Kilcrease, who is running unopposed in this election cycle. Only three other blacks—including A.A. Birch, now a Tennessee Supreme Court justice—have held judicial seats in Davidson County since Metro government was established in 1963. Thus far, in fact, Birch has been the only black General Sessions judge in Metro’s 35-year history.

Meanwhile, this is also a landmark year for the local Republican Party, which has never been much of a force in Davidson County politics. This time around, however, there are six GOP candidates in the Register of Deeds race. The one catch is that this is the only election in which any Republicans are running. As a result, anyone choosing to vote in the May 5 Republican primary will only be able to vote in the Register of Deeds race.

The other local races, will, for the most part, be decided in next week’s Democratic primary. (There are several independent candidates in a few races who will appear on the general election ballot in August.)

That means the six GOP candidates in the Register of Deeds race aren’t expecting a huge turnout. “I’ll get fewer votes in this countywide race than I did in my district races for Metro Council,” notes former two-term Council member Paul Koulakov, one of the GOP six-pack.

This week, the Scene focuses on the most hotly contested races included on the May 5 ballot, among them the three newly created local judgeships. Our overview does not feature every contested race on the ballot and is not intended as a comprehensive guide to the primary elections.

A toss up for Register of Deeds

In a recent poll of 400 likely voters in Davidson County, nearly 40 percent said they were undecided about which candidate to support in the local Register of Deeds race.

The results of the poll, conducted by an independent research firm, may say something about the Register of Deeds job, the constitutional office that records real estate transactions and related information. The Register of Deeds earns $84,000 a year, more than the mayor (whose salary is $75,000), but it is still not one of Metro’s high-profile jobs.

Beyond that, the field of candidates for the office—which is being vacated by the retirement of 36-year Register of Deeds Felix Wilson—is a wide one. There are six of them, and literally at the top of the ballot’s list (by virtue of alphabetical order) is state legislator and former Metro Mayor Bill Boner.

The poll indicates that, as of March 25, the race was a toss-up between Boner and computer-systems analyst Bill Garrett, son of longtime Metro trustee Bill Garrett. The poll showed that, as of that time, Garrett would take 25 percent of the vote, while Boner stood at 23 percent. The other candidates were running in the single digits, while a stunning 39 percent of those polled didn’t know whom they planned to vote for in next Tuesday’s Democratic primary.

“People are beginning to recognize that this race is between Bill Garrett and Bill Boner,” says Garrett, 39, who worked for IBM as a programmer and systems analyst until he resigned recently to run for the Register of Deeds office. Garrett also put in 13 years with Metro, working to computerize the Metro trustee’s office while his father was there.

He says that sort of technical experience helps make him the best choice to run the Register of Deeds office, which, all of the candidates agree, needs to be upgraded and computerized. “My experience is a near perfect match with the needs of the office,” Garrett says.

The outcome of next week’s Register of Deeds election may well determine state Rep. Bill Boner’s political fate. Supporters predicting a Boner victory are already talking about another Boner mayoral campaign sometime in the future. But even if Boner wins the primary, he is not assured of an ultimate victory. The winner of a six-candidate GOP primary will face the Democratic nominee in August, when Register of Deeds will be the only office realistically up for grabs on the general election ballot. (Two other countywide offices—a General Sessions Court seat and the Juvenile Court Clerk position—have independent candidates whose names will appear on the ballot in August, as does the Register of Deeds office.)

Boner, now 53, began his reemergence into political life in 1996, when he returned to the state Legislature to represent East Nashville. Next week’s election will answer the central question of the campaign: Will Boner continue his ascent, or, for literally the first time in his life, will he lose a political contest?

In the past week or so, Boner the politician has made good use of the tornado damage in his old East Nashville neighborhood. Residents talking in a television commercial praise him as the “only” politician who has really done anything to help the tornado victims. Then the commercial cuts to Boner chain-sawing a tree and stopping briefly to wipe his brow.

Garrett, who has been embraced both by old-time political insiders and by progressive newcomers, could begin celebrating now, were it not for the four other candidates in the race, each of whom has some qualifications for the job—and each of whom will siphon off some of the anti-Boner vote.

Parker Toler, a retired Metro water services supervisor, is a second-tier candidate behind Garrett and Boner, but he still has a respectable, loyal following. Toler, who worked for Metro for 35 years, planned to run for the Register of Deeds office in 1994, but he agreed to wait until the next election cycle, after incumbent Felix Wilson decided to run for one last term.

Toler, 56, is an almost achingly nice fellow. He is the former potentate of Middle Tennessee’s Al-Menah Shrine, which represents 37 counties. Toler points out that, except for Boner, he is the only candidate in the race with experience supervising Metro government employees. He managed permitting and inspection for Metro water services for about 30 years and was responsible for the collection of about $2 million a year.

Former Metro Council member Lorinda McLaughlin, 42, manages Gold Star Realty in Ashland City. McLaughlin did not seek reelection to a second term, even though she was a popular figure when she served in Council from 1991 to 1995. She is married to a Metro firefighter and says she wants to get back into public service.

“I’ve been thinking about it since I left the Council,” McLaughlin says, “because I knew Felix [Wilson] was retiring. [The Register of Deeds job] ties in with my real-estate background, and I just decided it was a good position to have and that I’m qualified for it.”

Metro Council member Eric Crafton, 30, is one of the most conservative voices in Council. The former target of a recall effort in his Council district, Crafton, a home builder and land developer with C & C Development, has been a controversial elected official. But he has also been a voice of reason. For example, Crafton, who holds degrees in math and economics from Vanderbilt University, was the first and most vocal Council member to advocate a public referendum on the construction of a stadium for the Houston Oilers. It was largely due to his efforts that Davidson County voters got a chance to register their opinions on the issue.

Crafton says he’s not had a lot of time to campaign because his father has been ill, but he says he’s going to try to come on strong in the last few days of the campaign. “It’s hard to really look past the candidates and find the most qualified,” he says. “But I’ve been in the news a lot and people know how I think.”

Jamie Isabel, 32, a marketing executive with Dalmatian Creative Agency, has been active in several local political races. In this campaign, he is being assisted by state Sen. Thelma Harper.

While Isabel says he doesn’t think voters should support him simply because he is black, he says, “The county is waiting to elect a strong, black candidate.

“If people are looking to put quality, business-minded people in elected office, I’m the one they should support,” he says. —L.M.G

Raising questions in the Juvenile Court race

In the last days of the campaign for Juvenile Court judge, challenger Betty Adams’ campaign has finally articulated a message. Hearing it, two words come to mind:Penny White.

Last week, in her most effective press conference to date, former Davidson County prosecutor Betty Adams, 52, plowed into her opponent, incumbent Juvenile Court Judge Andy Shookhoff, 47. When families and friends of victims of violent crimes took to the microphone to recount horror stories of their experiences in Shookhoff’s court, it was hard not to recall the drubbing former Tennessee Supreme Court Justice White took in 1996.

In that “retention” election, voters statewide were asked to cast a “yes” or “no” vote to determine whether White, a McWherter appointee, would remain on the bench. Those are tough to lose. But victims’ rights advocates were incensed over a ruling in which the Supreme Court justices—White among them—had ordered a new sentencing hearing for a man who’d been given the death penalty for raping and killing a 78-year-old woman. Victims’ rights advocates successfully targeted White and convinced the electorate to remove her from the bench.

Now the local victims’ rights forces have endorsed Adams and are supporting her, marking a milestone in a campaign that, until now, hadn’t done much beyond exploiting the vague “soft on crime” perception of Shookhoff. But the question remains: Is Shookhoff really soft on crime?

Shookhoff’s supporters, and Shookhoff himself, say the answer is no. He points out that approximately 14,000 cases come before the Juvenile Court in a given year, and only about one-third of those cases involve kids who have committed crimes. Of those cases, only about 7 percent involve violent offenders.

Shookhoff says it is a misperception that he coddles kid criminals. In most cases, he says, sentences for juveniles charged with violent offenses result from plea bargains between the defense attorneys and the assistant district attorneys assigned to the case.

“It would be very unusual for me to second-guess the assumptions made by both the district attorney and the defense attorney,” he says.

Shookhoff concedes that it might have been accurate to characterize the Juvenile Court as “soft on crime” when he took over the disorganized office in 1990. At that point, only two staffers from the district attorney’s office were assigned to Juvenile Court. Now there are 12.

“People who go back to the early days of my term could make these criticisms fairly,” he says. “I think that criticism now is either based on the distant past, or it’s based on misinformation, or it’s based on playing politics with the truth.”

Nevertheless, in the waning days of the campaign, Adams, who was commissioner of the state Department of Youth Development in the McWherter administration, has managed to convey the message that Shookhoff, personally, is easy on juvenile offenders.

“I think [Shookhoff is] going to do great in neighborhoods that don’t have a juvenile crime problem. He’s going to do great in my neighborhood,” says Allison Brooks, who lives in Green Hills.

Brooks and her husband, Phil, are owners in the local Calypso Cafe restaurants. Six years ago, one of their restaurant managers was murdered by a juvenile with a lengthy record of various convictions—including battery and sexual assault. The juvenile, Chuck Rose, then 17, had been in and out of Juvenile Court throughout much of his young life.

Even Rose has said that his treatment in Juvenile Court was a joke. “It’s all screwed up,” he told The Tennessean. “They don’t do nothing.”

Allison Brooks says she is “convinced” that, if somebody other than Shookhoff had been in charge, things would have been different. “You can’t sit in an ivory tower and decide all is right with the world,” she says.

But even Adams credits Shookhoff, a former Vanderbilt University law school professor and former legal-aid attorney, with some effective Juvenile Court reforms, such as stationing probation officers in satellite offices in the communities where probationers live.

Shookhoff’s campaign points to statistics that indicate a recent drop in juvenile crime. Figures released by the Shookhoff camp show a decrease in violent juvenile crime of almost 30 percent in the first quarter of this year. For example, during the first quarter of this year, there were 95 charges involving major violent crimes, down from 131 charges during the same period last year. Shookhoff’s supporters say the judge’s programs deserve at least partial credit for these improvements.

District attorney’s office prosecutors assigned to Juvenile Court can’t be politically visible in the Shookhoff-Adams race, but some of them are quietly supporting Adams. She has also been endorsed by the Fraternal Order of Police and the Nashville Fire Fighters and Fire Service Employees Association.

Shookhoff supporters dismiss those endorsements, saying that incumbents never make everyone happy. As far as Adams is concerned, however, the endorsements do have significance. “People who work in the system and understand the system are very supportive,” she says.

The Juvenile Court race reflects other divisions in Nashville as well. Shookhoff is considered part of the West Nashville elite, and he has a reputation as a liberal. He dines at coffeehouses and reeks of conscientiousness. He had a part in prompting The Tennessean to write features about Nashville children who are looking for foster and adoptive homes. He carries photos and neatly typed profiles of some of those children in his jacket pocket, and he talks passionately about them.

“If these children are just a file, you can go home and go to sleep,” Shookhoff says. “If they are individual, young, delightful human beings, you cannot just sit in your robe on the bench.”

By contrast, Betty Adams, who lives in East Nashville, has another kind of appeal. What’s more, she exudes common sense, a quality that is valuable, if rare, in politics. “I’m not trying to make [Shookhoff] feel awkward,” she’ll say. “But I want the job.”

Straightforwardly, she says, “Judges can’t make any promises. About the only thing a candidate can promise in judicial races is fairness. Everyone who comes before this court will be treated fairly—and that includes victims.”

About the only negative thing former state Public Service Commissioner Frank Cochran can say about his opponent, Ellen Lyle, is that she’s disloyal for having left the Republican Party. Twice appointed to the Davidson County Chancery Court by Republican Gov. Don Sundquist, Lyle switched parties as a matter of political necessity. After Sundquist appointed her to the court for the first time, she earned universally high marks and had strong support from some Democrats. Nevertheless, when she ran for election to the seat, Democrat Carol McCoy bested her.

When another court vacancy occurred, Sundquist again appointed Lyle, 40, to the bench. Now, once again, she is seeking election to a seat she already holds. This time, however, she’s running as a Democrat.

Davidson County politics isn’t kind to Republicans, and Lyle, a University of Tennessee law school graduate, recognizes that. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party establishment has embraced her.

Insiders see Cochran, 60, as a threat to Lyle, mostly because of the name recognition he gained while serving 18 years on the now defunct Public Service Commission. But Cochran, also a graduate of UT law school, is also widely viewed as a challenger against an incumbent who doesn’t need to be replaced. Cochran has practiced very little law since 1994, when he left the PSC and ran in the Democratic primary for governor. The Nashville Fire Fighters and Fire Service Employees Association has said either candidate is acceptable. Meanwhile, Lyle has been endorsed by the local Fraternal Order of Police, and, in a recent poll, received positive ratings from 95 percent of the Nashville Bar Association membership, compared to Cochran’s 19 percent.

When Davidson County General Sessions Judge Penny Harrington filed qualifying petitions to run against one of her popular General Sessions Court colleagues, Judge Bill Faimon, it became apparent just how small a town Nashville really is.

In the local political community, phones began ringing off the hook, and the prevailing question was, “Why Bill?” Instead of running for re-election to her own General Sessions seat, Harrington had decided to go after one of her fellow judges.

Harrington, 52, has said she wanted to run against Faimon because he has resisted change in the local courts. Beyond that, she wants to establish a court to deal with 18- to 22-year-olds charged in drug cases and to develop prevention and rehabilitation programs for those young offenders.

Harrington, a Vanderbilt law school graduate, does seem to have significant support, but even some of her friends concede that she has a reputation as a kind of “Dr. Jekyll/Mrs. Hyde.” Pleasant, even charming, in many settings, Harrington is nevertheless considered to be temperamental and inconsiderate on the bench. Among lawyers at least, she is Davidson County’s most unpopular judge, as evidenced by a recent Nashville Bar Association poll. The same poll of the bar membership gave Faimon, 66, a Vanderbilt law school graduate, the second-highest recommendations of any judge in Nashville, right behind Ellen Lyle.

Harrington has acknowledged her unpopularity among attorneys, noting that she makes them justify their reasoning when they charge certain fees in certain cases.

This has been one of the most closely watched races of the political season. There are three candidates in this race, but the race is really between Cliff Knowles, an attorney with Bass Berry & Sims, and Carol Soloman, a lawyer in private practice.

Knowles, 46, and Soloman, 56, are embroiled in the season’s second-most-negative campaign. Only the race for Juvenile Court judge—in which challenger Betty Adams has accused the incumbent, Andy Shookhoff, of coddling criminals—has been uglier.

In both cases, the men have been on the defensive. In the Eighth Circuit race, Soloman, who received her law degree from the Nashville School of Law, has characterized her opponent, a University of Tennessee law school graduate, as an overprivileged big-business type who hasn’t handled the volume and kinds of individual cases she has.

Knowles supporters have fired back, saying, first of all, that Knowles has done significant pro bono work on behalf of needy clients and that he grew up in Pensacola, Fla., in an environment that was anything but privileged. They note that Knowles, the son of a laborer, received an academic scholarship to Vanderbilt University and worked his way through undergraduate school.

Meanwhile, Soloman does have solid experience representing indviduals. What’s more, she has a reputation as an able campaigner, even if she’s also considered something of a loose cannon.

The legal community is overwhelmingly on Knowles’ side, as evidenced by a Nashville Bar Association poll in which 92 percent of the lawyers responding gave him a positive rating, compared to only 40 percent for Soloman. Meanwhile, Soloman has received endorsements from both the Fraternal Order of Police and the Nashville Fire Fighters and Fire Service Employees Association.

A third candidate, Ray Galbreath, an attorney with the Tennessee Department of Health, got a positive rating from just over 13 percent of the Nashville Bar Association membership. Galbreath, 45, is a Nashville School of Law graduate and a former night-court commissioner.

This race, which will fill one of two newly created General Sessions courts in Davidson County, has emerged as one of the friendliest of the political season. The races for both of the new General Sessions seats also give a good idea of the quality of candidates, ballotwide.

There are two favorites in this campaign, although all four candidates are well qualified. The Nashville Bar Association opinion poll gave its highest marks in this campaign to Randy Kennedy, 47, a popular former Metro Council member who is a Nashville School of Law graduate, and to former General Sessions Judge Casey Moreland, 40, also a graduate of Nashville School of Law. Metro Council appointed Moreland to the court in 1995 to fill an unexpired term, but he lost that seat to Sue McKnight Evans in a primary election the next year. Moreland has secured endorsements from the Fraternal Order of Police and the Nashville Coalition Against Domestic Violence. The Nashville Fire Fighters and Fire Service Employees Association has endorsed both Kennedy and Moreland.

Meanwhile, Andrei Ellen Lee, 48, a Juvenile Court referee who has taken a leave of absence to run for the General Sessions bench, is the only black woman running countywide in the May 5 elections. Lee is a TSU graduate with a law degree from the University of Detroit. If she won, she would become the only black woman ever to serve on the bench in Davidson County.

Tony Adgent, 50, a Nashville School of Law graduate, is a former child-abuse investigator for the state of Tennessee and worked in business marketing at BellSouth for 16 years. Most recently, Adgent has been an associate at the law firm of high-profile criminal defense attorney Lionel Barrett.

In this campaign for a newly created General Sessions judgeship, second-term Metro Council member John Aaron Holt, 42, has the benefit of name recognition. A graduate of the Nashville School of Law, Holt has 14 years of experience as a trial lawyer in general private practice. He has been endorsed by the Nashville Fire Fighters and Fire Service Employees Association.

Meanwhile, two other well-qualified, well-organized candidates have come on strong. Carlton Lewis, 39, a criminal defense attorney with Petway, Blackshear & Cain, is also a Nashville School of Law graduate and has been practicing law for 12 years. He is one of only two black candidates running for a judicial seat this year. If elected, he would be only the fifth black judge to serve in Davidson County since the beginning of Metro in 1963. Lewis has the endorsement of the Fraternal Order of Police, a particularly noteworthy fact, he says, given that his practice primarily consists of criminal-defense work.

Amanda McClendon, 40, has been practicing both civil and criminal law for 14 years. She graduated from the University of Tennessee law school and describes the General Sessions courts as Davidson County’s “most diverse.”

In a recent poll, members of the Nashville Bar Association gave Lewis the most positive rating, with nearly 89 percent highly recommending or recommending him for the job. Holt received a positive rating from just over 63 percent, while McClendon got recommendations from nearly 36 percent of Nashville’s lawyers