Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Politics Davidson County vs. Williamson County
Posted by Betsy Phillips on Tue, Feb 21, 2012 at 5:20 AM
This part is especially interesting:
With the South’s shift to the GOP, Tennessee’s power base has — like its affluent population — moved out of the city and off the farm and into the tony suburbs.The population boom, of course, has bolstered Williamson County’s representation, while Davidson County’s delegation has largely stayed static. Williamson gets ever more seats in the legislature. And where the county used to be a red dot in a sea of blue, the state’s conservative shift means that Davidson is now the outlier, a Democratic outpost surrounded by Republican counties.
But I think that this story helps shed a lot of light on the line Republican leaders have to walk. Some parts of the base expect red-meat social-issue bills. But the part of the base with money is well-educated, and they and their bosses are often not from here. Even if they consider themselves fiscally conservative, their patience for red-meat social issues bills — bills that make Tennessee look like a state full of yahoos where talented people who aren't from here might not feel welcome — is thin.
I'm not saying that these folks are ever going to abandon the Republican Party. But I think it is interesting to keep an eye on where they put their money within the party.
Comments (22)
Showing 1-22 of 22
Meh. I think a lot of those people are social conservatives too. I don't exactly see the "sane" Republicans stepping up and saying, "hey, this anti-Muslim, anti-gay, anti-immigrant stuff is making us look like a a bunch of hayseeds which is bad for business." Nope, they're usually beating the same drum, because a lot of them are religious and they agree with this crap.
like
dislike
The Southron flag in the county seal is a nice touch.
Of yahooliganism.
"I think a lot of those people are social conservatives too. I don't exactly see the "sane" Republicans stepping up and saying, "hey, this anti-Muslim, anti-gay, anti-immigrant stuff is making us look like a a bunch of hayseeds which is bad for business."
Exactly. And don't forget who their representation is in Washington- Marsha Blackburn. I've mentioned this on another thread, that Williamson county may attract a lot of out of staters, but I think you'd probably be surprised at how many are from other southern states, not New York and Michigan.
Betsy, I love your optimism, but, I fear Southern Beale's post is more reflective of the reality in Williamson County. And, even though many educated conservatives don't agree with the yahoos, they don't want to alienate them or their votes by standing up for what is right. Also, "education" is subjective. IQ vs EQ.
We saw much the same pattern years before in Atlanta and its suburbs, and in one Atlanta suburban county in particular as it became a Republican powerhouse in the state. When I moved back to Tennessee, I felt like a time traveler from the future. My husband and I could predict what would happen just from the patterns we had seen in Georgia and the patterns we were now seeing in Tennessee. Very similar.
The transplants from all over the country turned Atlanta suburbs/sprawl Republican, and the religionists took over.
Atlanta metro is now experiencing some major flip back to Democratic because of growing black and immigrant enclaves.
I predict the country music industry will eventually move, lock, stock, and amplifier, to Williamson County and even into Maury County. This is already happening. The Nashville Scene will eventually become the Franklin Scene or a foreign language newspaper catering to an immigrant community.
"The Nashville Scene will eventually become the Franklin Scene or a foreign language newspaper catering to an immigrant community."
The Scene is already written in a mix of Modern Hipster and American Cynic. What other foreign languages would they find room for? :>
Democratic because of growing black
********************************
Where are you seeing this??? If anything, folks are talking about gentrification.
Anyway, party talk is for sheeple and I think social issues are nothing but distractions from the important obligations of gov't (Fiscal responsibility, protecting our freedoms, and paving roads).
"Nope, they're usually beating the same drum, because a lot of them are religious and they agree with this crap."
Okay, but when are we going to see some of these religious people act like they actually read the Gospels? That's the thing that confounds me. They claim the moral high ground based on Biblical principles, but where are the actual works without which faith is dead?
"The Southron flag in the county seal is a nice touch. Of yahooliganism."
How quickly we forget that we in Nashville prefer our confederate flags be located next to the interstate adorning fiberglass statues.
I laugh everytime I see that "Welcome to Franklin, #1 Small Town In Tennessee" sign in Cool Springs. If they are still considered a small town by anybody and not just a tony, sprawlish Nashville suburb with major traffic problems, then I have no idea what a "small town" is anymore.
And to the point about Williamson becoming an economic powerhouse, and Donna alluded to this when talking about the Atlanta suburbs, a lot of it has to do with the relaxation of zoning regulations. We're seeing this in Franklin and Cool Springs, as well as over in Rutherford county. You want to see where this ultimately leads, go to the Atlanta suburban county of Gwinnett and try to get around. It's a freaking nightmare. There are office parks and strip malls everywhere. If you miss a turn, good luck getting turned back around anytime soon. There has been negligent planning by county officials there for decades and it shows. Counties like that and Williamson can ultimately throw all kinds of incentives to encourage development, but without planning that considers things other than $$$$, over time, the quality of life quotient will suffer.
As far as the embarrassingly racist, homophobic, misogynistic and just-plain anti-American bent of the TN RICO (nee GOP), I have only one question:
Why do the best people who remain in the Republican party seem so hell-bent to act like the worst people who ever called themselves Democrats? (Coming from pre-civil rights era Mississippi and having witnessed how elections were administered in Daley Senior's Chicago , I know of what I speak).
"The Scene is already written in a mix of Modern Hipster and American Cynic"
I misread that at first as "American Cyrillic," and was thinking that it was just going to be a few minutes until Gast accused the Scene of reprinting articles from Pravda.
Did someone say "artisanal fixed-gear Tumblr iPhone small batch reclaimed Instagram"?
It is so enjoyable to read so many informed comments by people who know absolutely nothing about the subject.
I have worked in or campaigned in Williamson County for 20 years and I can accurately observe that the vast majority of comments above are just the sort of stereotypical {and bigoted} nonsense that Pith loves to criticize when made by conservatives.
Allow me to elucidate:
1) Williamson County is no hot bed for social conservative rabble rousing in local issues. The County Commission unanimously voted to not allow guns in county parks. Unanimously. And they gave Representative Charles Sargent a standing ovation for voting against it in the Legislature. Is the County Commission pushing anti-Islamic legislation? No. Are there fights over other social issues {or urban chickens for that matter}?
And this is despite the fact that Williamson County government is all Republican. It would seem that if the county were dominated by the right wing, that would be far different.
2) Williamson County, unlike Davidson, has a reputation for excellence in administration that goes back for years. The County Clerk is not selling marriage licenses or hiring supporters for what are effectively no-show jobs. The judges don't leave people waiting for hours while they talk on their cell phone or operate side businesses. If Williamson County had a NASCAR race, they would not have let corruption lose it.
3) Williamson County schools do not spend noticeably more than Davidson County but they use it better. Even children who are receiving free and reduced lunches do better in Williamson than Davidson. One major reason is that Williamson County's Commission has line item veto over the School Board budget. Anyone who ever criticized the Davidson County School Board for asking for money for one thing and then using it somewhere else ought to love that this doesn't happen in Willliamson County.
For a variety of reasons, the Williamson School Board is much more attentive to parents' views. That empowers parents to get more involved in what goes on in specific schools and in the whole system.
4) Economically Williamson County has all the advantages noted by J.R. Lind but it has more. For example, despite having several incorporated cities {Franklin, Fairview, Spring Hill, Nolensville, Thompson's Station and Brent-something-or-other}, Williamson County has much less trouble with its planning than Davidson. Much of this has to do with a functioning 24 person county commission instead of 40 council members.
5) Recent County Mayors in Williamson County have been, as a whole, superior to Nashville's Mayors. Bob Ring, Clint Callicott and Rogers Anderson have served as County Mayors since the 1980s. All three are Republicans. Over the same time, Nashville's Mayors were Bill Boner, Phil Bredesen, Bill Purcell and Karl Dean. All are Democrats. Of those four, the best has been the last.
About Boner, nothing more need be said.
Bredesen had a generally good tenure marred only by some bad business deals like the contract with the Titans and the Dell deal.
Purcell benefited from a growing economy but his long term failure to deal with the city's crumbling infrastructure seemed to be designed to avoid confrontation and make him a statewide candidate for something. Long term, the downside of his legacy may be his encouragement of the growth in politically active neighborhood associations which may come to seriously retard economic growth.
Mayor Dean seems to have the best record of managing things in the face of economic recession, floods and other problems. I believe the fact that Dean, like his Williamson County colleagues, benefits from not looking for higher office, which allows his to make tough decisions without worrying how such choices hurt or help his political career. To be sure Callicott gave up the County Mayor's job to run for State Senate but that is less of an upward movement and more about Clint missing the Legislature.
The bottom line is that instead of making silly and inaccurate comments about Williamson County, you should consider how to import some of the ideas that make it such a successful county. Just giving the Council line item veto over the School Board would be a huge step. Having county officials and the Council putting the good of the citizens over playing politics with government would be another.
The fact that you think Dean is a capable mayor is baffling. All he does is reward his crony backers with boondoggles (Convention Center despite most of the city not wanting it, and now a baseball stadium in the works). I heard him talk once (he was doing his token bus campaign) and the man honestly has no grasp of the dire fiscal situation this country is in.
He shares some of the blame for 50% of Davidson's roads being in disrepair.
Williamson County will prob. end up like Davidson w/n 50 years----that's how things go unless Americans take their "leaders" to task on ignoring things that they're not obligated to do and focus on the things that they are.
P.S. Gun control lacks any logic/reason. GOPers are like Dems, they'll blow where the wind blows, all for the sake of power/$$$ in the long-run.
Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell, as Edward Abbey noted. Without restriction, "progress" and "development" end up looking like, well, a tumor and something you want to be rid of. We have lots of residents in Maury County who fled Williamson County -- like my neighbors on each side of me. And the sprawl continues. I'm way too familiar with that. I had to get out of the traffic and air pollution of metro Atlanta. I ended up with asthma from decades of exposure to Atlanta smog. I was outdoors much of the time, when I wasn't sitting in my car in traffic. The Atlanta suburbs have more smog than does Atlanta proper -- documented.
But most of all, I couldn't take the tragic loss of greenspace. Like many people, I require the daily nourishment of Nature, or life isn't worth living. It's called quality of life. The relentless, careless, mindless destruction of our natural environment broke my heart.
And the pattern repeats itself as a Mandelbrot set, new tumors spawning off the old ones....
Mark, the comments may be biased against Williamson, but you are making the same mistakes. You're comparing much smaller, much more homogenous Williamson County, citing it's strengths, and then comparing it against much larger, more complicated Davidson County. It's never a good idea to compare suburban counties with their urban neighbors. This goes for the City Paper article as well. For instance, you cite the school system. It's much less challenging for counties like Williamson to use their funds in the right way. They simply have a much wealthier student body without all the challenges that Metro has. The schools director of Williamson would never be a candidate for Metro's top job, when it comes open again, simply because he or she would be out of their depth.
Same holds for Mayors. Leaders in Williamson simply do not have the same issues that they do in Davidson, making their jobs much less challenging. I'm not saying they don't have issues, just much less. That's one reason no one's ever heard of any of them.
My family has had the opportunity to move in the past year. We can afford to live in Williamson but chose not to because we like Davidson County, warts and complications and all. I like the non-homogeneity of the people and different cultures who live here.
Same here, Chris. I like living in the city, with all its challenges and opportunities.
Chris,
My point was more that Williamson County offered potential solutions that would benefit Davidson County. And the title of this post is 'Davidson County vs Williamson County.
For example, Davidson County could improve aspects of education quickly by giving the Metro Council a line item veto over the School Board's budgeting.
And size has little to do with ethical government. Between the Davidson County Democratic machine and the Tennessean {with an occasional assist from the Scene}, it is a wonder that the county has made any progress in achieving cleaner government. The Arriola mess is just one more example of the bad old boy network that still tries to run the county. Remember the Election Commission before Ray Barrett and Albert Teich, when voter fraud was common, employees harassed for their political views and voter data stolen because of an incompetent employee with connections to one of the Election Commissioners.
Where are these scandals in Williamson County government?
As for the County Mayors, I would suggest that electing people who don't see the job as a stepping stone makes the greatest difference.
I prefer a city to a suburb myself but that doesn't mean I dismiss the virtues of the suburb. And I think Nashville could learn a great deal from Williamson County if people didn't want to spend so much time running our neighbor down.
City mice and country mice: Choice is a good thing, is it not? Preservation of options is wise, is it not? Rather than having choice severely limited or eliminated by national and/or local policies driven by the value systems and financial profits of an elite few?
It's always wise to keep an eye on where you're headed -- because some choices, when you lose them, you can never get back.
