As councilman, Jason Holleman has often sided with Mayor Karl Dean — but evidently not often enough

When Karl Dean's lone semi-serious opponent, Michael Craddock, dropped out of the mayoral race a few weeks ago, it left Team Dean with little reason to worry about winning a second term. Not that the mayor, who's been a hit with powerful civic institutions during his first term and has the financial disclosure reports to prove it, would stop campaigning. That'd be crazier than telling a NASCAR fan that driving isn't a real sport.

So Dean and his circle appear to have moved on to another pastime: unseating Metro Council incumbent Jason Holleman, whose disloyalty to the mayor on two major issues has become a rallying cry of his opponent's campaign. Some suggest that could be the only reason Holleman even has an opponent — one who may end up raising and spending more money than has ever changed hands in a district council race.

A group of wealthy, extremely well-connected old-school Democrats with ties to both the mayor and former Gov. Phil Bredesen has thrown its weight behind a contender in Holleman's district, Sarah Lodge Tally. A political newcomer, Tally has credentials that are solid in their own right. But they likely don't matter as much as her donor lists, a veritable Six Degrees of Karl Dean.

Various insiders say the mayor and those in his inner circle mean to punish Holleman, the first-term Sylvan Park councilman from District 24, for opposing the financing for the new convention center and the ill-fated concept to redevelop the Tennessee State Fairgrounds. Now Holleman is being cast as a public enemy and a mayoral adversary. To drive the point home, his opponent supposedly intends to raise a gaudy sum for such a race: $100,000. That should buy some yard signs.

It's a matter few are willing to discuss openly, as Nashville's Democratic political community is a closed ecosystem composed in part of people for whom retribution is de rigueur. But that doesn't mean no one's talking.

The campaign against Holleman took shape within days of Tally's entrance. Some prominent donors to the incumbent's 2007 campaign started getting calls from political strategist Will Pinkston, a former consultant to the Dean campaign who left that job after Craddock dropped out. The calls weren't small talk. Pinkston dropped strong hints they should defect to Tally.

One of those contacted tells the Scene that Pinkston referred to Holleman as "disruptive." Furthermore, the person says, Pinkston suggested the incumbent was responsible for derailing the mayor's agenda on the fairgrounds — a refrain that's growing louder as early voting looms.

Pinkston says Tally is a friend and acknowledged making calls on her behalf. Both he and Tally say the campaign is not paying for his services. But a number of political observers and elected officials, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity, say Team Dean is past the point of plausible deniability on targeting Holleman.

Tally, who moved to Sylvan Park three years ago, is an attorney at the firm Miller & Martin. She's worked in U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper's D.C. office, and she's a founding board member of Nashville Preparatory Charter School, a board on which Pinkston also serves.

Her family's connections are myriad. The 29-year-old Tally is the daughter of powerful Democratic lobbyist Dick Lodge, a skilled attorney with the firm Bass Berry & Sims, to which Dean also has strong ties. (More than 30 attorneys at the firm had donated to Dean's re-election war chest, as of the last reporting in April.) Once legislative director for U.S. Sen. Jim Sasser, Lodge also served as chair of the Tennessee Democratic Party. Tally's mother, Gina Lodge, was commissioner of the state Department of Human Resources under Gov. Phil Bredesen.

Tally's filing petition — stamped three days before the deadline to enter the race — reads like a dinner-party seating chart: Keith Simmons (Dean booster in '07; attorney at Bass Berry & Sims); Tom Hayden (Dean campaign spokesman); Irwin Kuhn (Dean's 2007 transition team); Matt Kisber (commissioner of economic development under Bredesen); Jeff Yarbro (former candidate for state Senate; attorney at Bass Berry & Sims) — you get the idea.

But that's just the beginning. Tally's campaign manager is Russell Riebeling, whose father is Metro Finance Director Richard Riebeling, chief advocate for the convention center financing plan. Her treasurer is Dave Goetz, commissioner of finance and administration under Bredesen. Goetz's wife, Katy Varney, is a partner at the public relations firm McNeely Pigott & Fox, which kept close ties to Dean even after it was revealed the company radically overbilled the city for work preceding a council vote on the Music City Center.

What's more, Leigh Walton, the Dean campaign's treasurer, hosted Tally's first fundraiser on Tuesday — $250 a head. The host list for that party featured a number of notables with ties to Dean, including David Fox of McNeely Pigott & Fox and Darek Bell of Bell & Associates Construction, a primary contractor for the convention center.

Hayden, spokesman for the Dean campaign, bluntly states "the organization is not involved." He says Dean first met Tally at a recent fundraiser, and he found her to be a "smart young attorney interested in public service." But Hayden wouldn't comment on why treasurer Walton was hosting a fundraiser for Tally. He says he signed Tally's qualifying petition because he's been a family friend for 11 years.

The mayor's office declined to comment.

Tally says her connections to the powerful and influential are through family and longtime friends. A cynic would say that makes her the perfect challenger for Holleman, described by one insider as "a gadfly" who may have severed his ties to establishment Democrats when he opposed Dean's fairgrounds plan. Nevertheless, Tally says she didn't talk to Dean before the race, and she wouldn't elaborate on discussions she had with others during the spring.

A political insider following the fray tells the Scene that those with ties to Dean "can't credibly deny their involvement" in hoisting Tally to run against Holleman. What no one fully understands is, why bother? One council member finds it curious that the mayor's advocates are "meddling" in a lowly district race. Another says it's a surprise that Dean insiders have involved themselves conspicuously in this of all races, since most assumed it would be a cakewalk for Holleman. Why risk a show of force, if it ends in humiliation?

One possible explanation is that if the incumbent has an Achilles heel, the challenger may have found it. Holleman's Sylvan Park district has been notoriously susceptible to squabbles over zoning and historic overlays. The councilman, who has lived there since 2000, has been drawn into some of those beefs, especially matters of preservation and development — and he hasn't always been given high marks for diplomacy.

Residents were particularly upset when Holleman worked against a deal to sell the Charlotte Avenue Church of Christ to make way for a Rite Aid. And when Aquinas College moved for an education overlay to expand on campus, Holleman made the process "harder than it needed to be," according to Joe Hall, a parent who volunteered to help the sisters through the process.

"Unfortunately, it took on a testier tone than was necessary," says Hall, who is also a principal at the consulting group Hall Strategies but wasn't working in a professional capacity. It's because of such complaints, according to Tally, that her first priority is to hear out the business owners and residents she says Holleman has alienated.

But you don't line up the Murderers' Row of the Democratic establishment to settle slap parties over a campus expansion or the convenience of buying aspirin. No, the reason Holleman needs to go, Tally suggests, is his hesitance to kiss the mayor's ring.

"In terms of larger citywide issues, this district is overwhelmingly — like the city in general — supportive of the mayor and his plan for Nashville and what he's done for Nashville in the last four years," Tally says. "Councilman Holleman has not been supportive of that agenda, particularly with respect to the fairgrounds and the convention center. And folks in this district are generally supportive of the mayor and his plans, so they've been unhappy to know about the lack of support from Councilman Holleman."

Which may be true — if you define "support" as "total capitulation." Holleman says he's voted with the mayor 85 percent of his time on the council. Those votes include support of the 28th Avenue Connector, as well as the mayor's ongoing plans to preserve green space, both nondiscrimination bills and all three budgets.

But oh, that 15 percent. On the convention center, Holleman abstained from the vote to acquire the land, voted against the funding, and then voted for the public-private financing package for the new Omni Hotel at the site. He says he based his votes on both the convention center and the fairgrounds — for which he developed an eleventh-hour compromise bill passed by a majority that kept racing at the Fairgrounds Speedway while a master plan for the site is decided — on a constituent survey.

"Asking hard questions and trying to exercise good judgment and represent the interests of my constituents — I don't see that as being against the mayor," Holleman says.

Right. It's a poorly kept secret that the Dean administration regards a number of council members, Holleman included, as speed humps slowing down their agenda. But if Dean and company are trying to dismantle the opposition, there is little need. Most of the mayor's shit list will be history by this fall. Mike Jameson, Eric Crafton, Michael Craddock and Jim Gotto are term-limited. Jamie Hollin is not running for re-election. Crafton is running for an at-large seat against five incumbents, and no incumbent has ever lost an at-large race.

Which presents, at best, a pair of no-win options for the mayor and his supporters. If Tally wins, Dean will have one fewer "vocal" critic out of two — but that directs more attention to Emily Evans, who's running unopposed and has been far more critical than Holleman. Meanwhile, to insiders, he'll become known as an '80s-style backdoor power broker in the age of transparency. But if Holleman wins, the mayor is left with a reputation for vindictive pettiness — and even worse, without the clout to pose any threat.

Holleman declined to comment on the origins of Tally's campaign, saying he's focusing on the race itself. He tells the Scene that he last met with Dean in February. They had what he termed as a positive chat, discussing legislation to expand mass transit in Nashville.

But if Tally's well-connected backers are any indication, that train has jumped the track.

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