Editor's note: The coming mayoral election in August promises to be one of the most decisive in Metro Nashville's history, in determining the future health and managed growth of a city at a crossroads. In this seven-part series, we profile the people competing to maintain Music City's newfound success, to represent those in danger of being shoved aside, and to steer the city past the shoals of bubble and bust. Read the rest of our profiles: Megan Barry, Charles Robert Bone, David Fox, Howard Gentry, Jeremy Kane and Linda Rebrovick.
Name: Bill Freeman
Birthdate: Nov. 1, 1951
Birthplace: Nashville
High School: Peabody Demonstration School (Now University School of Nashville)
College: University of Tennessee
Jobs: Director of development at MDHA; Freeman Webb Company
Boards: Nashville State Community College Foundation Board Member; Tennessee State University Foundation Board of Trustees; Masonic Lodge Member; Corinthian Lodge No. 414 F.&A.M., Past Master
Family: Babs (wife), Bob(39), Harvey (38), Michael(33)
Pets: Labrador Retrievers
Website:
Freeman2015.com
What are you to make of William H. Freeman?
It might depend on which way you hear his story — from the present working backward, or from the more humble beginnings working forward.
Presently, Freeman, 63, has just become Nashville’s latest candidate for mayor, and a serious contender in the race thanks entirely to his massive wealth and long list of political connections forged over the years. He ranks among the top Democratic Party fundraisers in the state and the country — as a campaign bundler, he reportedly raised nearly a million dollars for Barack Obama’s re-election effort in 2012.
The entryway to his office is decorated with pictures of him and his family visiting with the last six U.S. presidents. Freeman's desk is on the third floor of the Freeman Webb Building in Green Hills, which houses his massive property management company. Former Vice President Al Gore's office is on the second floor.
The beginning, on the other hand, is the winter of 1951 in Donelson, where he was born and raised. After attending Peabody Demonstration School — which would later become University School of Nashville — he went off to the University of Tennessee. But he left after his father died, and never graduated.
In his mid-20s, he became the director of development at the Metro Development and Housing Agency. Several years later he met Jimmy Webb, and the two formed the Freeman Webb Company. Over 36 years, they grew it from a company with one employee and one property to a billion-dollar business with nearly 500 employees and approximately 15,000 units in the region.
Bill Freeman doesn't shy away from any of this. When he tells this American success story, however — the tale of an influence merchant and political kingmaker come from humble origins — he neither emphasizes it nor minimizes it. The campaign, in fact, still seems to be working out how to portray him — as well as what his ideas are, and how to portray them. (After initially agreeing to meet with a Scene reporter for this story, the Freeman campaign briefly withdrew its participation, then eventually decided to make Freeman available for an interview.)
In person, Freeman is as affable as you'd expect from a guy who can get on the phone and round up a million dollars in contributions. He thrusts out a hand circled by a large golden wristwatch and punctuates the gesture with a solid pat on the back. If anyone really still does business on a handshake, one can imagine Freeman sealing a deal this way.
He beams with pride showing off a photo of his granddaughter hugging a smiling President Obama. Later he explains a shot of his wife, Babs, and the president laughing. It turns out she had cracked him up by whispering that she was actually more excited about meeting George Clooney, visible just over the president's shoulder.
Before making his candidacy official, Freeman spent months meeting informally with local political figures, running polls and reaching out to specific communities, with a particular focus on historically African-American neighborhoods. What did they tell him?
"One of the things that I kept hearing is people didn't feel like the next mayor was in the field yet," he says. "And I heard that over and over and over."
He insists that's not a shot at his fellow candidates, all of whom he says he respects. But there's no doubt he believed it — before he made his own announcement, he asked at least two of the candidates to get out of the race. His campaign has seemingly kept some others from starting, too. Former state Rep. Mike Turner said publicly that he would not run if Freeman did, and At-Large Councilman Jerry Maynard, who had been publicly considering a run for years, is now a senior adviser to the Freeman campaign.
While some close political observers have viewed his recent political activity — he started two political action committees last year and personally gave more than $170,000 to state-level candidates and PACs — and his outreach to Nashville's black neighborhoods as a partly cynical attempt to clear a path for himself to political office, he insists he hasn't been so calculated.
His political involvement, he notes, goes back decades. So do his ties to the city's historically black communities: as an example, he is entering his second eight-year term on the board of trustees at Tennessee State University.
As for all the money he spends on politics, he says he believes the old line about how you can't complain too much if you don't get involved in the process. Plus it's something of a hobby for him.
"I'm not a golfer," Freeman says. "That is my passion."
Freeman describes his fundraising as "an opportunity to have a voice later on and a seat at the table." In so doing, he unashamedly notes a fact he is not responsible for but one that he certainly has taken advantage of: When money talks, our political system listens.
And it also talks back. Despite his insistence that his political contributions were not made at the time with his own ambitions in mind, he says his early fundraising efforts have shown they worked just as well as investments.
"What I had hoped I would see is that a lot of the things that I had done over the decades — helping other people and causes and candidates — that some of that fruit would come back, and when I called people that they would be willing to help," he says. "And I'm finding that to be the case."
He declines to say how much of his own money he will invest in the campaign, but it promises to be a significant sum. He says he'll put in "whatever is necessary for me to run a robust, good campaign."
When it comes time to talk policy, his thoughts are still mostly general. On this day he has a lot to say about economic development and transit. Those issues top every campaign's list, to be sure. But Freeman's takes are unique — and while he is effusive in his praise for the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce and Mayor Karl Dean, these issues reveal places where he differs with them.
On economic development, he completely supports the approach Dean has taken: using corporate tax incentives and cash grants to attract companies or keep them here. But the chamber, he says, needs to narrow its focus. He is very concerned about the "bedroom communities" in surrounding counties that are growing at Nashville's expense. In large part, he says, they are attractive places to live because of their proximity to amenities and attractions in Davidson County, paid for by Nashville taxpayers.
If a company decides to relocate to Rutherford County, Freeman says, some in the chamber view it as a victory. But he says the mayor's office needs to be "a jealous advocate for Davidson County."
"They're putting too much emphasis on the Nashville area," he says. "When I talk to the chamber about that, they say, 'Well, we're the Nashville Area Chamber, we're not the Nashville chamber.' I ask the question, 'Well, what is the Williamson County Chamber — what industry have they brought to Nashville?' They say, 'Well, that's not their job, they don't do that.' But it seems we think it's our job to do that."
It's not a major problem for Nashville now, he says. But it has been for other cities, and if it's not managed, he fears, Nashville could start to struggle as surrounding areas thrive.
The transit discussion in Nashville is a blank slate now, to some degree, after The Amp's recent death. But Freeman thinks Dean's West End bus rapid transit line "missed the mark" anyway. The Amp was "ill-conceived," he says, explaining that the the availability of federal funding seemed to influence the plan too strongly. Transit improvements in the city are needed, he says — but that's not where he'd start.
"What I think we need is not a $160 million solution, but a much bolder, bigger solution that would connect ... you know this: The traffic problems are between Murfreesboro and Nashville, Franklin and Nashville, Lebanon and Nashville," he says. "That's what we have to solve."
He describes an "open discussion" that would involve the entire community, mayors from the surrounding counties and "the best people in the country" who build transit systems. The ensuing think tank would assess what could be done to connect Nashville with the cities people are commuting from.
Asked how he'd address the growing need for affordable housing, Freeman says his experience in property management and real estate investment make him "uniquely qualified" to deal with the issue.
"We don't build the brand-new, high-rise, $400,000 rental units that rent for $5,000 a month, that's not what we do," he says of Freeman Webb's business. "Our average rental in our entire portfolio is in the $800 to $900 a month range. We deal in those products every single day. I know how difficult it is to develop those, to create them, to own them, to manage them. I think I'm uniquely qualified to know what incentives make a difference to a developer that would come in and build that housing."
On education, Freeman says he'll pledge to meet with the new director of schools once a week.
He says the campaign will unveil a more detailed policy vision in coming weeks, stressing that the campaign is "brand-new."
On this Monday afternoon at his Green Hills office, the campaign has been moving out of its temporary home there to new headquarters at 1701 West End Ave. That address might ring a bell to political insiders — it has hosted the campaign operations of U.S. Sens. Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander, as well as Gov. Bill Haslam. He laughs at the suggestion that he might be seeking good vibes from the building — "I hope it's not just good Republican vibes," he says — but he's also the one who pointed out the connection. Ditto the date he chose to announce his candidacy: Dec. 19, which he said had no special significance to him, but happens to be the same date Karl Dean made his announcement in 2006.
But even if he is hoping to gain some good political juju by aligning these mundane details with those of successful Tennessee politicians, he says he's not in it for a career. This is the first office he's ever run for, and he says he's not doing it because he wants to run for another.
As such, his mayoral candidacy seems certain to be either a massive success or a spectacular failure. His pockets are deep, his Rolodex rolls for days, and he's building a campaign apparatus that rival operatives say looks more like something out of a statewide race.
Earlier this month, the campaign announced that Bill Hyers, former campaign manager to New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio, would be joining the Freeman team as its chief campaign strategist, along with Jessie Bradley, another operative from the same Washington, D.C.-based firm, who will serve as a senior adviser. Former Tennessee Democratic Party Chairman Chip Forrester is also an adviser, along with Maynard. Other campaign staffers include state Rep. Brenda Gilmore as treasurer and Metro Councilman Sean McGuire as the campaign's finance director.
Rumors had it that the Freeman campaign would be working with David Axelrod's political media group, and that they had also been looking to get Kim Kaegi — fundraising wizard for Dean, Haslam, Corker and Alexander — involved with the campaign. Freeman declined to confirm or deny any involvement with Axelrod's firm to The Tennessean earlier this month. Forrester did the same regarding Kaegi, saying the campaign had been having "discussions with numerous high-level campaign operatives over the last nine months, but we do not discuss those meetings on the record." He did add, however, that Kaegi is not under contract with the campaign.
Freeman has been getting some encouragement from on high, though. During the recent presidential visit to Knoxville, Freeman says Vice President Joe Biden asked for a 15-minute meeting with him.
"You're our guy," Freeman recalls Biden saying to him. "How can we help?"
Did the veep have any advice for the man who would be Nashville's next mayor?
"I'm gonna keep that to myself," Freeman says.
