Primary Splits Democrats Near the Davidson County Line

Before primary voters in Hermitage, Old Hickory or Donelson cast a single vote in the Aug. 1 primary elections, another kind of election has already reached a fever pitch in Tennessee’s House District 60. The seat — held for six terms by outgoing Democrat Rep. Darren Jernigan — has drawn two viable Democrats, Shaundelle Brooks and Tyler Brasher. Elected officials have lined up behind each in what has become a race projecting two distinct directions for a party desperate to find a winning formula in purple suburbs across the state.

The Tennessee Democratic Party can’t directly weigh in on a primary, where voters select candidates for the general election in November, but its most visible elected officials have split their support between Brooks and Brasher. While Jernigan has withheld his official endorsement — he currently holds a post in Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s administration as the mayor’s state House whisperer — Brasher won over his household, scoring an endorsement from Jernigan’s wife Michelle. Metro Councilmembers Jeff Gregg and Jordan Huffman, who together represent most of District 60 on the council, are also behind Brasher.

Brasher brought on Huffman as his campaign manager in early June. Last summer, Huffman ran his own successful campaign as a first-time candidate in Hermitage. The two share experience on the Donelson Hermitage Chamber of Commerce and the Donelson Hermitage Neighborhood Alliance, familiar local stepping stones to elected office. Brasher has made these relationships his campaign bedrock.

Shaundelle Brooks came to politics all of a sudden. Her son Akilah DaSilva, then 23, was among the four people killed when a man with schizophrenia opened fire at an Antioch Waffle House in 2018. The tragedy reordered her life around gun violence prevention.

“I saw my son in the casket, and I said, right then, I would do everything in my power to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Brooks tells the Scene after a morning of door-to-door canvassing. “It has to start with background checks — those are the foundation of stricter gun laws — to make sure people are mentally stable enough to carry.”

Brooks started the Akilah Dasilva Foundation and dyed her hair blue, her son’s favorite color. Around her neck, she wears a necklace with Akilah’s name on it. Regular advocacy at the state Capitol — “I went there and told my story, and they shut me down,” Brooks says of Republican lawmakers — quickly led to relationships with elected Democrats like Reps. Justin Jones and Gloria Johnson. Even though she has made her name as an advocate against gun violence, Brooks rejects the single-issue label.

“Raising my kids as a single mom, having to pay rent and bills on one income, how can I be a single-issue person?” she says. “I’m trying to give my kids a decent life. Daily, I’m coming into contact with the school system, the health care system, insurance companies and gun violence. I stand up for people. I fight for people who don’t have a voice.”

Brooks raised four children, including DaSilva. Her youngest son joins us at Nectar Urban Cantina, a Mexican restaurant in Donelson. While we talk, a boy runs up to the big industrial fan blowing cool air across the patio, and Brooks winces. “He needs to be careful of his fingers,” she says to herself.

Jones, briefly expelled from the House alongside Rep. Justin Pearson (D-Memphis) in April 2023 for leading gun violence protests, has seen his fierce advocacy inside the legislative chamber translate into fundraising dollars and a rising national profile. Johnson, who joined Pearson and Jones in protests after the Covenant School shooting, leads the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate and appears headed toward a showdown with Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn in November. Both Johnson and Jones encouraged Brooks to run for Jernigan’s soon-to-be vacant seat.

Both endorsed Brooks, as did the political arm of nonprofit group The Equity Alliance, several Metro councilmembers and nearly every Black elected official in the Tennessee state legislature. Democratic state Sen. Heidi Campbell, whose meandering district includes a northern swath of House District 60, also got behind Brooks, as did former Councilmember Jeff Syracuse.

Six months ago, former Councilmember Kevin Rhoten was a leading name for the seat. Then it was Tim Jester, whose campaign started and ended in February when a professional conflict cut short his primary hopes. Brasher came next. To Brooks, the parade of middle-aged white men has come to represent institutional resistance; her entry into the race prompted skepticism (and at least one angry phone call) from local party operatives.

Tyler Brasher
Photo: Tabitha Turner Visuals

“After Tim dropped out, I put on my walking shoes and got going trying to generate community support,” Brasher tells the Scene. “It’s not the big cultural issues that get a lot of attention. More often than not, folks are asking for sidewalks, for better transit, for roads to be paved. Just basic infrastructure.”

To voters, Brasher decries extremism among Republicans, a party that has drifted so far to the right that they’ve forgotten the job of basic representation. Huffman, Brasher and Jernigan all talk about the district as cautiously Democratic. Jernigan flipped the seat from Republican Jim Gotto in 2012 by 0.4 percent — just 95 votes. From there, he slowly gained ground, winning by more than 20 percentage points in 2022. In office and back home in his district, Jernigan built a political reputation appealing to the center in a district that includes historically working-class white suburbs, new transplant families, a few majority-Black neighborhoods and whiter, more conservative spillover from Mt. Juliet. On paper, district demographics look a lot like areas near Murfreesboro and Clarksville, where Democrats hope to gain ground against the state’s Republican supermajority.

“We both have different backgrounds, and I think they’re both viable paths to the nomination,” says Brasher. “Ultimately, I don’t have a whole lot of really big disagreements with Shaundelle. We’re both Democrats, and we both want to see the seat held by a Democrat. We’ll see what voters think.”

Correction: A previous version of this article indicated that Jeff Syracuse — not Kevin Rhoten — considered a run for the District 60 seat. We apologize for the error.