As, apparently, with so many things in Dave Cooley’s office, it all started with a call from an old political ally. Bobby Joslin, head of Joslin Sign and Maintenance Co., called his buddy Dave, deputy governor of Tennessee, and asked him for a favor. “He asked if I would mind just speaking to a couple friends that I would be comfortable speaking with about some legislation or a bill that had to do with electronic signs,” Cooley says. The deputy governor said he’d be happy to help the sign man out. After all, the two had been friends ever since Cooley’s boss Phil Bredesen was mayor of Nashville and all three men were working to bring an NFL franchise to Nashville. (These days, Joslin is a friend and prominent Republican supporter of the Democratic governor. In fact, the Bredesen campaign has listed Joslin among state business leaders who openly support the governor.) Cooley says he got in touch with the first three Metro Council members that came to mind: Tommy Bradley, Jim Shulman and Greg Adkins. The only problem is, Shulman and Adkins are state employees, and Cooley is the deputy governor who’s been making headlines in recent months for pulling some seriously political strings in the state Safety Department. So the deputy governor—you know, the one with a reputation for politically motivated interference in low-level personnel decisions—lobbied subordinates on a piece of legislation that would come before them as members of the Metro Council. It would seem wise, wouldn’t it, to heed the advice of the second-most-powerful political man in the state? Especially when he’s your boss. Cooley says it’s not like that at all. “Neither of those guys report to me,” he says. “In fact, there’s several layers of reporting between any of those gentlemen and me.” OK, so he’s their boss’s boss’s boss. Big deal. But all three say there was no pressure being applied, just friendly chatter among political wags. “It was all appropriate,” says Adkins, who worked for the Safety Department before becoming special assistant to the commissioner and legislative liaison at the Tennessee Department of Transportation. “There wasn’t a threat or anything. It was like ‘Hey, this is something that this guy supports, and he’s a friend of mine.’ ” Adkins calls it a “friend-to-friend” exchange, noting that he and Cooley are both involved Democrats who talk or run into each other every couple of weeks. “I didn’t feel pressured. It was more informative than anything,” he says. Shulman, employing his best political minimizing skills, goes so far as to deny any lobbying even took place. “He mentioned it to me at one point, but he didn’t lobby me on it…. He just mentioned it to me,” says Shulman, who might as well be saying he toked but never inhaled. “He was just curious how I was going to vote on the bill. And I said I was fine with it and was going to vote for it. There was certainly no indication of pressuring me to vote one way or another.” We’ll pause here to imagine how that conversation must have gone. Cooley: Hey Jim, my curiosity is absolutely killing me—how are you going to vote on that ordinance allowing video signs in front of Nashville businesses? Shulman: Actually, I’m fine with it and planning to vote for it. Cooley: Well, it sure is good to know your position. See you later. In any event, Adkins and Shulman voted in favor of the bill, which failed last month, while Bradley abstained. Of the state employees Cooley contacted, Shulman had already been planning to vote for it, while Adkins was undecided but ultimately supported the plan because, he says, he wants businesses to have access to current technologies. More recently, at-large Metro Council member and mayoral hopeful Buck Dozier has reintroduced the bill with a co-sponsor, Ludye Wallace. The planning department staff has again recommended disapproval. Joslin, meanwhile, says he doesn’t think his old friend Cooley pressured anybody to do anything; he just wanted Cooley to ask people to take his calls. “I wanted to make sure that when I called Jim Shulman and Tommy Bradley, they understood that I wasn’t some moron calling off the street,” says Joslin, who says he was trying to nail down the last few votes when he called his admittedly powerful friend for help. “What Dave Cooley did for me is the same thing I would do for you if you were my friend and you called and said, ‘Hey I need some help on this particular matter.’ ” Of course, in that scenario, Joslin would have to be an extremely high-ranking state official with control over the jobs of two Metro Council members. Joslin, who calls himself Cooley’s “token Republican friend,” says he understands that it may look bad to have the big-shot political boss encouraging employees to support his legislation. But, he says, these particular council members are too capable to be blackmailed. “These are the kind of people you don’t stiff-arm. These are the kind of people that get the facts and make the best decision,” he says. “These are intelligent people you’re dealing with, and I know that’s a rare thing in the Metro Council.” These days, it’s a rare thing in the deputy governor’s office, too.
