This story is a partnership between the Nashville Banner and the Nashville Scene. The Banner is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization focused on civic news and will launch later this year. For more information, visit NashvilleBanner.com.
For years, current Councilmember Freddie O’Connell has referred to District 19 as the city’s economic engine. The engine is about to get a new conductor.
Five candidates initially jumped into the race, but only three stayed in: Jacob Kupin, Jasper Hendricks III and Jonathan Turner. The trio is sprinting to stand out in one of Metro Council’s more crowded district races as July 14 early voting approaches.
“This district is the most important probably in the state, maybe the country, because of the amount of economic impact that [it] has,” says Hendricks. “District 19 actually feeds the entire state, and so it is important to have someone at the table that understands that.”
Originally from D.C., Hendricks served as outreach adviser to presidential and congressional campaigns, aide to three members of U.S. Congress and as national director of the NAACP’s Youth and College Voter Empowerment Program. He is currently a Fair Board commissioner. He says he wants to help people by bringing together corporate and community partners as well as state and local legislators.
Turner notes his passion for the city is a natural result of being a multigenerational Nashville native and product of Metro Nashville Public Schools, Vanderbilt and Belmont. He currently works for a sales and marketing firm.
“I’m a native and born in the area,” says Turner. “Unfortunately, my opponents are not. They don’t know where we’ve been because they weren’t here. Sometimes in order to have a better understanding of Nashville and of Tennessee, you’ve got to be in it from start to finish.”
Kupin identifies himself as the “neighborhood guy.” After the former New Yorker fell in love with Nashville 10 years ago, he says, he worked to embed himself on a granular level through real estate and neighborhood associations.
“In this race, we’ve got someone running that lives in the Gulch, and we’ve got someone running that lives downtown, but we didn’t have anyone running that lived in the neighborhoods that understood that balance of what the neighborhood needs are,” says Kupin.
With the districts redrawn following the 2020 Census, the addition of the East Bank and Midtown neighborhoods adds new voters in D19 for the 2023 election. The new district will also add Nissan Stadium to a long list of revenue attractions already in the area.
O’Connell, the previous representative, dealt with issues like floods, tornadoes, a downtown bombing, transportation infrastructure, parking, education, energy systems, business improvement, neighborhood conservation, development and environmental issues with the Cumberland River.
“I think Freddie’s relationship with the HOAs and the community associations are great, but this district is going to be different from what Freddie currently represents,” says Hendricks. “How do we get the homeowners and the community associations together with the businesses so that we can figure out how to coexist?”
Hendricks and Kupin look to add to O’Connell’s work, while Turner does not align with the former representative.
“Freddie kind of beats to his own drum and has lived in a lot of other districts,” says Turner. “I am downtown. If you don’t live in it and experience it, you don’t know where you’ve been. You don’t know where you are, and certainly you’re not going to know where you’re going.”
Hendricks looks to combine subsidized housing solutions with job retention through a program he titles “Music City Heroes,” while Kupin wants to first define affordable housing to support more coherent collaboration.
“I’ve been shifting to what I’ve heard called income-aligned housing, because I’m seeing this issue, top to bottom, across all sorts of salary ranges,” says Kupin. “I think the other piece is going back to the ground level, going door to door, and then looking to the city resources to figure out what you can do.”
Turner sees an opportunity in the Nissan stadium bill.
“There’s just too much opportunity, and we’re just missing out on a lot,” says Turner. “We have the party buses, but what about the water taxis?”
“We’re not done until we figure out how to house everyone, how to educate everyone, make things accessible for everyone, which covers a lot of things … accessible housing, accessible infrastructure,” says Hendricks. “We have to come together.”
All 40 Metro Council seats are up for election, and early voting begins in one month
