Pro-Immigrant Group TIRRC Votes Plans to Get Involved in Metro Elections

TIRRC Votes, the political arm of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, has big plans for this summer’s Metro election season. Founded last year, the political group is making its first foray into a Metro election, with plans to sink its teeth into 10 or more races, including by making endorsements and knocking on as many as 20,000 doors in Davidson County. 

TIRRC Votes organizers hope that by helping elect a more forcefully pro-immigrant mayor and Metro Council, they can turn Nashville into a bulwark against an interfering state legislature and federal government. 

“We think it’s unacceptable in this historic moment for the city of Nashville to be more afraid of the state legislature than of hundreds, thousands of families losing income earners, kids being traumatized, people afraid to go to school, people not wanting to engage in local government,” says Stephanie Teatro, co-director of TIRRC Votes. “That reality should be much scarier than the state.”

TIRRC Votes has already tried to go directly to the state legislature. Last year, in its first political efforts, the group endorsed and campaigned on behalf of candidates for the state legislature, some of whom were successful, and some of whom were Republicans. The group also backed the Democratic nominees for governor and U.S. Senate, both of whom lost. 

Though the organization is turning its attention to Metro elections this year, it has not abandoned advocacy at the state legislature. When freshman Republican Rep. Bruce Griffey of Paris introduced a slate of anti-immigrant bills in the legislative session earlier this year, TIRRC was quick to respond. All of his bills failed, but others they deemed similarly harmful passed, including Gov. Bill Lee’s signature education savings account bill. Both Lee and his bill’s House backers promised the voucher-like accounts would not be available either to undocumented students or citizen students with undocumented parents. TIRRC is considering legal action. 

With Republicans firmly in control of each lever of state government and pursuing policies TIRRC says will be detrimental to immigrant and refugee communities, the organization wants Nashville (and Memphis) to step up as a political — and moral — force within the state. 

“We need more bold leadership from our elected officials,” Teatro says. “We’re not going to let the state or the federal government rip our neighbors out of our community [and] make our children afraid to go to school.”

To secure that “bold leadership,” TIRRC Votes has a multipronged plan. It started earlier this year with a survey of about 5,000 members of Nashville’s immigrant and refugee communities. Results from those surveys have been distilled into a 10-part policy platform, which will be released at the organization’s election kickoff on May 22. Among the 10 points on the as-yet unpublished platform are “dismantle the deportation pipeline,” “support residents targeted for deportation,” “criminal justice reform” and other demands, some specifically tied to immigrant issues and others not. After that, Metro candidates will be invited to complete a survey of their own to determine how closely their policy positions align with TIRRC’s. TIRRC Votes will host a June forum for countywide candidates, and then will start issuing endorsements, including possibly in the mayoral race. 

TIRRC Votes raised and spent around $500,000 for its political efforts last year, Teatro says, and aims to spend around $300,000 this year, albeit in a more concentrated fashion. The organization knocked on 12,000 doors in Davidson County last year, stumping for U.S. Senate candidate Phil Bredesen, gubernatorial candidate Karl Dean and others, and the group plans to visit as many or more this year. Teatro says it could be the biggest canvassing effort by any non-candidate group in the city. 

Teatro isn’t offering a unified block of votes to candidates who earn her group’s endorsement, but she does offer up stats about immigrant voters that should be tantalizing to any office-seeker in what could end up being low-turnout elections.  

Immigrant voter turnout in Tennessee was up 35 percent in 2018 from the previous midterm election, and turnout about matched the 2016 presidential election. Twenty-two percent of immigrant voters last year were voting for the first time. TIRRC registered almost 1,500 people to vote last year, with ongoing registration efforts this year. 

That kind of enthusiasm can swing a race, particularly in Metro Council district races that can be decided by as little as a few dozen or a couple hundred votes. Teatro thinks it’s a “unique opportunity for immigrant communities to shape the outcome.”

“We have a chance to do something powerful, not only to improve the city for immigrant communities but to strengthen our city for all of us,” she says, “and to really make a historic statement about what a city in the South in the Trump administration, with this legislature, what we’re willing to do to defend our values.”