From Left: Bob Mendes, Gicola Lane, Burkley Allen, Fabian Bedne
It’s always tough to wrap your head around: A dozen or more (in 2015, it was 26) variously qualified candidates seek the five at-large seats on the Metro Council.
Because voters can pick up to five names, the race typically remains friendly, with candidates stumping alongside one another, or at least refraining from attacks. And because the field is so crowded, unexpected victors can emerge. But despite the race’s unconventionality, its winners can use the job as a springboard to bigger things: The past two mayors, David Briley and Megan Barry, served two terms as at-large council members before moving on to higher office.
This summer, 15 people are seeking the five countywide seats, and the field features a mix of candidates who are both well-known and unknown, formidable and forgettable. There are two incumbents seeking four more years in the post (Bob Mendes and Sharon Hurt). There are term-limited district council members trying to take the next logical step (Burkley Allen, Fabian Bedne, Steve Glover and Sheri Weiner).
Gary Moore, a former longtime state representative, firefighter and labor leader, is running. So is Zulfat Suara, an accountant and community organizer who has already turned some heads with a healthy fundraising haul. Gicola Lane, the woman behind last year’s successful community oversight referendum, is hoping she can translate that ballot-box success into her own seat on the council.
Former Metro Councilmember Adam Dread is running again on a simple platform: ban electric scooters. Another former council member, Michael Craddock, is running too. Howard Jones, Matthew DelRossi, James Dillard and Reuben Dockery round out the slate.
In a year when the mayor’s race at the top of the ticket is notably quiet, the at-large campaign could either swell to fill the vacuum or drown in the relative political apathy that has descended upon the city since Briley took over for Barry last year.
Some at-large candidates seem content to vie for a sufficient chunk of the sort of people who always vote. Glover, an avowed conservative, could benefit from Republicans who turn out to support mayoral candidate and former Vanderbilt professor Carol Swain. Hurt could build a coalition from two natural and politically active bases: the Jefferson Street area where she leads a small-business nonprofit, and the Bellevue area where she lives. Allen could tap her neighborhood roots for support: She currently represents one of the most politically active districts in the county, which includes her Hillsboro-West End neighborhood.
But others are looking to new sources of support.
“People I grew up with, people in my neighborhood, people in my family: They’ve never even heard of some of these people who are running,” Lane says. “A lot of these people haven’t really gone outside the super voters. They go to the people that they know are going to vote, and I think what we have to do to really have a participatory democracy is really reach out to other people.”
Lane cites her experience leading the community oversight campaign, which she says attracted the support of people who had never voted before. It remains to be seen whether she can translate that issue-specific energy to the hazier decision facing voters in August.
Several candidates are seeking the support of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition’s political arm, which is making endorsements in Metro elections for the first time this year. Some of those candidates think ties to the immigrant community could open up a new flow of votes. Two of the candidates — Bedne and Suara — are immigrants themselves.
“I bring a different perspective: as an immigrant, as a Muslim, as a woman, as a CPA,” says Suara, who came to the United States from Nigeria in 1993.
As seemingly random as voters’ at-large selections can be — a familiar last name, high ballot placement — debate over one issue could end up differentiating the candidates as Election Day nears, and one candidate is leading the debate. As he did last year, Mendes has again introduced an alternate budget that would raise property taxes to cover Metro employee raises and pay off debt without onetime revenue infusions. Discussion on the proposal will be over by the time voters make their picks, but it has given the candidates an opportunity to carve out a position all their own.
“The fact of the matter is that taking out budget problems on employee compensation and constituent services is fundamentally cynical,” Mendes says. “The majority of the people I talk to want to fix the budget. I’m sure there’s people who don’t love the idea of taxes going up, but I run into a lot more support than I run into opposition on that. No, I don’t love the idea of being the person who’s proposing a tax increase, but I just can’t on principle stand by and watch employees’ pay get choked back and constituent services get slow-walked.”
But not everyone is as eager to get behind the proposal.
“Before I tell a retiree that lives in Nashville or I tell a Metro employee that lives in Nashville that I’m going to raise their property taxes and further burden them, I’ve got to look at what my options are,” says Weiner, who will have to vote on the proposal later this month.
That won’t be the only debate, of course. Cleavages are already emerging in regard to when and how to bring a transit plan back to Nashville voters, how to handle the side effects of the city’s booming economy and how the mayor should interact with the council. But for now, the 15 candidates are just trying to force voters to pay any attention at all.
“The last 16 months have been really hard for the Nashville constituent, because there have been so many elections that I’m sure we’re suffering from election fatigue,” Hurt says. “We all know that when there’s a presidential election, there’s more participation and activity, but it’s more important for us to vote on a local level. … I can promise you that I’m going to do everything that I can to try to get those [voters] out. … I feel confident that the other candidates will do the exact same thing.”
