"Who all is here? Say your name! Say your name and what you're running for. My distinguished opponents!"
John Cooper is standing on a chair before a crowd that's spilling out of Dozen Bakery in the Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood. He's running for Metro Council at-large, and this is his campaign kickoff, but he's gleefully inviting any other candidates in the room to introduce themselves: Don Majors (at-large), Lonnell Matthews (at-large; see the cover story), Erin Coleman (at-large), Nancy Van Reese (District 8), David Briley (vice mayor).
"It's a fantastic race when it's so friendly," Cooper says.
The race for the council's five countywide at-large seats is an odd sort of contest. To secure a seat outright on election day, a candidate has to finish in the top five with more than 10 percent of the vote. If five candidates don't clear that bar, then there is a runoff with twice as many candidates as there are open seats. So if there are four seats left to be filled, as there were after election day in 2007, there will be a runoff between the top eight remaining candidates.
All that to say, the at-large race is one that a candidate doesn't have to win outright. They just have to be one of the winners. It makes for an unusually, almost comically nice competition.
"I'm John Cooper, but really I'm Jimmy Stewart and this is my wonderful life," he says. "And you are all my wonderful friends for making it that way."
Cooper is not unfamiliar with politics. His brother is U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, a fact betrayed by his general resemblance, his voice and some of his mannerisms. John has managed the Nashville congressman's campaigns in the past. But it's his wife's father he cites as he stands on the chair, talking about how local government can work.
"My father-in-law is actually my model for this, who was a small-town motorcycle cop who became magistrate in a small town in Virginia," Cooper says. "And in his quiet way, he did more good in a day than whole federal agencies do in a week. And he had a gift. The Gift. And the gift was being able to tell people that they were wrong but not make them mad."
Days later Cooper is driving back from a briefing at the Metro Transit Authority when he answers a call from the Scene. He assures a reporter that he's using a hands-free setup, but soon decides to pull over anyway.
Cooper says that as a government and history major in college, he has always wanted to do this. It had to be the right time, though. His youngest child is 10 now, and he says his age was another factor.
"My children have a slogan for me — 'Old Guy, Wants to Help,' " he says. "I realized that, you push past 55 and your opportunity to be involved and to serve. You know, there's a window that you have to be aware of."
A longtime real estate developer and investor, he says he likes the idea of bringing a business management background to the council.
"Most of the people running are former council people," he says. "And that's great to have that experience, but it's also useful to have more balanced experiences from the county. As I run, I sort of wish that some retired executive from the hospitality industry was running. Because we've made a billion-dollar bet as a group of citizens on hospitality. We need for that to work out. We need for that to be a successful investment for us as a city."
Asked about his main goals or priorities should he be elected, he shows something else he seems to have in common with his brother — a wonkish attraction to getting into the weeds of issues some might find mundane. But he says if he has a real hobbyhorse, it's protecting the process by which government interacts with citizens and "and making them feel that they are participating in a meaningful, transparent and understandable way."
The idea that finds its way into every answer, though, is that he really does think this is fun: the campaign, local government, all of it. He seems sincerely, oddly excited about the prospect of being on the Metro council — and a bit surprised that more people don't feel the same.
"The idea that you could be sort of on the board of directors of this county, in a way that's not a full-time job — you're still doing car line and cooking supper for your family — is really a fun idea," Cooper says. "Who wouldn't want to do that? Actually, the question is not why I'm running, it's why even more people are not running."
