The votes were still being counted on election night last week when the gun went off for the contest's next leg. Megan Barry and David Fox — the top two vote-getters in what had been a historically crowded and costly mayoral race — got right into runoff form in respective victory speeches, seeking to draw contrasts in that passive-aggressive manner we might call The Nashville Way, if the Fox campaign hadn't already trademarked the term to define a sort of know-it-when-you-see-it warmth the candidate says he'll preserve.
Not that they had much time to waste. Early voting for the Sept. 10 runoff begins on Aug. 21. At the Nashville Farmers Market, the Rev. Dr. Judy Cummings riled up a crowd of Barry supporters by noting what they had in that room was bigger than any Super PAC or personal wealth — a flashing arrow aimed at Fox, whose campaign was very publicly associated with both. When Barry, a two-term at-large Metro Council member who has only ever run countywide, took the podium, she spoke of "earning" votes — a bit of rhetoric that translates as, "The other guy wrote himself a check for more than $1.5 million, and his hedge-fund-managing brother put $500,000 into an out-of-state Super PAC to back him." At least that's what our translation said.
Fox's comments were a bit more on-the-nose — he referred frequently to Barry by name — but still delivered in those familiar "my opponent and dear friend" tones. He sought to blunt possible attacks from Barry on social issues, which he (rightly) said had clearly been an animating principle for his opponent and her progressive base, and that business about the Super PAC. Describing himself as a fiscal conservative and a social moderate, Fox said his Jewish faith informed his live-and-let-live views on abortion and same-sex marriage. He extended a hand to anyone to the right of Barry, a not-insignificant amount of Nashvillians now looking for a new candidate to support. He also thanked his brother "for trying to do everything he could to help me," artfully hinting that George Fox's ostensibly secret PACtivity was regrettable without throwing his sibling under the bus.
Fox was less subtle in summing up the runoff, saying, "I really think there's Megan Barry, who's over on the far left side, on the liberal side, and then there's generally all the rest of us." That was a well-delivered zinger, but it may overstate how far to the left Barry is and just how big a constituency "all the rest of us" is. It certainly contradicts one of the Super PAC mailers that went out last month, portraying Fox as the lone conservative in a field of MSNBC liberals (whose combined take added up to more than 70 percent of the turnout). But it does lead one to wonder if this runoff will take on a more partisan bent than is typically seen in Metro elections.
In the week since the matchup was set, Barry has put the full-court press on the supporters of her former opponents. She addressed an impromptu gathering of former Bill Freeman and Charles Robert Bone supporters last Friday and followed it up with open letters reaching out to Freeman and Jeremy Kane supporters, both focused on education-related issues. And that's an area, among others, where real differences emerge between the two.
In her letter to Freeman supporters, Barry pledged to take up part of the third-place candidate's platform: the cause of Community Schools, which serve as hubs in their communities offering expanded services to students and community members. When it comes to Nashville's ever-present hot topic — the balance between charter schools and traditional public schools — Barry essentially advocates the status quo. When the Scene profiled her in January, she told the crowd at a fundraiser that "people who want to pretend that charter schools are going to go away are wrong. And people who think that charter schools are going to take over our entire schools are wrong too. There is a balance, and they both have a place in our public education system. They are both public schools."
But Fox, the former Metro school board chairman, has made no secret of his interest in discussing a wide expansion of charter schools in Nashville, pointing to New Orleans — which created an all-charter school system — as a success story. And although he doesn't expect it to happen, he's said Nashville would be better off if board members were appointed, calling the city's "30-year experiment" with an elected school board a failure.
All's quiet so far from their former rivals' campaigns, with little indication as to whether Freeman, Bone or Howard Gentry — who each finished with more than 10,000 votes apiece — will endorse Barry or Fox in the runoff. Either one would make history, whether as Nashville's first female or first Jewish mayor. History is on Barry's side in one regard: She finished first in the general election, and no second-place finisher has ever won a runoff. Yet Fox's campaign seemed dormant for months until he mounted a well-strategized surge that catapulted him into the top two. So who's to say?
In the words of Opal Fleener, demanding a do-over on the question of whether to keep Coach Norman Dale at the pivotal town meeting in Hoosiers: "I think we should vote again."
Full disclosure: Megan Barry is married to longtime Scene contributor Bruce Barry. David Fox is married to longtime Scene food writer Carrington Fox.
