Metropolitik is a recurring column featuring the Scene’s analysis of Metro dealings.
Nashville used to have too many choices for mayor. Today there are too few, leaving Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s office with nothing to fear.
Without a credible challenger, O’Connell will walk to a second term despite decreasing support during Nashville’s steady rise in national importance. The ideal window for a strong campaign announcement just opened, and no one is ready to force the real city conversations that blossom from a competitive race.
Incumbent Nashville mayor officially launches run for second term at North Nashville event
O’Connell, the eventual champion of a crowded 2023 field, risked his own Metro future by challenging then-Mayor John Cooper in spring 2022, more than a year before O’Connell’s eventual election. This early plunge showed guts and gave the accomplished councilmember time to build a strong support base among the many disaffected voters who saw Cooper as a rudderless nepo mayor preoccupied by a personal obsession with real estate. A whole year to persuade business owners, other electeds, the media, community groups — all those constituencies who affect campaigns with more than a single vote — proved crucial for the bespectacled Salemtown candidate, who gradually progressed from dark horse to favorite. Cooper didn’t even make it to Election Day, choosing not to seek reelection, a political gift that turned O’Connell into the office’s best qualified applicant.
Three years later, he still is. O’Connell’s first term peaked in November 2024 with another ballot-box win: The mayor secured dedicated funding for his Choose How You Move transit initiative via a 0.5 percent sales tax boost. Bus ridership has improved but traffic hasn’t, and city streets remain just as lethal for pedestrians and cyclists while bikeway and greenway building stalls. Climbing housing prices continue to keep affordable homes out of reach for working-class Nashvillians, while the city continues to welcome wealthy newcomers. The mayor funds city affordable housing efforts, but has not directly tackled true zoning reform — perhaps deterred by politically nuclear zoning reform proposals known as NEST (Nashville’s Essential Structures for Togetherness) in 2024. O’Connell was late to the data center conversation, an issue he clearly sees as politically important, and he has waged a legally dubious and expensive attempt to catch up.
This doesn’t touch on the downtown power struggle, state lawmakers controlling the East Bank, an FBI investigation at Metro Water Services, faltering leadership during the winter ice storm or the property tax bind that recently drew in Broadway business owners — all deserving of debate that won’t happen unless O’Connell feels threatened enough to truly campaign. Instead he is stacking cash and blending his mayor-candidate persona into the city’s default politics.
Following community backlash, Metro could take control of South Nashville property for public use
If polling trends hold, O’Connell could fall below 50 percent support next year: Vanderbilt’s annual poll saw the mayor’s approval rating slip from 70 percent in 2024 to 67 in 2025 and 54 this year. Just three names — District 32 Councilmember Joy Styles, Bellevue neighborhood activist Lou Wilbanks and perennial candidate Natisha Brooks — are set to compete with O’Connell in August 2027. Styles announced her challenge in January but has little to show for it seven months later beyond a web page and meager fundraising numbers. Her campaign has aimed sharp critiques at O’Connell from her council post, some of which fairly illuminate his administration’s shortcomings and have provoked the O’Connell administration into a spat over Metro’s Office of Entertainment. Styles still struggles to make inroads that could translate into voting support, but it is early, and her campaign might yet find a higher gear. Wilbanks and Brooks (also a candidate for Congress this year) both appear to be running vanity campaigns.
Nashville knows how to put on a show. The next campaign fundraising disclosures are not due until 2027, allowing ample time for one or two campaigns to stand up real infrastructure before the spring. Any more options than that would likely divide the field into a game of Whac-A-Mole for the incumbent. There is no shortage of names who could carve out a compelling lane.
District 26 Councilmember Courtney Johnston has shown an appetite for grievance politics, financial accountability and retail campaigning, having unsuccessfully attempted to unseat incumbent U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles via 2024’s Republican primary. Well-connected businessmen like Sam Davidson, Sam Reed and state Rep. Bob Freeman (D-Nashville) could quickly raise money (or self-fund) and corner support among the Chamber of Commerce crowd, both intimidating qualities in a challenger. Councilmembers Delishia Porterfield and Sandra Sepulveda have enjoyed good working relationships with O’Connell since his time on the council but have the skill and politics to define themselves to the left of his mayoral administration. Former Councilmember Jamie Hollin, a Metro sharp who slams O’Connell from the comfort of his podcast, would be among the field’s most entertaining hypothetical entrants. There is the city hall old hand in Bob Mendes, whose long Metro résumé ends with a stint working the East Bank as O’Connell’s chief development officer, and the ambitious newcomer Rollin Horton, a first-term West Nashville councilmember who has crafted sound local legislation at times imitated (or co-opted) by the mayor himself.
Freeman, state Rep. Aftyn Behn (D-Nashville), Councilmember Zulfat Suara and affordable housing developer Matt Wiltshire, who ran in 2023, all recently dismissed the idea of running for mayor, setting up an all-time moment in Nashville politics: O’Connell, who captured backlash against the new Titans stadium to win his seat, warmed by the spotlight of hosting the 2030 Super Bowl.
Disclosure: Bob Freeman owns the Scene’s parent company, FW Publishing. He is not involved in the Scene’s editorial process or day-to-day operation.
