Pence to Nashville Again, This Time for Cash

A group of Tennessee businesspeople is hosting Vice President Mike Pence for a high-dollar fundraiser in Nashville next month.

Tickets for the Oct. 7 event, the location for which has not been disclosed, run between $1,000 and $100,000.

The top sponsors include: Barney Byrd, president and CEO of local private equity firm GenCap America; Tina and Mike Hodges, who together run payday lender Advance Financial; Garry McNabb, the owner of another payday lender, Cash Express; Andrew Puzder, the former CEO of CKE Restaurants and onetime nominee for Secretary of Labor under President Donald Trump; Jim Haslam, founder of Pilot Corporation and father to former Gov. Bill Haslam; Tommy Fitzgerald of Fitzgerald Glider Kits; Willis Johnson, founder of Texas-based auto auction company Copart and local tech startup Takl; and Jay Adair, CEO of Copart.

RNC chair Ronna McDaniel, co-chair Tommy Hicks Jr., finance chair Todd Ricketts and Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale will also be on hand, according to an invitation.

Fitzgerald’s past political donations drew attention recently when it came to light that one of his benefactors, former U.S. Rep. Diane Black, had intervened on his company’s behalf with the Environmental Protection Agency, which was considering whether to further regulate the kind of truck modifications Fitzgerald manufactures in Tennessee.

The vice president also made his way to Nashville for the National Religious Broadcasters’ annual convention in 2018 and the Tennessee Republican Party’s Statesmen’s Dinner in 2017.

Bill Haslam and Pence were friends and allies when both were governors, and Haslam even said Trump should step aside for Pence after a video of the now-president condoning sexual assault was published in the weeks before the 2016 election. The former governor has since softened his stance on the president.

"I'm going to vote for the Republican," he said.