Carol Swain is running for mayor again.
The right-wing former Vanderbilt University professor who finished second to Mayor David Briley in last year's special mayoral election will try again to unseat him.
Swain is mostly known for her contributions to The Tennessean's op-ed page — like one in which she called Islam an "absolute danger to us and our children" and another in which she wondered aloud whether the deaths of Vanderbilt students and alumni in separate 2016 terrorist attacks overseas might be a punishment from God — and her alarmingly ubiquitous red yard signs. She announced her decision in a speech Sunday morning during an event at Tennessee State University, according to the Tennessee Star (a thinly veiled right-wing propaganda outlet that was thoroughly exposed earlier this month by Snopes). Bizarrely, a tweet from Swain amplifying the news tagged the Metro Nashville Police Department, along with Second Lady Karen Pence and other right-wing personalities and organizations.
Swain does not like the Scene.
“Everything you publish in the Nashville Scene has been derogatory and insulting, so I don’t think I should be talking with you,” she told our reporter Stephen Elliott last month.
Swain's announcement makes her the third candidate in the mayoral race, along with Briley and Democratic state Rep. John Ray Clemmons.
She enters the race, with the baggage of her past Islamophobic statements, just days after 50 Muslims were killed in terrorist attacks on two mosques in New Zealand. Over the weekend, she tweeted: "We all need to fight all forms of hatred against racial, political, ethnic, and religious groups. All hatred that leads to violence is unacceptable." Later that evening, however, she tweeted support for Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, who was suspended from her show after suggesting that Democratic U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar might not be able to uphold the Constitution because she is a Muslim and wears a hijab.
