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In Davidson County’s May 5 primaries, appointed Judge Jodie Bell kept her seat on the General Sessions bench, but the Criminal and Family courts will have new judges. Longtime public defender Dawn Deaner held off incumbent Jim Todd by just under 700 votes in the Criminal Court race, and Corletra Mance beat incumbent Bethany Glandorf by around 1,200 votes in Circuit Court.
All three were running to finish unexpired terms. Each new judge’s term will last until 2030.
As projected, voter turnout was low. But at more than 40,000 voters, the turnout still eclipsed the 35,000 that some candidates had predicted earlier in their campaigns. In each race, voters seemed to choose the most overtly progressive candidates.
Deaner, 54, started at the Metro Nashville Public Defender’s Office in the 1990s and worked her way to the top. That experience was the centerpiece of her campaign.
“Nobody sitting [on the Criminal Court bench] has [public defender] experience,” Deaner told the Banner before the election, “and nobody’s been there for decades with that experience. And I think the people of Nashville want that.”
Perhaps this line in the sand made the difference for the voters. Of the three candidates, she raised the least money for her campaign, but both Todd and third-place finisher Ron Dowdy have worked as prosecutors.
“I wouldn’t ever be a prosecutor,” Deaner told the Banner during her campaign. “I don’t have the mindset that would allow me to do that, because I don’t see that the system itself helps anybody. I became a lawyer to fight for justice, and I couldn’t be a prosecutor because I don’t think the approach that requires is consistent with [my values].”
Bell has been in the General Sessions seat since November, when the Metro Council chose her to replace Todd after he was appointed to the Criminal Court bench. She earned approximately two-thirds of the vote in defeating challenger Michael Robinson and will now serve the remaining four years of Todd’s term.
“When I got the appointment from Metro Council, it was the biggest honor of my life,” Bell told the Banner on election night. “But to get the endorsement of the voters tops that. I appreciate the trust the community has put in me, and I intend to live up to that trust. And given the political climate, it’s great to see that Nashville has the values that [I share].”
General Sessions judges can hear more than 170,000 cases per year. Their courtrooms are large and busy, and the “high-volume, limited jurisdiction” court can hear a variety of misdemeanors, traffic violations and eviction cases. The Banner sat in on one case that determined who was the rightful owner of a dog.
“The thing I think people forget is that many cases start in General Sessions Court,” Bell, 58, told the Banner. “And it’s really important that they start the right way, because that can impact the long-term trajectory of the case.”
For three decades before taking the bench, Bell was a public defender and defense attorney in Nashville. She is passionate about indigent defense funding and started the IDEA Pilot Project, which provides training and supplemental funding in court-appointed cases to recruit experienced lawyers who can provide competent counsel to poorer defendants facing jail time. She is married to former Nashville mayor and current Judge David Briley.
Mance, 43, built her campaign on her experience in areas beyond family law.
“One thing I’ve been pushing the entire time is that what makes me unique is that I don’t just do family law,” she said. “I do immigration law, I do a little criminal, I do a lot of probate.”
She also emphasized her lived experience with the law, and how Nashville is becoming more diverse.
Mance said she has lived across the city, in Antioch, Hermitage, The Gulch, East Nashville and North Nashville. After law school, graduating into a recession, she worked as a server at BrickTop’s. She said she admires how Bell does expungement clinics in the community, and she plans to be out and about.
“It’s more than just being up on that bench,” she said. “You need to be out in the community. We need to be creating other resources or clinics and educating people on how Family Court works.”
School Board, County Clerk Races
Meanwhile in the Metro Nashville Public Schools board elections, all four incumbent candidates won reelection.
Four of nine seats on the school board were up for election in the Davidson County primary, and Districts 4 and 6 were the only ones contested. All candidates ran as Democrats, so the primary likely marks the end of this election cycle. School board candidates have been required to share a political affiliation since 2022.
Dr. Berthena Nabaa-McKinney easily prevailed in District 4 — encompassing Donelson and Hermitage — with 3,165 votes, almost double the votes for challenger Jenny Bell. Cheryl Mayes earned 2,323 votes for District 6 representing Antioch and Cane Ridge, well ahead of Fran Bush and Mary Bernice Polk.
Incumbents Rachael Anne Elrod and Erin O’Hara Block ran uncontested for Districts 2 and 8, respectively.
Sharon Hurt
Also on Tuesday, Nashville Democrats selected Sharon Hurt to be their nominee for Davidson County clerk in the August general election. With no Republicans qualified for the race, Hurt has effectively won the seat and will succeed retiring Clerk Brenda Wynn.
The three-way Democratic primary pitted Hurt against Metro Nashville Public Schools board chair Freda Player and Pamela Murray, who served on the Metro Council until she was recalled in 2009. With all precincts reporting Tuesday night, Hurt had 19,440 votes to Player’s 16,619, with Murray in a distant third.
This article first appeared on Nashville Banner and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
