The chair of the Tennessee Republican Party has endorsed a proposed bill in the GOP-dominated legislature that would forbid cities from holding runoffs in local elections―a plan that could give Republicans a much stronger chance to win this year’s officially nonpartisan race to lead the solidly Democratic city of Nashville. The plan comes one year after the legislature passed a law forbidding banning ranked choice voting in the state.
All the candidates looking to succeed retiring Nashville Mayor John Cooper will run on one ballot in August: The current law requires a September runoff between the top-two vote-getters unless one contender wins a majority of the vote, something that’s unlikely to happen in what’s shaping up to be a crowded field.
This Republican plan, though, would give the mayor’s office to whoever won the most votes even if they fell far short of 50%. Nashville, which is consolidated with the rest of Davidson County, backed Biden 64-32, and The Nashville Banner notes that this idea “would seemingly create the only path for a Republican to have a shot at winning the race” for mayor.
The proposal comes at a time when the GOP is looking to punish the local legislative body, the 40-member Metro Council, for effectively killing the legislature’s plan to land the 2024 Republican National Convention. One proposal would cut the Metro Council in half, while others would deprive the city’s convention center of funding and allow lawmakers and Republican Gov. Bill Lee to appoint a majority of members to the boards that run major Nashville sites. Republicans last year also infamously passed a congressional map that split the city between three different conservative seats, a gerrymander that led Cooper’s brother, Rep. Jim Cooper, to retire.
Republicans, though, insist they’re trying to eliminate a second round of voting because, in the words of state Sen. Brent Taylor, “Runoffs are a relic of the Jim Crow South.” Political scientist Sekou Franklin, however, told the Banner that while runoffs were originally a way to keep African Americans from winning elections, “Over time that narrative of runoffs [being] against African American candidates has disappeared, that's the best way I can describe it … [Black voters] became normalized into the process and have experienced success in runoff election systems.”
Two Republicans, meanwhile, have expressed interest in campaigning to replace Cooper. One potential contender is Alice Rolli, who served in then-Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration and was also Sen. Lamar Alexander’s campaign manager during his final race in 2014; Rolli’s treasurer for her potential bid is David Fox, a Republican who lost the 2015 runoff to Democrat Megan Barry 55-45. The other is conservative commentator Carol Swain, a former Vanderbilt professor who competed in the 2018 special election to succeed Barry after she resigned following a scandal. Swain lost that contest 54-23 to new Mayor David Briley, and she took 22% in the regular contest the following year. (Cooper went on to unseat Briley in the runoff.)
This year’s currently consists of Metro Council members Sharon Hurt and Freddie O'Connell along with former economic development chief Matt Wiltshire and Jim Gingrich, the former chief operating officer of the global asset management giant AllianceBernstein. Wiltshire, who has been self-funding part of his bid, made use of his large war chest to debut his opening TV ad “during the Puppy Bowl and the Super Bowl pregame show.” The commercial touts his local roots and argues, “We should focus on improving all of our neighborhoods, not just attracting more tourists.”
