CAPITOL VIEW
By Pat Nolan, NEWSCHANNEL 5 Political Analyst
August 11, 2023
MAYORAL RUNOFF CANDIDATE FREDDIE O’CONNELL IS ON INSIDE POLITICS; MORE ON THE AUGUST 3rd VOTE; FIRST APPEARANCES; THE SPECIAL SESSION OF THE LEGISLATURE IS FINALLY CONFIRMED; REDISTRICTING LAWSUIT FILED IN FEDERAL COURT OVER TENNESSEE CONGRESSIONAL AND STATE SENATE DISTRICT LINES; INFLATION TICKS UP AMID CLIMATE CHANGE IN PARADISE WITH DEADLY WILDFIRES RAGING IN HAWAII; CHARLES STROBEL
MAYORAL RUNOFF CANDIDATE FREDDIE O’CONNELL IS ON INSIDE POLITICS
A week ago, Nashville voters selected two candidates to be in a runoff election on September 14th.
The winner will be the city’s next mayor.
The candidates are progressive Metro Councilmember, Freddie O’Connell and conservative business woman, Alice Rolli.
INSIDE POLITICS plans to have both candidates on this program with Councilman O’Connell being with us today.
We welcome Councilman O’Connell back to the program.
Mrs. Rolli is scheduled to join us on INSIDE POLITICS next week.
Both interviews will also air on the main channel (WTVF-TV NEWSCHANNEL5) at 630 p.m. on Friday night.
INSIDE POLITICS can be seen as well on its regular weekly schedule on NEWSCHANNEL5 PLUS.
Those times include:
7:00 p.m. Friday.
5:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and 5:30 p.m. on Saturday.
1:30 a.m. & 5:00 a.m. on Sunday.
THE PLUS is on Comcast Cable channel 250, Charter Cable channel 182 and on NEWSCHANNEL5’s over-the-air digital channel 5.2. We are also on DISH TV with the rest of the NEWSCHANNEL5 NETWORK.
One option for those who cannot see the show locally, or who are out of town, you can watch it live with streaming video on NEWSCHANNEL5.com. Just use your TiVo or DVR, if those live times don't work for you.
This week’s show and previous INSIDE POLITICS interviews are also posted on the NEWSCHANNEL5 website for your viewing under the NEWSCHANNEL5 PLUS section. A link to the show is posted as well on the Facebook page of NEWSCHANNEL5 PLUS. Each new show and link are posted early in the week after the program airs. I am also posting a link to the show each week on my Facebook page.
MORE ON THE AUGUST 3rd VOTE
How did Nashville voters cast their ballots for mayor on August 3rd?
Well, it is said a picture can often explain more than a thousand words.
The Stones River public relations firm put together a color map that shows in the mayor’s race which candidate got the most votes in each of the 35 Council districts. Now getting the most votes doesn’t mean they got the majority of the vote (50% or more) cast in each district, just more than any of the 12 other mayoral candidates.
The map has been used in stories by THE NASHVILLE BANNER and WPLN NASHVILLE PUBLIC RADIO.
Not surprisingly, the two top candidates who are in the runoff, Freddie O’Connell and Alice Rolli, have the most districts shaded in their color. What is striking in the map is the strong geographic divergence in where each candidate shows strength.
The inner core of Nashville and as you look out, both in East Nashville, as well as around and inside I-440, and out I-24 towards the Rutherford County line, O’Connell runs first while Rolli leads in the areas around the edges of the county in all directions, such as Goodlettsville, Hermitage, Bellevue, the satellite cities and the rest of southwest Nashville.
Again, the two runoff candidates got the most votes in those areas, but not 50% majorities. I sensed the map might look like this election night when NEWSCHANNEL5 tallied the vote in the largest precinct in every Nashville zip code. You could see all night that O’Connell had the most strength all night.
Here is a further breakdown of where the vote was cast, and which candidates got it in on a precinct by precinct basis.
What also strikes me about the color map is how in some ways it resembles the 1987 mayoral runoff race between then congressman Bill Boner and Nashville businessman Phil Bredesen. Boner, with the help of then Sherrif Fate Thomas, won the mayor’s seat by carrying every precinct north and east of the river, while Bredesen did almost as well south of the river and going west across Davidson County. Is the new geographical dividing line for this 2023 mayoral runoff going to be the core city versus the more rural and suburban areas of Nashville?
In another countywide race, this one for vice mayor, some vote numbers posted on the website of the Metro Election Commission show how Councilmember Angie Henderson pulled off the biggest upset of the night by beating incumbent Jim Shulman.
The numbers are broken down by the early vote, the day of vote and absentee ballots. In both the early vote and in absentees, Shulman won narrowly, by 726 in early vote and 115 in absentees. But in day- of balloting, Henderson won by a significant margin of 6,655 votes! Obviously, she had the better GOTV effort, especially given the rain and storms that seemed to smother voter turnout countywide from about 8:00 a.m. until around 2:00 p.m. on August 3rd.
Shulman is the first Metro vice mayor to lose a bid to be re-elected.
FIRST APPEARANCES
Despite being a mayoral runoff candidate who needs to broaden her voter appeal beyond her conservative Republican base, where did Alice Rollo go on the Saturday after the August 3rd election?
How about the Tennessee State Republican Executive Committee meeting in nearby Wilson. It’s a move that the candidate later told reporters that maybe she should have thought about more.
THE BANNER article also reports that Rolli says she was present at a meeting of the State GOP Executive Committee last December when she says she got the first inklings of how the Republican Super Majority in the Legislature was devising “plans to hurt Nashville,” by cutting the size of the Metro Council and taking over its Airport Authority.
Rolli says she was in attendance because “it was better to have someone in those rooms talking to state Republicans than not.”
She wasn’t a mayoral candidate then, but did Rolli advise the Republicans she spoke to, not to “hurt Nashville?” What is she telling GOP leaders now?
Councilman O’Connell faces his own difficult issue during his final Metro Council meeting this coming Tuesday, August 15. That is when the Council decides whether to make permanent a controversial license plate reader program, that has been underway as a test pilot project the last six months. Metro Police say license plate readers will be an effective tool to fight crime. The city’s Community Oversight Board opposes it and says it will be an unfair invasion of privacy that will be a burden on black and brown people and their communities.
O’Connell has expressed concerns about the program. If he votes yes, he will anger some of his progressive supporters. If he votes no, he is giving Alice Rolli another line of attack that O’Connell is soft on crime.
To add an additional overtone of Metro vs. State partisan politics, a top leader of the Republican Super Majority says, if Metro rejects the license plate program, the GOP dominant General Assembly will pass legislation to mandate it.
THE SPECIAL SESSION OF THE LEGISLATURE IS FINALLY CONFIRMED
It’s finally official.
After announcing four months ago in April that he would call a special session of the Tennessee General Assembly to consider gun reform measures and other topics surrounding public safety, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has finally issued the legal documents required to bring lawmakers back to Nashville on August 21.
Here is the actual proclamation of Governor Lee calling the session.
Here is the news release from his office.
Governor Lee made his first comments about calling a special session within days after the mass shooting in late March at the Covenant School in Nashville that left three nine-year-old children and three adults dead.
Thousands of protestors besieged the State Capitol demanding action for “common sense” gun reform. But legislative leaders instead seemed intent on quickly ending their regular session. They adjourned and fled Capitol Hill without taking any action on the guns issue.
Even in recent days Tennessee Republican party leaders have urged Governor to abandon his call for a special session. Even a similar GOP party leadership group in Williamson County, where Governor Lee lives, has made a similar request that no special session be called.
But there are some Republican voices supporting the special session call.
What is the reaction of the parents of the Covenant School and other groups formed to push gun reform in the wake of the mass shooting. They are encouraged the special session will happen, but they are concerned how little of Governor Lee’s call for the session actually involves guns.
Here is a summary of other reaction to what is in, and not, in the special session call.
Of course, Tennessee lawmakers and their leaders will decide what will or won’t pass in the special session. The verdict they’ve already rendered is “no gun laws can be passed.”
But even as it appears no gun laws can be passed in the upcoming special session, Nashville experienced another troubling shooting on Thursday afternoon. Five juveniles came into the Bordeaux branch of the Metro Public Library. Two of them had guns. They got into a fight in a public restroom, gun fire broke out leaving two wounded. Police have all 5 of the suspects in custody. But the Metro Police department spokesman did wonder out loud how kids so young can obtain firearms so easily and use them so wantonly.
Meanwhile, even before lawmakers return, another scandal has been discovered on the Hill involving a top aide to a State Senator. There are also whispers a senator may also be implicated.
REDISTRICTING LAWSUIT FILED IN FEDERAL COURT OVER TENNESSEE CONGRESSIONAL AND STATE SENATE DISTRICT LINES
A federal court lawsuit filed this week in Nashville alleges the redistricting lines drawn in 2022 by the Tennessee General Assembly for the state’s congressional and State Senate districts are illegal “racial gerrymandering.”
The suit points to the Republican supermajority's effort to break up Davidson County into three congressional districts and the splitting of state Senate District 31 in Shelby County.
I remember when the redistricting plan was approved, the Chairman of the Tennessee Democratic Party predicted on INSIDE POLITICS that a lawsuit would be quickly filed. But nothing happened. That was when the U.S. Supreme Court had issued some rulings that seemed to put the federal courts all but out of the business of second-guessing redistricting decisions made by state legislatures.
But more recently in June, the High Court has handed down a decision impacting the state of Alabama. The ruling indicates that racial representation in redistricting plans remains a reason for the courts to intervene.
But will this new lawsuit in Tennessee be litigated and decided before the 2024 elections? Don’t bet on it.
INFLATION TICKS UP AMID CLIMATE CHANGE IN PARADISE WITH DEADLY WILDFIRES RAGING IN HAWAII
Just when it appears inflation was more and more slowly on the decline, it has ticked up in the latest consumer price index government report for July.
Will it mean yet another interest rate hike is in the offing in the next few weeks or months?
In another concerning news story this week, it appears climate change is impacting even paradise, with wildfires in Hawaii sparking major evacuations and the loss of at least 55 lives, as of Friday morning, with the death toll likely to rise still higher. While the cause of the blaze remains unknown, the flames do appear 80% contained.
CHARLES STROBEL
There are few among us that live their lives as a saint or an angel walking among us.
But Charles Strobel did.
I first met Charlie in May 1969. He was studying to be a priest and was leading our senior retreat at Father Ryan. Now high school seniors, in their final days in classes, are often already checked out.
But the soon to be Father Strobel helped make that retreat so memorable, my classmates were recalling it this week in e-mails we exchanged mourning his death.
When I next met Father Charlie, he was founding Room in the Inn, to assist the homeless have a warm place to stay on cold winter nights in Nashville. As a reporter, and later working in Mayor Fulton's office, I reported, observed and admired his Christ-like efforts to bring awareness to ease the suffering of "the least of us," as the Savior commands.
His love and compassion for his fellow human beings even extended to the man who murdered his mother. Charlie opposed the death penalty including for the one who brought so much pain and sorrow to him and his family.
One of the last times I saw Charles was the night he was honored by Father Ryan, his alma mater. I was struck he looked a bit fragile that night. I made the effort to push through the crowds to tell him personally what an exceptional person he's been and the huge impact he's had.
I can't think of a better place to host his Celebration of Life services than the First Horizon Baseball Park. First, there was no greater fan of our Great American Past Time than Charlie. Second, he had such a profound and far-reaching impact on Nashville and our citizens that there probably isn't a Catholic church, or any place of worship in the city, to host the huge crowd I hope attends.
Well done, Charles Strobel. Rest in Peace, a Good and Faithful Servant of the Lord!
Many have said the city should do something to permanently honor Father Strobel. On Thursday Mayor John Cooper announced plans to honor his humanitarian legacy by naming the city’s first permanent supportive housing center after him.
“Our city owes a great debt to Father Strobel for ensuring that we never forgot or neglected the poor and suffering in our midst,” said Mayor Cooper. “It is likely we would not have our new supportive housing facility without Father Strobel’s years of advocacy and example, so it is my privilege to recommend naming it after him. This center will permanently honor Father Strobel’s legacy, yet it also will serve as a reminder that, as he would so often tell us, there is still more work to do.”
The current Metro Council must approve the mayor’s recommendation at its next and final meeting Tuesday. Due to deadlines to file legislation, the action will require a suspension of the rules to consider the naming as a late item.
