Live from Music Row, Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed State Senator Joey Hensley (R-Hohenwald) in studio to talk about his background and growing up in Hohenwald, Tennessee.
Leahy: We are joined right now for the very first time by our good friend, State Senator Joey Hensley. Good morning, Senator Hensley.
Hensley: Good morning, Michael. It’s good to be here with you today.
Leahy: You’ve been on our newsmaker line many times and every time I just bug you, come on in! And finally, we’ve succeeded and you are here. And you are looking dapper in your three-piece suit with your tie. And you are ready to go up to the State Capitol and do some business, as they say.
Hensley: That’s right. But this is early in the morning. (Leahy laughs) But I get up early a lot of mornings, so it’s no problem. Yes, it’s a big day today in the capitol. I’m on the finance committee and chairman of the revenue subcommittee. We meet this morning and are looking at a lot of legislation, and the session is really gearing up and getting busy.
Leahy: It’s March now, and the session started in mid-January, and now typically, these sessions go until May or so.
Hensley: Typically the end of April but there’s no set finished date. It is basically when we get the budget passed, and all the bills signed and make sure everything is going through. After the budget gets passed, then it’s usually a week or two and we finish, but usually the end of April, the first of May.
Leahy: You are a medical doctor currently?
Hensley: I am, yes.
Leahy: You live in Hohenwald, Tennessee.
Hensley: Hohenwald, Tennessee, yes.
Leahy: I just have to say what a great name.
Hensley: That’s German for high forest. Hohenwald was settled by the Swiss and the Germans. And so Hohenwald is German for high forest.
Leahy: That’s a good history lesson here.
Hensley: And the county was formed because Mayor Meriwether Lewis is buried right outside of Hohenwald. Lewis County was formed right around his grave. And so Hohenwald is the only town in the county, but that’s my hometown.
Leahy: Yes, Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Hensley: Lewis and Clark Expedition. And he was quite a brilliant guy. Had a kind of troubled personal life.
Hensley: He had a troubled life, and he was traveling down the Natchez Trace and was killed. There’s still a big mystery of whether he committed suicide or whether he was murdered. And there’s been talk of digging up his grave in the past, but he was killed on the Natchez Trace and he’s buried there right outside of it.
Leahy: He was a young man at that time.
Hensley: He was a young man. He was still in his mid-thirties or so.
Leahy: Mid-thirties, yes.
Hensley: He had already made the trip out West, the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and was traveling down the Trace. And back in those days, the Trace wasn’t a much better trail. So he wound up being killed our committing suicide is still a mystery.
Leahy: Where are you on that mystery?
Hensley: I think he probably was murdered.
Leahy: I’m on that same path as well.
Hensley: I don’t think he committed suicide, but that’s been 200 years ago.
Leahy: He had a powerful friend in Thomas Jefferson.
Hensley: He did have a powerful friend. Yes.
Leahy: And if he got in trouble, I think Jefferson would’ve helped him out.
Hensley: I think he would. But traveling down the Trace, there were robbers and all kinds of people on the Trace. And so, who knows what happened?
Leahy: So you grew up in Hohenwald.
Hensley: I grew up in Hohenwald, yes.
Leahy: And went to medical school?
Hensley: I went to medical school in Memphis, and first of all, went to Columbia State Community College. And then went to Memphis State, which is the University of Memphis now. And then went to medical school in Memphis and did a family practice residency there.
I was in Memphis for about 10 years doing my training and then, I came back to Hoenwald and have a solo family practice in Hoenwald. I’m one of the dying breed, I guess. A solo family practitioner in a small town. But I’ve been very fortunate to be able to still practice medicine and be in the legislature as well. Being in the legislature is part-time so most people have other professions. I’ve been fortunate to be able to do both.
Leahy: And your district now includes all of Lewis County, Maury County, and just a tiny sliver of Williamson County. You represent me.
Hensley: I do.
Leahy: I know. I’m in that little sliver.
Hensley: It’s a tiny sliver, but there’s a lot of people that live in that sliver. That’s Spring Hill in Williamson County, so there are about 32,000 people in that part of Spring Hill.
Leahy: And also what other counties?
Hensley: Giles and Marshall County.
Leahy: That’s a lot of people. How many people are in that district?
Hensley: It’s about 220,000 people.
Leahy: And they all have your phone number. (Laughs)
Hensley: They all have it available. Yes. I’ve published my cell phone all the time. I’ve been in the legislature, which is quite a while.
Leahy: We’ll talk about that and more and what the agenda is in our next segment.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Joey Hensley” by Tennessee General Assembly. Background Photo “Downtown Hohenwald” by KFlanz. CC BY-SA 4.0.
Live from Music Row, Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Tennessee State Senator Joey Hensley in studio to discuss his top legislative items for the 2023 session.
Leahy: We are delighted to have in studio, State Senator Joey Hensley. Joey, you have been in the House of Representatives for 10 years.
Hensley: Yes.
Leahy: And you’ve been in the state Senate for 10 years?
Hensley: Yes.
Leahy: That’s a long time.
Hensley: It’s a long time. Yes. And certainly, when I first got elected, I never dreamed I’d still be here after 20 years. But I’ve been fortunate and blessed to be able to represent the people in my district and represent the people in the state. Because when you get elected, you pass laws that affect the whole state. But I have been blessed and fortunate to be able to do that.
Leahy: There are 33 members of the Senate. And they alternate; they have four-year terms. And this last session, I think 16, we’re up for re-election. And now, the next session, 17, you’ll be one in the next election in 2024.
Hensley: I’ll be one of ’em. The even-numbered districts will be running next time. The odd-numbered districts all run together, which was the last election. And now next year or the next election, the even number of districts will be running. So half of the Senate runs every two years now. All of the House members run every two years. But the Senate, half of ’em run every two years. So I’ll be up again next election.
Leahy: Now, here’s a fun question for you. You spent 10 years in the House. Ten years in the Senate. What’s the difference between those two chambers?
Hensley: There are more people in the House. There are more committees to get bills through. That’s the biggest difference. The house has subcommittees, and then more committees that get a bill through the Senate generally just have one full committee.
So if you get a bill through a committee, it goes to the floor. If it doesn’t have a cost, It’ll go straight to the floor after a few days in the house. It just takes longer for bills to get to the floor and there are more people. So you have to deal with more people in the committees than 99 people in the house and 33 in the Senate.
Leahy: Now you serve on the very important finance committee.
Hensley: I do. Yes.
Leahy: Tell us what your duties are there and what’s on your agenda today when you run up to the capitol right after this and work on your committee. (Hensley chuckles)
Hensley: I’m the second vice chairman of the Finance Committee and Chairman of the Revenue Subcommittee. So it’ll be meeting after the full finance committee today, the revenue subcommittee. All of the tax bills, if it has anything dealing with taxes it comes through the revenue subcommittee and either gets a negative or a positive recommendation.
I chair that committee. The finance committee, any bill that’s got a cost to it has to go through the finance committee, and we have to make sure the funds are available. Because even if a bill passes the House and the Senate, it has a cost to it, and that’s not funded in the budget, then the bill doesn’t go into effect.
So every bill has to have a cost that is applied to the bill, the fiscal review committee, and then puts the cost to the bill, and we have to make sure there’s that amount of money in the budget.
Leahy: And the state of Tennessee is, I think, top-rated, if not the top-rated state in the country, for fiscal responsibility.
Hensley: It is. It’s either number one or right at the top because we are a very fiscally responsible state. This year we had about a $9 billion surplus, which means money that some money rolled over from last year that we had spent as one-time money.
And then other money that we had where we collected more taxes than we had budgeted Tennessee’s attracting businesses to our state. And we were able to collect more money than we had budgeted at the first of the year. We put a budget in place, and we estimate how much money we’re going to take in.
If we take in more than that, we call it a surplus, but it really just means people have paid in more taxes than we had budgeted so that money can be spent until we come back in the legislature and designate where it’s going to.
Leahy: Do you have any bills that you’ve introduced that are part of your personal agenda this session?
Hensley: I have several bills, some dealing with Maury County. We’re trying to make part of the Duck River a scenic river. So I have that up.
Leahy: What does that mean if you make part of it a scenic river?
Hensley: Part of the river is already a scenic river. And for people that don’t know it, the Duck River is the most biodiverse river in the country because of the aquatic life in the river. Part of it is already scenic river we’re trying to make the rest of it is scenic river. Why is that special? What is that designation, scenic river? What does that mean?
Hensley: It protects it from certain development, ah, along the river and you can still have agricultural development, but certain other developments can’t be in a scenic river.
Leahy: Like residential development.
Hensley: Landfills and things like that. You can still have residential development, but mostly agricultural right up to the river. So part of it’s already a scenic river. We’re trying to make the rest of it a scenic river.
Leahy: Is that a state or federal designation, scenic river?
Hensley: This would be a state designation. We can only do things at a state level, but that’s one big thing because that’s very important to people in Maury County. We’re also trying to pass a bill that would make counties able to do the same thing cities can do like putting impact fees on new residential development. So that’s a big issue.
Leahy: I know Mayor Sheila Butt and Mayor Joe Carr are supporting that.
Hensley: Yes. They are supporting it because it is difficult for counties to be able to provide infrastructure when you have rapid growth like Maury County, the fastest-growing county in the state.
Leahy: Perhaps in the country. It’s way up there.
Hensley: It’s way up there in the country. And you see that in Spring Hill. (Chuckles)
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Photo “Joey Hensley” by Joey Hensley. Background Photo “Tennessee State Capitol” by Kaldari.
Live from Music Row, Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti to the newsmaker line to discuss the amicus brief filed against Chinese-owned TikTok and the possibility of litigation that could outlaw its platform in the state.
Leahy: On the newsmaker line right now, our good friend and, I think the very best state attorney general in the country, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. Good morning General Skrmetti.
Skrmetti: Good morning. How are you?
Gulbransen: Good morning.
Leahy: We’re glad to have you on, and I know you’re traveling and doing a lot of work around the state. Our lead story at The Tennessee Star. You are leading 46 states to demand that China-based TikTok comply with your multi-state investigation. You’ve asked for records, and they’re not providing them. Tell us about that.
Skrmetti: In any of these big multi-state investigations, we send out investigative requests using some legal tools we have, and in every other case, even when they don’t like it, companies send us the information to send us. In this case, TikTok has sent us almost nothing.
They have taken steps to ensure that evidence is being destroyed as far as we can tell. And what they have given us, they’ve provided it in a format you can’t understand. It looks like it was deliberately made to be unreadable. They have been abstracting in ways that I haven’t seen this from a legitimate business.
Leahy: They’re Chinese owned, and they also have confirmed that TikTok they have not disabled a feature on its internal communication platform that allows the automatic deletion of messages within seven days. According to your own office, why are they such scofflaws toward the duly authorized attorneys general in the United States?
Skrmetti: It’s incredible. When you have all the attorneys general working together as you have here, which is a pretty rare occurrence, that’s a serious signal to a corporation, that they’re under significant scrutiny and that this is a serious investigation.
And every other time that I’ve seen this, even where companies fought tooth and nail and disagreed vigorously with every theory we had about why they were liable, they still produced what they needed to produce, and they still preserved what they needed to preserve.
TikTok is an extreme outlier in my experience, and that’s why we went to the court. Ordinarily, you can resolve these with some conversations, and everybody understands that at the end of the day, they’re going to have to produce what they have to produce, and they grudgingly go along with it.
I think the fact that you have so many states signing onto a brief in a Tennessee state court, which is very unusual, is a strong signal here that this is not an everyday occurrence.
Leahy: Usually, when you see other attorneys general file an amicus brief, it’s usually in cases in federal court. And so you’ve gone to Tennessee state court, they’re joining with the amicus brief to get this information from Chinese-owned TikTok.
The issue here is that they’re collecting data on Americans and may not have the best of intentions for that. A very unusual situation. Where does this whole investigation go now that you’ve asked the court to tell them to produce these documents?
Skrmetti: The court will want them to produce the documents. We’re going to get the documents. Working hard on this for quite some time. Kids have been consulting birds looking at the impact of social media on kids, looking at what exactly it is the company does that’s causing problems.
What we need is transparency with respect to each specific company we’re looking at. And I expect we will likely file a lawsuit. The evidence we get is consistent with what we think we’ll get. And plus the company. Want to resolve this reasonably upfront; we are going to pursue this as far as necessary to protect our kids.
Leahy: This is my personal view, not your view, but my personal view is a TikTok is a tool of the Chinese Communist Party to obtain information about American citizens that they’re going to use in a way that harms our national security.
My personal feeling is that TikTok should be banned from the United States of America. Do you think that is an outcome that might result from some of your investigative work here and your litigation?
Skrmetti: I know we’re not the only ones looking at TikTok. I know that proposals at the federal level of various things. I also know that there’s a provision of Tennessee law that if a company’s behavior is sufficiently egregious, it allows me to ask a court to ban that company from ever doing business in Tennessee again.
And depending on the severity of the conduct in a given case, that may be appropriate. So we’re considering all options. I have a great team working on this nationally. We have a great team working on this from all the different states teaming up. We’re bringing our big guns to this fight.
Leahy: It seems to me then, if we were working towards a path where you as the attorney general of Tennessee could, in essence, bring litigation that would ban TikTok from operating in the state of Tennessee what would happen in the other states? In the United States, if that were the outcome that this ends up having?
Skrmetti: Each state has its own law, its own remedies, and its own lawsuits. And I don’t know whether other states have that capability or not. I suspect many of them do. I’ve never seen that invoked against a significant business interest. Usually, it’s reserved for your little fly-by-night scammers.
So I really don’t know what that world would look like. We’re so early. It’s really hard to predict exactly how that will play out. I just know that we have seen significant harm to kids. It’s all been nationally reported.
If you look at the mental health statistics, we are going to use every tool at our disposal, and I’m gonna use every tool at my disposal to protect our kids. So if that includes pulling out that, that hasn’t really been used we’ll do that. Good thing.
Leahy: Now, personally, this is me talking, not you personally. I’m all in favor of that. You said that this is something in Tennessee that’s been used to stop fly-by-night scammers.
My view on TikTok is that they have used this entertainment angle to become an international, fly-by-night scammer harming the national security of the United States and the welfare of children in America.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row, Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Aaron Gulbransen in studio to describe the recent bills that have passed in both the State House and State Senate.
Leahy: In studio, the state director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Mr. Aaron Gulbransen. Aaron, bring us up to speed on what’s happening in the Tennessee General Assembly.
Gulbransen: It seems that every day is busy at the General Assembly, but it seems like the last couple of weeks has just been lightning speed. We’ve discussed this a lot with Senator Johnson and others. You know, SB 1, the transgender mutilation bill, and the drag show bill SB 3.
Leahy: To be clear, one of our good friends pointed out, it’s really not a bill to stop drag shows. It’s a bill to regulate them and drag shows and related shows where they show body parts.
Gulbransen: Not on taxpayer-funded property and not in front of kids. There you go. And that’s what it was really done for. I was not in front of kids. And those of us in the media, unfortunately, and, and, and including myself, and some of the legislators themselves, shorthand referred to it as the drag show bill.
Leahy: That’s a good point. It’s interesting because when you write headlines, right? You shorten it. And we used that same headline, although, in the body of it, we d we described the detail. But one of our listeners pointed out that wasn’t exactly accurate, and no, I think they were right.
Gulbransen: And the Senate Majority Leader and the other bill sponsor, Chris Todd, pointed that out. The word drag is not in there. I will say, on behalf of those of us in conservative media, we are unwittingly feeding a little bit into a narrative.
Leahy: That was the point that one of our listeners made.
Gulbransen: And there are so many minutes in a segment, and you say things quicker. But there you go.
Leahy: This is the bill where Hillary Clinton, literally flies into town. Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, those icons of moral virtue, fly into town along with Pete Buttigieg, Alfred E. Newman, Alfred E. Buttigieg, as Bannon calls him. They fly into town, and they criticize what Tennesseans have done to protect children.
That is crazy. And then Gavin Newsom because you know California’s going so well, criticizes Bill Lee as well. And you know, Bill Lee punches back, and good for him.
Gulbransen: And certainly good for him. I will say, I don’t think the Clintons’ or Pete Buttigieg has ever had a reputation for defending children.
Leahy: No.
Gulbransen: And also, how dare Gavin Newsom to say anything, really about anything, but specifically recently, California just lessened the penalties on certain kinds of sex acts performed on underage children.
Leahy: And Gavin Newsom’s in favor of that?
Gulbransen: Yes. He signed it.
Leahy: Unbelievable.
Gulbransen: To paraphrase a phrase from the Bible, Newsom needs to take the log out of his own eye. For those of you who and including myself, was happy to see a special session a couple of years ago put some protections in against government overreach on COVID measures. Senator Jack Johnson’s SB 11 and Jason Zachary’s, HB 02, passed the House yesterday.
And basically, it makes a permanent liability shield against companies and people that might be sued for not requiring the vaccine, which is just a common sense thing. But that, that was very good. You had a bill by Bo Watson in the Senate passed the Senate unanimously, which is a simple thing, but I think it’s a good thing in terms of election integrity.
It allows a candidate to see a release and receive a list of all voters who change their residential address at the polling place and it requires under the circumstances of a recount to include verification of any change of addresses at the polling place.
You had another bill, SB 834 by Senator Lundberg, that prohibits a public institution of higher education that provides internet access to students, faculty, staff, and the general public from allowing individuals to access on that internet videos and forms like TikTok, which is another good thing.
Leahy: TikTok and Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti will be in here at 7:30 to talk about investigating TikTok. Look, TikTok is the Chinese Communist Party. They basically own TikTok and they’re taking data from Americans. It’s a national security problem.
Gulbransen: We had another bill sponsored by Senator Lundberg in the House sponsored by Representative Todd. You tend to see Todd’s name pop up in a lot of good bills. So he’s one of the good eggs. I know him. He was the house sponsor of the Yes On One, which was the right-to-work constitutional amendment.
He worked on that for many years, and that was a big victory in November when the voters passed it at over 70 percent of the vote, including a big majority here in Davidson County, which showed me that Democrats voted for it, which was good. A common sense thing. There’s another one.
SB 638 expands student eligibility for education savings accounts which we love, right? Anything to do with school choice is great. ESAs and charter schools are wonderful. Heidi Campbell had one of those silly leftist token bills that went nowhere. And of course, we oppose it here at Tennessee Faith and Freedom. She was trying to just abolish charter schools and ESAs.
Leahy: You talk about charter schools; we’re big fans of charter schools. So the latest Phil Williams expose is an organization called SCORE that is looking to expand charter schools. They’ve got a private study that apparently says we need more charter schools.
Well, of course, we need more private schools because K-12 public schools are absolutely failing in every measure of reading, writing, and arithmetic, not hitting their standards, and indoctrinating kids. We’re all in favor of charter schools. And Phil Williams may not like him, but we don’t like Phil Williams. (Laughter) So there you go. We’ll be back with more.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Background Photo “Tennessee House of Representatives” by Tennessee General Assembly. Background Photo “Tennessee Senate” by Tennessee General Assembly.
Live from Music Row, Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed all-star panelist Aaron Gulbransen in studio to discuss proposed legislation that is likely to pass reducing the size of Metro Nashville Council members from 40 to 20.
Leahy: Aaron, a couple of things if you could bring us up to speed on. How is this bill that will reduce the size of Metro Council to no more than 20 from the current level of 40 of Metro Nashville Davidson County? How’s that doing?
Gulbransen: William Lambert’s bill in the House, HB 48, passed the House yesterday, 72 to 25. And the Senate version will be heard. Today in the Senate Finance Ways and Means Committee, the senator that is the Senate sponsor, SB 87, is State Senator Bo Watson.
Leahy: That thing’s gonna pass.
Gulbransen: You’ve got the heavyweights behind it. Of course, there are a number of very accurate things to say about it. One of which, from my perspective, it’s a good government bill.
Leahy: In essence, it’s a good government bill, but it is motivated by revenge.
Gulbransen: Revenge.
Leahy: So there’s that. What about this idea of getting rid of runoffs in local elections? There’s a bill, and if it passes and becomes law, would it apply to the mayoral election here in at Metro Nashville Davidson County?
Gulbransen: My understanding is that’s the intent. I will say what the caveat is; it’s still a caption. It is gonna be, from my understanding, heard this week. But I haven’t seen the amendment to the caption so.
Leahy: We could be in a situation where if it passes and it goes into effect this year, it would eliminate runoffs in Metro Nashville Davidson County mayoral election, which means that somebody in theory could be elected mayor with 20, 25 percent of the vote. Is that right?
Gulbransen: Yes. If you get all the Republicans swimming in the same direction you could. You could see that, or you could see anybody, really. The Democrat party right now, with their emphasis on their very disparate identity politics under the situation, would have to put a lot of pressure to get behind one person to make sure that doesn’t happen. But they wouldn’t be able to do that.
Leahy: The announced candidates in the mayoral race are Matt Wilshire, who’s raised like a million bucks, he says, or maybe more than that. A little bit more than that.
Gulbransen: He’s certainly capable of that.
Leahy: And Matt Wilshire, who’s a lefty.
Gulbransen: He’s a carpetbagger, right?
Leahy: Matt? No, Matt Wilshire is not a carpet bagger. Oh no. We can only use that phrase for the actual carpetbagger. Jim Carpetbagger Gingrich.
Gulbransen: That’s the carpetbagger.
Leahy: He’s the carpetbagger. Matt? No, Matt is born and breaded.
Gulbransen: Excuse me, Matt. I apologize for that one.
Leahy: Matt Wilshire. You gotta come in, and we’ll let you know that was an inaccurate description of who you are.
Gulbransen: I got you confused with Gingrich for a moment. But carpetbagger, Jim Gingrich.
Leahy: We’ve had advice for all of them to come in. They’ve not come in. Sharon hurt. She’s been on; she’s a lefty. Who else is out there? Fred O’Connell. He’s a lefty.
Gulbranen: Yarbro.
Leahy: Yarbro actually, I think he’s got some promise in terms of winning. Because he’s got some chops, he’s got his own money. He’s a partner of Bass, Berry, and Sims. Now on the not-crazy lunatic left-wing side, you have Natisha Brooks, who’s very nice.
I don’t think she’s got a lot of money. Fran Bush, our friend who is a former Metro Nashville School Board member and who ran as an Independent and really got decimated. She lost three to one just recently, and she said that she’s gonna try and raise $500,000. That’s not gonna be enough.
I don’t even know if she’ll get to $500,000. She’s a friend. And then Alice Rolli just announced, and we’re gonna have Alice on. Alice, I think she’s gonna have money, but she worked in Lamar Alexander’s reelection campaign. She’s had a series of jobs, none of which I think she’s accomplished much of anything in.
But she’ll come on and she’ll tell us if she’s accomplished anything. And her dad was a big financial guy who got into some trouble but was friends with Lamar Alexander, not on our side. It’s a weak field.
Gulbransen: If you get rid of the runoffs, it’s a completely different campaign in all likelihood. If they don’t, then you’re looking at more than one Democrat that gets into the runoff. And then you’ll have a Democrat mayor.
Leahy: We’ve had Fran Bush in and Natisha Brooks. We’ll get Alice Rolli in and talk to her about that. We’ll ask her the tough questions. What have you actually accomplished in your life and how could you be a mayor?
I think she’ll have money, but has she accomplished anything? And is she a conservative, or is she, basically a Lamar Alexander establishment Republican? We’ll find that out.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Background Photo “Election Day” by Phil Roeder. CC BY 2.0.
Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed public affairs specialist Clint Brewer in studio to comment upon the Nashville mayoral field of candidates and the significance of State Senator Jeff Yarbro (D-Nashville).
Leahy: Clint Brewer all-star panelist and a good friend Clint. On Friday, State Senator Jeff Yarbro announced that he’s running for Mayor of Nashville. He’s a state senator who represents parts of Davidson County right now. So he’s already got name recognition. He’s relatively young. He’s 46. He’s got a very impressive background.
Harvard undergrad. University of Virginia Law School. Has worked and continues to work at Bass, Berry, and Sims, which is really the premier law firm in Nashville. Very expensive, very good. And so now he’s served in the state senate for 10 years. He was young when he was elected and announced that he wants to run for mayor. Said he’s all in to serve as the next mayor of Nashville.
Already in the race, Freddie O’Connell. Can I tell a story about Freddie? Can’t. Okay, Freddie. Come on in. You can tell your story. How about that? Freddie O’Connell and Metro Council member at large Sharon Hurt, Natisha Brooks, Matt Wilshire, and carpet bagger Jim Gingrich from Alliance Bernstein. You grimace, but it’s true. Carpet bagger Jim. You’re welcome to come in. Carpet bagger Jim has lived here for at least three years and moved from New York City.
Brewer: I hear a salsa commercial now, folks. (Chuckles)
Leahy: And Fran Bush, who was in here yesterday.
Brewer: Former school board member.
Leahy: Former school board member. But Yarbro is interesting in this sense. He has name recognition.
Brewer: Did you say Matt Wilshire?
Leahy: Did I say Matt Wilshire? Yes. Matt Wilshire raised a million bucks. So he’s in the raise. We’ve talked about money. You’re going to need $2 million, $3 million. I think, in this particular race. The election is August 3rd. Top two, if nobody gets 50 percent, goes to a runoff September 13th.
You need $2 million. Of the people that we’ve talked about here, who’s going to get to $2 million? Matt Wilshire? I don’t think Freddie will get to $2 million. Maybe he will. I don’t think so.
But Sharon Hurt won’t get there. Natisha won’t get there. Jim Gingrich could take his carpet bagger bank account and get the $2 million, but I don’t think it’ll help. And Fran Bush is not going to get the $2 million.
Brewer: Let’s talk about Jeff, and then let’s talk about who can be competitive in the race.
Leahy: Let’s do that.
Brewer: So, Jeff, Senator Yarbro is a significant addition to the field. All the things you said about him, spot on. His district is Sylvan Park to Antioch. It’s a great district for a mayor’s race.
Leahy: He probably currently represents about half of Davidson County.
Brewer: Yes, he does. And he’s been on the ballot three times.
Leahy: Name ID is there.
Brewer: So he’s got the name ID. He’s got, obviously, the infrastructure to run countywide immediately. It’s a name people know. The other thing is he can run without penalty because Metro’s elections are in odd-numbered years, and so he doesn’t risk losing his Senate seat.
I think it’s a really significant addition to the field. I would hesitate to call him the front-runner right off the bat, but I think he and Matt Wiltshire pull pretty even pretty quickly.
Leahy: I think you’re probably right in terms of because Wiltshire has raised a million bucks.
Brewer: Matt has got a really substantial network in Davidson County. He grew up here, went to high school here, and his career has been here.
Leahy: Jeff’s from Dyersburg and didn’t arrive here until after he got out of law school.
Brewer: You look at those two things and sort of the juxtaposition between those two candidates, I think it’s a pretty fair match right now. I think there are people in the field who can come on and be players. I think Jim Gingrich is one of those.
Leahy: You think he can?
Brewer: I do.
Leahy: I think he’ll never get past the carpet bagger thing.
Brewer: He’s got an opportunity to self-fund, which none of the other candidates in the race do. Well, that’s not true. I think Matt can self-fund to a certain extent.
Leahy: So some of that money is self-funded for Matt?
Brewer: I think there’s $400k in there.
Leahy: So he’s really only raised $600k.
Brewer: I think he’s at $1.4. So that would be a million. I think I think Jim Gingrich can self-fund. I think that is probably his best play.
Leahy: I can’t wait to get Jim Gingrich in studio.
Brewer: Jim Gingrich is a delightful guy. You would like Jim Gingrich.
Leahy: He’s not going to come in.
Brewer: He’s incredibly intelligent.
Leahy: He’s going to sit next to me, and I’m going to call him a carpet bagger. And he’s going to go ohh.
Brewer: I don’t know that he would do that.
Leahy: Here’s the gauntlet down. Jim, come on in.
Brewer: Jim is a very intelligent guy. He’s very accomplished. He’s run a very large company. A lot of the management skills we could use in Metro Nashville.
Leahy: Did I mention he’s a carpet bagger? (Chuckles)
Brewer: He has a lot of the serious, hard management skills that could be applied to a large metropolitan city and have a good effect.
Leahy: So I have a question about Jeff Yarbro. Can he take the pay cut? He must be a partner by now at Bass, Berry, and Sims.
Brewer: I don’t know.
Leahy: He’s making bank.
Brewer: He’s obviously willing to. In his law career, if he were to be elected mayor, a former mayor is a really nice person to have in your law firm.
Leahy: If you look at it, 46 year old guy,
Brewer: It’s the back end.
Leahy: Serves a couple of terms, and then he would easily become a senior partner at a law firm.
Brewer: And I think that right now where we are in the history of Metro, Nashville, and the state of Tennessee, and I know a lot of people who disagree with me about this, and they don’t think Metro has done anything wrong. But job one is to tamp all this stuff down with the General Assembly and make the relationship productive again. And it hasn’t been for some time.
Leahy: They’re at odds.
Brewer: When you go and ask the state government for half a billion dollars to build your football stadium, you’ve bought yourself a partner is what you bought.
Leahy: And they said yes.
Brewer: And they said yes.
Leahy: They should have said no. But they said yes.
Brewer: All the things that the state legislature is considering doing with the city of Nashville, from changing its election runoff laws to shrinking the size of its council to taking over fiscal control of the convention center, this is a partisan reaction to a partisan action.
The Metro Council said the Republican National Convention was not welcomed here. They rejected 50 percent of the voters in this country’s convention. I don’t know why anybody would be surprised. And so the next mayor has got to fix that, right? The next mayor has got to mend a new fence.
Leahy: State Senator Jeff Yarbro would have that history.
Brewer: He’s uniquely positioned to do that.
Listen to today’s show highlights, including this interview:
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Photo “Jeff Yabro” by Jeff Yabro. Background Photo “Nashville City Hall” by Nicolas Henderson. CC BY 2.0.
