All-Star Panelist Clint Brewer Weighs In on Recent Triton Poll Showing Rutherford County Mayoral Candidate Joe Carr in Lead

 

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 all-star panelist Clint Brewer in-studio to weigh in on a recent Triton poll for the mayoral race in Rutherford County, Tennessee between Joe Carr and Bill Ketron.

Leahy: In-studio, good friend, recovering journalist, and public affairs specialist Clint Brewer. Clint, another local story in Rutherford County here. There’s a new poll. This is a story by Chris Butler. A new poll gives Joe Carr a comfortable lead in the race for Rutherford County mayor.

I’ll read the headline here: “A New Poll Reveals Strong Support for Former Tennessee State Representative Joe Carr’s Campaign for Rutherford County Mayor.” The Oregon-based Triton Polling and Research released the poll this week. It polled 455 likely Rutherford County voters between January 19th and January 20th.

If the election were held today, 31.7 percent of those polled will vote for Carr, 15.6 percent would vote to reelect current county Mayor Bill Ketron, and 11.3 percent would vote for candidate and current District 11 County Commissioner Rhonda Allen. Forty-one percent, undecided. I find these results surprising. Clint, what about you?

Brewer: Pushing back on pollsters is always difficult because you can’t really get under the hood. I think anybody who’s familiar with Rutherford County politics knows Mayor Ketron has had some problems out there.

But I will say this. I think he has been a good mayor, and I think he is a relatively popular mayor in some circles. He’s taken on some pretty big issues. The other thing the poll talks about is the Middle Point landfill and the smell from it, and the problems it causes in the community.

Prior to Mayor Ketron getting in office, that really wasn’t anything people addressed. And for listeners who don’t understand, the Middle Point landfill is a landfill that takes the majority of the household waste or a large part of the household waste, not just from Rutherford County, but from Davidson County, and from counties all over middle Tennessee.

And it’s actually a systemic problem that faces local governments in the area. And prior to Mayor Ketron getting an office, it really didn’t get a lot of attention. If the poll is correct, or if the poll is even close to being correct, I would be surprised. Joe Carr is certainly somebody who’s been on the ballot before and has a history of running. Doesn’t have a history of winning.

Leahy: He did win his state representative races. He did.

Brewer: Some time ago.

Leahy: Some time ago. But again – and I have a personal friendship with Joe –

Brewer: Sure.

Leahy: – because we did the Beat Lamar door-to-door canvassing campaign to beat Lamar Alexander in the 2014 primary. I worked on that for a year and a half, and that group ended up endorsing or supporting Joe Carr.

And he lost that primary 49 percent to 40 percent, which was a really strong performance in that 2014 primary. But then he ran against Diane Black in 2016. Got stomped two-to-one, ran again against Shane Reeves, I guess, in 2018.

Got stomped two-to-one for state Senate and was briefly with the Lee administration. He’s a friend of mine and he’s going to be on the show to talk about this because we are very interested in what’s going on in Rutherford County.

But when he announced, I think a lot of people said, “Oh, there he goes again. He’s running for another office.” But I haven’t followed this race very carefully.

I do want to say this about the guys that did the poll. We’ve used Triton Polling and Research. It’s basically phone-call, automated telephone. But we’ve used them extensively.

Brewer: It’s a robo-poll.

Leahy: Yes. But they’ve got a good methodology and we’ve used them. And they have been spot-on in every poll we’ve done. And we’ve done like five polls with them. In fact, they called the rise of Bill Lee two weeks before the 2018 primary that he won. And in the transit tax deal, they were spot-on.

Brewer: I was going to say I have used robo-polling before. Different company. I find that we’re calling it a robo-poll because it’s automated calling. It’s not a live human being on the phone.

Leahy: It’s automated, and you press a button.

Brewer: My experience with it as a technique for polling is it’s more accurate the closer to the race. It’s a quick-hit format.

Leahy: Like a month to three weeks before.

Brewer: Exactly.

Leahy: I would agree with that.

Brewer: I’m sure this is a relatively small sample size.

Leahy: Now the sample size, it’s registered voters in Rutherford County. The margin of error is 4.6 percent.

Brewer: I won’t say it’s early. It’s a little early. Regardless of what this poll says, I think it’s going to be a contest. I would not count Mayor Ketron out.

I would not count Joe Carr in. I think there’s going to be a pretty robust debate out there. Senator Ketron and his record of election is sort of different. He’s won his races pretty consistently.

Leahy: State Senate, longtime. County executive, longtime. Huge problems with the instance with his daughter and his insurance company. And she got in trouble and I think she got on probation.

Brewer: There have been some issues tied to his family business, but I do believe that he has been a good mayor out there. And I think at a local level, people reward that. And I think he’s still got a pretty good network. Now that’s not to say Joe Carr can’t be competitive in the race. Obviously, this poll shows he can. But it’s a long time –

Leahy: Between now and May. Three months. Good point.

Brewer: There’s a lot of time. And this is a primary. People need to remember that this is not the old-school general election.

Leahy: The other thing about this poll is it’s a likely voter, but only 63 percent of the poll respondents said they absolutely are going to vote in the primary, and the propensity to vote is much lower.

Brewer: And you’ve got a couple of Independents thrown in there that are going to be siphoning off votes. They may or may not be in the primary. And you’ve got one candidate in the poll who the state committee has said doesn’t qualify.

Leahy: Clint, I wish this could go on forever because for political geeks like us, this is fascinating. But our time this morning is over.

Brewer: I’ve enjoyed it. Thanks for having me.

Leahy: Great to have you here.

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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 “Joe Carr” by Joe Carr. Background Photo “People Voting” by Ben Schumin. CC BY-SA 3.0.