Live from Music Row Monday 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 the Independent write-in candidate for Chancery Court Part Three, John Ellis to the newsmaker line to talk about running as an Independent write-in candidate and his experience in the courts.
Leahy: We welcome Johnny Ellis to our newsmaker line. Good morning, Johnny.
Ellis: Yeah, good morning. How are you?
Leahy: So you are an attorney. You’re running for chancellor in Chancery Court part three. You’re a write-in candidate. So tell us, did you try for the Republican nomination? Why are you running as a write-in?
Ellis: Michael, the sad truth of the matter is for years and years the Republican Party has not really come out for candidates in the Davidson County judicial elections. We haven’t elected a Republican judge in Nashville since 1972.
So it’s been 50 years since anybody has been elected as a judge as a Republican in Nashville. I entered the race as a Democrat and filed paperwork and then they checked my voting history and some Facebook posts got said that were impolite about some Democratic Party ideas.
Leahy: You were impolite? Oh my goodness. You must be a really bad guy if you are impolite, Johnny. (Laughs)
Ellis: I know you can’t say Nancy Pelosi needs new teeth, but she does. I mean, it’s all true. Nothing I wouldn’t take back.
Leahy: That’s not your main reason why people should vote for you as a write-in, right?
Ellis: No, I mean, I’ve had 25 years of experience as an attorney. I’ve been practicing here. I’ve practiced in all the courts. I’ve argued in front of the state Supreme Court before successfully.
I testified in front of the legislature about issues on real property law, and this kind of related to my Supreme Court case. But I’ve just got more experience and I think that you have to be a lawyer in the courtroom before you can know how to run one as a judge.
Leahy: That makes sense. The Democrat candidate is not a lawyer in the courtroom or what’s the Democrat candidate?
Ellis: She’s pretty fresh. She’s pretty fresh. She’s been out of law school just a few years even though she’s repeatedly said that she’s got 20 years of experience. She only graduated from law school in 2014.
That’s just not 20 years. I don’t know what kind of math that is, but I think sometimes she’ll weasel in and say I’ve got 20 years’ experience in business and law and then keep on going. But she never says the law part.
Leahy: What does a chancery court judge do?
Ellis: A chancellor does cases that are equitable in nature and that means that you have to take the facts and the law and fashion the remedy for people who have a problem. This has to do with trademark, copyright, and property line boundary disputes.
It might have to do with property ownership, maybe a contract that people have which is a little ambiguous, like a land contract or a lease-purchase agreement.
And maybe one party says they completed it and the other party says, no, they didn’t. And you have to try to fashion a result. Counselors also issue restraining orders for things like, I had a client one time that had made his mortgage payment.
Wells Fargo Bank had withdrawn his money automatically and then tried to foreclose on his house. And we showed them where the money had been drawn out and they didn’t accept that and they went ahead with the foreclosure sale.
And I went to chancery three court and got a restraining order and stopped the foreclosure sale one day before it was going to auction.
Leahy: Wow.
Ellis: Yes. And then five years later, that was the sixth-largest jury verdict in Davidson County in 2006. Chancery court, it’s a mixed bag of things, but it’s from the English.
King Henry VIII, who had the chancellor of the Church of England made equitable remedies for people who came in there and we’ve carried that on into our jurisprudence.
And we’ve got four chancellors in Davidson County and I’m chancery part three. Write me in, Johnny Ellis. Because I got kicked off the ballot, I’m not a Democrat. The Democratic Party said that I was just a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Leahy: Well, Mr. Johnny Ellis, the wolf in sheep’s clothing, what are the odds that a write-in candidate works?
Ellis: It’s only happened once before in Davidson County, and that was in the late ’70s, I think, with Judge Mondelli. But we’ve got a unique situation right now.
I think that there are enough Republican voters coming out in the 5th district race. So that should give me an opportunity to, if I can get my message out and say we just don’t need a woke agenda on the bench.
We don’t need somebody that wants to come in and change everything and have a social agenda being a judge. The judge shouldn’t be a political office.
AÂ judge should not be tied to any strict set of political guidelines. You should have your conscience, you should have the facts and the law and be able to run the case.
What we’ve got in this situation with the 5th district, we’ve got I think nine congressional candidates and that’s going to bring a lot of people out to the polls.
And I appreciate you giving me an opportunity to talk to some of the listeners who are going to be voting in those races because they could vote for Johnny Ellis on Chancellor Court Part Three here in Davidson County.
And there’s going to be a lot of them. There’s more to learn at electjohnnyellis.com if somebody wanted to learn more about me. But is it a long shot? Well, it’s not a slam-dunk. But I could have won in the primary as a Democrat and they know that …
Leahy: And they kicked you out!
Ellis: They told me three days after the deadline to refile.
Leahy: What a shock!
Listen to the 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.
