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 the creator of the Huey Report and marketing expert, Craig Huey, in-studio to run down the profiles of candidates running for city council and board of mayor and alderman seats in Franklin, Tennessee October elections.
Leahy: In the studio, Craig Huey, a California transplant and a direct marketing wizard and our good friend. Craig, you have been looking at local elections throughout Tennessee. Why did you decide to look at this city council, board of mayor, and aldermen elections in Knoxville and Franklin?
And we’re going to get to the board of mayor and aldermen election, which is going on right as we speak. Election Day is October 26th. That’s a weird day to pick.
Huey: It is.
Leahy: Who knew election Day was October 26th. Early voting began on October 6th, and it continues. And if you live in the city, Franklin until October 21st. Why did you decide to look at these elections?
Huey: Well, Michael, here’s the thing. Over the last 20 years, we have research candidates that are judges, and we perfected how to evaluate judges. Then we went ahead and started evaluating other candidates. And we did this in California.
So what I’ve done is I’ve taken the research knowledge and applied it to Tennessee. And unlike running for President, when you have somebody running for City Council, few people vote and few people know who these candidates are.
Leahy: I mean, the big thing when you’re running for a local race is simply the first step. Name identification.
Huey: Well, it is and it’s who you know, it’s always who gets out the vote. And here’s the thing. Most people sit out the election, or sometimes they vote against their values. They think this candidate will be good. Here’s the truth.
When you start with an Alderman and when you start with a city Council, when you start with the school board, that’s what the radical left and the Democrats focus on.
They start running candidates in those offices, and then they move up higher all the way to the governor, senator.
Leahy: And Mark Pulliam, our friend in Maryville, has talked about this where they’re taking over city council, school boards in these little conservative towns.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: And they’re all a bunch of left-wing lunatics.
Huey: That’s right. That happened in Knoxville.
Leahy: It did.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy:Â And so you’ve documented that.
Huey: I’ve documented it.
Leahy: In Franklin, they don’t call it city council. It’s the board of mayor and alderman. There are nine members, eight aldermen, and a mayor. This current election going on right now there are four candidates up.
In Ward one right now Beverly Burger is unopposed in War three. There are three candidates in War two. There are 1,2,3,4 candidates.
In Ward four there are two candidates, and they also have an at-large member. And there are four candidates there. Let’s start with the at-large candidate.
Huey: What we did is we took a look at who they were, what their positions were. We took a look at what their political affiliation was. We took a look at a variety of different things. And here’s what we discovered.
On the surface, many times these candidates look good. We found that in Franklin, there are people who are progressive and from the left, that sound very good.
But that’s only on the surface. When you dig down, you see that. Wait a minute. This person has a worldview of expanding government and government control. These people are more concerned with transformation through government.
Leahy: Transformation.
Huey: Oh, yeah.
Leahy: By the way, you heard that from Jen Psaki who just the other day…
Huey: Chilling. It was chilling.
Huey: That basically Joe Biden wants to transform the American economy using COVID as an excuse. She said it at a press conference.
Huey: This is what their view is. That’s what people don’t understand. They’re not looking for a good government. They’re looking for transforming it.
Leahy: And basically what they mean by transforming it is changing it from a capitalist free-market economy into a top-down command and control economy. That’s the transformation they want.
Huey: Exactly. And, Michael, if you take a look, for example, Biden talking about the supply chain.
Leahy: Oh, I’ve got a clip for you.
Huey: He was attacking private enterprise, free enterprise. And he was pinpointing that they’re the danger. They’re the problem. And he is the government that will solve the problem. It was a total socialist worldview.
Leahy: Our legal but not legitimate grifter in chief. That’s who we’re talking about. Joe Biden. Now, back to the election going on right now in the city of Franklin for members of the Board of Mayor and Aldermen.
Four Wards are up, and then one at large position. The candidates at large. Gabrielle Hanson, John J. Haines, Kirtikumar Bavanjibhai Marvania, and Alan Simms.
So those are the four candidates at large. You’ve done your analysis. What have you found out about the worldview of these four candidates?
Huey: So what we found out is that some of them are just nice people without much political philosophy. Some of them are like, well, I go to church and I’m a registered Republican, but they have no ideology. No grounding as to what their belief is. Others were very deceptive.
Leahy: Really?
Huey: Oh yeah. They emphasize, well, I’m very involved in these church ministries. But then when I took a look at it.
Leahy: These church ministry, social justice warriors.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: I know. They’re all over the place.
Huey: And they were projecting a false image. So what we did is we were able to take a look and be able to rate the candidates. So if you take a look at how we did this, we have on craighuey.com a voter guide.
Leahy:Â I’m looking at it right now. Craighuey.com. I’ll just read the ratings. This is on a one to five scale with five stars being the best.
This is kind of with a consistent which one of these candidates have a worldview consistent with traditional constitutional American views of the world. Free markets, individual liberty.
Huey: That’s right. If they have a four or five, it means they really passed a lot of the strict standards that we have. When you have a candidate like that, you can trust them to be consistent, not to betray you, and not to be able to raise taxes and regulations.
Leahy: So let’s go through this. Gabrielle Hanson, at large, has five stars.
Huey: Yes. I was impressed.
Leahy: There you go.
Huey: That is Gabrielle. She was able to stand articulate and be consistent over the years.
Leahy: John J. Haines, another candidate has three stars.
Huey: Yeah, not too impressed, but so much better than their opponent then they get three stars over all the rest. They’re the ones that had the highest rating.
Leahy: Now, this fellow, Kirtikumar Bavanjibhai Marvania. Two stars. And then Alan Simms, only two stars. What’s the story on those two?
Huey: When I took a look at these candidates that are for a more liberal worldview they’re able to be really agents of that transformation that you were talking about, Michael.
They’re just not the candidates that would be good because their political ideology says, we want bigger government, more control, and bigger bureaucracy.
Leahy: Kirtikumar Bavanjibhai Marvania moved to the U.S. in 2000 from India. He’s running again for an at-large seat after he lost in 2019.
Huey: Nice guy. He doesn’t have a free market, conservative, limited government worldview.
Leahy: Got it. And Alan Simms.
Huey: Very scary.
Leahy: Alan, you’re very scary. (Huey laughs) You’re welcome to come in, by the way, and talk about it.
Huey: So in this at-large general election, two of them had two stars. Stay away. One had three stars. Not very good. Kind of okay.
Leahy: But the one that had the five stars…
Huey: Gabrielle Hanson, they shine.
Leahy: All right. We’ll talk about the other candidates and the other open wards in the Franklin election.
(Commercial break)
Leahy: We’re wrapping up the current election for board of mayor and alderman in Franklin. We just talked about the at large. There’s also Ward one. Beverly Burger is running unopposed. She’s great.
Huey: Yes.
Leahy: Ward two, three, and four. Now you’ve got more options in Ward two, three, and four. There are four candidates. It looks like you’ve got a five-star rating for Tina Pierret.
Huey:Â But I got to tell you, I was so impressed with Tina and the massive amount of research we did on all the candidates, she really stood out. And she’s involved with the worship at her church, Harpeth Christian Church.
She’s a member of the Republican Party of Williamson County. She’s been involved with the Heritage Foundation. She’s a member of the Tennessee Christian Chamber of Commerce. And her Church.
Michael takes a real strong stand on voting your values. What I find with her is consistency and an understanding not to be persuaded by all the pressures to use the power of government to control the people of Franklin or to use it to become a platform for expanding power, controlling regulations, and taxes. She won’t do that.
Huey: She understands the importance of protecting the population and providing necessary services. And she’s against all the efforts of local government to be used to transform Franklin and Williamson County.
Leahy: In the Ward three election, it looks like you’ve got a couple of candidates that you don’t have a five-star candidate there, but you got a couple of four-star candidates. Michelle Sutton is a four-star candidate, and Jason Potts is a four-star candidate. Tell us about them.
Huey: Right. So when we take a look at these candidates, sometimes you’ve got a couple of candidates so good that it’s hard to distinguish between one or the other. And in this case, Jason and Michelle were so good but I’m personally recommending Michelle Sutton.
She is consistent in her political beliefs. She’s a conservative, who supports small businesses. She looks at well-planned growth. She’s a member of Journey Church. She’s pretty good. I have also taken a look at Jason Potts and I’m inclined to go for Jason as well.
I’m waiting for Jason to get back to me to fill out a form to see if he can be lifted up into a better position. But Samantha Degrasse has three stars and is not recommended.
Huey: Definitely not. I would avoid her.
Leahy: What’s your analysis of her situation?
Huey: I didn’t find the confidence that she quite understood politics and economics and the relationship of the citizen and government.
Leahy: That’s pretty important. Ward Four, it seems pretty clear. There are two candidates, Patrick Baggett, who gets five stars, and Elizabeth Downing Wanczak who gets one star. It looks like Patrick is the one. Tell us what your recommendation is there.
Huey: When we talk about Patrick, I encourage everybody to go out and vote for him. And this is important to get out and vote for these candidates because the left, the Democrats know who they’re voting for and they’re going to get out the vote.
And so we’ve got to have everybody get out and make the right recommendation. So with Patrick, he teaches Sunday school. He’s a graduate of Stanford University, which is a Baptist University. So from that standpoint, I like him.
But here’s the thing. From a political worldview, he wants to minimize taxes. He’s shown consistency and supporting conservative candidates, even contributing to conservative candidates.
When you have somebody over time that may be consistent like this, they turn out to be extremely good. And that’s why we made a recommendation for him.
Leahy: The Elizabeth Downing Wanczack has one star. She has some experience as a songwriter and a paralegal but looks like she’s donated heavily to Joe Biden and made many donations. I don’t know how many there were. But you’ve got her listed as having contributed to Joe Biden for President.
Huey: That’s correct.
Leahy: And everybody else she’s contributed to is a Democrat. I guess she must have lived in Florida for a while because she made a lot of Florida contributions. But they’re all Democrats.
Huey: They’re all Democrats. That’s just one indicator that she’s part of this group of the radical left that wants to take over the City Council. People don’t know it. They just think they’re a nice person.
And she’ll sound good in a coffee. She’ll sound good in a public debate. But when you get down to it, she has a political agenda.
Leahy: She’s endorsed by Women for Tennessee’s Future. That’s a Democrat political action committee. She’s also a graduate of Sewanee. And by the way, the Sewanee made some news. Did you see this?
Huey: No.
Leahy: The University of the South at Sewanee. A number of alumni there have called to take back Eric Metaxas’s honorary doctorate.
Huey: Oh, my gosh.
Leahy: Because he’s too Christian or something that.
Huey: Oh, my gosh.
Leahy: So anyway, there is that.
Listen to the second hour 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.
Background Photo “Franklin Downtown” by Ichabod. CC BY-SA 3.0.
