Former Nashville Mayor Megan Barry on Tuesday announced an event titled “VP Kamala Harris Day” will take place on Saturday, issuing a flyer that invited Nashville Democrats to “win with black women” by attending.
The Barry campaign posted a campaign flyer to social media advertising an event, titled “VP Kamala Harris Day,” which will be held in Nashville on Saturday.
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Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday received the endorsement of both Nashville’s current mayor, Freddie O’Connell, as well as former Mayor Megan Barry, who resigned in 2018 after it was revealed she used public funds and resources to facilitate an affair with her bodyguard.
The endorsements came after President Joe Biden on Sunday confirmed he will no longer see the Democratic Party’s nomination, then later endorsed Harris to lead the Democrats against former President Donald Trump in November.
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On the first day of June, politicians, political organizations and private companies took to X, formerly Twitter, to celebrate gay pride month.
“Happy Pride, everyone!” said disgraced former Nashville mayor turned congressional candidate Megan Barry. “I proudly stand with the LGBTQ+ community. Let’s celebrate love, diversity, and equality for all. Together, we can build a Tennessee where everyone feels seen, heard, and valued.”
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Former Nashville Mayor Megan Barry on Sunday explained her decision to reenter politics with a challenge to U.S. Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07), asserting “now is the right time” for her foray into the public arena.
Barry resigned as Nashville mayor in 2018 after it was reported she financed an affair with her bodyguard using almost $175,000 in taxpayer money and used taxpayer resources and vehicles to facilitate the affair at the Nashville City Cemetery.
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Tennessee State Senator Bill Powers (R-Clarksville) has announced he has “no plans” to run for Congress in Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District amid the announcement of incumbent U.S. Representative Mark Green’s (R-TN-07) retirement.
“For me, family is more important than any congressional title in Washington DC. I’m honored to be your state senator and have no plans to run for congress,” Powers wrote in a Facebook post on Thursday.
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Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Scott Golden said he was surprised when Tennessee U.S. Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) announced his retirement from Congress.
Green, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, announced his retirement on Wednesday, just one day after leading the House in a historic vote to impeach Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
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Four possible Republican candidates expressed an interest in representing Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District to The Tennessee Star when asked on Thursday after Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) announced his intention to retire from Congress at the end of his term.
The Star asked Dr. Omar Hamada, Robby Starbuck, Jeff Beierlein, Dr. Manny Sethi, and State Senators Bill Powers (R-Clarksville) and Kerry Roberts (R-Springfield) about their interest in running for office.
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Metro Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell signed 44 executive orders on Friday, including Executive Order 45, which expands Metro’s Green and Complete Streets policy with calls for the city to close some streets to vehicles and “serve the most vulnerable users of the transportation network.” The policy was originally introduced by disgraced former Mayor Megan Barry in 2016.
The text of O’Connell’s order acknowledges inspiration from Barry’s Executive Order 31, signed in 2016, which aimed to “[a]pproach every transportation improvement project phase with the purpose to create greener, safer, and more accessible streets for all users” to “enhance environmental quality” of Metro Nashville.
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Former Nashville Mayor Megan Barry launched her campaign for Tennessee’s 7th congressional district on Wednesday.
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Former Metro Nashville Mayor Megan Barry confirmed on Wednesday night that she is “exploring” a campaign to secure the Democratic Party’s nomination for U.S. House, which could see her challenge Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) in 2024.
Barry said she is considering launching a campaign in a statement to News Channel 5, in which she revealed she will “decide in the coming weeks.” Justifying a potential run, Barry claimed Green “deserves to be challenged” because of his pro-life positions on healthcare and support for the Second Amendment.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed political consultant Chris Walker and all-star panelist Aaron Gulbransen in studio to discuss the myriad of weak candidates who have announced their run for mayor of Nashville and recommended those that should.
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As of this week, any records of former Nashville Mayor Megan Barry’s criminal behavior during her time in office are officially expunged from the record. This after she spent nearly $175,000 in taxpayer money on an extra-marital tryst.
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People are reportedly waiting for Nashville Democratic Mayor John Cooper and the Nashville Soccer Club to announce the latest on a solution on the soccer stadium at the Fairgrounds.
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No one knows how much the Davidson County Sheriff’s Department that is under development will cost in the end — not even the city office responsible for the construction and which now says the project may stop.
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The choice in the Nashville mayoral race is between incumbent Mayor David Briley, who is soft on immigration — and Metro Councilman John Cooper, who is soft on immigration. Michael Patrick Leahy on Tuesday’s Tennessee Star Report weighed in on the mayoral debate: “So, the very, very, very, bad Mayor – David Briley – debated with the very, very bad Metro Council at large candidate for Mayor, John Cooper. And purportedly they were discussing issues. Except they really weren’t. They talked platitudes.” The report is broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 am to 8:00 am. Briley tweeted, “This week, @WSMV reported on Metro probation officers sharing Nashville residents’ personal information with ICE agents. Today, I’m ordering the Metro Auditor to conduct a full investigation of the department involved and these deeply troubling reports.” This week, @WSMV reported on Metro probation officers sharing Nashville residents’ personal information with ICE agents. Today, I'm ordering the Metro Auditor to conduct a full investigation of the department involved and these deeply troubling reports. pic.twitter.com/JKqGWCcCR6 — Judge David Briley (@DavidBriley) August 29, 2019 One comment summed up the Nashville mayor’s responsibility — to protect the public: “If they are on…
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Former Vanderbilt professor Carol Swain announced on Sunday that she is running for mayor of Nashville again in the municipal election to be held this August. Swain finished in second place to Mayor David Briley in last May’s special election for mayor. Briley easily surpassed the 50 percent runoff cutoff, while Swain received 23 percent of the vote. “Swain made the announcement Sunday during her keynote address at a faculty breakfast club event hosted at Tennessee State University, in Nashville,” according to a statement released by her campaign. “The city of Nashville deserves a mayor that is committed to making commonsense improvements that will enrich our community,” Swain said in the statement. “It is a disgrace that under the leadership of our current mayor, Nashville has the highest debt per citizen of any city in the nation, teachers remain under paid, we lack affordable housing, all while traffic and infrastructure problems clog our streets,” she added. The statement continued: Swain has pledged to work closely with the police, firefighters, first responders and emergency personnel to address ongoing concerns regarding funding, working conditions and competitive pay. She insists that Nashville can be a model for what can be done with sensible,…
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Outspoken Metro Nashville Councilman Steve Glover of District 12, no friend of Mayor David Briley, will run for an at-large seat on the council, NewsChannel 5 said. He made the announcement at the firefighter’s union hall Monday, NewsChannel 5 said. Glover’s council webpage says he lives in Hermitage and is agent/owner of Glover Benefit Group and president of The Retirement Solution Show Inc. Glover told The Tennessee Star last September that Briley threatens many of his colleagues on the Metro Nashville Council. The Briley administration tells council members that he will not support projects in their districts unless they support him, Glover said. Glover has spoken out against Briley, including the way he planned for the Major League Soccer stadium. “They should never be threatened by anyone in the executive branch because they were elected to represent their constituents,” he said. Glover, a Republican, said he would not run for mayor because too many Nashville voters are Democrats. Last month, Glover asked for an audit of the city’s personnel practices, the WSMV News4 I-team said. The station determined that the list of candidates who were qualified for Nashville’s fire chief was abruptly thrown out five days before the new chief, William…
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After much anticipation and weeks of speculation Nashville real estate mogul and top Democratic Party fundraiser Bill Freeman has decided to opt out of another campaign for Mayor of Nashville. Freeman made the announcement in a release to two of his media properties, the Nashville Scene and Nashville Post, Monday afternoon. Freeman’s 2015 mayoral bid fell just short of him making the runoff setting up a race between David Fox and eventual winner Megan Barry. Freeman spent over $5 million in his unsuccessful campaign, with nearly $4 million from his personal funds. Barry subsequently resigned in scandal, setting up Vice Mayor David Briley to succeed her, first automatically and then by handily winning a special election. One of the candidates that Briley defeated in the special election, conservative former Vanderbilt professor Carol Swain, is again considering a race for Mayor. Nashville Democrat State Representative John Ray Clemmons has announced in January that he is running for the position. Bob Freeman is a newly-elected Democrat State Representative in Nashville, and is widely viewed as the political heir to his father’s political operations. He is settling into his new position representing the legislative district previously represented by Republican House Speaker Beth Harwell…
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Proving that politicians are adept at coming out ahead no matter what, disgraced former Nashville Mayor Megan Barry has landed a job — teaching women about the trials and tribulations of politics at Fisk University. Barry began teaching a “Women in Politics” class three weeks ago, Fox 17 News reporter Harriet Wallace said. On March 6, 2018, Barry resigned as the first female mayor of Nashville. She entered a conditional plea, or diversion, on felony theft of property over $10,000 with three years’ unsupervised probation and $11,000 in restitution, The Tennessee Star reported at the time. She was not convicted, so if she follows her requirements, she can have her record expunged after three years. The now ex-mayor, who was married, admitted to having an affair with her married bodyguard, Sgt. Rob. Forrest of the Metro Nashville Police Department, including times he was clocked in and was on overtime. Forrest earned $75,462 in overtime during the 2016-17 fiscal year. WSMV reported Fisk’s statement about Barry’s job: Megan Barry is currently teaching a spring semester class at Fisk University. As a University, we believe that Mrs. Barry can provide valuable insight into the role of women in public life. Several students have already expressed their appreciation…
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Former Nashville mayoral candidate Carol Swain might run for mayor of Nashville again. But put heavy emphasis on the word “might.” Swain said it all depends on how much money she raises. Swain announced on her Facebook page Monday she’s only considering a run and nothing is definite. But she has already filed the Appointment of Treasurer, which permits her to start raising money. The race is scheduled for Aug. 1. The filing deadline for the race is May 16. “We must raise substantial money before I feel comfortable officially announcing. If we fail to reach our preliminary fundraising goal, all early donations will be returned,” Swain said on Facebook. “Please note you don’t have to live in metropolitan Nashville to contribute to my campaign. What happens in Nashville doesn’t stay in Nashville. It affects every city and town in the state and ultimately the entire nation.” Swain, of course, ran for mayor last May in a special election to fill out the remaining term of disgraced former mayor Megan Barry. According to Ballotpedia, she lost that election to then-interim Mayor David Briley. Briley got 54 percent of the vote, while Swain got 23 percent. Last time around, Swain told…
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Former Nashville Mayor Megan Barry’s choice to spend nearly $175,000 in taxpayer money on an extra-marital tryst just earned her top billing in the Beacon Center of Tennessee’s 2018 Pork Report. Beacon, a Nashville-based free market think tank, releases a report detailing government waste, fraud, and abuse in Tennessee once a year. Beacon released this year’s report Monday. The disgraced former mayor won Pork of the Year thanks to an online poll on Beacon’s website, according to a press release. “We won’t get into the personal aspect of the affair,” said Beacon President Justin Owen, in a series of online videos that accompanied the think tank’s press release. “What matters to us is that Mayor Barry did this on the taxpayers’ dime. She used taxpayers’ money to pay overtime pay to her bodyguard so she could be with him more often. The mayor of Nashville doesn’t need security in Paris, France or in Greece, but, ultimately she used taxpayer money to further her affair and that is why she pled guilty to felony theft as a result.” As for other government excess, Beacon cited a company in Memphis, ServiceMaster, that received $5 million just to move to another part of…
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The Beacon Center of Tennessee, a Nashville-based right-of-center think tank, this week announced finalists for its 2018 Tennessee Pork of the Year Award. The winner gets top billing in Beacon’s yearly Pork Report. The report catalogs the year’s worst instances of government waste, fraud, and abuse in Tennessee. As was the case in prior years, people may go online and vote on what they consider the most foolish example. This year, Beacon staff members offered four options. The first example, as explained in a YouTube video, concerns former Nashville Mayor Megan Barry and her extra-marital affair with her former security guard. “Clearly there is no better example of the Pork of the Year than a mayor who everyone thought would go on to be a U.S. senator, maybe even president,” said Beacon Center President Justin Owen. “She has now fallen in disgrace, not even serving in office anymore because she thought it was a good idea to take taxpayer money and give her chief of security overtime pay and to have an affair with him and to travel the world with him and to travel across the world to places like Greece and France, all on your dime.” As Owen…
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The former police sergeant who had an extra-marital affair with former Nashville Mayor Megan Barry will get a reduced pension, according to Nashville Public Radio. Members of the Nashville Metro Benefits Board recalculated the earnings for Robert Forrest, who served on the police force for 31 years. Metro Nashville spokeswoman Tara Stewart told The Tennessee Star Thursday she received our questions seeking comment on the matter. Stewart, however, said she would have not answers before the close of the business day. Nashville Public Radio elaborated and said board members chose not to move to revoke Forrest’s entire pension, based on his five highest-earning years. “From that total amount, members subtracted $10,780 in overtime that Forrest improperly earned guarding the mayor,” according to Nashville Public Radio. “That means a cut of more than $1,000 to Forrest’s annual pension — which will likely end up around $73,000. That’s according to a prior analysis, with slightly different figures, that was run by the Metro Auditor. A final tabulation was not immediately available after the board’s vote.” Board members made the adjustment retroactive, per city code. Forrest has to return any overpayments since he retired this year, Nashville Public Radio reported. Barry resigned as…
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In downtown Nashville two investigations are underway to learn more about former Mayor Megan Barry and how she used taxpayer money to carry on an affair with her security guard. Nashville Public Radio reports that members of the Metro Auditor’s Office plan to make their findings on the matter public soon. Meanwhile, members of the Metro Board of Ethical Conduct are doing a separate probe, the station reported. Members of that board are about to call upon people to testify. Board of Ethical Conduct spokeswoman Elizabeth Waites told The Tennessee Star that the two boards have different objectives. “The Ethics Board is investigating specific allegations contained in a complaint that was filed by a private citizen on record here with this office,” Waites said. “The scope of those two things is not entirely the same.” Waites said she will eventually distribute an internal auditors’ report to the board. “Fourteen days from my distribution of that report, the complainant has to provide a summary of who she would like to see subpoenaed,” Waites said. According to Nashville Public Radio, the private citizen in question is Theeda Murphy, something Waites confirmed to The Star. Murphy told the station that “there are unanswered…
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Nashville Mayor David Briley and many members of the Metro Council, as a collective, act as though the 2011 referendum on the Nashville Fairgrounds never happened, said Metro Council member Steve Glover. As reported, if all the shiny details get finalized, a Major League Soccer stadium will likely go up on that property. But there’s that one little problem — dating back to 2011. There was a referendum that year where voters, by a margin of 73 percent, said to just leave the fairgrounds alone, as is. But Metro officials act as though it’s OK to ignore the voters’ wishes and do their own thing, Glover said. “This is something people need to understand. The MLS didn’t come to us and say ‘We need to be at the fairgrounds.’ This was Megan Barry’s administration who said ‘We want this, and this is where you will go. You will go here,’” Glover said. “The administration basically told the people of Nashville ‘We don’t care what you voted for. This is what we’re going to do.’” None of Glover’s 39 colleagues returned messages seeing comment Thursday, and neither did anyone from current Mayor David Briley’s office. For their part, Metro officials think…
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Bruce Barry, Vanderbilt professor and cuckold of felon former Mayor Moonbeam Megan Barry, tried helping David Briley’s no-energy campaign for mayor with a column in the Nashville Scene on Tuesday. If elected, Briley will continue Moonbeam’s, big government, progressive policies and insider dealings administration. In that typical long-winded way ultra-liberal elitists pontificate, Barry-the-Briley-surrogate launched an irrelevant attack on Nashville mayoral candidate Carol Swain wherein Bruce tries to prove that Swain misused a single word and he can see that needle in the haystack. What we do know about Bruce the Goose is that he was good for at least two years of turning the other cheek while Moonbeam traveled internationally with her bodyguard and did those early morning cemetery meditation sessions with the same bodyguard. But during that entire time Moonbeam never ever once misused a single word. She just didn’t mean most of them. Even when she was lying to everyone around her – except of course not to her staff who arranged her travel and approved the bodyguard expenses on behalf of Chief Anderson. But according to Bruce, Carol Swain misused a single word – a red flag that Bruce warns is a red flag that Ph.D. Swain is incompetent.…
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That’s a question usually asked by a popular fashion magazine but now we HAVE TO ask the same question when the same dress is being worn by two politicians – a radical progressive Democrat and an establishment-sometimes-conservative. Before we even get to the judging (and we expect you to weigh in as to whom you think wore it best), the dress worn yesterday by Speaker Beth Harwell on the House floor has called out to The Star to ask the obvious question: Why would Speaker Beth Harwell who is also a GOP gubernatorial candidate do twinsies with the disgraced radical progressive-pro-illegal-immigration-kicked-out-of-office former mayor Megan Barry? You know that old adage – “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” and you could say that fashion is oh so very universal, meaning that Democrats and Republicans can be equally wobbly with “aesthetic intelligence.” But wearing the same dress that adultress Megan Barry wore in her official mayoral website photo??? Just what image is Harwell trying to plant in voters’ minds? Did Harwell think The Star wouldn’t notice??? The Star’s unsolicited fashion advice to the Speaker is simple – first, burn the dress; Megan Barry has simply ruined that look for self-respecting women. Next, remember that softer colors…
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A group that is opposed to the $9 billion light rail transit plan is making waves on social media. Better Transit for Nashville’s Facebook page like count reached nearly 2,900 last week compared to Transit for Nashville’s page total of just under 2,700, the former reports in an email newsletter. BTN calls itself an all-volunteer local group. BTN’s popularity may be due in part to its running the numbers on the light rail plan’s alleged drawbacks. Nor is Facebook the only social media platform BTN is using effectively. Its YouTube page has posted a number of videos laying out details such as this: “In 2.5 years, (ex-Mayor Megan) Barry spent $2.4 million on frills, bodyguards & her love affair. The video has all the data. Now she wants to spend $8.9 BILLION for a transit plan that directly serves the rich & only 2% or less of commuters. The plan will spend $568,000 per current transit rider.” The per rider number is garnered from an $8.9 billion cost divided current transit riders totaling 15,650. BTN cites these sources: MTA audits; apta.com BTN says light rail will serve parts of five roadways and 6 percent of downtown workers. The group contends…
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The fallout from the Nashville Mayor Megan Barry scandal continues to reverberate. As The Tennessee Star reported in February, Republican candidate for Governor Bill Lee made a $500 donation to the Megan Barry mayoral campaign in 2015. Now, The Star has learned that the Barry campaign made a donation to the reelection campaign of Republican State Senator Bill Ketron on January 9, 2017. The $250 donation to the Ketron campaign from “Friends of Megan Barry” is contained in Ketron’s Amended 2018 Yearly Supplemental Report filed with the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance on 3/31/2017. Ketron confirmed the contribution in a statement emailed to The Star on Monday. “I did receive a contribution from her, but do not approve of the way she conducted her office,” Ketron said. “Therefore, I will be taking that contribution and giving it to charity,” he added. Ketron was an early supporter of Megan Barry’s transit plan for Nashville and has expressed his hopes to expand it to Murfreesboro. The nearly $9 billion Nashville transit plan and the tax increases needed to pay for it are scheduled for a referendum vote on May 1, 2018 in Davidson County. Ketron is currently running in the Republican primary…
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As the firestorm surrounding former Mayor Megan Barry’s abrupt resignation and guilty plea on a felony charge continues to roil Nashville, the Metro Nashville Police Department released Barry’s booking photo on Tuesday. A serene, fresh-looking mugshot of Barry will now hold its place is the annals of political history as Nashville’s first woman elected to the Mayor’s office resigns in disgrace. Even with the mayor’s guilty plea, investigations continue, which could mean trouble for her top staff. The Nashville Scene’s Steven Hale tweeted the photo: https://twitter.com/iamstevenhale/status/971085824677818369
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Nashville Mayor Megan Barry announced her resignation at a brief press conference held Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. at Nashville City Hall. The announcement came shortly after she pleaded guilty to felony charges of theft in a Nashville criminal court. “Today is primarily about the smooth transition of power from my administration to that of Vice Mayor David Briley,” Barry said in a statement that lasted less than three minutes: Nashville, with its boundless energy its infectious optimism . . . will in years ahead continue its steady march to the very top of the list of great American cities. It’s a continued climb that I will watch, but I will watch as a private citizen. Barry’s bodyguard and lover, MNPD Sgt. Rob Forrest, also faces criminal charges, apparently. “Sgt. Forrest is being led into the Court House right now,” NewsChannel 5’s Phil Williams reported at 10:15 a.m.
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Nashville media outlets are reporting that Mayor Megan Barry pleaded guilty this morning to felony theft charges and is expected to resign this morning at 10. am.
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UPDATE: At 9:05 a.m., WKRN reported “JUST IN: Davidson County Criminal Court says Mayor Barry is expected to appear in criminal court this morning.” 8:15 a.m. The Tennessean is reporting that “Nashville Mayor Megan Barry is expected to announce her resignation at a press conference Tuesday morning.” The mayor has begun calling close advisers to inform them of it, according to multiple sources. The resignation comes amid an investigation of an affair with her former bodyguard Metro police Sgt. Robert Forrest. The resignation means that Vice Mayor David Briley will become acting mayor. This report comes less than 24 hours after The Tennessee Star reported that “On Monday embattled Nashville Mayor Megan Barry called a report by WTN’s Brian Wilson that sources say the mayor and her bodyguard boyfriend Sgt. Rob. Forrest visited Mt. Olivet Cemetery at sunset on several occasions over a six month period “false and slanderous.” The Star has asked Mayor’s Office spokesperson Sean Braisted for comment, but has not yet received a response. Metro Councilman Steve Glover, however, did respond to an inquiry from The Star. “That is my understanding,” Glover told The Star when asked if he can confirm or deny whether Mayor Barry is…
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Embattled Nashville Mayor Megan Barry responded defiantly late Wednesday to the call from the Editorial Board of The Tennessean earlier in the day for her to resign. That call comes in the aftermath of her admission to an extramarital affair with her former bodyguard, Metro Nashville Police Sgt. Rob Forrest. “I was elected to serve as mayor by the voters of Davidson County, and I will continue to do so. The Tennessean is welcome to their opinion,” she said in a statement released by Sean Braisted, director of communications for the Mayor’s Office. The Tennessean’s call for her resignation, written by the paper’s very liberal opinion page editor, David Plazas, pulled no punches: A leader must put the interests and the needs of the people she serves above her own. We thought Nashville Mayor Megan Barry was doing just that. However, it has become abundantly clear in recent weeks that this is not the case after the revelation of her affair with her subordinate and former head of security, retired Metro Nashville Police Department Sgt. Rob Forrest. This is a confounding and disappointing situation: – How he could rack up more than $170,000 in overtime pay over three years, which…
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A judge has signed off on search warrants for the electronic equipment of Nashville Mayor Megan Barry and retired Metro Nashville Police Sgt. Rob Forrest. On January 31, Barry admitted that she had conducted a two-year-long extramarital affair with Forrest, who served as her bodyguard. “Authorities believe that Forrest took two photos of a nude woman who is believed to be Barry on his police department-issued cell phone. He allegedly sent the pictures to himself to his MNPD email,” WSMV reported on Thursday. “Police also found there could be deleted phone logs and hundreds of deleted chats between Forrest and Barry on at least one of the devices that were being searched,” WSMV noted, adding: The warrants specifically asked for records from a silver Apple iPhone 6s Plus and two black Apple iPhone 7 Plus devices. The warrants were approved on Feb. 16 by Criminal Court Judge Steve Dozier and were returned on Thursday to the Davidson County Criminal Court Clerk’s office. “Within the search warrant, a special agent with the TBI mentions an email sent from Sgt. Forrest’s work email address that included a photo of a nude female lying on the bed with a black purse next to her,”…
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Renata Soto, the Donald Trump-bashing chairman of the board of UnidosUS (the new name adopted by the George Soros-funded National Council of LaRaza in July 2017), and founder and head of Conexion Americas, the Nashville affiliate of UnidosUS, was one of the featured speakers at Saturday’s kickoff of the Transit for Nashville campaign to support the passage of the tax increasing transit plan on the May 1 referendum before Nashville/Davidson County voters. Soto was joined by former Nashville Vice-Mayor Howard Gentry and Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN-05) as the featured speakers in the 22 minute kickoff event. Notably, embattled Nashville Mayor Megan Barry, who two weeks ago admitted to conducting a two-year-long extramarital affair with her bodyguard, was not one of the event’s featured speakers, though she was, apparently, in attendance. “My name is Renata Soto and I am with Conexion Americas, one of almost 120 coalition members who are so excited to get this campaign kicked off today,” Soto began. “Are we ready for transit?” she asked the crowd “Our coalition represents almost 300,000 Nashvillians. We have collected more than 30,000 signatures. We have hosted more than 200 community events. And we know that with your support, your enthusiasm, your…
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Sean Braisted, Director of Communications for the Mayor’s Office, has confirmed to The Tennessee Star that Mayor Megan Barry’s lover, Sgt. Rob Forrest, was the only Metro Nashville security officer assigned to travel with the mayor when she attended the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in July 2016. Mayor Barry has previously claimed that Forrest only accompanied her out of state as a security officer when paid by Metro Nashville when she was traveling on official city business. Barry attended the Democratic National Convention not on city business, but on political and personal business as a delegate committed to Hillary Clinton. Braisted failed to respond directly to The Star’s request that he identify the specific city business Barry conducted at the Democratic National Convention. Instead, he asserted that Barry “met with many other mayors, as well as state and federal officials during the course of this trip.” He also fell back on a previous statement by Metro Nashville Police Chief Steve Anderson in explaining why Forrest was assigned to accompany Mayor Barry on this trip, and presumably, was paid by Metro Nashville to do so. “As Chief Anderson has said, the mayor is the mayor wherever she is and…
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by Judson Phillips On Wednesday evening, the rumors that had been percolating through downtown Nashville all day were finally shown to be true. Nashville Mayor Megan Barry admitted that she had an extramarital affair. But it was not just any extramarital affair. She was having an affair with a Nashville employee who was paid to protect her. Metro police sergeant Rob Forrest was assigned to protect the Mayor and traveled with her extensively. According to media reports, Barry traveled with Forrest at least nine times alone. According to other media reports, in the last two years alone, Forrest made $135,000 in overtime. That overtime is in addition to his regular salary and for the trips he took with the Mayor on the taxpayer’s dime. Neither Barry or Forrest are giving details, such as the time frame of the affair, presumably on the advice of their lawyers. Until there is evidence to the contrary, sane people have to assume they were having their affair while he was on duty and they were traveling together. Megan Barry used tax dollars to help pay for her affair. And she had that affair with someone who works for the city. All of this…
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Despite his rhetorical claims to be in line with President Donald Trump’s policy agenda, Republican Senatorial candidate Stephen Fincher has immediately aligned himself with the “Queen of the Establishment” and anti-Trump political class in Tennessee. Political fundraiser Kim Kaegi, who has been a lead fundraiser for Senator Lamar Alexander, Senator Bob Corker, Governor Bill Haslam and gubernatorial candidate Randy Boyd, will serve as Treasurer and Finance Consultant for the Fincher campaign, as she announced in this October 23 email. Kaegi raised eyebrows in 2016 when the “Republican” fundraiser contracted to raise funds for staunch Democrat Charles R. Bone in the Nashville Mayoral race. After Bone failed to make the runoff, Kaegi shifted her fundraising efforts to Megan Barry as she faced off against the more conservative David Fox. Barry is a liberal democrat married to Bruce Barry, the past President of the Tennessee ACLU and a member of the board of directors of the national ACLU. He has been a frequent critic of Trump’s immigration poicies. Mayor Barry has supported sanctuary city status for Nashville, is a strong proponent for illegal aliens, and recently proposed a $5.2 billion tax increase for the city. She was a Hillary Clinton delegate to…
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GOP Gubernatorial candidate Randy Boyd and Nashville Mayor Megan Barry have something in common. They both want refugees resettled in Tennessee, and they both remain silent on the threat of female genital mutilation (FGM) to women and girls in the Volunteer State. Reiterating her campaign theme, “it doesn’t matter where you started life or how you got here” progressive Mayor Megan Barry lauded Nashville for being a “warm and welcoming place” during her second state of Metro address, yet did not respond to the Tennessee Star’s questions about the threat of FGM to women and girls in Davidson County. Barry’s office was asked last week if based on the Mayor’s support for increased refugee resettlement and the high immigration from FGM prevalent countries to Nashville, whether the discovery of and prosecution for FGM in Michigan raises any concern for her administration about what might be happening in her city? No response was received from Mayor Barry’s office. Despite the Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro-Franklin Metropolitan Statistical Area being ranked 20th in the country for the potential risk of female genital mutilation (FGM) as reported by the Population Reference Bureau, and despite Nashville being the city that receives the highest number of refugees annually including refugees from…
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