Live from Music Row Friday 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 Davidson County GOP Chair Lonnie Spivak in studio to talk about the fielding of candidates in most of the 35 council districts as Metro Council expected fewer members by 2027.
Leahy: In studio, our very good friend, the chairman of the Davidson County Republican Party Lonnie Spivak. Your website is gopnashville.org. Lonnie, when people join our company, Star News Digital Media, Inc, we give them sort of a list of eight simple rules. Rule number one is simply this, show up.
Spivak: Right.
Leahy: I think you, as chairman of the Davidson County Republican Party, are implementing that rule. You’re showing up.
Spivak: And one of the things that I implemented when I took over is I canceled virtual meetings so everybody on the executive committee is showing up too. So we all have to meet in person. But we get business done that way. I’d much rather be face-to-face with somebody.
We can work through the hard issues, we can have our votes and move on. Meeting virtually, we just don’t really have good rules to govern that at this point. So until we get those in place, we’re going to meet in person.
Leahy: Another part of showing up is actually having a Republican candidate on the ballot.
Spivak: Yes.
Leahy: And so congratulations first to you and the Davidson County Republican Party for actually having a Republican candidate on the ballot in this special election in the 52nd district. Last time in 2022, there was no challenger in the general election.
Spivak: Yes. I think the biggest kudos just goes to Laura Nelson for stepping up. When I spoke to her about running for the race, I explained to her that this was going to be a very difficult race.
We focus on get out the vote and voter turnout because of how few people voted in that election last time that, we could come out ahead. And she felt that it was God’s calling and that things lined up for her perfectly to run. And just a big shout out to Laura Nelson for really stepping up and being that person to take on Justin Jones.
Leahy: And the other part about this is, again, remember when we talk about the relatively moribund history of Republicans in Nashville and Davidson County, again, very good at whining. But no it’s time to show up.
And Laura Nelson showed up, and others are showing up. We have a mayoral race on August 3rd. And we have 40 city council seats that are up—five at large and 35 districts. I think you’ve probably been recruiting some candidates.
Spivak: We’ve been recruiting a lot of candidates. I will tell you that those races are nonpartisan so you won’t show up on the ballot as Republican or Democrat. But Nashville politics are partisan races you’ll ever see. (Leahy chuckles) Everybody’s picked their sides, and we have a very radical Metro Council right now.
We’ve identified and are working on identifying candidates in most of the 35 council districts, and we’ll be putting a list together. I will say that some of those districts do not lean Republican and some of those candidates who we verified are Republican voters have asked us not to get involved heavily.
Leahy: Because of a district with five to one Democrat versus Republican.
Spivak: Or even 60-40…
Leahy: They kind of want to be a little stealth.
Spivak: They want to be stealthy. And we’re perfectly fine with that. What we want is 40 rational people who can work through the issues that really are affecting Nashville.
Leahy: Well, right now, one of the five at-large seats for the entire county is empty. Steve Glover resigned for health reasons. He’s doing well now, by the way. Yes. Thank you, Steve, for all your efforts.
Spivak: He’s enjoying his farm, from what I understand.
Leahy: I think so. But there will be five at-large members and then 35 smaller districts. If you look right now at the 39 members of the city council, I don’t know, what would you say? Maybe four or five of them are sane people that are moderate to conservative.
Spivak: Let me say there’s probably more than that who are sane, but they’re afraid to go against the grain. That being the case, we’re stuck with what we are stuck with. I really wish we’d have been able to cut the council down for this election cycle. But that won’t happen now until the 2027th election.
Leahy: The law was passed, cutting the council from 40 to less than 20. 20 or less.
Spivak: Twenty or less, but it’ll be 20.
Leahy: It was challenged. And the attorney general, our superstar Jonathan Skrmetti looked at it and said, look, we could litigate this in court, but we wouldn’t really be able to do it in a timely manner before the August 3rd election. And therefore, in order to not have chaos, we’ll wait. And this will be implemented in 2027.
Spivak: And my conversations with the attorney general were, look. We really just need to know what elections we’re having, whether it’s 20 or 40 this year or next year. We don’t care at this point. We just need an answer.
He called me that morning when his decision came out and said that they’d decided not to appeal it and that it would be 40 Metro Council elections this year, and that it would change in 2027. I really appreciate that he felt like calling me to let me know what their decision was. That just really just goes to show what kind of person he is and how dedicated he is to the state of Tennessee.
Leahy: Yes. And it’s interesting because we do get into this, and some of our listeners would say they have a very kind of quick decision-making process when they look at it as if is somebody doing something right or something wrong.
Decisions sometimes have some complexity to them. And this would be something that would fit in that case. Yes, it would be better to have this implemented law and challenge, but I do think logistically, it would’ve been a big challenge to do that.
Spivak: And we are perfectly happy to have the 40-member council at this time. It’s hard to put up 40 candidates. Five At-larges, which is run county-wide, and then the 35 districts. It’s hard to field those and to find “Republican candidates” to run in every one of those districts. But we’re doing a good job identifying candidates and making sure they have the tools they need.
Leahy: Yes. And by the way, the filing period is over now.
Spivak: Yes, it’s over now.
Leahy: If you are out listing and say, I’d like to be a candidate, it’s going to be, if you want to run for city council, the next opportunity is 2027. Not now. But I think you feel there are more candidates fielded this time around.
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 “Lonnie Spivak” by Lonnie Spivak. Background Photo “Tennessee State Capitol” by Blake Wylie. CC BY-SA 3.0.
