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 Republican Party Chair Lonnie Spivak and Nashville Republican Women’s Sheryl Longin in studio to discuss the urgency of the Republican Party to reach out to blue state transplants and the confusion around Nashville politics.
Leahy: In studio, Lonnie Spivak and Sheryl Longin, Sheryl, I wanna start with you. You told me right here on air, you fessed up. You were once a Democrat. What happened?
Longin: It’s kind of what Ronald Reagan said. I didn’t leave the Democratic Party, the Democratic Party left me. And it happened, gradually and all at once. All at once they left on September 11th, and a lot of people.
And no one ever says this. No one ever says I found the Republican Party. No one ever says the Republican Party found me. And that is what needs to happen.
Leahy: Let me just stop for a moment and Lonnie, I see you’re shaking your head up and down. This is a problem. Democrats and left-wingers go out and grab young people and grab others, and they recruit, recruit, recruit all the time. What you just said is quite profound. Nobody ever says the Republican Party found me. I think you want to fix that, change that here in Davidson County.
Longin: Yes, I do. I do, and a lot of people do. We have to do it because when people leave, as so many people have these blue states and blue cities and come here, they’re rejecting those policies.
But that doesn’t mean that they’re becoming Republicans. They don’t know. They just are disgusted and horrified. Some of them become Republicans, but they would all become Republicans if the Republicans would reach them.
Leahy: And you’re going to do that here with Davidson County Republican and Nashville Republican Women. How do people reach you? If somebody’s listening and they say Sheryl’s making a lot of sense and trying to find me, how do they go to find you?
Longin: Our website is nashvillerepublicanwomen.org. Go right on there. We have a community calendar, so we have all the events that are happening for conservatives or are just interested citizens around Davidson County.
We have monthly meetings with great speakers. Riley Gaines was our speaker last month. And we had the attorney general the month before. Come to our website and contact us, and through that and come to our events.
Leahy: And I can tell you they’re very welcoming. They’re a nice crowd. Lonnie Spivak, chairman of the Davidson County Republican Party, bring us up to speed on the mayor’s race, what’s going on with the Metro Council, and whether or not they’re going to break down to have these elections in these now 20 as opposed to 40 Metro Council seats.
Spivak: Metro Council’s approach right now seems to be that they want to do nothing. They want to do nothing to pick the style of the Metro Council going forward, as set forth in the new state legislation. Last Tuesday, they once again deferred any action. They still will not pick how many districts or how many at-larges.
Planning will move forward one way or the other. There will obviously be court challenges and looking at it from the outside as not a council member, I don’t know how we get to a point by May 1st where they have settled on maps, how many districts, how many at large, and how we get to a point to where we’re having Metro elections.
I don’t know what the state will do in the event that Metro Council does nothing. I don’t know if it would require a special session for them to come in and force a map on Nashville, Davidson County. I really don’t know. And so when I say that there’s a lot of turmoil in Davidson County, Nashville elections, there is.
There’s so much uncertainty. And now we’ll have the special election for the 52nd district, which we’ll just add to the confusion. And remember when we had Megan Berry and all the other stuff, and we had three mayoral elections and three years, I think, is what we had.
And it’s going to be one of those situations where we’re just in a constant tumultuous situation with Nashville politics. And no one will really know what’s going to happen until it happens.
Leahy: One thing we do know is that John Cooper will no longer be mayor after this upcoming election. The first election will be held in the first week of August.
Spivak: Early voting starts July 15th.
Leahy: July 15th, early voting. There are now seven Democrat candidates. I saw State Senator Heidi Campbell threw her hat in the ring.
Spivak: And Tara Scarlett is about to announce also.
Leahy: Now, will Tara Scarlet announce as a Republican?
Spivak: No, she will not, no. She will announce as a Democrat Independent.
Leahy: Independent. That doesn’t sound like it’s going to have an outcome. If you go independent, what’s your constituency of Independent in Nashville?
Spivak: One thing to remember is the Metro elections are nonpartisan, but here in the Davidson County Republican Party, we support Republicans.
Leahy: So we will have seven Democrats. One of them is a carpet bagger, Jim Gingrich. Jim, by the way, you’re welcome to come in and defend yourself from the charges that you are a carpet bagger, and you’ve been here three years, maybe three and a half. I don’t know. You are a carpet bagger. (Chuckles)
Spivak: If you haven’t gotten tired of receiving postcards in the mail from potential mayoral candidates, be ready because your trash cans are going to be full.
Leahy: We have seven Democrats. A couple of them have raised money now. Wilshire has raised, I guess, maybe a million and. a half now. And I think what State Senator Jeff Yarbro, I don’t know how much he’s raised.
Spivak: Everybody’s about to file their financial disclosures. So we’ll see.
Leahy: We have two Republicans, Alice Rolli, who’s been in studio here, Natisha Brooks, who’s been in studio here. And we have two Independents, Fran Bush, who’s been in the studio, former school board member. And then the other one is Tara Scarlett. Tara Scarlett is an Independent. Her dad was Joe Scarlett, the business guy. Clearly, I don’t see anybody getting over 50 percent in the August election. Do you, Sheryl?
Longin: No, I don’t.
Leahy: And so then we’ll have a runoff between the two top vote-getters, and I think it’s going to be a selection between bad and very bad. (Chuckles)
Spivak: Let me just say, we have two Republican candidates, and I really think we had a missed opportunity with the bill that stalled in the State Senate to kill the runoff elections.
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 “Sheryl Longin” by Nashville Republican Women. Background Photo “Tennessee Capitol” by Kayfishup. CC BY-SA 3.0.
