Live from Music Row, Tuesday 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 former TN5 GOP candidate Baxter Lee in studio to comment on the Nashville mayoral candidates and recent endorsement by the Fraternal Order of Police of incumbent Mayor John Cooper.
Leahy: In studio, we welcome to our microphones our friend, Mr. Baxter Lee. Good morning, Baxter.
Lee: Good morning, Michael. Thank you for having me on.
Leahy: Well, great. We have a particular role for you here that we envision this year. But I want to say something about you, Baxter, to our listening audience. You announced your candidacy for the Fifth Congressional District, and an issue came up about eligibility for the Republican nomination, and the issue was a little obscure. It’s in the bylaws, but it is in the bylaws that you have to voted in three of the last four statewide elections for some peculiarities. You had only voted in two of the last four.
Lee: It’s the only time in my life since I lived in Tennessee that I wasn’t four out of four or three out of four in dumb luck.
Leahy: It just happened.
Lee: It’s life.
Leahy: What I really respect about you, is you looked at that, whereas a couple of other candidates who didn’t meet that standard kind of were crying in their beer, I suppose you could say. (Lee chuckles) And one got involved in litigation and went all the way to the Supreme Court.
The state party ended up spending over $100,000 in legal fees. The state Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of the party. But you kind of assessed the circumstance and said, yeah, they’re probably right.
And so rather than whining and complaining, you said, okay, I’m not in this time around, but I am committed to helping build the Republican Party in Davidson County. You handled it with grace and style, and I think everybody saw that and really appreciated it. Congratulations on that.
Lee: And my big point is, a big part of politics is you got to listen to your teammates.
Leahy: Exactly.
Lee: Politics is not about the individual. It’s not about grandstanding or being a peacock on television. (Leahy laughs) It’s a team sport.
Leahy: A peacock on television. I like that phrase. Baxter, we’ve asked you, between now and August to be our analyst for the mayoral race here in Nashville. And basically, let me tell you how I look at it. Right now, we have an incumbent, Mayor John Cooper who I think has been an egomaniacal disaster, and I’m being kind in that description of him.
There are more candidates, and I want to kind of lay it out. We haven’t really paid a lot of attention to it because of all these national stories. But to me and I won’t tell you which one is which, to me, this looks like a race between Tweedle Dum, Tweedle Dee, and Tweedle Dumber. That’s what it looks like to me. Who are the candidates out there right now? The incumbent, Mayor Cooper. Who else is running?
Lee: We’ve got Sharon Hurt, who has announced. Nashville, she’s a council member, and then we’ve also got Freddie O’Connell, who’s a council member, and then Matt Wilshire, who appears to kind of be outside of it.
He’s come in from the I think it was the development housing authority. But he’s done a lot of stuff on his website, so I kind of did some research to kind of look at him. Cooper, I think, recently got the FOP endorsement.
Leahy: Yes, I saw that.
Lee: For me, the number one thing everybody wants is to feel safe. And if you’ve got the police on your side we’ve been talking about Memphis a lot recently in the news.
Leahy: We saw the story about a week and a half ago that the fraternal order of police has endorsed Mayor Cooper. I saw that and I can’t say exactly how I framed it, but it started with what the…and we have to have them on to talk about that.
Lee: Correct.
Leahy: I was surprised by that. Were you surprised by that?
Lee: Yes and no. If you’re a police officer in Davidson County, you’ve got to be realistic, and you’ve got to pick from lesser of evils,
Leahy: Tweedle Dee, Tweedle Dum, and Tweedle Dumber. Which one do you want?
Lee: Exactly? And I go back to it. The number one thing everybody needs to feel is to feel safe, and it starts with police officers.
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 “Baxter Lee” by Baxter Lee. Background Photo “Tennessee Capitol” by Kayfishup. CC BY-SA 3.0.
I hope the local gop party will call for a gop primary! Gop in Davidson county needs to field and support a good conservative candidate!