Cluster

On July 20, 2021, the Metro Council is going to decide whether to approve Vice Mayor Shulman’s appointee for the Fair Board. It’s shaping up to be a lengthy and unpleasant debate. In this era where the city is under scrutiny and sometimes attack from the state legislature and the Davidson County Election Commission, this will be a self-inflicted, unnecessary fight that risks damaging relationships among Council members, the Vice Mayor, and maybe the Cooper administration.

When I’ve talked to community members about this, they shake their heads with disbelief that this appointment can’t be figured out. I’ll describe the situation as best I know. As I go through it, I’m only going to name names where I think they are relevant to understand what’s going on. Not everyone is going to love me airing my perspective. Others might have different perspectives. But whatever we do at our meeting tomorrow night is going to be confusing and people should know what’s going on.

How did we get here?

Stella Yu from the Tennessean wrote a piece on July 6, 2021, that has a good description of how we got here. This Fair Board opening should have been the Mayor’s pick to make six months ago. But his office missed a deadline. By rule, once the Mayor misses his window, the Vice Mayor must make the appointment.

Then the Vice Mayor proposed a candidate in March. The candidate was an African American woman and needed 21 votes to be approved. She got 20 and the Vice Mayor had to start over. Then, the Vice Mayor sat on it for three months. When pushed about the status during that time, he responded that he was working on it.

In late June, the Vice Mayor made his next appointment — also an African American woman. This appointment was set on the Council’s July 6 agenda. But when it was clear it was going to be a very close vote, it was pushed off until July 20 to see if the parties involved could reach an agreement. That apparently hasn’t happened and it’s on the agenda again for July 20. A close vote is anticipated.

How did the Mayor miss his window?

For me, the exact details are rumor, but it’s clear that a debate broke out about whether a minority candidate should be appointed to the otherwise all-white Fair Board. The Tennessean reported that “Cooper's original pick for the seat was a white man. And by the time he had withdrawn that nomination and replaced it with a Black candidate, the deadline passed and the authority fell on Shulman's shoulders.” It’s also clear that CM Colby Sledge, who represents the district where the Fairgrounds is located, was advocating for a Latino appointment. I think it is safe to say that the Mayor’s Office questioned Sledge’s motives and wondered whether his position was really about whether the appointee would be in favor of the Mayor’s desired racetrack deal, and not about ethnicity or race.

Somewhere in this back and forth, the Mayor’s Office missed their appointment window. It happens every once in a while — there’s no real excuse other than sometimes mistakes happen. There’s no chance that they would have actively chosen to lose the power to make this appointment.

How did the Vice Mayor’s first pick fail in March?

By the time the Vice Mayor inherited this situation, there were a lot of Council members backing the idea that this pick should be Latino. Notably, CM Sandra Sepulveda has actively pushed for more Latino board and commission members and she backed Sledge’s position. Many of us, including me, committed to Sepulveda back in March to support her efforts.

I suspect that the Vice Mayor wanted (and still wants) to make a pick that is satisfactory to the Mayor’s Office (which likely means someone who is expected to support a racetrack deal). And since there was a distrust of Sledge’s motives, I think that dynamic maybe (??) spilled over into the Vice Mayor’s effort to find a candidate. There’s nothing wrong with the Vice Mayor wanting to pick someone the administration can have a relationship with. But to me, there’s no question that this pick being an early proxy fight over racing initially contributed to the current situation.

The Vice Mayor’s approach generally in the face of conflict is to try to find a way to split the baby. Here, I think that, in choosing an African American woman in March, he was trying to get the Fair Board away from being all white while side-stepping any mutual distrust among the others. What the Vice Mayor either didn’t know back in March (or knew and disregarded??) was that it had become important to many Council members that the pick be Latino. While the Mayor’s problem initialing related to racing, now it was more about race.

So the Vice Mayor’s pick failed. In falling short, there were a lot of abstentions. Because the appointee needed 21 “yes” votes, an abstention in March was just a more polite way of voting “no.” I thought it was clear to all involved in that vote why the appointment failed. It wasn’t about the qualifications. It was about the commitment many Council members had made to see a Latino appointment.

Why has it taken three more months to get another appointee?

I don’t know. The Vice Mayor indicated during that time that he was “working on it.”

I hear rumblings that maybe the Vice Mayor wasn’t aware that there are lots of Council members who would prefer to see a Latino appointment. I also hear some questions being asked now about whether this is a “real” issue for the community, or just something a few Council members want. I don’t want to guess at anyone’s state of mind…but I will say that it was clear to me when the appointment failed in March that there were many Council members who wanted to see a Latino appointment. In fact, the Tennessean directly reported this in March: “A council contingent thwarted her nomination as it sought a Hispanic community member for the board who they felt could represent a larger sector of the city's soccer fan base and advocate for workers.”

Why this appointment now?

The Vice Mayor again has proposed an African American women. She is impressive and well-qualified and doesn’t deserve to be in the middle of this.

I believe the Vice Mayor would say that his objective has been and continues to be to make a minority appointment. Others have theories about why the Vice Mayor would not have used the last three months to make a Latino appointment. Some wonder whether it has to do with ongoing distrust related to a potential racing deal. Some wonder whether the Vice Mayor just feels a need to “win” and not have some folks in the back of the room tell him how to run the Council. Hashing this out is what has the potential to be damaging to the Council on Tuesday.

Are there other factors making this more difficult?

The more this process lingers, the stickier the situation gets. In March, the Council’s Minority Caucus was split with some members wanting to support a qualified Latino appointment and others wanting to support the qualified African American nominee. There may be a similar split from the Caucus when we vote tomorrow.

The Vice Mayor is also now making the point to some that there is a large African American population in Sledge’s district and no current African American members on the Fair Board. Both of those facts are true — but frankly, injecting that argument into the situation at the last minute runs the risk of dividing and pitting people against each other rather than leading. Together, what started as a racetrack issue and became a White/Latino issue has now become a Black/White/Latino issue.

I’m also hearing questions about “Why this board?” and “Why now?” The answer is because this appointment and the process around it was allowed to linger, people got their heels dug in, and because the future racetrack deal looms large in the background, the people involved can’t seem to find a compromise that works.

Will this get resolved before Tuesday’s Council meeting?

I hope so. But that looks unlikely. I’m expecting a close vote one way or another and maybe some hurt feelings and frayed relationships. If that’s the way it ends up, it will be a leadership fail for the Mayor, Vice Mayor, and the entire Council.

The Mayor’s Office missed the pick in the first place and that allowed things to begin spinning out of control. Then, if the best the Vice Mayor can do is to win by a few votes or lose by a few votes, that will reflect poorly too. Setting those shortcomings aside, the Council should be able to handle its own stuff…so we’ll look bad too. Hopefully some solution presents itself before this all has to be hashed out at our Tuesday meeting. Otherwise, I’ll honor my commitment from several months ago and not be able to support the Vice Mayor’s appointee.