Many politicians don’t grow up thinking they want to eventually represent thousands of people and help create laws. In fact, most have an entire life and career outside of being politicians.
WPLN News spoke with Tennessee House Rep. Vincent Dixie, D-Nashville, about his life before coming to work on Capitol Hill.
“I was born in Chattanooga, and we moved,” Dixie said. “My mom got transferred. She worked for — at the time it was — South Central Bell, which is now AT&T. And we moved to Nashville when I was 9 years old.”
Most of Dixie’s younger life was like most kids.
“I went to Jere Baxter. Then I went to, Park, which is now KIPP Academy. And then I went to Hunter’s Lane,” said Dixie. “I was blessed with a scholarship, and I went to Dillard University in New Orleans.”
Once he got to Louisiana for school, he says he had maybe too much of a blast.
“I had the time of my life. I was 17 years old in New Orleans, and that probably wasn’t a good fit at that time,” Dixie said. “And so, I partied my way back to Tennessee State University and graduated from Tennessee State with an accounting degree and an MBA.”
Dixie’s attraction to getting a business degree came from his goal of owning his own one day. But his first job was as an accountant. After realizing working at bank wasn’t for him, he circled back on his dream of being an entrepreneur.
“So, in that time, I had always been looking at bail bonding, and there’s no manual to get into it. There’s no way to get into somebody really has to kind of show you how to get into it,” said Dixie. “So I was talking to one of my friends — which is, really, like my brother — one of the guys we met and my business partner to this day and several other businesses. He’s like, ‘Hey, my uncle is in bail bonding.”
The talk went great, and Dixie went into business with his friend’s uncle. And right out of the gate, he did well for himself.
“We became really successful. And our bond business — we have six offices right now,” said Dixie.
But eventually, Dixie found himself in a situation where he wanted to split from the partnership.
“We realized that his uncle was taking advantage of us, right? And so when I started looking at the numbers, I was like, ‘We’re taking all the risk, and we ain’t making a lot of money,'” said Dixie.
Dixie said he doesn’t regret anything about that time. In fact, he credits his friend’s uncle for leading him toward running for office.
“He was very active in the political world, and he was like, ‘Hey, man, you need to always get to know who your state senator is. You always need to get to know who your state rep is in. You need to know who the judges are. You need to know everybody in between. You make sure you go to a campaign, and you give them money.'”
Running for office wasn’t a decision he made on his own though. By this time, Dixie was married with two daughters. And he wanted to be sure his family was comfortable with it.
Initially, they weren’t.
“So before I ran, I asked them. I asked the whole family. I was like, ‘Y’all okay with doing this?'” Dixie said. “And my wife said, ‘No’ — matter of fact, she said, ‘Hell no.’ She was like, ‘I can’t do that. I don’t want to be in that light.'”
He kept bringing it up for months, and eventually, she supported his idea.
The timing couldn’t have worked out better, as the District 54 seat was left vacant after then-Rep. Brenda Gilmore decided to run for the Tennessee Senate in 2018. Dixie ran for the seat and won, and he has been representing the area ever since.
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