Candidates To Be Nashville Mayor Love On City’s Latin-Americans

Immigrant voters in Nashville are feeling some new attention this week from the mayoral candidates. Campaign websites, pamphlets and online videos are now appearing in Spanish.

The first to the radio airwaves in a second language was candidate Bill Freeman, who himself
appears in one ad for about 13 seconds. T

he rough translation of what he said: His Spanish isn’t any good, but he wants Nashville to be excellent for everyone.

Four years ago, Mayor Karl Dean ran limited Spanish radio ads. Since then, the push has intensified to reach immigrant voters — and there are more of them.
Census data show there are about 40,000 Spanish speakers in Nashville.

Leon Barrios, with the Hispanic Family Foundation, has noticed the difference. He’s lived in Nashville eight years after moving from Nicaragua.

“In my household, basically four members of my family became citizens lately. And we are participating actively, in terms of civic engagement,” Barrios said.

Barrios was among 600 people who attended a forum this week hosted by immigrant and refugee groups. The audience didn’t just have Spanish speakers: About two dozen people relied on live interpreters, in three languages.

The candidates spoke about inclusiveness, immigration enforcement and how to best teach English to immigrant students. They also were asked to read pretend postcards that they hope an immigrant would send home about life in Nashville.

Megan Barry began hers by addressing her
“abuela
“
 — or grandmother — and joked that it’s the only word she knows in Spanish. (All of the candidates came clean that night on having limited foreign language skills.)

More:
See Megan Barry’s Spanish website

Afterward, Barry was the clear winner in an informal poll, garnering twice as many votes as anyone else.

Immigrant forum poll results

Megan Barry: 113 votes

David Fox: 60

Jeremy Kane: 60

Charles R. Bone: 32

Howard Gentry: 10

Bill Freeman: 2

Linda Eskind Rebrovick: 1

But for all of the efforts to connect with Hispanic voters, members of Nashville’s large Kurdish and Somali communities say they’ve not yet seen much in the way of campaign materials designed for them.

Jeremy Kane appears to be the only candidate with 
a video testimonial from a Kurdish immigrant

.