Charles Robert Bone Considers Mayor’s Job A Family Affair

This is the second of seven profiles of the candidates running for Nashville mayor. For more on the mayor’s race, click here.

Growing up in Hendersonville, Charles Robert Bone would tag along with his dad to Sumner County Commission meetings. At the end was the promise of a late night trip to Shoney’s for a hot fudge cake. Politics was the family pastime. If elected mayor of Nashville, Bone says running the city won’t be a solo mission for him either.

In 1987, little 12-year-old Charles Robert boarded a campaign jet for Iowa after eating way too many hotdogs at a stop in New Hampshire. This was Al Gore’s first presidential run. Bone puked on the plane. Tipper Gore comforted the sick kid.

“So when I see Tipper Gore, that’s the first thing she says,” Bone recalls. “‘Remember that time we were on that little bitty airplane and you just kept throwing up?”

Bone’s upbringing put him among the politically powerful. His dad—Charles Bone—is one of the better known Democratic fundraisers in Tennessee. He’s the gregarious, backslapping type. Charles Robert is the more studious type. He admits his father is a tough act to follow.

“My dad does have a big personality, has a big shadow,” Bone says. “But we’re two totally different people.”

The son did glean one campaign tactic from dad — involve the kids. All four of his children appear running around the Bone house, chasing a golden retriever in a recent TV ad. The four sat on the couch to record a last-minute fundraising pitch, too.

Bone talks about an epiphany he reached a few years into his law career. He was working at the firm his dad started. But like most young attorneys, he was trying to prove himself, at the office late and even on weekends. He says he was missing “a fair amount” of his children’s lives. And he only had two then.

Since that time, Bone says he tries to involve them in his political activities. That includes campaigning for mayor and—if elected—being mayor.

“This wouldn’t be just me going off and doing this by myself,” he says. “Now at times, that is harder said than done.”

Bone never expected to have such a large family. “Selfishly,” he says, he thought one child would be enough. Now, he considers the chaos of a 6-member household life’s ultimate blessing.

Instead of a hindrance to his aspirations, Bone says being a father of four has taught him lessons he figures will help him be a better mayor.

“Parenting is about a series of judgment calls, and you’re not going to get every decision right,” he says. “I see that all the time with my kids. They keep badgering me when I’ve said no, and I’ll say no six or seven times and now I’ve forgotten why I said no in the first place and it would have been just as easy to say yes.”

Bone says “you’re not going to bat a thousand” as a parent, and he doesn’t expect to as mayor either. 

Bone’s children also have helped him realize the obvious fact that his family is doing pretty well in terms of finances. Fatherhood, he says, opens your eyes to poverty.

“It’s looking at how do we provide opportunities for others that I’m trying to strive for myself. It is an issue for our city,” Bone says. “So whether you come from an impoverished background or not, we’re all in this together.”