Megan Barry: The Candidate For Mayor Who Knows How Newcomers Feel

Only one candidate in Nashville’s race for mayor would continue a streak. The last three mayors didn’t grow up here. Neither did Megan Barry.

The at-large Metro Council member’s path started in Kansas, then trekked through Colorado with a stint in London. She doesn’t play up that she’s from elsewhere. But she does say coming from the outside helps her identify with the masses moving here now.

Megan Barry remembers the moment she felt like a Nashvillian. That’s when she figured out how to pronounce a street named after an early settler that has long separated the natives from the newbies.

“I said ‘demon bruin’ for a long time, and finally I’m like, oh wait, it’s Demonbreun.”

In her stump speech and web videos, Barry always talks about how she got to Nashville. She came to get her MBA at Vanderbilt, only planning to stay 18 months.

She usually leaves out that she was an elementary school teacher before deciding to get into business. She planned to get her degree and follow where that led. But she found a job here and grew to love the city.

Other candidates talk about how many generations their families have been here.

“I think I’m the one who had the great fortune to choose to live here,” Barry says.

It took time for her activism to kick in. Her first foray was in creating a historic overlay for her neighborhood off Belmont Boulevard. Then she joined the effort to keep historic Eakin Elementary from being bulldozed.

Some friends talked her into running for Metro Council in 2007. She’s held that seat for two terms. In office, she’s been outspoken about gay rights and abortion rights.

“Because I didn’t intend to stay, it took me a little while to say I am going to stay here, so I’m going to put my roots down and I’m going to reach out and I’m going to get involved….I go out and talk to people and see that energy. So many people are choosing to be here and staying here, and that makes a difference because they want to be involved.”

Barry suspects people relocating to Nashville these days will create a new class of activists who won’t wait as long as she did.

One such newcomer has even joined the Barry campaign. Actress Connie Britton headlined a recent fundraiser. The star of the TV show “Nashville” described how she would run into Barry at various events for liberal causes.

“I was like who is this ballsy woman? This is somebody I gotta get to know,” Britton said in a packed Hilsboro Village restaurant.

The room was full of fresh faces. Barry says she enjoys rubbing elbows with newcomers. She can identify with them, even though she has now been here 25 years.  She says their conversations often turn to one particular topic.

“When you have a lot of folks who’ve moved from places where public education is really great and they come here and they are surprised that people don’t send their kids as much to public schools.”

The number of Nashville kids in private schools is only a little higher than the national average of 10 percent. But they’re seen as the preferred option for families who can afford it. Others with means will often move to surrounding counties where schools are generally better.

Barry says if you didn’t go to public schools, it probably colors your opinion. 

“I started off in public schools. My sisters all went to public schools. The only time you didn’t go to a public school was if you went to a Catholic school. Those were the choices. I think people who are not from Nashville go, ‘wow’.”

Many candidates running for mayor attended private academies at some point, or their kids did. Even Barry’s son wound up in a private high school, but she says she’s retained a public school mentality.

Asked if she means someone coming in will act with more urgency, Barry says not exactly.

“I think people who are from here want our public schools to be excellent. I just think they are also coming with a different perspective because they’ve had a different experience.”

At this point, Barry is anything but an outsider. Still, she’s hoping that some of her background might appeal to newcomers looking for a mayoral candidate to get behind.