Nashville Vice Mayor Jim Shulman is kind of like a referee. He enforces the rules at Metro Council meetings and reins in conversations that are going on too long — or going off the rails.
His job is the city’s second highest position. It mostly requires him to run the Metro Council’s bi-weekly meeting and, if needed, step in if the mayor can no longer do the job.
The Metro Council is a nonpartisan local body, but nowadays, it’s not free of polarization.
Shulman is nostalgic for a bygone era of polite politics where people generally followed all the rules. But in a more diverse and polarized political world, his approach has been drawing more skepticism.
Who is Jim Shulman?
During the 1960s and ’70s, Shulman thought Johnson City, Tenn. was the perfect place to grow up.
“You rode your bicycle around. There wasn’t really any crime,” he says. “No serious, as far as I could tell, any problems between Black-white relations. People just got along.”
But, of course, not everyone got along. This is the same time period that 100 Black residents were suing the local school board over unequal conditions like outdated libraries, cafeterias and textbooks.
His parents were Democrats in a Republican-dominated area, advocating for change and supporting candidates they thought were progressive. They instilled in him core principles about government that he sticks to today.
“You should respect the people who are in office,” he says. “And as the country grows, you push for change in the proper way.”
This idea of the “proper way” is crucial to understanding what makes Shulman tick.
A preference for compromise and politeness
Shulman wants to bring back when different political parties worked together and people used their manners.
Throughout his career in the public and private sector, he’s worked for the state, served as the District 25 city councilmember and run health care nonprofits like the Tennessee Commission on Aging and Disability.
Mayor John Cooper met Shulman back in 1982.
“That’s a great thing, to have somebody who is a personally comfortable person, you know, who has a lot of integrity and kindness,” he says of Shulman.
Shulman is often laidback and peppers in jokes. He routinely reviews the agenda for the next council meeting over the weekend to brace himself for topics that might become contentious.
A public blow-up almost led Shulman to step down
But in 2020, the old rules and ways of doing politics were up for debate.
This was the summer Americans were cooped up in their homes during the pandemic and watching the fallout from the police killings of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. Residents who may not have been consistently engaged were now demanding their power be recognized.
It was under these circumstances that over 200 residents called in and showed up to the first council meeting of June 2020 to tell city officials how they wanted their tax dollars spent.
In the recording, you can hear the frustration starting to bubble up.
“As a native Nashvillian, granddaughter of Tennessee educators and a Black woman, I am strongly opposed to the allocation of even one more taxpayer dollar to fund a public safety system that does not and has not kept our community safe,” said Phoebe Moore.
“I believe we should not increase spending on police and jails,” resident Brittney Blackwood said. “I believe we should increase spending on affordable housing, social services and other critical public goods instead.”
Public comment is taking a lot longer than usual at this council meeting, and Shulman is growing agitated. This is when things take a turn.
During a 15-minute recess, Shulman huddles with city officials and the handful of councilmembers who came in person. From there, a YouTube video filmed by a resident picks up his conversation directly to residents who are sitting outside the chambers in a socially distant line.
Shulman criticizes the residents.
“You are killing your ideas. You are destroying any ideas by what are you doing right now,” he says, as he wags his finger like an upset parent. “I’m just telling you that this is bad politics and it’s bad policy what you all are doing right now. You all should know better.”
Residents boo him and even threaten to vote him out of office for not listening to them.
Shulman, Councilmember Sharon Hurt and Tonya Hancock attempt to end the conversation. But the council doesn’t agree and residents are able to keep submitting comment on the Mayor’s budget.
A day after the meeting, Shulman apologized for his behavior. While Shulman thinks of himself as working toward progress for everyone, his reaction to that night put a few cracks in his public persona as a laid-back and quirky older white guy.
Incremental change or upholding the status quo? Shulman’s approach has its critics.
Two years later, Shulman watches the video from his office for the first time. He’s actually a little relieved.
“I thought I was screaming at people, so I wasn’t really screaming. That makes me feel better,” he says.
This council meeting was one of a handful of recent times there was an overwhelming push against the status quo by Nashville residents.
The first one that most can remember was demonstrators shutting down the council meeting after Jocques Clemmons, a Black man, was killed by Metro Police. This got them 20 uninterrupted minutes to be heard. Longer term they successfully get a section added to the meeting for residents to be heard. Public comment now happens once a month.
That council night in 2020 made it clear to those there who city officials and our government validates as worthy voices to listen to.
“You don’t come in and then read us the same message over and over again,” he says. “And they kept us there until 5:30.”
Shulman says he also wanted to ensure home and business owners concerned about the property tax increases during the pandemic could be heard.
It’s easy to see why Shulman is a bit unphased. He did his job in enforcing the rules — the “proper way,” as he puts it.
After this blow up, he considered stepping away from the job, but ultimately didn’t.
While Shulman sees the June 2020 meeting as an outlier because of higher than normal participation, former People’s Budget organizer Daniel Yoon says local government should always strive for this level of engagement.
“I think I watched every minute of it [the video] because it was really moving for me to see that many people participate,” Yoon says. “And the people that who told their stories and people who told emotional things about why this was important to them.”
Yoon was hoping councilmembers would see the level of turnout and reimagine how Metro could serve their constituents.
In the short term, there has been some incremental progress. Last year the council held a public hearing in March, two months earlier than what the charter requires.
Yet it’s the mayor who still has an outsized role in what goes into the budget. The groundswell of momentum from organizers and residents ultimately didn’t create more than what some activists consider superficial changes.
Shulman leads an increasingly diverse Metro council, who want to see changes, too
This pressure for Shulman to do things differently isn’t limited to the budget or resident concerns.
Nashville currently has one of its most diverse council. They’re also pushing against processes and cultural expectations to assimilate.
“Our government is not easily as accessible and maybe that’s by design,” councilmember Sandra Sepulveda says. “But I think I do think we need to do better.”
Sepulveda is a first term councilmember and currently the only Latina member.
She’s run in the same political circles with Shulman since she started working for the Democratic party. But because of a political falling out, their relationship has soured. She won’t say if she’ll support another term for Shulman.
“There are certain things we cannot come back from,” she says.
In an emailed response, Shulman downplays their interpersonal differences, and instead says he’s focused on moving the city forward.
Shulman will run for another term next year
Nashville’s Vice Mayor Jim Shulman tells WPLN News he will run for re-election in 2023. If elected, it will be his second and last term.
Even though nationally, Democrats are changing their message of what unity looks like — think President Joe Biden criticizing “ultra MAGA” conservatives — Shulman isn’t.
“Nobody needs to remember me,” he says. “It’s just that people need to remember this time and go, ‘Boy, that was divisive. But we got through it.”
Shulman won’t be the guy that shakes things up. But he will work with you … if you play by the rules.
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