Negativity Irks Some Nashville Voters — But They Still Cast Ballots For Mayor

In Nashville’s mayor’s race — a virtual tie, according to polling — both campaigns have gone decidedly negative in their advertising. Even if the tactic bothers some voters, they’ve encountered new attacks almost every day, especially since candidates Megan Barry and David Fox saved their most aggressive messages for the runoff.

They’ve traded radio attack ads and unleashed a bombardment of mailers.

While the negativity irks some Nashvillians, it also keeps the attention of voters like Jane Lyon.

“I think the mayoral race has been a very interesting event. Not very pretty,” she said.

Lyon heard one of the campaign’s most controversial rumors at the nail salon, just a few hours before casting her ballot.

“It came up about Megan Barry being an atheist. And I’m like, ‘Come on, that has absolutely nothing to do with her running the city,’ 
“ 
she said. 
“
You know, an atheist, to me, is somebody who just hasn’t woken up yet. I don’t judge on that. That doesn’t have anything to do with being mayor of Nashville.”

Fox
condemned the atheism rumor — which never appeared in an official ad — but still
went on the offensive about Barry’s faith. Meanwhile,
the Tennessee Democrats and the Metro employees union attacked Fox by mail for outsourcing jobs while chairman of the Metro School Board.

Those caught the attention of 
Donelson
 voter Lynne Pool.

“I’ve gotten a lot more negative mailings from … Megan Barry. 
I got a lot of really, I thought, bad ones from her
,
“ 
she said. 
“
I just don’t appreciate the bad stuff. Let’s just look at what we can do and move the town ahead.”

Neither candidate promised to avoid negative ads.

And with the race so close, they also asked pointed questions during the live debates —
sometimes so intense that they wouldn’t look at one another.