Newcomers Win At-Large Seats

In the race for Metro council’s at-large seats, voters proved the pundits wrong.

Six of the eight candidates in the runoff had served on council before-three are currently finishing up terms as district council members. Their name recognition was expected to carry the race. But in the end, both of the newcomers won seats.

Almost 41-thousand Nashvillians voted for Jerry Maynard. He credits his win to a hard-working staff and a never-say-die approach.

“We went all over the county. Places where people said we’d never get votes-we went there. We just stated what our message was, we stated common sense solutions, and then pretty soon, Nashvillians began to really identify with the fact that we were trying to bring Nashville together to get things done for the city.”More than 49-thousand votes went to the other newcomer, Megan Barry, making her the top vote-getter in the race. As pleased as she is with the results of the election, the experience has convinced her that Nashville needs to adopt an instant run-off system–if the at-large race had gone to the candidates with the most votes in the general election, the results would have been the same.

“You know, we’ve had two races so far in the last six weeks. There are ways and other people do this, where we could have had one and had a similar outcome and we would have saved the county a whole lot of money.”

The other two at-large seats went to former vice-mayor Ronnie Steine and current district councilman Charlie Tygard.