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Nashville / Davidson County has been a democratic stronghold for years. The local elections are theoretically non-partisan, but we’ve never had a Republican mayor in my lifetime. The white flight to the surrounding counties during the forced busing of the 70s is the root of Nashville’s left leanings. The city is made up of inner city / low income, young transplants from the east and west coasts and the rust belt who are revitalizing downtown and midtown housing, old money many with Vanderbilt university ties, and the suburban communities ringing the city but still inside the county that make up Metropolitan Nashville. All of those but the outer communities are heavily liberal, Even the suburban communities have turned more democratic in recent years as the neighborhoods built in the 50s, 60s and 70s age, the original owners die or move to assisted living and immigrants and young families buying flipped houses move in.

The race was between David Fox, a Jewish moderate democratic who ran on being a fiscal conservative and Megan Barry who promises to spend our way to prosperity. They are both social liberals. She ran a mud slinging campaign associating Fox with the Tea Party and Republicans, and apparently it worked.

The white flight to the surrounding counties during the forced busing of the 70s is the root of Nashville’s left leanings.

Things may have been different had Casey Jenkins, pictured below, won in the hotly-contested mayor's race in 1971. Jenkins bravely stated:

We love our God, our nation, our country, our homes and our children. We must let those men who call themselves Supreme know that we are not going to let them juggle our children around like bowling pins at a circus.

But the liberal political machine defied the will of the people and forced-integration became a sad reality. The creation of Metro in 1962 is what led to a single school district, making the leftist dream of force-integration easier to implement.

As I said, no Republican Mayor since President Grover Cleveland’s 1st term in 1887.

Fox, believe it or not, is a Republican, but as you said, a social leftist (which was repugnant to me, but as he wished to avoid social issues (which you really can’t), he wanted to do something about out-of-control spending and resolving the $2 billion debt we’re in, which Barry will exacerbate). I voted for him solely on the fiscal issue.