We Asked Nashville’s Mayoral Candidates To Set The Record Straight On, Well, Anything

With 38 days until early voting begins, Nashville’s mayoral campaign has been a clean one thus far. Candidates have even shown a willingness to defend each other from aggressive questioners at forums. Still some candidates had points to make when WPLN asked if they’d like to set the record straight on anything.

Bill Freeman is sensitive to the title “developer.” He doesn’t build anything. He buys buildings, mostly apartment complexes, and manages them as the landlord.

“I’m not a developer. I’ve developed two properties in 40 years,” Freeman says. “I just wanted to get that on the record.”

Charter school founder Jeremy Kane says he finds that some voters think LEAD Academy, which he started, is still making him money. It’s a non-profit, and Kane says he’s no longer on the payroll.

“There’s no investment, no stock options in LEAD,” Kane says. “I walked away.”

Neither At-large Metro Council member Megan Barry nor businesswoman Linda Rebrovick had anything they wanted to bring up when put on the spot.

Some candidates feel their proposals are coming off the wrong way. Former school board chairman David Fox says he’s not a doomsday guy, even though he focuses on impending fiscal troubles.

“We have a lot of challenges we need to address,” Fox says. “Sometimes when I talk about it, I can leave the people with the impression that I’m pessimistic about our future when in fact I’m really very optimistic about it.”

Recently, Criminal Court Clerk Howard Gentry has talked about getting tough on violent crime. But he says that doesn’t mean he plans to send the police on a massive sweep.

“It’s ok to attack cancer. It’s ok to attack poverty. It’s ok to attack the circumstance around discrimination,” Gentry says. “Well, ya’ll got to let it be ok for me to attack violent crime.”

He says it will be a community effort.

Lastly, attorney Charles Robert Bone says he wants people to know he doesn’t just look at spreadsheets all day and that he’s a “fun guy.”

“They say because I cite all these statistics that I must be some kind of nerd or geek, but clearly that’s not the case.”