Photo: Stephen Elliott



Temperatures climbed well into the 90s late one weekday afternoon earlier this month as an estimated 1,000 people lined up outside music and events venue Cannery Ballroom. They were waiting for a glimpse of the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Ind., a shrinking Midwestern town with a population just north of 100,000.

The large, sweaty crowd was gathered to see Pete Buttigieg, the unlikely Democratic presidential candidate affectionately known as Mayor Pete. Nashville would vote on a mayor of its own in just two weeks’ time, but none of the candidates could come close to drawing a crowd the size of Buttigieg’s, despite seeking to lead a city nearly seven times the size of South Bend.

“People need to be reminded that no election has a more direct impact on their lives than mayor,” said John Ray Clemmons, a mayoral candidate who attended the Buttigieg event.

With more than seven months until Tennessee’s presidential primary and more than a year before the presidential election, many of the attendees seemed far more excited about Mayor Pete than Mayor David Briley or his challengers.

One couple at Cannery Ballroom — the dad wearing a Buttigieg T-shirt and the mom holding a newborn — said they hadn’t “done as much research” on the mayoral candidates and didn’t know for whom they’d vote, or if they would even vote at all. “The president is more important,” the dad said.

One young college student from Memphis made the drive to Nashville to see Mayor Pete because, he said, the presidential candidate was “eloquent” and helped “lift people up.” The student was “not up to speed” on the mayoral election in Memphis, which is also set for later this year.

A woman who said she was “probably just going to go with Briley” explained the discrepancy in enthusiasm for Buttigieg and the seeming lack of enthusiasm for the local mayoral race as a matter of contrasts. People showed up in droves for Buttigieg “because Trump is in office,” she said. They want an alternative, and the incumbent mayor doesn’t generate the same kind of antagonistic energy.

Another Buttigieg supporter, who said he worked on presidential campaigns for Robert Kennedy and Jimmy Carter, blamed the mayoral candidates themselves. “Ask the candidates why they haven’t drummed up any enthusiasm,” he said.

Buttigieg was not the first presidential candidate to visit Nashville this cycle. Amy Klobuchar and Joe Biden have both held smaller events in Nashville, and Beto O’Rourke was recently in town for meetings with activists and a larger rally. O’Rourke, like Buttigieg, sought out a local organization, the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, and its co-executive director Stephanie Teatro while in town. Teatro led a roundtable discussion with O’Rourke, and then questioned Buttigieg onstage — back-to-back appearances that make it seem like Teatro and her organization are on a consultation shortlist for any presidential candidate who comes to Nashville.

But this year was not supposed to be about presidential politics for TIRRC and its new political spinoff, TIRRC Votes. This year, the group — formed in 2018 and also co-led by Teatro — is endorsing and spending money on behalf of Metro candidates for the first time. Their candidate forum and their election kickoff, both of which were held earlier this summer, were among the best-attended political events of the 2019 campaign.

“For us, it isn’t a tension at all,” says Teatro. “We are excited that presidential candidates are not shying away from immigration issues. We hope the attention that presidential candidates are paying to immigrant families in the South can serve as an example for local government officials to also recognize that these families are important.”

The group has so far endorsed more than 20 candidates for Metro Council, but has held out on weighing in on the mayor’s race. An endorsement could come in the waning days of the election, or next month in the event of a runoff. For now, TIRRC Votes volunteers are, according to Teatro, canvassing thousands of homes on behalf of their slate of candidates and planning to send a significant mailing in the week before the election.

“National politics is centered around immigration, and that same level of outrage people are feeling toward federal policies, we’re trying to channel that within immigrant voters and progressive voters to the local elections,” Teatro says.

Local politics were nominally present at the Buttigieg event. Metro Councilmember Nancy VanReece took the mic to rattle off a slate of Victory Fund-endorsed candidates for Metro Council, a record number of LGBT candidates she said were part of a “rainbow wave.” Buttigieg himself touted the importance of progressivism in places like Nashville, despite his own improbable leap out of city hall.

“What you’re seeing more and more, these bluer cities in redder states demonstrate how you can have progress in the heartland,” Buttigieg said.

But even so, more than a week into early voting for mayor, turnout was already lagging far behind previous cycles.