Democrats' ads evoke segregation in attacking David Fox

In what had already turned into a divisive partisan race, the Tennessee Democratic Party made its first financial play in Nashville’s mayoral runoff Thursday that included a new advertisement that evokes images of segregation to attack David Fox.

The party, which doesn't typically get involved in local races, released a pair of ads Thursday — one on radio, the other through the mail — that seek to rally Democrats for Megan Barry and hurt Fox's candidacy. The ads, which are aimed specifically at black voters, characterize Fox as a "partisan Republican" and someone who isn’t on the side of African-Americans or looking out for them.

One of the ads also paints Fox as a mayor who would return Nashville’s schools to the era of segregation. It does so by alluding to a controversial student assignment plan he voted for while on the Metro school board. A double-sided mail piece features a black-and-white photo of a school taken 60 years ago.

"With David Fox as your mayor, it will be like a stroll down memory lane ... to the 1950s,” the mail piece reads in big, bold letters.

“The NAACP said the David Fox Plan rolled back decades of racial progress and doomed the city’s poor black children to a substandard education in segregated schools,” the ad finishes.

The Fox campaign — criticized earlier this week by the Barry campaign for a negative radio ad that raised past writings from Barry’s husband that touched on religion — called on Barry to “immediately condemn and repudiate these outrageous ads or accept full responsibility for them."

Fox campaign manager Chris Turner referenced a new Tennessean poll released this week that found the Sept. 10 runoff is in a statistical tie, adding that “the new series of ads from Megan Barry and her allies are just one more sad and desperate attempt to hang on to a failing campaign. They are patently false and are race-baiting of the lowest order.

"The ads that are clearly designed to incite the African-American community will only backfire on the Barry campaign,” Turner said. “African-American voters know when they are being manipulated, and the rest of Nashville will find them disgusting.”

The segregation allegation comes from the Spurlock v. Fox case, in which Fox was the lead defendant because of his role as board chairman. The case stemmed from a controversial student assignment plan the Metro school board passed by a 5-4 vote in 2008. Fox was among the five board members who voted for the plan, which resulted in a segregation lawsuit that dragged on for several years.

MORE DETAILS:View the state Democratic Party's mail ad

In 2013, a federal appeals court upheld a judge’s prior findings that the rezoning plan did not have a "segregative intent" and that it passed constitutional muster even though it led to more racially divided schools in the Pearl-Cohn and Hillwood high school clusters.

Fox has defended the rezoning plan and has noted the diverse task force that helped draft it. On Thursday, the Fox campaign pointed out that Barry was among those on the Metro Council who in 2010 voted to approve a council resolution to recognize Fox for his service on the school board.

In response to the state Democratic Party's involvement, Barry spokesman Sean Braisted said, "We are running our campaign and our campaign alone. If others want to inform the voters about David Fox's record, that is up to them. We only ask that they be truthful, unlike David Fox and the out-of-state Republican super PAC aligned with his campaign."

"The more interesting news today are the financial disclosures which show that just as voters were receiving phone calls lying about Megan Barry's faith, Citizen Super PAC (the pro-Fox political committee funded by Fox’s brother) spent nearly $17,000 on paid phone (calls)," Braisted added. "It seems like attacking Megan's faith might be a Fox family tradition."

In addition to the school rezoning plan, the Democratic ads single out Fox’s 2010 board vote to outsource school custodians, arguing that decision meant that “more than 600 hard-working janitors and maintenance workers lost their jobs.”

The ads also call attention to his opposition to increasing the minimum wage, which they say “(denies) thousands of Nashville families the opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty."

“I don’t know how anyone could defend David Fox,” a man says in the radio ad, which is airing on African-American radio stations.

“David Fox just isn’t on our side, but Megan Barry is,” it later continues, before applauding Barry’s record on the Metro Council.

Though every Democratic lawmaker in Nashville has endorsed Barry, the state party hadn’t advertised on behalf of Barry until these two ads. The party’s involvement comes as the new poll released by The Tennessean shows a highly partisan race that could rely on Democratic turnout for Barry, particularly among African-American voters.

Meanwhile, Tennessee Democrats, who have suffered massive election setbacks in the state legislature, have talked openly about mayors of Tennessee’s largest cities serving as the bench for the party's future. Outgoing mayor Karl Dean is widely seen as a possible statewide contender for Democrats.

“Clearly, David Fox made this race partisan at this point,” Tennessee Democratic Party Chairwoman Mary Mancini said. “Megan is the person in the race that most clearly aligns with Democratic Party values, and we just couldn’t stand on the sidelines anymore because there is such a clear choice."

“I think the question is better asked for David as to why he made that vote,” Mancini said when asked if she thought the ad was “race-baiting.”

Fox has gotten help from several Republican donors, as well as Williamson County Republicans Sen. Jack Johnson and Rep. Glen Casada. Though the Tennessee Republican Party has made its preference of Fox clear, the party has yet to get active through advertising and other expenditures.

Tennessee Republican Party Chairman Ryan Haynes, in response to the Democratic Party’s involvement, said that numerous Democrats have endorsed Fox and are involved in his campaign because he’s “a bipartisan problem-solver talking about the issues Nashville cares about: traffic, opportunity and growth."

“Mancini has been involved from day one with Barry's out-of-touch campaign,” Haynes said. “Her antics serve as further proof that Mrs. Barry cares nothing about mainstream Democrats, centrists or the everyday citizens of Nashville nor about solving the problems they're facing."

Reach Joey Garrison at 615-259-8236 and on Twitter @joeygarrison.