Photo: Stephen Elliott

A raucous round of social-media applause does not an electoral coalition make, but if it did, well, John Ray Clemmons just might be Nashville’s next mayor.

Clemmons, a Democratic state representative, was the only major candidate to come out in favor of a Metro Council effort to raise property taxes to fund further pay increases for Metro employees and other budget priorities. That proposal fell a single vote short at the council’s meeting last week, meaning Mayor David Briley’s flat budget plan will go into effect at the end of the month.

The reaction to the vote and Clemmons’ stance was swift and loud, though perhaps too weak to overcome the inertia of Briley’s re-election effort. The Clemmons campaign announced the Metro teachers union’s (already-decided) endorsement shortly after the vote. The Central Labor Council, a local union umbrella organization, reiterated its support for Clemmons following the vote and said it would revisit its prior endorsements of council members who voted down the tax increase. Representatives from the NAACP and other community organizations urged passage.

But Briley was forceful in his lobbying against the council’s budget. He threatened to veto a property tax increase if it were to pass but not garner two-thirds support. And despite the reaction from employees and other activists, Briley’s campaign arm was unmoved, at least publicly. (The campaign declined to comment on the electoral ramifications of his opposition to the increase.)

The budget debate drew in another mayoral candidate: At-Large Metro Councilmember John Cooper, the only person in the field who actually had a vote in the matter, and the former chair of the council’s Budget and Finance Committee. Juggling his long-held fiscal conservatism and his campaign to differentiate himself from Briley, Cooper found himself left in the lurch, siding with the mayor — whom he’s been hammering at for weeks — by voting down the tax increase. And thus many in the Anybody but Briley crowd, for weeks indecisive about the Johns, seemed to break to Clemmons, at least online.

If Clemmons had Cooper’s money, some observers hypothesized, maybe there’d be a real race.

“It’s clear [Briley] is taking what he thinks is the politically safe route to get re-elected,” Clemmons says. “He’s not acknowledging the biggest challenges facing our families. He’s certainly unwilling to do what it takes to fund the solutions to those challenges.”

It’s a topsy-turvy political season when raising taxes is the cause célèbre, but here we are. “There’s plenty of support in the city for this,” says At-Large Councilmember Bob Mendes, who for the second year in a row was among the main backers of a tax hike, and who is running for a second term. He even suggests that some district council members voted against the proposal despite overwhelming support among their constituents.

Four of the current council members in the at-large race — in which 15 candidates are seeking five countywide seats — voted for the tax increase, while two voted against it. That could create a recognizable distinction in the sometimes-overlooked at-large election, but Mendes is skeptical that voters are making their decisions on the budget vote alone.

Cooper, whose vote could have swung the tax proposal to passage, defended his position. According to him, the support in the community is not for a tax increase but for a tax shift. When it comes to generating new revenues for the city, Cooper says, the burden should fall on the bustling tourism industry downtown.

“Only the mayor can do the job of rebalancing the city,” Cooper says. “It’s not saying the priorities aren’t important. Everybody in the county thinks they’re important, but everybody in the county wants them paid for by the right pocket.”

Still, Clemmons is latching onto the budget debate as a possible sticking point for voters, with fewer than two months remaining until Election Day. He’s not letting Cooper off the hook, either, dubbing it “the Briley-Cooper budget.” But the question remains: Does Clemmons have the funds to spread his message to voters this summer?

“I don’t have a million-dollar last name or a million-dollar bank account,” Clemmons says. “But what I have done is spent the last five-and-a-half months building a significant grassroots level organization across this entire community that is ready to mobilize, and even more so after last night. My opponents are going to try to buy the race, and we’ve seen in past mayoral elections that doesn’t work out so well.”