In Nashville mayor's race, David Briley is all alone with transit push

It's a little after 7:30 a.m. on a cool, drizzly Friday morning earlier this month, and David Briley is walking to work.

The mayor, one month into his job, has invited a reporter to tag along for the nearly two-mile hike from his modern Salemtown townhome to his office inside the Metro courthouse.

His morning stroll isn't a daily routine, but rather an occasional exercise, and there's another purpose this day.

Briley is setting a scene to make his case why Nashvillians should vote for the May 1 transit referendum, a highly controversial $5.4 billion proposal anchored by light rail. The referendum has defined his first few weeks in office.

Regardless of how the vote goes, the outcome could have direct implications on Briley's run for mayor in a special election just weeks later on May 24.

He's the only top-tier mayoral candidate who backs the referendum in a crowded field of 13.

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Briley has tweaked his pitch of late.

"Independence" from the automobile, he says — a concept popular among millennials flocking to Nashville but a hard sell for many in this sprawling city.

He's showcasing his walkable home turf, the heavily gentrified neighborhoods of Salemtown and Germantown that feature a park, hip restaurants, a nearby grocery store and a community center. It's an area where the transit plan probably has more fans than foes.

"The plan is about choices. It's about making sure everybody has the choice not to use a car if they don't want to," Briley says, framing the proposal for light rail, rapid bus and bus improvements as one driven by the market.

"Young people, more and more, are wanting to live in a neighborhood where they don't necessarily have to get in a car every day."

Briley only top-tier candidate in mayor's race pushing transit plan

For Briley, the former vice mayor, much could be at stake politically with the referendum — a fight that he inherited when former Mayor Megan Barry, who first proposed the referendum last fall, resigned on March 6 and he took over.

Early voting on the transit referendum ends April 26 ahead of the election.

"It's not my plan, it wasn't my predecessor's plan, it was a community plan," Briley counters when presented with the unusual circumstances that made him now the project's chief salesman. "I'm the mayor of the city right now. As such, it's my obligation to push the city's plan forward."

But his opponents in the election to fill Barry's remaining term through August 2019 are looking to seize on an issue they are convinced Nashvillians are resisting in droves.

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From the political right, former Vanderbilt University professor Carol Swain and retired conservative radio talk show host Ralph Bristol have made opposition to the transit plan the centerpiece of their campaigns.

Swain has tagged the project the "Barry-Briley transit boondoggle."

The only two other sitting officeholders in the race — Metro Councilwoman Erica Gilmore and Rep. Harold Love Jr., both Democrats, and two of Nashville's top African-American elected officials — also oppose the transit referendum.

Gilmore, at one time a public supporter for the project, last week abruptly flipped her position, calling the transit plan "unworkable" and raising issues around equity. She decried a "lack of leadership" for allowing the plan to not respond to the wishes of constituents.

► Your elected leaders: Where every Nashville council member stands on the transit referendum

Even a paid organizer for the transit opposition group NoTax4Tacks, Nashville activist jeff obafemi carr, is running to unseat Briley.

Nevertheless, Briley insists he isn't thinking about the political ramifications of his referendum backing.

"I'm not worried about that," Briley says. "It's the right thing to do for the city. I think the people of Nashville want a mayor who stands up and makes principled decisions without regard to what the political consequences are. That's what I'm trying to do."

Transit referendum will 'drag Briley down with it,' opponent predicts

The transit referendum was already poised to dominate Nashville's mayoral race. But after the Tennessee Supreme Court last week ruled that the election must move to May from August, the two elections are now stacked back to back in the same month.

Early voting in the condensed mayor's election begins May 4, just three days after the vote on transit.

► Election dates: Tennessee Supreme Court moves up Nashville mayoral election to May

► The new mayor's election: Nashville mayoral election now set for May 24

If the referendum passes, it would provide a jolt for Briley, who is widely seen as the frontrunner. Although Briley came in last in the 2007 mayor's race won by Karl Dean, he now holds the power of incumbency and his first-quarter fundraising haul of $400,000 easily tops his opponents.

But if the referendum fails — which even supporters privately acknowledge is a real possibility — then his opponents contend Briley would be a wounded politician just days before voting begins in the mayor's race.

"If the referendum fails, it will be a vote of non-confidence in the current administration," Swain said, "and provide the next administration an opportunity for Nashville to develop a more affordable and effective plan."

She called Briley, known as a liberal, "an extension of the Barry administration."

Although some rivals still predict Briley will come in first in the May 24 election, they see their opening on June 28, when a runoff election would occur between the top two finishers if no candidate gets at least half the vote.

"It is going to go down in defeat, and it is going to drag Mayor Briley down with it, and whoever comes in second is going to be the next mayor," Bristol said. "And I firmly believe that's going to be me.

"After May 1, when the transit tax goes down to a huge defeat, his numbers will go down with it."

Professor thinks Barry, not Briley, would get blamed for transit loss

Gilmore said it "presents some problems for him if it does fail."

"As I go around town, people express some concerns about it," she said of the referendum, arguing people in communities like North Nashville and elsewhere don't see how they benefit from the transit plan. "By him becoming the face of it, I think it will be problems for him."

John Geer, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University, countered these takes, arguing that while the referendum would help Briley if it passes, he's not convinced he would be severely hampered if it fails.

He said the race lacks an anti-transit referendum candidate with substantial name recognition and deep resources — someone, he said, like businessman Bill Freeman, who had been considering a bid before passing.

"I think that if it doesn't pass, it certainly would be a bit of a knot, but the realities are that he's not facing a candidate that's going to have the kind of a breadth that a Bill Freeman would have had," Geer said. "So as a result, he's got a pretty clear path.

"And I think that a lot of people, rightly or wrongly, if the referendum fails, they'll blame it on former Mayor Barry as opposed to Briley," he said.

'Now's the moment,' Briley says

Briley has talked so much about transit in such a short time that he's started to joke about it on the stump. During a speech Monday before Nashville's Poetry in Motion group, Briley paused when he got to his prepared remarks about the issue.

"Some stuff about transit. Everybody's tired of hearing about transit. Skip that. Skip that. Skip that," he said, while smiling.

He then went on to read a poem and then talk about transit anyway.

The mayor's race Nashville mayor's race candidates

Back on his walk, Briley stops at Red Bicycle for a coffee about halfway to the mayor's office.

He bemoans the "I'll be generous — back and forth" discourse on what would be the biggest transportation infrastructure project in Nashville history. Days earlier, during a transit speech, Briley warned transit supporters about "forces" out there who want to "make money off our not changing."

He appeared to be referring to the undisclosed donors behind the NoTax4Tracks anti-transit group, whose funding to fight the referendum has largely came from a 501(c)(4) non-profit, which by law does not have to disclose its donors. The group is tied to conservative activist and automobile executive Lee Beaman, who served as the original treasurer of its political action committee.

► More: Bulk of money raised by opposition Nashville transit group kept secret

"I don't think we really know who they are," Briley says. "We do know that there's a group that's putting ads up that are similar to ads that ran in other cities where people tried to stop transit.

"NoTax4Tracks — that exact slogan has been used elsewhere. Some of the stuff they're saying is just not true."

Briley says he has not spoken to Barry about the upcoming referendum.

He says embedded in almost every criticism of the project is "some sense that things aren't going to change" when it comes to traffic. He adds that some opponents are out to "scare people" — a similar line that is being used on pro-referendum mailers from the Nashville For Transit coalition.

"There is some risk associated with doing this, sure," Briley says. "But there's a whole lot more risk associated with doing nothing.

"We're going to add 1 million people, and we're close to a saturation point on many streets. We're past it in some. It's only going to get worse if we don't do something now to invest."

Ultimately, he says, "What the city has to decide is, is it going to do something or is it going to do nothing?

"I think now's the moment for us to decide to do something," he says.

"I'm optimistic that voters will look at all the details and conclude it's the right thing to do."

But is he ready to predict it will pass?

"I'm so routinely wrong in my predictions, I've stopped making them."

Reach Joey Garrison at 615-259-8236, jgarrison@tennessean.com and on Twitter @joeygarrison.