Nashville runoff election: Inside the district Council races on the ballot

Seven seats were left undecided after Nashville's Aug. 3 general election and are heading to a runoff. Three of those seats are to represent Metro Council Districts 4, 11 and 29. Mayor and three at-large Council seats will also be on the ballot.

Every race has its own quirks and personalities, with different priorities and approaches. This story breaks down each district council race.

Early voting began Friday, with election day on Sept. 14.

If you're unsure of your district, you can check that here.

Nashville voter guide 2023: Our hub for mayoral, Council runoff election coverage

District 4: Davette Blalock and Mike Cortese

The closest race in the general election that went to a runoff sees former two-term Council member Davette Blalock facing off against Belmont University professor Mike Cortese.

The two were separated by only 53 votes in the Aug. 3 election, beating out Brian Sullivan in the race for term-limited Council member Robert Swope’s District 4 seat.

It’s not the first time Cortese has made a bid for the seat, losing the 2019 general election to Swope while earning 38% of the vote.

But it would be Blalock’s third term on the Metro Council if she is elected, and her third term as a district Council member, a rare occurrence given Metro’s term limits. She’s eligible to run because Metro only prohibits twice-elected officials from running in a succeeding term, and she left office representing District 27 — where her current home was zoned before redistricting — in 2019.

District 4 is in southern Davidson County next to Brentwood.

Both candidates have tried to use Blalock’s previous terms as a selling point.

“I tell [voters] that I am somebody who's done it before, and I have a lot of institutional knowledge,” Blalock, who has Swope's endorsement, said. “There's nothing wrong with term limits, but you know, it takes sometimes four years just to get a stoplight. And it takes two years sometimes figuring out how to do the job.”

Blalock also said the skills she uses as a realtor and financial planner translate nicely to much of what the job entails.

“That's pretty much what Metro Council is — real estate land use and the budget,” she said.

Meanwhile, Cortese called Blalock, who ran unsuccessfully for the Tennessee House of Representatives in 2016, a “career politician.” Cortese particularly criticized Blalock’s Metro Council cohort’s failure to incrementally increase property taxes, which he blamed for placing Nashville’s finances in dire straits and limiting city services while also leading to the large 34% property tax hike Metro implemented in 2020 — which was reduced a year later.

“The same thing that got us into this mess, it's not going to get us out,” Cortese said.

But Blalock says not raising taxes is one of the main desires she hears from residents and something she wants to deliver on. Some of her other priorities are completing traffic projects on Edmondson Pike and Nolensville Pike.

For Cortese, the most pressing issue facing his district is an amalgam of several issues.

“It's just getting harder to live in Nashville,” he said. He identified affordable housing and traffic as specific examples of that.

The two have raised similar amounts throughout the race, but Blalock outspent Cortese in July by a whopping 12-1 margin, spending more than $12,000 on mailing that month, according to financial reports.

Cortese said in late August that he has an “aggressive mail campaign” of his own planned before the runoff, too, but his approach has been comparatively more stripped down.

“From day one, our goal has been to outwork everybody else,” Cortese said.

District 11: Jeff Eslick and Eric Patton

The competition for the Old Hickory and Hermitage area’s seat has become the most polarized in the runoff.

On one side is Jeff Eslick, a self-described conservative who produced a divisive attack ad against mayoral candidate Freddie O’Connell and was an outspoken critic of a proposal to expand Metro employee health insurance to cover gender-affirming surgery, a plan which was later voted down by the Metro Benefits Board.

On the other side is Eric Patton, a self-described Democrat with endorsements from Tennessee Advocates for Planned Parenthood, the Central Labor Council, the Metro Nashville Education Association PAC, and Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition.

Of course, the race is nonpartisan — but their campaigns have been starkly opposed.

Patton and Eslick came within 60 votes of each other in the general election while besting Sherard Edington and Joe Delucas in the fight for term-limited Metro Council member Larry Hagar’s District 11 seat.

Eslick, who runs Slick Media Productions and is on the payroll for several of honky tonk mogul Steve Smith’s Lower Broadway venues, said in a Tennessean questionnaire that his top three priorities are keeping Nashville safe by expanding its police force, managing growth and the “growing problem with encampments” in Nashville.

“A new mayor and new council can repair the trust that has eroded and restore focus on core priorities for safe, flourishing neighborhoods,” he said in the questionnaire.

Patton, a customer relations director, said his priorities are improving schools through better teacher pay, improving city services and ensuring a fair “piece of the pie” for District 11, which he says has been overlooked by Metro for years.

“We are the most beautiful portion of Davidson County, and nobody realizes we're here,” Patton said in an August interview. “Which means we lose out on some things like sidewalks that we need, and more attention from the police department and the infrastructure that goes along with it.”

Their strategies have been vastly different.

Eslick’s campaign has far outspent every district Council candidate in the runoff election and put more than 2.5 times as much money into the race as Patton, much of which has gone toward Eslicks’ aggressive mail and TV advertising campaigns, campaign finance records show. And his campaign has been largely self-funded: More than 80% of the roughly $96,000 Eslick has raised has come from personal loans and contributions.

Patton, who describes his campaign as “grassroots from the get-go,” has taken a virtually opposite path, touting that he’s had contributions from more than 200 donors and that he’s been able to take that money farther than his opponent.

“I don’t have that kind of money,” Patton said. “We have been more targeted with how we have spent our funds and put a lot of boots to the ground.”

Eslick did not respond to repeated requests for comment in time for publication.

District 29: Tasha Ellis and John Reed

Of the district Council races heading to a runoff, the contest for District 29 in Antioch saw the largest gap between its first and second-place finishers, two political consultants running for office in Nashville for the first time.

Tasha Ellis received 911 votes to John Reed’s 484 on Aug. 3, separating the two candidates by more than 20 percentage points.

But Reed said he still feels confident moving toward the runoff.

“I think we're in a good position… especially as I get the support of the other candidates,” Reed said in an interview. Jama Mohamed, who received 13% of the vote in the general election, endorsed Reed after being eliminated from the race.

At the time of the general election, Ellis had outspent and received more donations than Reed. Ellis also took on more than $18,000 in debt to her consulting company for mailers in July, while Reed has relied on just more than that in personal loans to fund most of his campaign.

Ellis said her top priorities are public safety and alleviating traffic, but she’s also heard many residents' concerns about how growth is affecting the district.

“We want to make sure that we protect the character of our community and that any growth that happens is smart growth,” Ellis said.

Reed told The Tennessean that his main concerns are increasing access to affordable housing and improving transit and connectivity for the district.

“I want to work with Council and the next mayor to keep Nashville affordable so that we can keep people who love their homes and love their communities in their communities so they're not pushed out into either other areas or completely different counties,” Reed said. He has proposed facilitating public-private partnerships and using public property to increase the housing stock.

Dates to know

• Friday, Aug. 25: Early voting began

• Saturday, Sept. 9: Early voting ends

• Thursday, Sept. 14, 7 a.m.-7 p.m.: Election day

Evan Mealins is the justice reporter for The Tennessean. Contact him at emealins@gannett.com or follow him on Twitter @EvanMealins.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville runoff election guide: Inside the district Council races