Randy Tyree runs again for mayor
by Joe Sullivan
Flash back almost a quarter of a century, and an underfunded underdog is challenging Knoxville's well-connected and well-funded mayor. But this mayor's sometimes abrasive style and heavy-handedness leave him vulnerable to his ever-so-likable challenger's campaign themes of getting all Knoxvillians working together and putting a halt to political intimidation of city employees.
And so, in the November, 1975, city election, upstart Randy Tyree upset incumbent Mayor Kyle Testerman and went on to become the city's mayor for the next eight years.
Now it's 1999, and an underfunded underdog is getting ready to challenge Mayor Victor Ashe's bid for an unprecedented fourth term in this fall's voting. His name and his rhetoric both have a familiar ring.
"There's a sense of disunity in the community. We've gotten fragmented in a lot of ways, and we need to start focusing on areas of commonalty and stop politicizing our uniformed bodies," Randy Tyree tells a visitor to his modest law office on Market Street.
The "Run Randy Run" sign on prominent display is yet another refrain of campaigns past as is his emphasis on reaching out to the little guy, manifest in the y'all come $10-a-plate barbecue that will kick off his fund raising on April 22. But a lot has changed since Tyree launched his 1975 campaign from a base of acclaim as the city's swashbuckling young safety director whose Operation Aquarius busted hundreds of UT campus area druggies in the early 1970s. Now, at age 59, there are wrinkles beneath his mellowed blue eyes, and his once thick shock of dark brown hair has become a thinner silver. While he insists he's still "got that fire in the belly," he's also got a lot of baggage from the hind end of his term as mayor in 1983.
If Tyree could have cut his political swan song while the bands were still playing during the 1982 World's Fair, it would have sounded pretty good. The World's Fair was, after all, Knoxville's single biggest accomplishment of the era, and Tyree did a lot to help make it happen. On his watch, the city acquired the site, built the convention and exhibition center that's served the city ever since, and backed several fair-related projects at a total cost of about $50 million. The fair itself broke even, but the $50 million in short-term debt incurred by the city left it nearly broke.
Tyree had banked on selling off much of the fair site to a developer to help cover the debt and was close to cutting a deal for condominium and festive retail development on the site toward the end of his term in 1983. But a reinstated Testerman, who succeeded him, nixed the deal.
The collapse of the fraud-riddled Butcher banking empire in early 1983 compounded the city's financial woes. Jake Butcher had been the fair's biggest backer, and credit from his United American Bank continued to lubricate the local economy until federal bank regulators shut it down in February, 1983. A resultant credit crunch pinched the city to the point that its rainy day fund got totally depleted. And worse, by June 30, 1983, the city had a negative fund balance of $225,000, which meant it was having to borrow money just to meet the payroll. Massive layoffs ensued across all branches of city government. The fire department's ranks dropped from 402 at the end of 1982 to 366 at the end of 1983. Police Department staffing went from 340 to 299.
When the Testerman administration undertook to refinance the city's debt in early 1984, one of the principal bond rating services, Moody's Investor Service, lowered the city's credit rating by an almost unprecedented two full grades. A Moody's credit report dated April 16, 1984, advised bond investors that, "The city must soon contend with the funding of a large amount of short-term debt and substantially higher debt service costs at the same time that its overall financial position has weakened and appears most vulnerable."
Perhaps just as bad for Tyree's personal fortunes, Jake Butcher had also been his major backer—politically and financially. A $700,000 loan from United American Bank was a principal source of financing in Tyree's ill-fated campaign for governor in 1982 in which he got clobbered by Lamar Alexander. When the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation sought to recover the $700,000 from Tyree individually (even though the loan had been made to his campaign treasury) a decade of litigation and negotiation ensued before the matter got resolved.
Although Tyree was never accused of any impropriety, it's understandable why he decided not to run again for mayor in 1983.
Reflecting back on those hard times, Tyree philosophically observes that, "What doesn't destroy you makes you stronger." Viewed on a long-term basis, the World's Fair did a lot more for Knoxville than the city's short-term financial crisis did to it, he insists.
"We took a dilapidated area around Second Creek and developed it into one of the city's crown jewels. Except for the city's failure to follow through on its redevelopment after the fair and except for the Butcher bank's failure, which had a chilling effect on the economy, we wouldn't have faced the difficulties that forced the toughest decisions I ever had to make...The layoffs hurt me worse than any other, but you've got to do what you've got to do."
As for his relationship with Jake Butcher, Tyree says that, "Jake was and is a friend. Not to condone the wrongs he obviously committed, but I also know firsthand the many good things Jake and UAB did for the community."
After leaving office, Tyree returned to law practice with his long-time partner and backer, Max Morrison, who died last year. As he acknowledges, though, actually practicing law isn't what his work is mostly all about. "I'm what's referred to as a rain-maker, mainly arranging consulting contracts with cities on waste water management on behalf of Professional Services Group out of Houston."
He also devoted himself to raising his four children who now range in age from 24 to 17 and to a host of civic activities. These range from serving on the boards of the Florence Crittenton Agency and the Tennessee March of Dimes Foundation to heading the Bearden High School PTSO to coaching baseball and basketball for 12 years under the auspices of Knox Youth Sports. With an easy-going warmth that almost belies the politically ambitious drive that's still within him, he's kept up good relations with all segments of the community. From business leaders and his neighbors in an affluent West Knoxville suburb to firefighters and the regulars at Ruby's Coffee Shop in Burlington where he lunches from time to time, Tyree's comfort zone extends to all—and vice versa.
But having been there and done that amid great turmoil, why does he want to be mayor again and what has he got to offer?
"I believe I'm good at unifying interest groups, both public and private, so we can all get on the same track." His stock phrasing begs the question: get on the track to where?
"This community has a lot of potential, and in the course of the campaign I will elevate what that potential is and how we're going to achieve it. I want to get people talking about Knoxville instead of Nashville, Chattanooga, and Sevier County as a place that's got momentum. I've got to provide a progressive alternative to the status quo. If I can, I'll win; and if I can't, I won't."
Ironically, his candidacy comes at the very time Mayor Ashe has set in motion Knoxville's most ambitious undertaking since the World's Fair. A $45 million first installment (of a $160 million total tab) has already been committed for building a new convention center on the World's Fair site and enhancing the park itself. Moreover, a development plan for making downtown Knoxville a more attractive tourist destination is due to be rolled out between now and next September's mayoral voting in which Tyree appears to be Ashe's only serious challenger.
Tyree, who's been pushing for 15 years to get something going on the World's Fair site, isn't going to challenge Ashe on that. "The convention center is hugely important to this community, and I'm not going to be doing anything to sandbag it," he allows. But don't expect him to forego sticking it to Victor wherever he believes the mayor is vulnerable. To wit:
"After 12 years in any public position you lose a certain amount of energy and focus... My sense is that after 12 years of set operation, there are ways to improve city government from an efficiency and productivity standpoint... We've had add-on departments and assignments that have the potential for conflicts of interest, and we've got some harmful turf fights of which law enforcement [the Sheriff vs. the KPD] is a prime example."
The "time for a change" theme may be telling in some quarters, but Tyree isn't likely to have much money to put behind it. Indeed, he has yet to raise any, whereas Ashe is sitting on a campaign war chest of $220,000, which he expects to build to $300,000 by election day. While Ashe insists his campaign will be focused on his accomplishments and the future, his boasts about how he's restored Knoxville to good financial health are almost certain to include invidious comparisons. Ditto for his claims about how he's strengthened police and fire protection and how well he's worked with City Council—which ended up at loggerheads with Tyree. And there will be the intimations that Tyree has become the Harold Stassen or John Jay Hooker of local politics, compulsively seeking office without recognizing that his time has come and gone.
"I do enjoy campaigning," Tyree acknowledges. "In some ways I've always been a little shy. In a campaign, I become more of an extrovert." In campaigns past, the extroverted "Run, Randy, Run" theme rallied an enthusiastic corps of volunteers behind him. But he's not exactly a golden boy anymore, and his backers of yesteryear have aged also.
"Most of Randy's serious supporters from 25 years ago are now in Asbury Acres," says a local political wag who's anything but enamored of Ashe but who doesn't believe that Tyree's capable of exploiting any vulnerabilities the mayor may have. But Tyree has been written off for (and come back from) the politically dead before.
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