Metro Pulse/Editor's Corner/I Like Leslie

Comment
on this story

What kind of person do we want on City Council?

by Jesse Fox Mayshark

There are 29 candidates running for Knoxville City Council this fall. Leslie Terry is the best of them.

In saying that, I don't mean to slight other contenders—at least, not all of them. Although the field overall is what I'd call mediocre-to-average, there are several (including some with a good shot at winning) who have the makings of good or even great Council members. In particular, I'd mention Joe Hultquist in the 1st District and Rob Frost in the 4th. And even in districts where the prospects are less immediately heartening, almost all of them will probably be an improvement over the tired bunch they're replacing. Surely no one in the 3rd or 6th districts could actually be worse than stumblebum Ivan Harmon and seat-warmer Raleigh Wynn.

But Leslie Terry stands out from the rest of the pack. To me, she represents the kind of candidate, and the kind of person, we as a city most need in leadership positions. It is unfortunate for her (and for the rest of us) that she's running in the 2nd District, where the preferences of the established political powers are most clear. It is also fitting. Because if Knoxville is going to move beyond the petty, small-minded, lumbering, slumbering politics of the present, it is going to have to confront those forces head on. Leslie's candidacy is a good start.

The 2nd District is the city's traditional power base. It includes Sequoyah Hills and Cherokee Country Club and much of the priciest residential real estate within city limits. Current Councilwoman Jean Teague, one of the most craven, mean-spirited representatives on a Council full of mean-spirited cravenness, has been mercifully term-limited out (I say mercifully because it's hard to watch her in action without thinking of Marie Antoinette, who ended up with much bigger problems than term limits).

In competition for her seat are three "front-runner" candidates: Joe Bailey, son of former longtime Councilman Ed Bailey; Archie Ellis, a developer who works for Ron Watkins' Partners & Associates company; and neighborhood group alumnus Barbara Pelot, a confidante of Teague. Bailey seems like a nice enough guy, but he started the campaign without any clear platform, and the agenda he's developed along the way still sounds pretty fuzzy. He's worked in and around government most of his life, and it's hard to escape the feeling that his candidacy, and his base of support, is largely a factor of continuing the family tradition. That kind of "name recognition politics" goes on a lot around here (and elsewhere as well, obviously) to nobody's particular benefit except the ones with the names.

With Ellis, I don't know if I'm more bothered by his clear conflict of interest in working for Watkins (who is half of the Worsham Watkins team that got paid more than $400,000 in taxpayer money to propose bad, expensive ideas for downtown redevelopment), or his prickly denial that any such conflict exists. In any event, he's unquestionably a representative of the growth-obsessed mindset that just happens to produce big dividends for developers like Partners & Associates at the same time it produces long-term problems of economic and environmental sustainability for everyone else. Pelot (whom my esteemed boss, Joe Sullivan, endorsed in these pages last week) is of a different but just as familiar model: the "neighborhood activist" whose vision rarely extends much beyond the neighborhood. That may not be entirely fair—Pelot is by reputation a good deal sharper and more thoughtful than, say, Teague. But she also has a loud and large chorus of detractors who have found her over the years to be arrogant, divisive and even vindictive. We have had quite enough of that sort of thing here, thanks.

Then there is Leslie Terry. (Well, there are also two longer-shot candidates, Scott Meece and Sharon Byrd, but this column is already long enough.) Leslie is thoughtful, intelligent and perceptive. She is a quick study who can absorb complex issues in both detail and sweep. And, at least as far as I can tell, she is running for office for the sole purpose of making Knoxville a better place to live and work and play. She is one of the few running in any district who sees Knoxville City Council as a problem needing to be solved, which it is, rather than a prize to be won.

I first got to know Leslie via her posts on the Internet forum K2K. A music teacher who's passionate about both arts and education, she grew up in Oak Ridge, graduated from UT and then decamped to Atlanta for a decade. She returned to East Tennessee and began looking around with a native's devotion but an outsider's objective eye. She wasn't happy with much of what she saw. So she did what politicians and pundits are always saying they wish average citizens would do: she got educated and got involved. She started attending public meetings—County Commission, City Council, MPC. She learned how things work, who made the decisions, who influenced the people who made the decisions. Her K2K posts recounting the goings-on at various meetings were invariably more insightful and informative than what I read in the daily paper or saw on TV. She also learned how to make a difference. Within two months of joining K2K, she presented County Commission with a petition bearing 3,000 signatures asking for a halt to the justice center project on State Street. (Ironically, Worsham and Watkins—of whom Terry has often and correctly been critical—owe it partly to her efforts that the State Street site is currently unoccupied and available for Universe Knoxville.)

Since then, she has become a moderator on K2K (which now has more than 700 subscribers and nearly 25,000 posts and remains the most interesting political dialogue in town). Bothered by the antics of City Council and Mayor Ashe, she carried a petition for KnoxRecall. And then she decided to run for office in the toughest district in town. This is not a woman who lacks either guts or ideas. Along with Frost and Hultquist, she is one of the few candidates who has demonstrated a real grasp of the complex social and economic issues shaping 21st century America, the complications brought on by the relentless suburbanization and quick-fix scorched-earth development of the past 50 years.

Unlike anyone else in her race, Terry has no ties to established interests, nobody with a lot of clout or cash urging her from behind (many in the Knoxville big-money oligarchy, have donated money to both Ellis and Bailey), no specific geographic base that's likely to get more attention than any other. I can also attest that, although I have seen Leslie argue fiercely both online and in person on the merits of a variety of issues, I have never seen her be so much as impolite, much less mean-spirited. She is capable of forceful, articulate debate, but also of compromise and diplomacy.

Our current political system is pretty rotten, from the bottom to the top. It's full of people who are where they are because they enjoy the ego boost that power brings or because powerful interests with much to gain installed them there (or, in many cases, both). Our miserable voter turn-outs in this city are both a symptom and a cause of this state of affairs. The only way to make it better is to get more people to care about having good government. And the way to do that is to elect leaders interested in making people care, capable of making people care, capable of understanding complicated issues and explaining why they're important and encouraging community dialogue and participation, reminding people that their government is an extension of themselves.

I think Leslie Terry can be that kind of leader. I don't live in the 2nd District, and so I can't vote for her in the primary. But I'll vote for her in the general election, even if it's as a write-in. And if she's not elected this year, I hope I'll get the chance to vote for her again.