Meeting in special session Monday morning just minutes after Mayor Bill Haslam formally resigned his post, Knoxville City Council spent about an hour jawing and voting before finally selecting 6th District Councilman Daniel Brown as the city's acting mayor. A Vietnam veteran and retired U.S. Postal worker, Brown is now the city's first African-American mayor. He will serve only through the end of the year, completing Haslam's term and then handing off to whoever wins the regular mayor's election this fall. All five of the Council members who offered themselves as candidates for the interim post promised not to seek re-election to a full term. The other four were Joe Bailey, Duane Grieve, Brenda Palmer, and Chris Woodhull.
The meeting began with an extended farewell to Haslam, as each Council member said nice things about his seven years in office and presented him with the usual legislative bric-a-brac (a signed photo of Council to take to Nashville, a mayoral nameplate). Approaching the podium to speak, Haslam jokingly gave his address as, "I-40, somewhere between Knoxville and Nashville." He said a few nice things about Council in return--especially saluting Vice Mayor Bob Becker's own decision to resign in order to join his family in Virginia, rather than sticking around and lobbying for the acting mayor position.
With the niceties out of the way, the selection of the acting mayor began. There was not a clear favorite going into the vote on the nine-member Council. Grieve was known to have some support, and there was an expectation that Brown would receive votes at least in early rounds. Councilman Nick Pavlis had been lobbying for the position, but took himself out of the running last week because of what he said were the pressing needs of his South Knoxville district. (Widely interpreted to mean that he had decided that he couldn't muster the five votes needed to win the post.) Besides Becker, the others not in contention were 4th District rep Nick Della Volpe, who said he wasn't interested, and West Knoxville's Marilyn Roddy, who is running for the full-term mayor's position in the fall.
In the first round, as expected, Pavlis and Della Volpe supported Grieve, and Becker and Roddy backed Brown. (Roddy's support for Brown was widely predicted, as a way to bolster her standing with black voters. Her opponent Madeline Rogero already has a sizable base in East Knoxville.) Baily, Palmer, and Woodhull voted for themselves. And so the vote more or less remained, through multiple rounds, with the only variation being Becker's switch to Palmer in the second round. After that, he switched back to Brown, and stayed there. After a few more deadlocks at 3-3-1-1-1, Woodhull made the first move, throwing his support to Brown. Soon after, Palmer started abstaining from the votes, seemingly putting herself in a kingmaker position if Bailey decided to support Grieve. But Bailey went for Brown instead, in what the News Sentinel says was the 11th round (between watching and tweeting, I lost count, but that sounds right), giving Brown the five votes he needed.
He was quickly sworn in by Magistrate Mark Brown, himself a former 6th District Council member. Mayor Brown made a brief statement thanking Council members for their support, and asked all city department heads to retain their current positions. Then he adjourned the meeting.
While not many of the Council members are likely to say they cast a vote for largely symbolic purposes, the symbolism was hard to avoid. Brown is well liked on Council, but has been in office since only 2009. With Roddy and Rogero perceived as the two strongest mayoral candidates in the early running for this fall, Brown's selection means that Knoxville could have its first black mayor and first woman mayor in the same year.
(Image is from ctvknox.org.)
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