Government and politics
The city of Nashville and Davidson County merged in 1963 as a way for Nashville to combat the problems of urban sprawl. The combined entity is officially known as "the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County," and is popularly known as "Metro Nashville" or simply "Metro". It offers services such as police, fire, electricity, water, and sewage treatment. When the Metro government was formed in 1963, the government was split into two service districts-- the "urban services district" and the "general services district." The urban services district encompasses the 1963 boundaries of the former City of Nashville, and the general services district includes the remainder of Davidson County.
Nashville has a strong-mayor form of government. It is governed by a mayor, vice-mayor and 40-member Metropolitan Council. The current mayor of Nashville is Bill Purcell. The Metropolitan Council is the legislative body of government for Nashville and Davidson County. There are 5 council members who are elected at large and 35 councilmembers that represent individual districts. The Metro Council has regular meetings that are presided over by the vice-mayor, who is currently Howard Gentry, Jr. The Metro Council meets on the first and third Tuesday of each month at 7:00 p.m., according to the Metropolitan Charter.
Nashville is one of the few major Southern cities that has remained loyal to the Democratic Party. Most local elections are officially nonpartisan. However, Democratic dominance is so absolute that most local races take place between the populist (moderate-to-conservative) and "good government" (liberal) wings of the Democratic Party. ; the "good government" faction has held the upper hand for some time. Elected Republicans are few and far between. At the state level, only two Republicans—one in the State House and one in the State Senate—represent significant portions of Nashville. Most area residents who prefer conservative politics generally live in the outlying suburban counties (which themselves were represented by conservative Democrats well into the late 1970s). Much of this, of course, is a reaction in many respects, somewhat akin to urban-suburban polarizations elsewhere in America, to the lifestyle-driven liberal orientation of the city's unusually large (for the South) collegiate and white-collar professional population (with the musician community divided between the cultural traditionalists in country and gospel music and the progressive, even leftist, slant among rock musicians and those in similar genres).
Democrats are no less dominant at the federal level. Since the end of Reconstruction, the Democratic presidential candidate has carried Nashville and Davidson County in every election with the exception of two. In the 1968 U.S. presidential election, George Wallace of the American Independent Party (and governor of nearby Alabama) carried the city by a large margin, although he did not win the state (Richard Nixon did). In the 1972 presidential election, Nixon became the only Republican to carry Nashville since Reconstruction, gaining support from the then-dominant conservative Democrats in the area. However, since then, Democrats have usually won Nashville by some of the largest, if not the largest, margins in Tennessee, even when the rest of the state strongly favors the Republican. In the 2000 presidential election, Al Gore carried Nashville with over 59% of the vote even as he narrowly lost his home state. In the 2004 election, John Kerry carried Nashville with 55% of the vote even as George W. Bush won the state by 14 points. The only part of Tennessee more heavily Democratic than Nashville is the major portion of the city of Memphis, which has a far larger population of African-Americans (some 60 percent as compared to Nashville's 25 or so), making Nashville's continued loyalty to the Democratic Party all the more remarkable--and increasingly unique--for a city so far south in the U.S.
Despite its size, all of Nashville has been in one congressional district for most of the time since Reconstruction. For most of the time, it has been numbered as the 5th District, currently represented by Democrat Jim Cooper. A Republican has not represented a significant portion of Nashville since 1875. While Republicans made a few spirited challenges in the mid-1960s and early 1970s, they have not made a serious bid for the district since 1972, when the Republican candidate gained only 38% of the vote even as Nixon carried the district by a large margin. The district's best-known congressman was probably Jo Byrns, who represented the district from 1909 to 1936 and was Speaker of the House for much of Franklin Roosevelt's first term. Another nationally prominent congressman from Nashville was Percy Priest, who represented the district from 1941 to 1956 and was House Majority Whip from 1949 to 1953. Former mayors Richard Fulton and Bill Boner also sat in the U.S. House before assuming the Metro mayoral office.
A tiny portion of southern Davidson County (between Hillsboro and Nolensville Roads, split by Interstate 65) was drawn into the heavily Republican 7th District after the 2000 Census. That district is currently represented by Marsha Blackburn of neighboring Williamson County. Despite this, many living Nashvillians have never been represented by a Republican on the state or federal levels.
(Source: Wikipedia.org)
