Bye-bye Gabrielle Hanson, We Hardly Knew Ye
Franklin, less than half an hour from Nashville, is the county seat of Williamson County, Tennessee. With just over 83,000 people (75% white and pretty wealthy), it’s the 7th largest city, home to lots of music celebrities, including Faith Hill and Tim McGraw, Miley Cyrus, Amy Grant, Justin Timberlake, Kenny Chesney, Carrie Underwood, Wynonna Judd, Keith Urban, Brad Paisley… It’s represented in Washington and in Nashville by Republicans. In 2020, Williamson County gave Trump a big win over Biden— 86,469 (62.2%) to 50,161 (36.1%). Two years later, the county gave extremist MAGAt Andy Ogles as even bigger win in the congressional race— 66%-32%— over progressive Democrat Heidi Campbell.
Yesterday they had a local election, described by Nashville’s Channel 5 as “perhaps the most bizarre race that this picturesque Middle Tennessee community has ever experienced.” It pitted incumbent mayor Ken Moore, an orthopedic surgeon, against a white nationalist MAGAt, Gabrielle Hanson, both Republicans. Spoiler: he kicked her ass in a super-high turnout election. By way of comparison, just 3,475 people voted in the 2019 mayoral election. Yesterday almost 5 times as many people voted— over 16,000 people.
Moore- 12,822 (79.4%)
Hanson- 3,322 (20.6%)
In fact, the entire neo-Nazi ticket went down to landslide defeats: Incumbent Alderman Brandy Blanton defeated neo-Nazi Gary Moore 10,946 to 4,666; Greg Caesar will take over Hanson's former post in seat winning 10,336 votes to neo-Nazi Patrick George's 4,249; and incumbent Alderman Ann Petersen defeated neo-Nazi Jeff Feldman by a vote of 10,961 to 4,243.
Hanson, arrested and convicted in Dallas as an employee of an escort service, is more recently a realtor, an alderman and a fascist politician. Her supporters were all a bunch of neo-Nazis and white supremacists. Channel 5 reported that “The election results also brought a decisive defeat for other MAGA candidates for alderman-at-large that had been supported by the far-right Williamson Families PAC, including Jeff Feldman, Patrick George and Gary Moore… Hanson refused to allow media to attend their election night event, which reportedly cost $500 a person to attend.”
The controversy that turned this election into a big deal— and even garnered national attention began when Hanson started parroting Trump’s craziest conspiracy theories and shady election tactics. She “lifted social media images to falsely portray support for her campaign, including posting a photo of a diverse group of women”who told Channel 5 that they didn’t know her or support her. “[S]he angered families associated with Nashville's Covenant School shooting, passing on a bogus conspiracy theory. While she claimed to warned a Franklin police officer in advance of a premonition about an active shooting, Channel 5 obtained the officer's bodycam video to prove it never happened. Very Kari Lake-like, despite her opposition to Franklin's Pride festival, Channel 5 uncovered a photo showing her Speedo-wearing husband at a 2008 Pride parade in Chicago. They also “uncovered apparent links between Hanson's campaign and a harassment campaign waged by her white supremacist supporters. Critics also raised concerns about links between Hanson's campaign and Christian nationalists who want to use politics to impose their faith on others.”
Great news!!! TN is still a nazi shithole, though. Maybe they now have their Austin.
so... tell us... how many of the winners are democraps?