Anatomy of a Scandal
🏛️ The Council Halvening · Brent Taylor weathers a scandal · TIRRC files another lawsuit · Much more!
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“Just remember that I didn’t cancel on you when you write this.” Noted, Senator.
From Megan Podsiedlik
In the twilight of early voting, a sexting scandal emerged involving Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District Republican candidate, state Senator Brent Taylor. The allegations center on claims that Taylor sent unsolicited nude photographs to an anonymous recipient in 2021, an account reportedly corroborated by a second unnamed source.
The 9th District race is a hotly contested one. Taylor’s opponent, state Representative Justin Pearson, is fighting to keep Tennessee’s only Democratic-held congressional seat blue after Republican lawmakers redrew the district boundaries to give the GOP an electoral advantage ahead of midterm elections.
As the scandal unfolded, The Pamphleteer had a front-row seat to how the Taylor campaign confronted the controversy. We were already scheduled to accompany Taylor and his team on a media ride-along through Williamson County on October 27, where they planned to attend a roundtable discussion and campaign rally. Those plans took an unexpected turn when news of the scandal broke that morning.
As we hit the road, the calls began pouring in.
“If you’re explaining, you’re losing,” one strategist advised over the phone. Meanwhile, as I watched the senator move from one interview to the next—even squeezing in a radio station stop along the way—Taylor’s own strategy became clear: confront it head-on.
Taylor acknowledged the photographs and admitted to past indiscretions during his marriage as I listened from SuperTalk 99.7’s production room.
“I told them… ’Look, I don’t know what story you think you’ve got, but whatever it is, my wife is fully aware of it. We’ve worked through it together years ago, and we’ve moved on from it,’” Taylor said of his conversation with the reporter who broke the story while on air with Matt Murphy.
“It’s a hit piece. I mean, there’s no question,” Murphy interjected later in the exchange. Taylor didn’t bite: “Look, the best way to avoid that hit piece was for me not to do something that I now regret.”
The day ended with a swarm of reporters crowding Taylor as he pulled up to the Amruth Sports Bar to attend the Williamson County Get Out the Vote Rally. The event featured House Republican Majority Whip Tom Emmer and 5th Congressional District Republican candidate Charlie Hatcher, but the press was there for one thing: the Brent Taylor scandal.
A visibly worn-down Taylor stuck to his script as the bird-doggers pressed in. Later, I overheard Williamson County Republican Party Chairman Steve Hickey dismiss the scandal as a typical “October surprise,” telling a reporter it was an attempt to take Taylor down.
“Just remember that I didn’t cancel on you when you write this,” Taylor said as they dropped me off at the end of the day.
Though Democrats capitalized on the scandal, indications suggest the story was actually shopped around by people within the Republican Party. Several outlets allegedly refused to run the story before the Nashville Scene published an account based on an anonymous allegation, reportedly corroborated by a second unnamed source, but ultimately confirmed by Taylor himself.
The pile-on quickly ensued, and a number of publications honed in on Taylor’s own corroboration, pointing out the folly of the senator’s characterization of his actions as “youthful indiscretions” when they occurred as recently as five years ago. Not letting a juicy scandal go to waste, his Democratic opponent posted, “I’m not a sexual predator. My opponent is. Early voting ends today!”
“You know, you don’t know how you’re going to react,” Taylor hedged, reflecting on his initial response during our post-ride-along interview. “I think what I was attempting to say, very unartfully, is that the sending of pictures was a youthful, a youthful-like, act because that’s what the kids do is send the pictures back and forth.”
While no additional allegations have surfaced, a clip from a GOP 9th Congressional District debate hosted by KWAM in July has also been making the rounds. During the broadcast, a woman named Marie called in and made a serious allegation, saying her friend was “a victim of sexual assault by the senator on a conference in Oklahoma.”
The only senator on the panel was Brent Taylor, though Marie did not explicitly name him. Her comment created an awkward segue as the panel turned to each candidate for their response to whether taxpayer dollars should be used to pay settlements related to sexual harassment allegations.
“Any sexual assault allegation is just patently false, and that never happened,” an audibly frustrated Taylor said when we asked about the accusation. “All of this piling on with anonymous sources, and anonymous sources who saw something that another anonymous source saw, is ridiculous.”
As for the pictures, Taylor acknowledges sending them to the anonymous person who spoke with the Scene but rejects the characterization that they were “unsolicited.”
“These were part of a consensual relationship between two people who were sending text messages back and forth to one another,” said Taylor.
The senator has since had a conversation with his children, who didn’t know about his extramarital relationships until they were front-page news.
“We made the conscious decision that we were going to shield our kids from it,” said Taylor. “And so now, with all this coming out, we had to have that conversation with our kids.”
Taylor expressed gratitude that his children are processing the information as adults rather than having to navigate it as young children but sounded distressed about his dirty laundry getting aired out in public.
“For the left to take a resolved personal matter and to try to exploit a family pain for political gain is really kind of despicable,” he said.
Two days after Taylor’s scandal broke, his opponent had a scandal of his own. According to a Memphis police report, Representative Justin Pearson’s mother, Kimberly Owens-Pearson, caused a disturbance and slapped a poll officer’s hand during a dispute at an early voting site on October 28 while working as a poll watcher.
“You would think that they would be on their best behavior to ensure that all the attention is on my camp and our bad news week,” Taylor quipped. The senator said the incident ended up shifting some of the attention away from his disgrace while simultaneously reinforcing the message he’s been parroting on the campaign trail: “Competence over chaos.”
“I was competent enough to save my family, and I believe I’m competent enough to save America, and that’s why Tennesseans are going to choose competence over chaos,” Taylor pitched, recomposing himself back into campaign mode.
âśą EARLY VOTING CONCLUDES
🗳️ What to Expect on Election Day Davidson County cast 148,556 early votes, 57% more than in 2022 and 8% fewer than in 2018. In 2018, early voting accounted for 66% of all Davidson votes, and in 2022 for 53%. If this year’s early vote is the same share, another 75,000 to 130,000 Nashvillians will vote Tuesday, between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. at their assigned polling place. (See the Tracker)
HEADLINES
⚖️ TN Supreme Court upholds the state law capping Metro Council at 20 members. The justices unanimously rejected Metro’s argument that the state constitution’s Exemption Clause protects its 40-member council, and tossed its local-legislation challenge as moot after lawmakers amended the law this spring. In a companion ruling, the court also dismissed Metro’s lawsuit over the 2023 state takeover of the airport authority board, which had handed six of eight seats to the governor and the House and Senate speakers. That case became moot after the legislature rewrote the law to cover all metro airport authorities, and the ruling wipes out Metro’s wins in the lower courts. (Council Opinion, Airport Opinion)
đźš” Gov. Lee names Chris Hansen interim TDOC commissioner
Governor Bill Lee named Christopher Hansen interim commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Correction on Friday, effective immediately. Hansen will also keep his current job running probation and parole, which has about 1,100 employees. He joined TDOC in 2023 and led its TN-STEPS supervision model. Before that, he was chief U.S. probation officer for Nevada and ran probation for Solano County, California. (Governor’s Office)
🪪 TIRRC sues state over DACA driver’s license denials
TIRRC, the National Immigration Law Center, and the law firm Bass Berry & Sims are suing the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security. They’re challenging a new policy that limits temporary licenses to non-citizens with a valid visa, I-94, or temporary green card. Work permits are no longer accepted, which shuts out DACA recipients and, according to TIRRC, “thousands” of others who are in the country legally. The suit says the state made the change without required rulemaking or public input, and it asks the court to block the rule and bring back the old process. (Court filing)
🏥 O’Connell forms committee on a new Nashville General Hospital
Mayor Freddie O’Connell created a committee to study Nashville General’s space and facility needs, including whether the hospital should stay on Meharry’s campus, where it has been since 1998, or move. O’Connell stressed that no location decision has been made and called for a “right-sized approach at reasonable public costs.” Meharry’s president and NGH’s new CEO, Dr. Veronica Elders, said a new hospital is “essential” as the number of uninsured patients grows. The hospital already provides about $60M a year in uncompensated care. (Banner)
DEVELOPMENT
- MDHA files Phase 1 site plan for Napier-Sudekum redevelopment (City Now Next)
- Metro pays ~$19M for part of Stillwater’s East Bank site for East Bank Blvd (NBJ)
- DC Blox revives suit against Metro over zoo-adjacent data center (NBJ)
âśą PAMPHLETEER TOOLS
Pamphleteer Tools Council Watch tells you who funds your councilmember and how they vote. The Property Tax Calculator tells you what that cost you.
THINGS TO DO
View our calendar for the week here.
đź“… Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.
🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.
👨🏻‍🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide.
TONIGHT
🎸 Running Late / Foxtooth / Mal McCormick @ The East Room, 8p, $13.36, Info
🎸 Steve Lacy @ Nashville Municipal Auditorium, 8p, $108, Info
🎸 Ben Rice Trio + Casey Brefka Plays Jim Hall @ Rudy's Jazz Room, 5p, $12, Info
🪕 Bluegrass Mondays with Kyle Tuttle @ Dee's Lounge, 6p, $10, Info
🪕 The Time Jumpers @ 3rd and Lindsley, 8p, $25.61, Info
đź’€ Grateful Monday @ Acme Feed & Seed, 7p, Free, Info
đź•ş Motown Monday @ The 5 Spot, 9p, $5, Info
đź“° Check out the full newsletter archive here.
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Today's newsletter is brought to you by Davis Hunt, Megan Podsiedlik, and Camelia Brennan.