How’s Mayor Freddie O’Connell doing? Pretty well according to Nashvillians who responded to the latest Vanderbilt Poll.
Of the 1,041 residents surveyed, 71 percent approve of O’Connell’s work so far, with 85 percent of Democrats, 56 percent of Republicans and 68 percent of Independents having favorable views of the mayor. The polling represents improvement from his September runoff performance when he beat Republican candidate Alice Rolli with 64 percent of the vote. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.8 percent.
Additionally, the city’s right track/wrong track numbers have nearly inverted from last year, when O’Connell was on the campaign trail and noted the 56 percent of Nashvillians who felt the city was on the wrong track under former Mayor John Cooper. Currently, 53 percent of Nashvillians are optimistic about the city’s direction, giving O’Connell some leeway as he kicks off what likely will be the larger initiatives of his term.
“I think it’s a combination of a new mayor, but I also think it’s very much a function of the fact that he has reached out and very successfully is building relationships with business, with the state legislature and with the governor,” John Geer, Co-Director of the Vanderbilt Poll, told the Banner. “He’s visible in all different kinds of settings. He’s talking about transportation, trying to solve the city’s problems and cares about the whole situation with housing prices. He gets the city and he’s lived here.”
O’Connell’s high approval rating is not unprecedented for a first-term mayor. Cooper, predecessor, had an approval rating of 80 percent in Vanderbilt’s 2020 poll, which was his first year in office. That number fell to 57 percent in his second year and stayed in the upper 50s for the remainder of his term.
“I think Cooper was talking about increasing taxes, and he took a lot of hard positions on a lot of issues and I think it cost him,” said Geer.
So far in his first term, O’Connell’s two most significant initiatives have been developing the East Bank and placing a transit referendum on the Nov. 8 ballot. Despite inheriting the East Bank project from the Cooper administration, the current administration’s agreement with master developer Fallon Company is on the verge of approval in the Metro Council following passage on second reading Tuesday evening. It comes up for a final vote on April 16.
Though the project is massive, 32 percent of Vanderbilt Poll respondents knew nothing about the East Bank development, and 26 percent said they knew very little. Eighty-two percent of respondents who were aware of the project said affordable housing should be a top priority in the area. The master development agreement currently making its way through the Metro Council includes 1,550 units of housing, 695 of which will be affordable.
Further south in Wedgewood Houston, a battle over the fate of the Fairgrounds Speedway represented a sour ending to Cooper’s time in office, as his full-court press to bring NASCAR to the Fairgrounds failed. While conversations to renovate the Speedway are ongoing with the O’Connell administration, 48 percent of respondents said they have not followed the Speedway project at all.
“Even with a lot of agreement about many of the city’s priorities, the lack of awareness of large projects like East Bank and the Fairgrounds point out the potential issues lurking just below the surface,” Geer said in the release. “If they aren’t keeping up with these projects, new unfavorable information about the project could quickly undermine support for it.”
Moving forward with a transit referendum has widespread support in Vanderbilt’s poll – 84 percent of respondents support the initiative, broken down by 70 percent of Republicans, 86 percent of Independents and 92 percent of Democrats. O’Connell has not released a final transit plan for the November referendum, though details began emerging in early March and focus on a half-cent sales tax increase funding four bus rapid transit lines, widespread sidewalk construction and improvements to more than 600 traffic signals. The proposal is far less ambitious than former Mayor Megan Barry’s failed 2018 transit referendum, which included billions of dollars in light rail construction.
“The Devil’s in the details,” said Geer. “There’s going to be a chance for the citizens to vote in November to see if they support what the mayor is recommending. And if they do support it, that’ll be a tribute to his leadership. If they don’t, that’s going to be a big setback.”
Interestingly, opinions on Nashville’s growth mirror the findings of a survey done by Imagine Nashville released in February. That survey found that 59 percent of Nashvillians believe the city’s rapid growth makes things worse. In the Vanderbilt Poll, 47 percent of respondents said the city’s growth has made their lives worse and only 25 percent said it has made their lives better. A whopping 80 percent believe that the city has grown too quickly.
“People are unhappy about the growth collectively,” Geer said. “They think we’re going too fast. They’re worried about housing prices, they’re worried about traffic. There’s lots of problems. But there’s interestingly a lot of consensus across partisan groups. So Freddie O’Connell won’t have to battle as much partisanship.”
The main area of separation between political sides in the poll came over the relationship between the city and the state. While 67 percent of Democrats felt Metro should actively challenge the Republican-led state legislature on issues affecting the city, 82 percent of Republicans felt Metro should work with the state. Despite this, when it came to who should control the airport, a topic that has led to legal battles between Metro and the State, 79 percent of respondents felt that Metro should oversee the Metro Nashville Airport Authority, with 66 percent of Republicans joining 90 percent of Democrats in favor of that.