Jon Sewell
Jon Sewell ran for election for Mayor of Nashville in Tennessee. Sewell lost in the general election on August 1, 2019.
Sewell completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2019. Click here to read the survey answers.
Sewell was a candidate for Mayor of Nashville in Tennessee. Sewell lost the general special election on May 24, 2018.
Elections
2019
See also: Mayoral election in Nashville, Tennessee (2019)
General runoff election
General runoff election for Mayor of Nashville
John Cooper defeated incumbent David Briley in the general runoff election for Mayor of Nashville on September 12, 2019.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | John Cooper (Nonpartisan)  | 69.1 | 62,440 |
 | David Briley (Nonpartisan) | 30.2 | 27,281 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.7 | 621 | ||
| Total votes: 90,342 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
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General election
General election for Mayor of Nashville
The following candidates ran in the general election for Mayor of Nashville on August 1, 2019.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | John Cooper (Nonpartisan) | 35.0 | 35,676 |
| ✔ | | David Briley (Nonpartisan) | 25.3 | 25,786 |
 | Carol Swain (Nonpartisan) | 22.0 | 22,387 | |
 | John Ray Clemmons (Nonpartisan) | 16.1 | 16,391 | |
 | Julia Clark-Johnson (Nonpartisan) | 0.4 | 404 | |
 | Bernie Cox (Nonpartisan) | 0.3 | 337 | |
 | Jimmy Lawrence (Nonpartisan) | 0.3 | 305 | |
 | Jody Ball (Nonpartisan) | 0.3 | 280 | |
| Nolan Starnes (Nonpartisan) | 0.1 | 129 | ||
 | Jon Sewell (Nonpartisan) | 0.0 | 24 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.1 | 83 | ||
| Total votes: 101,802 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
2018
General election
Special general election for Mayor of Nashville
The following candidates ran in the special general election for Mayor of Nashville on May 24, 2018.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | David Briley (Nonpartisan) | 54.4 | 44,845 |
| Carol Swain (Nonpartisan) | 22.9 | 18,850 | |
 | Erica Gilmore (Nonpartisan) | 5.6 | 4,608 | |
 | Harold Love (Nonpartisan) | 5.3 | 4,349 | |
 | Ralph Bristol (Nonpartisan) | 5.3 | 4,341 | |
 | Jeff Obafemi Carr (Nonpartisan) | 4.6 | 3,790 | |
| David Hiland (Nonpartisan) | 0.4 | 325 | ||
| Ludye Wallace (Nonpartisan) | 0.4 | 324 | ||
| Carlin Alford (Nonpartisan) | 0.3 | 243 | ||
| Albert Hacker (Nonpartisan) | 0.2 | 169 | ||
| Julia Clark-Johnson (Nonpartisan) | 0.2 | 168 | |
 | Jeffrey Napier (Nonpartisan) | 0.2 | 141 | |
| Jon Sewell (Nonpartisan) | 0.1 | 93 | |
| Other/Write-in votes | 0.1 | 122 | ||
| Total votes: 82,368 | |||
| = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey. | ||||
| If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey. | ||||
Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team. | ||||
Campaign themes
2019
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Jon Sewell completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2019. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Sewell's responses.
What would be your top three priorities, if elected?
1. Expanding the Field: I'm running an unconventional outsider campaign to inject new ideas into the political discussion that are not being presented by my more-seasoned co-applicants. From Decriminalization of Drug Use and Sex Work to permanent street closures and even entertaining a free public transport network there are ways we can save lives and save money.Its possible folx. 2. Democratization of Decision-making Processes: From Participatory Budgeting to limits on 'board-bouncing', we can increase transparency in appointments, help democratize the decision-making process, and get these people the proper help for their addiction to political prestige. Finally pushing thru IRV/RCV can be just the beginning. 3.Damn the Money: I'm running a money-free campaign: I plan to raise $0 and spend even less. We can live in a future without money corrupting politics by discussing the possibilities now. "Don’t do it for the money. Do it and Be Damned to the Money."
What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?
The source of Nashville’s most pressing problem right now might be its own self-discouraging attitude honestly. We keep desperately searching for outside forces to move here and help us make it a great city. It already is. If no one else ever moved here we'd be fine. Our ‘leaders’ have been so desperate to make new wealthy citizens that they have done so by scorched earth thru poorer neighborhoods; so eager to please developers that they have squandered the largest windfall this city has ever seen and pulled a shortfall out of mutual benefit. By wasting the opportunity to encourage responsible growth, we have let some of our most needy neighbors seen public property turn a private profit for the most greedy without protecting the resources that made the community a shared asset. We’re in a self-wrought fiscal crisis, where we can’t afford the fire sale anymore. Now I'm afraid it's too late; the people who built this town became boys and girls from nowhere. Now we’re coming home.
Is there a book, essay, film, or something else you would recommend to someone who wants to understand your political philosophy?
The Revolution of Everyday Life, by Raoul Vaneigem
What qualities do you possess that you believe would make you a successful officeholder?
I'm an outsider looking in: While I’m sure for many the hope of a long walk off a short pier may be their approach to outsiders getting involved in the political discourse, for others the hope of a more representative democratic municipal body politic with the occasional industrial disease to slough off could be the cure. So, Lets get more than skin-deep and mind the head. While the focus of other candidacies may be the tired old cliches of schools and sidewalks, I want to hit the boardwalk and go for broke. Lets Walk that Plank together and take a small stride toward getting wet in the waters of honest exchange waged for people, not in spite of them. Sure, we can look at a latitudinal shift but we can also go longitudinal: Changes in Attitudes, Changes in Platitudes., even when its against the grain.
What do you believe are the core responsibilities for someone elected to this office?
Continuous Learning Credits for Elected
What legacy would you like to leave?
Mandatory General Logic classes While I would like to see this proposal include professionals in the “argument” industries (press, politics, publishing, pub-crawlers), as the chief Metro employee, I believe it a good exercise to practice first in our schools. The classes would be required in MNPS high schools and available through MNPS Community Education classes. So many undergraduate programs in PoliSci, Creative Writing, and Journalism include education in style and presentation of the argumentative essay, without any background in WHAT makes a good argument. During my previous run for Mayor in 2018 and in its wake, I suffered numerous slings of logical fallacies (whose authors actually believed they were engaging in an honest exchange) and errant arrows of intentional misrepresentation. While we are allowed to disagree, can we at least do it informed by thousands of years of established procedure? Notable fallacies include: Ad Hominem, Appeals to Authority, Appeals to Emotion, and Strawman among the most prevalent. These fallacies (among many others) committed by journalists, lawyers, and politicians corrupt the conversation under the influence of bad approach and are most taxing to receive. General Logic classes offered in Metro High Schools as well as through MNPS Community Education programs should emphasize the ambiguities and pitfalls of ordinary usage and selected issues in inductive logic and scientific method.
If you could be any fictional character, who would you want to be?
"Socrates" as portrayed in the works of Plato
What was the last song that got stuck in your head?
"Killing the King" by Tau Cross
A mayor is a leader in his or her city. What does that mean to you?
Power Corrupts Scrawled on the wall, baby! Its truth set in stone. From Lord Acton to the action in the streets, we’re talking about getting some of that spectacle! We need to quit imbibing the proverbial poisoned kool-aid, and embrace the post-modern, post-truth, primitive smash-and-grab operation happening downtown. In other words: “Get you some.” I’m just stating a material fact about a material conditional: the infamous ‘if-then’ consequence. Don’t hold me to the fire, here, unless its hot to the touch, but I’m just harkening back to some basic logic. We can re-write the universal statement above as “if power, then corruption.” Power is sufficient, but not necessary. Where there's smoke, there’s a dumpster fire; where there is power, there is corruption. These people want the power, so by definition the corruption is embedded. We need leaders walking behind, instead of in front expelling the hot air we must endure in their wake.
Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.
See also
2019 Elections
External links
Footnotes
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