Democratic gun-control activist Shaundelle Brooks beat former Republican aide Chad Bobo in the race to fill a seat vacated by District 60 Rep. Darren Jernigan. With her win, Brooks saved the state’s already outnumbered Democrats from losing ground in the legislature.
District 60, which represents the growing suburbs east of Nashville including Donelson, Hermitage and parts of Old Hickory, has been a consistently competitive district for more than a decade, with a near-even split between both major parties.
When Jernigan announced his departure, Brooks became a favorite to carry the torch. A former parole officer, Brooks became a gun-control advocate after her 23-year-old son Akilah Dasilva was killed in the 2018 Antioch Waffle House shooting. In August, she beat Donelson Hermitage Neighborhood Alliance President Tyler Brasher to win the party’s nomination.
Tuesday, she led Bobo 55 percent to 45 percent, a difference of about 2,600 votes.
“It was such a fight, oh my god,” an emotional Brooks said to a friend while waiting for final election results.
Brooks joined about two dozen supporters at Homegrown Taproom in Donelson, and was greeted by cheers of “fight like a mom.”
Propelled by the memory of her son, Brooks centered gun control in her campaign, which, she said, resonated with Nashville voters.
“They care about their families, they care about safety, they care about the real things,” Brooks told the Banner, noting that her door-knocking and conversations at the polls left her “confident in what the people want.”
Brooks spent the evening clutching a button with her son’s face on her chest while watching her race and watching early presidential election results.
“I really hope she wins,” Brooks said, watching CNN discuss Kamala Harris’s chances in Pennsylvania.
Brimming with anxiety, Brooks cried intermittently throughout the night, consoled by different friends.
When Bobo conceded, Brooks put on a pin that said “Rep. Brooks for Akilah.” She thanked her supporters and said her son had called her “Rep. Brooks” in a vision.
“I hope he’s proud of me,” she said in her speech, which was interrupted by a call from Rep. Justin Jones.
Jones welcomed Brooks to the “progressive caucus” and said she was the “highlight of Tennessee tonight.”
Bobo campaigned on ideas like preserving the area as a “traditional American community” by limiting housing density, but offered few specific policy stances. While Bobo said he supports school choice, he declined to share his stance on the governor’s controversial school voucher proposal, which dominates current education policy discussions.
“This has been, I would say, probably the hardest six to eight months. But I’ve had so much fun working with each of you,” Bobo told his supporters Tuesday night at the Old Hickory Country Club. “I think that this campaign, we gave all that we had and left it all out there, and the district chose differently. So, you know they’ll have to work with what they have.”
Brooks took stronger stances on issues like restoring women’s rights to reproductive healthcare and expanding access to mental healthcare and gun control.
Her win suggests that District 60 has followed other suburban Nashville neighborhoods, shifting further to the left amid population growth. In 2012, the last time the seat was open, Jernigan beat his Republican opponent by 95 votes, or less than half a percent.
Braden Simmons contributed to this story.