Rep. Bo Mitchell suing Nashville over electoral challenge
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — Democratic Rep. Bo Mitchell, who is running for reelection in the state’s 50th House District, has filed suit against the city and the Davidson County Election Commission, saying they erred when they certified the signatures of his Republican challenger’s petition.
Mitchell will face off against current Metro Nashville District 10 Councilwoman Jennifer Frensley Webb, who is running as a Republican, in the general election later this year.
Mitchell says the election commission’s decision to validate Webb’s nominating petition signatures, which he challenged earlier in the year, will cause him to spend substantially more money on his campaign on a candidate he asserts “failed to qualify for election as required by law.”
He says the election commission “unlawfully approved” Webb’s campaign, further noting the commission meeting where Webb’s signatures were validated “was a farcical display of incompetence, lacking in legitimate procedure, and riddled with flaws now common to Davidson County taxpayers under the leadership of its Chairman, Jim DeLanis.”
In the complaint, filed in Davidson County Chancery Court, Mitchell argues the election commission heard testimony outside the legally permissible statute of limitations in making its decision to validate five of Webb’s signatures. Had the commission stuck to the only legally allowable evidence — the nominating petition and a signer’s voter registration card — it would not have been able to validate Webb’s signatures, and he would have an uncontested race, he said.
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He seeks a judge to void the commission’s decision and to declare the commission acted “illegally” when it set the ballot with both his and Webb’s names on it. He also seeks the court to order the election commission remove Webb from the 2024 ballot and declare her disqualified.
Mitchell issued a statement on the matter:
“We sit in the General Assembly all the time and listen to the majority party talk about election integrity and things that go wrong in elections. Well, if they want election integrity, let’s have election integrity. We have such a low bar to get on the ballot in Tennessee: you only need 25 signatures and if you can’t even get that, I’d be very concerned about that person’s ability to come into the Legislature and have serious discussions about things like the budget.”
News 2 has also reached out to Webb for comment.
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