The next Chattanooga City Council will be younger, more racially diverse and more gender diverse.
Voters made that call in a runoff election Tuesday when they swept into office two black candidates, one of whom is a woman.
The nine-person body, in total, will have four new members, down from seven new members in 2013 (which included Yusuf Hakeem, who had been elected five times previously before he accepted a seat on the state Probation and Parole Board).
The election of Erskine Oglesby Jr. in District 7 and Demetrus Coonrod in District 9 gives the council four black representatives for the first time since 2005. The election of Coonrod also gives the council its first black female representative.
Anthony Byrd, 41, who was elected in the March municipal election, replaces Moses Freeman, 78, the current council chairman. Coonrod, 40, replaces Hakeem, 68.
Byrd and Oglesby, who didn't campaign specifically as anti-City Hall candidates, replace in Freeman and Chris Anderson, two of the most reliable votes for nearly anything Mayor Andy Berke, a Democrat, has suggested in the past four years.
However, Byrd, who told Times Free Press editors he had had run-ins with city officials while managing a music hall several years ago, and Oglesby, who won with the help of financial support from some conservatives, may not want to toe the mayor's line.
Byrd, at the time, said he didn't believe the current city council was a good voice for the city.
"I want to be a voice for the city," he said. "It belongs to the people. It's time to let someone else be a champion for the people."
Oglesby told newspaper editors before the March election he would be an independent council voter.
"If [a proposal] doesn't make sense, it doesn't make sense," he said. "I will vote what's in the best interests of the city. I'm not here to please [the mayor]. I'm not rubber-stamping anything not fair and equitable and not the fiduciary responsibility of the government."
Similarly, Coonrod has said the Violence Reduction Initiative was a failure. So she may not be a solid Berke backer, either.
Still, as several incumbents said in the run up to the March election, it takes five votes to get things done in a strong mayor-weak council form of government. So if any of the three (Coonrod, Byrd and Oglesby), or the three more conservative members of the council, Chip Henderson, Ken Smith and Darrin Ledford, want to make a stand, it'll take a coalition of council members to do so.
Henderson, the District 1 representative who was re-elected to a second term in March, said learning "to play as a team" will be critical for the new council members.
"They seem to have an idea of what they'd like to get accomplished," he said, "but you have to work within the council. You're not an individual. It's really a team effort. How well they learn that" will determine their success.
Henderson said he doesn't see Berke altering his style in light of the new members, but he believes Freeman and Anderson were replaced by two representatives "closer to the center." So, he said, legislation coming out of the council is likely to be "more in the center than slanting left," as was the case the last four years.
He said the council also is likely to be more active than it was at the start of the 2013 term when seven members were new (or not on the previous council). He said as the term continued the council began to be more active by having strategic planning meetings and asking for a "three-week look-ahead" so members would know well ahead of time what was coming before the body.
"I see that continuing," the District 1 councilman said.
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In Tuesday's election, Oglesby won four of the six precincts in District 7, losing only Downtown 1 (by eight votes) and St. Elmo 1 (by 35 votes). Anderson, who hoped he had significant backing in Alton Park after securing a new park there and increasing street paving, lost the two Alton Park precincts by a combined 100 votes.
But where the incumbent probably thought he might score best, downtown Chattanooga, which has seen significant development, did not overwhelmingly back him. Although he won the Downtown 1 precinct, he lost Downtown 2 by 12 votes. And, critically, only 13.8 percent of the voters in Downtown 1 and 11.2 percent in Downtown 2 went to the polls for the runoff.
Coonrod, meanwhile, capitalized on the declining ballot popularity of Hakeem. Hakeem had earned less than 4 percent above a majority in 2005, won by six votes in 2013 and was forced into a runoff this year.
In the runoff, Coonrod won all seven precincts, including the incumbent's home Glenwood precinct by 16 votes and most heavily her home Eastdale precinct with two-thirds of the vote. She wound up with nearly 60 percent of the vote total.
Neither Anderson nor Hakeem equaled their vote percentage from the March municipal election, with Anderson falling from 47.7 percent to 45.8 percent and Hakeem dropping from 41.4 percent to 40 percent.
When it was all said and done, 8.1 percent of registered voters in District 7 elected Oglesby and 7.2 percent of registered voters in District 9 elected Coonrod.
With all due respect to the winners, to whom we wish the best of luck, we must do better in exercising our right to vote.