Joe Ledbetter speaks to the media outside the Chattanooga Choo-Choo in this November file photo.Joe Ledbetter has worked for months to build a Chattanooga Whiskey Co. distillery in the city’s Southside. But the local whiskey maker is afraid that a new group seeking to circumvent legislators ultimately could dash his dreams.
“Let me be clear about this: We don’t know who the hell these people are,” Ledbetter said Wednesday of the upstart group, which calls itself Let Hamilton Distill.
The group emerged last week with a well-funded effort to collect 14,000 signatures on a petition to force a countywide vote whether to allow distilleries in Hamilton County.
No one seems to have heard of the group, whose spokesman is a political operative from a Nashville firm who won’t disclose his backers.
But it’s not the group’s message that worries Ledbetter. It’s the methods.