In 2014, Hamilton County Mayor Jim Coppinger was seeking re-election for his first full term after being appointed to the seat in 2011 and winning an abbreviated term of office in a 2012 special election. At the time, the paper’s editorial board asked him why he didn’t force a more public discussion of what new and expanded school facilities would be funded. His answer was he was “staying in his lane.” But he also said he had “grown” in the job.
He had, and has continued that growth since. Now, at 66 and 11 years later, Coppinger announced Wednesday he will not seek re-election in 2022. The Chattanooga Times page asked him for a recap of his tenure. This Q&A has been edited for brevity.
Q: I recall some years back when you were running for re-election, you told us you had ‘grown’. How has that growth unfolded?
A: The position itself obviously is important, and I went in thinking I was prepared. I would consider I’d had a better-than-average success as a fire chief and running an organization of 500 people with a $30 million or $35 million budget. And it did prepare me for a lot of the things, because a lot of being a firefighter is about being a problem solver. But the most important thing I found out early on was that you have to surround yourself with some really good help.
People always think people are going to go in and just redo the staff or whatever. I took the exact opposite approach. You need to know what they know, and let them build confidence in you, and you in them. A lot [of the staff] were people who had worked for [former county Mayor] Claude [Ramsey].