The local Democratic Socialists of America chapter endorsed Monty Bruell for mayor of Chattanooga this week, marking the organization's first-ever candidate endorsement.
Casey Crook, co-chair of DSA Chattanooga's Electoral Politics working group, said Friday that the group had voted to back Bruell this week after forming a "peripheral" relationship with Bruell through his attendance of their meetings and protests this past summer.
"There are kind of two main reasons that we chose Monty. And one is that he listens," Crook said. "A lot of times, he would come to meetings and not say anything. He would just sit there, take notes and listen to what we were talking about, what our concerns were and things like that. And that is really valuable."
In addition to trust and rapport with Bruell, Crook said the group endorsed him based on his preparedness and progressive policies.
"And that was kind of refreshing. Especially when you add on what a lot of his policies actually are. He supports things like housing homeless, like directly housing the homeless. And providing free CARTA transportation, expanding CARTA and things like that," Crook said. "They were actual concrete, thought-out policies, as opposed to most of what I hear from other people that are, like, 'Yeah, we'll fix roads.'
"With Monty there was a lot of thought put into not only what are we going to do, but how are we going to do it and why are we going to do it."
According to Crook, the group began considering policy and candidate priorities in city and county government after a boost in membership and platform this summer, following the group's involvement in protests against police brutality and lobbying the City Council for law enforcement reform.
"We decided to kind of piggyback off of the work with the budget amendments and actually put some pressure on changing local elections," Crook said. "A lot of it is relatively new to us, in terms of us saying, 'OK, we're actually going to throw our weight into local elections.' But Monty's met with us, and Monty actually sought our endorsement and, more importantly, Monty actually has a lot of policies that we support and a lot of policies that we hope to see in Chattanooga."
Bruell gladly accepted the endorsement from the activist group, which is not popular among all city government representatives, to broaden the perspectives in his corner.
"I am very excited that DSA is endorsing me. I think it's a sign that I want to bring all kinds of people from different perspectives and different ideologies to the table," Bruell said Friday. "We have real inequity in Chattanooga, and if we're going to solve that inequity it's very important that we have DSA as part of those conversations."
Contact Sarah Grace Taylor at staylor@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6416. Follow her on Twitter @_sarahgtaylor.