Millersville Commissioners Take Office, Supported by Best of Tennessee PAC
MILLERSVILLE, TN (December 18, 2024)
New city commissioners were installed last night in a tiny town where political dysfunction and scandal have undermined basic government functions and made repeated headlines.
Lincoln Atwood, Dustin Darnall, and Jesse Powell, who won city commission seats in Millersville, TN, in the November election, conducted business throughout the meeting after the outgoing administration had announced it would not seat the new commissioners until the conclusion of the meeting.
“Millersville’s yearlong nightmare is over,” Commissioner Darnall said. “We are going to get back to the basics of providing reliable city services, and we’re going to do that with maximum transparency and accountability and do it all in accordance with the law.”
Darnall said allowing outgoing commissioners to conduct city business after their successors had been duly elected and certified “would have been an act of malfeasance and a further insult to the people of Millersville who just want to know somebody will show up when they dial 911.”
Darnall credits The Best of Tennessee, a nonpartisan initiative aimed at lowering the temperature of Tennessee politics, with helping him and his fellow new commissioners get elected.
“It was refreshing to work with the Best of Tennessee to develop a message of positive change and not resort to the politics of personal attack that is so common,” Darnall said.
The Best of Tennessee Victory Fund and its team helped recruit, advise, and fund the three candidates’ winning campaigns.
According to Best of Tennessee’s Founder and CEO Chloe Akers, the group’s decision to engage in a nonpartisan city election was a natural extension of its focus on increasing primary voter turnout. “One of the most effective ways to generate stronger candidates for state legislative seats is to support citizens seeking to serve their communities at the local level first,” Akers said. “Increasing the number of qualified candidates is an important element to increasing overall participation.”
Their ticket ran on slogans such as “Stop the chaos,” “Help is on the way,” and “Millersville deserves a government as good as its people.”
Stephen Sebastian, a consultant with The Ingram Group and an advisor to The Best of Tennessee, said, “Millersville quickly became a case study of what happens when extreme ideologues take over a local government.”
Explaining the election results, Sebastian said, “We simply found sincere candidates who wanted to do the right thing for their community and ran an upbeat race about making Millersville better. The contrast was clear, and the voters agreed. They just wanted a return to responsible and respectable representation, not agenda-driven activism or conspiracy theories.”
One mailer from the trio featured headlines about allegations of secret meetings, unvetted hires, the fire department’s decertification, and a stream of discredited conspiracy theories from the police department.
Another mailer featured poetry in the style of “The House That Jack Built,” highlighting the absurdity of city hall events and their negative impact on residents’ safety and quality of life.