In a Tennessee community called Franklin, a candidate for mayor named Gabrielle Hanson who was personally and at the campaign level connected by reports to extremely troubling, extremist political trends has been defeated by a very large margin. Hanson only got 20.6 percent of the support per final results, while the incumbent, Ken Moore, passed 79 percent.
And the controversies around Hanson were frequently rather bizarre. She claimed, for instance, to have warned a local police officer about a premonition she supposedly experienced that pointed to what became the school shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville where three young children and three adults, excluding the shooter, were killed. “NewsChannel 5 Investigates obtained the officer’s bodycam video to prove it never happened,” that local Tennessee outlet said. What is it with these sorts of people and conspiracy theories about devastatingly tragic incidents of gun violence?
At another recent point of the campaign for mayor in this community, white supremacists involved with a local group espousing such ideology showed up at a local forum for candidates, claiming purposes including protection for the Hansons. A man named Brad Lewis told that same local news outlet at the time that “Gabrielle’s a friend of mine, and she’s had some credible threats against her. So I’m just posted up out here.” And besides links at a business of his to local white supremacist activity, he’s reportedly been very explicit about his ideology. He reportedly called himself “an actual literal Nazi” on the fringe platform called Telegram.
In the local election results, several far-right contenders for another position called alderman-at-large were also defeated Tuesday. It’s another repudiation by voters of the extreme ideologies provided tacit even if indirect support by figures like Trump himself, considering he has repeatedly backed participants in the Capitol riots… a group that includes members of other extremist organizations like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, whose participants have perpetrated “actual literal” violence.
