Bill Purcell (mayor) - Political History

Political History

In 1986, Purcell was elected to the Tennessee House of Representatives where he served for five terms. As House Majority Leader and Chair of the Select Committee on Children and Youth, Purcell's work in the legislature positioned him in the forefront of education, health care, workers compensation, and criminal sentencing reforms. Purcell retired from the General Assembly in 1996 to became director of the Child and Family Policy Center at the Vanderbilt Institute of Public Policy Studies, a nationally-recognized center building a bridge between academic research, politics, and best practices to benefit children and their families.

Although many suspected that he would run for governor in 1998, Purcell instead announced that he would enter the race for Mayor of Metro Nashville after incumbent mayor Phil Bredesen opted not to run for a third term. Purcell won the election against former Mayor Richard Fulton and then Vice Mayor Jay West. In September 1999, Purcell took office as the fifth mayor of Metropolitan Nashville. Purcell was reelected to a second term in 2003 with a record-setting 84.8 percent of the vote. Purcell is the second native Northerner to serve as mayor of Nashville (at least since the merger of Nashville and Davidson County in 1963); the first was Bredesen.

Purcell opted not to run for a third term because an amendment to the Metro Charter which limited city council members to two consecutive terms was worded in a way that it applied to mayors as well. Although mayors have been limited to three consecutive terms since the formation of Metro Nashville in 1963, Purcell decided not to make an issue of it, and stepped down at the end of his term in 2007. In the fall of 2007 he served as a fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics, and later as the Dean of the school of Public Service and Urban Affairs at Tennessee State University. He was succeeded as mayor by Metro's law director, Karl Dean.