Will Nashville Still Be a 'City on the Rise' Now That It Lost Its Rising Star Mayor?

Nashville’s charismatic mayor, Megan Barry, resigned on Tuesday, after a sex scandal that had been simmering for weeks boiled over into charges of corruption. When she admitted in January to an extramarital affair with Robert Forrest, the now-retired police sergeant who headed up her security detail, a local district attorney asked the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to discover whether the mayor’s conduct broke any laws. Barry pled guilty to felony theft after it came to light that Forrest had earned $170,000 in overtime since the start of Barry’s tenure—including overtime for nine trips last year in which he accompanied the mayor alone.

Barry’s brief administration is over. Whatever residents think of her conduct—and local pundits have an awful lot to say about it—her resignation cuts short the future of a rising star not just in Nashville but regionally and nationally.