CHANGE: Nashville’s Next Mayor May Be a Black Conservative Woman.

The election is being shaken up by Carol Swain, a woman who is – of all things in traditionally Democratic Nashville, a blue stronghold in a red state – a no-holds-barred black, Christian Republican conservative.

Swain’s vitae resembles neurosurgeon/cabinet member Ben Carson’s, but is in some ways more extraordinary. She was one of twelve children born in rural Virginia in 1954, growing up in a shack without running water. Her mother, a victim of infantile paralysis who never made it out of high school, was physically abused by her stepfather. Her own father ended his education at third grade. Carol herself, shoeless and unable to attend on snow days, did not finish high school either. She dropped out and married at sixteen to have three children, one of whom died of sudden infant death syndrome. Five years later, she was divorced and tried to commit suicide.

But then everything slowly changed. In a remarkable bootstrap story she would likely ascribe to her faith, Swain earned her GED while working as a cashier at McDonald’s, then attended, in succession, Virginia Western Community College, Roanoke College (BA), Virginia Tech (MA), University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (PhD) and Yale (MLS).

But wait, as they say, there’s more.

Good stuff from Roger L. Simon. You’ll want to click over for the rest of the story.