Tim Kelly with wife Ginny
Did you know that Tim Kelly likes to go hunting and fishing, grew up playing the drums, and that he seriously considered being a journalist while in college?
Now, of course, his sight is focused on being mayor of Chattanooga, and he is observing the media from the other side as a political candidate.
To help readers and city voters get to know Mr.
Kelly and fellow mayoral runoff candidate Kim White better leading up to the April 13 election that begins with early voting on March 24, they were both recently interviewed.
This profile story will focus on Mr. Kelly, with another one planned on Ms. White in the near future. Both are designed simply to highlight through a personal perspective how they each reached the place in their lives of wanting to be the next mayor of the Scenic City.
For Mr. Kelly, it started with automobiles and his family’s initial dealership. “One of my earliest memories is of being in the showroom of the Ayers Motor Co. back in the day,” he said of the business located then where the U-Haul facility now is in the 2000 block of Broad Street. He also vividly remembers the distinctive Christmas and holiday decorations that went up on the windows every year.
His maternal grandfather, Jim Ayers, who died in 1967 before Mr. Kelly had his first birthday, had surpassed his family’s wishes of just working on a Northeast Alabama family farm and instead went to Birmingham-Southern College and was hired by General Motors.
When Mr. Ayers was asked to take over management of a struggling Cadillac-Oldsmobile dealership in Chattanooga during the Great Depression, his stint went well enough that he eventually had an opportunity to buy it.
“That’s how Ayers Motor Co. got started on the site by the current Chattanoogan Hotel,” Mr. Kelly said of the dealership that later moved to Broad Street and in 1971 to Riverfront Parkway as Kelly Cadillac after Mr. Kelly’s father, Patrick Kelly, had earlier taken over the operation.
“The most enjoyable thing about being in business was meeting people who did know him (Mr. Ayers) and who told me what a great man he was, so I felt like I got to know him,” the younger Mr. Kelly said.
Of course, a few years and different experiences would pass before Mr. Kelly went into the automobile business himself.
His father had gone to Central High and then Georgia Tech, while his mother, Betty Sue, who would spend the later part of her life divorced from his father, had gone to Girls Preparatory School. As a result, his family had no strong expectations on whether he should go to a private or public secondary school.
“I could probably have flipped a coin coming out of elementary school,” he said. “My friends were going to Baylor and I liked Baylor better and that’s where I went. It was a great experience.”
He jokingly added that his father did tease him some for being “fancy pants” and going to a private school.
At Baylor, he felt like he learned a lot of leadership skills, even though he admittedly did not hold any student government leadership positions more typical of a future politician.
“I look back on my years there fondly because it was a big part of making me who I am,” the 1985 graduate said. “I played soccer a little, but I broke my fingers. Goalkeepers didn’t wear gloves back in those days.
“But I was always a musician. I played the drums. I played in a lot of bands. I was a little bit of an outsider. I stayed a little in the background.”
A Baylor student one year behind him was current Chattanooga mayor Andy Berke.
While he admittedly did not apply himself enough academically to be one of the top students, he did score high on the college board tests and was admitted to Columbia University in Manhattan as a prestigious John Jay Scholar, which surprised him.
He actually wanted to be a Billy Bulldog and go to the University of Georgia with his friends and participate in the honors program, but he felt like he owed it to his family and himself to accept the scholarship to Columbia. His older sister, Susan, had gone to Harvard, he said.
He was not overly excited initially about being in New York City, but his time there turned out to be a transformative experience, he said, and has even help give him current insight as he campaigns to be mayor.
“I wouldn’t have traded it for anything in the world,” he said. “Just being in New York, socially and culturally it really showed me what a healthy, vibrant urban economy looks like and showed me the value of diversity.
“I also realized a lot of things that were imperfect about Chattanooga regarding everything from a lack of diversity to race relations. It changed me for the better.”
While there, Mr. Kelly became interested in journalism and wrote for the student newspaper, the Columbia Daily Spectator, and the school alternative paper, The Federalist. “I really felt like that’s what I wanted to do,” he said.
A fellow Columbia student journalist with whom he became acquainted was Neil Gorsuch, who is now a Supreme Court justice after being nominated by President Donald Trump.
He also had time for student fun at Columbia. He and another John Jay Scholar had lived as freshmen with the football team and became good friends with them. As a result, he took much delight when the Lions in 1988 finally broke a 5-year losing streak that had made national news with a home upset win over Princeton.
“You would have thought they won the Rose Bowl,” he said with a laugh, remembering that parts of the goal posts were carried all the way from Baker Field on the northern tip of Manhattan dozens of blocks through Harlem and back to campus.
After finishing at Baylor and through college, Mr. Kelly had held a variety of menial jobs, he said. He had worked at the Vine Street Market washing dishes and also played drums for a variety show actor Leslie Jordan staged to raise money to go to Los Angeles, where he would eventually win an Emmy Award for his role in “Will & Grace.”
Mr. Kelly also held labor-focused jobs with the family dealership during college.
Upon graduation in 1989, he decided to forego a journalism career and help the family business. He said he was quickly humbled as a proud Ivy League graduate when his father put him on the used car lot.
“I realized pretty quickly nobody cared how smart I was,” he recalled. “They just cared how many cars I could get out that week or that month. And for the next 30 years I was learning the business from the ground up.”
During the initial years, he was a sales manager, parts department employee, and a service adviser and service manager, and eventually became general manager.
One key contribution he made early on, he said, was that when his family’s former colleague John Hicks was having to divest of his dealerships after he had gone out on his own, the Kellys had a chance to acquire one of them. Although imports three decades ago were still not as respected or as popular as American cars, the family had a choice between Volkswagen and Subaru and Tim suggested Subaru, saying that is what some of his friends drove and he thought it was a good car.
“He said, ‘OK, that is your project,’ ” Mr. Kelly recalled. “I organized the inventory to bring all the parts over and all the cars over and that’s how we got started in Subaru.”
While Mr. Kelly said he does not obsess over cars or collect them, although he does have a 1972 Cadillac Coupe DeVille, he said that if he could have only one car, it would be a Subaru Crosstrek.
The Kellys also had several other dealerships and automobile lines, but some were closed or discontinued by once-struggling General Motors during GM’s financial reorganization moves of 2009.
The elder Kelly died in 2014, and Tim continued to head the company. Over the years he also bought Jamup Cycle Service, as well as the former Griffith Honda from Don Griffith and turned it into Southern Honda Powersports.
In 2020 when he was gearing up to run for mayor, he sold the Subaru dealership to Crown Automotive Group.
He also became an owner of the Chattanooga Football Club soccer team in 2009 in sort of a roundabout way. He had become acquainted with Thomas Clark, who moved up from Birmingham and was talking with a couple of church friends, Krue Brock and Daryl Heald, about starting a professional soccer team in Chattanooga. Mr. Clark soon approached Mr. Kelly about getting involved.
“He said that we should start a team here,” Mr. Kelly recalled. “It was that classic Chattanooga thing of networking and leveraging. And then I got a call from Sheldon Grizzle a couple of weeks later saying we heard you like soccer and you’re a business guy and you know Frank Burke, who at the time ran Finley Stadium.
“I negotiated the first deal with Frank and Finley, which was basically a handshake, and it’s been probably the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done in my life because it was Chattanooga born and bred and completely from scratch.”
But since about two years ago, Mr. Kelly -- who also enjoys dove, deer and antelope hunting and becoming a skilled long-range marksman like his late father was in the Army -- has envisioned a goal beyond just the soccer kind with a net.
While serving as chairman of the Community Foundation and as a trustee with the Benwood Foundation and in other civic service in which he participated as a working adult, he became a little restless realizing he could only do so much to help his community in that realm.
“At some point, if you want to get involved, you have to be in public policy,” he said. “I never saw myself as that person, but I had people who saw it in me and said, ‘You ought to consider doing it because we think you would be good at it.’
“I think I’m a very good manager, but it just did not occur to me that really is the job of a local city mayor.”
After talking with his wife, Ginny, the Fort Wood resident announced his candidacy last year. In January, after he began running his TV commercials saying he wanted to serve as mayor, his comments about fixing a few potholes became the memorable sound bites. He jokingly recalled that after the marketing team came up with that idea of using the pothole theme, the commercials would be filmed where some potholes could be found.
After he dumped some asphalt gravel into the holes, the film crew would tell him he could stop, that they had enough video footage. But he said he wanted to completely fill the pothole, and that is what he did.
He also said he wants to fulfill his promises of helping Chattanooga become a better city as its future mayor, citing such other former business executives as current Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg as others who have transitioned well.
“It is very much running an organization,” he said. “Starting and running organizations have taught me well. I know how to build functional teams to get things done.
“And I will always put the future of Chattanoogans first because I don’t have any future political ambitions. I’m a Chattanoogan first and foremost, and I want to make Chattanooga the best city it can be.”
Jcshearer2@comcast.net