NASHVILLE, TN (BRAIN)—Kerry Roberts, the owner of two Bike Pedlar stores in Tennessee, recently added another title to his name: state senator. Roberts won a special election earlier this month, taking over the Senate seat for District 18, previously held by Diane Black who vacated it last November after being elected to Congress.
Roberts, a CPA and past president and chairman of the NBDA, won the election by a landslide margin of 67 to 33, with 8,827 votes. His opponent, Ken Wilbur, a Democratic mayor of one of the cities in the district, took the remaining 33 percent of the votes. The 18th Senate District in Tennessee is comprised of Robertson and Sumner counties.
“I didn’t expect to win the primary. Then in the general election, I felt it was going to be close, but it wasn’t,” said Roberts. “I had no idea we would win by the margin that we did. It was a total surprise. For someone who’s never been elected before that’s just huge.”
Roberts said running for State Senate wasn’t part of his plan last fall, especially as he struggled to keep his two bike shops afloat. He said his business fell on hard times following the torrential rain that hit the Nashville area in early May 2010.
“We were absolutely devastated by the floods, virtually wiped out. We did half the business in summer that we expected,” Roberts said. “We didn’t make the money needed to get through winter. By October the choice was to close, sell or recapitalize.”
Roberts decided to refinance and went through a long, drawn out process to get a new deal with the bank. “What I was going to do is get the refinancing done and then make the decision to run,” Roberts said. “I thought that the newly elected congresswoman would wait until the end of the year to vacate the seat. She didn’t. She vacated right away so I went ahead and threw my hat in the ring.”
Roberts said the republican primary was a highly contested six-way race but he couldn’t do much campaigning since he was still trying to finalize a refinancing deal for his business. Still, Roberts managed to win the primary, beating one of the GOP favorites backed by the lieutenant governor and several state Senators one week after the refinancing deal with the bank went through in January. Then on March 8 he won the general election.
“I’ve never had a period of my life that’s been busier or more stressful,” Roberts said about the past few months. But he said he’s confident he’ll be able to fulfill both roles—business owner and Senator—without any issues.
“I'm on a much more structured schedule and spending more time in the stores now than I have been in the past three years,” said Roberts, who lives about 50 minutes from his stores. He makes the trip to the State Senate offices in downtown Nashville, near one of his stores, three days out of the week.
Roberts, who serves on three State Senate committees, said one of his goals is to help lessen regulatory requirements that make it hard for small businesses to thrive.
Last year, Roberts campaigned for a seat in Congress, but lost in the primary to Black, now a U.S. House rep.
Roberts served as president of the National Bicycle Dealers Association from 2002 to 2003. He was on the board of the NBDA for 10 years, and taught seminars on financial management and bike store operation for the association at Interbike.
(PHOTO: Retailer Kerry Roberts and wife Dianne celebrate the win on election night March 8. Photo courtesy Bill Hobbs).
—Lynette Carpiet
lcarpiet@bicycleretailer.com
