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County Commission Votes to Appoint Anti-Trans Influencer Riley Gaines to Sumner County Library Board

Updated: Oct 22

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COUNTY COMMISIONER JEREMY MANSFIELD POSES WITH RILEY GAINES


Joanna Daniels, recent chair of Sumner County Library Board, has finally reached the end of her tenure. Daniels was responsible for leading the charge to ban books from our public libraries and libraries within our school system. Her targets included books with LGBTQIA themes, anti-racism educational content, and even books that simply focused on empathy. Daniels’ actions have contributed to the resignation of over 10 library directors and staff members across our county in the last few years. Many people in our community (including many of you) have rallied in support of our libraries and free speech to try to counteract her actions, and those people were relieved to finally see her leave the board. 


Unfortunately, another issue is now emerging. Library Board members are appointed by the county commission. In a county commission meeting last night that began at 7:00 pm and lasted well past 1:00 in the morning, county commissioner Jeremy Mansfield nominated Riley Gaines, an anti-trans influencer and former D1 swimmer, to become a member of the library board. 


Steve Wasilowski was another nominee. Wasilowski appears to be co-founder of an industrial-scale painting company called PaintJet and the founder of a sales consultation engine called Fullscale Outbound. His LinkedIn shows him reposting video game content from county commissioner Matthew Shoaf. It is entirely unclear how either of these candidates have qualifications that make them a good candidate to hold a position on the county library board. The nomination of Riley Gaines is especially troubling, especially in light of how her actions have contributed to the destabilization of our library system. 


In 2023, evangelist actor Kirk Cameron, Riley Gaines, and Missy Robertson (of Duck Dynasty) held a book-reading event inside the Hendersonville Public Library. While the separate personalities were filming promo segments for their social media, they lashed out at library staff for being too loud in the background. The three personalities then took to social media and podcasts expressing their outrage at the Hendersonville Public Library, claiming that HPL staff were intentionally sabotaging their social media reels. It sparked enough outrage in their fanbase that the Hendersonville Library began receiving threats of violence against staff, including a bomb threat to the library itself. 


HENDERSONVILLE PUBLIC LIBRARY RECEIVES BOMB THREAT AFTER KIRK CAMERON AND RILEY GAINES BLAST THEM ON SOCIAL MEDIA

The incident ultimately resulted in the firing of HPL director Allan Morales by the library board- a firing that Joanna Daniels contributed to. Allan was the first in a long string of firings and resignations from various Sumner County libraries that have left our local libraries understaffed and under-resourced. 


Joanna Daniels and Riley Gaines are cut from the same cloth. But with Gaines’s national right-wing fan-base, the temperature at our library board meetings will be turned up to an even more unsustainable high.

The events in recent years that Gaines had a hand in have already created a dangerous and divisive atmosphere that unnecessarily burdens our library system. Our library staff should not have to fear for their safety anytime an influencer wants to rally their troops.

It is also glaringly apparent that the only reason Gaines has been nominated is to accelerate efforts to ban books in our Sumner County Libraries. It makes it hard to even imagine that the other appointee, Wasilowski, would be anything different.  For more cultural context on who Riley Gaines is, you can watch a segment about her on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.

 

CALL TO ACTION:

Here is where you come in as a Sumner County Resident. If you are passionate about freedom of information and fighting book bans, it’s time to email the county commission and the library board. Tell them we need qualified and neutral appointees who are committed to acting in the best interest of the libraries and the tax-payers that fund them. Riley Gaines is a persona, an influencer. It is incredibly obvious that this is a political publicity stunt for herself and Jeremy Mansfield. It’s time to bring down the temperature. #makelibraryboardmeetingsboringagain  


Here are some important talking points you can include in your email:


  • Riley Gaines has already sparked threats of violence within our library system. Making her involvement in our libraries a regular occurrence endangers library staff and patrons. She is likely to generate a hostile work environment within our public libraries, where staff are at constant risk of threats and harassment.  

  • There are many other issues the library board could be addressing. Addressing literacy challenges, expanding library programs, how we build sustainable structures concerning the role of AI in our libraries. Instead, the commission made a choice that doubles down on their fixation with “gender ideology” as a central issue. This will inevitably impede progress in all other aspects of library operations. 

  • These decisions were made at 1:30 AM on a Tuesday. The majority of parents, and working people cannot attend or remain at a meeting that lasts 6+ hours into the middle of a work night. It’s a mistake to assume that the people in attendance at the commissioners meeting on 10/20/25 were representative of Sumner County as a whole. 

  • The choice to appoint Gaines will garner continued negative publicity for our public library system. This will likely play out just like Mansfield’s attempt to rename Wolfpack Way- with lots of embarrassing attention paid to him and our county.  


Send your email to commissioners and the library board with the following addresses. Simply copy and paste, sending as one email to all. 


by Mandy Cook of

Indivisible Sumner


 
 
 

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