Candidate for Tennessee House of Representatives - District 97 in 2026 Tennessee Primary Election.
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Get StartedSimply stated, Shelby County should have its own crime lab, and it will be my first priority to get the state to help fund it. There have been many well-publicized instances recently where the lack of a local lab has been a huge part of the problem. A local kindergarten teacher was allegedly murdered by a man who had committed a rape over a year earlier, but he was not charged for the rape until after he committed the murder because of a year-long delay in getting test results back. We still have a huge backlog and inexcusable delays on testing rape kits, and this is just the most notable incident. Learn more
As part of our public education system, Tennessee should increase spending on our trade and technical schools. There are thousands of jobs available for well-paid trades like plumbers, electricians, HVAC techs, etc., and our public schools have proven that they have the ability to prepare students for these occupations. There are also opportunities for emerging industries, like the Ford Blue Oval City facility that will produce electric vehicles, not to mention other green energy jobs. We must prepare our students for the challenges of tomorrow, and that includes equipping them with the skills they will need for success in these markets. Learn more
Tennessee has some outstanding colleges and universities, of which we are justifiably proud. Unfortunately, rising costs make these institutions of higher learning unaffordable and inaccessible to a large portion of our students. In addition to making trade schools more affordable, we should also make it easier and cheaper to go to college. Advanced degrees in fields like engineering, digital technology, and medicine are absolutely vital in today’s economy, and far too many of our students never aspire to these jobs due to the extremely high cost. Learn more
From my own experience as a teacher, I know that public schools are chronically underfunded, and that this impacts the classroom experience, and results. Teachers shouldn’t have to ask parents to provide basic supplies like copy paper or tissue. Tennessee ranks in the bottom 10 for state funding per pupil, spending 30% less than the national average. Among our neighboring states, only Mississippi spends less. We must increase funding and support for our public schools. To do that, we must strongly oppose the voucher scam. Our Governor plans to siphon money away from Tennessee public schools to allow wealthy parents (and his political donors) to use taxpayer dollars at private schools. This pattern has repeated many times across the country; when vouchers are introduced, the vast majority of the benefits go to those families who are already attending private schools. Most public school students never see a benefit, and in fact the majority of them suffer from the drop in funding available to their public school. We are already shortchanging our students, we cannot make it worse by implementing vouchers. Learn more
We MUST address the proliferation of guns in our state, and especially in our district. Gun violence is now the leading cause of death for Tennessee children. Our legislature has made it entirely too easy for criminals to get guns, and a few simple changes can begin to reverse some negative trends. First, we need to repeal permit-less carry. Allowing people to purchase guns without so much as a background check is a frightening idea, and we should at least require proof that they know how to safely operate a gun before we allow them to carry loaded firearms publicly. Learn more
We should also allow courts to issue extreme risk orders of protection, temporarily restricting access to individuals who are at risk of harming themselves or others. Not only do guns contribute dramatically to the occurrence of violent crime, they are also instrumental in our high suicide rate. A huge driver of the increase in crime in Shelby County has been the sudden rise in the number of vehicle break-ins by criminals looking for guns, including in my own cases. The fact that it is now legal to store guns carelessly in cars is the direct cause of this problem, and contributes massively to the proliferation of illegal guns in our community. We should immediately require SECURE storage of guns in all vehicles. Learn more
The Tennessee legislature is also considering abandoning billions of federal dollars. These are Tennessee taxpayer dollars (roughly 2500 per student) that come back to our state from the federal government for education. Members of the leadership cite unnamed “strings” associated with these dollars, but the only real strings are that the dollars must go to education. This loss of funds amounts to roughly the cost of a dozen brand new, state-of-the-art high schools in the state, every year. Now, the governor says that the state could “easily replace” these dollars with other money. If that’s the case (and it’s a gigantic “if,”), here’s an idea—let’s put those new dollars towards education AND continue to accept the federal money. Then we could make serious investments in our students, and in our own future. Learn more
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