Rep. Mike Carter talks about his plans for the 2015 General Assembly session.In a year when there is much clamor for change in politics, Tennessee state House incumbents in Hamilton County have more opposition than has been the norm.
That's good - especially for Democrats - although most of the potential change Democratic opposition could bring won't get a vote until November. That's because in the primary races, only two of our local state representatives have primary opposition.
Tennessee House District 26 incumbent Gerald McCormick, R-Hixson, is the only member of the Hamilton County delegation with no opposition at all.
State House District 27 incumbent and Republican Patsy Hazlewood, of Signal Mountain, will face Democrat Steve Gordon, of Chattanooga, in November. And House District 30 incumbent Marc Gravitt, R-East Ridge, in the fall will face both Democrat Katie R. Cowley of Ooltewah, and Independent Patrick Hickey of Chattanooga.
But in August, District 28 incumbent JoAnne Favors, D-Chattanooga, is opposed by Democrat Dennis Clark of Chattanooga. And District 29 incumbent Mike Carter, R-Ooltewah, is opposed by Republican Ethan White, of Collegedale.
Neither primary winner in District 28 and District 29, however, will have General Election opposition.
District 28: JoAnne Favors
Few people have served as long and as well in public positions as JoAnne Favors, a registered nurse who began her public service decades ago as a trustee of the Erlanger hospital board, as executive director of the Southside and Dodson Avenue Community Health Centers and as a member of the Hamilton County Commission from 1998 until 2002. She was then elected to the Tennessee General Assembly in 2004 and has served there since, garnering seats on the Health Committee, the Health Subcommittee, the Insurance and Banking and Rules Committee. She also has served as chairwoman of the Professional Occupations Committee, secretary of the Health and Human Resources Committee, vice-chairwoman of the House Democratic Caucus and now the House Democratic Whip.
That's an impressive record, considering that she also now is one of only two House Democrats in East Tennessee. In all of Tennessee, she is one of but 26 Democrats among 99 House members, and one of only 33 Democrats among the total 132 General Assembly members.
What that means is that Favors must bring all her experience to bear in finding ways to work with a super-majority of Republicans in a very red state. She has worked with Republicans to find funding for Southside and Dodson Avenue Community Health Centers, Erlanger, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Chattanooga State Community College. She fought for and won support to prevent domestic violence victims from being subject to landlord eviction notices simply because a domestic violence incident was reported at their address.
But when it's time for a fight, she's also effective. She motivated her Democratic caucus and the local delegation Republicans to prevent members of the General Assembly from overturning Republican governor Bill Haslam's veto of a bill that would make the Bible the state book - a measure that both belittled the Bible and other religions in our state.
Favors, a feisty 73, also has been strong voice against school vouchers and charter schools, believing that we first should fully fund and fix the public schools we have.
"We've placed too much attention on pulling out of public schools, rather than trying to improve public schools," she says.
As a health care professional and administrator, she fought especially hard to try to educate fellow lawmakers about the benefits of the Affordable Care Act, which Tennessee has spurned despite the governor's work on Insure Tennessee - an ACA alternative waiver program.
Favors says she will continue to seek compromise, expecting soon to take a look at Republican Beth Harwell's proposal on an alternative program.
Favors' opposition, 32-year-old Dennis Clark, is a bright, personable business owner who was a former marketing administrator with Tennessee Temple and a marketing contractor for Hope for the Inner City, the nonprofit contracted with Chattanooga to help curb gang violence. We hope Clark continues to seek public office, but this time we need Favors' experience.
District 29: Mike Carter
Alas, there are only Republicans in this race. One conservative and another more conservative.
Carter, 62, is an attorney and former Hamilton County General Sessions Court judge who has been in the General Assembly since 2012. In those four years, he has voted to end forced annexation by cities, to add a safety training course to a bill for constitutional gun carry (the safety amendment, in part, killed the bill), to defund the University of Tennessee's Diversity Office and to oppose an override attempt on the governor's veto of the Bible as the official state book.
His opponent, 27-year-old Ethan White, a real estate agent from Collegedale, disagrees with Carter's de-annexation stance. White, a Collegedale city commissioner since 2014, claims to be the youngest person elected in the county. He says Carter's bill was not fair because cities need ways to grow.
So much for individual freedoms, but that isn't White's most frightening stance. That honor goes to his attitude about deregulating much of the state's jobs licensing laws as well as his attitude about guns. White thinks teachers should be able to carry guns, and perhaps veterans might be used as volunteers to augment school resource officers.
Perhaps in 2018, a Democrat will run.