Thirty minutes after a committee of senators voted down Gov. Bill Haslam's Insure Tennessee proposal on Tuesday, East Ridge resident Trae Haggard was still upset.
Along with hundreds of other protesters, she had driven to the state Capitol in Nashville to demonstrate in favor of the legislation, which proposed using federal Medicaid dollars to buy health insurance for an estimated 280,000 low-income Tennesseans.
Like other protesters, Haggard cried when Senate Commerce Committee members voted 7-2 against the bill, halting it in the Senate.
Afterward, Haggard and a group of purple-shirted protesters headed down to a corridor and were standing near a coffee station when they saw Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, one of the seven senators to vote against the measure, appear to exit a men's bathroom, then go back in.
After several minutes, one protester decided to enter the bathroom himself. Haggard got her phone ready so she could capture whatever transpired next on video.
The phone caught more of a reaction than Haggard was expecting. As Gardenhire exited the bathroom, protester Damien Crisp asked loudly, "Senator, are you willing to give up your health insurance?"
Looking back over his shoulder as he walked away, Gardenhire responded, "Why don't you give it up, a--?"
The audio is almost unintelligible in places. While Gardenhire later said the phrase "give it up" was intended to mean "lay off," some protesters heard Gardenhire was "not giving it up." Neither disputes the word the senator used at the end.
"I was shocked he called a constituent that name," Haggard said Wednesday.
The heated exchange shows just how much tensions have escalated between protesters - who say the senator often ignores them or replies with antagonistic emails when they reach out to him - and Gardenhire, who says he has been the brunt of a smear campaign.
Since his initial vote against Insure Tennessee in a February special legislative session, advocates have staged mock funerals and protests outside of his downtown Chattanooga office; held a prayer vigil outside of a Pachyderm Club meeting at which he was speaking; and carried signs with slogans like "Blood on Todd's Hands." Earlier this month, Gardenhire's Morgan Stanley office was vandalized with chalk, a tactic Gardenhire compared to being "in Nazi Germany."
Records released later to news organizations showed Gardenhire and five other senators among the among the seven voting no had state insurance. He later said he didn't actually use it.
"I have very nice health care provided to me through my private employer," Gardenhire said during the Feb. 4 special session on Insure Tennessee.
Gardenhire made no apologies for his vulgar language Wednesday, saying the group "only wanted to make a scene."
"When a guy follows you into the bathroom, and starts shouting at you he's lucky I only called him by his first name," Gardenhire said.
Crisp disputes the account, saying he never had a chance to confront Gardenhire in the bathroom and only called the question as Gardenhire walked away.
"That's the extent of the democracy I'm allowed," Crisp said. "I had driven all the way to Nashville, been protesting for weeks, and when I can finally ask him a question, and he calls me an a--."
Gardenhire is one of five senators voting against the measure who receive taxpayer-subsidized insurance. Crisp, who said he is uninsured, said he was asking whether the senator could give up insurance entirely, like many of the people imploring lawmakers to approve Insure Tennessee.
"We had just come from a committee room where people were crying, where people had testified that they were sick and needed help," he said. "I wanted him to respond to that reality. And I guess this is how he responds."
Following the posting of the video, Tennessee Democratic Party Chair Mary Mancini accused Gardenhire of having "shown a serious lack of character after calling a fellow Tennessean an a--."
Republican Senate Speaker Ron Ramsey of Blountville chuckled when reporters described the video.
"That's Todd," he said. "He is opinionated, somewhat brash at times. You know what? That's great. You never have to worry about where he's standing, so that's a good thing."
Ramsey said he was offended by some of his own interactions with advocates.
"They questioned how I could be a Christian and be against this bill," Ramsey said. "And I got a little upset too. I told them my religion is between me and God - and not them."
Sen. Bo Watson, R-Hixson, also voted against the revived Insure Tennessee proposal Tuesday. He said in a statement Wednesday that "spending even more money to grow our Medicaid rolls may be good politics, but is not policy that taxpayers expect."
"Effective policy considers the short- and long-term impact, especially when spending taxpayer money," Watson said.
Watson, the Senate speaker pro tempore, said he still recalls "the harm to our state's budget that occurred with the excessive growth of TennCare a few short years ago."
That resulted in an estimated 172,000 Tennesseans being disenrolled by then-Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen.
Contact staff writer Kate Belz at kbelz@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6673. Contact staff writer Andy Sher at asher@timesfreepress.com or 615-255-0550.