NASHVILLE – A candidate running in Tennessee’s 4th Congressional District Democratic primary says he was the target of a death threat after calling Grundy County a “hotbed of white supremacy” following a July 4th parade at which Confederate battle flags were flown.
In his July 5 tweet after the Independence Day event in Tracy City, Tennessee, Chris Hale tweeted that Grundy is “one of the poorest areas in the nation. It’s also sadly a hotbed of white supremacy.”
Hale also called the Confederate flag “traitorous and racist to the gospel of Jesus Christ” in a subsequent tweet that same day and stated that “to my fellow Tennesseans who don’t believe that truth today, I’ll work like hell to convince you of it by November 3. This isn’t about left versus right, but right versus wrong.”
The candidate, who is from Murfreesboro, returned to Grundy on Sunday to campaign. He later included on his Twitter account an embedded social media post from his Facebook page. It came from a man identifying himself as Patrick Fuller and read, “you can’t say what you said and then want to come back and try to make it right- thats [sic] not going to work-anyone in this county that heard your words will not be there for you-you might as well just go on down the road-Me personally want to put a bullet in your head and I just might.”
Hale wrote in his tweeted response that “when you stand up to the Confederate flag, expect people to threaten to put a bullet in you. I won’t be intimidated. I won’t back down. I’m going to win this election.”