Independent congressional candidate Scooter King believes abortion should be on the ballot

Independent Stephen “Scooter” King is challenging incumbent U.S. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Ooltewah, for his District 3 congressional seat.

King, 55, is a first-generation Chattanoogan and said he has lived everywhere from Hixson to Highway 58. He currently lives in Brainerd. He joined the U.S. Navy when he was 18 and went to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga when he was 19. He changed gears from studying business finance and attended school to become a barber. After completing barber school, King opened Nico’s Salon in 2000. The salon is on Broad Street. King and his wife have been married for 27 years and have four children.

King will face Fleischmann, Democrat Jack Allen and independent Jean Howard-Hill at the polls as voters cast ballots in the general election Nov. 5. Early voting in Tennessee begins Wednesday. For more information, visit elect.hamiltontn.gov.

(READ MORE: Read about more local candidates on the Nov. 5 ballot at timesfreepress.com/vote-2024)

Policy Q&A

King said the economy is the main issue for people in his district.

“It’s the one thing that affects everybody from the bottom of the state to the top of the state,” King said in an interview with the Chattanooga Times Free Press.

The Times Free Press asked all candidates for their stances on abortion, guns and education legislation. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Q: Should Congress pass abortion legislation? If so, what should it say?

A: First, an abortion should only be decided on by the mother and her doctor. I don’t think it’s anybody’s business except for the mother or the doctor, or if she’s a minor, the parent and the mother and the doctor. However, I don’t believe that abortion should be birth control either. I mean, I think we should be a much more valued, moralistic society that 14-year-olds aren’t getting pregnant.

I do believe it belongs in the state, but if it’s going to go to the states, I think it belongs on a ballot. I don’t think you just send it back to the state’s congress to start deciding what to do for women. First of all, there are not a lot of women there, so I don’t think that old dudes should be making decisions that are affecting teenagers to 40-year-old women. I think those are their decisions to make for themselves.

I don’t believe it should be a federal issue because every state doesn’t believe the same way. I do believe it belongs back in the state’s hands, but I don’t believe it belongs in the House’s hands. I believe it belongs on a ballot, and I think the people that live in that state should literally be able to check a box of what they believe in.

I think at that point, we get rid of a whole lot of the fighting about abortion when we give it back to first, the mother’s decision, second, the doctor’s decision, third the state residents’ decision. And then, if we can’t work it out amongst our neighbors in our state, then maybe Congress has to look at it on a federal level. Before Congress starts making decisions for every young woman on the planet, I think that the people she lives with should have a right to vote one way or the other whether she can or cannot.

I’m a pro-life guy, but I’m pro-mama’s life, too. I mean, I think there should be exceptions, and I agree with some things from both parties. There was a Democrat who said years ago that abortion should be available, safe and rare. It shouldn’t be the solution, but it should be available

Q: Should Congress ban assault weapons again?

A: I believe in the Second Amendment right. I believe our forefathers put it in there because if bad guys have guns, good guys should have guns. If a government has guns, citizens should have guns.

I don’t have an understanding of why anybody would need an assault rifle. I don’t own a gun. I’m trained in guns. I was in the military. I can break down an M16 in no time and put it back together, but I don’t have a need to own an M16. That’s another thing I think you need to bring back to the people, and you need to put it on a ballot. You need to ask Americans how they feel about it instead of y’all just deciding by party whether it’s important or obsolete.

I’ve seen way too many governments overthrown by people, and I’ve seen governments oppress people. The common denominator is, the ones with the most powerful guns usually win.

I don’t know why anybody needs an assault rifle, but here’s a simple thing.

Here’s what happens with legislation. We say that you don’t need an assault weapon, so therefore, we’re going to ban the assault weapon. Then, they start qualifying things that aren’t assault weapons as assault weapons so that they can ban them, too. Then the next thing you know, if you put a bump stock on a pistol now, it’s qualified as an assault weapon, and now you’re no longer allowed to have a pistol. It’s not the original intent that becomes the problem, it’s the power that they get with the passing of legislation and then they go overboard with it. And AR-15 is not an assault rifle.

So when you start passing bans and legislation, you’re opening up a whole world of control that legislation can now use against citizens of the United States, and if I trusted D.C. to say, “Hey, you can’t have an assault weapon,” and I agree with them that you don’t need an assault weapon, I’m probably still not going to agree with them banning what they deem assault weapons.

Q: Should the Department of Education be abolished?

A: I don’t believe it should be abolished, I believe it should be ratified. I do think it’s messed up. I don’t think that we’re actually trying to educate children. I believe the main purpose of modern education is to create somebody that will show up every day, be quiet and do what they’re told. That’s why we don’t have arts in school, we don’t have music in school, those are things that create free thinkers. The education system is no longer set up to empower free thinkers.

We’re living in a country where 60% of high school graduates can’t read at a 12th-grade level. That’s the way it’s set up now. They pass kids, they move them along, we’re getting funding from the federal government for all these standardized tests. Standardized tests are going to be based on how much money your school gets.

Every child is different. One of the great things about coaching baseball is you have to have nine different personalities to build a baseball team. You can’t have nine shortstops. There are too many personality conflicts. It doesn’t make a good team, so there’s got to be a diversification in those personality types. In a classroom, you have up to sometimes 30 kids who have multiple different personality types. They’re not all gonna learn the same way, but the education system now isn’t set up for teachers to veer from that.

I don’t believe in abolishing the Department of Education, but I do believe that education needs to be ratified, probably back to state level again. If you live in corn country, you should probably have some agricultural learning when you’re young, especially if you ain’t never going to move out of corn country. You don’t need to know the same things that the kids in the inner city need to know. The inner city kids don’t need to know how to grow corn, there ain’t nowhere to grow corn. That’s why I think that most things need to come back to the state because we need to treat each state as an individual state. Children and adults in that state need to be recognized to not be just like everybody else and let’s empower them for where they are instead of trying to force them into a box that we want to put them in.

Contact Sarah Dolgin at sdolgin@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6556.