Kathy Lennon wants to bring gun control, reproductive rights to Tennessee House

Democrat Kathy Lennon said she is tired of seeing Tennessee rank low.

“We’re at the bottom in teacher pay. We’re at the bottom in the amount of money we spend on our students. We’re at the bottom of hospital closures, infant mortality rates,” Lennon said in an interview with the Chattanooga Times Free Press. “I think Tennessee is better than that.”

Lennon, 68, is running for the Tennessee District 27 House seat. The district stretches from Lookout Valley to Flat Top Mountain.

Lennon will face Republican Michele Reneau at the polls as voters cast ballots in the general election on Nov. 5. Early voting in Tennessee begins Wednesday. For more information, visit elect.hamiltontn.gov.

Lennon was born and raised in Chattanooga. She lives in Red Bank with her husband, John Lennon, and identifies as a moderate Democrat. She has two children and three grandchildren.

“I want to find common ground, and I want to listen to both sides and bring people together and find solutions to problems that are really going to benefit our community,” Lennon said.

Lennon grew up in a single-parent household with her four brothers and two sisters. She was raised Catholic and attended Catholic elementary and high school. She got her undergraduate degree at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Virginia Intermont College in Bristol, Virginia. She also received a degree in religious studies from the Loyola Institute and completed summer institutes at the University of Notre Dame.

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For the bulk of her career, Lennon was a theology educator and worked in the Catholic school system for 25 years. She taught every grade from third grade to seniors in high school. At Notre Dame High School, Lennon was head of the theology department, head swim team coach and implemented a community service and outreach program.

Lennon also spent a year in Nevada as an Americorps Volunteer in Service to America, working with the Paiute and Shoshone Native American tribes. She then continued Americorps work at Tennessee State University, organizing community service and civic engagement programs. Then, she was the director of development at Our Lady of Perpetual Help and helped teach classes as needed.

“I feel like I never taught a day in my life because I learned every day from my kids,” Lennon said.

After working in education, Lennon was the director of Chattanooga WorkSpace, which was an effort to help artists who participated in the Chattanooga Market have access to studio space downtown. She also worked with Carla Pritchard, owner of Chattanooga Presents, to develop the art market at the annual Nightfall summer concert series in Miller Park and organize The 3 Sisters Festival of Bluegrass Music.

“She knows how to work with people. She’s calm but decisive, and so I was totally comfortable with her representing us,” Pritchard said in a phone interview. “I think she’s the kind of person that would also represent Tennessee well.”

In 2016, Lennon was elected to the Hamilton County school board. She represented District 2, which used to include Signal Mountain, Red Bank and parts of Stuart Heights. After redistricting in 2021-22, Red Bank and Stuart Heights now fall into District 6. While on the school board, Lennon was the policy chair for two years and also helped develop a strategic plan that she said set the path for Future Ready 2023, the school district’s five-year plan.

Lennon also formed an advisory committee for her district. The panel consisted of a teacher and parent from every school in the district. The group met monthly to discuss issues within the district. If elected to the statehouse, Lennon said she would form an advisory committee for District 27.

(READ MORE: Two school board members face opposition in August races, Kathy Lennon to announce she will not run for re-election)

“That’s how you listen,” Lennon said. “That’s how you know what’s the pulse of the community.”

Lennon has also been involved in Welcome Home of Chattanooga, a hospice center for people without housing; Scenic City Clay Arts; Mayor Tim Kelly’s transition team; and other community efforts.

Lennon’s son owns Farm to Med, a hemp product retailer. Lennon said she is the “mama” of the business and helps with some of the day-to-day operations. Her daughter also works for the business. Lennon said her family business has given her experience with budgets, employee management and payroll. The family business has been to Nashville to advocate for the legalization of medical cannabis.

(READ MORE: Pot or not? Everything you need to know about Chattanooga’s cannabis industry)

POLICY

If elected, Lennon said she wants to address the high cost of living and grocery prices and improve working conditions. She brought up the minimum wage in Tennessee, which is the federal rate of $7.25, and said that is half of what employees of her family business are paid as a starting salary.

“There are things that we can do to help hard-working families live better,” Lennon said.

She said that small businesses like her family’s should set the tone in giving employees higher wages and more benefits and that Tennessee should follow suit.

The Chattanooga Times Free Press asked all candidates for their stances on abortion, guns and education legislation.

ABORTION

Lennon said she would look to make changes to existing abortion legislation in Tennessee, and that she thinks women should have access to reproductive rights without government interference.

Lennon referred to her Catholic upbringing and said she believes in the sanctity of life but doesn’t want to decide what another woman might choose to do with her reproductive rights.

“I just do not think it’s the government’s job to interfere with the decision between a woman and her health care provider,” Lennon said, “because it’s about much more than a medical procedure.”

She said the bigger picture also includes prenatal care, maternity care and contraceptive education.

“We have got to empower our next generation of women in Tennessee, and they have to be able to take control of their bodies and make their decisions,” Lennon said.

Lennon said that she hadn’t heard of government interference in men’s health care decisions and challenged the government’s involvement in women’s health care decisions.

GUNS

Lennon said she believes in protecting the Second Amendment rights of responsible gun owners. Her son hunts and is a gun owner, and she said she is not against that.

Lennon said she thinks legislation should be passed to address gun safety issues, particularly safe storage laws that would further restrict the ability of gun owners to leave loaded guns in their vehicles.

She is also interested in the implementation of extreme risk protection orders in Tennessee — orders that would enable law enforcement or immediate family members to petition a judge to remove firearms temporarily from a person who is believed to be a risk to themselves or others.

Gov. Bill Lee proposed gun safety legislation encouraging stronger background checks and an order of protection law on guns in the spring of 2023 after a shooting took place at The Covenant School in Nashville and six people were killed. This year, Senate Bill 2763 — which does the opposite of Lee’s early gun safety proposal — passed through the Tennessee Senate and was signed by Lee in May. The bill prevents extreme risk protection order legislation from being adopted and also prevents agencies within the state from accepting resources to enact such legislation.

Lennon said she wants to find common ground to keep the community and schools safe. She said that children should not have access to guns and that safeguards need to be in place to prevent guns from entering schools.

“I think it’s on the adults to be adults, and if it means to have a few stricter laws in place, then I’m ready to have those hard conversations,” Lennon said, “because I do not want a tragedy to happen like Covenant in Nashville again.”

VOUCHERS

Lee’s school voucher plan, which did not pass in the last legislative session, entailed universal statewide access to taxpayer-funded school vouchers for private schools. The state currently makes vouchers of more than $8,000 available for families below a certain income cap in Nashville, Memphis and Hamilton County, and deposits them into education savings accounts. Lee’s bill pushed to expand the program statewide and remove the income limitations after the second year of expansion.

Lennon said she does not support Lee’s school voucher proposal.

“Public dollars need to stay in public schools,” Lennon said. “Period. End of discussion.”

She said private schools already have funding and do not need the support of public dollars and that vouchers take away resources like individual education programs from children who need them.

“Every student in Tennessee needs to have the quality education they deserve,” Lennon said, “and that means we don’t need vouchers because it’s gonna take money. There’s no more slices of that pie. We only have so many slices to go. We’ve already used them all up, so we do not need to get rid of any more.”

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