When he visits District 27 voters, Republican Tony Hullender says no one asks him about raw milk. No one tells him how much they want to have fluoride removed from their drinking water. No one is concerned about inspections of food from small farms. No one is passionate about U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again agenda, though they all want to be healthy.
“Those issues don’t come up,” he says.
Except those are the issues of first-term state Rep. Michele Reneau, R-Hixson. Those are her priorities.
Hullender, a former Army officer who recently retired from his job investigating Medicaid fraud in the Tennessee attorney general’s office, is challenging the incumbent, who upset state Rep. Patsy Hazlewood in 2024, in the August state legislative primary for areas including Lookout Valley, Signal Mountain and Soddy-Daisy.