My Platform

Education

Education spending is an investment. Tennessee invests the least amount on students in the nation, ranking 51st including D.C.
Our teachers are paid at one of the lowest levels in the country. We ask our teachers to work with fewer resources while paying them less to educate our children. That is not a recipe for success. We must increase our investment in their efforts.
We need to invest in early childhood care and education
- Investing in these subsidies as other states have done allows parents to work while their children get good care and education
- We must expand access to pre-K which has also happened in states such as Florida, Illinois and Oklahoma.
MSCS doesn’t need a state takeover. That's already been tried and it failed. What we need are legislators who actually care about the welfare and future of our children and invest accordingly.
The private school voucher program is the exact opposite of what we should be doing, as it takes funding from public schools and largely gives it to wealthy families with children already in private schools.

We must ensure that everyone has ready access to healthcare, not just the wealthy.
We must work to reduce the costs of health care, both to the individuals who need the care and to all of us, who ultimately bear the burden.
We must pay more attention to areas like preventive and chronic care, health maintenance, and elder care.

We need to work to make childcare more affordable and accessible for working families.
We can lower healthcare costs by expanding Medicaid and increasing access to care.
We must combat the rising housing, grocery, and gas costs so families don't need to choose which to go without.

We have had too much divisiveness for personal gain.
We stand on common ground, and we need to once again work for the common good.
Not only is the divisiveness counterproductive in the present, it forces us to confront the question, “What example are we setting for the next generation?”

My public safety plan includes 3 parts:

Suppression
- Increase the number of state-funded prosectors and public defenders to deal with the influx of cases from the Memphis Safe Task Force
- Advocate for a dedicated crime lab for Memphis & Shelby County
- Expand mental health training for law enforcement and services for arrestees.
Prevention
- Invest in early education, specifically pre-K for 3 and 4 yr olds
  - Data also shows that children who cannot read at grade level by 3rd grade are more likely to engage in risky behaviors. It is only reasonable to invest in early education to prevent crime & improve outcomes for our children.
- Pass common sense gun laws
  - We can keep citizens safe without infringing on 2nd Amendment rights by supporting an Extreme Risk law for domestic abusers and individuals having a mental health crisis. We can require background checks for private & gun show sales to keep guns out of hands of criminals.
Intervention
- Secure the $30 million for intervention allocated in the Governor’s budget but stripped out by the legislature last session.
- Provide grants for organizations focused on intervention to provide trauma-informed services.

When we build from shared ground, we can move Tennessee forward - together.