Gloria Johnson Says She’ll Fight for Tennesseans in the Senate: ‘People Are Fed Up’

Democratic Senate candidate Gloria Johnson isn’t deterred by the outsized power Republicans wield in Tennessee. In fact, she seems more determined than ever.

“I’m tired of my politicians being multi-millionaires,” she said. “We need elected leaders who understand what it’s like on a daily basis to strive to pay your bills and do what’s necessary. I understand how most Tennesseans live. That the majority of Tennesseans are one car problem away from bankruptcy.”

The state legislator says she couldn’t be more different than the longtime incumbent GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who she’s described as out of touch and passionately pro-Trump. The former president endorsed Blackburn in July, calling her a “True Fighter.” But it was Johnson who made national headlines for speaking out in favor of gun-reform and facing discipline as a result.

She and fellow Democratic state Reps. Justin Pearson and Justin Jones protested in support of gun control legislation last year after a deadly school shooting in Nashville. Pearson and Jones were expelled over the protest for breaking House rules, while a vote to expel Johnson failed.

In an interview with Democracy Docket, she lamented the presence of far-right and neo-Nazi groups in the state.  “People who look like me especially need to speak up and speak out, and we need to stand with those who are being oppressed,” she said. “And we need to call it out [or] it’s not going to change.”

Blackburn’s popularity in the state is evident in the polling, with the senator maintaining a double-digit lead over Johnson. Blackburn, the first woman to represent Tennessee in the Senate, was elected in 2018. But Johnson, who’s been traversing the state’s 95 counties and speaking with voters, said many Tennesseans want change. “People are fed up.”

Election Day is next week but Tennesseans are already heading to the polls. Why should Tennesseans vote for you?

It’s so important that we elect someone who works for Tennessee families, because what we’re seeing right now is we have a senator who votes against everything that Tennessee families need, who thinks that a $7.25 minimum wage is okay. That’s just not acceptable.

We have someone who has voted against capping insulin at $35 and voted against negotiating drug prices for seniors. It boggles the mind. Why would somebody do that? But then you find out that my opponent has taken ($1.3 million) from Big Pharma. So we have a U.S. senator who is not working for Tennessee, she’s working for lobbyists and corporations.

Tennessee hasn’t elected a Democrat to the Senate in over two decades. Do you think the state is ready for something different?

I think they are. I’m certainly seeing that as I travel to all 95 counties across the state. I made a commitment to go everywhere and talk to everyone and go where they don’t expect you to come, because we’ve had such great attendance and people are fed up. They are fed up that women in Tennessee are no longer equal. They are fed up that we are doing nothing about gun violence when we do not have to live this way.

Throughout the race, you’ve framed your campaign as understanding Tennesseans and Blackburn as being an elitist and out of touch. Why should Tennesseans trust you instead?

Well, because the reality is this: we have polling across the state from multiple outlets that tell you that 81% of Tennesseans want cannabis reform; that 84%  of Tennesseans want paid family leave; and that 63% of Tennesseans want Medicaid expansion. Overwhelmingly, all parties agree we need to raise the wage. They may differ on what you raise it to, But all parties agree with a majority that we should raise the wage. And Blackburn is against every one of those things.

Local news outlets have been reporting fairly high numbers for early voting turnout. But as you know, Tennessee has historically ranked low for turnout. Are you hopeful that residents will vote in this election?

I’ve seen a lot of people who have hope who didn’t before. One thing we know is in 2018, when Marsha Blackburn was last elected, she won by just a little over 200,000 votes. And demographics in Tennessee have changed a little bit since then. In addition to that, we know there are 300,000 typically-Democratic voters who haven’t voted in several cycles and who didn’t vote in 2018.

So, our goal is to get those 300,000 voters back to voting. You talk to people and they feel like, “well, it doesn’t matter, I vote and nothing changes for me.” We’ve got to show them that there is hope, and if you elect the right people, we can make it better for regular, hardworking families. We hope we’re getting that message out. 

It’s all just kind of a wait and see. But I have talked to hundreds and thousands of people who are not feeling the same way they have in the past. Tennessee has registered (nearly 140,000) new voters for this election cycle. And 60 percent of them are 18 to 34. So that’s a good sign.

We spoke this summer about the Tennessee secretary of state’s office sending letters seeking proof of U.S. citizenship. You had called it an attempt to intimidate voters. Do you think efforts like this discourage people from voting?

They sent a letter to over 14,000 naturalized citizens saying they might be committing a felony if they vote. Then at the end of the letter, it invited them to remove themselves from the [voter] roll if they were afraid of that happening.

Note: Elections Coordinator Mark Goins later clarified that “no one will be removed from a voting list for not responding to the June 13 letter.”

Naturalized citizens register to vote right after their ceremony. But here’s the tricky thing they did. They only checked their immigration status based on DMV records and those don’t get updated with immigration status. They could have checked it with other databases, but they didn’t. It’s outrageous.

Democrats we’ve spoken with who are seeking seats in Congress have said voting rights will be a priority. They’ve talked about the John Lewis Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. Would you also make this issue a priority in the Senate?

Absolutely. We have got to vote for H.1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. We need to get back to nonpartisan redistricting, because gerrymandering is really what is damaging Tennessee and leading to extremists only in the supermajority of our government.

Because we have elected officials choosing their voters instead of voters choosing their elected officials. And we know that when districts are so gerrymandered you get the most extreme form of government. So we’ve got a Republican supermajority that are drunk on power.

Sometimes people say to [Tennessee] Democrats, “why don’t y’all walk out?” If we walked out, they could still pass anything they wanted to. And so the reality is we’ve got to be in there to fight.