Aaron Gulbransen, executive director of the Tennessee Faith and Freedom Coalition, said the current session of the Tennessee General Assembly is “pretty normal” despite state lawmakers still reeling from last year’s events by the “Tennessee Three” Democrats and the special session.
“It’s kind of normal, to be honest with you. Now, I will say, I think everybody has a little bit of PTSD after last year with all the shenanigans that Justin Jones, Justin Pearson, and Gloria Johnson pulled and then the contentiousness of the special session and the lead up to that and right after that. But it’s relatively normal,” Gulbransen explained on Tuesday’s episode of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy.
“The big issue that is being dealt with is the budget, right, and you’ve got that budget process, which there’s a lot of negotiations going on, on a lot of different sides there. There’s a bit of a temporary budget crunch as far as I’m aware. And then you’ve got, of course, the high profile discussion going on about school choice,” he added.
Gulbransen (pictured above), who was previously a senior reporter at The Tennessee Star, noted there have also been a number of bills filed that are presumably dead on arrival.
“Per usual, you have your anti-second amendment bills that have been filed by Democrats that are not going anywhere,” Gulbransen said. “You have your sounding the alarm for people who are looking for clickbait on stuff or looking to raise money or whatever on bills that are either not going anywhere or they don’t understand them.”
In addition to the high-stakes discussions surrounding the state budget and the governor’s universal school choice bill, Gulbransen noted how another bill has been turning some heads.
SB 2795, introduced by State Senator Jack Johnson (R-Franklin), would prohibit a candidate from running for more than one federal or state public office in the same election year.
While Leahy noted the bill is “common sense,” Gulbransen explained how Democrat State Representative Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville) argues it directly targets her as she is running for reelection to the State House as well as for U.S. Senate against incumbent Republican U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN).
“Gloria’s saying it’s targeted at her, I don’t really care about the nuance of it. I think it’s a sound thing to do one way or the other. You shouldn’t be able to run for state rep. and U. S. Senate or Congress and state senate or whatever, right? And insert these offices at the same time because for her, it’s an insurance policy, right?” Gulbransen said.
She knows she wants the national notoriety of running for U.S. Senate against Marsha Blackburn – wants to raise a lot of money, wants to make a lot of fundraising contacts. No, she’s going to get destroyed because she knows that her values have nothing to do with Tennessee values and is going to lose by 20 points to Marsha Blackburn, who is in line with Tennessee values. And so she wants to be on the ballot for her state rep. seat and that she will likely win,” he added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
