Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – guest host Aaron Gulbransen welcomed Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs to the newsmaker line to promote his “Get Out the Vote” event in Powell, Tennessee, tonight with Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and the need for a red wave across the state come November.
Gulbransen: We have Tennessee’s favorite mayor, Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs. How are you doing this morning, sir?
Jacobs: Good morning, Aaron. I’m doing great. It’s muggy here in East Tennessee. But if I don’t say it’s muggy, just like Biden is not saying we are in recession, it feels a lot better outside somehow. It’s still muggy. It doesn’t matter. But in that case I’m doing great.
Gulbransen: Well, you’re a conservative, so we’re not redefining anything. Right? There you go. (Jacobs chuckles) So you have a really fun event tonight. Why don’t you tell everybody about your event with Marsha Blackburn?
Jacobs: Sure do. Senator Blackburn is coming in with a get-out-the-vote event. It’ll be this evening starting at 6:00 p.m. At The Barn event venue in Powell, Tennessee. Encourage everyone to come out.
She’s been very supportive of me and other Republican candidates as well. And pretty cool to have a U.S. senator come down and help you out with your campaign.
Gulbransen: Yes, and just that’s also a lovely reminder to everybody in the state that can hear this, that August 4 is not just primary day. We have our local offices, and you have an opponent in your race that’s a crazy far-left Democrat from everything I’ve seen on her Twitter page. Tell us what your race is like right now.
Jacobs: Knox County is an overwhelmingly Republican county. So just if you look at the election business called the generic ballot, all Republicans do well here. But nevertheless, there are issues in some of, say, the school board districts as well as the county commission districts, because there might be a higher percentage of Democrat voters in those districts than across the county at large.
And that’s what I’m really concerned about. Throughout the pandemic, our school board was great. They voted five to four on many issues. I believe they voted the right way.
Say on mask mandates and other issues. If that flips, they’ll go the wrong way. And you can just see how important that is, especially when we look across the country. We all saw the stuff going on around the country, and Loudoun County, Virginia, and how important school board races have become.
Likewise with the county commission. Currently, we have two Democrats sitting in a county commission. They’re actually very common sense folks, and we get along with them well.
But one of our districts is kind of a purple district, and we really need Republicans to get out and vote and make sure that we don’t get the third Democrat on our county commission. As you said, right now, it is state and local general election voting as well as federal primary.
That early voting ends tomorrow and then Election Day, August 4th. We talk a lot about the red wave across the country. In November, we need a red wave across Tennessee here in August.
Gulbransen: Yeah, I think it’s important to be vigilant in these kinds of elections, and obviously it’s one of those things where if you’re in a 60 percent Republican county, it’s easy to coast when you’re the county-wide elected official to re-election.
But it sounds like you’re doing your part across the ticket. What issues are you hearing? Obviously, I’m sure people are talking to you about gas prices when you talk to your constituents, but are there any other local issues that you’re hearing, or is it like inflation and gas price is the number one thing on everybody’s mind right now.
Jacobs: Inflation and gas prices again. Which direction our schools are going to go. We have a new superintendent school I’m very happy with. He’s a longtime member of Knox County Schools, and I think it’s right in line with what folks here in East Tennessee believe are our values, and I think he’s going to do some really great things.
But nevertheless, we want to make sure that the school board he has supports him. As well as in Knoxville, kind of like you guys, not to the extent, but a little bit like Nashville is dealing with. We have a lot of folks moving here.
They’re fleeing from the blue states and they’re coming to the free state. And our housing, as well as infrastructure, is under a lot of strain right now. And that’s locally probably the biggest issue that we’re facing with is how are we going to deal with that.
The people that I meet that are coming here are coming here for the right reason. They’re fleeing frankly, Democrat tyranny and have come to a place where people think like they do. But nevertheless, it is a change for us as we grow and have to accommodate more folks coming here.
Gulbransen: You frequently have tweeted about inflation and gas prices, and I want to give you the opportunity since everybody in the state in the country is doing this. We made a little bit of a joke about it before, but we are officially in a recession now. And what does that mean?
Jacobs: Don’t tell that to the White House.
Gulbransen: Yes. They don’t know what it means, apparently.
Jacobs: Well, the technical definition of a recession is two quarters or more of negative economic growth, which means GDP has dropped. I think it’s probably dropped more than the books are going to say because of the inflation. If you think about real dollars and are spending power of our dollars, they’re down.
So if the economy drops at all, even if you factor inflation in, they never factor enough inflation in. So we’re in a deeper recession than anyone is going to admit or point out. And what that means is less opportunity for people. Right now we have all these jobs out there.
They’re going to start drying up. I mean, I already talked to business owners that are pulling back. So the labor market is going to tighten as well as we can expect interest rates to continue to go up. Inflation is caused by money print.
So we can lay that squarely at the feet of the Federal Reserve, as well as Congress and the White House with proficient spending. So what they try to do is raise interest rates to suck that money back out of the economy.
But then what that does, of course, is it makes everything more expensive. We can expect the housing market is going to really cool off, and it’s been hot for a very long time. I would also expect, potentially, that the stock market is going to cool off as well.
So I think that we’re going to see trouble not only throughout the entire economy, but I think also with the amount of money that’s been printed and the bubbles that have been created. Also, I think that we could be looking at some bubbles bursting going forward on the capital markets.
Gulbransen: Yes. I tell my wife all the time, we are not looking at our 401K until we’re about five years away from retirement. We’re definitely not looking at it now.
Something I’ve actually haven’t asked you yet, that I was interested in. What first got you interested in government and politics?
Jacobs: Man, I’ve had an unbelievable life. I grew up on a farm in Missouri. My father was retired military. My mom was a homemaker. We always had a roof over our heads and always had food to eat. Dad had his military retirement, so that took care of us.
But in some cases, man, if the car broke down or something like that, an unexpected expense, things got really tight. Working factories got laid off. This is the Carter years, and I grew up in a place with not a whole lot of economic prospects and opportunities.
My folks didn’t have a whole lot of money and weren’t connected in any way. Some how I’ve been able to live the American dream.
It just boggles my mind that’s possible for someone like me, but I see it all the time. And that’s the beauty of this country, is no matter who you are, no matter where you come from, you have the opportunity.
If you figure out a way to use your God-given gifts and you work hard, you have the opportunity to do anything you want with your life. And that’s what America is all about.
And for me, I just want to make sure my kids and grandkids have the opportunities like I’ve had. Ronald Reagan said that freedom is a fragile thing. It’s never more than one generation away from extinction.
I do not want my generation to be the generation that sees the American dream die and free to become extinct. It won’t only be in this country it will be around the world because America is still the beacon of liberty and freedom to everyone else.
Listen to the interview:
– – –
Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
