In Tennessee, Democratic state Rep. Gloria Johnson says she is considering a U.S. Senate run, which would pit her against Marsha Blackburn, a Republican incumbent.
Johnson was one of the three state legislators recently targeted by Republicans over their support for protests demanding action on gun safety. Nashville, where Tennessee’s state Capitol is situated, recently suffered a mass shooting at a private school, where three young children and three adults were killed, sparking these further rounds of demonstrations in Tennessee and elsewhere. Both Johnson and the other two participating lawmakers — Justin Jones and Justin Pearson — were threatened with expulsion, but Johnson, who’s also the only white member of the group, was the only one who retained her seat. Jones and Pearson were put back into their positions on an interim basis by administrative bodies in their home areas, though.
Johnson, Jones, and Pearson have since even met with President Joe Biden. “There have been a whole lot of people, very serious people, asking me to do it,” Johnson said of a potential U.S. Senate run, according to the Chattanooga Times Free Press. “And so I told them I would seriously consider doing it.” Of Blackburn, Johnson added: “Mainly, what I hear is she’s not voting for Tennessee families.” Blackburn is up for re-election next year.
Blackburn has a reputation for being what one could call outspoken. Some of her recent posts on her official account on Twitter are essentially run-of-the-mill conservative nonsense. “CBP officers recently reported seizing about 207,800 fentanyl pills and 16.65 pounds of fentanyl powder at the southern border—in one day,” she complained in one post. “What will it take for Joe Biden to stop this crisis?” It is utterly ludicrous to pretend as though Biden and his team haven’t been focusing on what’s been transpiring at the border. Do Republicans want Americans to believe the White House is closed or something? What bizarro world is this? As has been discussed elsewhere, it’s also odd to assume seizures of fentanyl are a bad thing, because wouldn’t the ideal situation be for the dangerous drug to, in fact, be seized?
