Written By JR Robinson

Most candidates hide their worst day. David Hatley wrote a book about his.

In Tested in Tennessee, the man running as an independent for governor tells you he was once handed a number and a pod assignment. Inmate 308215. “You’re moving to Pod C2. Stand by.”

He is not hoping you will not find out. He is making sure you hear it from him first.

How it happened

Hatley was a young man trying to keep a struggling business alive. He writes that he floated bad checks, about $37,000 worth, and spent a year in what he calls a moral tug of war. He convinced himself he was only buying time. He told himself it was a victimless crime.

He pled guilty. A prosecutor pushed hard. But the judge, as Hatley tells it, said he did not see a criminal, only a kid who had tried to keep a business alive, showed up with more than half the money he owed, and was ready to own his mistakes. The sentence was one month in federal prison and six months of home detention.

He also spent time in Knox County Detention, where, he writes, the thing he did most was think.

The lie he told himself

Inside, he heard the same excuses from inmate after inmate. And he realized his “victimless” story was, in his words, pure BS. Look what it had done to him and his family.

What ate at him most was that he had gambled with his freedom, the thing so many men and women fought and died for. He called it selfish, entitled, and unappreciative. That is not how people usually describe themselves in a campaign biography.

There is no spin in that passage. No excuses about the economy and no blaming the bank, though he notes the bank could have simply approved the loan. He lays out the decision, calls it what it was, and carries it.

The vow

He writes that he made a solemn vow, in his deepest core, to live his life in a better way. Never again would he risk his freedom for a shortcut. He would rather be broke, poor, and lonely than be deprived of his freedom and family again.

Then he did the work. He built companies. He hired people. By his account, he built them on the principle that people deserve a fair shake, because someone gave him one.

He also tells you about the church that gave him community, and about a girlfriend’s parents who, he writes, saw only the sin and not the repentance. That stung. It is also the story of what a record does to a person long after the sentence ends.

Getting his vote back

Here is a part of the story many Tennesseans will not know. After his conviction, Hatley lost his voting rights. For years, he assumed he would never vote again. Then he learned he could apply to have them restored.

He did. He stood before a Washington County judge, who told him, “Mr. Hatley, I think you have earned the right to restore your voting privileges, and I will gladly sign this order.”

Hatley writes that he walked out feeling the monkey on his back was now running behind him. Years later, he decided to run for office.

Why it should matter to you

Maybe you think a record like this disqualifies someone. Plenty will say so. Expect the attacks. Hatley does; he writes that he knows people will try to put him down over a mistake from almost thirty years ago.

But consider what we say we believe about this state. We say we believe in second chances. We say we believe in accountability, in owning your mistakes, in earning your way back. Here is a candidate who did each of those things, in public, with his name on it.

The question is whether we meant it.

Is a person defined by the worst thing they did at twenty-something, or by what they built over the thirty years after? Tennessee has plenty of people who need that question answered kindly. Some of them are your neighbors. A few might be in your family.

You do not have to agree with every choice he made. You only have to decide whether the man in the book is the man you would trust.

If your first reaction is hate, ask yourself where it comes from. If your first reaction is respect, ask yourself why we do not see it more often. Either way, you will be talking about him, and so will your neighbors.

Read it yourself

The book is free. Start with the chapter on Knox County. Then check vote.tn.gov for early voting and your polling place. Election Day is November 3.

Paid for by Hatley for Governor, Joe Cronin, Treasurer.