Written By JR Robinson

The seat at the podium is empty. That is where this story begins.

On October 27, at Middle Tennessee State University, Tennessee’s candidates for governor are scheduled to meet in a Tennessee Press Association forum. Democrat Jerri Green says she has agreed. Independents David Hatley and Lauren Pinkston have agreed. The Republican nominee, U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, was invited. As of mid-October, she had not said yes.

That one fact tells you a lot about how this race has been run. And it raises a bigger question for anyone who has voted a party line for years: when the front-runner will not stand next to the others and answer, what exactly are you voting for?

Here is a hard, honest look at all three of the candidates who matter in this decision, including the one you may not have heard much about.

Part one: Marsha Blackburn and the empty podium

Blackburn is the Republican nominee. She has served in the U.S. Senate since 2019, and before that in the U.S. House and the Tennessee Senate. That is a long career. It is also exactly why voters have the right to ask hard questions.

She will not debate. Fox 17 reported on October 15, with early voting underway, that Blackburn had not agreed to debate Green, while Hatley and Pinkston had agreed to participate. Her campaign’s stated reason, reported by WSMV, is that she will not give a platform to Green, whom the campaign calls a socialist. “Voters know what we’re doing,” Blackburn said, adding that her campaign reaches voters through social media, phone calls and roundtables.

That answer only covers one opponent. It does not explain why she would not stand next to the independents. And in a commentary in the Tennessee Lookout, Vanderbilt professor emeritus Bruce Barry noted that she also skipped debates with her Republican primary opponents. In 2018, he points out, she did debate former Gov. Phil Bredesen in her Senate race. Barry’s piece is opinion, and he offers his own theories for her silence, including that her platform is thin on K-12 education, health care and other issues. You can weigh his argument for yourself. The facts underneath are simple: she skipped the primary debates, and she has not agreed to this one.

Hatley tried to make it easy. On September 23, he pledged $1 million to charity if Blackburn agreed to a public debate with him and Green. The money would be split among a charity for veterans, one protecting women, and one feeding Tennessee families. His proposed date was October 8 in Nashville. WSMV reported no response from her campaign.

Even Republicans are noticing. A Republican voter, Ray Smith, who told Fox 17 he supports Trump and the party, said Blackburn “won’t debate nobody” and added, “To me, it’s like she got something to hide.” We cannot say what is in her mind. But when that is what a supporter of her own party says out loud, the campaign has a problem.

And at least one Republican officeholder has gone further. State Sen. Janice Bowling, a Tullahoma Republican, endorsed Hatley rather than her party’s nominee, saying many people in her district wanted her to meet him. The state party chair warned that failing to back the nominee “absolutely endangers” a Republican’s standing. Bowling did it anyway.

None of this proves Blackburn would be a bad governor. It does raise a fair question for any voter: if you cannot see how a candidate answers hard questions when she is in the room, how will you know what she will do when the room is Nashville?

Part two: Jerri Green and the Memphis question

Green is the Democratic nominee. She is a first-term Memphis City Council member, a former Shelby County chief public defender, a licensed attorney, and a former deputy chief of staff to Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris. She has a record worth respecting, and she deserves credit for one thing in particular: she said yes to the debate.

But if you are a Democrat, or an independent-minded voter who leans that way, you owe her the same hard question you would put to anyone asking to run the whole state: what has your leadership delivered where you have already served?

Start with Memphis. According to FBI data reported by WSMV, Memphis had the highest violent crime rate in the United States in 2024: 2,501 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, against a national rate of 359.1. That is the city Green represents.

Fairness demands the rest of the picture. Preliminary Tennessee Bureau of Investigation figures released in January by the University of Memphis Public Safety Institute and the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission showed the city’s major violent crime rate fell 27.6 percent in 2025, to a level lower than in each of the eight previous years. That is real progress. It is also progress from the highest rate in the country.

And Green is one of thirteen council members, not the mayor. She would say that credit and blame do not rest on her alone. That is true. It is also true that a candidate who runs on her record of public service has to own the record, including the parts that are painful. Her campaign’s answer to the question, “What did you do about Memphis?”, is the one voters in Chattanooga, Knoxville and Clarksville should hear before deciding whether they want that approach statewide.

There is one more thing voters are quietly asking. Some Tennesseans wonder whether this race is a stepping stone to something else in Memphis politics, such as the mayor’s office. We have found no evidence of that, and Green says she did not seek this race; she says people asked her to run. But the question is fair, and the simplest way to put it to rest is for her to say plainly that she would serve a full term as governor and nothing else.

Green’s platform includes paid family leave, affordable health care, living wages, unions, environmental protections and combating gun violence. Those are real positions, and plenty of Tennesseans share them. The question is whether the Democratic label is a reason to vote for her or a reason not to ask questions.

Part three: the man who has failed, and then built

Now the one who is not a politician.

David Hatley has never held office. His campaign says he has spent his life building companies and creating jobs in Tennessee. And he wrote a book telling you the worst of it. In Tested in Tennessee, Hatley does not start with his résumé. He starts with a county, a history, and a lesson in doing things yourself.

The fall. As a young man, Hatley writes, he tried to keep a struggling business alive by floating bad checks, about $37,000 worth. He pled guilty. A judge, in Hatley’s telling, looked at him and saw not a criminal but a kid who had tried to keep a business alive and was ready to own his mistakes. The sentence was one month in federal prison and six months of home detention. His campaign’s ad says he served 23 days in a county jail. In the book, he writes that what he did in Knox County Detention was think, and that he came to understand his “victimless” story was a lie he told himself.

Then came the vow. “I made a solemn vow—in my deepest core—that I would live my life in a better way.”

The second fall. Years later, in 2008, he lost the company he built. He writes that Costco, his biggest customer, put a hold on two million dollars it owed him, and that he had allowed Costco to account for almost eighty percent of his business. “When you let one customer dominate your output that way,” he writes, “you’re operating at their whim.” He says he offered the lender a deal to pay in full and keep the company. They refused. He lost it.

The comeback. When he started a new company, he writes, fifty employees showed up on day one, ready to work again. About forty of them are still with him. He says that happened because he stood in front of them and owned all his decisions, good and bad. Suppliers who had lost hundreds of thousands answered his call too. One told him, “Dave, you never lied to us. Or disappeared. You picked up the phone and told us the truth.”

Then he went to the auction where the bank sold off the old company’s equipment. Hatley bid on nearly everything and won it back for a fraction of its price.

The ballot. After his conviction, Hatley lost his right to vote. Years later he applied to have it restored. A Washington County judge told him, “Mr. Hatley, I think you have earned the right to restore your voting privileges, and I will gladly sign this order.” Now he is on the ballot for governor.

That is the case for Hatley, and you can check it. A man who has failed twice, told the truth both times, and built something worth following is not a polished candidate. He is a rare one.

His platform is the five-point plan from his ads: fund the detectives, elect the auditor, back the teachers, build the homes, cap the tax. He promises that on day one he will bring in an auditor to open the books, and that no PAC or special interest buys the office. Tennessee has been last in the nation in per-student school funding, according to an NEA report, and one of only four states with no statewide cap on property tax increases, according to the Beacon Center. Those are the problems his plan is aimed at.

The honest knock on Hatley is plain: he has never governed anything but his own companies. If you decide that matters most, that is a legitimate choice. But look at the other two. A career of governing, in one case, has not been enough to get her to a debate stage. A record of city service, in the other, comes with the city’s hardest problems.

The case for crossing the line

Same Tennessee. Different path.

Here is what voting across the line does not ask of you: that you stop believing anything you believe. You can stay a conservative. You can stay a progressive. You can keep your church, your union, your party card. You are voting for the person, not the letter.

It asks only that you notice what the system has trained us not to. One nominee does not stand next to her opponents. One carries the hardest problems of one of the state’s biggest cities. And one is on the ballot with no party owning his vote, because, he says, he owes nobody but you.

Maybe that is not enough for you. Maybe you will vote for one of the others anyway. But decide it with open eyes, after you have watched the video at the top of this page and read what Hatley says in his own words. Your ballot is secret. Nobody will ever know.

What to do next

Read the book. It is free. Watch the film. Then check vote.tn.gov for early voting, which ends October 29, and for your polling place. Election Day is November 3.

Sources

Fox 17: Republican voter questions Blackburn’s refusal to debate · WSMV: Hatley $1 million debate pledge · Tennessee Lookout commentary (Bruce Barry) · Tennessee Lookout: Sen. Bowling backs Hatley · WSMV: Oct. 27 forum · WSMV: FBI 2024 violent crime data · Memphis Shelby Crime Commission: 2025 figures · Memphis Flyer: Green profile · WSMV: candidate guide · Hatley, Tested in Tennessee.

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