- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- Democratic candidate for governor, Jerri Green, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by Jerri Green.

She is the Democratic candidate for governor, as well as a member of City Council and the interim chief public defender.

Thanks for being here.

- Thanks for having me.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

Before we get started with a conversation with Jerri Green, I'll note that we've reached out to her Republican opponent, Marsha Blackburn.

We're talking to her office, and I hope to get her scheduled in the coming weeks.

All of this moves toward November 3rd, the election day for the federal offices, like, you know, U.S.

House and Senate, as well as key state races, like governor.

Early voting begins October 14th.

We'll try to do one-on-one interviews with all the candidates we can get to.

There's no magic or conspiracy to the order in which we get them.

It's just scheduling, the candidate's availability.

I think we have Justin Pearson scheduled.

We're talking to Brent Taylor's office, et cetera, et cetera.

And so we'll just get those done as we go forward.

But Jerri Green, again, thanks for being here.

Congratulations on winning the Democratic nomination.

You toured the state a lot as part of the primary.

What were the issues that you heard the most from voters, and were they different?

I mean, stereotypically, people talk about the issues being very different among cities and rural area, white people, black people.

What did you hear that was common, and what did you hear that was different as you toured the state?

- Really everything was pretty much the same.

I think it would shock people.

They are worried about affordability.

Gas is up.

Groceries are up.

Wages are not.

And they're worried about the future, especially for their children, so they want good investment in their public schools.

They want affordable housing and living wages.

And there was also a running theme of a fear of the fall of democracy.

You know, I feel like every election, we say, "This is the most important election of your lifetime," but a lot of people are really saying that back to me.

And they understand that we're on the front lines of something really important here in Tennessee, and so they're energized to fight back.

- You know, the state is dominated by the Governor, State Senate, State House, Republican super majorities, has been that way for quite a while now.

Is it possible for a Democrat to win statewide?

I mean, Marsha Blackburn has a big multimillion dollar war chest that she, you know, can deploy to win this seat.

You're going into it with some hundreds of thousands of dollars.

I don't know where you are right now, and you can correct me if I'm wrong.

How do you do that with the name recognition, the Republican dominance, and the huge war chest, the huge amount more money that she has and will likely have, it seems like, unless something changes in the next 90 days?

- Well, I think Tennessee is more of a non-voting state and a very gerrymandered state.

We've had politicians that have been rigging the maps, just like they did here in Memphis for very long, and so people feel like they have nothing to vote for.

The great news is you can't gerrymander a statewide race.

And we have had, even though I'm not a spring chicken, in my lifetime, a Democratic Governor and Democratic Senators.

That means the votes are there.

You just have to get them out to vote.

And there are a lot of Republicans that are fed up.

Look, Marsha Blackburn didn't get a majority of the vote even in her primary.

And on the money front, I will just say this, she might have a bigger war chest, but we have thousands of volunteers, over 4,000 volunteers, I think, at this point.

And we're deploying them because face-to-face conversations, talking to Tennesseeans every day, is what's actually gonna make the difference.

- Let me bring in Bill.

- Does the national political dialogue on both sides, as well as the involvement of people and the money that comes with it on that stage, does that spill over to this race, or is this race kind of its own environment?

- I think it does in some ways, so for example, 95% of my donations come from within state.

Seventy percent of Marsha Blackburn's come from out of state and from billionaires, PACs, even foreign-associated PACs, and so I think that is bothersome to people in this race.

And a lot of the national issues that we are seeing running through, whether it is immigration, et cetera, you know, they see a ridiculous ad of her crumbling up fortune cookies, and they're like, "I just would like to be able to afford groceries."

So in a way, the fact that we are concentrating on Tennesseeans' everyday lives and she is trying to nationalize this with culture wars is playing a role, and I think to her detriment.

- There's some of the culture war, especially in the Congressional races on both sides.

And also Democrats are having a bit of a tug of war now between progressives versus those who might be more centrist.

Is that something that you work on in your campaign?

- No, I just focus on what people are telling me.

And look, I go around, and I'll say, "Raise your hand "if you're worried about the cost of medicine "and whether if you have one illness, "it could bankrupt you.

"Raise your hand if you've seen your gas prices "and utilities go up.

"Now raise your hand if your number one issue in this election is transgender swimmers."

Nobody raises their hand.

Not a single person has brought China up to me.

So I'm just staying to the issues that I think matter to Tennesseans and that we could actually change if we win.

- If you're elected, how do you work, if the state legislature stays super majority or even just majority Republican?

- Well, I think Governor Beshear, right, north of us, is a great example.

You know, people would say that's a solid red state.

Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul's solid red Kentucky.

And he's a Democratic governor, and he governs well.

They find the issues that you can work on together, jobs, roads, et cetera, and the ones that you can't, you don't.

Look, we have a lot of power in the Governor's Office.

You just haven't seen it used.

There's power of appointments, so putting somebody at the Department of Health that believes in science, so we're not getting sick from eating lettuce.

Putting someone in the Department of Education who spent time in the classroom I think is important.

We also can issue executive orders saying, "Doctors, you can practice medicine "without fear that your license is gonna be taken away if you're trying to save a woman's life."

And there is so much common ground.

Two Republicans proposed legalizing marijuana last year.

We will be able to work together on a lot of issues.

Where we can't, we won't, and I'll stand up and fight for what I believe in.

- Your take on the Memphis Safe Task Force.

If you'd been governor, would you have participated in a surge that really started, it was a federal impetus to do this.

A lot of state resources have been part of Memphis Safe Task Force.

Some people will point to it and say, "Crime is way down."

Others will point, "Well, it was already going down before that."

If you'd been governor, how would you have participated, if at all, in that task force?

- It seems strange to be the Democrat saying I believe in local government and local control instead of big government.

But I also think that sending National Guard troops is unconstitutional under our state and our federal constitution.

I have a Georgetown law degree.

I've been practicing law for many years.

And a federal judge has agreed with me while it's on appeal.

So no, I would not be doing things that I think are unconstitutional.

And I don't believe soldiers belong on our streets.

To your point, crime was already at a 20-plus year low.

It's like coming in at the end of a group project and taking credit for the last little bit.

We were already on this trajectory.

and it wasn't because of more force on the ground.

It's because we invested in our police force and in mental health supports and in youth job programs and in blight remediation.

It was a whole package that we've been working on for years.

- Is there a role, though?

I mean, there have been task force that have involved U.S.

Marshals, state, you know, TBI.

There've been, you know, kind of flooding the zone of the highways where highway patrol would be here.

If you were governor, would you want those kinds of efforts to continue?

- Well, I was just talking to the highway patrol that now is part of my entourage, as you said.

- I met them.

[Jerri laughs] - And I was saying the one thing that I have enjoyed is not being run over by cars with drive-out tags on the highway.

Yes, I think there is a role for law enforcement to do law enforcement, but to have people who are trained as soldiers on our streets that have murdered a citizen here in broad daylight, I think is wrong, and so that is not something I would've sent in.

- Guns.

I mean, the polls have showed that certainly within the Memphis area, people want, they call it common sense gun laws.

There's not widespread support for taking everyone's guns, but they find it, you know, by and large, it's strange the widespread availability of guns and no permitting.

What, as governor, would you do about guns?

What changes would you try to make?

- Well, look, I am a gun owner.

I got my first gun when I was nine years old.

My dad took me hunting.

I had a .22, and I still have a gun.

So I believe in the Second Amendment.

I just believe with that right comes responsibilities.

And just like if I have a license with my car or you know, I wear a seatbelt, there are regulations that I think make that car safer.

So I think there are things we can put in, and I would work across aisles to do that.

My free gun lock by mail program here has been really successful.

We haven't taken away anybody's gun, but we have seen a 25% reduction in guns stolen out of cars and a nearly identical reduction in our violent crime rate.

And Le Bonheur has cut their children who have been injured by guns laying around in half.

We can institute that statewide.

- Bill.

- The Republican narrative has been that Memphis and Shelby County need state government oversight.

Is that the case?

- No, they need state resources.

I think about our Level I Trauma Center that serves all of West Tennessee and some other states too.

It's where our firefighters go if they're burned.

It's where our police officers go if they're shot.

It's where our most sick preemies go, and yet we can't get state funding to help rebuild it.

So I think we need more resources, not more oversight.

It's not as though the people of Memphis here, as you mentioned, don't know how to help end violence, but we don't have the resources to tackle it.

And we need the state to stop passing laws that harm us more than help us.

- The plan for Regional One has included a partnership in the ownership with University of Tennessee Health Science Center.

Would that be the same kind of arrangement you would favor?

- Absolutely because over 90% of the doctors that stay in Tennessee are ones that were trained at Regional One, and they get trained by the best, and they see the hardest cases.

So yes, we want to continue that partnership of training those doctors, but we also need to take the Medicaid expansion money so we can reopen our rural hospitals and make healthcare more accessible and more affordable so they don't have to be airflighted into Regional One when they need that care.

- The state takeover board for Memphis-Shelby County Schools is appointed.

It's on hold by court order while that is litigated.

If you're elected governor and the takeover board is back on, what do you do with it?

- Eliminate it.

The voters get to pick who's on that school board, not the governor.

There's no accountability the other way.

And it's just authoritarian dictatorship to come in and say, "I know who would govern you best, "and I know what they should be doing and they will only be answerable to me."

I believe in democracy.

I believe in the voters.

I trust them.

And you know, we saw it when everything was happening with Dr.

Feagins.

The community had a place to go and to vent their frustrations, right?

Where should they go now with the state-appointed board?

To the governor's mansion?

That's not possible.

So I believe that we should go back to exactly what our charter says, and that is a school board that is elected by the people.

- Is that the same as saying that Memphis-Shelby County Schools is doing a good enough job?

- Absolutely not.

It's not the same.

But we can't hold their feet to the fire if we have nobody to hold accountable.

And so you, the way that you make your school board better, one, is by defunding the voucher scheme and fully funding our public schools, but two, making sure that voters can say they're not doing a good job and vote them out if they want to.

- When you saw the audit that the state legislature, you know, approved and put through and raised some red flags about some spending, did you see that, and say that there needs to be more oversight or changes within Memphis Shelby County Schools?

- I think there definitely needs to be better auditing and making sure that we're not having wasteful or fraudulent spending.

But I think that can be true in almost every branch of government.

I think that if you took a fine-tooth comb through the governor's budget, you would find the same sort of waste, fraud, and abuse.

So we need to budget better.

Your budgets are a moral document.

You show me yours, I'll show you what you care about.

But yeah, we actually can do better.

- Midway through the show, and I'll just remind anyone who joined late, that we have reached out to Marsha Blackburn, the Republican candidate for governor.

Hope to get her scheduled soon.

And we're trying to get through some of the key races between now and November 3rd.

We're getting people scheduled as they're available.

and we can fit them in.

So again, appreciate Jerri Green being here first.

To Marsha Blackburn, and you've alluded to a few of these points, but this is from Marsha Blackburn's campaign website.

"Marsha fights every day "for President Donald Trump's America First agenda "to keep men out of girls' sports, "hold big tech accountable, defend life, "protect American farmland "from communist China, secure our borders, and deport all illegal aliens."

One thing I can't remember, and I'll look to Bill to fact-check me here, us ever having a conversation on the show about transgender sports or issues.

It just hasn't come up, but it is a big issue, at least in the online world, in campaign world, in cable TV, you know, news, and so on, political podcast and so on, trans people and then trans sports.

There are, I've looked at the Williams Institute 'cause I never looked this up before, 56,000 estimated transgender folks in the state of Tennessee.

It's about 1% of adults, about 15,000 who are 13 to 17 years old, and about 20,000, 18 to 24.

Are transgender issues, whether it's sports, which gets a lot of attention, politicized attention, or just the right for young people to transition, are those issues you hear from voters?

And what is your take on those issues?

- I think voters want someone who will represent all Tennesseeans and treat them equally and fairly.

And I plan to do that.

I am supportive of the LGBTQ+ community.

I've been a strong ally for many years.

But mostly, people are worried about the cost of groceries.

They're worried about making ends meet.

They're worried about the schools their kids are going to.

And I'll say this on the sports, you know, the NCAA has said there are exactly 10 transgender athletes in every sport that they're a part of across the country.

So for me, this is just an issue to divide.

It is a culture war.

They want us going back and forth about transgender athletes instead of talking about the fact that millionaires, billionaires, and at least one trillionaire are being able to continue to live in exorbitant wealth while the rest of us are suffering.

- Let's talk about Marsha Blackburn here, "Secure our borders and deport all illegal aliens."

That's been part of the task force.

There's been a bigger ICE presence here and around the country.

Do you support what ICE is doing?

Do you support if people are here illegally, they should be picked up and taken out of the country?

- I support the legal process that we've had in place for many years that was run through the Department of Justice before we had ICE in place, before it was militarized, before it started murdering mothers on the street for exercising their First Amendment rights or nurses in the streets for exercising their First and Second Amendment rights.

So I think that ICE should be abolished and abandoned at this point, and that we should go back to the process that we had before to work through the system to get people out.

There are very few people that are being detained right now that actually have violent criminal histories.

Most of 'em don't have any history.

It's just a matter of a paperwork problem.

But they're filling up CoreCivic prisons, and CoreCivic is one of Marsha Blackburn's and Bill Lee's biggest donors.

- When you say abolish ICE, many people hear that as, "Oh, well, that means no border patrol.

"That means no one enforcing any sort of law around illegal immigration."

Is that what you mean?

- No, we have Customs and Border Patrol.

That's a whole separate unit, CPB.

We have Homeland Security, HSI, and DOJ can work through the legalities.

We have other institutions.

ICE has not been here for forever.

We believe that we should protect our borders, but our borders are actually with Mississippi who has better education, with Arkansas, who has better wages.

with Georgia that has a freeze on the gas tax.

That's who our borders are.

With Missouri that has cannabis that is legalized.

Our tax dollars, our people are going to those borders.

- One more, with apologies to Bill, just from this list from Marsha Blackburn's campaign site, and one of her first campaign ads, most recent campaign ad was about protecting American farmland from communist China.

Is that an issue as you were in rural Tennessee or, you know, farmland or talking to farmers, that Chinese ownership of farmland is happening?

- Is absolutely not an issue, and to your first point that she's gonna support Trump, the issue with farmers, and I have met sixth generation farmers, they're about to go bankrupt, the issue they have are directly tied back to Trump.

So his tariffs, when he goes on and off, the closing of the Strait of Hormuz because of the war in Iran is costing them with diesel and with fertilizer.

The immigration policies and the crackdowns are hurting them.

Even with people who are here legally, they're afraid to come to work, so their problems are traced back to Trump, not to China.

- Bill.

- This is a state, as we all know, of 95 counties.

Mountain City, which is, as long as I've been doing this, is a must-stop for candidates for governor.

It is closer to Canada than it is to Memphis.

So is your campaign about kind of like a miniature version of a presidential campaign?

Find a county here, here, here and put together that number of votes.

- Look, I've made 150 stops.

I've been all the way to Bristol to the other corner multiple times now.

They're great people in Northeast Tennessee, very energized, flipped some seats up there in this past election to Democrats for the first time ever.

Look, we have a very strategic plan.

We obviously have priority counties.

Look, we got to get out the vote here in Shelby.

It's where the most Democrats live.

But we also have to remind suburban voters that they're really more purple.

They've just been gerrymandered into being in red areas, so they should come out and vote.

It matters.

And we need to tell rural voters we're listening.

That's why I've made so many stops across the state, even in those tiny hollers up in East Tennessee.

- What did you see in the county by county result in your primary in those rural counties that surprised you and also kind of confirmed what you just said?

- So I think in my race, what we saw was a unified party that is backing my campaign in a strong manner and ready to get to work.

What surprised me was some of the things I saw on the other side of the aisle, like Marsha Blackburn not winning her home county in Williamson.

Those are the kinds of things that I think are canaries in the coal mine that are going to help us in November.

- Look, I should have also mentioned David Hatley is a independent candidate on the ballot.

Am I right about that?

I'm right about that, right?

- Mm-hmm.

- A Knoxville businessman - - There's several independent.

- There's 11.

- He's probably, yeah.

He's made the most noise with $6 million.

Do you look at that and any of the other independent candidates and feel like you have to compete against them as well?

- No.

We haven't had an independent win a statewide office in Tennessee for over a century.

Look across the country, there's not independent governors.

It is incredibly hard as an independent.

And I think whether it is Hatley or any others, they'll likely pull from Marsha Blackburn.

We've already seen her own party doesn't support her in the majority.

So I'm not worried about that.

I'm worried about turning out Democrats.

Like I said, we have the votes here.

If people want to come to vote for Jerri Green, even if they've never voted for a Democrat before, we're happy to have them because I plan to represent all Tennesseeans.

- Data centers is a major issue nationally.

It's a concern statewide.

It's obviously been a big topic of conversation with, you know, arguably one of the biggest supercomputers in the world just down the street from us.

- The biggest.

- The biggest, yeah, I mean.

What would your approach be if you win the Governor's Office to data centers both here in Memphis and beyond?

- I think everybody needs to learn from Memphis, and I've been saying that since xAI got here.

I know people think we have some secret bat phone, but I think I found out when Bill Dries told me that they were here already because they were under the zoning laws correctly.

So we've had to retroactively put in a bunch of legislation to try to stop further harm and to make sure the communities that are there benefit from the tax dollars that are raised.

So I would put a moratorium on the data centers until we can get a handle on this because here's what we're talking about, not just jobs, although that's important, but our air and our water, two things we literally cannot live without.

And while we have a large resource of water here, it is precious.

A lot of these places, the water will dry up, and we've seen it across the state, Nashville, McMinnville, Coffee County.

I mean, it's just spreading.

People don't want them in their backyard.

- Will you take a, I don't know what it would be, a leave of absence from the Public Defender's Office as they you into this full?

I mean, how do you balance that?

I mean, you're paid to be a public defender.

I mean, it's some amount of money to be a City Council person.

Will you take a leave from those two positions while campaigning?

- Well, I think this is the difference in having a working-class candidate and having somebody who has been a career politician.

I still have to work.

I still have bills to pay.

I still got kids I got to save for college.

And so I do my campaigning around my work, and I show it fully.

Again, my entourage can tell you we were in the office the last two days.

I'll be at City Council next Tuesday.

I have some resolutions coming forward.

I juggle a lot, but you know what they say?

If you want something done, give it to a busy woman.

- Entourage, by the way, is a joke.

You have security now.

Your governor, that's the state law.

- I don't have entourage.

- So there are two State Troopers sitting right here off camera.

So Bill, just a minute, two minutes left.

- You brought up some history in this.

You are the first Democratic nominee for Governor from Memphis since Malcolm Rice Patterson in 1906.

Talk a little bit about that because four years ago, your colleague, JB Smiley, just missed being the Democratic nominee by less than 1,500 votes.

Is there something going on on the Democratic base statewide?

- Well, I think it's important for Memphis to have representation because I think if you're not at the table, you're on the table.

And as you mentioned, we haven't been there for 100 years, so that's really important.

I do think there is something that happened, especially after they gerrymandered us.

You know, we saw a huge turnout.

I read your articles, so I know it's been at least a decade since we've had that kind of turnout.

And the people of Shelby County, of Memphis, are really mad about what the state's trying to do to them, and they see that there is a potential for us to take those three seats and the Governor's Office.

- So this election cycle has never hit 200,000 voters going back all the way to at least 1970.

Do you need 200,000-plus votes here?

- Yes, I think we do.

And I think we need big numbers everywhere.

Look, this is going to be hard, but what I tell my kids every day is hard is not impossible.

A lot of people stop at hard.

And we are in a really different political environment.

Please just look around the country.

Look in ruby red states.

Look at places that are flipping mayors, super majorities, you name it.

We are in a different space, mostly because of Trump, and I'm running against a person who has closely tied herself with Trump.

So I think this is going to be even bigger numbers than we've seen in the past.

- That is all the time we have this week.

Apparently, I referenced you as governor.

Sorry, you are a City Council person.

You are a Democratic candidate for governor.

- Nominee.

- You're a mom.

- All the things.

- You're trying to be governor.

So sorry about that.

And again, if you missed early in the show, we have reached out to Marsha Blackburn, the opponent, hoping to get her scheduled soon.

We've got Justin Pearson coming up in September.

We've reached out to Brent Taylor.

All the key candidates in these races leading up to November 3rd, we'll try to get them all on.

If you missed any of the show today, you can get the full episode online at wkno.org, The Daily Memphian, YouTube, or you can download the full show as a podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks very much, and we'll see you next week.

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