KELLY MCEVERS, HOST:
Hey. It's Kelly McEvers, and this is the third episode of Supermajority. If you haven't listened to the first two episodes, go back and start there. I just want to say before we get started there is some coarse language in this episode. OK, here's Meribah Knight.
MERIBAH KNIGHT, BYLINE: Mary Joyce and Melissa Alexander were exhausted after dealing with all the stress of the Statehouse, so they gathered some girlfriends to spend the weekend at a swanky wellness retreat just outside of Nashville, offering farm-to-table dining, rolling vineyards, massages, the works. It was supposed to be a moment to get away, to recharge. But after a couple glasses of wine, the conversation soon turned to something decidedly less zen.
MELISSA ALEXANDER: The House is so dysfunctional. I'm not sure...
KNIGHT: The Covenant women had hit a brick wall in their dealings at the Capitol. Nothing they were doing so far had gotten them the kind of progress they'd hoped - the meetings, the showing up day after day, the polite activism. So they started thinking about a pivot. Melissa's representative, Gino Bulso, was up for reelection in 2024. What if Melissa ran for office against him?
MARY JOYCE: We did weigh out pros and cons over dinner. Do you remember?
ALEXANDER: No.
JOYCE: And we were going through...
ALEXANDER: I probably blanked it out.
JOYCE: So we were - we had a - we were having a great time and shared, like, concerns, and OK, what are the pros? Could this happen?
KNIGHT: The pros - changing laws, preventing gun violence. Also pro - a woman in politics. They all agreed more of those were needed. The cons - it could hurt Melissa's high-powered commercial real estate career, which she'd worked so hard to establish in an industry dominated by men. Plus, her husband wasn't keen on the idea of her running. He was worried about Melissa putting herself out there in such a public way and what it might do to their family, which she gets.
ALEXANDER: If I ran, someone's going to put an attack out about, you know, who knows what? But, you know, it's just you become a very, very public person at that point, and that - you know, I don't want my young children to turn on the TV and be like, why are they talking about you?
KNIGHT: And then there's actually working in the Statehouse.
ALEXANDER: It is a very toxic environment.
KNIGHT: The women had already experienced some of this. During their year at the Statehouse, they felt like they'd been talked down to, their concerns dismissed. One senator had called them the attractive moms. Another representative had seen them going through security and asked, y'all having fun? - as if in their minds, their dealings at the Capitol were for sport.
ALEXANDER: And so is it, can you be more effective there, or can I be more effective out here in the real world?
KNIGHT: But if Melissa were to win and assume the role of a lawmaker, she'd be part of a kind of minority within the majority, a moderate Republican.
ALEXANDER: Because I am a Republican. OK? Just to get that straight, I am a Republican.
KNIGHT: And so she starts wondering, what can a moderate Republican actually do in Tennessee?
ALEXANDER: There's a lot of pressure to sit along party lines. That's going to be really tough because it's not who I am. You know, I'm not going to vote on party lines on things.
KNIGHT: I wanted to know what it looks like and feels like to be that Republican, a Republican who wants to stand firm and push back against the party. Can they change things, or do they end up in the crosshairs of their own colleagues? Today, in this episode, we spend a little time away from the women to tell a story, a cautionary tale, really, about what happens when you stand your ground against your own majority and then that ground shifts beneath you. From NPR's EMBEDDED and WPLN in Nashville, I'm Meribah Knight, and you're listening to Supermajority.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: Morning.
SAM WHITSON: Hey, Meribah. Come on in. It's going to be cold (ph).
KNIGHT: Hey.
WHITSON: How you doing?
KNIGHT: Good, thanks.
WHITSON: Would you like some coffee?
KNIGHT: It was late March when I invited myself to morning coffee at the Capitol with two Republican lawmakers.
RICHARD BRIGGS: Are you going to come up? Are you going to come up, or me come down?
WHITSON: I'm fixing her coffee here. Why don't you come on down?
BRIGGS: OK. OK, bye.
WHITSON: Bye.
KNIGHT: With Melissa in the throes of deciding whether or not she wants to become a lawmaker herself, one who would no doubt buck the majority at times, I wondered, what could I glean from a couple lawmakers who know exactly what that feels like?
They can learn something from you.
The guy fixing me coffee is Sam Whitson, a state representative from Williamson County. His district is right next to Gino Bulso's. The other guy coming to join us is state Senator Richard Briggs of Knox County in the eastern part of the state.
WHITSON: Here he comes.
BRIGGS: OK.
WHITSON: Look who I found, Doc.
KNIGHT: Whitson calls him Doc because Briggs is a doctor. He's been a heart and lung surgeon for over 30 years.
Hi, Dr. Briggs.
BRIGGS: Hey, how are you?
KNIGHT: Nice to see you.
BRIGGS: Yeah.
KNIGHT: Briggs and Whitson have been doing these coffee dates for the past eight years, every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Usually, other lawmakers join, too. But today, they're a bit media shy. So it's just Briggs and Whitson.
WHITSON: The senator comes down, and he shares what's going on in the Senate. We share what's going on in the House.
KNIGHT: It's kind of like a social club for Republican legislators, a coffee klatch. They swap stories, tell jokes. And naturally, they talk politics.
BRIGGS: It allows us to - you know, we can really talk about things. We're not judgmental on people, and we had a lot of different views this morning.
KNIGHT: But as these coffee chats have gone on year after year, Briggs and Whitson say they've watched a shift play out among their colleagues. And similar to the women, they've been asking themselves, what's happened to the Republican Party?
BRIGGS: Some of what's called conservative these days I don't consider conservative.
WHITSON: I think the pandemic really caused a lot of issues that we're still dealing with.
BRIGGS: There's almost an anti-science bias.
WHITSON: Yes. Do not believe these radical conspiracy theories you read about.
KNIGHT: This is why I'm here - because Briggs and Whitson, they're lifelong Republicans, Army veterans, old-school statesmen. But these days, they've become outsiders. And this group of guys they drink coffee with - they lean on each other. Sometimes, they refer to themselves as the common-sense caucus.
BRIGGS: Culture wars aren't my primary concern as a legislator. My primary concern deals with education and children's future, jobs...
KNIGHT: These coffees...
BRIGGS: ...Public safety...
KNIGHT: ...They're also numbered. Whitson is retiring after this session, and he's not the only legislator like them signing off at the Statehouse. Senator Art Swann, another more moderate lawmaker, is retiring, too. Politics has gotten too polarized, Whitson says, not just in Tennessee but in Washington, too.
WHITSON: I think you see a lot of people leaving Congress because they're caught in a position where if you tell the truth, you're considered a traitor or a RINO or even worse.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: So soon, Briggs will be down a couple of allies, or maybe he'll gain one in Melissa. The women, by the way, know Briggs and Whitson pretty well. They see them as allies within the Statehouse. Whitson has even helped the women with their advocacy ahead of the special session. They agree on most everything when it comes to gun control. The women said they see these guys as fellow moderate Republicans.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: But to be clear, Briggs doesn't see himself that way.
BRIGGS: I don't self-identify as a moderate Republican. I think I'm a very conservative Republican. I don't want the government interfering in my life.
KNIGHT: What Briggs tells me is something that Melissa has told me before, too, that the party they've always identified with has changed.
BRIGGS: And I think now conservative is someone who's trying to get every little thing into a person's life. And I don't think that's conservative.
KNIGHT: So where does that leave someone like Briggs and someone like Melissa?
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: When I met Briggs, it was striking to me just how similar he was to Melissa - a lifelong conservative but not always a follower of local politics until 2008, when Briggs had just returned home from serving as an Army doctor in Afghanistan and Iraq. Briggs was in his late 50s, and he felt he was too old to deploy again, but he wanted to find some other way to serve.
At that point in your life, did you have any political ambitions?
BRIGGS: No. Zero.
KNIGHT: Zero.
BRIGGS: Zero.
KNIGHT: But Briggs' home county, Knox - almost 200 miles east of Nashville - was in a tumultuous moment. There had been mismanagement on the county commission - some shady dealings that led to the dismissal of a dozen county officials. And Briggs thought someone had to step up.
BRIGGS: So I literally went across the street that day and picked up a petition at the county courthouse.
KNIGHT: He ran for county commission. A conservative Republican with proven leadership, said a newspaper ad at the time. He won. As a county commissioner, Briggs started paying more attention to local politics, and he started seeing other Republicans get elected. But he felt like some of them had a very different idea about what being conservative meant. Like Melissa, he wasn't happy with his representative - in this case, his Republican state senator, a guy named Stacey Campfield.
BRIGGS: There's some people who just are an embarrassment to our community and to our state.
KNIGHT: Stacey Campfield had made a name for himself by pushing provocative far-right legislation. He sponsored a bill to issue death certificates to aborted fetuses. He argued that the state's Black Caucus was racist to not allow him - a white guy - in. And he sponsored what became known as a Don't Say Gay bill and compared homosexuality to bestiality. Stacey Campfield couldn't be reached for this story. Briggs felt like Campfield wasn't truly representing his community and his district, and he couldn't sit there watching this guy continue to cast votes on his behalf.
BRIGGS: I just wanted to have someone who I felt represented the values of our community better.
KNIGHT: The Senate seat was up for reelection in 2014, in a solidly Republican district. If Briggs won the primary, he would win the general election hands down. And so Briggs decided to run against Campfield.
BRIGGS: I went out every day between 15 of February and the first Thursday in August, knocking on doors, including Sunday afternoons. I knocked on - personally - 12,000 doors.
KNIGHT: He raised about $500,000 - courted both Republican and Democratic voters. And in the end, it all worked. He won - beat an incumbent, which is no small thing.
BRIGGS: And we won big. After all the hard work, I felt really good, I mean, just almost on a high that we had gotten it done.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: Briggs thought he knew what he was up against.
BRIGGS: I knew that we were going to have lobbyists. You know, I knew there would be some pressures to always tow the party line.
KNIGHT: The majority that shocks the women today - it had really just taken shape when Briggs arrived at the Statehouse in 2014. They were already trying to pass bills, loosening regulations around guns, tightening abortion restrictions and rolling back health care provisions, the last of which Briggs found especially alarming. And so right from the jump, he found himself in an uncomfortable position.
Do you remember the first time that you bucked the majority?
BRIGGS: It was my very first day up here.
KNIGHT: Tell me more.
BRIGGS: The very first week of that session was Governor Haslam's...
KNIGHT: Then-Governor Bill Haslam, a big business Republican, was committed to expanding Medicaid, and Briggs agreed.
BRIGGS: I'm one of these people that believe that healthcare coverage is a right.
KNIGHT: But public healthcare was not popular among the Republican establishment in the legislature. To this day, Tennessee is one of just 10 states that refuses to expand Medicaid. So just like Governor Lee did in 2023 with the special session around guns and public safety, Haslam called his own special session to try to expand Medicaid.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RUSTY CROWE: I will ask the clerk to take a vote. Mr. Clerk, would you please call a roll?
KNIGHT: Briggs was assigned to the first committee that the expansion bill had to go through.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
RUSSELL HUMPHREY: Senator Briggs.
BRIGGS: Yes.
HUMPHREY: Senator Briggs votes aye.
KNIGHT: Briggs was only one of four people to vote yes.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
HUMPHREY: Four ayes, seven nays, zero present aye (ph) voting.
CROWE: Motion fails.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: Haslam's Medicaid expansion bill never got out of committee, never got to a general vote. And this was Briggs' welcome to the big leagues. He got to see where the party stood and how he felt about not standing with it.
BRIGGS: It doesn't bother me to go against the grain on people. And if some people don't like what I want, that's their problem (laughter).
KNIGHT: Ever since Briggs entered office in 2015, what he's found most frustrating is that he just doesn't think that a lot of Republicans are actually representing their constituents and the issues most relevant to them.
BRIGGS: We're not necessarily doing things that even the conservative citizens of the state want.
KNIGHT: The Vanderbilt poll we mentioned in the last episode shows this, how many Republican constituents don't agree with their legislators on things like guns and abortion. And so Briggs tries to push back against bills he thinks don't serve the public interest.
He voted no on a bill that would allow people to carry handguns without a permit. The bill passed anyway. He's been outspoken that the COVID vaccine is effective when many people in his party were not. And when Trump lost the election in 2020, he was one of only two Republican state senators in Tennessee who refused to sign a letter supporting Trump's false claims that the election had been stolen.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: But Briggs also realizes that he can't always assume the position of contrarian in his party. That doesn't really help him in the long term. He has to pick his battles.
BRIGGS: Some things - it's just not worth a big fight over what I consider to be inconsequential.
KNIGHT: Inconsequential to him. He supported bills that many people feel are quite consequential.
BRIGGS: My primary concern is not whether boys wear earrings or dresses or some - you know, whatever.
KNIGHT: But he voted to ban drag performances in public spaces. It was the first legislation of its kind in the country. When it comes to guns, he's in favor of background checks and red flag laws. But the first bill he ever sponsored was one to prohibit Tennessee from following any federal gun control laws.
And so I wanted you to explain those decisions to me.
BRIGGS: Yeah. I very - I'll tell you very well. I - and sometimes, it makes you seem like you waffle, or you're going to change your mind. But actually, the research - let's go those...
KNIGHT: Briggs is aware that he can be a little inconsistent in how he votes on issues. But he tells me he always has a reason - an informed one. And he trusts that the system, with its checks and balances, will generally correct itself via disgruntled constituents, amendments, even lawsuits. Case in point - the drag show ban was ultimately overturned in federal court. This is all to say Briggs has found a way to work within this system, despite all the big personalities and special interests that he thinks have too much say in the Statehouse.
BRIGGS: Whoever screams the loudest gets heard, even though they're out of step with the general Republican voters. The voices are so strong up here that people are afraid to do what the majority of even conservative Republicans...
KNIGHT: Yeah.
BRIGGS: ...Would like to have done. That's what's frustrating.
KNIGHT: And do you see that as disruptive?
BRIGGS: I don't know if it's disruptive, but it's not good democracy.
KNIGHT: But Briggs is about to discover that the outside forces governing the majority are much, much bigger than he ever imagined. And what will happen to him is basically Melissa's worst-case scenario for what might happen to her if she's elected - becoming a loser on the winning team. That's after the break.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: A good example of how powerful these outside forces can be and how powerless lawmakers can be to resist them is the story of Briggs and Tennessee's abortion ban.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
MIKE BELL: Members, we're now on item No. 20, Senate bill 1257. Senator Gresham, you're recognized.
KNIGHT: In 2019, three years before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a trigger law to ban abortion started circulating among Tennessee legislators.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DOLORES GRESHAM: This bill is the Human Life Protection Act. It's also called a trigger bill, and I'll explain why as I go through it. The bill is...
KNIGHT: Trigger laws are kind of a funny legislative tool.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: When they're signed into law, they don't really do anything. They're basically there as a what-if. This one was built for a post-Roe world. If the Supreme Court's decision was overturned, Tennessee's ban on abortion would go into effect. Briggs, by now, had just been reelected for the first time. And as a doctor, he was not for a total abortion ban.
BRIGGS: I hate to call it abortion because it's not abortion. It's a medical necessary termination of pregnancy. So you can save a woman's life, or you can preserve her fertility to where she can have children in the future, which I think is very, very important.
KNIGHT: He didn't think Roe would ever fall.
BRIGGS: We had a half a century of Roe. We had a half a century, and nothing had happened.
KNIGHT: But Briggs still decided to come out in support of the trigger bill because he thought in the unlikely event that Roe did fall and chaos ensued, there should be something in place.
BRIGGS: Are you going to have mobs - literally mobs outside an abortion clinic shooting people? Are they going to be burning the places down? But you just don't know what's going to happen if you have nothing there.
KNIGHT: And also, the trigger law, he thought, could always be tweaked, amended or challenged.
BRIGGS: If Roe was overturned, we would have to come back and do some things to fix it.
KNIGHT: Briggs believes that putting something - some kind of law on the books - is better than nothing. And if the legislation isn't perfect, well, they can always fix it later.
BRIGGS: We do that with bills all the time. You know, we have bills. We find out there's problems or something's not working back. I mean, we have over a 200-year history of making laws in Tennessee. We don't always get it right the first time, and you have to go back and change things.
KNIGHT: He'd come to find out that he was wrong.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: For years, the anti-abortion movement had been making a slow and steady march toward banning abortion. It's a bit hard to trace back who exactly wrote every word of Tennessee's trigger bill. But that's true with a lot of bills like this pushed by single-issue special interest groups. But what we know is that it was shepherded by an anti-abortion group called Tennessee Right to Life and seems similar to others from national anti-abortion organizations, like Americans United for Life.
Organizations like these churn out what's called model legislation - essentially boilerplate bills written by a special interest group that get handed off to lawmakers to try and pass. It's been used not just in Tennessee but also across the country, reshaping the power and position of state legislatures.
BRIGGS: The reason we're seeing that more and more and more is because there really and truly is gridlock in Congress. And it used to be before, if there was a national organization, they could go to Congress. They could get their lobbyists. They'd spend a lot of money. They could get their bills through, and it was the law of the land.
KNIGHT: He's right. With Congress passing so little, organizations had to look elsewhere to get their ideas implemented, and that became the states. So middleman organizations began to pop up, often serving groups with conservative interests - oil and gas production, gun rights, immigration, abortion - and they would draft model legislation that they offered up to state lawmakers across the country, who could then propose them in their statehouses.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: Tennessee Right to Life, the group that formulated the trigger bill, is one such organization. It's an affiliate of the National Right to Life Committee. For years, they have lobbied for anti-abortion legislation, slowly and methodically chipping away at abortion access and making the timeline to get abortions shorter and shorter - 20 weeks, 15 weeks, six weeks. Then in February 2019, Tennessee's trigger bill was filed quietly, at least in Briggs' recollection.
So you don't recall, like, colleagues talking about it - reporters?
BRIGGS: I don't remember a single reporter calling me. I don't remember any of the print reporters calling - oh, what do you think about this? I don't remember getting a single email or a single letter from a constituent about it or a single phone call.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: The bill passed easily along party lines and sat on the shelf for three years until June of 2022, when the Supreme Court ruled to overturn Roe. Two months later, Tennessee's trigger bill went into effect.
(SOUNDBITE OF WBIR-TV BROADCAST)
JOHN BECKER: This marks day one of a post-Roe Tennessee - the Supreme Court overturning the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion ruling earlier this summer. It paved the way for states to add restrictions or ban abortion. And today, the Tennessee trigger law took effect.
ROBIN WILHOIT: That law makes it a felony for someone to provide one. 10News reporter...
KNIGHT: It was the moment Briggs never thought would ever come - Roe being overturned - like space aliens arriving, he once told me. But here it was.
So you really thought Roe wasn't going to be overturned?
BRIGGS: I didn't think it would be overturned.
KNIGHT: I feel like that's so...
BRIGGS: ...Naive (laughter).
KNIGHT: I think a little bit. I mean, this has been - you know, this has been a target of the pro-life movement for decades.
BRIGGS: I just felt like history was on my side.
KNIGHT: But that wasn't enough. Abortions in Tennessee were now banned under virtually any circumstance. And what's more, Briggs had helped it come to pass. He now had to find a way to roll back what he had a hand in making. So he started going on news shows, coming out against the bill.
(SOUNDBITE OF WBIR-TV BROADCAST)
BRIGGS: We've really put our doctors into a difficult position. And the question is, do you have...
KNIGHT: And ever since, he's been trying to carve out exceptions in the law. Almost a year after the trigger law went into effect, Briggs came to session prepared with fixes. He was able to get an amendment passed, an exception for the life of the mother and for ectopic pregnancies. But Briggs says he wasn't happy with the win.
BRIGGS: 'Cause it was not enough. We did not address the severe fetal anomalies. We did not address the potential for infertility. We also have the rape and incest issue, particularly on a minor.
KNIGHT: This session, he's continuing his fight for more exceptions. He wants to file a bill to allow abortions in the case of severe fetal anomalies where the child would never survive outside the womb. Briggs has done polling on this issue and others. And he says he knows his constituents - his Republican constituents - support a policy like this. He showed me one day in his office the breakdown of what his polling shows.
BRIGGS: You take this 24%. But then you take the 34%. You're up to 60% that there has to be exceptions for it. I mean...
KNIGHT: Sixty percent - that's the number of Republican constituents in his district that he says believe that abortion should either be legal, or there must be wide-ranging exceptions, like rape and incest and if the life of the mother is at risk. It's not just his constituents who feel this way. Briggs says that at least privately, a lot of his colleagues at the Capitol agree that there should be exceptions, but few are willing to join him in getting anything passed.
And also, powerful lobbying organizations like Tennessee Right to Life are trying to get him to stop. They published a press release where they revoked their endorsement of Briggs because of his changed views on the trigger law.
BRIGGS: That just said, you know, this was an evil person who was a liar. He doesn't tell the truth about things. He misrepresents things. And this was a press release.
KNIGHT: They didn't literally call him evil, but they did say he was not honest. Obviously, Senator Briggs can no longer be trusted by the voters, said the organization's president. I suppose this is what Melissa's husband was talking about that she put in her cons column about running for office - the brutality of the public eye.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: But Briggs isn't giving in to the pressure.
BRIGGS: These are life and death issues, and that starts to get - and whether you can have a family or not, whether you can have children or not. And this is just one of the most basic rights. And when the government tells you, we're not going to allow you to be treated. We're not - that's going to result in you aren't going to have a family. Your life may be endangered because of it. It's just wrong.
KNIGHT: For weeks, Briggs works his fetal anomaly bill. He finds a sponsor, since he's too radioactive on the issue and can't carry the bill himself. He talks with the bill's lobbyists, who start counting votes, but Republicans won't touch it. And even though Briggs' bill would add more flexibility for abortions to happen, some progressive voters still aren't happy with him, and they let him know. One time, during a phone call with Briggs, he played me a voicemail that was left by one of them.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: You're a f***ing doctor. You knew better than this. You pandered to the right for political means...
KNIGHT: It seems exhausting being caught in the middle like this. But Briggs rolls with it, even making a quip after the voicemail ends.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Republican fascist f***. F*** off.
BRIGGS: Thank you very much, sir. Glad to hear from you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: In the end, despite all of his efforts, Briggs couldn't get any momentum on the fetal anomaly bill. It fizzled out before it ever went to committee, the first big hurdle for every bill. And the whole ordeal left Briggs a bit reflective. In our early meetings, he was adamant that he didn't regret helping pass the trigger bill back in 2019. That's just not true, he told me. But now...
Is there anything that you can remember that - like, if you could have a redo - that you would have voted differently?
BRIGGS: You know, I wish that I could have maybe voted differently on the abortion stand, the trigger bill.
KNIGHT: How would you have thought about it differently?
BRIGGS: I don't know. I mean, I don't know. Well, see - maybe I'm trying to justify it to myself, saying that we maybe should have done something different.
KNIGHT: Briggs isn't up for reelection for another two years. So he says he won't stop fighting. He'll be back next year to try and push for abortion exceptions again. But things will be different. Some of his like-minded colleagues - like Whitson and Swann - they'll be gone. And this year, half of his Senate colleagues are up for reelection. And there are a handful of far-right challengers going up against incumbent Republicans.
BRIGGS: The problem is, no matter how bad I want something - and I can - you know, you do have an influence up here, but one person is not going to be able to overturn what 120 other people do.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: Melissa Alexander and the other Covenant moms feel those seemingly insurmountable odds, too. When they first started their journey to influence legislators, they also felt like outsiders in their own party, unable to get anything done. But as they fall deeper into local politics, they also see their impact working on the inside. They're building relationships...
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
SARAH SHOOP NEUMANN: Hey, Senator Bailey.
PAUL BAILEY: Hey.
ALEXANDER: Melissa Alexander. I don't think I've met you yet. I'm...
KNIGHT: ...Even writing some legislation.
BAILEY: Yeah. So - and they were supposed to let you know that we - I took kind of your recommendation...
SHOOP NEUMANN: Oh.
BAILEY: ...On that.
SHOOP NEUMANN: Can I give you a hug? I didn't see that yet.
BAILEY: Yeah. Yeah.
KNIGHT: What if Melissa runs and she's the exception - proof that a candidate can deviate and still win?
ALEXANDER: I want to send a message that someone who supports safer gun laws is supported by the people in Tennessee and maybe ousts somebody who is the - quite the opposite - right? - to send kind of this ripple effect through the legislature and show them that, hey, I won't get reelected if I vote for these laws.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: That's after the break.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: In early March, Melissa was inching her way towards announcing her candidacy for state House. The idea of standing up to the Republican establishment was exciting to her. What she envisioned would essentially be a single-issue platform, a Republican woman for gun control. One day, when she was at her son's baseball game looking at uniforms, she started thinking about a campaign logo. So she called up a friend.
ALEXANDER: I was really kind of energized that day. Then I was like, I love these colors, and I think I like more of a sans serif font. You know, we're just kind of getting into the weeds on something like that. And I said...
KNIGHT: But even as a single-issue candidate, Melissa began opening up, being more willing to take on other issues, just as any general candidate might need to do during a campaign.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: On her Instagram - her social media platform of choice - she started to weigh in on other matters, giving her unvarnished opinions on how poorly Democratic lawmakers were being treated and how she's against banning books and that Gino Bulso's flag bill would inevitably lead to vulnerable children being bullied.
And when the Alabama court decision came out, halting IVF procedures, she wrote plainly that she was, quote, "100% certain this has gone too far." But running for office isn't just logos and Instagram posts. There's a lot to do before Melissa can officially throw her hat in the ring.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: She's been having a lot of meetings with strategists and high-ranking members of the GOP to feel out a potential run. She's brought along her friend, Christina, to all of these meetings for support.
ALEXANDER: She - yes.
CHRISTINA: Thankfully, she lets me join and kind of go along for the ride.
ALEXANDER: Thankfully, she comes along 'cause I feel like...
KNIGHT: But they say responses have been a mixed bag. Some have clearly stated their allegiance to Bulso, and others have said...
CHRISTINA: He said, I can't publicly endorse you, but I will help you behind closed doors.
ALEXANDER: Oh, a couple of people refused to meet with me.
CHRISTINA: Oh, yes. A couple of people refused to meet with her.
ALEXANDER: And I've got their names in my head, right?
CHRISTINA: Yeah.
KNIGHT: They tell me that some of the Republican strategists they've spoken to are less willing to bet on challengers like Melissa. The party has become too entrenched, they say, and putting your support behind an outsider can burn bridges at the Statehouse and get you on the wrong side of the GOP. But strategists also had another thing to say - that Melissa might not even be allowed to get on the Republican ballot in the first place.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: The Tennessee GOP bylaws say that in order to run for office as a Republican, one must be a, quote, "bona fide," which, among other things, means that you must have voted in three out of the last four Republican primaries.
ALEXANDER: That was a shocker to me because I think a lot of people would say, hey, I'm a Republican, but they don't realize that the rules make it so difficult to get on the ballot.
KNIGHT: Melissa hadn't voted in a primary since 2014. The Tennessee GOP's complicated rules to get on a ballot are definitely unusual compared to most other states, according to our research. And they've only gotten more restrictive over the last decade. Now, if you sue the party, you can't run as a Republican for the next 10 years. And if you voted in a Democratic primary in any of the last four elections, you're automatically ineligible to run.
ALEXANDER: I would talk to people who are - you know, who are in this political world. And I would say, do you realize that it's really tough to get on the Republican ballot? And I really do think those rules keep the moderate Republican out.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: We should say Melissa could still file for candidacy. Nothing stops you from doing that. But it would almost be like an act of protest or maybe wishful thinking. And even if she were eligible to run as a Republican...
ALEXANDER: Even if you meet all those requirements, you can still have somebody kind of contest your candidacy. And then it goes to some committee.
KNIGHT: A committee made up of bona fide GOP members - the Contest and Credentials Committee - would make the final decision. And Melissa figured her high profile, as one of the Covenant moms, might outweigh the GOP's technicalities. She tells me she said as much in one of her meetings with a party official, who told her...
ALEXANDER: Well, I've kicked people off before. That's - we've pushed them off the ballot before. And I said, have they been a Covenant mother (laughter) who has said they're a Republican? I try to remind them, like, do you realize what you're saying? Because I don't think you're thinking through the implications of what this would - how this would affect the party if you do this.
KNIGHT: They would be kicking off the mother of a mass shooting survivor, she says, a well-known one and a Republican who's been covered by national media.
ALEXANDER: If you guys kick me off the ballot, you're going to - it's going to be, like, a national news story, and that is not my intention here. I don't want to, like, put the party on blast. I don't want to do all of that. I just want to be able to run.
KNIGHT: They'd made exceptions before for a few school board candidates. Maybe they could again, Melissa thought.
ALEXANDER: But I still was, like, really nervous about the vitriol that would come from getting kicked off. And I'm not sure I was, like, wanting to do all of that, you know, cause that much of a stir.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
ALEXANDER: And so my mind would go back and forth. I'm ready. I can do this. I can handle it - all the pressure, all the press, all the comments, all the things. And then I'd be like, no, I don't think - I just - I don't know. I'm not - I don't want to be thrown into this world in such a bold way.
KNIGHT: Melissa still isn't sure if she's willing to step into the spotlight and run for office because the pressure won't go away if she ends up winning. She'll be a standout moderate in the party. And if Briggs' story tells us anything, it's that if you stand out, you will always be a target.
In the meantime, Melissa does what she can to keep her options open. And next time on Supermajority, she'll find out just how treacherous the spotlight can be.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
KNIGHT: Supermajority from EMBEDDED is a collaboration with WPLN News in Nashville. This episode was produced and sound designed by Dan Girma, with help from Ariana Lee. Our senior producer is Adelina Lancianese. She and Alex Kotlowitz edited the series. Katie Simon is our supervising editor. Irene Noguchi is our executive producer for NPR's Enterprise Storytelling Unit.
Additional reporting and production help from Katia Riddle and David Gutherz. Robert Rodriguez mastered the program. Fact-checking by Katie Daugert and Rachel Brown. With WPLN News in Nashville, Mack Linebaugh is our vice president of audience engagement. Tony Gonzalez is our news director, and Rachel Iacovone is our director of multiplatform publishing. Thanks to our managing editor of standards and practices, Tony Cavin, and to Ashley Messenger for legal support. Special thanks to Kelly McEvers, Luis Trelles, Ryland Barton and NPR's marketing department, as well as Erik Schelzig (ph), Kimberlee Kruesi (ph), Molly Pratt (ph) and Jessica Hansen.
And a big thanks to our EMBEDDED+ supporters. EMBEDDED is where we do ambitious long-form journalism at NPR. And EMBEDDED+ helps keep that work going. Supporters also get to listen to every EMBEDDED series sponsor-free and every episode early. Find out more at plus.npr.org/embedded or find the EMBEDDED channel on Apple. I'm Meribah Knight. This is EMBEDDED from NPR. Thanks for listening.
Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.