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One Tough Mother: Jerri Green Is Walking Tennessee Toward November
Tennessee's Democratic nominee for governor took our call mid-walk near her Memphis home — and talked National Guard recalls, redistricting, data centers, school vouchers, the state budget, and why she's not quitting her day job.
| By Shawnee Calhoun | Scarlett's Media | August 26, 2026 | Memphis, TN |
Jerri Green, Democratic nominee for Tennessee governor | Credit: Green for Governor campaign
Jerri Green answered the phone from a walk near her house, out of studio lights, trying to fit one more thing into a day that already had too many. Before we could get into policy, there was the matter of proving she was actually herself, so Green walked the rest of the way home — messy bun and all — and laughed when she got there: “Really me? Really me and my messy bun.” Her response summed up the whole conversation: “Real life working class candidate. Imagine that.”
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Shop This DealThat's not a slogan. It's her actual life. Green is a practicing public defender, a wife, and a mother of school-age children, including a child with autism, and she has no plans to give up her job while she runs. “People keep asking me, they're like, ‘Are you still going to keep your job?’ And I'm like, ‘Well, I happen to not be a millionaire.’ So, yes, I'll show up to my job,” she said. It's the same reason she takes meetings on foot when she can — she told me she loves a walking meeting because she can focus better while she's walking — fitting the job of running for governor around the job of, well, working.
A Historic Nomination
Green made history this month as the first woman nominated by either major party for governor of Tennessee, and the first woman ever nominated by Tennessee Democrats. Asked what that means for how the state sees female leadership, she didn't reach for a victory lap. “I think I stand on the shoulders of many trailblazers that have made it possible for me to be here,” she said. “The facts bear out that when you elect women, more stuff gets done and it helps more people.”
“My slogan is ‘one tough mother.’ You don't have to be a mother to govern, but if you govern like a mother, you're going to help the most people.”
— Jerri Green, Democratic Nominee for Governor
An Unconventional, Grassroots Campaign
Asked what unconventional moves she's making ahead of November, Green pointed to the campaign itself. “We are not doing things the way that most other people who've run for governor on either side of the aisle have done,” she said. “We're kind of outside of not only the corporate PACs and billionaires and that sort of stuff, but we're also outside of the establishment Democrats at this point. So we're just trying to meet people where they are, talk to them about the real issues and offer solutions.” She pointed to Tennessee, and Memphis in particular, as ground zero for Project 2025. “I've been worried since last year when the National Guard got here and I would travel around the state and I would tell people that their hotel rooms were booked through November of 2026 and nobody believed me. But here we are almost in September of 2026 and they're still here, and that's very concerning to me.”
Recalling the National Guard
On the Guard's continued presence in Memphis, Green was direct: she would recall the troops immediately, calling the deployment an unconstitutional occupation under both the state and federal constitutions. She pointed to 300 people detained in a Memphis nightclub last weekend under what officials described as an over-occupancy inspection — and to her own questioning of Memphis Police Chief C.J. Davis, who told a city council committee the Guard has no arresting power. “As soon as they say you can't leave, you are under arrest,” Green said. “They can say ‘detained’ all they want.”
“It's about a million dollars a day that we're spending to have the National Guard here.”
— Jerri Green, Democratic Nominee for Governor
A Public Defender's Platform
Green's legal career shapes what she says she'd do on day one. “There are certain things that I would do by Executive Order that are informed by my experience as a public defender,” she said. “For example, I would end the contracts with CoreCivic because I don't think you should be profiting off of people who are in prison. It's inhumane.” She said she'd push the legislature toward bipartisan support for legalizing medicinal and recreational marijuana, and would veto “blatantly unconstitutional and discriminatory laws that are hate-filled against our LGBTQ+ siblings, or women, or immigrants,” even knowing a veto could be overridden. On redistricting, she's prepared to call special session after special session — a maneuver, she noted, that also blocks legislators from fundraising while they're in Nashville. “We're going to keep them there for as long as it takes to get them to come to the table and come to their senses.”
Redistricting Memphis Out of Power
On the maps that split Memphis across U.S. House Districts 5, 8 and 9, Green didn't mince words. “Independent studies have shown they're racist,” she said. “They don't like the way we look. They don't like the way we vote. And that's why they redrew it.” She noted the irony in Republican strategist Brent Taylor's own words: “I know Brent Taylor likes to say, ‘We're going to make Memphis matter,’ but they just made them matter. We are seeing a large jump in the numbers of people who are coming out to vote, and we have enough voters here to take all three of those, so they really may have messed up here.” Invoking the late Congressman John Lewis and the Voting Rights Act, she said the goal is to “restore the power of Black Memphians in particular, because what they did was blatantly racist.”
Staying Connected From Nashville
Much of a governor's work happens far from Memphis, so I asked how her team plans to stay connected to District 2 and Shelby County. Green pointed to the letters she reads from across the state — from “people who are being forced to carry fatal pregnancies until they become septic, people who are going bankrupt because of a medical diagnosis, single moms who are struggling to put food on the table and going hungry at night” — and pledged to keep holding free, open town halls and to meet with local mayors region by region, something she said the current governor has not done in office. “Brian Stevenson says this — that you have to get proximate to people and their problems before you can solve them,” she said. She described a food bank visit on Park Avenue the day before our call, where people lined up at midnight and the pantry had roughly half its usual supply because of SNAP cuts. “And then I came home to a headline that said the state has a $1.2 billion surplus,” she said.
“You've got to get out and see people in their moments of pain if you're going to actually make a difference.”
— Jerri Green, Democratic Nominee for Governor
Closing the Gap With Marsha Blackburn
Green won her primary with 240,638 votes; Marsha Blackburn won hers with roughly 67,684 more. Asked how supporters can help close that gap, Green pointed to Republicans who didn't turn out for Blackburn and are looking for common ground on a data center moratorium, reining in Flock camera surveillance, and opposing school vouchers. “That's not a partisan issue,” she said. “We don't have to move the suburbs from bright red to bright blue; we need to move them from pink to lavender.” In rural areas, she said the campaign plans to talk directly about farmers, rural infrastructure, and the opioid crisis. On the ground, that means the basics: door-knocking, phone banking, text banking, postcard writing — including, that same night, an event at Cross Town Brewery where volunteers wrote postcards with puppies over pints. “Times are really hard,” she said, “and just know there's other people out there that are in the fight with you.”
The Data Center Moratorium, Explained
On the data centers moving into South Memphis, Green wants a statewide pause while regulators study electric rates, environmental impact, and jobs — before, not after, the harm is done. Asked to explain what a moratorium actually means, she compared it to the dawn of the Industrial Revolution: “There's some great things that came out of the Industrial Revolution — we're all sitting here in air conditioning right now on a phone talking to each other. But there were a lot of harms at the beginning, too. There were factories with black clouds of smoke, and so we had the EPA come in. There was child labor, so we put in child labor laws. There were people who were getting injured on the job, losing limbs in factories, so we put in OSHA.” During a pause, she said, the state should study air and noise quality, push data centers off temporary turbines and onto solar and battery power sooner, require graywater recycling facilities, and make sure the centers — not residential customers — go offline first during brownouts. “We just put humans and families above corporations.”
Budget Priorities: Housing, Wages, and Memphis's Fair Share
Green said her first budget would put more TANF dollars toward housing vouchers, with a particular focus on homeless veterans, and pointed to the state's $7.25 minimum wage as a housing problem in its own right — “you can't afford first and last month's rent” on it, she said, let alone “a full McDonald's meal.” On Memphis specifically, she argued the state has starved the city of investment for a century. “We have not had a governor who was born and raised in Memphis for over a hundred years. When you're not at the table, you're on the table.” (Tennessee's last Memphis-born governor, Malcolm R. Patterson, left office in 1911.) She traced the city's most-cited problems back to Nashville: loose gun laws she linked to 40 percent of violent crime, education funding pulled out for vouchers, and a refusal to fund Region One Health Center's rebuild — the region's only level-one trauma center, and the hospital where, she said, Tennessee's highest-in-the-nation infant and maternal mortality rates hit Black mothers and babies hardest.
“When you're not at the table, you're on the table.”
— Jerri Green, Democratic Nominee for Governor
Vouchers: “Public Funds Belong in Public Schools”
Green said she'd move voucher funding back into public schools, citing Tennessee comptroller data showing the average voucher household earns six figures — and could already afford private school — alongside new TCAP results showing only 17 percent of voucher recipients passed math and 24 percent passed reading at grade level. Lawmakers have since dropped the TCAP reporting requirement for vouchers, meaning this is the last year that data will even be available. “Public funds belong in public schools for the public good,” she said. “That's your future workforce. That's your future, period.” As the mother of an autistic child with kids currently in public school, she called the issue personal, not abstract, and said she'll spend the legislative session holding pro-voucher representatives accountable in their own small towns — billboards included. “Representative So-and-So thinks that he shouldn't fund your public schools.”
No Income Tax, But Maybe a Marijuana Tax
Asked whether Tennessee's millionaire class could be fairly taxed to fund private schools, Green noted the state has no income tax — it's barred in the state constitution, an amendment Marsha Blackburn championed in 1999 — and no interest in reviving a statewide property tax that hasn't been collected since 1949. Her preferred fix is better budgeting of what the state already has: a $1.2 billion surplus, a $2 billion rainy day fund, and hundreds of millions in unspent TANF dollars. The one new tax she'd support is on legalized marijuana, funding what she calls “pot for potholes,” mental health services, and substance abuse training. She pointed to the state's THC ban as a cautionary tale: “We've already seen with the ban of THC, we've lost $54 million in a matter of months.”
A Message for White Station's Seniors
Running short on time — she had another interview waiting — I closed with a bonus question: a message for the incoming senior class at her alma mater, White Station High School, where her own son is a junior. “Onward, Spartans! Class of '96,” Green said, laughing. “Look, I would just say enjoy your final year because I loved, loved, loved high school. I still love White Station. I'm still close with so many of my White Station friends. And I would do my senior year all over again. So like, enjoy it, soak it up. And you know, try not to take on too many AP classes because it's high pressure there, man.”
From the Green for Governor campaign's own social media. | Credit: Green for Governor campaign
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Shop This Deal Community Resources & Links
- Green for Governor — Events & RSVP — Catch Jerri Green live, including her August 27 Memphis and August 29 Nashville stops.
- Green for Governor — Volunteer — Sign up to canvass, phone bank, or text bank ahead of November.
- Green for Governor — Voting Info — Check your registration and find out what's on your ballot.
Sources & Further Reading
Editor's Note
This piece draws on the full interview, conducted by phone and video call while Green was walking near her home in Memphis. Quotes have been lightly edited for length and clarity; nothing has been added to or changed in substance from what she said. — Shawnee Calhoun, Scarlett's Media
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