Tennessee State Senator Todd Gardenhire, who literally cusses out his constituents.
In 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of Tennessee State Senator Todd Gardenhire, who we noted for his reaching office in 2012 by winning a GOP primary in a conservative-leaning district by a mere 40 votes, and since, his utter dedication to mendacity regarding discussions of healthcare. Gardenhire, after voting to block the Medicaid Expansion in Tennessee, lied and said he wasn’t being a hypocrite because he wasn’t on government insurance himself (he was). He also lied about the Affordable Care Act, claiming it hadn’t also, by extension, allowed him to keep his son covered through his own government medical insurance until he was 27 (it did). When confronted on camera by a constituent who demanded he pull himself from his own insurance plans if he was going to deny coverage to a quarter million Tennesseeans, Todd Gardenhire’s reasonable response was, “Why don’t you give it up, asshole?”
But back to the lying… Gardenhire falsely claimed in a hearing on abortion that there were more restrictions on men seeking vasectomies these days than women seeking abortions (WHAT?). Gardenhire also voted for Tennessee’s attempts to bring back the electric chair, because they’re having a hard time getting phenobarbital to perform lethal injections. He has voted to try and block Tennessee from resettling Syrian refugees. Gardenhire called those who wrote protests on the sidewalk outside his office in chalk “Nazis”, which seems pretty hyperbolic given that we’re pretty sure that actual Nazis used far more heinous tactics. Oh, and in 2017 he became the sponsor of an honest-to-goodness “Blue Lives Matter” bill in the Tennessee state legislature.
Gardenhire, now 73 won re-election in a race that was closer than expected, with 53% of the vote in November. That may have had something to do with the racist comments he made in October of 2020, where he blamed “inner city” obesity on people “eating fried chicken from 7-11”:
”The obesity rate in the inner city is bigger than anywhere else. Because … they go to a 7-Eleven or a convenience store, there’s fried chicken so they get them some fried chicken on the way home and have dinner on that. Well, that’s the worst thing you can eat.”
Since winning re-election, Gardenhire has been counterproductive in the United States recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic, voting for a bill to prohibit the use of Covid-19 vaccination passports, and voted for both of the Tennessee GOP’s transphobic bills, to both ban transgender athletes from playing against their biological sex, and should there be events where it’s irrelevant, banning transgender student athletes from locker rooms.
Todd Gardenhire will, barring a resignation of untimely death, remain in office until 2024.
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