Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District was controversially redrawn before the 2022 mid-term elections as some local politicians called the move “straight gerrymandering” due to the fact the new redrawing split up the Democrat stronghold in Nashville into a Republican base on political maps. Former Democratic 5th District Congressman, Jim Cooper, served in the seat for 20 years following 10 elections. Before that, he served as the 4th Congressional District Congressman for 12 years due to another redistricting process. With one single redrawing of the district, a man with 32-years of fighting for and representing Tennessee and Nashville was essentially kicked out. Republican and former Mayor of Maury County, Andy Ogles, won the 2022 election, receiving over 123,000 votes. Ogles, in the first three months of his time in D.C., has made quite a bit of headlines, especially for a freshman.
Before Ogles was even sworn into office, he and his family posted an iconic image on their social media of their family Christmas card from December 2022. The problem? They were all holding assault weapons. As can be expected, this was controversially received, as Ogles was making a political statement for gun rights. An MSNBC analyst said that the Christmas card went “too far.” This also highlights some irony now following The Covenant School in Nashville’s shooter who killed 3 children and 3 adults. Nashvillians are demanding gun reform of any kind.
Ogles was also caught lying about his college major. While campaigning, he stated that he received an international relations major at Middle Tennessee State University where he then began to “fight against international sex trafficking crimes.” After being called out by countless news outlets, Ogles admitted his real college major is “a liberal arts degree.”
In January, the U.S. House of Representatives were stuck trying to vote a speaker in, and the process took multiple days. Ogles was a part of the mess. For the first 11 rounds of voting for speaker he went against the Republican majority’s pick, Kevin McCarthy, joining far-right congressmen and congresswomen who believed McCarthy was too moderate while Democrats believed he was too far-left. After a heated discussion on the floor together, coupled with other negotiations on the side, Ogles flipped to help vote Kevin McCarthy as the Speaker of the House.
While Andy Ogles hasn’t been in office long, he is already making a ton of news we seem to be overlooking. With large news headlines coming out almost weekly at this point, we have missed that Ogles was a part of the problem of prolonging the speaker vote and has even lied about his college major intentionally to his voters. Are you happy with Ogles’ work, or should he rethink some of his decisions or his approach moving forward?
- Jacob Francy
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