District 7 Debate Roundup
A dispatch from Friday's District 7 debate put on by AFP and SuperTalk 99.7
Despite the infighting and accusations of falsified MAGA bona fides, the Republican candidates vying to replace U.S. Rep.Mark Green during November’s election have remained fairly interchangeable to Tennessee voters. Thus far, most polls show no candidate breaking away. However, if Friday night’s Republican candidate debate sponsored by The Americans for Prosperity Foundation and SuperTalk 99.7 was any indication, Rep. Jody Barrett may soon find himself the frontrunner.
Held at Nashville’s Ray Stevens CabaRay Showroom with “top-tier” candidates Barrrett, Gino Bulso, Matt Van Epps, and Lee Reeves front and center, the debate served as a breezy and efficient alternative to the national and local slogs that political junkies are so used to seeing. SuperTalk host Matt Murphy and Americans for Prosperity’s state deputy director Michael Lotfi crafted a list of compelling questions that sought to differentiate the candidates and spark discussions about a cogent America First platform.
Much of the event’s success was likely due to organizers’ decision to eliminate rebuttals and prohibit candidates from name checking each other, a rule that forced Bulso to sit out a question on AI and the economy when he called out Van Epps for proclaiming himself the race’s “number one supporter of Israel.”
The occasional personality clashes aside, only Barrett came away as a distinct and decisive candidate. When the moderators asked the straightforward question of how the candidates' opinions differed from Donald Trump, everyone else simply claimed that they were 100% aligned with the Commander in Chief. On everything…
While much of this groupthink was largely due to the race’s comical hyperfocus on RINOism, the result was that Barrett’s straightforward criticism of Trump’s role in Operation Warp Speed and COVID’s infringement on Americans’ rights made him look the type of watchdog that won’t toe a party line when faced with an administration that hasn’t proven itself as uncompromising as advertised.
However, each candidate did land at least one hit. Army special ops Air Mission Commander Van Epps’s firsthand experience with the VA made all other answers to the questions about proper veteran health care and Ft. Campbell pale in comparison while Bulso’s intimate knowledge of the First Amendment and flag burning showed his prowess as a legal scholar. Reeves’s strongest moment came when he maligned the federal bureaucracy who, “Read into law things that aren’t there,” in response to a question about executive overreach.
No candidate dealt any deathblows or made unrecoverable faux pas. Still, the cringiest moment of the night occurred when Van Epps turned the moderators’ request for the candidates to say something they admire about each other into an opportunity to remind the audience that he was the only top-tier candidate who wasn’t an attorney.
As a political newbie, Van Epps has built his entire ethos on military service and outsider status. But he also lacks the Trumpian bravado that makes such transgressions of decorum work, especially since his professed love of vanilla ice cream and Luke Combs when responding to the moderators’ palette-cleansing questions seemed like the words of malfunctioning AI, not a badass who flew Apaches on the reg.
Even if Van Epps proved not quite ready for primetime despite his impressive military credentials, all four candidates cemented their approach to the office. Bulso established himself as a bookish, risk-averse policy wonk whose proclamation that his idea of a perfect Saturday afternoon would consist of reading the Constitution was the event’s second biggest eye-roller. Reeves carved out a niche for himself as an innocuous choice, a suburban Republican dad who would “follow Trump’s lead,” but was still well-versed on the issues enough to go deeper than the average political rant before the big HOA meeting.
But, in the end, Barrett’s combination of warmth and tenacity won the night. No one sounded more human and in touch with voters than Barrett rattling off the problems plaguing the district’s rural voters. As he said in his closing statement, his job is, “To say what you would say if you were in that chair.” By the end of the debate, he was the only candidate I wanted to hear say anything more—although all four proved a worthy enough successor to Green.