Karen Reynolds: future Senator who knows "What Right Looks Like"

Flippable Senate District 22: Montgomery County

Friends, I had the absolute pleasure of spending an afternoon in conversation with Karen Reynolds, running for the District 22 Senate Seat covering Montgomery County. Yes, this IS a very flippable Senate seat IF people get out and vote!!

Talk about a candidate who covers all the bases ( a little summer baseball analogy)… Karen is a former military officer trained in the health field, a single Mom who raised 2 sons, and a Clarksville City Council Representative until running for this Senate seat.

Karen is open about her abortion-related health care experiences and an outspoken advocate about those bills she would reject and measures she would support if elected to a Senate seat.

Karen’s key issues are: √ Reproductive Freedom for Every Tennessean

√Invest in Public Schools/No to Vouchers

√Common-Sense Gun Laws

√Accessible Healthcare and Reversal of hospital closures

Karen has been endorsed by: • National Women’s Political Caucus •SEIU Local 205 •Planned Parenthood • Change TN • Montgomery County Democratic Party

Karen was given a “Distinction” by: • Moms Demand Action •Mental Health Now

Karen is smart, has experience, is dedicated, and eager to carry her “This is what right looks like” into the Tennessee Legislature.

To learn more go to: Website HERE, Volunteer HERE, and Donate HERE

Let this be the year we elect one more incredible Democratic woman to our state Senate!!

We will ALL benefit from Karen’s election! Michele

INTERVIEW

1.) Karen’s Background: Karen was born and raised in a family of six in a small Michigan town and joined the military for the educational opportunities it offered. Karen spent 21 years as an active-duty pharmacist, most of that time stationed at Ft. Campbell. Karen expressed a love of Clarksville, a city welcoming of newcomers, where her two sons she was raising by herself received a good education. She and her husband Billy, who also has one child from a previous marriage, are deeply involved in contributing to Montgomery County. Karen earned two Bachelors Degrees and a Masters in Adult Education. A lifelong learner and a committed community member, Karen is a graduate of Clarksville Leadership and Clarksville Montgomery County School System Leadership Program. But it was in 2017, when she was working as a Department of Defense civilian and the former President was elected, that she decided she needed to “stand-up” because “it was time to fight for democracy.”

2.) Beginning Local Advocacy: Karen founded Clarksville Indivisible that same year, which is where she and others learned that their voice mattered and practiced reaching out to elected officials to express their concerns. But it was hard work trying to help people get a “seat at the table” so they decided instead of trying to convince someone else, they would work together to “fix the issues.”

3.) City Council Campaign: Karen’s engagement led to her running for and winning a seat on the Clarksville City Council. An example of how she tries to bring about change, Karen learned of a pregnant teenager in foster care who was unable to receive basic health care. She joined forces with a local developmental pediatrician and the Director of the Austin Peay University nursing program to create a medical home-based program for children in the Department of Children Services (DCS) care. As chair of the Montgomery County Health Council, she has continued this work, bringing together various providers to craft a model so all children in foster can can receive complete medical services.

4.) Run for State Senate: Karen is proud that in a 4-way race, she garnered 43% of the vote and has happily served in the Clarksville City Council for the last 4 years. Karen was clear from the moment she sought this elected position that she wanted the community to remain in constant communication with her so she could address the issues that concern them.

While campaigning for City Council, she learned that the major issues of concern were mental health care, creating a more walkable community, and addressing the city’s infrastructure needs. In addition, Karen said attainable housing is one of the biggest issues facing the city of Clarksville. While she has served on the Attainable Housing Coalition she acknowledges they have “not been able to move that needle in our community.”

Frustrated by this reality, combined with watching Legislators contemplating refusing Federal dollars for education while promoting the reallocation of public dollars to fund private schools under the voucher plan, and angry about their passage of an abortion ban, Karen was convinced that rather than running for another Council term she should try to be elected to the TN Legislature representing Senate District 22.

5.) Employment History: I asked Karen about the connection between her military service, employment with the VA and her role as an elected official. Karen said that after retiring from the VA she worked as a servicer representative and then as an administrator in a traumatic brain injury facility, linking health care IT to veterans and families so they could best utilize electronic medical records.

6.) Health Care Deserts: Karen said “We’re facing a nationwide shortage of providers,” given the low reimbursement rate for medical services in Tennessee and the abortion ban. “Providers aren’t coming here and the ones that have opportunities, they aren’t staying, they’re leaving.” She said there are currently about 37 maternity health care deserts out of the 95 counties in Tennessee, effecting women’s access to health care throughout the state. And even though Montgomery County is not considered a health-care desert, because they are surrounded by 2 counties that are, those residents are coming to Montgomery for care, putting a stress on providers there.

7.) “This is What Right Looks Like:” Karen said the phrase, “This is What Right Looks Like” is used by military personnel in the medical field for the process of training staff in a hospital setting with the expectation that they will adapt when facing unknown circumstances in the field of battle. If you know what should be done in an optimal setting, you can alter the procedure in a crisis situation, but if you’ve never operated under the best, or “right” circumstance, you will adapt to something less than optimal. Karen believes Legislators should educate themselves about issues and look for what is working in other states and then replicate these models for Tennessee rather than operating without a base of knowledge.

8.) Comparison to current Republican Senator Bill Powers: While initially saying he was against vouchers, Powers flipped and voted for them. Karen expressed concern that taking funds away from public schools to fund private ones under the voucher scheme would negatively affect their operations. Also, voucher schools don’t have to serve everyone or meet specific standards; if a family decides the voucher school is not a good fit for their child the funding does not revert to the public school when they return; property taxes would need to be raised to make up diverted state funding; voucher schools don’t have to enroll children of color or those of a different religion; and they don’t have to provide transportation. Karen concluded that 75% of children using vouchers in other states are already attending private schools so the voucher scheme proposed in Tennessee is merely an effort to transfer wealth while not fixing the challenges faced by public schools. “We need to pay our teachers and let our teachers teach. That is what we need to work on.”

Karen further said that she led the effort on the City Council for Clarksville to reject the voucher bill but current Senator Powers voted for it anyway. He also voted for arming teachers but the Director of Schools and the County Sheriff have come out against it. She reminds voters that because this bill is now a state law, if there were a change in administrators they could decide at any time to allow teachers to be armed in the classrooms of Montgomery County.

9. Lobbyist Money: Karen referenced State Representative Gloria Johnson who said, “We don’t need to bring the gunfight to the classroom.” Teachers have enough to do, without also acting as security guards. She also pointed out that Tennessee is 44th out of 50 states in the amount teachers are paid. Karen believes the only reason the state is trying to pass the voucher law is because of lobbyist money. “In 6 months in 2022 there was $23 million in lobbyist money that came for vouchers” and “It’s the same from the NRA (National Rifle Association)… They are taking the lobbyist money over listening to constituents and then overriding local elected officials.”

10. Second Amendment: Karen said this is not a black-and-white issue. She was raised with guns, her brother and father hunted and fished but guns were safely stored. The week before hunting season opened students were taught gun safety in the school. She said we have lost what “gun safety looks like.”

In the military, troops are taught the difference between guns and weapons. Guns are intended for hunting but weapons, such as AR15s and M16s, are designed to kill and do the most damage. “Safe and smart gun owners want to live next door to safe and smart gun owners.” However, “The most stolen items in Montgomery County are guns taken out of unlocked cars… In Tennessee, the number 1 cause of death for children are gunshot wounds.” And while she supports the Second Amendment, Karen said, “At 10PM at night, there’s no stranger in the parking lot with a weapon that’s a safe zone for me… If I don’t know you and you have a gun, you are a threat.”

Questioning “the good guy myth,” Karen said, “Nobody knows who the good guy is (when) everybody gets a gun.” In referencing the Supreme Court case that upheld preventing convicted domestic violence perpetrators from owning a gun, she said “Tennessee has one of the highest rates of women murdered by their intimate partners and often those weapons are purchased within 3 days of a domestic violence report to the police.” She then asked, “Where are we willing to meet in the middle” to “get our children from hiding under those desks” and “How are we going to decrease the number of children killed by gunshot wounds? What will that take?”

As an elected official, Karen said she would promote passage of a safe storage law and if a gun that was not stored safely is used in the commission of a crime she believes “they should be held liable.” Likewise, if a child is killed in the home with a gun, the gun owner should also be held liable. She believes this starts with training and permitting because formerly permits required training “and that’s what we’ve lost. No one is driving a car without training so why is anyone owning a gun without training?”

Karen believes most Americans support background checks, safe storage laws and red flag laws. Legislators are not listening to the experts and the community on this issue but also on the issue of abortion.

11.) Abortion: Karen said there is a lot of misunderstanding about the abortion ban in Tennessee. “Our daughters and grand-daughters have less access to reproductive freedom than us.” In passing the abortion ban, state Legislators determined there is no standard of care for doctors to follow if a woman is experiencing a miscarriage. Karen shared that she experienced a miscarriage during her first pregnancy and in her second pregnancy she suffered from pre-eclampsia. The doctor decided to induce her at 37 weeks but “under the current law, this would be illegal” because it addresses the life of the mother but not the health of the mother.

Karen talked about the fact that Tennessee has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the nation and that “black women are 3 times more likely to die following delivery than white women regardless of their income level.” This trend will only get worse because of the gag order restricting what providers can say to patients. “They don’t go to the medical book first. They go to the law book first.” State legislators believe “We don’t matter.”

Karen said she openly shares with women that she’s had 3 pregnancies, the last one a healthy delivery but previous to that, her first was a spontaneous abortion, and the second was her son who was an induced delivery. If he had not survived, under the current law it would have been deemed a late-term induced abortion. “When women say abortion is healthcare this is what they mean.”

“I trust women… In your family, who makes the health care decisions for the children? The women. Who takes care of our elder patients? Mostly women. And who makes the end-of-life decisions? Mostly women. So why do we as a nation, and why in Tennessee, do we not trust women to make their own decisions?”

12.) Kitchen Table Issues: Karen said she expects to focus on “kitchen-table issues” if elected as a State Senator, such as removing the tax on groceries rather than passing a franchise tax, supported by her competitor. Growing up in a small town and having been a single mom, Karen understands the challenge for women to be employed without affordable daycare. She pointed to the fact that there is money at the state level but “we are hoarding it” instead of “making a difference for individual citizens." Karen’s other concern is attainable housing. Clarksville just underwent a property tax revision and for many people, their tax rate doubled. Rents have increased by $300-400 a month. Karen believes the state could address these issues, along with infrastructure and traffic problems, if it took advantage of available federal dollars.

13.) Equity versus Equality: Karen addressed the difference between equity and equality, a topic she wrote about in her Ballotopia questionnaire. Eight years ago she heard an MLK Day speaker address the need to examine equity and equality when contemplating school investments. If a school located in a higher-income bracket neighborhood and one located in a lower-income bracket neighborhood were given the same (equal) amount of funding, the one from a more resource-rich area could add to this funding, while the one with fewer resources might have to go without, resulting in a less equal, or inequitable, outcome. Karen concluded, “Equal means everybody gets the same amount of money. Equity means each gets what they need- which is not always equal.” Karen went on to offer LGBTQIA+ bathrooms as an example, saying it is more equitable to create private bathroom options for everyone rather than to prevent someone from using a bathroom of their choice. “Equity and equality should be at every level in our community.”

14.) State Budget as a Moral Document: Karen pointed to the fact that Tennessee has one of the most regressive tax systems in the county. “People who make under $100,000 pay a much higher percentage of their income in taxes than those making over $100,000.” She said it is hurtful to the average person to fund schools by increasing the wheel tax and taxing groceries while upper-income people benefit from a franchise tax refund. It was “only after the Governor was criticized nationally” for the childcare funding crisis in the state that the sliding scale rate was “changed from 80% to 100% “of the median income. Tennessee has a crisis with foster children at DCS that “is our own making because we defunded” them. “Yet we brag about having the biggest rainy day fund. That is a moral sin to me.”

QUOTES

(NOTE: These quotes are from Southern Cultures-Center for the Study of the American South: The Rhetoric and the Reality of the New Southern Strategy . This was a conversation between Courtland Cox (1960s SNCC leader), Nsé Ufot (New Georgia Project) and Charles V. Taylor (NAACP-Mississippi leader), then edited by Emilye Crosby (SNCC Legacy Project).)

QUOTE 1.) The Co-Governance Model is how we win in the New Southern Strategy: Karen said when she was elected as a City Council person she sent a monthly Newsletter to her constituents outlining upcoming bill, asking for input, reporting how she had voted on bills the previous month and why. In this way, she created a place at the table for local people and encouraged them to use their voice during the process of governing.

Karen offered the example of attending an LGBTQI+ gathering where people living with or trying to prevent HIV and taking the medication PREP, mentioned that they were unable to secure a full lab panel. As chair of the Montgomery County Health Council, Karen worked with the Director of Public Health and Music City PREP to come each month to the Queen City Women’s Health Clinic to offer free HIV and STD education and screening along with free IUDs and access to brith control. “This is co-governance,” whereby Karen used her seat at the table to listen, bring others to the table to listen, and co-created a solution. She went on to say that elected officials don’t have all the answers but by bringing those to the table who do ,they can help to clear the barriers and implement “What right looks like.” People need an elected official who will answer the phone and emails and then respond. “That is how we protect the big D in Democracy and protect the little d, too. We have been missing that.”

Karen pointed out that only 12% of eligible voters in Clarksville cast a ballot in the August 2022 election and less than 30% in the November 2022 election. “Let’s up that vote, but voting is not enough.” Karen said she does her homework before showing up yet she doesn’t pretend to know all the answers and she also asks questions of others so the community can see if they are not answering. But it is the community that “needs to ask the hard questions” and provide elected officials the information they need so they “can then make a seat at the table for them next to us.”

QUOTE 2.) “Politics is the Expression of Economic Interests” OR “How can millions of voters beat billions of dollars?”

Karen said when her opponent in the Senate race heard she was running he said “You better get out your checkbook” and Karen answered, “I’m gonna get out my voters.” Karen said she doesn’t have “income privilege” but what she does have is a willingness to ask people for their vote.

She also encourages other people to get involved. She suggests they “find one topic they are passionate about,” asking “what keeps you up at night?” like President Obama suggested, “then follow that.” Karen said no one person can do it all but if 10 people send an email to a city council person they will pay attention, and if 50 people send an email to a State legislator, they will pay attention. Karen shared an example of her changing her vote after constituents showed her the impact a certain measure would have on their life. She finished with the rallying cry, “Stand up, fight back!”

17.) Final thoughts: Karen said she wanted to remind people that she is a “retired army officer, union member, city council person and a mom who has lived in Clarksville, a community that she loves, since 2001,” and is running for the Senate District 22 seat “because I want to make a difference. I hope you will vote, and when you do, that it will be for Karen.”

For more information, Karen encouraged people to check out KarenReynoldsVote.com on all social media sites. Karen asked that people make a donation but also said she needs people to help “write postcards and knock on doors.” Karen said the “most power everyone has is the contacts on their phone” so she asked people to please reach out to their contacts to ask if they have a plan to vote and encourage them to vote in the August election. If they have questions about the ballot they can find answers on the VOTETN Ap. She suggested they let their contacts “know who you are voting for and why” and let them know about early voting.

Karen also asked that folks let their contacts know about her: she “will center our most vulnerable residents” because she understands that “when our most vulnerable residents are safe then we’ll all be safe;” tell them “Karen understands health care and attainable housing issues” and she is “committed to addressing the kitchen table issues” that will make a difference in our community. “When you have those conversations with those in your phone, that’s how we’re gonna win this election. That’s how our millions of voters can overcome the millions of dollars.”

Karen and her husband Bill