Governing From the Ground Up with Tennessee State Representative Jody Barrett - Interview

0:00I'm Olivia Lupia filling in today for the one and only Yaffe. I am with the Tennessee Conservative. We are going to speak now with state representative Jody Barrett, who has graciously worked us into his very busy schedule today. How are you today, sir? Doing very well. Thank you for having me on. Oh my gosh. Thank you for joining us. So I know it's a busy day down there. Fill us in a little bit about what's going on. What you got cook in today. Well, we are still in the midst of committee meetings today. Just spent about almost two hours in the education full committee and kind of bouncing back and forth also have a bill pending in state and local and been waiting for a couple weeks to try to get heard and still didn't get heard today. But we're slogging through. Hopefully education will get through its calendar. We're going to meet again tomorrow and be completely done with our education committee calendar and hopefully be ready to close that committee by the end of the week. Good grief. Lots and lots going on.

1:02It's this this session has been a little bit crazy and different. It seems like you guys are having to kind of make up some ground because we had that week off in the you know for the snow storm and then it just seems like everything's been kind of get pushed back and pushed back and pushed back and so now you guys are seems like having to play some catch up which is no fun for anyone. Well, I think they're all unique every year. I've been up here now. This is my fourth time, fourth year, fourth session. It seems like they all have their own different feel and pace about them. But definitely this one with the week off for the the ice storm and then also we took a week off in the kind of in the middle of things to handle all of our budget hearings at one time kind of let all the committees take off except for finance ways and means and that kind of put I think everybody behind a ball and then when we got back to following week everyone put all of their bills on notice and so it was kind of a it was like starting a race with a hundred and ninety-nine people or

2:03hundred thirty-three people at least on the start line going it at the same time. That doesn't sound like chaos at all. We are speaking with state representative Jody Barrett who has a couple of really great bills. You finally got back in the well. We were covering this yesterday actually Tennessee conservative so tell us about some of these bills that you passed you were able to get all the way through this crazy committee process. You fought for them on the house floor and hopefully now they're one step closer to becoming lost. So tell us about a couple of these awesome bills that you've got cooking. Well, we've the first thing we we got through last week on the consent calendar. We added to the list of official state songs with a song by Drew Holcomb that will actually be coming up next Monday to the house floor to perform his song called Tennessee. That's kind of the feel good fun bill of the session but yesterday as you said got back in the well got to education or education adjacent bills through one being dealing with the history of communism

3:09and adjusting the state standards to provide require that schools provide some age appropriate educational instruction on the history of communism particularly as it relates to the I guess the failures of communist regimes the negative impacts on the people that have suffered through them so that our students are getting a full picture of our history. Unfortunately I think what's happened is a lot of our students younger students today think that our history began at 9-11 and don't really have a lot of context for what we went through before radical Islamic terrorism became the main point of emphasis of our fight and so I think it's important for them to understand that full context have some sort of filler information of what happened between World War II and 9-11 and so understand kind of how we got where we are and then the second bill the second bill yesterday not to dominate your segment here but

4:15we passed a bill that came to me from a student at the University of Tennessee who is a member of the Student Government Association there and passed some legislation on campus to allow students to take a class holiday on election day in order to be able to vote and participate in the election process and that was well taken there at the university level supported by the president not only Donda Plowman but also the president of the system Randy Boyd and so that student Colby Norrod that came and reached out to members of the legislature to see if he could find some support to make that statewide across all state public institutions of higher learning and we were able to get that done yesterday that is huge two really good things and we'll say you know and when I talk about I have the privilege slash torment of watching a lot of these committee hearings live in these house floor sessions and representative Barrett's interaction

5:16with the Democrats who were pushing back on the communist bill was phenomenal he dropped one of I think you dropped like one of the coolest lines ever that should be spoken in Tennessee history is this Democrat was railing and he said you know can you even define communism or do you even know the difference between socialism and communism and whatever and and I just love that you were like I can but I'm not gonna it's like that's beautiful because we just we don't need to play with this and I I think you could speak to this more a little bit but that is that the experience you have is I I see sometimes a lot of these Republicans they want to engage in this back and forth and I'm all about healthy debate when legitimate questions are being asked or you know just to cut off debate for the sake of cutting off debate is never okay but there there is a time and a place I think and you demonstrate it perfectly to just nip this stuff in the bud and say I know where you're going and I'm not going to give you that opportunity so that's that's huge and I actually think I wish more lawmakers would take your cue on that so was that how was that for you to be able to get up and just do what you needed to do you never you never really know if which bills

6:20they're going to select to get themselves on camera and make their little speech but very true this was this was the one for representative Joan yesterday and he started out by asking me to define what communism is and and I think he specifically mentioned democratic socialism to which I equipped back well no thank you all the further your expertise in that it seems that you know he knows much more about that and has much more extensive personal experience in that world and so I don't think he liked that too well and that kind of elevated his speech a little bit and I think he challenged my competency and ability to explain my bill to which I just responded there's a difference between can and won't I can do it but I won't and so you you can read just read the bill and it tells you what this does yeah yeah and that's that's huge so let's just

7:21again for everybody listening who may not be totally familiar with some of the process state representative jody bear it with us explaining just kind of again how this works and what's going on in your state houses is that and you made such a good point is you never know which ones they're going to get all hung up on and there's so many that I watch I'm like okay this should be no big deal I know they're going to vote against it but what really are they're going to say and they will spend 30 40 minutes you know harping on this thing or getting themselves all worked up and someone holds their ground calmly cool respectfully like you did and it just sends them into a tailspin so I it's really informative to watch and I think it's a great example for a lot of us and how we can hopefully have interactions you know in our own spaces or our own fears of influence so that's cool and I think too I want to just loop back real quick around to what you said about constituents bringing you a bill and I know that you you and I have talked about this previously but so many of your bills come from your constituents and I think that's huge because you're trying to give an example of governing you know from the ground up kind of making sure we talked

8:23about this before with the Senate they've just the US Senate has forsaken their duty of representing the people and here I think you're trying to give the opposite and do the opposite so commend I commend you for that and then talk maybe just a couple of real quickly about what that process is like for you and why it's so important for you to do things that way sure I mean I think there's it's important probably for your listeners to know there's there's several different ways that a bill originates or finds its way onto the desk of a representative or a senator oftentimes it's what they call administration bills where it's coming directly from the governor's administration one of the departments seeking to change some law or make some tweak to make their life easier or better other times it's coming from special interest groups or lobbyists that are working in a particular industry that are trying to affect change in that industry but for me the most satisfying and and I think the best pieces of legislation that I've been able to produce are all

9:28those that have generated from people right here within the district that I represent and know of work for that have a need or an issue something that they have experienced in their interactions with the state or state government and you know they they need an outlet someone to champion for them they come to me with that idea and then we talk through it and and mold that idea into a bill and being able to see those get through the process and become adopted in the law is very satisfying that is excellent perfect timing my friend too you nailed it so we were speaking with state representative jody bear it thank you so much for joining us today it's always a privilege to talk to you and thank you for taking time out to give us an inside peak about what's going on well thank you thank you for having me on and thank you for all you do Olivia for covering everything that goes on up here it's important work that you do well I appreciate and we appreciate you I always like to leave you guys and I say always the few times that I have had the privilege of

10:34being your hostess with the most is I like to leave you guys with a call to action so we talk about all this stuff and you're like great you've given me so much information what the heck am I supposed to do with that or you really bummed me out what am I supposed to do now so I do want to leave you with some practical tips here and practical calls to action that you can implement things that are easy to do so the most important thing right now we're coming up we're about to come into April here is vote you've got to vote in the primaries and we we touched on this a little bit earlier where people are saying well I'm really frustrated so I'm just not going to turn out and this not that's that's not the answer it's not it's frustrating we're all frustrated definitely particularly conservatives because we fight we fight we fight for stuff or we say hey I've been telling you the writing's been on the wall for however long and now things are that we were warning about are coming to fruition we told you we told you that that is frustrating absolutely but we shouldn't let it deter us from doing the things that are going to make the impact so a lot

11:34of people think well I don't need to show up in the primary I'll just vote in the general because you know that's what really matters or that's where the big decision happens and I would really encourage you to do the opposite and to change your mindset to really understand that the primary election is where your power is your primary election is where you get to determine who your candidate actually is so instead of just showing up and say well as long as we get a Republican that's better than a Democrat that's honestly the mentality that's put us in a lot frankly in the position where we are we're not happy with our elected representation because they're not doing what we ask them to do but if we had had a better candidate hopefully they would have been on a better job so please go vote in the primary whether you vote early or whether you vote on election day I think most states are having their primaries are in the middle of them whatever state you're in Georgia Florida Alabama Tennessee we're coming up on Tennessee primaries here soon I think early voting is going to start not too far out from here I can't remember the exact days but go vote and like I said if you're not happy with the primary candidates that are on your ballot well you have a chance to either next

12:35time run yourself which is a great thing start small run for school board run for city council just get out there and run start putting your name out start putting building connections serving your community doing what you need to do or find a candidate who is willing to run and when you find them support them because a lot of times we ask so much of our elected officials or these candidates and say well we want you and it's your responsibility and then we don't help them carry their burdens or we send them off to do their job and we don't give them any support after that so vote vote vote in the primaries that is going to be the biggest thing that we can do to create change at the level it needs to be I know and and guys we've got to make sure that we're paying attention to who we're voting for just make sure that you're keeping an eye out for any inconsistencies any irregularities stuff that you're seeing going on make note of it report it to who you need to report if you see things are going wonky that the I know there was a flip in Florida they flip the house district from red to blue 800 votes then they come to find out that a worker in that election which is the district that includes Mar-a-Lago by the way so nothing fishy there I'm sure

13:39report it supposedly reportedly I saw that someone had been arrested a poll worker because he stole election information or had the key to the machines to do something else and so there's concerns of cheating now so those are the things we need to keep our eye on but 800 votes is not a lot you guys so whether or not those elections were were rigged 800 votes is not not very many there are a lot of races that truly do come down particularly at the local level to one or two votes so anyway vote in the primary that's your call to action today get to know your candidates do your research vote with your conscience obviously make the best decision with someone who lines up with conservative values and Christian values and do the best you can so it has been my pleasure you guys thank you so much for letting me host Olivia Lupea