Written By JR Robinson

For as long as you can remember, Tennessee has handed you the same ballot. Red or blue. Pick a team, hold your nose, go home. Then, on November 3, a name will sit on the governor’s race with no party label beside it at all.

David Hatley is running as an independent. The reason he gives starts about 250 years ago, in his hometown.

The first Tennesseans refused to be governed from afar

In his memoir, Tested in Tennessee, Hatley opens in Elizabethton, in Carter County. He writes that it is said to be the place where American independence was born. In 1772, the Watauga settlers, down by Sycamore Shoals, declared in their own rough way, “We don’t need anyone to govern us.” A few years later, they beat the British at Kings Mountain.

Then comes the line that explains his whole campaign: “That legacy stuck.” People there, he writes, handle their own problems and do not wait on outsiders. Stubbornness is baked into the soil. It is a birthright.

Independent is not a protest. It is a job application.

Here is what an independent label does not mean. It does not mean angry. It does not mean a stunt. Hatley is a manufacturer who has spent his adult life meeting payroll. His campaign describes him as an inventor and builder of American-made products who has led companies through boom years and brutal ones.

That matters because governing is not a debate sport. It is budgets, hiring, and deciding what to do when the money runs short. Hatley’s pitch is simple: Tennessee does not need another professional politician with a better slogan. It needs someone who has had to make things work.

He is also honest that he never planned this. In the book, he writes that he spent his life avoiding anything that looked like politics. Then someone close to him told him the state needed a person with his work ethic and integrity. He could not stop thinking about it.

The question the two parties hope you never ask

If a party owns your vote, does it ever have to earn it?

You have probably heard that a vote for an independent is a wasted vote. Consider the opposite. A vote is wasted when it is cast out of habit, for someone who already knows you will show up no matter what. Your vote is worth the most when it is the one nobody can take for granted.

Hatley is not asking you to hate anyone. His campaign says it wants to talk with Tennesseans of every stripe, and it has organized ten “Build Tennessee” coalitions to do exactly that. The message is not red versus blue. It is Tennessee versus the people who profit from keeping us divided.

Think about how rare that is. Most campaigns are built in a consultant’s office and tested on a focus group. Hatley’s starts with a place and a people. When he says he wants to put Tennessee first, he means the county road and the factory floor, not a talking point that polls well in both parties.

What he says he will fight for

The campaign puts good jobs first, because Hatley has built them and knows what a paycheck does for a family. It talks about closing the wealth gap, so that people who work hard can actually build something of their own. It talks about giving people second chances, because he has needed one himself. And it talks about keeping decisions close to home, which is exactly what those Watauga settlers wanted.

And nothing about it requires you to give up your own convictions. You can love your church, your gun, your union, or your garden and still decide that the party machine does not speak for you. Independents are not a different kind of Tennessean. They are the ones who finally stopped taking orders.

Tennessee’s own tradition

Independence is not an import. It is the oldest thing we have. The people who built this state did not wait for permission, and they did not ask which team they belonged to first. They looked at the problem in front of them and solved it with their neighbors.

Hatley is betting that is still who we are. He is betting that enough Tennesseans are tired of being told their choices are only two, and that a state with that history can handle a third.

Here is what to do next

Read the book. It is free, and it will tell you more about this man than any ad could. Then check vote.tn.gov for early voting and your polling place. Election Day is November 3.

If the same two choices have not fixed what you care about, try a different one. It is, after all, how Tennessee got started.

Paid for by Hatley for Governor, Joe Cronin, Treasurer.