Tennessee State Senator Kerry Roberts (R-Springfield) has doubled down on his call for incumbent U.S. Representative Mark Green (R-TN-07) to reconsider retiring from Congress and instead run for reelection.
Green announced his decision not to seek reelection on February 14.
Roberts, who previously expressed an interest in launching a bid for the foreseeable open seat, released a statement on Sunday saying Green is “the one who needs to be our representative in Congress.”
The state senator reiterated his remarks during Monday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy, saying, “I love Mark Green being my congressman, he’s doing such a great job for us.”
Roberts added that Green, who was elected to Congress in 2018, has “risen to a significant level of leadership” while in D.C., noting that there have not been any candidates to throw their hat in the ring due to there being a “tremendous amount of enthusiasm” for Green in his role in Congress.
“None of us would be able to get elected and be in the position in such a short period of time that he’s in. I mean, we need him to be there and stay there,” Roberts said,
“You’ve got three state senators in the district – none of them have thrown their hat in the ring. You’ve got five house members or six house members or more – none of them have thrown their hat in the ring,” Roberts explained. “You start looking at the list of names, and it’s just a very, very short list. And I think it just reflects the fact that there’s a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for Mark in this role. I think, frankly, a lot of us are kind of bummed out that he said he wasn’t going to run for re-election. That’s the prevailing feeling. Instead of people going, ‘Wow, what a great opportunity for me,’ they’re saying, ‘Man, I hate that because he was doing such a great job.’…Nobody wants to follow the legend.”
Roberts added that Green has “proven” himself as a conservative leader, noting that Congress has no room for a “learning curve.”
“It’s a critical point in our history,” Roberts explained. “We don’t want to lose the House. Even though we look at this district and we think it’s 57 Republican, 43 Democrat, we’re in such a weird time that we can’t count on those numbers. We need someone who’s been there, done that…We don’t need to slip up and end up losing this thing to the Democrats…The United States Congress is not a place to have a learning curve. There’s really a lot of benefit to having someone who has served and sort of knows the way things work. You just want them to be able to hit the ground running.”
“Mark’s proven how he’s going to vote when the pressure mounts. He’s not going to cave in and he’s not going to sacrifice his principles,” Roberts added.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Mark Green” by Congressman Mark Green.
