Tennessee Gubernatorial Candidate Jerri Green Wants to End ‘Voucher Scheme’ and Follow Kentucky’s Lead

Gubernatorial candidate Jerri Green speaking at a recent campaign event (Photo by Jerri Green)

Memphis City Council member Jerri Green says there are three things she’d aim to do on day one if elected governor next year.

Speaking at a town hall event in Jonesborough, Tennessee earlier this month, Green said her priorities would be to expand Medicaid, repeal Tennessee’s grocery tax, and end the Tennessee Education Freedom Scholarship Act that allows families to use taxpayer dollars to send their children to private school.

Green calls the Education Freedom Scholarship program a “voucher scheme,” saying children from smaller communities don’t have access to private schools and the $7,25 scholarship isn’t enough to help lower-income families afford tuition.

“I’ve been driving through these little towns, you know what I’ve been noticing about em? They got one school,” said Green. “I believe deeply that these small towns are being robbed of public-school dollars. On top of that, in places like Memphis, all we’re doing is welfare for the rich.”

Long Odds for a Tennessee Democrat

Green is the only announced candidate from the Democratic party in the 2026 Governor’s race who has held an elected public office, and she’s spent much of October on a series of campaign stops in cities across the state. Tennessee hasn’t elected a Democrat to a statewide office since former Governor Phil Bredesen won re-election in 2006, and polls show the winner of the party’s gubernatorial primary next year will be a heavy underdog in the general election.

Green addressed that polling in Jonesborough, saying she’d approach the challenge in much the same way she won her city council seat in a section of Memphis that hasn’t traditionally supported Democrats. She said the path to winning statewide lies in convincing suburban voters who may not completely agree with the priorities of leading Republicans in the race, including U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn and Congressman John Rose.

“Moms that are fed up with sending their kids to school and praying they come home, businesspeople who are tired of watching their workers flee because we don’t have a living wage here, and we don’t have a good quality of life.  All of that in the suburbs, we’ve got to talk to those people,” said Green.

Following Kentucky’s Lead

If elected, Green would face equally challenging odds passing any of her three day-one priorities in the Republican supermajority in the Tennessee General Assembly.

She acknowledged this challenge on the Anchor Girls podcast earlier this month, saying she’d similarly approach the office to Kentucky’s Democratic Governor Andy Beshear.  He also governs with a Republican majority in the state legislature.

“He has to find the spaces and places where they can work together, jobs, roads, schools, whatever, and then when they pass some nasty, anti-trans, hateful-filled bill, he vetoes it.  Now he knows it’s probably going to get overridden. That’s the reality, but he also knows that those kids, those families, see their governor stands up for them.” Said Green.

Long-Time Memphis Resident

Green was born and raised in Memphis and graduated from White Station High School. She says growing up, her parents struggled financially, and that led her to pursue a career as a public defender and later join Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris’ administration to work on public safety, women’s health, and living wages.

Greed she became politically active after the New Town shooting in 2012 and unsuccessfully challenged House Education Committee Chair Mark White, R-Memphis, for the House District 83 seat in 2020.

Green won her city council seat three years later by just 56 votes.