Mike Cortese grounds his campaign in the kind of stories that stay with you: classmates collecting “nickels and dimes” so his wife could buy lunch, shopkeepers slipping him food when home wasn’t safe. Out of that comes his refusal to accept a politics where “real people just don’t have a seat at the table.” He looks at students terrified of debt, retirees clocking back in, and families priced out of parenthood and calls it a system that has lost sight of its own purpose. What he’s offering isn’t charity — it’s a promise that government should work as faithfully as those neighbors once did.
That promise is sharpened by the contrast with Tennessee GOP Congressman Andy Ogles. Constituents are literally putting up “MIA” posters, and Cortese says Ogles has filed “over 80 bills” without delivering a single material benefit. The phrase, “Daddy Trump, look at me” captures a style of politics that is performance without service. Against that backdrop, Cortese’s pledge to build a district office that actually answers calls sounds less mundane than radical.
On immigration, he refuses to accept a false choice between safety and cruelty. Tennessee has been used as a testing ground for ICE raids that drive immigrants underground and strip police of vital community partners. “Should we treat a grandmother the same way as a human trafficker? I don’t think we should,” he said, a line that drew agreement from both Republicans and Democrats. The real test, in his view, is whether policy comes from lived experience instead of political theater.
And he isn’t sparing with Democrats either. He describes a party that keeps recruiting self-funded candidates who don’t know what “90 percent of Americans” are going through, while Trump at least “diagnosed the issue exceedingly well.” The cure may have been worse than the disease, but acknowledging pain matters — and Democrats haven’t done it. Cortese insists the path forward is trust built face to face, door to door. Tune in for his full conversation with Sam, because if Democrats can flip Tennessee’s 5th District, maybe it means they’ve finally learned how to listen.
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