State Rep. Joe Carr says he chose to make his run official in front of a hospital in Murfreesboro to underscore the case he’ll press against the federal healthcare overhaul. Credit Daniel Potter/WPLN
Tennessee Congressman Scott DesJarlais got a second official challenger today, more than a year before he’s up for reelection. State Representative Joe Carr of Lascassas will try to knock off the scandalized incumbent in next summer’s Republican primary.
Carr’s colleague from the state legislature, Shelbyville Senator Jim Tracy, is also running to unseat DesJarlais. Carr says he and Tracy met hours before the announcement, and called their exchange “cordial.”
“I think what the voters are looking for more than the same good-old-boy politics we’ve grown accustomed to, and just another conservative vote, I think the voters want to say ‘that’s all well and good, but I need more than that, and we demand more than that.’”
In the first quarter of this year Carr raised more than $200 thousand – about half the reported total from Tracy, but well ahead of DesJarlais. The physician limped through reelection last year amid revelations he pressured a patient he’d slept with to get an abortion.
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