Everything you need to know about ranked-choice voting in one spot. Click to learn more!

Mark Harmon

From Ballotpedia
Jump to: navigation, search
BP-Initials-UPDATED.png
This page was current at the end of the individual's last campaign covered by Ballotpedia. Please contact us with any updates.
Mark Harmon
Image of Mark Harmon

Democratic Party

Elections and appointments
Last election

November 8, 2022

Education

Bachelor's

Pennsylvania State University, 1979

Graduate

Syracuse University, 1981

Ph.D

Ohio University, 1988

Personal
Birthplace
Pittsburgh, Pa.
Religion
Unitarian Universalist
Profession
Professor
Contact

Campaign website

Campaign Facebook

Campaign Twitter

Campaign Instagram

Campaign YouTube

Personal Facebook

Personal LinkedIn

Mark Harmon (Democratic Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Tennessee's 2nd Congressional District. He lost in the general election on November 8, 2022.

Harmon completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. Click here to read the survey answers.

Biography

Mark Harmon was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He earned a bachelor's degree from Pennsylvania State University in 1979, a graduate degree from Syracuse University in 1981, and a Ph.D. from Ohio University in 1988. His career experience includes working as a professor. Harmon has been affiliated with the Society of Professional Journalists, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, and the Tennessee Democratic Party.[1]

Elections

2022

See also: Tennessee's 2nd Congressional District election, 2022

General election

General election for U.S. House Tennessee District 2

Incumbent Tim Burchett defeated Mark Harmon in the general election for U.S. House Tennessee District 2 on November 8, 2022.

Candidate
%
Votes
✔
Image of Tim Burchett
Tim Burchett (R)
 
67.9
 
141,089
Image of Mark Harmon
Mark Harmon (D) Candidate Connection
 
32.1
 
66,673

Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source

Total votes: 207,762
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for U.S. House Tennessee District 2

Mark Harmon advanced from the Democratic primary for U.S. House Tennessee District 2 on August 4, 2022.

Candidate
%
Votes
✔
Image of Mark Harmon
Mark Harmon Candidate Connection
 
100.0
 
24,879

There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source

Total votes: 24,879
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Republican primary election

Republican primary for U.S. House Tennessee District 2

Incumbent Tim Burchett advanced from the Republican primary for U.S. House Tennessee District 2 on August 4, 2022.

Candidate
%
Votes
✔
Image of Tim Burchett
Tim Burchett
 
100.0
 
56,880

Incumbents are bolded and underlined. The results have been certified. Source

Total votes: 56,880
Candidate Connection = candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.

Do you want a spreadsheet of this type of data? Contact our sales team.

Campaign themes

2022

Video for Ballotpedia

Video submitted to Ballotpedia
Released Mar 25, 2022

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Candidate Connection

Mark Harmon completed Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection survey in 2022. The survey questions appear in bold and are followed by Harmon's responses. Candidates are asked three required questions for this survey, but they may answer additional optional questions as well.

Expand all | Collapse all

Mark Harmon has been a teacher for most of his adult life, and his enthusiasm for helping the next generation is what motivates him. He wants to create opportunities for working families—as a way of giving back to those who opened doors for him.

Mark and his wife Becky live in the North Hills neighborhood of Knoxville. He served our area as an elected Knox County Commissioner from 2006 to 2010.

Some 22 years ago Mark Harmon moved to Knoxville to take a journalism and broadcasting professor job at the University of Tennessee. He’s still working there, earning two national awards for his teaching and three national honors for his column writing.

Mark was known on commission for standing up for neighborhoods whenever developers sought to run roughshod over them. He also reached across the political aisle to get things done on recall elections, holding a Medicaid provider to account, and developing a better and money-saving county vehicles policy.
  • We need a better congressman. Tim Burchett is a failed insurrectionist and an extremist who is more a Twitter critic of Congress than a public servant.
  • Mark Harmon supports abortion rights, an increased minimum wage, a public option for health care plans, and expanded post-secondary grants.
  • This campaign is not about right and left, but about right and wrong. My opponent disqualified himself by voting to delay or deny the peaceful transfer of power.
I care deeply about reducing student debt, supporting abortion rights, serving the public honestly and thoroughly, offering consumers a public option in health care, protecting our environment, combatting climate change, raising the minimum wage, protecting voting rights, defending Western democracy, fighting corporate price fixing and corruption of our political processes, and advancing human rights.
My mother, father, sister, and wife all have (or had, as Mom and Dad have passed) remarkable qualities that I admire. I was friends with the late, great Molly Ivins, and I'd like to follow her example of humor and hell raising.
I'd recommend Truman by David McCullough.
Honesty, dedication to service, humility, intellectual curiosity, independence, perseverance, research skills, communication skills.
Friends regard me as a resilient and upbeat person who works hard and holds to ethical principles.
Be true to one's oath to defend the Constitution. Respect the peaceful transfer of power. Serve your constituents in their interactions with the federal government. Evaluate and vote upon legislation based on its overall merit.
Expanded grants to help young people pay for college and other post-secondary education.
I was six at the time of the JFK assasination. I remember my mother running into the room and crying.
Catch-22. It shows the absurdity of war.
Moving public policy in a direction that opens doors for kids from working-class backgrounds.
The ability (with wise membership and leadership) to challenge corporate excess, to protect democratic institutions, and to open doors for the next generation. Currently it falls short of that potential because of corruption and the obstructionist use of the filibuster.
Yes.
Climate change, disinformation, and the growing gap between the extremely wealthy and everyone else.
Education, Labor.
The term is set in the Constitution. I believe it is fine.
I volunteer not to serve more than six years in this office.
Katie Porter has been an effective advocate for everyday people, and just fantastic at challenging corporate nonsense and greed.
One day I met a fellow who said he was a classmate of my opponent, Tim Burchett. I waited through a long pause, expecting this person to dismiss me and praise Burchett. Instead, he said, "Do me a favor. Beat the crap out of him, will you?" I hope to do so metaphorically at the ballot box.
Yes, but principles and honest should not be compromised.
I would seek areas of corporate welfare to cut when I propose things such as expanded college (and other post-secondary aid). I also would roll back corporate tax breaks to fund needed programs.

Note: Ballotpedia reserves the right to edit Candidate Connection survey responses. Any edits made by Ballotpedia will be clearly marked with [brackets] for the public. If the candidate disagrees with an edit, he or she may request the full removal of the survey response from Ballotpedia.org. Ballotpedia does not edit or correct typographical errors unless the candidate's campaign requests it.

Campaign website

Harmon's campaign website stated the following:

“

Minimum Wage

Reward work by raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.


Affordable College

Help working-class families achieve the American dream by making more grants (instead of loans) available for college and other post-secondary education. We also need to reduce student debt with loan forgiveness programs.


Health Care

Improve our health care coverage by adding a public option plan based on what people like about Medicare.


Abortion Rights

Mark trusts women, and leaves to them and their medical providers decisions about abortion. He would put no level of government between pregnant persons and their reproductive care. He would sponsor or co-sponsor putting the Roe and Casey protections into federal law.

His opponent is against choice, and actually joined a legal brief in favor of the terrible Mississippi law that our extremist Supreme Court used to wipe out abortion rights.


Other notable issues

  • Advocate for expanded Medicaid, something desperately needed by many families—and a great benefit to our struggling rural hospitals.
  • Respect science, research, and truth in making public policy, especially as we craft improvements to our infrastructure. We should emphasize green jobs as we prepare our economy for the future, and combat climate change.
  • Get federal consistency so states and localities can introduce plans to decriminalize cannabis—generating tax money as well as saving costs from incarceration for minor offenses.
  • Make voting easier, and clarify that corporations are not people, and money is not speech—all part of an effort to empower everyday citizens and reduce corporate influence in our government. Not all politicians are bought-and-sold, but there are far too many who can be rented.
  • Reverse tax policies that for too long have given huge tax breaks to billionaires and corporations (and looked-the-other-way on tax cheating). These policies increase the total tax burden on working families, and must be rolled back.


Worst Burchett Votes

Tim Burchett has cast so many bad votes in our name that a full list would be unmanageable, but here is a starter list of some of the worst:

  • Reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act (HR 1620, March 8, 2021). It extended programs that seek to prevent and respond to domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence, and stalking. Burchett votes No.
  • American Rescue Plan (HR 1319, March 6, 2021). Additional relief to address the impact of COVID-19 on the economy, public health, state and local government, individual and businesses. This popular bill included direct stimulus checks, small business relief, and money for vaccine distribution. Burchett votes No.
  • COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act (S. 937, May 18, 2021). This Act required the Department of Justice to designate a person to speed up gathering data and reporting on hate crimes motivated by race or ethnicity (often crimes against Asian heritage persons) related to COVID-19. This bipartisan bill passes easily—with 217 Democrats and 147 Republicans voting for it. Burchett was one of 62 extremist Republicans voting against it.
  • For the People Act (HR 1, March 3, 2021). Sets minimum standards below which states may not fall in guaranteeing voting access, including vote-by-mail and early voting. Requires independent redistricting commissions rather than the current system of gerrymandered districts where legislators pick their voters. Tightens campaign finance rules. Burchett votes No.
  • Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (HR 1065, May 14, 2021). Prohibits employment practices that fail to make reasonable accommodations for pregnant employees who otherwise can perform the job. Bipartisan support, 216 Democrats and 99 Republicans vote for it. Burchett votes No.
  • Remove Confederate Statues and Busts from the Capitol (HR 3005, June 29, 2021). Included a specific call to replace the bust of Roger Taney, author of the infamous Dred Scott case upholding slavery, with a bust of civil rights icon and Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall. Passed on a bipartisan basis; 67 Republicans joined 218 Democrats. Burchett votes No.
  • Supporting our NATO Allies (HR 676, Jan. 22, 2019). For decades, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been vital tool in defending Western democracy. This bill showed support for our NATO allies by prohibiting any expenditure of funds for the U.S. to withdraw from this vital defense organization. Only 22 congressmen voted against it. Tim Burchett was one of them.[2]
 ”
—Mark Harmon's campaign website (2022)[3]

See also

2022 Elections

Ballotpedia Election Coverage Badge.png
What's on the ballot?
U.S. Congress
U.S. Congress special elections
State executives
State legislatures
State courts
Ballot measures
Municipal government
School boards
Election analysis hub

Government

Seal of Tennessee.png
Who represents me?
U.S. Congress
State executives
State legislators
State courts
Ballot measures
Municipal government
School boards

Newsletters

Ballotpedia RSS.jpg
The Heart of the Primaries
The Daily Brew
The Weekly Brew
The Ballot Bulletin
Checks and Balances
Economy and Society
Hall Pass
Number of the Day
Robe & Gavel
Union Station


External links

Candidate

U.S. House Tennessee District 2
  • Instagram
  • Website
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
    		•

    Personal

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
    		•

    Footnotes

    1. ↑ Information submitted to Ballotpedia through the Candidate Connection survey on June 25, 2022
    2. ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
    3. ↑ Mark Harmon for Congress, “The Issues,” accessed September 29, 2022


    Tennessee's current delegation to the United States Congress
    Senators
    Marsha Blackburn (R)
    Bill Hagerty (R)
    Representatives
    District 1
    District 2
    District 3
    District 4
    District 5
    District 6
    John Rose (R)
    District 7
    Vacant
    District 8
    District 9
    Republican Party (9)
    Democratic Party (1)
    Vacancies (1)


    Flag of Tennessee
    v • e
    State of Tennessee
    Nashville (capital)
    Elections

    What's on my ballot? | Elections in 2025 | How to vote | How to run for office | Ballot measures

    Government

    Who represents me? | U.S. President | U.S. Congress | Federal courts | State executives | State legislature | State and local courts | Counties | Cities | School districts | Public policy


    Retrieved from "https://ballotpedia.org/wiki/index.php?title=Mark_Harmon&oldid=9789509"