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Odessa Kelly
Odessa Kelly (Democratic Party) ran for election to the U.S. House to represent Tennessee's 7th Congressional District. She lost in the general election on November 8, 2022.
Elections
2022
See also: Tennessee's 7th Congressional District election, 2022
General election
General election for U.S. House Tennessee District 7
Incumbent Mark Green defeated Odessa Kelly and Steven Hooper in the general election for U.S. House Tennessee District 7 on November 8, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ |  | Mark Green (R) | 60.0 | 108,421 |
 | Odessa Kelly (D) | 38.1 | 68,973 | |
| Steven Hooper (Independent) | 1.9 | 3,428 | ||
| Total votes: 180,822 | |||
 = 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. | ||||
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Democratic primary election
Democratic primary for U.S. House Tennessee District 7
Odessa Kelly advanced from the Democratic primary for U.S. House Tennessee District 7 on August 4, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Odessa Kelly | 100.0 | 24,854 |
| Total votes: 24,854 | |||
| = 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 7
Incumbent Mark Green advanced from the Republican primary for U.S. House Tennessee District 7 on August 4, 2022.
Candidate | % | Votes | ||
| ✔ | | Mark Green | 100.0 | 48,968 |
| Total votes: 48,968 | |||
| = 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
Ballotpedia survey responses
See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection
Odessa Kelly did not complete Ballotpedia's 2022 Candidate Connection survey.
Campaign website
Kelly's campaign website stated the following:
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Economic Justice Economic inequality has been growing for decades in America, but the COVID-19 pandemic fanned the flames of this crisis. Before the pandemic, wages remained stagnant for decades while the cost of housing, child care, and education continued to rise and the social safety net suffered drastic cuts. Now, as we begin the long road to recovery, Black and Hispanic communities, women, and low-wage workers are fairing worse. We need an economy that works for everyone, not just the people at the top. Our baseline as Democrats must be to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Congress must pass the PRO Act to protect unions and strengthen workers’ rights to organize and fight for fair wages. A $15 an hour federal minimum wage is the floor, not the ceiling. I also support progressive tax rates that require corporations and the richest Americans to pay their fair share and give back to our communities, instead of exploiting communities of color. I’m fighting for a more equitable economy that ensures all people have the right to housing, education, child care, and healthcare.
Our communities were devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic and are in urgent need of comprehensive, direct relief. Our neighborhood businesses have made sacrifices to protect the health of our community and they deserve immediate relief. Students are falling behind without in-person classes and families are struggling to make virtual schooling work. People who are doing the right thing by sheltering in place as much as possible should not have to bear the added burden of worrying about paying rent, struggling to put food on the table, and affording childcare. In each of these struggles, undocumented communities, low-income families, women, and communities of color are disproportionately impacted. When an economic crisis strikes, these communities are historically the first to feel its impact and the last to recover. We’re showing up for our communities, we deserve representation in Congress that shows up for us too. It is our moral obligation to ensure that our plans for COVID relief and recovery center these communities and to do everything in our power to make sure that relief goes directly to working people, not big corporations. President Biden’s American Rescue Plan is evidence of what Democrats can deliver for working people when we act boldly and with urgency. The law reduces overall poverty in America by one-third and drastically expands healthcare coverage for the duration of the pandemic; the $1400 survival checks deliver immediate relief to Americans including millions of mixed-status households, and the child tax credit puts money directly into the pockets of families and will cut child poverty in half. The American Rescue Plan opens the door to turn this triage COVID relief into long-term structural change to the systems that intensified this crisis. But there’s more we can do. We need monthly $2000 survival checks for everyone, immediate emergency Medicare enrollment for the uninsured, a moratorium on rent, mortgage, and debt payments, cancelation of student debt, immediate economic relief for small businesses, and vaccinations for teachers to safely reopen schools. As vaccines become more widely available, we need to increase education and awareness around COVID vaccinations to ensure everyone understands the safety and efficacy of the vaccines and how to access them. It is critical that vaccine administration plans prioritize our essential workers and the communities who’ve suffered the most during this pandemic.
Every year, tens of millions of people in America go without health insurance because they either can’t afford it or aren’t eligible. Last year, the coronavirus pandemic exposed what millions of Americans already knew: Our healthcare system is broken. We cannot continue to tie health insurance to employment status and allow big pharmaceutical and private health insurance companies to profit off our suffering. No one should have to delay treatment or ration medication due to cost. Americans are drowning in rising copays and deductibles. We have the most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet tens of millions of people are still left without coverage. It’s time for America to catch up with the rest of the developed world and adopt a universal healthcare system that eliminates the barriers preventing the people most in need from accessing care. Medicare for All expands coverage, reduces the burden of navigating endless paperwork and forms, and drastically cuts costs for both individuals and the government. Every doctor will be in-network and coverage for dental, vision, reproductive, and mental health will no longer be luxury supplemental plans. Healthcare is a human right, not a privilege. We must pass single-payer, Medicare For All because every American – no matter how rich or poor – deserves health care. We must also dramatically lower the cost of prescription drugs by allowing the government to manufacture drugs. Right now we have pharmaceutical monopolies that allow Big Pharma to charge patients and providers extreme prices for lifesaving drugs. Congress must step in and ensure that these corporations face real competition that will lower prescription drug prices for all.
Right now there is no justice in our punitive and discriminatory criminal justice system. We need a system focused on reform and connecting families and communities, not punishment and redress. We must end the school-to-prison pipeline and create a world that delivers on the dreams of our children when we tell them they can be anything they want to be. We must end the for-profit greed that fuels our current criminal justice system by banning for-profit prisons and detention centers and ending cash bail. We must legalize marijuana, expunge records, and ensure the revenue goes toward wealth creation in the communities most targeted by the War on Drugs. We must also hold law enforcement accountable by ending military equipment transfer programs to local and state law enforcement, providing grants to cities and states that create unarmed Crisis Care Units of social workers and mental health professionals, ending qualified immunity, and ensuring that our resources are being allocated toward the root causes of crime and not perpetuating the policing of poverty.
Every year, the affordable housing crisis gets worse. The reality is that it’s much harder to raise a family on one or two incomes now than it was 30 years ago. Just look at Nashville, where decades of gentrification displaced our neighbors and friends, pushing them out of the communities they’ve spent their whole lives in. It’s time to break the cycle of politicians doing the work of real estate developers who exploit foreclosures and gentrify our neighborhoods, and then pump their profits into buying off politicians with campaign contributions. Housing is a human right. More than a year into the pandemic, thousands of people in Nashville are struggling to pay rent. In an already heavily-gentrified city, we’re facing another foreclosure crisis as a direct result of the pandemic. Housing plays a critical role in determining our social mobility, access to education, economic opportunity, and health outcomes, but as home prices and rents skyrocket and wages remain stagnant, low-income families have fallen further behind. We must invest in public housing and ensure that everyone has a guaranteed home. We need multi-bedroom affordable housing that accommodates families who are planting roots in this community. The fight against homelessness also means ensuring tenants’ right to organize and protections against unjust eviction, providing federal funding to Tennessee to provide necessary services to the unhoused population, and investing in thousands of low-income housing to house the homeless. That’s why I support a #HomesGuarantee. As we think about expanding affordable housing, we must also invest in green space, public transit, and access to health care, quality education, and healthy food to ensure these neighborhoods are set up to thrive.
The climate crisis is already damaging communities like our own and we must act boldly to combat its devastating impacts. While our planet suffers and working-class communities battle pollution-related diagnoses like asthma, corporations and those at the top continue to pollute our water and air, and profit off our suffering. It’s time to cut a new deal for America’s working and middle class — one that ensures everyone shares in the dream of shared American prosperity. The Green New Deal is a solution that matches the scale of the problem. We need the war-time level of mobilization a Green New Deal requires to confront the climate crisis, upgrade our infrastructure, and create millions of good-paying union jobs that build a pathway for people of color to enter the middle class. The Green New Deal isn’t only about the environment. Working at the Napier Community Center, I realized that families and kids are up against systemic problems that are too big to fix with policies that tinker around the edges. The Green New Deal also includes a Just Transition that prioritizes union workers, communities on the frontline of the climate crisis, and low-income families who have powered our economy for more than a century and who have too often been neglected by corporations and politicians.
Growing up as a gay Black woman meant growing up without seeing myself or people like me represented in many of the spaces I occupied. Decades later, we are still fighting to be received as our full selves. Congress must pass the Equality Act, which creates a federal standard to prohibit discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community in housing, employment, government, healthcare, and more. More than one-third of LGBTQ Americans face discrimination, including more than 3 in 5 transgender Americans, and around 3 in 10 LGBTQ Americans faced difficulties just last year accessing necessary medical care, including more than half of transgender Americans. Every day this discrimination harms the mental and economic well-being of many in the LGBTQ community. Fighting for equality means ensuring the voices of LGBTQ Americans are represented in every policy conversation whether it’s inclusive education, fair housing policy, or non-discriminatory healthcare.
Our immigrant brothers and sisters deserve the right to seek a better life in America, but policies that criminalize immigrants and tear families apart have tarnished that dream. ICE was formed during a time of heightened xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment in the aftermath of 9/11 and is now the primary agency enforcing anti-immigrant deportation crackdowns. Between 2010 and 2016 alone, the Office of Inspector General received 33,000 reports of alleged abuse in ICE immigration detention centers. We need immigration policies rooted in our common humanity. We must abolish ICE and stop the mass deportations tearing families apart. We will protect DREAMers and create a fair pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented Americans.
In the United States, mass shootings occur on a daily basis. Like many of America’s deeply rooted crises, the gun violence epidemic disproportionately impacts communities of color and inflicts deeper pain in communities that are already struggling. It’s time to think differently about how we protect our communities from gun violence and to enact common-sense gun laws that will save lives. We must do everything in our power to keep guns out of the hands of those at the highest risk of violence. Anyone convicted of a hate crime should not own a gun. Period. We need to mandate universal background checks for private gun sales at gun shows and online, raise the minimum age to buy a firearm to at least 18 years old, and close the boyfriend loophole to protect survivors of domestic abuse. I support a federal licensing system for the purchase of any type of firearm or ammunition, establishing a one-week waiting period for all firearms purchases to discourage impulsive gun violence and reduce gun suicides. Improving the Gun-Free School Zones Act to include college and university campuses, and individuals licensed by a state or locality to carry a firearm. Gun dealers and manufacturers must be held accountable by prosecuting gun traffickers and revoking licenses for gun dealers who break the rules. Congress should pass an assault weapons ban prohibiting the future production, sale, and importation of military-style assault weapons. We should require individuals already in possession of assault weapons to register them under the National Firearms Act and individuals who fail to register or return their assault weapon should face penalties.[1] |
” |
| —Odessa Kelly's campaign website (2022)[2] | ||
See also
2022 Elections
External links
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Candidate U.S. House Tennessee District 7 |
Personal |
Footnotes
- ↑ Note: This text is quoted verbatim from the original source. Any inconsistencies are attributable to the original source.
- ↑ Odessa Kelly for Congress, “Home,” accessed September 28, 2022
