U.S. Senate candidate Bill Hagerty underlined that he is an ally to President Donald Trump in a speech at The Royal Lunch in downtown LaFollette on Tuesday afternoon.
“I’m a fourth-generation Tennessean,” Hagerty said. “I grew up, I think, like most of us did. We didn’t have a lot. My mom was a career schoolteacher. My dad worked road construction. Again, we didn’t have a lot, but they raised us with strong Christian conservative Tennessee values. They taught us to love Christ. They taught us to love our country, and they taught us to love one another. And importantly, they taught us the value of hard work.
“No one worked harder than my family. I grew up raising cattle and pigs, baling hay. When I was older, I worked road construction right alongside my dad. I worked my way through school, through college, shoveling asphalt. And no one worked harder than my dad. He wanted me to have an opportunity that he didn’t. He made sure that I was the first male in the Hagerty family to have a college degree. He worked hard for that. I worked hard for that, and I worked my way all the way through school, making that happen. That’s the American way.
“That gave me the opportunity to build a foundation for my own career in business. I was successful beyond my imagination, and today, can you imagine a kid from a small town, Sumner County, Tennessee, having spent the last four years working side by side with the president of the United States? Only in America, that can happen.”
Trump endorsed Hagerty for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Sen. Lamar Alexander, who has chosen not to run for re-election.
“This is the reason that I’ve come into this race: I’m very concerned about where we are as a nation,” Hagerty said. “We’re at a tipping point right now, and if we don’t have leaders with the strength and the courage and the stamina to stand up, we’re going to lose this nation.”