State Rep. Michele Reneau, R-Hixson, has announced she will run for reelection.
Reneau is serving her first term in the Tennessee House after unseating five-term Rep. Patsy Hazlewood, R-Signal Mountain, by fewer than 150 votes in 2024.
The lawmaker said in an interview with the Chattanooga Times Free Press that she’s running again for more time to accomplish her policy goals with the steepest part of the legislative learning curve behind her.
Reneau said she is particularly focused on furthering the Make America Healthy Again policy objectives at the state level.
The phrase, coined by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., describes his health agenda for the country. The slogan is a label for Kennedy’s aim to address chronic illness, particularly in children, by targeting food and drink additives, reassessing pediatric health policy and emphasizing prevention.
“Now that there are a lot of things in particular with the MAHA movement that have now come to the attention at the federal level, I think we’re going to have a lot more success at the state level and bring those things down a little bit sooner,” Reneau said by phone. “I’ve been passionate about this for a long time, and I just hope to be able to continue to make a difference in that area in Tennessee.”
In 2025, the Tennessee General Assembly passed a bill that Reneau cosponsored, with overwhelming bipartisan support, to ban artificial red dye, known as Red 40, from being sold, offered for sale or provided in charter and public schools. Limiting artificial dyes is a core target of Kennedy’s MAHA platform.
Reneau is pushing to pass two MAHA-aligned bills in 2026, one to eliminate fluoride in water, which Kennedy has advocated for, and another to require the presidential fitness test in public schools. Trump passed an executive order as part of the MAHA initiative to require schools administer the physical.
In 2016, Reneau became more closely involved with legislative politics through work related to her farm food delivery business. That work aligns closely with her MAHA ethos. She helped draft and testify for a farm-to-consumer distribution bill.
Reneau said her own personal interest in the benefits of drinking raw milk is what led her to become active in grassroots work with farmers to advocate against a bill that would have prevented raw milk’s sale. Reneau said eventually the bill got pulled.
Raw milk has been promoted by the MAHA movement, and Kennedy has advocated that it is a superfood.
Reneau’s grassroots organizing with farmers was a precursor to the grassroots campaign that got her elected.
Reneau, a self-proclaimed newcomer to politics, ran a campaign primary with less money than her opponent and lots of door-knocking.
Hazlewood raised $366,790, while Reneau raised $22,410 in the Republican primary race for the Tennessee House District 27 seat.
Reneau’s campaign was supported by Calvary Chapel members and its pastor. Gail Greene, a fellow Calvary Chapel member, worked on Reneau’s campaign and was elected the same year as the new head of the Chattanooga Republican Party.
Reneau considers herself a constitutional conservative.
In her first year, Reneau split with the majority of her Republican colleagues on key votes like Gov. Bill Lee’s state-funded private school grantsprogram, the Education Freedom Scholarship Act; bipartisan legislation that established a fund for farmland preservation; and a health care conscience law.
Reneau said she heard from many constituents who didn’t support the private school tuition grants and that some lawmakers who voted to pass the bill did so not because their constituents wanted it, but for other political reasons.
The program is a cornerstone of Lee’s school choice agenda. Lee has said he wants to expand the program this session to offer more publicly funded grants for students to attend private schools.
“The problem I have with that is that, as a state, we have the responsibility to provide a free public education, and it means in order to maintain that education, which is what is required by the Tennessee Constitution, it means we should provide a good one, an excellent one,” Reneau said. “And so to me, to divert money into private education instead of addressing the real problems we have in public education, I think, it is really, I hate to say, a dereliction of duty.”
Original article online at: https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/2026/jan/15/reneau-seeks-reelection-in-2026-plans-to-focus-on/