Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity.
HEIMERMAN: So, I grew up in Lenior City, and I travel a lot. I don't have any real established housing roots anywhere, so I tend to come back into town every couple years or so in between assignments and trips, and I work on the river system a lot. So, I'm usually out for summers. I'll come back for a little bit in the wintertime, and every time I come back, it feels a little less like the hometown I grew up in, and this last time I came back right before the previous election, I didn't plan on actually moving and staying back home. But when I got back, I felt like I had entered a place that no longer looked familiar to me. The amount of congestion on the roadways, the amount of police that were everywhere. I felt like I was entering a police state, and then I started seeing cameras posted up on every street corner, and I felt like I had no longer entered East Tennessee, but instead I'd entered some other country that was actively trying to oppress people, and that was quite concerning to me. I didn't plan on staying, so I just kind of made an observation. I was like, ‘This doesn't quite feel like home anymore.’ Then my grandmother recited some propaganda to me that came straight from the Kremlin, and at that point, I was taken back a little bit because they're heavy conservative Republicans. So, you know, no surprise of some of the conversations. But what she said was something that was so foreign to me that I would never expect my grandmother, someone that raised me to be good in the world, to repeat something that is an obvious lie, as well as something that is doing damage to a nation and degrading human life, I found that to be absolutely appalling; that the people who have been brainwashing my grandparents have gotten to the point that they wouldn't listen to truth coming from their own grandson because it wasn't part of the policy or the political rhetoric being sold to them online. At that point I saw that as a pretty big issue; that I'm about to lose my hometown forever.
I've thought about and fantasized about running for office a long time. Always thought it would be cool to actually have some power to be able to do the good in the world instead of always being hands-on and having to be one-on-one and creating small change, which is great. Small change adds up, but I've always thought it would be great to be able to run for federal office and actually make big change; start having people look at East Tennessee with a little more dignity and respect, because the last couple years, as I'm traveling around in other spots of the country, it went from being ‘Oh Tennessee, the land of Dolly and Jack Daniels and country music. We love Tennessee.’ I started finding myself having to defend Tennessee and say ‘No, no, we're not what you see on the news. I swear we are better than that.’
So, I feel like I'm no longer properly represented as an East Tennessean in federal office, and I'd have to say in state and local as well. It was kind of concerning the direction that people have been pushing, and that has kind of cut me to the core in a bit. I have the ability to do it this year, so I'm taking the opportunity to. I don't know if I have that chance in the future, and really determine what the future holds will be how this election pans out.
I'm looking for statistics. I'm really big on numbers, and the numbers say that there is room for change in East Tennessee, but people have to feel like it actually is worth going out to vote. So I put my name on the ballot because there's a lot of people that I grew up with in Loudon County, and that's one of the spots that, in order to win this congressional seat, Loudon County has to break away from being hard Republican, and I think as an independent, I believe a lot of people actually view themselves as independents, but they get bottled into two categories, and that's why we don't see a lot of people actually show up. They think it's either left or right, so why should I bother going to vote? It doesn't matter, and I understand that. But once we accept that level of defeat, we no longer have the ability to make any change, and that cynicism is going to just continue to pollute the soil all the way down to the core of this area. And for me, that's just not something I can tolerate and call it my home still. And if I have to go and find another place to call home. It sure would be a disappointment, but I'm willing to fight for the Tennessee that I believe in. But if the Tennessee I believe in doesn't exist, then I'm going to have to unfortunately find a new place to call home, and I don't want to do that. I love my state. I love my area. I just hope people start coming together a little bit better and have some passion once again.
SIEBER: What is your pitch to voters who may have historically voted for Democrat or Republican as an independent candidate?
HEIMERMAN: So traditionally in midterms, we get about a 50% turnout through the district. In some of the outlying counties to the north of Knox County, it gets even lower. I think I believe it was Union or Claiborne County. One of the two turned out to be 25 to 30% voter turnout last midterm, so there's a lot of people that sit on the sidelines and just don't believe that their voice or opinion matters, yet they want to have some way to protest against the status quo. If everyone who sat on their hands in the last election went out and protest-vote for Adam Heimerman as an independent, we would have an independent. Because there's way more people who don't vote than either party receives in votes. So it's a real path to victory if people are willing to step up and actually have that and take the opportunity. That's the tough part. A lot of people just don't think they're being heard, and you know, people like me, it's kind of tough to hear the independents because I don't have a big backing. And you know, unless folks like you were to reach out, there's not a lot I can do to get my name further out other than places that already know who I am.
SIEBER: If elected, what are the first steps that you would take in office?
HEIMERMAN: So, I think as a representative, the biggest responsibility as a representative is to represent the people. I have personal goals and objectives that I'd like to see done, but if people were to come out and say, ‘Hey, man, I don't think that's important enough to have you wasting time on it,’ then that's the prerogative. So I guess let's start day one. I start finding allies for folks that want to get rid of Citizens United. I think that is a cancer in our government, and until we remove that thorn, the infection will never heal. That's the first step to fixing all these problems because everything boils down to corporate entities, interest, and lobbyist money going into our federal government. Once we remove that thorn, we can start to heal. The second step is going to have to start looking at refunding some of these cut [federal] programs that were there to regulate from corporate entities that are looking to just dump their sewage into our rivers or looking to use public land for their own private profits. There's corporations that are receiving subsidies, just massive amounts of subsidies that we could be putting towards helping the people. So our tax money is going to the wrong hands. People that already have money are receiving handouts. We need hand-ups for the people at the bottom that are just trying to get by and just pursue their American dream. So that's going to be the first step. So my week one is going to be finding allies, working towards getting [rid of] Citizens United and starting the coalition to get rid of it, and then start looking at who has been leeching off the government so heavily because they like to say it's the people. I tell you, it's definitely the corporations that are receiving way more funding in private equity than anyone on ground level as citizens are receiving.
SIEBER: So you filled out a candidate form, and that form was based on a survey that we conducted with East Tennesseans. A common theme that was raised in an open-ended section was the cost of living. So I was wondering if you could maybe provide some insight on how you would address those concerns from these constituents.
HEIMERMAN: So that's it's kind of like looking at a Herculean task. We're looking at a monster, and you have to wonder how in the hell am I ever going to take this on? Because it's got 50 heads and 20 arms. Where do you even begin? It's going to take way more than one person from East Tennessee coming up with an idea. It's going to take people all across this country that can come together, speak, and work civilly, and actually start working towards making our cost of living a little bit better. It's not going to be fast. It's going to take years to make it happen. It's unfortunately not just a switch. It's easy to crank up the cost, but it's certainly hard to get corporations to decide we don't want those record-breaking profits anymore. So, my first plan would be we need to start investing in housing because that's really our base root. It's going to be: how much does it cost to just have a roof over your head, and once that's established to come down and have a better price for you to start with. Now, the groceries and things don't feel as painful, but we need to find ways to bring those down as well. We have, in a way, brought this upon ourselves through poor policies. We have allowed private developers to accept tax breaks and not have to pay in their fair share to then create luxury housing units, which they designate 20 to 25% as affordable housing. Well, they just leached off a whole lot of tax money and got something for nothing. While on the side, they make all the money off of selling these expensive units, and they leave a couple of them for people to fight over at the bottom. That creates some turmoil. So until we find a proper fix for housing, we're going to continue seeing that issue. Another bit is our immigration policy has removed a lot of farm hands from the system, and as mad as people wanted to be about an immigrant, they are absolutely critical for every society in every country across this world. Immigrants bring in a lot of value that people are overlooking now because the rhetoric has gotten so inflamed that people no longer are thinking rationally and they're thinking off of fear and anger, a very base emotion. In fact, I consider it to be, if you're angry about something, it's because you don't know the proper emotion to have. So when people are angry, I always ask, what is actually the feeling they have in their heart right now? When we lost the ability to have all these farm hands, now our groceries are looking rougher. We have a war that shouldn't be going on. That's unilaterally made by a president that has directly affected the cost of fertilizer, fuel, as well as a lot of other chemicals that come in from the Middle East. Because of our senseless boondoggle in Iran, it's not going to come down real easily. Because now these corporations are used to being able to say, ‘Well, it's now $10 instead of five. If they're going to pay for it, let's keep it.’ So we have to have some people in the federal government that are willing to push back against capitalism running so rampant. It's important that we have a free market and a capitalistic society, but there's a lot of people that say the federal government in America should run like a business. I agree, we should run it like a business, which means it's time that the federal government starts getting in business to compete against these other corporations. They're doing a program right now in New York City, and that's a scary city for a lot of folks down here. It's one that you often hear about Mayor Zohran Mamdani and how the whole city is going to burn down. Yet they have found a way to bring their price down with groceries by having government assistance and you could call it a subsidy. But instead of the farms and the corporations getting the subsidies, it now goes towards helping the people get lower cost food. We have a lot of food waste in this country, so we really did kind of bring this on ourselves by allowing people in office to just kneel down to a president and let him make unilateral decisions.
Congress is the one that's supposed to be setting tariff rates. They're the ones that are supposed to be setting the purse. They're the ones that are supposed to be determining if we're going to war or not. The president gets 90 days, and he's long past it. They have failed to do their job and gave it all to the president. With executive power, he has dismantled a lot of things that were actually very important for us to function. If you were to look at the American government as a corporation, you don't cut the departments that are the most beneficial for the workers and to produce a product. You find ways to invest in them and get them more efficient if they're not functioning properly. So we've really gone through and kind of cut the wrong places and gave funding to the wrong spots as well. So it's like I said, it's like fighting a hydra. When you go to cut one head, two more are going to pop up. But without people in the federal office willing to start taking on the first monsters, there's no way we're going to get through to the last monster. It
It is going to be a long fight, and it's not something I can just snap my fingers and make go away. But if we have level-headed people and independently minded people that aren't cow tailing to party lines, we can start seeing it come down over the next two years. But at this point, we're-I feel like at times we're on a bus with no driver heading to a cliff and the pedal is stuck, and until someone goes to sit in the seat and remove the stuck pedal or jump off the bus, we're all in this together, and we're not heading in a good direction. So it's something that needs to be addressed, and I think it starts with housing, and then we have to start looking at how our farming networks work, and starting to recognize how much corporate entities are now consuming all the things that used to be held at a lower individual level. So now that they're buying up all these farms that are foreclosing, they're going to continue controlling more and more. And when they can control the prices, we have no way to fight back. They're not going to bring them down because they're the purpose of a corporation is to create value for its shareholders, not to create value for the people buying the product. They just need us to be okay with buying it, and they'll be more than happy to continue slowly raising or decreasing the size that we receive. So, either they'll increase the price or they'll decrease the volume and quantity, but they will find a way to squeeze $1 until we start squeezing back.
SIEBER: Another issue that I have found were concerns regarding data centers. Data centers were a big thing that not only were appearing in the survey, but also we've seen it in a local level where there's a moratorium on data centers to a certain size, and we're seeing that across the country. You know, I wanted to kind of get your take on how you would regulate something that has sparked the concerns of hundreds of maybe more than hundreds of 1000s of people.
HEIMERMAN: It's impressive how some things have really taken a spotlight in the last couple months, and data centers being one of them. They've been built for a while. It's just now that they've become so aggressive and just so absolutely massive, and they're putting them in places that folks don't want them, so we were actually kind of talking about a moratorium at the city council for, well, Blount County Commissioners meeting the other night was one of the moratoriums. I'm fairly active over there, and it seems like we haven't really got a good idea of how we're going to deal with this just yet as a whole. We can't just outright ban them because there are places that actually utilize a data center for proper use. Something that would be, let's say, the University of Tennessee needs a data center to be able to hold in all the massive amount of information that's being generated here on campus through whether it be scientific research, whether it's communications, whether it's you know it, they have to have somewhere to store it. So that makes sense. When the data center is being used to collect information for AI, now it's a little more concerning because that's it's really just sleuthing through the internet, collecting everything you can, putting it into one server. In this case, a data center being as massive as it is, but just to simplify, they're putting it into one server, and then that server is being utilized to create their own personal profit off of the people's data. We have to start finding a way to draw a line and say, ‘This is okay, proper usage. This is not.’ As long as they're able to be the ones dictating what our policies are and have more influence with the representatives than the people do, we're going to be basically enslaved to whatever corporate entities want to do with the data centers. We can't outright get rid of them entirely, but we do need to find some way moving forward to address what's a good use, what's a bad use. As far as regulation goes, it's the local government that really decides if they can even be built. So, the local government plays a lot more impact than what I believe a lot of people realize. In fact, I would encourage people to start paying a lot of attention to their local government. It's the reason why we have flock cameras going up. It's the reason why we have issues with roadways and bridges. It's why our zoning allows for either high-density residential units or data centers. At a federal level, I could put in regulations preventing a data center from being in specific locations, like saying you know you can't be within ‘x’ amount of a community unless that community comes out with a certain level of interest. Say, you know, at least 70% of the community says bring on a data center. We could put something like that in play. We could also put in something more along the lines for environmental protections, that data centers cannot be using up water more than what the local community is, or it could not be depositing wastewater outside into a protected area. So, there are things that we can require of them. No one's been willing to tackle that because the idea of regulation sounds really scary to the Republican environment, and we're not going to see any form of regulation as long as we have corporate entities buying out the people that are supposed to represent us. Unfortunately, I can't just snap my fingers and make a law happen and say no more. This is America; they have the right, and if the people want a data center, okay, they got to choose it. But we do have to find a way to start making tighter regulations for them, ensuring that what they are doing is not destroying the environment or the communities around them.
SIEBER: What other concerns are you hearing from folks?
HEIMERMAN: I tend to hear most about surveillance. That's the biggest one that people talk to me about and it's probably because I was in the news regarding it. So, I get that a whole lot, and there's a lot of people that have reached out and said, ‘Hey, man, now that I'm aware of this, I can't stop seeing them everywhere. What can I do, and how can I start paying more attention?’ And I've had a lot of people across the country, not even just in our district, just across the country, reach out to me in the last two months, and just straight up ask me, how can I make sure I can participate more in my government? And it always starts with the same thing: find out who represents you locally and start going to the meetings. They're public, they're there, they're accessible, and you have a right to be heard. So, everyone gets a couple minutes at these meetings to have the opportunity to speak up. Our voices are way louder when they are in person, because if it's online, they can just pretend that it's some troll. They don't. They can wish it away and pretend it doesn't exist. But if you show up in person, they have to look at you, and it makes them uncomfortable. I'll tell you right now. I can feel it when I walk into some of these rooms. Some people immediately start realizing that maybe a little, little more attention needs to be given. I've seen folks go from commissioners and representatives that have gone from looking at their phone and clearly not paying attention to suddenly now I go in and solely just try to lock eyes with every single person I can. I try to let them know people like me are out there and we're watching, we're listening. Holding them accountable has a huge impact at the local level. So the biggest discussions I've been getting are regarding data centers, the use of flock cameras and surveillance companies, and how can we be more interactive with our local government? Which is great to hear because that's where all this starts. People like to say you know the president and federal government is really important. It is, but what truly happens on ground level happens here at. Your commissioners' meeting and your city council's meeting-that's what determines all this stuff. The federal government's not the one that's coming in and saying, "Hey, here's what's going to happen. They say, ‘Hey, here's the guidelines. You can kind of decide what to do amongst yourselves.’
SIEBER: What are key takeaways from your campaign that you want people to know?
HEIMERMAN: I really wish people would start feeling like their voice matters and that they're actually being heard and that they actually can do something. I'm just some dude that grew up in Lenoir City. I have worked as a river guide for the last 10 years. I've had businesses before. Happiness for me is outdoors. Tennessee, East Tennessee specifically, is the most biodiverse landlocked state. East Tennessee is the most biodiverse of anything that's not coastal in our country. But we're at risk of losing that because people are not aware of what's going on, and they are actively championing it. As long as we keep this hard left and right political agenda and continue having people saying it's either option A or option B, things are not going to get better. It's just going to swing back and forth like a clock until eventually the battery runs out and it stops. We have to start coming together. East Tennesseans have to get up and vote. This doesn't just happen naturally. This is all happening because people decided and they believed that their voice didn't matter. So there's one key takeaway that I would want people to hear is that we have to start showing up at the ballot box. Early voting is going on right now. If people feel like an independent's never going to win, then they're right as long as they don't vote. If things are never going to change and their voice doesn't matter, they're right as long as they're not going to go vote. The only wasted vote is the one that you did not cast. If I only get 1000 people to vote for Adam Heimerman , I'll know that that's 1000 people that actually cared enough to get up, go out, and vote. I'll be proud of that. I know I have incited change, and I'm just one guy. Just one guy that got tired of watching everything fall apart and losing my home – not the physical home – but the town, the community, the place that I grew up and valued as a kid-is no longer the feeling I get here. And that's because too many people have decided their voice does not matter. I assure you, it absolutely does. Go out in person, go to these meetings, confront the people, and be respectful, because when people are angry, I understand it. When you're angry, you have a lot to say, but when you're disrespectful, you're not going to get anyone to listen to you. And if the goal is to be heard, then you have to find a way to communicate. So I hope we can change our path because the Smoky Mountains are a treasure in this area, but they're at risk of being privatized in sections of it, so we are at risk of losing our natural resources and the beauty that people travel to our state for. They're at major risk right now, and a lot of people don't realize it because they don't see it happening yet. But when a logging company shows up, it's not because it just happened. It's been going on for months or years, and we're witnessing that happen right now in the back room, and soon it will be in front of us. And when people start seeing it, it's going to be too late to stop it. People need to stand up, have their voices heard now while they still have a chance.
SIEBER: That was Adam Heimerman, the independent candidate for Tennessee's second congressional district. Thank you for your time, Adam.
HEIMERMAN: I appreciate you having me
