Mike Cortese

Mike Cortese earned a bachelor's degree from Belmont University in 2004. His career experience includes working as an educator.[1]

Who are you? Tell us about yourself.

Mike Cortese grew up around instability, addiction, and crime. He did not have family connections, a safety net, or anyone positioned to hand him anything. What he had was a community that helped him fight his way forward, and a clear-eyed understanding of what it costs when the people in charge stop paying attention to the people counting on them.

He built a career in the entertainment business and education before being elected to Nashville's Metro Council, where he represents District 4. On the council, he has authored legislation targeting algorithmic pricing, fought predatory development, and taken on corporate interests that expected local government to get out of their way. He did not get out of their way.

He is married to Amy Cortese, who shares his background and his convictions, and has two sons. Together they built their life in Nashville without the advantages that smooth the path for so many who end up in politics, which is why Mike understands the stakes of getting this right.

Mike is running for Congress in Tennessee's 4th Congressional District to take the fights he has been having in council chambers to Washington. He is not running to make friends with wealthy donors, he's running because working families in Tennessee have been represented by someone who has introduced almost no legislation in fourteen years, missed votes at twice the national average, and collected checks from the industries his committees are supposed to oversee.

Please list below 3 key messages of your campaign. What are the main points you want voters to remember about your goals for your time in office?

For decades, Washington has handed tax breaks to corporations, subsidized industries that don't need subsidizing, and bailed out financial institutions that made bad bets, and then gone on to tell working families the money wasn't there for them. Meanwhile, corporate middlemen continue to increase prices for working people while not providing any new value to consumers or the national interest because they're able to buy access to politicians and regulators, corner markets, and raise prices. simply because nobody has made them stop. Mike Cortese is running to stop them.Americans pay more for healthcare than any country on earth and get worse outcomes. Rent consumes a larger share of income every year while private equity buys up the housing supply. Prescription drugs cost ten times more here than in Canada — for the same pills, made by the same companies. None of this is accidental. Corporate consolidation in healthcare, housing, and pharmaceuticals has eliminated real competition and replaced it with managed extraction. Mike will fight to negotiate drug prices, lower the Medicare eligibility age, break up monopolies driving up rents and killing small businesses, and stop the middlemen whose only product is a higher bill.Government should be reshaped to prioritize accountability over access. DC incumbents have spent decades in Congress introducing surprisingly little legislation and collecting checks from the same industries they're supposed to oversee. Mike takes no corporate PAC money. He has a documented record of standing up to powerful interests — from fighting predatory real estate development to taking on corporate consolidation that crushes small businesses. Mike believes members of Congress should represent the people who elected them, not the people who funded them.

What areas of public policy are you personally passionate about?

Mike Cortese is passionate about one thing above everything else: making the economy work for the people who actually do the work. That means breaking up the corporate monopolies driving up grocery bills, rent, and prescription costs. It means ending the quiet subsidies that transfer wealth from working families to shareholders. It means making sure that when a corporation profits from public infrastructure, it pays for it — instead of passing the cost to the people already paying their bills on time. The system is not broken. It is working exactly as intended for the wrong people. Mike is running to make it work for us.

Mike Cortese did not complete [the profile publisher]'s 2023 Candidate Connection survey.

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Mike Cortese did not complete the candidate survey.