Andy Ogles
William Andrew Ogles IV is an American politician and businessman who has served as the U.S. representative for Tennessee's 5th congressional district since 2023. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the mayor of Maury County, Tennessee, from 2018 to 2022.
Ogles had previously worked as a conservative activist, serving as the executive director of the Laffer Center, a conservative think tank and the Tennessee chapter of conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity.
Ogles has taken strongly conservative positions and been described by media as being on the far-right of the political spectrum. He has called for Christian nationalism in the United States, and he opposes abortion and same-sex marriage. He was one of the original 19 members of Congress to vote against Kevin McCarthy for Speaker of the House. He is known for his staunch support for Donald Trump, and for sending Christmas cards featuring a photo of his family holding rifles.
During the attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election, Ogles falsely claimed that it was stolen. He has proposed a constitutional amendment to enable Trump to serve a third presidential term and filed articles of impeachment against judges who rule against the Trump administration.
Ogles has been criticized for lying about his education and career backgrounds, having falsely claimed to be both an economist and law-enforcement officer.
Early life and education
Ogles was born on June 18, 1971. A native of Middle Tennessee, he graduated from Franklin High School and later attended Western Kentucky University and Columbia State Community College from 1990 to 1993, studying allied language arts and English.Ogles later studied at Middle Tennessee State University, where he failed every course taken in the fall of 1995 and the fall of 1998; he returned to the university in 2007 and graduated with a 2.4 grade point average, with a Bachelor of Science in liberal studies. Ogles said in late February 2023 that his failed university courses were due to "an interfamilial matter" that led him to abandon his studies "to financially support my family during a difficult time" and that he eventually completed his studies with online courses.
Disputed education details
After Ogles became a congressman in 2023, his congressional biography claimed that he received his degree from MTSU, "where he studied policy and economics." Ogles' claim was questioned by NewsChannel 5 in February 2023, which published an investigatory report detailing that in a 2009 resume and also in a background check of unspecified date, Ogles claimed to have an MTSU degree in international relations, with minors in psychology and English. NewsChannel 5 additionally reported that MTSU declined to confirm Ogles' degree, referencing a federal law allowing students like Ogles the ability to block the release of academic records. Ogles later spoke to WWTN radio, calling for everyone to "lock down your transcripts... so you're not a victim of identity theft." In other comments to WWTN made on February 21, 2023, Ogles said that he does not remember "saying I had an economics degree … because I've been quite clear that I studied political science and international relations", while maintaining that he studied political science from "the economic perspective".On February 26, Ogles said that he was "mistaken" in claiming to have an MTSU degree in international relations, and claimed that he requested his college transcript the week before, and only learned then that his degree was actually in liberal studies. NewsChannel 5 called Ogles's statement "apparently preemptive" because Ogles "ignored our requests for comment" after the media outlet obtained his MTSU transcript from an old job application. On February 27, NewsChannel 5 published Ogles's transcript, which showed that Ogles took only one economics course at a community college, scoring a C pass, while he passed nine political science courses at MTSU. By February 28, Ogles's congressional biography was edited to simply state: "Andy obtained his degree from MTSU." NewsChannel 5 also investigated Ogles' claims of having done graduate work in marketing at Vanderbilt University's Owen School of Management and Dartmouth College's Tuck School of Business, and learned that Ogles took online non-credit courses in certificate programs rather than graduate courses.
Business and early political career
Ogles's involvement in politics began when he became the first director of the Tennessee chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a conservative political advocacy group. He later became involved with the Laffer Center, a conservative think tank. He has also been a Club for Growth Foundation fellow.Ogles made two unsuccessful bids for elected office, a run for the state's 4th congressional district in 2002 and the Tennessee Senate in 2006, losing in the Republican primary both times.
In September 2017, Ogles announced he would challenge incumbent U.S. senator Bob Corker, who he believed was insufficiently conservative, in the following year's primary. Upon announcing his bid, Ogles was financially supported by Lee Beaman, a Tennessee businessman who owns a large auto dealership chain and who planned to raise $4 million for Ogles. Two months later, Corker announced that he would retire instead of seeking the 2018 nomination. That led incumbent U.S. representative Marsha Blackburn, the eventual winner, and former representative Stephen Fincher to announce they would seek the seat. As their respective campaigns were likely to be well funded, Ogles announced shortly afterward that he would withdraw.
Disputed career claims
Ogles has repeatedly made public claims of being an "economist." After NewsChannel 5 questioned how much formal training in economics Ogles had, he said he was an economist because when "you look at the body of someone's work... I've spent the last decade working on economic policy and tax policy." During that time, Ogles had worked for roughly five years as an anti-tax lobbyist with Americans for Prosperity, and then for a year as the executive director of the Laffer Center, an organisation run by economist Arthur Laffer. The executive director position seemed to involve mainly "administrative" work, reported NewsChannel 5, with Ogles not being named as an author of any economic reports uploaded on the Laffer Center's website. Ogles' congressional website claims that "while working at the Laffer Center, Andy became a nationally recognized expert on tax policy and healthcare, having been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal and Investor's Business Daily". NewsChannel 5 questioned this claim, being unable to find any articles in the publications independently citing him as an expert, only finding three columns written by Ogles in these publications, all of which were written when he was a lobbyist, before he worked for the Laffer Center.At a political debate, Ogles called himself "a former member of law enforcement, worked in international sex crimes, specifically child trafficking", while at a separate forum, he said: "I went into law enforcement. I worked in human trafficking." NewsChannel 5 reported that Ogles was a volunteer reserve deputy with the Williamson County Sheriff's Office from 2009 to 2011, with his position revoked for failing to meet minimum standards, failing to progress in field training, and failing to attend required meetings. The Williamson County Sheriff's Office said that records do not show Ogles trained or worked against international sex trafficking as a reserve deputy. In 2011, Ogles worked as a chief operating officer for Abolition International, a non-profit organisation which described its work as giving grants to "holistic ministries". Ogles indicated that since his stint at Abolition International overlapped his stint as a reserve deputy, "Maybe I created some of the confusion or maybe it was someone looking to write a story". While Ogles claimed he was "heavily involved in the fight against human trafficking", NewsChannel 5 reported that Abolition International's tax records showed that Ogles worked in a part-time position that paid him $4,000 in total. Ogles' congressional website originally claimed that Ogles was "overseeing operations and investments in 12 countries" for Abolition International; but NewsChannel 5 disputed that number as too large; the website later amended its claim to overseeing operations and investments in "several countries."
County mayoralty
Initially considered a potential contender in the 2018 Tennessee gubernatorial election, Ogles instead saw his major first electoral success when he was elected mayor of Maury County in the August 2, 2018, general election, defeating incumbent Charlie Norman.During his mayoralty, Ogles criticized Tennessee governor Bill Lee for not restricting local school boards' ability to implement mask mandates in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, calling for the state legislature to pass legislation to support his position in a special session. He supported a sales tax increase that passed in 2020.
Ogles initially filed to run for a second term as county mayor but withdrew to enter the race for the redrawn U.S. House of Representatives seat in Tennessee's 5th congressional district in 2022. After he had announced his candidacy for Congress, he vetoed the county and school budget increases over a 31-cent property tax increase. In a letter he sent to the county commission chairman, he claimed that the "County Library went full woke