Rep. Kumar, Meet Me on a Debate Stage
SPRINGFIELD, TENNESSEE: (Smokey Barn News) – Dr. Tamara Bavendam, a candidate for Tennessee House District 66, has issued a public invitation to incumbent State Rep. Sabi Kumar to participate in a debate ahead of the November 3 election.
Bavendam says her efforts to arrange a debate have not resulted in an agreement. Smokey Barn News has also attempted to reach Rep. Kumar through multiple channels, including two telephone numbers, two email addresses, and direct contact with his staff. As of publication, we have not received a response regarding his willingness to participate.
The following is a paid political announcement submitted by the Bavendam campaign and is being published as provided. The views and statements expressed are those of the candidate and do not necessarily reflect those of Smokey Barn News.
PAID POLITICAL ANNOUNCEMENT
By Dr. Tamara Bavendam, candidate for Tennessee House District 66
Eight crashes at one Robertson County intersection this year, and a fix with no date. Nearly 300,000 Tennesseans locked out of health coverage while he holds the gavel on TennCare. A doctor who says he isn’t worried about cuts to medical research. Rep. Sabi Kumar owes you answers on all of it, and I’m inviting him to give them face to face.
Who I am
I earned my medical degree at the University of Iowa in 1981 and built my urology career around problems medicine had long ignored: the bladder and pelvic health conditions that leave millions of women suffering in silence. I listened to hundreds of women tell me their stories, and together we found better ways to treat them. I taught medicine and directed women’s urology programs at the University of Washington and in Philadelphia, training young urologists and gynecologists. Then I spent ten years at Pfizer on the research side, running clinical trials and patient education on bladder health, and learning to win over lawyers, regulators and executives who often didn’t agree with me. When Pfizer de-emphasized research and my role would have been primarily supporting marketing, I quit. I took my vision of bladder health to the National Institutes of Health, where I spent nine years helping decide which research the federal government would fund and started a research group focused on prevention of bladder conditions in women. My colleagues honored that work with a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021, and my alma mater Luther College gave me its Distinguished Service Award in 2022.
I never lost sight of my goal to improve care for women with bladder conditions and fought for it in distinct and different roles. That’s the kind of representation I want to bring to Robertson County: strong public schools, affordable health care, repealing the grocery tax, raising the minimum wage and fixing roads before people get hurt. You can read my full story at bavendam4robco.substack.com.
A record worth examining
Rep. Sabi Kumar and I are both physicians, and I respect his many years of surgical practice here. But eleven years in office leave a record, and voters deserve to examine it.
Health care should be a doctor’s home turf. Here’s how it works in Nashville: in the House, TennCare has its own subcommittee, and it sits under the Insurance Committee. Rep. Kumar runs that committee. He holds the gavel. Few people in that building have more say over whether TennCare grows. On his watch, Tennessee is still one of only 10 states that hasn’t expanded it, and nearly 300,000 of our neighbors remain locked out. He’s a surgeon. He knows what happens when uninsured patients wait until a problem becomes an emergency. And the door is still shut.
This year he co-sponsored bills in the state’s “Immigration 2026” package. One is designed to provoke a U.S. Supreme Court fight over powers that belong to Washington, and Tennessee taxpayers will pay the legal bills. Another makes county health workers check the immigration status of parents bringing children in for vaccines, or face criminal charges themselves. As a doctor, I know what happens when parents fear the clinic: fewer kids get vaccinated, and every family’s children are at risk. I believe in the rule of law, and that starts with the Constitution.
Then there’s the Highway 76 intersection at New Hall Road. After a June 2022 crash there, Rep. Kumar asked TDOT to study it, by his own count for the second time. In March 2024, he told Smokey Barn News he had “exhausted” his efforts with TDOT. That same month, officials agreed that realigning the intersection was the real fix, but no one found the money. Now, with another election weeks away, he says he has worked on it for five years. Five years, eight crashes this year alone, no date, no funding, and Rep. Kumar is still talking about it.
In June, he told Tennessean readers that splitting majority-Black Memphis among three congressional districts would benefit the city. By his own figures, Black voters would drop from 63% of one district to 31% of each of three, outvoted three times over. He calls that more influence. I call it hogwash.
That same week, Robertson County’s Black community gathered at the Bransford Community Center to mark Juneteenth. Rep. Kumar wasn’t there. His own Facebook post shows where he was that day: about eight blocks away at the opening of a theater. He made no public mention of Juneteenth. When it counted, he didn’t stand with the Black families he was elected to represent. I will.
In February 2025, a reporter asked him whether, as a doctor, he was concerned about cuts to federal medical research. “No, I’m not worried,” he said.
I spent nine years inside the NIH. Behind every research grant are patients waiting for better treatments. I am worried, and I’ll say so.
An invitation
So I am publicly inviting Rep. Kumar to debate me before Election Day, at any reasonable time and place in Robertson County, before a neutral moderator, open to the public and the press. His campaign can reach mine at [email protected] or (615) 519-6405.
Here are the questions I’d like voters to hear him answer:
- You’ve raised Highway 76 with TDOT since 2022 and said your efforts were “exhausted” in 2024. Why should voters expect a different result after this election?
- You hold the gavel on TennCare. Why are nearly 300,000 Tennesseans still locked out of coverage?
I’ll answer any question he wants to ask me. Hear us both in the same room, then decide.
Why this matters
Every doctor learns one lesson early: you can’t treat what you refuse to look at. For eleven years, Rep. Kumar has looked away — from a deadly intersection, from Juneteenth, from nearly 300,000 neighbors without health coverage. I’m asking for your vote. And I’m asking him for one evening to look you in the eye.
Early voting begins October 14. Election Day is Tuesday, November 3.
Paid for by Citizens For Tamara; Donna Lewis, Treasurer
