Knoxville City Councilwoman Seema Singh Faces Tough Questions About Her Tennessee State House Bid as a Democrat

It appears Knoxville City Councilwoman Seema Singh is having to face some tough questions about her bid to the Tennessee House of Representatives. The Indian American is vying for the seat held by Rep. Gloria Johnson in District 90 which covers north Knoxville and part of west Knox County. Johnson, a Democrat, is running for the U.S. Senate seat currently held by Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.)

Although she is running as a Democrat, the Knoxville News Sentinel notes that Singh shouldn’t be allowed to represent the party as she has “voted Republican in four consecutive Republican primaries in 2020 and 2022.” However, she may have ‘backed the Democrats in the general election,” the publication speculates. 

As the state is staunchly Republican, Singh may be “the Democrats’ best candidate for a seat they now hold,” Knoxville News Sentinel adds. “If she is disqualified, then the Democrats may not have any candidate or a strong candidate against the GOP nominee’ in the district. According to The Real News Network, Knoxville, which is nearly 80% white, leans Democratic in a deeply conservative state. But the municipal elections in the state are nonpartisan and must not require candidates to be nominated by political parties.

Johnson’s U.S. Senate bid could also be an issue for Singh the Knoxville Sentinel says.”‘Local Democrats would clearly vote in large numbers for Johnson to stay in the state House, making it unlikely Singh would oppose her.”

Singh , a member of the Democratic Socialist of America party, was elected to the city council in 2017, becoming the first South Asian American to be elected to any public office in East Tennessee. She was reelected in 2021 for another four-year term. 

On the council, she has been a big proponent of community-based policing and grants targeted at low-income neighborhoods through affordable housing programs. One of her most immediate successes came in the form of a fee freeze from the Knoxville Utilities Board (KUB) as well as the creation of a community advisory board for KUB.

A social worker and community advocate, Singh is the executive director of the Healing the Home, a nonprofit agency serving families to address the abuse and trauma that are the result of generational domestic and intimate partner violence. She has worked as a coordinator for the Batterers Intervention Program – Knoxville, for the past six years. It is a state-certified program to reduce intimate partner violence and rehabilitate domestic violence offenders.

She currently serves on the Knoxville Family Justice Center’s Coordinated Community Response Team, Knox County Domestic Assault Death Review Team, The Metropolitan Drug Center Gateway Advisory Board, and The YMCA of East Tennessee Board. She is also a City Council Representative and Chair of the Municipal Golf Committee.

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Born in Varanasi, Singh moved with her family to Knoxville at the age 2, as her father, Ram Naresh Singh came on a Fulbright scholarship to New York’s Columbia University. He later settled in Knoxville to teach social work at the University of Tennessee. He passed away 15 years ago. Singh’s mother remarried a White American man with a very large extended family from a rural county of Tennessee. Singh married a Puerto Rican man. They divorced not long after she assumed office.

After graduating from Bearden High School, she got a B.A. from the University of Tennessee in 1996 with a major in Psychology with an emphasis on Clinical, Counseling, and Applied Psychology. 

She has served as a community advocate for more than two decades, dedicating many years to her work in the field of medical social services, where she assisted women in our community with access to healthcare. Additionally, she worked with the Knox County Health Department, focusing on access to medical care for Knoxville’s homeless population with HIV/AIDS.