[1][2] In 2018, Roger Kane announced his retirement from the 89th district of the Tennessee House of Representatives, and a crowded field formed to replace him.
Lafferty, a stay-at-home father and a landlord, was considered a significant underdog against several of his competitors, including former Knox County sheriff Tim Hutchison and former state senator Stacey Campfield.
[3] In the strongly Republican suburban seat, Lafferty went on to soundly win the general election over Democrat Coleen Martinez, 64-36%.
[4] On May 4, 2021, Lafferty made a speech on the Tennessee House floor in defense of the Three-fifths Compromise, a provision of the original U.S. Constitution resulting from a 1787 agreement between northern and southern states, providing that three-fifths of a state's slave population would be counted for representation in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Lafferty inaccurately claimed in his speech that the three-fifths compromise was adopted for "the purpose of ending slavery.