William Andrew Ogles IV ( ; born June 18, 1971) is an American politician and business owner serving as the U.S. representative for Tennessee's 5th congressional district since 2023. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as the mayor of Maury County, Tennessee, from 2018 to 2022.
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 Republican 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 stated 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, and has been designated an anti-Muslim extremist by CAIR.
Ogles lost re-nomination to former Tennessee Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Hatcher in 2026.
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. Ogles later studied at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU), 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. Ogles graduated with a degree in liberal studies.
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 NewsChannel5 in February 2023, which published an investigatory report detailing that in a 2009resume 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. NewsChannel5 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 February21, 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 February26, 2023, 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. NewsChannel5 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 February27, NewsChannel5 published Ogles's transcript, which showed that Ogles took only one economics course at a community college, scoring a Cpass, while at MTSU he passed nine political science courses (and failed several others). By February28, Ogles's congressional biography was edited to simply state: "Andy obtained his degree from MTSU." NewsChannel5 also investigated Ogles' claims of having done graduate work in marketing at Vanderbilt University Owen Graduate School of Management and Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth College, 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 founded by the Koch Brothers. 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. 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 organization run by economist Arthur Laffer. A NewsChannel 5 report questioned his claims, noting that any columns he wrote on economic policy 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 exposing children to age inappropriate material." The county commission complained it had not been aware of any concerns Ogles had had over the budget, noting that he rarely attended meetings and had taken no part in the budget process. Ogles said that since he could not vote at the meetings it was not necessary for him to attend them and that he kept up by watching them online. Two weeks later the county commission overrode the veto, citing Maury's status as the fastest-growing county in the state.
U.S. House of Representatives Election
2022
Primary Ogles seemed to some observers to have gotten off to a strong start in the primary, specifically credited to his nearly half a million dollars raised in the campaign's first month. Though, campaign finance disclosure reports showed that he had raised only $264,400, with a $320,000 personal loan to the campaign. Among the many rival candidates, two stood out as serious challengers: former state House speaker Beth Harwell, and retired U.S. Army brigadier general Kurt Winstead. Ads by the Tennessee Conservatives Political Action Committee (TCPAC) called Ogles a "D.C. insider" and lobbyist who had failed to pay his property taxes nine times while supporting the sales tax hike and a marriage tax, as well as failing to vigorously oppose Maury County's recent property tax hike. Records showed that Ogles had indeed been from a few days to almost a year late paying taxes on his Franklin home between 2005 and 2015, leading to interest charges. He filed a defamation suit against TCPAC. Ogles, in turn, was supported by super PACs that ran ads attacking Harwell and Winstead as "too liberal for Tennessee." On August 4, Ogles won the primary.
General
Ogles faced Tennessee senator Heidi Campbell in the November general election. The district was previously a Democratic stronghold centered on Nashville, but had been redrawn as an area that voted for Republican Donald Trump by 12 percentage points in the 2020 presidential election. This was done by splitting heavily Democratic Nashville into three congressional districts. When the new district boundaries were announced, the Democratic incumbent decided to retire, calling the new district "unwinnable" for a Democrat. Ogles was endorsed by the House Freedom Caucus, the House Republican Conference's farthest-right bloc.
During the campaign, Ogles avoided the major local media in favor of conservative local talk radio and posted very little on social media. Early in the campaign, he made some appearances with a flamethrower, saying he would use it on President Joe Biden's work when he got to Washington. A late October appearance with Texas U.S.senator Ted Cruz in Franklin was announced in his first campaign-related Twitter post since he won the Republican primary. He declined several invitations to debate.