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Why Democrats want this scandal-plagued Republican to survive his primaryNo one knows why Tennessee has Thursday primaries, but we've previewed all the top races
One of the biggest primary weeks of 2026 continues on Thursday—yes, Thursday—when Tennessee holds nominating contests for posts up and down the ballot. The main event is the Republican primary for the open governor’s office, where Sen. Marsha Blackburn, long the apparent frontrunner, may have a rockier road than she anticipated. Unlike many other Southern states, Tennessee does not use runoffs, so nominees need to win just a simple plurality to come out on top. This will also be the state’s first time employing the new congressional gerrymander that Republicans rushed through in May shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. GOP map makers radically transformed the 9th District, long a majority Black and safely Democratic constituency in Memphis, into a majority-white and heavily Republican seat. That transformation led Rep. Steve Cohen, the only Democrat in the state’s nine-member House delegation, to retire rather than face an all-but-certain defeat at the ballot box. But that wasn’t the only House race upended by the new boundaries. The new lines also gave Republican Rep. Andy Ogles—whose two terms representing the 5th District have been defined by a series of scandals—some extra protection in his campaign for renomination. But Ogles isn’t in the clear, and he still has to win an expensive primary fight on Thursday. And just why does Tennessee hold its primaries on the fifth day of the week—a day that no other state sets aside for elections? This perennial question surfaces every election cycle, but no one has been able to answer it. Reporter Nicholas Fandos dove into this topic in a piece for Politico in 2014 and learned this policy has been in place since the state’s first constitution was drafted in 1796. However, no one left any records explaining why Tennessee’s long-ago leaders made this choice. “I can’t find any rationale for why Thursday was in there,” state librarian Charles Sherrill said 12 years ago of the still-unsolved mystery. You can find The Downballot’s calculations of the 2024 presidential results for each congressional district updated to reflect the boundaries that will be used this fall, as well as an interactive map from Dave’s Redistricting App. While Tennessee is split between the Eastern and Central Time zones, all polls close at 8 PM ET / 7 PM CT. Join The Downballot on our private Discord server for this rare Thursday election night! TN-05 (R) (61-38 Trump)Republican Rep. Andy Ogles is about to find out whether Donald Trump’s endorsement and favorable new district lines will be enough to overcome a myriad of scandals and a well-funded primary challenge from former state Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Hatcher. Ogles, who was elected in 2022 to represent a gerrymandered slice of Nashville and more conservative parts of Middle Tennessee, spent his first term dealing with revelations that he appeared to have fabricated much of his life story and that he’d loaned his campaign considerably more money than his apparent wealth indicated was possible. But Ogles, who had Trump’s endorsement, nonetheless won a closely watched primary two years ago by a 57-43 margin. Soon after, he acknowledged that he was under FBI investigation over alleged campaign finance violations, though that didn’t stop him from easily winning in November. Ogles, however, got some more unwelcome news last fall when Hatcher stepped down from his post in Gov. Bill Lee’s administration and launched a campaign to deny the incumbent renomination. Democrats also believed Ogles was vulnerable despite the 5th District’s conservative leanings, and Columbia Mayor Chaz Molder emerged as an unusually strong potential opponent for the general election. Ogles, though, has friends in high places. Trump’s Department of Justice said in May it was preparing to drop its investigation into allegations he committed campaign finance fraud. The very next day, the GOP-dominated legislature unveiled a new gerrymander that radically reshaped Ogles’ constituency, leaving him to run in a revamped district where he currently represents fewer than one out of every five residents. While most incumbents would dread having to introduce themselves to so many voters in such a short period of time, Ogles had reason to be happy with the trade. The new lines made the 5th District, which now incorporates more rural areas on its way to Memphis, even more conservative by removing its section of Nashville. They also relocated both Hatcher’s and Molder’s homes into the new 9th District. Both challengers are continuing to run for the 5th—candidates for Congress don’t need to live in the district they want to represent, just the state—and Hatcher is Ogles’ more immediate threat. Hatcher, who received Lee’s endorsement two days before the primary, has brought in more money than the embattled congressman, and he’s benefited from $2 million in outside spending from a group called Invest In Tomorrow Coalition. The outfit, funded by wealthy clean energy investors, has aired ads charging Ogles “lied about his resume,” and that the congressman is “still under investigation.” (The House Ethics Committee, at least, is still looking into him.) This intervention, though, has brought criticism from both the right and the left. Ogles’ backers at the House Freedom Caucus have spent over $700,000 to save the incumbent, an effort that’s included commercials warning that Hatcher is supported by “Biden’s green energy czar.” Frustrated Democrats, meanwhile, told Punchbowl News that if Invest In Tomorrow gets its way on Thursday, it would be even more difficult for Molder, who remains the party’s frontrunner, to flip the redrawn seat. A spokesperson for the group responded by telling the site it was going after Ogles because he is an “extremist on American energy,” and that it didn’t want to be “sucked into those partisan games.” A late July internal poll for Invest In Tomorrow found Ogles with a small 37-33 lead over Hatcher. No one has released any other surveys of this contest. TN-Gov (R) (64-34 Trump)Sen. Marsha Blackburn remains the favorite to succeed termed-out Gov. Bill Lee, a fellow Republican, but her nomination doesn’t appear as inevitable as it once did. While many Tennessee Republicans initially eyed the governor’s race, the potential field rapidly thinned when Blackburn, who easily won reelection in 2024, began laying the groundwork to run for governor before she was even sworn in for a new six-year term in the Senate. Blackburn, who would be the first woman to lead the state, scared off most of her would-be rivals, and political observers soon started speculating about whom she might appoint to replace her in the Senate. Rep. John Rose and state Rep. Monty Fritts, however, decided to test their luck against the favorite, despite numerous polls showing Blackburn easily winning. Rose, who became wealthy in the business world before he was first elected to Congress in 2018, has sunk $13 million of his fortune into his campaign. He’s used his money to finance ads framing the race as a choice between a “CEO” and Blackburn, whom he’s faulted for spending more than three decades in politics. Fritts, meanwhile, has campaigned for ending the state’s sales tax on groceries, but he’s also embracing xenophobia. The state representative told WSMV he wants to ban what he calls “pagan religions,” including Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam. Fritts, though, has brought in far less cash than either of his rivals. Both Blackburn and Rose have also largely ignored him while attacking one another on the airwaves during the final month of the contest. A pro-Blackburn outside group affiliated with the hardline Club for Growth has aired ads blasting the “wilting” Rose, who voted in Democratic primaries in the early 2000s, as a “former Democrat.” Rose’s allies in turn generated attention with a commercial depicting an AI-generated version of Blackburn smiling in front of the U.S. Capitol as a singer croons, “Marsha Blackburn’s the queen pharma mama who’s ready to sell.” Blackburn’s legal team responded with a cease-and-desist letter calling the spot, which two stations took off the air, “defamatory.” Her lawyers also charged that it violated a new state law requiring a written disclaimer in political ads that feature AI-generated deepfake versions of candidates doing or saying things they didn’t actually do. Rose’s attacks may have had their intended effect. In late July, the Republican pollster OnMessage found Blackburn leading Rose just 35-31, with Fritts at 26%. The survey, which the Nashville Banner says was done for an undisclosed “corporate client,” was the first—and only—poll to show Blackburn ahead by just single digits. The senator responded with her own internal poll that showed her beating Rose by a much wider 42-25 spread, with Fritts similarly situated at 22%. That survey, though, still showed Blackburn losing ground from June, when she led Rose 51-20 in an earlier poll for her campaign. TN-06 (63-36 Trump)Rep. John Rose’s decision to run for governor has opened up his conservative 6th District in Middle Tennessee, and two fellow Republicans are locked in a nasty race to replace him. In one corner is former Rep. Van Hilleary, who is seeking to return to Congress after a 24-year absence. Hilleary, who was first elected in 1994 to represent the 4th District several maps ago, left the House after losing a tight race for governor to Democrat Phil Bredesen in 2002. Hilleary went on to serve as Rose’s chief of staff after Rose was elected in 2018, though Rose has refrained from taking sides. Standing in his way is state Rep. Johnny Garrett, who has served in the leadership as majority whip. Garrett, who earned a condemnation from the Tennessee Black Caucus last year when he gave actual, literal whips as gifts to his deputies, has made transphobia a centerpiece of his campaign for higher office. That didn’t deter Hilleary, though, from launching a commercial last month portraying an AI version of Garrett throwing a MAGA cap into the crowd at a gay pride parade. Garrett hit back by using AI to create his own ad arguing Hilleary voted with the Clinton administration during his first stint in Congress, with the narrator saying he “sided with Bill and the other Hillary.” Garrett, who loaned his campaign more than $1 million, has brought in more money than his opponent, and his allies have spent considerably more money than Hilleary’s supporters. No one, however, has released any polls of the race. TN-09 (R) (60-39 Trump)Republican legislators forced Democratic Rep. Steve Cohen into retirement after they made his 9th District all but unrecognizable, and one of them appears to have the inside track to replace him. State Sen. Brent Taylor has endorsements from Trump, Blackburn, and Bill Hagerty, Tennessee’s other U.S. senator. Taylor, who has self-funded $1 million, also has considerably more money than any of the other three Republicans. The other main candidate is state Rep. Todd Warner, but he faces a difficult task overcoming Taylor’s many advantages. It doesn’t help that all of the roughly $500,000 in outside spending for the GOP contest has been to promote Taylor or attack Warner. On the Democratic side, state Rep. Justin Pearson, who was challenging Cohen for renomination before the GOP passed its new gerrymander, has continued running despite the tough odds against any Democrat. Pearson faces state Sen. London Lamar, who has Cohen’s endorsement, as well as three other candidates. There are no publicly available polls of either primary. Thank you so much for being a paid subscriber to The Downballot! If you’d like to further support our work, you can donate on our ActBlue page. |
