COMPLETE U.S. Senate Offices
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HOUSE PRIMARY:
One incumbent loses, two close races come down to the wire in Tennessee state House primary
BY: CASSANDRA STEPHENSON AND ADAM FRIEDMAN - AUGUST 1, 2024 10:25 PM
(Editor’s note: This story has been updated with additional data as final voting numbers became available.)
A longtime gun control advocate seeking a Tennessee House seat in Nashville advanced in Thursday’s primary elections while an Oak Ridge Republican incumbent lost his seat and two Republican races remained too close to call.
In Franklin, the Gov. Bill Lee-backed and pro-school voucher candidate held a 95 vote lead, and the chairwoman of the state House finance committee trailed in Chattanooga by 137 votes.
Reeves narrowly tops Beathard in Franklin
Lee Reeves narrowly won a three-person Republican primary for District 65.
The seat, which covers Fairview, southern Franklin and part of Thompson’s Station in Williamson County, has been held by Republican Rep. Sam Whitson since 2016.
Reeves, a school voucher advocate who received an endorsement from Lee, had 3,141 votes to Williamson County Commission Chair Brian Beathard’s 3,046. Former Tennessee GOP State Executive Committee member Michelle Foreman trailed in a distant third.
Whitson did not support school vouchers and after his retirement Lee and pro-school voucher groups targeted the seat as a potential flip. Voucher groups independently spent nearly $970,000 supporting Reeves’ candidacy as of July 30. Reeves, who holds a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center and practices real estate law, explicitly states on his campaign website that he supports “education freedom scholarships” in Tennessee.
The winner will face Democratic candidate LaRhonda Williams in November.
Rep. Patsy Hazlewood, R-East Ridge. (Photo: John Partipilo)
Renau beats Hazlewood in District 27 outside Chattagnooga
Small business owner Michele Reneau narrowly beat District 27 incumbent Patsy Hazlewood by 137 votes.
Hazlewood has represented the narrow district running through a portion of Chattanooga, Signal Mountain and Soddy-Daisy since 2014. She entered the race with nearly $456,000 already in her campaign account and reported bringing in an additional $189,000 in 2024. She also received $6,000 in “in-kind” contributions for media and messaging from House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s political action committee, according to her most recent campaign finance disclosure.
Reneau began fundraising in 2023 and reported raising a total of almost $76,000 as well as a few thousand dollars in in-kind contributions from multiple individuals. She was endorsed by Tennessee Right to Life and the Tennessee Firearms Association.
The winner will face Democratic challenger Kathy Lennon, a former Hamilton County Board of Education member, in the general election.
Lennon has raised around $34,000 in 2024, so far.
Brooks bests Brasher in District 60 race
Shaundelle Brooks is one step closer to trading her seat in the Tennessee legislature’s gallery for a House Representative title of her own.
Brooks and Tyler Brasher — both first-time candidates touting years of civic engagement — faced off in the Democratic primary for a Nashville seat recently vacated by longtime Democratic state Rep. Darren Jernigan, who left office to work for Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell.
Brooks has made herself a fixture at the Capitol since the murder of her 23-year-old son Akilah DaSilva in a 2018 Nashville Waffle House mass shooting. The former parole officer decided to run for a seat in the rotunda where she often advocated for gun control after Democratic state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson were expelled for leading a gun-control protest from the floor following a Nashville school shooting that killed three children and three adults.
Brooks received endorsements from multiple local politicians and community leaders, including Jones and Pearson, as well as the advocacy organizations Planned Parenthood, The Equity Alliance, Everytown for Gun Safety and the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition (TIRRC).
Brasher, a healthcare management and finance consultant, serves on the Donelson-Hermitage Chamber of Commerce and was elected by the Metro Nashville Council to serve on the city’s Health and Educational Facilities Board. Brasher was endorsed as a Moms Demand Action Gun Sense Candidate and had union endorsements from Service Employers (SEIU 205) and firefighters (IAFF Local 140). He also received the stamp of approval from multiple Nashville council members.
SENATE PRIMARY:
Harshbarger upsets veteran Sen. Lundberg in East Tennessee GOP primary
Haile rolls past Spencer in Sumner County race; Seal beats Niceley in seat outside Knoxville
BY: SAM STOCKARD - AUGUST 1, 2024
Big money couldn’t stop a Senate incumbent from suffering a loss Thursday in Tennessee’s Republican primary as the son of a U.S. congresswoman vaulted to victory in upper East Tennessee.
In contrast, massive political action committee spending pushed a sitting senator to victory in Sumner County and enabled a Senate challenger to upset a veteran lawmaker in East Tennessee’s District 8.
Kingsport pharmacist Bobby Harshbarger upset Sen. Jon Lundberg of Bristol in the District 4 race, aided by ads with his mother, U.S. Rep. Diana Harshbarger, tying her endorsement from former President Donald Trump to him. According to results posted by the Tennessee Secretary of State’s office, Bobby Harshbarger captured 52% with a total vote count of 11,540 to Lundberg’s 10,668 votes and 48%.
Harshbarger won in spite of charges filed against his father for allegedly tampering with Lundberg election signs, which was caught on video camera.
Sen. Ferrell Haile of Gallatin defeated Chris Spencer of Hendersonville, co-founder of the Sumner County Constitutional Republicans, in Senate District 18.
Haile received the backing of two pro-voucher groups that spent almost $68,000 supporting his campaign, in addition to some $400,000 from Lt. Gov. Randy McNally’s political action committee.
Spencer, who received no major support from PACs, spent about $14,000 on his campaign and made loans totaling $70,000 to the effort. He called for campaign finance reform at the state level to place limits on PAC spending.
In Senate District 8, newcomer Jessie Seal, a medical center public relations director from Claiborne County, defeated Sen. Frank Niceley, a Strawberry Plains farmer, capturing 10,200 votes, 55.6%, to Niceley’s 8,132, for 44.4%%.
 Sen. Niceley |
Seal benefited from nearly $740,000 in PAC expenditures, mainly from the School Freedom Fund, which is backed by Club for Growth and billionaires Jeff Yass and Richard Uihlein.
Harshbarger’s campaign received a jolt from ads purchased by his mother featuring a photo of him saying, “Harshbarger endorsed by Trump,” that made no distinction between the two campaigns.
Senate Republican Caucus Chairman Ken Yager filed a complaint this year with the Tennessee Registry of Election Finance claiming collusion between Bobby Harshbarger’s campaign and that of his mother and a political action committee. The Registry board requested an Attorney General’s Office investigation, but it wasn’t finished by Election Day.
Lundberg, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, was supported from independent expenditures from dark-money political action committees and a $300,000 injection from McNally, the Senate speaker, and other top Republicans in the Senate as they tried to shore up re-elections for other Republican Caucus members in the upper chamber.
As education chairman, he was the chief negotiator for the Senate’s private-school voucher plan, which was supported by McNally and Haile. Lundberg received nearly $191,000 in independent expenditures from four pro-voucher groups, School Freedom Fund, Tennessee Federation for Children, Americans for Prosperity and Tennesseans for Student Success.
US CONGRESSIONAL PRIMARY:
U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles survives Republican primary challenge from Nashville council member
The Columbia Republican will face Democrat Maryam Abolfazli in the general election
BY: ADAM FRIEDMAN - AUGUST 1, 2024 8:37 PM
Columbia Republican U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles soundly defeated Metro Nashville Council member Courtney Johnston Thursday in the August Republican primary.
Ogles’s win, by a margin of 55% to 44% when the Associated Press called the race around 8:30 p.m. Thursday, sets him up to face Democrat Maryam Abolfazli in the November general election in a seat that leans heavily towards the Republican Party.
Abolfazli is the founder of the nonprofit Rise and Shine Tennessee. She has become a frequent face at the state capitol, advocating for stricter gun laws and better public education funding.
She was also the plaintiff in the American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit against state House Speaker Cameron Sexton’s rules to ban signs during hearings.
Ogles is the former mayor of Maury County and used to work as a lobbyist for Americans for Prosperity in Tennessee. He’s a member of the U.S. House Freedom Caucus, which serves as the most ideological right-wing part of the Republican Party.
Political action committees for Americans for Prosperity and the House Freedom Caucus spent almost $300,000 to independently back Ogles, who ran his most recent campaign on a past endorsement by President Donald Trump and unwavering support for gun rights.
Ogles also tried to brandish his conservative credentials in the final weeks of the campaign by filing articles of impeachment against Vice President Kamala Harris after she became the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic Party.
During his time in Congress, Ogles was one of the 20 members who initially held out on supporting U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in his quest for the speakership at the start of 2023.
Ogles has also faced allegations that he embellished his resume and lied about how he would use funds raised through GoFundMe, according to reports from NewsChannel 5. He also admitted to wrongly reporting that he loaned his campaign $320,000 in 2022 during a pivotal fundraising time.
Proxy battle
The Ogles-Johnston race served as a proxy between the Nashville-based wing of the Republican Party and more suburban and rural parts of surrounding Columbia and Franklin.
Ogles first won the seat in 2022 after defeating former Republican state House Speaker Beth Harwell, and Brigadier General Kurt Winstead, both from Nashville. In that race, Ogles managed to win over about a third of primary voters, leaving open the hope among Republicans living in Tennessee’s capital that he could be defeated in a one-on-one primary matchup.
A political action committee called Conservatives With Character backing Johnston raised and spent nearly $640,000, blanketing the airwaves with commercials attacking Ogles in the final weeks of the campaign.
Former Hendersonville Republican State Rep. Randy Stamps is the director Conservatives With Character. The Best of Tennessee, another political action committee that claims to be bipartisan, gave $120,000 to Conservatives With Character.
The Best of Tennessee does not disclose all its donors, but is run by Knoxville-turned-Nashville lawyer Chloe Akers alongside longtime Nashville Republican political operatives Tom Ingram and Kim Kaegi.
Tennessee Three member Gloria Johnson to challenge Sen. Marsha Blackburn in 2024
State Rep. Gloria Johnson, one of the Tennessee Three lawmakers who Republicans sought to expel from office, announced Tuesday she is running for the U.S. Senate.
Why it matters: Johnson is harnessing her newly enhanced national profile to challenge incumbent U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a pro-Trump conservative firebrand, in 2024.
Reality check: Tennessee Democrats have not come close to winning a Senate seat since Harold Ford narrowly lost to Bob Corker in 2006.
- Even two-term former Democratic Gov. Phil Bredesen failed to get within shouting distance of the GOP. He lost to Blackburn in 2018 by just under 11 points.
Zoom in: Johnson was a battle-tested politician before she and fellow Democratic state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson drew the ire of Republicans during the spring legislative session.
Why This Senator Warns Republicans Should Worry About a Kamala Harris Ticket
Sarah Arnold | August 01, 2024 7:30 PM
As the emerging presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, you would expect Vice President Kamala Harris to be out on the campaign trail addressing Americans and holding rallies.
However, it’s been 11 days since President Joe Biden was forced out of the race, and Harris is still nowhere to be seen rallying voters.
On the contrary, 2024 GOP nominee and former President Donald Trump hit the campaign trail early, holding rallies even before he announced his candidacy—a stark difference between the two candidates.
Less than two weeks before the Democratic National Convention (DNC), Harris is doing nothing to prove to Americans that she can beat Trump. Instead, she took the advice of her former boss and stayed away from the cameras, avoiding reporters' questions that revealed the reality of her policies.
Harris, who will likely become the Democratic nominee without receiving any primary votes, has gotten by without facing tough questions on her campaign or policy issues. She even chose not to attend the National Association of Black Journalists convention despite Trump taking hard-hitting questions from reporters there.
Conservative firebrand Ben Shapiro pointed out that Harris has only done teleprompter speeches and "has not answered ONE difficult question in the last week and a half.”
Meanwhile, critics have highlighted that Biden got elected in 2020 despite hiding in his basement for most of the election cycle. Sitting down for interviews means Harris would have to defend and take accountability for her policies and positions that have failed Americans.
However, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who previously served on a committee together, warned Republicans not to discount Harris.
Lee cautioned that Harris is a real threat when she is prepped correctly and follows a script
