2024 is Taking Shape in Tennessee
It’s election-time nationwide and in Tennessee once again. While November feels far away, the first seeds were planted this past Thursday: the last day to file petitions for the November election. There’s the potential that more names can percolate up as places report and issues arise, but the table is essentially set for who has a primary challenge, who has a general election challenger, who has both, and who has neither.
Obviously, we still need more data points to know the primaries and general election matchups that will truly be interesting. Particularly, how candidates do in fundraising, as well as where different outside groups start endorsing and putting in resources will be necessary. And for that, we are still a few days from the deadline for the first quarter, and even that will be of limited use since incumbents aren’t yet able to raise money, full stop.
That being said, there are a few trends we can see even from this limited dataset.
Dems Are Leaving Less on the Table than in 2022 (or 2020)
This year, Democrats are leaving 25 House seats and 4 Senate seats on the table. Meanwhile, Republicans are foregoing contesting 14 House seats and a single Senate seat (Sen. Kyle’s seat in Memphis).
While that sounds fairly disproportionate, it’s a vast, vast improvement over prior years for Democrats. In the past cycles, Republicans have let 16–18 House seats and 1–2 Senate seats go. Essentially, in line with this year. By contrast, in 2020, the last Presidential election, Democrats did not contest 39 House seats or 6 Senate seats. And that’s in a Presidential year. In the last election, 2022 (a midterm), Democrats did not contest a staggering 45 House Seats and 7 Senates seats, nearly half of the positions up in both. Essentially, last election, Democrats resigned themselves to a minority before the election even began.
This year, there was a concerted public effort by the state Democratic Party to get people to run, and it bore results. Results which seem to have paid off. This will be helpful in the long term, even if a lot (candidly, most) of the seats are not winnable. Even placeholder candidates who don’t do a ton will make their opponent have to do something, keep some time and money in-district, as well as make outside groups expend some time and resources that would otherwise go elsewhere. And some, even in unflippable districts, won’t be placeholders. And who knows, even in Vegas someone eventually pulls the lever right.
The Democratic Party is Finally Contesting the Suburbs (and has Written Off Rural West Tennessee)
What’s just as striking as the amount is where those new contests are taking place. To summarize, for years the Democratic Party has not truly been contesting some of its greatest opportunities in rapidly growing suburbs. There are signs now that that is changing.
This is most striking in the Nashville area (which I define as Davidson, the ring counties, Montgomery and Maury). These are counties that grew 10%-20% in the last Census, and don’t seem to be slowing down. In past elections, there has not really been a concerted effort to contest every seat in these elections. But this year, Democrats are contesting every seat in these counties, some of which were within 10 points in 2020, and, depending on how November goes, might have shifted more during that time.
But it’s not just Nashville. Democrats are contesting every seat in the mixed urban-suburban Hamilton and Knox Counties (also growing like crazy), which wasn’t true last cycle, particularly in the former. Moreover the rural northeast and southeast are Republican heartlands where, functionally, they have gotten all the people they reasonably can (many shifted towards Biden in 2020, bucking the rural Tennessee trend) and have plateaued or are losing people. The number of candidates there is another indication there might be at least some trouble in the GOP heartland of Tennessee.
Not so with the rural West. What used to be the core of the deeply Dixiecratic 8th Congressional District and its predecessors has completed a fairly seismic manner. Frankly though, since the Democratic portions of Haywood were put into the Court mandated District 80, there is no real chance in any of these seats besides maybe 73 (which should at least have someone, being around Jackson). While you wish you could walk and chew gum at the same time, and I’d rather have those seats contested than not for all the reasons above, I take the trade of the suburbs for the rapidly diminishing (even moreso than the northeast) western seats all day. After all, there are as many uncontested districts in the rural West as there are in Davidson County alone.
Other complaints? As bad as Monty Fritts is and how fast Loudon County is growing, an opponent in 32 would’ve been nice (even if just to make Democratic presence clear), same for the far suburban districts of Shelby. But frankly, those are all nit-picks and very much reaches even in ideal circumstances.
A real qualitative measure of these candidates really has to wait until Q2 fundraising numbers come in (around Mid-July). However, quantitatively, maybe I’m punch drunk from years of failure to bench-build, but A-, 9/10, functionally, the Democratic Party is contesting everything it needs to at the state level. Largely because of a very simple strategy of… just making social media posts listing uncontested seats. I don’t know if I’m more shocked by the simplicity or the fact we haven’t done it before, but future administrations, keep doing it.
Republicans are Still Going for Each Others’ Throats
Both nationwide and statewide, Republicans are in a deep factional and anti-establishment mindset. And in Tennessee, it is continuing, and almost certainly worsening.
Previously in the TN GOP, there were three big buckets, “moderates” (you can argue how moderate they truly were objectively, but they certainly were relatively), hardcore conservative, and the ascendent faction you can call “party centrists” who placate the business interests of the moderates and the radical inclinations of the hardcore while not necessarily having a firm ideological base of their own. The former, particularly in the House, is gone, just gone, with only a few stragglers (Rep. Baum, Rep. White, and the retiring Reps. Johnson and Whitson) left. And the conflict between the conservative party establishment and the harder right is escalating. Moreover, it seems that elections like the near victory of lunatic Gary Humble against also-pretty-damn-conservative Senate Majority Leader Johnson have encouraged challengers.
In 2022, as best I can tell, there were primary challenges against 8 sitting GOP Reps. and 3 GOP Senators. In the very heady days of 2020, 15 GOP Reps. and 3 GOP Senators got challengers. This year dwarfs those, with 18 Republican Reps. and a mind-boggling 9 Senators (over half the Senators up total, nevermind GOP Senators) are fending off challengers.
Just like with the candidates the Democrats are putting up, we are still awaiting a qualitative analysis. However, through anecdote and the data that does exist, you can already see some have potential to be ones to watch out for, particularly in the Senate. Sen. Haile represents all of Sumner County, a place with probably the most contentous and clear factional disputes in the state. Indeed, candidate Chris Spencer, endorsed by the radical Sumner Constitutional Republicans and a bevy of other lunatics, has already hauled in $70,000.00. The radical opponent of Sen. Massey, the moderate scion of a classic Knoxville Republican family, has also raised $70k. Relative moderate Northeastern Sen. Lundberg has received a contest from the son of Federal Rep. Harshbarger. Moderate-to-Party-Centrist Senators Nicely, Gardenhire, Yager and Rose all have challengers. The only obvious chance for a clear victory for the party center in the Senate is the open District 2, where Blount Circuit Court Clerk Tom Hatcher seems set to beat poorly-liked Freshman Rep. Richey in that suburban seat.
This high number of primaries, particularly in the Senate, is going to drain time and resources and potentially wound whoever does eventually come out the other side. Over the past decade or two, Democrats have not been a threat. which, combined with what’s happening nationwide, encouraged open and regular primary scraps. This high number of primaries might be the culmination, or might just be the new normal. If this large slate of Democratic candidates has even a decent hit rate of being competent, this will create true issues for the supermajority.
Something is Up with Black Dems, and I Don’t Know What it Is
Then there are Democratic primary challenges which are… interesting. In 2020, there were 9 Democratic House and one Senate contest. 2022 was much more peaceful, with only 3 incumbent Reps. challenged, and again only one Senate contest. This year, counting two retirements, there are 22 incumbents Democrats running in the House, and two in the Senate. 7 Representatives and a Senator (Sen. Kyle) have challengers.
So, it’s in line with past years, but let me add another statistic. Of the 24 Democratic Representatives, 15 are black, meaning 62.5% (or 5/8) of the Caucus. Which means you’d expect 4–5 of the challengers to be against black Democratic incumbents, all other things being equal. However, of the 7 challenges, 6, nearly all, are against black incumbents. The only exception is Rep. Freeman, whose opponent is a Junior RA at Vanderbilt University. Put another way, not truly serious.
By contrast, some of the other 6 challenges seem truly serious. The most obvious is moderate-to-outright-Conservative Rep. Shaw, who has a challenge from both a Madison County Commissioner and a Bolivar City Councilman (with an…interesting career). Knoxville Rep. McKenzie is opposed by a Knox County Commissioner. Rep. Hakeem in Chattanooga has an opponent on the Chattanooga City Council. Comparing to other years, while 2022’s 3 challengers were all black, the number is so low you can’t really extrapolate like you can with 7 or 9, while in 2020, of the 9 challenges, 2 were against white incumbents, only slightly disproportionate, but within what’s expected.
More importantly, there’s a qualitative difference. Of those 12 challenges, only one was successful, and the Legislature’s Ethics committee found that incumbent to be a sexual harasser. The only real ardent challenges of this bunch were those against Rep. Cooper (likely due to her advanced age) both years and Rep. Stewart in 2020. By contrast, there are three facially-legitimate challenges by local electeds against incumbents this year alone, all against black incumbents.
And frankly, I do not know what’s up. It might be a generational thing, all of the challenges besides the one against Rep. Pearson (who is running against someone he’s trounced before) are relatively old. It might be ideological (it almost certainly is with Shaw at a minimum). It might be a regional thing, outside the laughable challenge to Rep. Freeman, no Nashville Rep. has a primary contest, while the one Senate contest is in Memphis, which has 3 challenges (4 if you want to put Shaw in that bucket) in the House. Maybe it is truly coincidence. Let me know what you think.
