Tennesseeans go to the polls Thursday (the state has held elections on this unusual day of the week since 1796, and no one's really sure why) to vote in party primaries. While several neighboring states use primary runoffs, it only takes a simple plurality to win the nomination in the Volunteer State.
However, we may not know all the winners at the end of Thursday. With the coronavirus pandemic fueling a surge in mail voting, election watchers everywhere should expect that we might not learn the results in every race for some time—perhaps days or even weeks.
Our guide to the key races to watch Tuesday is below. The polls close at 8 PM ET/7 PM CT, and we’ll begin our liveblog then at Daily Kos Elections.
• TN-Sen (R) (61-35 Trump, 59-39 Romney): Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander is retiring, and there’s a nasty and expensive primary to succeed him between Bill Hagerty, who previously served as Donald Trump's ambassador to Japan, and orthopedic surgeon Manny Sethi. A few other Republicans are running, but none of them have attracted much attention. The winner will be the heavy favorite in November in this very red state.
Hagerty has the backing of Trump and Tennessee’s other senator, Marsha Blackburn, and he’s long looked like the frontrunner. However, a mid-July survey from JMC Analytics, a Republican firm that's said it isn’t working for anyone in this race, found Hagerty leading Sethi just 36-32. And while Hagerty has outspent Sethi, outside groups have helped Sethi make up some of the gap.
Both candidates have positioned themselves far to the right and have accused the other of being too close both to Democrats and Republicans on the outs with Trump. Sethi has gone after Hagerty for having donated to Al Gore two decades ago and for serving as a prominent fundraiser for Mitt Romney’s two presidential campaigns. He's even run ads falsely insisting that Romney, the most hated man in the GOP ever since his vote to remove Trump from office, has endorsed Hagerty.
Hagerty’s side in turn has attacked Sethi for having once used the Democratic fundraising website ActBlue to donate to a Virginia congressional candidate in 2008, and they’ve pretended that this donation somehow financed the racial justice groups that both Hagerty and Sethi despise. Hagerty has also repeatedly mispronounced Sethi’s name as "Set-ee" rather than "Seth-ee” on the campaign trail and in ads, which very much seems to be his attempt to make Sethi, who is the son of Indian immigrants, sound as foreign as possible.
• TN-01 (R) (77-20 Trump, 73-26 Romney): Rep. Phil Roe is retiring from this East Tennessee seat that has been in Republican hands since 1881, and no fewer than 16 Republicans are competing to succeed him.
The two candidates who've spent the most money are pharmacist Diana Harshbarger and physician Josh Gapp, who have each self-funded most of their campaigns. The field also includes several current and former office holders, including state Sen. Rusty Crowe; state Reps. David Hawk and Timothy Hill; Kingsport Mayor John Clark; and former Johnson City Mayor Steve Darden.
A late July survey from the GOP firm Spry Strategies for the local station WJHL found Hill, who is backed by the anti-tax Club for Growth, tied with Harshbarger at 16 apiece, while Gapp was just behind with 12. The Club is also acting like Harshbarger is Hill’s main threat: The group has spent a total of $945,000 here, and much of that money has gone towards attacking Harshbarger.
We hope you’ll join us for our liveblog at Daily Kos Elections for our once-in-a-cycle Thursday liveblog!