Tennessee voters head to the polls to pick nominees for Senate, House seats
Voters in Tennessee head to the polls on Thursday to cast their ballots in the state’s primary, which includes a competitive Republican primary challenge against a sitting member of Congress.
There are two major races to watch on Thursday in Tennessee: the 5th Congressional District Republican primary and the Senate Democratic primary.
5th Congressional District Republican primary
Rep. Andrew Ogles (R) faces a primary challenge from Courtney Johnston, a Nashville Metro council member who has so far raised more money than the freshman congressman.
Ogles, endorsed by former president and GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), was one of the holdouts to approving Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) as House speaker in early 2023. However, Ogles later voted against McCarthy’s ouster that fall.
In Congress he’s frequently criticized the Biden administration, filing articles of impeachment against President Biden and Vice President Harris last year. After Harris became a front-runner to replace Biden for the Democratic presidential nomination earlier this month, Ogles filed new articles of impeachment against her.
His brief tenure in the House has brought scrutiny on several fronts.
After a deadly Covenant School shooting in 2023, Ogles — who represents the district where the Christian school is located — said in a statement that he was heartbroken. At the time, gun-control advocates and Democrats circulated a 2021 Christmas photo of his family posing with firearms. Ogles has also been accused of making several misrepresentations about his background, admitting last year that he misstated the degree he received. Earlier this year, he was also the subject of an ethics complaint over his personal and campaign finances.
Johnston, whose political positions are largely aligned with Ogles’s, has the endorsements of former senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) and former governor Bill Haslam (R-Tenn.).
The winner will face Democrat Maryam Abolfazli in November.
Senate primaries
Four Democrats are competing in Thursday’s Democratic primary for Senate: Tennessee state Rep. Gloria Johnson, environmental activist Marquita Bradshaw (who lost the 2020 Senate race in Tennessee against Sen. Bill Hagerty (R) by a wide margin), educator Civil Miller-Watkins and Lola Denise Brown, chair of the membership committee of the NAACP in Nashville.
Johnson, outraised her Democratic competitors and was one of the “Tennessee Three” — a group of state lawmakers who faced backlash in the statehouse when they joined protesters demanding gun-control legislation at the state Capitol in 2023 following the shooting at the Covenant School. At the time, Johnson was the only lawmaker out of the three to narrowly survive an expulsion vote by the state legislature.
Incumbent Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R) has one GOP primary challenger, Tres Wittum — a former state Senate policy analyst, though the senator is widely favored to win on Thursday. The Senate seat remains solidly Republican according to the Cook Political Report’s Senate race rankings.