Highlights from the Tennessee Primaries Today

[euphemia]

We voted early.

Former Nashville mayors seem to be doing well. Phil Bredesen was a very good mayor and governor, and it looks like he will face off against Rep Marsha Blackburn for the senate seat currently held by Bob Corker in November. Bredesen took almost all the Dem votes.

In the US House 5th district Republican race (this is the seat held by Jim (Marshmallow) Cooper), there is an honest-to-goodness liberty candidate in Glen Dean. He will likely not win against establishment Republican Jody Ball, but it will be somewhat close. There are not a lot of Republicans in Middle Tennessee and it will probably come down to about 36K total votes. Dean sounds like he would make for a good debate against Cooper. If I had known about him sooner we could have done a little bit of work for him. I've never met him, but on paper he looks very good.

The Republican race for governor got ugly early. Randy Boyd had the earliest commercials. Pro-life, and not much else. Representative Diane Black (6th district) was negative right from the start. Her district is right next to mine and she is always negative. She got a little braggy about some of her votes, but almost none of it is actually done, so I guess that shows how much influence she has. Businessman Bill Lee will probably be the nominee in spite of some very late negative ads and mailings put out by Diane Black. It is fairly close, but Lee seems to have a lot of East Tennessee support that may make him a strong candidate against former Nashville mayor Karl Dean. Dean was a pretty good mayor. He was mayor during the floods in 2010. We couldn't get Alexander, Corker, or Cooper to give us the time of day, so Dean was pretty much on his own mobilizing people to get the city cleaned up. Low drama kind of guy, he ran a very scandal-free administration compared to Megan Barry who is the Hillary Clinton wannabe.

[oyarde]

I wish the citizens of the Volunteer state luck in replacing senators .

[Swordsmyth]

Underdog conservative outsider Bill Lee upset a crowded field of well-funded, better-known candidates to win Tennessee's Republican gubernatorial primary Thursday, sending shockwaves through a state where he was down double-digits in polls (https://tennesseestar.com/2018/06/29/tennessee-star-poll-boyd-leads-black-by-5-in-gop-gubernatorial-primary-lee-close-behind-in-third-place/) as recently as last month.
U.S. Rep. Diane Black, who had the endorsement of Vice President Mike Pence, was the clear favorite in the race. Former state economic development chief Randy Boyd, who had the backing of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, was widely considered Black's chief rival.
But President Trump, who has a 56 percent approval rating in Tennessee, stopped short of endorsing any candidate in the race, including Black -- despite keeping her by his side and praising her at several events.
Lee, a businessman whose poll numbers surged dramatically in the last week of the campaign, took advantage of infighting among his rivals, as he traveled the state and touted his Christian values while Boyd and Black sparred.

A look at the Diane Black watch party. She is current trailing Bill Lee by 16 points pic.twitter.com/iAm0Tt670S (https://t.co/iAm0Tt670S)
— Michael Schwab (@michaelschwab13) August 3, 2018 (https://twitter.com/michaelschwab13/status/1025188061083324418?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
On the eve of the primary vote, supporters of Black's campaign, perhaps realizing the threat posed by Lee's insurgent candidacy, released an attack advertisement suggesting Lee's company had terminated an employee and Army National Guard member for being deployed.
Lee strongly denied the allegations, and his company sent out a cease-and-desist letter concerning the messaging.


Harsh rhetoric in the campaign was backed by big money. The top four Republican contenders for governor, including Black, Lee, Boyd, and State House Speaker Beth Harwell, spent a combined $40 million of their own personal wealth fighting over who is more devoted to Trump, setting records and underscoring the president's continuing influence in state races. The candidates were seeking to replace the state's term-limited Gov. Bill Haslam.
Former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean, a moderate, won the Democratic primary for the state's governorship, defeating state House Minority Leader Craig Fitzhugh in a mostly cordial race. But the surprising results in the Republican gubernatorial primary contest will reverberate nationally, serving as a bellwether for Trump enthusiasm and establishment influence in a state that supported the president by double digits in 2016.

More at: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/08/02/underdog-bill-lee-surges-to-win-tennessee-gop-gubernatorial-primary-pivotal-senate-race-takes-shape.html