It’s the day of Tennessee’s primary, and CNN/Politics thinks it’s too close to call:
Last year, President Donald Trump publicly endorsed Bill Hagerty, his former ambassador to Japan, to be the next Senator from Tennessee before he even announced his campaign. That should’ve been enough in a conservative state where Republicans overwhelmingly approve of the President.
But the GOP’s primary election on Thursday to replace retiring Sen. Lamar Alexander has turned into a bitter, competitive contest between Hagerty and a conservative challenger, Dr. Manny Sethi, over who can be Tennessee’s Trump.
Hagerty and Sethi have campaigned as Trump loyalists, even though they’ve both found things in each other’s backgrounds to try to suggest otherwise. Hagerty founded a private equity firm and served as the state’s economic commissioner under former Republican Gov. Bill Haslam. Sethi, who talks about being the son of first-generation immigrants from India, is an orthopedic trauma surgeon at Vanderbilt University Medical Center who founded the non-profit organization Healthy Tennessee.
Trump himself has intervened in the primary, reminding voters of his endorsement in a tweet last week and agreeing to a tele-town hall with Hagerty on the eve of the primary. In announcing the event, Hagerty called Trump “America’s greatest President.”
I find it fascinating that Trump’s endorsement is not carrying a dispositive weight. Remember back when Governor DeSantis (R-FL) was Rep DeSantis, who had just filed to run for governor – and no one gave him a chance? But, regardless of any other competencies he may or may not have, DeSantis understood how the political winds were blowing in 2017, and he understood President Trump. He’s infamous for having arranged to appear on Fox News multiple times, winning Trump’s endorsement, and going on to win the primary and then the Governorship of Florida.
Today? The Trump-endorsed candidate is not a shoe-in.
Also a factor: both of the top GOP candidates – there are actually fifteen listed – have welded themselves to President Trump, and have spent resources in trying to discredit their opponent in this area. This is partly a result of the fact that neither has an elective victory under their belt. Hagerty has been an economic advisor to some Republican officials over the years, and served as Trump’s ambassador to Japan, while Sethi, an orthopedic surgeon, has as his sole political experience a book on health policy he co-authored with Senator William Frist. Neither one has legislative accomplishments that they can campaign on, nothing at all. It’s basically a war of empty, empty words, emblematic, ironically enough, of Trump himself.
And neither is an inspirational choice for one of the most powerful legislative posts in the nation.
In this sort of contest, it’s not hard to envision supporters of these two, in the absence of political accomplishments of the candidates, simply becoming entrenched and embittered. This is not a healthy way to conduct a contest, after all, and the decision to support one or the other based on irrelevant factors such as non-political experience, personal charm, and the like, and then seeing them blasted by the other side, will damage those supporters, as I noted previously when I first covered Tennessee’s Senate contest.
I think there’ll be two factors at play here: turnout for the primaries, both Republican and Democratic, and whether or not the Republican race is close. If it is, and turnout is low, I’ll have to give the Democrat, whoever that turns out to be, a better chance at winning than the professionals have so far (“Solid Republican” from Inside Elections), because there’s a good chance that embittered partisans of the losing Republican candidate will stay home, and overall low turnout will suggest Tennessee voters have soured on President Trump.
And if turnout is high for the Republican primary, then we can assume this seat will stay Republican.
