Five states already voted on Tuesday, but this election week isn’t over yet — an idea we should all get accustomed to as November nears. Tennessee, the only state that holds its primaries on a Thursday, goes to the polls today. The marquee race is a Senate primary, but there are also a handful of House contests worth keeping an eye on, so here’s an overview of what to watch in the Volunteer State.
In the Republican primary for U.S. Senate, the race to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander has turned into a close battle between former U.S. Ambassador to Japan Bill Hagerty and orthopedic surgeon Dr. Manny Sethi. And the stakes are high: The eventual Republican nominee is all but guaranteed to win in November because of Tennessee’s dark red hue.
Initially, the race wasn’t all that competitive either. With President Trump’s endorsement, Hagerty had long been the favorite, but recent polls show that this race has tightened considerably. A mid-July poll from JMC Analytics found Hagerty ahead by just 4 percentage points, 36 percent to 32 percent, while The Trafalgar Group gave Hagerty only a 3-point edge, 42 percent to 39 percent, earlier in July. It’s also grown nastier as both Hagerty and Sethi try to one-up each other in proving their conservative bona fides.
For his part, Sethi has tried to target conservatives who might be upset with the anti-police brutality protests following George Floyd’s death, asking if they’re “sick of the mobs yet.” And in another ad, Sethi played up his anti-abortion views by questioning whether liberals believe “Black lives matter” because Planned Parenthood places clinics near neighborhoods occupied primarily by people of color. Meanwhile, as the Trump-backed candidate, Hagerty has taken every opportunity to echo the president, including blaming China for initially covering up the coronavirus. He’s also repeatedly stressed his “conservative Tennessee values” as a native son of the state and introduced a dark racial undertone to the race by consistently mispronounc