Republican voters in Tennessee went to the polls in the state’s nasty and fractious Senate primary, choosing between two candidates who have run hard to the right to earn the GOP nomination in the safe red state.
Bill Hagerty, a former private-equity executive who became President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Japan, had been the clear favorite in the primary after earning Trump’s early support. But Manny Sethi, a physician, ran an insurgent bid that caught fire over the summer and turned a sleepy race into a competitive one.
The primary was one of the last and biggest tests of Trump’s sway over Republican voters this year. The president went all in to boost Hagerty from the very beginning of his campaign — he endorsed Hagerty before he had even left Japan to enter the race, and stayed in touch as the race developed. Trump hosted two telephone calls with Hagerty supporters in the closing weeks of the race to encourage his base to turn out.
“He’s a Trump conservative. He’s a friend of mine. He’s a great guy,” Trump said Wednesday night, on the eve of the primary. The candidates are running to replace Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who is retiring.
Hagerty fully embraced Trump and made that support central to his campaign. But Sethi ran provocative TV ads attacking liberals over Black Lives Matter and the lockdowns during the coronavirus surge earlier this year, aiming to appeal to the right-wing voters that make up Trump’s base. He often included his support for Trump in his campaign ads, even as the president endorsed against him.
Those ads helped boost his campaign, which continued to host large events into the summer despite the pandemic, and gave him a shot of adrenaline to make the race closer than initially expected.
The back-and-forth got increasingly nasty in the closing stretch. Hagerty ran TV ads bashing Sethi over a small donation to a Democratic candidate more than a decade ago. He also consistently mispronounced Sethi’s name on the campaign trail and in ads.
Sethi, meanwhile, repeatedly attacked Hagerty over his association with Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), a former Hagerty business associate. Sethi has implied that Romney endorsed Hagerty, though the Utah senator has not weighed in on the race.
Hagerty repeatedly denounced Romney, the party’s 2012 presidential nominee, on the campaign trail. The New York Times reported that Romney’s PAC contributed to Hagerty, whose campaign cashed the check but then returned it in full and did not include it on FEC reports.
The race drew in and divided national Republicans, in particular many who have potential 2024 presidential ambitions. Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and former Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley endorsed Hagerty, along with Trump and Vice President Mike Pence; Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.) endorsed Sethi.
The primary winner will likely face Democrat James Mackler, a veteran who is the favorite to earn the party’s nomination. Republicans will be heavily favored to retain the seat in November: No Democrat has won a Senate election in Tennessee since Al Gore in 1990.
Meanwhile, in East Tennessee, GOP voters will pick a candidate to replace retiring Rep. Phil Roe (R-Tenn.), whose district is solidly Republican.
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