Tennessee has nine Congressional seats. For most of this the past century, seven of those seats were routinely occupied by Democrats, and two by Republicans. But the two east Tennessee Republicans have been joined by two others over the past few decades as TN-03 (Chattanooga) and TN-07 (Memphis suburbs to Nashville suburbs) switched to the R column.
Now it looks fairly certain that two more seats are about to be converted from Democrat to Republican. The demographics seem to indicate that the changes may well be semi-permanent. Bart Gordon is retiring from TN-06, and John Tanner is retiring from TN-08. Both incumbent Democrats were going to have a hard time getting re-elected had they stayed in the race.
Two other seats, currently held by Democrats Jim Cooper (TN-05) and Lincoln Davis (TN-04) are attracting a surprising amount of attention and activity. They could also be in play (more on them in a later post). Only TN-09 seems safely Democrat at this point, and it seems fairly certain that Steve Cohen will retain the seat – more on that later, as well.
Of all the races, TN-06 has attracted the most attention. There are six Republicans, three Democrats, and one independent who have filed for the race. First quarter financial reports have been filed with the FEC. Raising the most money doesn’t guarantee that a candidate will win, but it’s pretty strongly correlated. Here’s what the money looks like in TN-06. The dollar amount is the total raised from individual contributions (not counting PAC money, or loans from the candidates to their own campaigns), 1/1/2010 thru 3/31/2010:
| R | Jim Tracy | $533,647 |
| R | Diane Black | $271,591 |
| R | Lou Ann Zelenik | $129,767 |
| R | Dale Evans | $34,970 |
| R | Kerry Roberts | $33,944 |
| R | Gary Mann | $3,200 |
| D | George Erdel | $375 |
| D | Brett Carter | $0 |
| I | Tommy Hay | $0 |
| D | Benjamin Leming | $0 |
I’d say this one is definitely an “R” pickup.
TN-08 will be more of a horse race. There are ten candidates here as well, eight Republicans and two Democrats. One of the Democrats, Roy Herron seems poised to make this a contest. Here are the fund-raising numbers (Individual contributions – not counting PAC money, or loans from the candidates to their own campaigns):
| R | Steve Fincher | $970,095 |
| D | Roy Herron | $822,866 |
| R | Ron Kirkland | $607,357 |
| R | George Flinn | $156,355 |
| R | Donn Janes | $10,937 |
| R | Randy Smith | $300 |
| R | James Hart | $142 |
| D | Luther Mercer | $0 |
| R | David Rice | $0 |
| R | Craig Steinfels | $0 |
I’d give the edge to Fincher in this one right now, but there is still a long time till November.
IF the Republicans manage to win both these seats, then the 112th Congressional map for Tennessee will look like this:
Stay tuned – in part two, I’ll report and comment on the numbers from TN-04 and TN-05.
Donn Janes is not running as a Republican anymore. This should re-shape your thinking just a little.
Donn Janes is running a very distant fifth in the fund-raising totals. How do you see him affecting the race?
Actually, for all of this century, Democrats have held five of the seats and Republicans four. As for the last century, from 1967 to the millenium, Republicans held a minimum of three seats every year.
Fincher doesn’t even have the edge in the Republican primary, he just has establishment backing and more money. He’ll be toast when voters start paying attention to how little he’s actually saying and the millions of tax payer money he has taken in farm subsidies.
Your analysis is far too simplistic to be considered legitimate. Herron is far and away the front-runner in the 8th, and is absolutely moderate-to-conservative enough to not only win the seat, but hold it for some time. And the 6th — the frontrunner in name is Ben Leming. He just got in to the race a week before the filing deadline and cannot campaign or raise money until May 1 because he’s on active duty for the US military. A bit premature to call the 6th a Republican lock this early because the likely Dem nominee hasn’t even been able to start campaigning.
In the absence of independent polling in TN-08, I don’t think anyone can call Herron the front-runner. I agree, that he will make it a race. But the tide this November is not going to favor Democrats, especially in TN-08.
Leming is a special case. He’s going to have a steep mountain to climb to get in the race for this seat – against an experienced Republican opponent.