After tumultuous final weeks of campaigning, U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn held a lead over rivals U.S. Rep. John Rose and state Rep. Monty Fritts among early voter returns in the Republican primary for Tennessee governor on Aug. 6.
As of 7:15 p.m., Blackburn led the Republican field with about 42% of the vote, according to unofficial vote counts from the Tennessee secretary of state's office.
Rose followed with about 33% of the vote, while Fritts trailed the two U.S. congresspeople in third with about 23% of the vote.
On the Democratic side of the ballot, sources including the Associated Press, the New York Times and NBC News called the race for Memphis city councilwoman Jerri Green, who ran out to an early lead shortly after polling places closed.
As of 7:37 p.m. on election night, Green had earned nearly 70% of the vote.
Unofficial results provided by the Tennessee Secretary of State's Office.
Blackburn held a commanding 58–point lead over Rose even before launching her bid for governor and quickly became an early favorite among establishment Republicans statewide.
Blackburn's unconventional campaign largely remained aloof from the general public. Instead, Blackburn focused her efforts on closed-door and invite-only events and Republican party functions. She declined to debate her opponents despite many calls for her to do so. She held no public town halls and engaged very little with reporters outside conservative media circles.
Blackburn centered her campaign around issues such as "cracking down" on China, hunting down communists, deporting “criminal illegal aliens” and expanding an existing state law to ban cell phone use in schools from "bell to bell."
Rose got started started early and had a much longer road to building statewide name recognition. Rose focused on practical issues like fixing Tennessee's roads, prioritizing families in state spending and making health care more accessible. He spent 18 months pounding the pavement across the state, engaging with voters and holding more than four dozen town halls — and he was able to narrow the gap.
Polling showed Rose consistently gaining on Blackburn. By election week, one poll showed Rose within as little as 3.5 percentage points of Blackburn. Internal polling from the Blackburn campaign showed him behind by 17 points.
Green, a Memphis City Councilwoman who has also been leading the Shelby County Public Defender's Office since January, became an early favorite in the Democratic primary, traveling across the state to build name recognition and sparking early criticism from Blackburn. A Memphis native, Green attended the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and later was a juvenile public defender in Nashville before moving back to Memphis to raise her three kids.
The Republican will be the distinct favorite in the general election: no Democrat has won statewide election in Tennessee since 2006.
A Republican win in November would mark the first time Republicans have held the governor’s office for three administrations in a row. Until Gov. Bill Lee succeeded Gov. Bill Haslam, Tennessee’s governors flip-flopped between parties for much of the last seven decades.
The battle for the GOP nomination
Blackburn, an eight-term congresswoman-turned two-term U.S. senator, is a Republican political juggernaut, with an entrenched fundraising machine and statewide grassroots outreach.
Blackburn said she is running to lead Tennessee "through a reset" and make it “America’s conservative leader for this generation and the next." She promised to "take a big red marker" to make cuts to the state budget, and pledged to "fight tooth and nail" against a statewide property tax — something Tennessee has not had since the 1940s. Many of the policies Blackburn outlined during her campaign are already state law.
Rose has said the next governor shouldn’t be “trying to remake Tennessee into some other mold.” He has pledged to safeguard the state’s low taxes, low debt, low regulations and Christian values, which he says were won by years of strong conservative leadership.
As the underdog, Rose had a long road to build name recognition. So he started before anyone else and launched his bid first. He held campaign events in each of the 95 counties and took questions from the public during more than 45 in-person town halls.Being “a governor who listens" became a central tenet of his campaign.
He focused his campaign on Tennessee's practical needs like affordability, better roads and schools, access to health care, and lowering energy costs. On the campaign trail, he also touched on his conservative positions on social issues like abortion and immigration, and pledged as governor to be tough on China.
Blackburn's tide of inevitablity turned when she refused to answer policy questions put to her by NewsChannel 5 reporter Ben Hall as she waited for an elevator. During the awkward wait, Blackburn repeatedly said she was "talking to Tennesseans every single day" in response to every question from Hall. Rose's team quickly turned the moment into a campaign ad.
Then came reports that a U.S. Senate ethics investigation found Blackburn's office violated Senate ethics rules by using government resources to bolster her 2024 Senate reelection bid. Rose repeatedly called on Blackburn to release documents related to the probe. She never did.
Rose self-loaned his campaign $9 million. Blackburn raised $8.3 million in donations, more than 70% of which came from outside Tennessee. She also benefited from more than $2.5 million in PAC spending and grassroots canvassing efforts by Americans for Prosperity's state PAC.
Throughout the campaign, both Blackburn and Rose touted their relationship with President Donald Trump. Rose pointed to his vote against certifying the 2020 election results as proof of his loyalty to the president. Ads supporting Blackburn almost all showed her alongside Trump, embracing him or pledging to help carry out his agenda.
Trump never made an endorsement in the race.
Vivian Jones covers state government and politics for The Tennessean. Reach her at vjones@tennessean.com.
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Blackburn takes early lead over Rose in GOP primary for TN governor
