Tennessee’s even state Senate districts and all of its state House districts are up for election this year.
Volunteer State residents will cast their ballots on Aug. 1 for a handful of federal and state races, as well as for down ballot county general elections.
A handful of competitive primaries loom in state legislative races in northwestern Tennessee.
Tennessee Senate District 24
Incumbent GOP Tennessee State Senator John Stevens is running for his fourth term in office representing the state’s 24th Senate District, which includes Benton, Carroll, Gibson, Henry, Houston, Obion, Stewart and Weakley counties. He’ll face a challenger in Charles “Charlie” Cooper.
Stevens, according to his campaign website, became the first Republican to ever represent Obion and Weakley counties when he was elected in 2012.
The 50-year-old Huntingdon attorney sponsored many conservative bills during the past legislative session, including one aimed at protecting the “fundamental rights” of parents that some called hypocritical. He also backed legislation protecting financial transaction data from firearm and ammunition purchases from being identified by a specific merchant code.
Stevens ranked among the most active legislators of the last year in Tennessee. Reporting from the Tennessee Lookout found that more than half of the 96 bills he introduced passed the legislature.
Gov. Bill Lee recently voiced his support for Stevens’ reelection campaign, endorsing him in a video posted on Facebook.
Stevens has received criticism from members of his own party, being named among the state’s top five RINOs (Republicans In Name Only) by the Tennessee Conservative in its 2022 report.
Cooper – a U.S. Army veteran who works in local government in western Tennessee – has never held elected office. He identifies as a constitutional conservative Republican, with his campaign website saying that he hopes to “advocate for maximum Personal Liberty and freedom” and “oppose policies that encourage illegal immigration.”
No Democrat has filed in the race.
Tennessee House of Representatives District 77
The Republican Primary will effectively decide the winner of Tennessee’s 77th House District, which includes Lake and Dyer counties as well as a portion of Obion.
James T. “Bubba” Cobb is taking on incumbent Tennessee State Representative Rusty Grills.
Grills won a special election to represent the district in 2019 and was reelected to the state House in 2020 and 2022. Before that, according to his campaign website, he served as a Dyer County commissioner for a decade.
In addition to chairing the state House’s subcommittee on Agriculture & Natural Resources, the incumbent Republican was an active legislative sponsor this past year. He backed 14 bills that passed (around 41% of his total sponsored legislation, according to the Tennessee Lookout).
The Newbern farmer has consistently advocated for Second Amendment rights, including for the expansion of Tennessee’s concealed carry law to include all firearms.
School vouchers are a touchy subject in Tennessee, especially after a bill supported by Gov. Bill Lee that would have given private schools access to taxpayer dollars faltered this session. Despite vocal outcries from local school districts, educators and parents at an event in Dyer County, Grills did not voice opposition to the proposed school voucher program.
Cobb is a retired educator, coach and Tennessee Army National Guard veteran. He taught and coached at Dyersburg City Schools for 37 years. He is a sitting member of the Dyer County commission.
According to this campaign website, Cobb said he supports school choice – but at the same time opposes the use of taxpayer dollars to support private education in the form of vouchers. Other key issues on his platform include advocating for the reinstatement of a mentoring program to help young Tennesseans better learn how to read, reforming the state’s Department of Education to ensure greater accountability within it and better maintained roads.
No Democrat has filed for the race.
Federal races
Voters across the Volunteer State will choose the nominees for the U.S. Senate race in November.
Incumbent Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn faces a challenger in Tres Wittum.
Blackburn, 72, is seeking a second term as senator. Before being elected, she served eight terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. Earlier in her career, she served in the Tennessee Senate.
The senior U.S. Senator from Tennessee has been a vocal supporter of former President Donald Trump, decrying his criminal conviction as a "total witch hunt” and touting his platform at the recent Republican National Convention.
Wittum is a former Tennessee Senate staffer. The 37-year-old has said that he’s running for office because Blackburn and other leadership “has failed to address the real issues affecting Tennesseans,” like the country’s debt ceiling, election integrity and border security.
On the other side of the aisle, Marquita Bradshaw, Lola Denise Brown, Gloria Johnson and Civil Miller-Watkins will duel it out in the Democratic Primary.
Tennessee voters are required to have a valid photo ID to cast a ballot. Acceptable forms of identification include driver’s licenses or photo IDs issued through the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, state government, or the federal government.
Election Day is Aug. 1.
Johnson, a state representative, rose to national fame last year after she survived a GOP-led effort to oust her from the legislature following her participation in a gun control demonstration. Bradshaw is a longtime Memphis activist who unsuccessfully ran for the U.S. Senate in 2020. Brown is chair of the membership committee of the NAACP in Nashville and the daughter of the first Black woman to serve in the Tennessee General Assembly. Miller-Watkins is a middle school teacher based in western Tennessee.
There is also a five-way race in the Democratic Primary for the U.S. Representative seat in Tennessee’s 8th Congressional District, which includes Henry, Weakley and Obion counties. Sarah Freeman, Leonard Perkins, Lawrence A. Pivnick, Lynnette P. Williams and Brenda Woods will compete for the opportunity to take on incumbent U.S. Rep. David Kustoff.
Freeman is an educator and a member of the Tennessee Democratic Party Executive Committee.
Pivnick, an Emeritus Professor of Law, taught full-time at the University of Memphis School of Law for nearly four decades. Perkins, according to his campaign website, has worked as a United States Air Force air traffic controller and for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Pivnick is a former law professor and faculty director for civil litigation clinics at University of Memphis Law School. Williams – sometimes identified as a Democratic activist – faced Kustoff in the 2022 general election as the Democratic nominee, garnering less than 25% of the vote.
