Morning Digest: Longtime Tennessee GOP senator won't seek another term in 2020
newsdepo.com
The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar. Leading Off ●Morning Digest: Longtime Tennessee GOP senator won't seek another term in 2020
The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Stephen Wolf, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, Daniel Donner, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar. Leading Off ● TN-Sen: On Monday, Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander announced that he would not seek a fourth term in 2020. Alexander sounded eager to run again last month, so this decision comes as a surprise. However, the senator now says that he'd made his choice all the way back in August. Campaign Action Tennessee is a reliably red state, and Team Red will be heavily favored to keep this seat. Naturally, there's no shortage of possible Volunteer State Republicans who could get in. The biggest name to watch is termed-out Gov. Bill Haslam, who said on Monday that he was giving a run «serious consideration.» Haslam, who will leave office in mid-January, publicly flirted with running in 2017 after Sen. Bob Corker decided to retire, but he ended up passing. Last week, the Nashville Post also reported that orthopedic surgeon Manny Sethi, who is close to former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, was considering a bid in the event the seat opened up. In additon, GOP operatives have mentioned wealthy businessman and U.S. Ambassador to Japan Bill Hagerty. While Hagerty hasn't said anything publicly yet, Alexander named both him and Haslam as «obvious favorites ... in addition to four or five of our congressmen.» Speaking of those congressmen, Politico writes that Rep. David Kustoff, who represents part of West Tennessee, is interested, but he's also not said anything publicly about his plans. Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, who represents the Chattanooga area, spoke and didn't rule anything out, saying he was «solely focused on the responsibilities of my current role for the time being.» Politico adds that Rep.-elect Mark Green «had begun making calls to some Republicans touting his potential as a statewide candidate prior to Alexander's retirement.» Green made the bad kind of national headlines last week when he suggested that the Centers for Disease Control was hiding data on a link between vaccines and autism, but that didn't stop the radical anti-tax Club For Growth from encouraging him to jump in on Monday. Read more