When the state legislature redrew Tennessee’s U.S. congressional districts early this year, Nashville got cracked. It looked like a safe gamble for the state’s Republican supermajority: Lawmakers split the city’s longtime Democratic seat into three — redrawing the lines of the 5th, 6th and 7th districts — and diluting the electoral power of the city’s left-leaning constituency.
Nashville’s historic seat, Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District, now bears very little resemblance to its former self. It combines slices of Davidson, Wilson and Williamson counties, as well as Marshall, Lewis and Maury to the south. Along with packing and stacking, cracking is Gerrymandering 101 — all ways to draw boundaries that emphasize or dilute partisan voting power. The state’s efforts turned Nashville’s safe Democratic district, held for two decades by now-retiring Democrat Jim Cooper, into parts of three districts with double-digit margins for Republicans.
Things have changed in nine months. The Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, leaked in May and decided in June, gutted protections for reproductive rights and precipitated chaos in an already dysfunctional health care system. Republicans have targeted the FBI, the IRS and, more recently, Social Security, for budget cuts. On the national level, remaining party planks have been largely replaced by a string of absurd stunts and talking points increasingly divorced from reality — from panics about rainbow fentanyl to targeting transgender health care to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis luring immigrants onto a plane bound for Martha’s Vineyard.
President Joe Biden has become slightly less unpopular, notching a few term-defining accomplishments with the Inflation Reduction Act and student loan forgiveness. Armed with clear material for campaign offense and defense, Democrats are finally learning how to message to a demographic that is disproportionately older and female — the ideal context for a moderate candidate to win moderate voters in a suburban district.
Against this backdrop, Tennessee’s new 5th Congressional District has become a little bit competitive. Instead of climbing a mountain, the Democratic candidate, state Sen. Heidi Campbell, may just be climbing a hill as she faces off against far-right Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles. Or a slightly smaller mountain. Estimating voting numbers for a brand-new district requires even more conjecture than usual, and every county in the redrawn district went to Trump in 2020 by a nearly 2-to-1 ratio, with the exception of Davidson. But a few interesting developments — namely Ogles’ dogmatic views on abortion — have cleared a narrow path for the Oak Hill Democrat who identifies as a Williamson County soccer mom.
“It’s been inspiring to have a lot of Republicans and independents come on board this campaign,” Campbell tells the Scene. “They are aware their freedoms are being taken away by the far-right faction controlling their party. The precedence of Social Security has surprised me — my opponent wants to eliminate Social Security. It was the top issue in our poll. And many feel like Dobbs was a bridge too far.”
Since Ogles won the Republican primary in August, Campbell has been on offense. He won with 21,000 votes — 37 percent of the total share. It was enough to edge out major opponents Beth Harwell and Kurt Winstead, but not quite an anointment. An ideological outgrowth of Republicans’ right flank, Ogles made a career bouncing between various think-tank and campaign posts in GOP-libertarian world before his Maury County election in 2019. He comfortably fights in the right’s culture war, relying on platitudes about “separation of powers” and “accountability and transparency” while saving more detailed campaign positions for immigration, guns and abortion.
Ogles does not support access to abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. In December, Ogles briefly made national news for his Christmas card, which featured the mayor and his wife, along with two adolescent children, toting assault rifles. In recent weeks, Ogles added “Take Back TN-05 Republican Nominee Fund 2022” to a growing list of political action committees based in other states to help fund his campaign. Over the summer, a complaint filed with the FEC detailed a “pattern of malfeasance” related to the campaign’s bookkeeping, overseen by campaign treasurer and Nashville conservative mega donor Lee Beaman.
The Ogles campaign did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.
Polling commissioned by the Campbell campaign and shared with the Scene gives her a slim edge — though the firm that conducted it, Frederick Polls, has historically overestimated margins in favor of Democrats. The survey keys in on “middle partisans,” about half of the poll’s 1,622 respondents, who indicated that they had not yet made up their minds. Poll questions focus on abortion and inflation and emphasize Ogles’ loyalty to Trump, attempting to cast every Republican position as an example of government overreach.
Campbell hits the same points in the same way in a recent Tennessean op-ed, focusing her messaging on abortion access and Ogles’ contempt for basic and popular federal programs like Medicare and Social Security. She frames Ogles as a threat to democracy and “personal” and “basic” freedoms, words that have increasingly filtered into Democratic Party rhetoric after years of the left losing the battle over patriotism. She also takes the chance to shame Ogles for refusing repeated invitations by Campbell to participate in a live debate ahead of Election Day on Nov. 8.
The 5th Congressional District will be a testing ground for Democrats hoping to hold a slim margin in the House. Word out of D.C. is that party leaders are “cautiously optimistic” about midterms. In Nashville, the race is a reminder that state and federal politics are deeply connected, and that democracy is a set of rules that can always be revised.
