Republican Bill Hagerty on Tuesday beat Democrat Marquita Bradshaw and will succeed retiring Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander in the U.S. Senate.
Hagerty — a businessman, political donor and former ambassador to Japan — will join fellow Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who won her seat two years ago, in Washington.
The Republican, whom President Trump endorsed for the seat before he even launched his campaign, survived a primary election battle from, among others, Nashville surgeon Manny Sethi before moving on to the general election. Hagerty’s race against Bradshaw attracted far less national attention and money than Blackburn’s 2018 win over former Gov. Phil Bredesen.
Bradshaw, an environmental activist from Memphis, advanced to the general election after a surprise primary victory over third-place finisher James Mackler, a Nashville attorney endorsed by national Democrats. Mackler spent many times more on his campaign than either Bradshaw or second-place finisher Robin Kimbrough Hayes.
After the primary victory, Bradshaw quickly began raising more money, even outraising Hagerty among individual donors in one recent reporting cycle. The first Black woman to lead a major-party statewide ticket in Tennessee, Bradshaw was also able to unite disparate political movements, earning endorsements from both the Democratic Socialists of America and party standard-bearer Joe Biden.
“We need candidates to vote for that inspire us, and Marquita inspires us,” says Charlane Oliver, co-executive director of The Equity Alliance Fund. “She inspires us in a way that we haven’t seen in Tennessee, well, ever, because we haven’t had a Black woman on the ballot. It shows there’s an appetite for it in Tennessee, regardless of what the polls say.”
But it was not enough to best Hagerty, whose top-billed policy priority is to “stand up to Democrats’ liberal socialist agenda that would deeply damage the America we know and love.”
A former commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development, Hagerty also lists “confirming constitutionalist judges,” “standing with law enforcement officers” and “stopping illegal immigration” as priorities in the Senate.
It remained too early Tuesday to determine whether Hagerty’s party would hold onto its majority in the Senate.
