WKNO TRANSCRIPT
CHRISTOPHER BLANK (Host) Tennesseans will choose their first woman governor in November, and Shelby County has a new mayor elect. The results of Thursday's election are in. With us to go over some of the results is political analyst Otis Sanford. Welcome back.
OTIS SANFORD: Thank you, Chris. Thank you for having me.
BLANK Otis, let's start locally. Commissioner Mickell Lowery will be our next Shelby County mayor, and Anthony Buckner will be the next county sheriff. What do the results say about these two wins?
SANFORD: Well, they say that Democrats once again flexed their muscles in a county general election, which has been happening for the last at least three election cycles. Democrats rule the roost in Shelby County, and they showed it here. And they had two pretty attractive candidates in Mickell Lowery for county mayor, and Anthony Buckner for county sheriff.
BLANK: And come next year, Tennessee will have its first woman governor. Memphis City Councilwoman Jerri Green handily won the Democratic nomination. U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn beat her two opponents. What will we be hearing from them going into the fall campaign?
SANFORD: I think what we will hear is what we have already started to hear, especially from Blackburn. I mean, she's going to try to paint Jerri Green as an extremist. She was in Memphis yesterday, pretty much calling all Democrats communists. I don't know where she got that from, but she's going to try to paint her opponent as an extremist. I think what what Jerri Green is going to try to do is point to the fact that her opponent, Marsha Blackburn, is not really addressing issues that people in Tennessee really care about. The number one issue is affordability. You don't hear Marsha Blackburn talking about that. I think Jerri Green is also going to tie Blackburn to Trump as much as she can, and then say, "how's that working out for you?" So, it's going to be an interesting race. A lot of it depends on how much money Jerri Green can get to take this race statewide. That will be her challenge. And also a heavy turnout is going to be necessary for her to win.
BLANK: For the new congressional races, let's start with District 5. Incumbent Republican and Trump pick Andy Ogles lost in an upset to the state's agricultural commissioner Charlie Hatcher. He'll now be running against Columbia Mayor Chaz Molder. We've talked about how Ogles was so unpopular that if he won, it would benefit Molder. How does this campaign look now with a different Republican candidate?
SANFORD: The stage has changed a little bit here, Chris. Democrats were hoping that Andy Ogles would get the nomination because it would be easier to run against him because of his unpopularity. But I think with Charlie Hatcher winning and winning fairly handily here -- it wasn't all that close -- it sets up a pretty tough chore for Democrats. There's not a lot of negatives that you can point to right away with Hatcher, and the fact that he's a farmer and former agriculture guy, that's going to be a tough haul for the Democrat. Although, I do think Chaz Molder presents the best opportunity, still, for Democrats to pick off one of these three seats that have been gerrymandered.
BLANK: And in District 8, it's going to be incumbent David Kustoff against Shelby County Criminal Court Clerk Heidi Kuhn. Thoughts about that?
SANFORD: Well, I just think that Kustoff as the incumbent, and a fairly entrenched incumbent right now, he's been there 10 years -- it's going to be very difficult for Heidi Kuhn to win that. She had an impressive showing in this primary, but that district is not drawn for her to be successful probably in the way that some of the others are. And so it's going to be tough for Heidi to do it. I predict that Kustoff will win easily.
BLANK: Finally, in the new District 9, Democratic State Rep. Justin J. Pearson will face Republican State Sen. Brent Taylor in November. Both won their respective primaries with about the same number of votes, just over 30,000. And Pearson won in all 15 counties of this new district. What do you make of these results?
SANFORD: Well, I think this is an impressive win for Justin Pearson. He had the most energy, even though London Lamar is a formidable candidate, well known and fairly well liked. But Justin Pearson has just brought the energy here. And this is shaping up to be a really, really interesting race. You're going to see national money poured into Justin Pearson's race in a way probably even more so than in the the governor's race. And Pearson, with his firebrand style of politics, he's going to take the fight directly to Taylor. Now, Taylor is going to take the fight to him. But it's going to be a real test for Pearson to point out that Brent Taylor is going to be serving a current president and a political apparatus that is not looking out for the average Tennessean. That's going to be his argument. And he's going to continue to say that this was a racist move by the legislature. And so, there's a lot of fodder there that is going to be very interesting to cover.
