Nearly $700K spent on Lundberg-Harshbarger primary

KINGSPORT, Tenn. (WJHL) — New campaign finance reports show the District Four State Senate race between incumbent Jon Lundberg and challenger Bobby Harshbarger is setting up to be one of the most expensive state primaries in Tennessee history.

Nearly $700,000 was spent on the race between the Republican candidates and political action committees supporting them.

“It’s an expensive one, and we obviously don’t have all the numbers yet, and the race still continues beyond this reporting period,” Tennessee Journal Editor Erik Schelzig told News Channel 11 Wednesday. “It’s definitely been been way up there, especially for a Republican primary.”

Second-quarter reports show Lundberg raised more than $250,000 and spent more than $235,000 in the April to June quarter.

Large donations came from dozens of insiders, including former Senate leader Ron Ramsey and former Congressman Phil Roe to former Governor Bill Haslam, his brother Pilot CEO Jimmy and Food City CEO Steve Smith.

Two of the four political action committees that have put their weight behind the incumbent reported spending another $215,237, putting more than $450,000 in the column spent to aid the two-term senator and 18-year General Assembly veteran.

Harshbarger, whose mother Diana represents the First District in the U.S. Congress, raised more than $208,000 in the second quarter, with a $190,000 loan from himself to the campaign comprising the vast majority of those receipts. He’s also backed by East Tennessee Conservatives, a political action committee.

Harshbarger spend just under $150,000, and East Tennessee Conservatives reported spending nearly $90,000. The PAC also reported receiving $200,000 from the “Great America Coalition,” based in Washington D.C., June 27 to leave it with $203,067 heading into July.

“It’s a pretty astounding number, especially looking at Lundberg’s fundraising,” said Schelzig, who has covered capitol politics for decades. “It shows that he’s really beating the bushes with the help of the governor to raise money and gain support from the folks that he’s dealt with at the legislature for the last two decades, and that they’re coming out to rally behind him.”

He said the race is one of two primaries throwing enough of a scare into the incumbent GOP establishment in Nashville to get them and their main PACs off the sidelines. The other involves Ferrell Haile, a Nashville-area incumbent facing a challenge from former Hendersonville alderman candidate Chris Spencer.

Lieutenant Gov. Randy McNally’s PAC spent $64,097 on ads supporting Lundberg — or perhaps more accurately, opposing Harshbarger, labeling him a tool of the “Washington, D.C. swamp.” All that money was reported as being spent the last week of June.

The Tennessee Senate Republican Caucus put just over $150,000 behind Lundberg in two late June spends.

The Lundberg and Haile races feature similar set ups to Senate Majority Jack Johnson’s 2022 close victory over Tennessee Stands chief Gary Humble for District 27 in Williamson County. Johnson won 51.6% of the vote, prevailing by less than 600 votes in a primary where the put about $100,000 behind him and Johnson spent about $300,000, according to Schelzig. Humble spent slightly less than $200,000.

“It didn’t used to be that way,” Schelzig said of expensive and bitter primaries. But that was before a massive Republican majority took a firm grasp on power.

“People have gotten entrenched, they’ve gotten comfortable, and other folks want to break in and shake it up,” he said. “And it’s making the incumbents nervous.”

Now, more often than not the “incumbent protection” provided by groups like McNally’s Mac PAC, Johnson’s own Jack-PAC and the Senate caucus are poured into primary battles, Schelzig said.

He said leadership is taking both contested races very seriously, “and they’re very concerned about losing these seats because these are key allies of McNally’s and of the Senate leadership, both Lundberg and Haile.”

As for Harshbarger, he’s taking a combination self-funding and PAC approach — with the added twist of a recognizable name in his mother.

“Harshbarger is an outsider, at least in the state capital world, and he only raised what was it, $19,000 in donations that last quarter, which is, you know, a huge contrast. But of course, he did pour in $190,000, which can make up for some of that sort of more grassroots or personal investment from donors.”

It’s all politics in the end, Schelzig said.

“This is what lawmakers do, and they are always interested first in protecting their existing colleagues, which doesn’t mean that if someone else gets elected down the road, they don’t all become friends and then they protect each other the next time around.”

“But really it’s a no questions asked sort of arrangement for the most part, that if you are already in the club, you will get support from the leadership and your colleagues that are already there.”

Early voting begins Friday and runs through July 27. Election day is Aug. 1.

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