How TN Republican primary races are pushing the party further to the right on key issues

As Republicans nationwide consider their future, deep-red Tennessee's dominant political party is creeping further to the right as primary candidates seek to bolster their conservative credentials on key issues ahead of the Aug. 1 primary.

With a GOP supermajority in the state legislature, many races are determined in primary contests. During campaigns this year, both incumbents and newcomers alike have taken staunchly conservative views on issues such as state-paid school lunches, arming teachers, taxpayer-funded school vouchers, and making the Bible a state book.

The shift becomes more stark as key moderates like Franklin's Rep. Sam Whitson and Sen. Art Swann, R-Maryville, retired this year.

The issue of state-funded private school vouchers has taken center stage — prompting millions in spending from in-state and national political action committees. But other other issues are getting intense debate on the campaign trail.

And it is all happening as new groups, such as the Tennessee Conservative, are hammering Republican incumbents on websites and social media for not being conservative enough.

The site has branded incumbents like Sen. Jon Lundberg, R-Bristol and Rep. Jason Zachary, R-Knoxville ― known elsewhere as conservative stalwarts in the legislature ― as "Republican in name only." Brandon Lewis, a Signal Mountain resident who runs the site, has also given several in-kind donations to political challengers to incumbents criticized in posts.

Likewise, several right-wing challengers have hired a for-profit campaign consulting firm run by Gary Humble, director of Tennessee Stands. Through his platform with the nonprofit Tennessee Stands, Humble has attacked the incumbents his firm's clients are running against. His clients include House District 65 candidate Michelle Foreman, Chris Spencer who is challenging Sen. Ferrell Haile, and Monica Irvine, who is challenging Sen. Becky Massey.

Meanwhile, Republican caucus leaders have traveled the state to fundraise and knock on doors to help incumbents keep their seats.

Here's a sampling of the issues they're talking about on the campaign trail.

State-paid school lunches

Down in Cleveland, Tennessee, Troy Weathers drives his white Ford pickup through town, pointing out campaign signs that feature a life-sized likeness of himself holding a campaign sign and waving. He moves around the life-sized cutouts every so often to keep drivers guessing.

Weathers lost a four-way primary to incumbent freshman Rep. Kevin Raper, R-Cleveland, by 246 votes in 2022. A 20-year school board veteran, he decided to challenge Raper again after Raper supported a bill to offer free school lunches for every student in the state.

“I paid for my daughters education, their college education, they have great jobs, they make great money. Why should I continue to pay for my grandkids now?” Weathers said. “It just don’t feel right. It don’t sound right… I’m a Republican, okay? That’s a Democrat program… The Democrats, they always talk about give, give, give, and never worry about pay, pay, pay.”

Raper, a retired teacher, stands by his work, saying he's heard from cafeteria managers around the state that kids are struggling to eat.

"This is not a liberal bill, this is not a conservative bill: it's the right thing to do," Raper told The Tennessean. "I witnessed many, many children myself that did not have free breakfast and lunch. Optimal learning is not going to take place when you've got hungry kids."

Intense debates over immigration

In Williamson County, the race for Whitson’s seat is a contest between far-right Trump delegate Michelle Foreman, who recently relocated to the district after losing to Rep. Caleb Hemmer, D-Nashville, in 2022, and political newcomer Lee Reeves.

Foreman opposes state-funded school vouchers, saying that the state should work to improve existing public schools, not offer a way out. She says a top priority if elected is fighting taxpayer-funded benefits for people who entered the United States illegally.

“One of my legislative focuses, which resonates extremely strongly in the district, will be combatting illegal immigration – including housing, renting, employing and educating illegal aliens,” Foreman said.

Foreman is endorsed by rightwing singer songwriter John Rich, and right wing advocacy group Tennessee Stands. Foreman also has the endorsement of Rep. Gino Bulso, R-Brentwood, one of the most conservative and controversial lawmakers in the state House, who this year championed bills to make the Aitken Bible a state book, and require students as early as kindergarten to watch a fetal development video produced by a high-profile anti-abortion organization.

Former real estate attorney Lee Reeves, another frontrunner in the primary, has pledged to keep taxes low and support school choice policies, arguing that taxpayer dollars for education should follow the child wherever their parent chooses to send them. He's endorsed by Gov. Bill Lee, Americans for Prosperity Action, Latinos for Tennessee, and the School Freedom Fund PAC.

Third Grade retention

For others, it’s the state’s third grade retention law that lit the fire for them to run.

Ray Jeter, who owns a construction business in Columbia, is challenging incumbent Rep. Scott Cepicky, who has worked on policies aimed at boosting the state’s literacy rates. Jeter knows that third grade reading levels are critical, but he questions whether state testing is accurately measuring students’ abilities.

His convictions solidified when he proctored a third-grade TCAP test this spring at Woodard Elementary School in Columbia.

“At the beginning of the test, they're asked to read the directions. It's just a small paragraph but they have to read it out loud,” Jeter told The Tennessean. “I walk in the room and I'm just proctoring – I'm not involved at all – I'm just observing. I bet you 80% to 90% of the kids in that classroom read that paragraph. Out loud. Very articulated very well as a third grader should.”

But when he later saw results for the students he proctored, only 38-40% tested at the third grade level.

“It didn’t match what I witnessed as far as their capabilities,” Jeter said.

Jeter says he’s “fundamentally for school choice” – himself a product of both the public and private schools. But, he says keeping private education private is a priority.

“My only fear is that if we start moving public funds into private education, that soon thereafter government regulations are coming,” he said.

State funded private school vouchers

Even the voucher issue, in some races, has become a contest of conservatism.

In Marshall County, incumbent Rep. Todd Warner, R-Chapel Hill, doesn’t face a primary opponent. But as a vocal opponent of vouchers, he argues real conservatives should be wary of public funds going to private schools that aren’t accountable to the state for what they teach.

“There’s a Satanic school that’s suing Shelby County in Memphis right now over an after school program,” Warner said during a Republican Party dinner in Lewisburg earlier this month. “You see all the Chinese they’re talking about coming across the border. You don’t think when they get a chance to take tax money that they’re not going to try to fund a Communist school?”

Warner also said he opposed Lee’s voucher proposal this year because there was nothing that would have prevented children unlawfully in the United States from using the funding.

Rep. Paul Sherrell, R-Sparta, made a similar argument during a recent candidate forum in Warren County, the Tennessee Lookout reported.

“If you wanted to have an LGBTQ school, or Bill wanted to have a Muslim school, well they would have the right of getting this money as well as everybody else would,” Sherrell said. “We don’t want our money going to any kind of LGBTQ school or Muslim school.”

Many of the schools approved to participate in the state’s existing Education Savings Accounts are religiously affiliated Christian institutions.

Gender transition bans

Up in Hendersonville, college basketball promoter Chris Spencer is challenging Senate Speaker Pro Tempore Ferrell Haile in a knock-down, drag-out, race that's cost candidates $102,000 so far.

Spencer blames the legislature – and Haile directly – for allowing pediatric transgender clinics like the one at Vanderbilt University Medical Center to continue to operate in the state – despite a legislative effort in 2018 sponsored by Haile aimed at preventing such surgeries from happening.

Haile sponsored a bill in 2018 to bar minors from taking hormonal medications and puberty blockers under a certain age to treat gender dysphoria ― more than a year before tweets from conservative pundit Matt Walsh lit the right on fire over the issue. Echoing talking points from Tennessee Conservative's website, Spencer argues that the age defined in Haile’s bill didn’t go far enough – and emboldened entities like Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Pediatric Transgender Clinic to continue offering such treatments to older children.

“What this bill did was basically give cover to Vanderbilt Hospital, what they were doing,” Spencer says. “Only because of Matt Walsh did the Republicans go, oh gosh, what are we going to do? It’s funny to go back and look at some of these press conferences, they’re like ‘how could this happen?’ It happened because you signed it into law, governor.”

Haile vehemently disagrees, saying that his 2018 legislation with Rep. Sabi Kumar, R-Springfield, who is a physician, was ahead of the curve.

"I had heard that there were some clinics that were going to pop up and do this type of treatment... As a pharmacist, I knew that the hormone treatment could take place in independent, private physician offices," Haile said. "I carried a bill that prevented this from taking place."

After Walsh's social media posts, the Republican caucus sought to draft more wide ranging legislation that banned all hormone treatments and gender transition surgeries for minors, of which Haile was the first prime sponsor.

Spencer also criticizes Haile for an open letter to Tennesseans he wrote with Republican colleagues during the coronavirus pandemic to encourage Tennesseans to get vaccinated ― something Spencer has characterized as a mandate.

"There was never a requirement," Haile said. "I did recommend that individuals take the vaccine, but I also recommended that you check with your physician. Never was there a mandate."

Teachers with guns

A hugely divisive issue in the state legislature this year was a measure that would allow teachers who meet certain training qualifications and have approval from their school and a local law enforcement agencies to carry guns inside their classrooms without notifying parents. So far, no school district has chosen to take part in the optional effort.

Weathers said it's a commonsense way to offer schools "another level of protection for your students." Raper opposed the bill.

“We need to give every opportunity we can for school systems that needed to utilize it," he said. “We still have county schools across the state that don’t have SROs."

He calls Raper’s vote against the teacher gun bill was “a huge, fatal mistake.”

“It was just such a simple thing. The gun Bill was designed to allow school systems to arm their teachers,” Weathers said.

"I did not have a single person in all my area send me something that said 'please vote for this bill,'" Raper said, adding that he'd also been reassured by the Attorney General's office that the existing policy to not allow guns in schools did not violate the Second Amendment. "I've been wholeheartedly Second Amendment... But this is not a Second Amendment issue. You're not trying to deny freedoms."

The Bible as a state book

This year, Tennessee became the first state in the country to designate a Bible – the Aitken Bible – as an official state book. Lawmakers’ decision to do so has sparked controversy and constitutional concerns: Tennessee’s state Constitution goes beyond the U.S. Constitution’s establishment clause by requiring that “no preference shall ever be given, by law, to any religious establishment or mode of worship.” Further, promoters of the Aitken Bible have strong ties with a movement aimed at eroding the separation of church and state, a Tennessean investigation found.

Spencer blames the federal government’s decision to “take God away from our public schools” for increased violence across the country. That’s part of what fuels his convictions to preserve the Second Amendment.

“I would prefer making the Bible the state book of Tennessee. Why not?” Spencer said, citing Article 9, Section 2 of the state constitution which he claims requires civil servants “believe in God and must believe in heaven in order to serve.”

That Article is commonly understood to prohibit atheists from serving in the state legislature.

“I’m not going to shy away from my Christianity. I won’t. Not one iota. It is who I am,” Spencer said. “I would definitely pass a bill that made the Bible the state book, and I would not blink.”

Vivian Jones covers state government and politics for The Tennessean. Reach her atvjones@tennessean.com or on X @Vivian_E_Jones.