The Republican Party’s hotly contested races for the gubernatorial and 3rd District congressional nominations generated plenty of sparks, but not the results that Zach Wamp, Robin Smith and the noisy tea party minority they targeted might have expected. The results, however, surely made Bill Haslam and Chuck Fleisch-mann happy.
Mr. Haslam’s wide margin of victory in the gubernatorial primary suggested, in fact, that GOP voters – and probably a fair number of Democratic cross-over voters who wanted to influence the race – found the Knoxville mayor’s temperate, pragmatic, thoughtful approach to state governance and knotty problems far more appealing than the hard right bent that Messrs. Wamp and Ron Ramsey espoused throughout the primary campaign.
Mr. Fleischmann’s narrow win over Mrs. Smith conveyed, as well, a measure of Republican discontent with her strident rhetoric, pat party talking points, and presumptuous sense of entitlement to the vacant congressional seat merely on account of her long ties to the state Republican Party’s establishment and its power brokers.
Mr. Haslam’s margin of victory turned out to be far wider than pre-election polls suggested. Indeed, he collected nearly as many votes as both of his major opponents combined. The unofficial tally of 99 percent of precincts statewide showed him carrying 340,488 votes versus Mr. Wamp’s 208,313 and Mr. Ramsey’s 158,100. In a state with more than 3.7 million voters, however, the Republican candidates attracted less than 20 percent of registered voters.
In November Mr. Haslam will face Democrat Mike McWherter, who was unopposed in his party’s primary election and thus ran minimal advertising.