As primary season in Tennessee draws closer to an end, two of the three Republicans vying for the state’s top job made laps through Chattanooga on Tuesday.
Gubernatorial candidate and Knoxville Mayor Bill Haslam’s stop at the Double Tree Hotel saw a crowd of roughly 200 supporters come alive when Haslam, University of Tennessee at Knoxville men’s basketball coach Bruce Pearl and U.S. House Rep. Jimmy Duncan, R-Knoxville, arrived in the Haslam tour bus 44 minutes late.
“In two days and two hours, the polls close. I’ll be real blunt: Right now, if everybody votes for us who says they’re going to vote for us, we’ll win,” Haslam told the crowd.
A July 21-23 poll, commissioned by the Chattanooga Times Free Press, other newspapers and WBIR-TV in Knoxville, agrees with Haslam concerning the Republican primary. The mayor is ahead with 36 percent, U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp is in second place with 25 percent, and Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey is in third with 20 percent, according to the poll.
Wamp, who held a campaign rally Tuesday at the same time as Haslam in his headquarters on Georgia Avenue, isn’t giving up yet, though.