Given the partisan bent of the 3rd Congressional District, the common assumption here is that the Republican party will again win the seat, as it has since Democratic Rep. Marilyn Lloyd stepped down at the end of her tenth term in 1994. Her departure ushered in Republican Zach Wamp’s 16-year tenure, which he voluntarily ended two years ago in his campaign for governor. His voter base tells a distinctive tale.
Wamp won each of his eight terms with at least 64 percent of the district’s vote, a margin that widened to more than two-thirds of the vote after the decennial redistricting that followed the 2000 Census. The Republican/tea party wave in 2010 entrenched the aura of GOP dominance in most state and federal elections in Tennessee.
The decennial redistricting after the 2010 Census substantially changed the shape of the 3rd District, however, and narrowed its partisan bias. The new line-up of counties appears to give independent voters potential swing vote leverage. But since it didn’t affect Hamilton County, the main media center and still the district’s most populous voter base, Republicans still confidently take the seat for granted.
So their focus in the 2012 elections is the internal challenge in the August GOP primary against one-term incumbent Chuck Fleischmann. He’s widely painted by supporters of his chief GOP foes — Scottie Mayfield and Weston Wamp — as an unblinking and rather lightweight puppet for Speaker John Boehner’s agenda in Washington. His voting record and stilted regurgitation of right-wing boilerplate blather largely substantiates that charge. Regrettably, his opponents are equally vague and superficial.
The Headrick-Taylor toss-up