Agreed, in fact as to both districts. The Jenkins district in fact has not elected a Democrat since 1860 or so. The young men who volunteered to fight in the Civil War from that part of Tennessee, traveled north to join the army, rather than south.
There is something of a problem in the name of Nathen vaughn. He is black and Democrat but extremely level headed and well liked. He served for many years on a city council and excelled at common sense hard fiscal decisions.
I do not support him and in fact tagged him a Goreon which was probably unfair. He's better than that.
The first thing he did on getting elected to the Tennessee House was join the black caucus and become tainted with the stench of the Black Memphis political crooks even tho they are 550 mile away.
He will not say yet if he will run but might prove a little stronger than the usual hacks the rats dredge up for the token run here in the 1st District.
Meanwhile, the Republican hacks are jumping out of the wood work. I've seen no one mentioned today that is worth a damn.
The 1st last went Democrat in 1878. The 2nd (containing Knoxville) is one of the most penultimate GOP districts in the nation, and was previously Whig. It last elected a Democrat in 1852. In 1969, 32-year old Bill Jenkins was the only person ever to serve as a GOP House Speaker since Reconstruction to date when following Baker v. Carr in the early '60s netted the GOP a 49-49 split (with 1 independent, who refused to take a side and preferred to take a nap) in the House. Jenkins persuaded a Black Knoxville Democrat to support him, and he was elected 50 to 48. After serving one term, he vacated his seat (the Democrat narrowly got control for the 1970 election, and have gerrymandered the districts ever since to ensure majority status, despite having surrendered majority status amongst the voters for close to a dozen years), and ran for Governor, losing the nomination to Winfield Dunn, who would go on to win. Had Jenkins won, I'm sure he probably would've been a much higher-profile figure in TN politics (probably would've ended up in the Senate by the '80s). He's done a good job and we TN Republicans wish him well in his retirement.