I recall 1996 I think it was some state house candidate murdered another, I think that was TN.
1998. It was Byron Looper. Looper was a strange man who first started running for office as a Democrat in Georgia in the ‘80s, but never won. He came to TN and tried running for several offices, this time as a Republican. He changed his name to “Low Tax” (literally and legally). He discovered an odd loophole in the law that if your opponent dies during the course of an election, their name is immediately stricken from the ballot, and you are automatically elected. Two weeks before the election, he assassinated (and that is the right usage of the word) State Senator Tommy Burks (quite probably one of the most Conservative members of the Senate, of either party, a DINO) while he was out, IIRC, getting his mail. He was quickly located, and arrested. But he was still on the ballot and would cruise to a general election victory. The Dems (and the GOP, for that matter) quickly mobilized to get Burks’s widow as a write-in candidate, and she won over Looper. In 2000, he was sentenced to life without parole.