Good news. THe TN GOP finally has some statewide office holders. Ironically, TN was the one of the first Dixie states to be voting for GOP candidates. It took so long to make progress on the legislative level.
Actually, TN was the only Southern (Confederacy) state that always had at least 1 (usually 2) Republican members in Congress from the 1860s to date (and a consistent presence in the legislature, though mostly solidly in East TN with only a handful elected outside of it from Reconstruction to the 1960s). Most other former Confederate states only occasionally had one, and others only had Republicans (such as Louisiana) since the 1970s. In 1969, TN became the first Southern state since NC in the 1890s to elect a GOP House Speaker (with a 49R-49D-1I membership). They probably would’ve reclaimed the chamber again by 1976, but Watergate was devastating in our state, reducing our Congressional majority (or near majorities in the TN House) to just about a third. So this has been delayed by 40 years.