On another note, my State Senator (D) just died this morning (Jenny Oropeza)
She was up for reelection. Ordinarily, that should make for better odds for the Republican running against her. Unfortunately, voters are so uninformed they will probably vote her back into office. I hope I’m wrong.
Tennessee has an interesting law... if the candidate dies before the election, they are stricken from the ballot, period (meaning no party replacements and any votes cast by absentee or early voting are thrown out). One deranged political opportunist tried to use this to his advantage. He was the GOP nominee for a State Senate seat against a beloved Dem incumbent (whom some considered to be the most Conservative member of the body, one reason the GOP wasn’t bothering to give the other guy much help). So the guy went over to the Senator’s property and assassinated him. In doing so, he became the default winner of the race. However, authorities figured out real fast that he had done it, and there was a big scramble to mount a write-in candidacy for the widow (and the GOP had little choice but to assist, since we’d never have lived down having a murderer win the race by default). Byron Looper is still in the big house today... (though he should’ve gotten the death penalty for what was a first-degree murder).