Free Republic

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) has scheduled a return trip to Tennessee Monday to appear alongside U.S. Senate candidate Manny Sethi. Members of Sethi’s campaign said in an emailed press release Saturday that the pair will appear in Jackson and then Cordova. As reported last month, Cruz endorsed Sethi. Sethi and Bill Hagerty are competing against one another in Thursday’s Republican primary to replace the retiring U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander. Sethi and Cruz will first appear at a town hall meeting from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. central time on Monday at Volunteer International, 626 Airways Blvd. in Jackson, the...

I'm on the team' is a message from Bill Hagerty that Republican leadership, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, likes to hear. William Hagerty IV is a millionaire businessman running in the Republican primary for Tennessee senator. He made his money in private equity, where decades ago he began his lifelong friendship with Mitt Romney.Hagerty was an early supporter of Jeb Bush, for whom he was chosen as a national delegate, before switching to Team Marco Rubio after Jeb left the race. He was late to Team Donald Trump, using his role there to position himself for future success.He has...

So much for Southern hospitality. This fall, Tennessee will say goodbye to retiring Sen. Lamar Alexander, one of the last of the genteel Republican moderates in the chamber. And the race to replace him has turned into perhaps the ugliest Republican primary in the country — with spurious super PAC attacks, Mitt Romney being invoked as a slur and President Donald Trump lining up on opposite sides as Sen. Ted Cruz.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — At first, the cheers for U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz were louder than those for the man he came to stump for Friday morning, but that changed. Cruz, R-Texas, came to Knoxville in support of Republican U.S. Senate hopeful Dr. Manny Sethi and a crowd of nearly 200 people crammed inside a dining room of the Southern Rail Station to hear from the two as Sethi attempts to go toe-to-toe with Bill Hagerty, the former U.S. ambassador to Japan. The race has both tightened and gotten uglier in recent weeks ahead of the August 6 Election Day. Both...

NASHVILLE — Nashville trauma surgeon Manny Sethi announced Monday he is running for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination to replace retiring Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. Sethi, 41, made the announcement as former Gov. Bill Haslam continues weighing a bid for the 2020 GOP nomination. The physician is playing up his status as a "conservative outsider." "I am not a politician," Sethi said in an announcement video. "I'm a surgeon, an outsider. I'm a conservative and I support President Trump. Above all, I am grateful to God for a story that could have only have happened right here in Tennessee....