Incumbents Hazlewood And Ragan Lose In House Republican Primaries Amid School Voucher Debate‌   ‌

TENNESSEE CITY, Tenn. — 19 Republican primaries for the Tennessee House of Representatives were held on Aug. 1, 2024. In the primaries, an incumbent ran in 13 of those primaries. Two incumbents—Patsy Hazlewood and John Ragan lost their primaries.

The 2024 elections took place in the context of a conflict among House Republicans over a proposal to expand Tennessee’s school voucher program. In the 2024 legislative session, Gov. Bill Lee supported a proposal allowing all Tennessee families with school-age children access vouchers to be applied towards the cost of private school.

The bill did not advance to a final vote before the end of the session owing to differences between the House and Senate drafts in what Chalkbeat described as “one of the biggest defeats of [Lee’s] administration, now in its second term.” According to information in the media, with the legislature out of session until 2025, the primaries “are the next frontier in the debate over whether state lawmakers should adopt a universal plan to provide parents with $7,200 in cash to subsidize private school tuition.”

Ballotpedia identified 13 of the 19 contested Republican primaries as battlegrounds. All 13 primaries featured $10,000 or more in spending from the nine Tennessee groups Ballotpedia identified as having a recent record of advocacy on school voucher-related issues. Nine also had competitive fundraising among the candidates where no single candidate raised more than two-thirds of the total fundraising across the entire candidate field. Gov. Bill Lee (R) endorsed eight candidates in contested primaries, including four candidates running in battleground primaries.

The 2024 legislative elections had 19 contested Republican primaries compared to 20 in 2022 and 19 in 2020. Thirteen of those primaries had an incumbent on the ballot compared to seven in 2022 and 14 in 2020. Two incumbents lost primaries in 2024 compared to two in 2022 and three in 2020.

Tennessee was, at the time of the election, one of 23 states with a Republican trifecta. A state government trifecta is a term used to describe a single-party government where one political party holds the governor’s office and a majority in both chambers of the state legislature. The only other five states with trifectas are Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia.

Produced in association with Ballotpedia

Edited by Priscilla Jepchumba and Judy J. Rotich