Image: Democrat Chaz Molder (right) and Republican Charlie Hatcher (left) are running for Congress in Tennessee’s 5th District Image Credit: Martin B. Cherry and Hamilton Matthew Masters / Nashville Banner/Nashville Scene & Canva.
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Article by Stephen Elliott [The Nashville Banner, Creative Commons] –
Charlie Hatcher and Chaz Molder both started running for Congress to unseat incumbent U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles.
So, too, did Micheál O’Leary, a Republican-leaning independent and Irish pub owner also on the ballot.
Hatcher accomplished that feat in August, beating Ogles in the Republican primary for Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District.
That leaves the candidates crafting a new thesis as they move toward the November general election in a district for which geographic boundaries have changed dramatically since each started running.
The candidates share another trait: None lives in the district.
In a different political environment, not living in the jurisdiction a candidate seeks to represent could serve as a ruinous political cudgel for the opposition. But — setting aside the opposition being in the same boat — the Tennessee legislature’s last-minute redistricting has left candidates and voters alike scattered across swirling, expansive districts with little geographic identity.
Until 2022, the 5th District was mostly Davidson County and reliably voted Democrat. Redistricting then split Nashville between three districts, leaving the 5th with the southern portion of Nashville but adding more conservative areas to the south. That opened the door for Ogles, previously the Maury County mayor and an anti-tax lobbyist, to win the seat.
His tenure was defined by high-profile fights with colleagues and local officials like Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell and a series of campaign finance and other controversies, including one that saw the FBI seize his phone (the investigation was later dropped).
Earlier this year, amid a push by President Donald Trump to secure Republicans’ majority in the House, Tennessee lawmakers redrew the lines again, a rare mid-decade redistricting. That new map, implemented after candidates had already qualified in the old districts, changed the 5th further.
Now, it no longer includes any part of Nashville, instead encompassing parts of Maury and Williamson counties to the south, then navigating northwest through rural parts of the state, then down the Mississippi River to include part of Memphis.
Neither Molder nor Hatcher is a bomb-thrower like Ogles. Molder is an attorney and the two-term mayor of Columbia in Maury County, while Hatcher is a veterinarian, dairy farmer and the former Tennessee commissioner of agriculture. The candidates have agreed to debate.
Molder has pitched himself as a moderate, touting the endorsement of the congressional Blue Dogs and describing himself as a “middle of the road” small-town mayor. So much so that Hatcher has taken notice, saying that “maybe he should have run in the Republican primary” when asked about a Molder ad highlighting his family and faith.
“We’re better off as a state and a country that he’s not going to get to back,” Molder said of Ogles’ loss. “While my opponent may have changed, the issues that we’re running on have remained the same.”
He added that people “want to vote for something” and not against someone, and that his opposition to the Iran war and tariffs and his support for health care affordability continue to set him apart from Republicans.
Molder said in a recent interview that he is “a capitalist, not a socialist” but that he believes Tennessee has gone too far in restricting abortion and that Republicans are too beholden to Trump. He said he opposes Trump’s tariffs and cuts to social services but that focusing on impeachment would be a distraction for House Democrats. Molder also criticized the rising cost of living that he attributes to the war in Iran, tariffs and other Trump administration decisions.
“I cannot imagine surrendering my judgment to one political party or one president like that,” Molder said of Republicans. “President Trump has done a very good job in helping secure our borders, particularly compared to what the Biden administration did. … I present an option for folks like you to vote for to make sure that the socialists are not taking over the Democratic Party, just like we don’t want the far right taking over the Republican Party.”
Unlike the man he unseated in the August primary, Hatcher does not spend much time talking about hot-button cultural issues. Like Ogles’ opponents before, he had secured the support of more old-school Tennessee Republican leaders, including Gov. Bill Lee and former Gov. Bill Haslam, even before defeating the Trump-backed Ogles.
Asked about the top issues facing the district, Hatcher listed cost of living (especially the price of diesel fuel), infrastructure and regulatory reform. He acknowledged at least occasional disagreement with Trump, including on a plan to import more beef.
“I’m not taking this general election for granted,” he said in a recent interview. “It’s going to be a tough general election with the economy and everything else that’s going on.”
Hatcher rarely has much negative to say about Molder personally, though he warns that any Democrat elected will have to go along with the national party’s positions (Molder makes the same claim in reverse about Hatcher).
“I don’t think he can deliver on what he’s running on in the new Democratic Party,” Hatcher said.
Despite the national political tailwinds for Democrats and Molder’s fundraising prowess, Hatcher still should be the favorite to win. Trump would have won the newly drawn district by more than 20 percentage points in the 2024 election. Still, the Molder camp is expressing some optimism. An internal poll showed the Democrat within a single-digit margin of Hatcher at the start of September, before Molder launched a television campaign that has, so far, not been matched by Hatcher.
O’Leary and James A. Johnson are on the ballot as independents. O’Leary owns The Lost Paddy Irish Pub in South Nashville. An Irish immigrant, he’s also the former mayor of Culver City in California. He initially sought to run as a Republican, but the state party threw him off the ballot.
Citing the prominence of independents in the gubernatorial race, O’Leary told the Banner that voters are looking for something different than the two major parties.
“The usual jumping from left to right or right to left is not working, and people are feeling the frustration,” he said.
His campaign plan is to drive a wrapped RV throughout the district, including the town of Erin that proudly clings to its Irish heritage.
“Every single congressman is just told what way to vote and how to explain the vote to the public,” he said. “It’s frustrating, and it’s disingenuous for the job that they’re supposed to be doing.”
