Anderson County Republican Chair, Myra Mansfield, is asking all Tennesseans to email the Republican executive committee chair immediately to support Ragan’s primary challenge.
Image Credit: JohnRagan4TN / Facebook
By Jennifer Hay [Knoxville Nobility] –
For the last 12 years, John Ragan has represented Tennessee House District 33 which includes Oak Ridge and a good part of Anderson County, but on August 1, he lost to primary challenger Rick Scarbrough. Ragan was endorsed by Tennessee Right to Life, The Tennessee Conservative, Governor Bill Lee, Lt. Governor Randy McNally, and U.S. Representative Chuck Fleischmann.
Last Thursday, Ragan formally challenged his primary loss, because as many as 20% of primary voters were not legitimate Republicans. Crossover-voting in primaries is prohibited by Tennessee law.
In his challenge, Ragan has the support of Myra Mansfield, the chair of the Anderson County Republican Party. She believes that Anderson County “suffered a calculated and planned attack in the Republican process by Democrats.” Mansfield is urging concerned citizens from all of Tennessee to support John Ragan’s challenge by emailing Scott Golden (golden@tngop.org) by the end of the day tomorrow, August 20. Golden is the chair of the Tennessee Republican Party State Executive Committee.
Anderson County Democrats tacitly acknowledged the attack in a Facebook post on Tuesday, August 2, celebrating that “Anderson County voters came together last night to defeat State Representative John Ragan.”
Democrats should not be “coming together” with Republicans to weigh in on Republican primaries. This is immoral and illegal under Tennessee law. Republican primaries are for Republicans only.
To make his challenge, Ragan pulled the voting histories of everyone who voted in the Republican primary for District 33. This is public information. A person’s voting history does not reveal exactly how he or she voted, but it does reveal for each election whether one voted at all and in what primary (Democrat or Republican).
By any reasonable analysis, the number of Democrats who voted in the Republican primary for District 33 exceeded the vote difference between Scarbrough and Ragan (258 votes). Ragan provided me with his spreadsheet, which I have shared here. (Even though this is public information, I have stripped surnames to protect voter identity.)
• 609 voters did not vote at all or voted only in Democrat primaries in the last four primary elections.
• 1119 voters did not meet the Republican party’s own definition of a bona fide Republican by having voted in Republican primaries in two of the last four primary elections.
Tennessee law specifies that a primary voter must be “a bona fide member of and affiliated with the political party in whose primary the voter seeks to vote (T.C.A. § 2-7-115).” However, Tennessee law defers to political parties to determine their own requirements for membership.
The bylaws of the Tennessee Republican Party define a bona fide Republican as “any individual who has voted in at least two (2) of the four (4) most recent state and/or local Republican primary elections (Article IX, Section 1, Paragraph B).”
One could argue that there is a boot-strapping problem with the Republican bylaws: How does one begin voting in Republican primaries if the requirement to vote is having a consistent history of voting in Republican primaries? However, in practice this is not a problem, because the vote difference between candidates usually far exceeds the number of first-time Republican primary voters.
Thus, there is one valuable take-away from this fiasco which I had never considered before: It is important to vote in every primary election, even if the candidates are unopposed. This is how you establish yourself as a bona fide Republican.
Your action here is really important. Please consider supporting John Ragan with the email suggested below. And please consider forwarding this email to sympathetic friends and family.
If Tennessee Republicans cannot manage their own primaries, they cannot manage anything at all.
Suggested email to Tennessee Republican Party State Executive Committee Chair, Scott Golden:
To: golden@tngop.org
Subject: I stand with John Ragan in District 33.
Body:
Dear Chair and Members of the Republican State Executive Committee,
I stand with John Ragan in his challenge to the outcome of the Republican primary election in District 33. By any reasonable analysis, the number of Democrats who voted in the Republican primary for District 33 exceeded the vote difference between Ragan and Scarbrough. Further, Anderson County Democrats tacitly acknowledged the cheating in a Facebook post dated August 2, 2024.
If Tennessee Republicans cannot manage their own primaries, they cannot manage anything at all.
Sincerely,
Your name, address, and phone number
Note: this article is republished on The Tennessee Conservative with express permission from Jennifer Hay at Knoxville Nobility.
3 Responses
The tepid conservative Republican establishment “manages” the Republican primaries under the current laws exactly as it prefers. Anytime one of its tepid conservative favorites are challenged by a solid conservative it has a ready supply of Democrats who are ready to invade the Republican primary ready to vote for the least conservative candidate.
The only answer is for Tennessee conservatives to make voting for the current virtual open primary system the third rail of Tennessee politics. No one in the Republican leadership in the General Assembly should be even considered for Governor so long as the open primary issue isn’t even seriously considered by the General Assembly. Lookin’ at you Cameron Sexton!
I added “Open primaries are killing us.”
A few questions:
1. Is Rick Scarbrough not a “real Republican”? If not, why wasn’t he removed from the ballot as the TNGOP has done with other candidates very recently?
2. Is Donald Trump a “real Republican”? If so, then isn’t Ragan endorsed by RINO Lee (Trump’s words)?
If the Big Two didn’t use public funds and equipment to run their private political club nomination “primaries”, they could invite or shut out whomever they wanted.
Since TN (most secure elections ever!) has prevented any kind of recount of elections with the “voting machines”, except when results are protested by a losing candidate – I guess we all have to take Ragan’s word for it. Nobody else is allowed to see the ballots and perform a recount.