Tennessee's 3rd congressional district

The 3rd Congressional District of Tennessee is a congressional district in Tennessee. It currently includes a north-south strip in the eastern part of the state. Current Republican Representative Chuck Fleischmann has served since 2011.

Cities in the district include Chattanooga, Oak Ridge, and Cleveland. Its configuration has remained more or less the same since the 1850s. Currently it includes all of Anderson, Bradley, Claiborne, Grainger, Hamilton, Meigs, Polk, Rhea, and Union Counties, and parts of Jefferson and Roane Counties. The southern counties are connected to the northern counties by a thin strip in Roane County.^[1]

Given its obscure shape, it can appear that the district may have been gerrymandered.

History

The 3rd District is on the dividing line between counties and towns that favored or opposed Southern secession in the Civil War. George Washington Bridges was elected as a Unionist (the name used by a coalition of Republicans, northern Democrats and anti-Confederate Southern Democrats) to the Thirty-seventh Congress, but he was arrested by Confederate troops while en route to Washington, D.C. and taken back to Tennessee. Bridges was held prisoner for more than a year before he made his escape and went to Washington, D.C., and assumed his duties on February 23, 1863; serving until March 3, 1863.

During much of the 20th century, southeastern Tennessee was the only portion of heavily Republican East Tennessee where Democrats were able to compete on a more-or-less even basis. The Chattanooga papers (now consolidated) vigorously printed diametrically-opposed political editorials (the moderate-to-progressive Times and the archconservative Free Press). As late as the early 1990s, Democrats held about half, perhaps more, of the local and county offices in the region.

This balance was upset in favor of the Republicans, beginning in the late 1950s, when rural and working-class whites began defecting from their historic Democratic preferences in favor of candidates such as Dwight Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater, George Wallace, Tennessee governor Winfield Dunn, Ronald Reagan, and two Chattanoogans, U.S. Representative LaMar Baker and Senator Bill Brock. The district has only supported a Democrat for president twice in the last half century, in 1956 and 1992. Even in those cases, that support was almost entirely attributable to the presence of native sons as vice presidential candidates. In 1956, Senator Estes Kefauver, who had represented the 3rd from 1939 to 1949, was the Democratic vice presidential candidate. In 1992, Senator Al Gore was the Democratic running mate, but even with Gore's presence, the Democrats only carried the 3rd by 39 votes out of 225,000 cast.

Although conservative Democrat Marilyn Lloyd (the widow of a popular television news anchorman in Chattanooga) held the district's seat for 20 years, area Democrats became increasingly unable to build upon her popularity, and slowly began losing even county and local offices that they had held for generations. Democrats still remain competitive in some local- and state-level races. However, even moderately liberal politics are a very hard sell, and most of the area's Democrats are quite conservative on social issues.

The northern counties have predominantly voted Republican since the 1860s, in a manner similar to their neighbors in the present 1st and 2nd districts. However, Democrats have received some support in coal mining areas (dating from the Great Depression). Also, in the years since World War II, the government-founded city of Oak Ridge, with its active labor unions and a population largely derived from outside the region, has been a source of potential Democratic votes.

The 3rd District is home to several Evangelical Protestant denominations and colleges, contributing to the area's pronounced social conservatism.

2010 election

Republican Zach Wamp of Chattanooga has represented the 3rd District since 1995. After Wamp's January 2009 announcement that he would run for Governor in 2010 instead of seeking re-election, several candidates announced campaigns for the seat. As of March 2010, the Republican field included former state party chairwoman Robin Smith, Air Force Captain Rick Kernea, Tommy Crangle, Chattanooga attorney Chuck Fleischmann, Bradley County sheriff Tim Gobble, Art Rhodes, Van Irion, and Basil Marceaux. Fleischmann won the August 5, 2010 primary with about 28% of the total vote.^[2][3] Democratic candidates as of October 2009 were Paula Flowers of Oak Ridge, a former member of Governor Phil Bredesen's cabinet, and former Libertarian Party member Brent Benedict, who won the 2006 Democratic primary for the seat but lost the general election to Wamp.^[4][5][6] Both of those Democrats later abandoned their campaigns, but four other candidates placed their names on the ballot for the August 2010 Democratic primary: Alicia Mitchell of Oak Ridge, Brenda Freeman Short of East Ridge, and Brent Staton and John Wolfe of Chattanooga. Wolfe was the winner in the August 5, 2010 primary.^[7] Six independents also filed petitions to appear on the November 2010 ballot: Don Barkman, Mark DeVol, Gregory C. Goodwin, Robert Humphries, Mo Kiah and Savas T. Kyriakidis.^[8] Republican nominee Chuck Fleischmann won the general election in November 2010 with 57% of the vote, trailed by Democrat John Wolfe with 28%, and independent Savas Kyriakidis with 10%. ^[9]

List of representatives

References

• Martis, Kenneth C. (1989). The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. 
• Martis, Kenneth C. (1982). The Historical Atlas of United States Congressional Districts. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. 
• Congressional Biographical Directory of the United States 1774–present
• Political Graveyard database of Tennessee congressmen