There were eight Republican primaries for the Tennessee State Senate on Aug. 1, 2024. An incumbent ran in seven of those primaries. Two incumbents—Jon Lundberg (R) and Frank Niceley (R)—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 (R) supported a proposal allowing all Tennessee families with school-age children access to 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 the Tennessee Lookout, 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 the Republican primaries in Districts 2, 4, 8, and 18 as battlegrounds. Three primaries featured an incumbent and a single challenger. The fourth was for an open seat. All four battlegrounds featured $50,000 or more in spending from nine groups Ballotpedia identified as having a recent history of advocacy related to school vouchers. Gov. Bill Lee (R) endorsed a candidate in four contested primaries, including two battleground primaries.
The 2024 legislative elections had eight contested Republican primaries compared to four in both 2022 and 2020. Seven of those primaries had an incumbent on the ballot compared to three in both 2022 and 2020. Two incumbents lost in the primaries, the most since 2014.
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.