Political newcomer Sam Whitson defeated embattled state Rep. Jeremy Durham in perhaps the most-watched primary race in Tennessee Thursday night, according to early election results.
With Williamson County officials just releasing early vote and absentee vote totals, Whitson leads Durham by 2,058 votes to 322 in the GOP primary for the House District 65 seat. The Associated Press also called the race for Whitson at 8 p.m.
"Initially it looks good, but again, we're not taking anything for granted in this election," Whitson said Thursday evening. "If we are fortunate enough to win the primary, we're going to focus on the general election coming up. We're going to work real hard on that one, just as we worked real hard on this one."
Durham suspended his campaign last month in the wake of a Tennessee attorney general's report citing 22 women who alleged inappropriate sexual contact or conduct by Durham, R-Franklin. Early voting started the next day.
About 3,100 people voted early in the race, including 2,573 Republican ballots cast.
Local officials and members of the Williamson delegation, once supportive of the one-time rising Republican star and former state House majority whip, threw their political and financial support behind Whitson.
“I think this is Whitson’s race now,” said House Republican Caucus Chairman Glen Casada, R-Franklin, who also served as a longtime political mentor to Durham, on the day the report came out.
“I think now the majority of Jeremy’s supporters will go to Sam.”
Whitson was stunned by the turn of events.
“It was a shock,” he said in the days leading up the election. “We’d planned to fight until the end. We still do.”
Whitson, a 62-year-old community volunteer and a retired U.S. Army colonel, was an unlikely challenger to the well-supported incumbent.
“It was hard convincing people we could do this,” Whitson said this week. “My wife and I gave each other $1,000 and said, ‘Here, this is what we’re going to campaign with,’ when Durham had over $200,000. People said we were wasting our time, that he couldn’t be beat.”
But following the release of the report, Whitson yard signs that stretched down his own neighborhood and began to multiply throughout the community.
In the final weeks of the race, more than $66,000 flowed into Whitson’s campaign, money that came both before and after the release of the attorney general's report.
Now, Whitson, who came out of retirement to run, is looking toward the future. He says he'll focus on transportation, schools and infrastructure and that one of his strong points will be his fresh eyes.
"You’ve got two tiers of experience in the legislature," Casada said. "Academic knowledge and practical knowledge. You have to understand how the committee system works, setting down with the majority and coming up with votes and you have to know how to make things happen. For Sam, coming from a military background, the earning curve will be shorter than most."
Although Whitson claims the title of “lifetime Republican,” noting that he ran Richard Nixon’s campaign at Glencliff High School in Nashville in 1968, he said he hasn’t set foot on Capitol Hill since his senior class voted him most likely to succeed in 1972.
“I think people really liked that I was not a career politician,” Whitson said Wednesday. "I’ve been married 42 years, I have grandkids in public schools and that resonated with folks. They understand I’m not trying to get a higher position in 10 or 20 years from now."
Even with Durham’s campaign suspended, Whitson said he didn't slack off with his campaign, nor does he plan on doing so before November.
Whitson’s team made hundreds of phone calls alerting Williamson County voters that Durham’s name was still on the ballot.
“We’ve had to tell people that you have to vote,” he said Wednesday. “It’s not a given.”
Whitson now has his eyes on the November general election where he will face off against Democrat Holly McCall. McCall ran unopposed in her primary.
