As Gloria Johnson, the Democratic candidate for Senate in Tennessee, has driven from diner to coffee shop to restaurant across the state, she has been met with a chorus of enthusiasm that a Democrat has shown up — and resignation that it most likely still won’t matter.
Her Republican opponent, Senator Marsha Blackburn, an uncompromising fiscal conservative and a loyal ally of former President Donald J. Trump, is widely expected to coast to re-election.
So Ms. Johnson, who gained unexpected prominence as one of the “Tennessee Three” gun control advocates, has instead shaped her long-shot bid around channeling frustration over Republican dominance into better turnout down the ballot.
“What I was thinking about was the importance of flipping the State House and the State Senate,” Ms. Johnson said, describing her decision to run. And that, she added, required “somebody at the top of the ticket who was really speaking to Tennessee voters about how things could be better.”
As in much of the South, Democrats in Tennessee are mired in the depths of the minority under both a Republican governor and a supermajority in the State Legislature. A Democrat has not won a statewide election since 2006, and Republicans have spent years pressing their advantage by using redistricting to ruthlessly carve up the few remaining splashes of blue voters into conservative districts.
And with hard-line conservatives increasingly winning state primaries, many voters would like the Republican hold on power to be replicated at the national level this November.
“Our side is the side that needs to take control and get us back to our leadership position,” said Eric Howell, a lifelong Republican, standing outside a polling place in the small city of Franklin on the first day of voting this month. He added, “I think it will benefit Americans.”
But some Tennessee Democrats are cautiously hopeful there could be a path for the party to start gaining ground.
Frustration first began to bubble over among some voters after Republicans muscled through a tough abortion ban after the fall of Roe v. Wade, and then deepened with the party’s handling of the 2023 mass shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville.
Thousands of people descended on the State Capitol to demand lawmakers reverse years of loosened gun laws. Ms. Johnson, who is white, joined two newly elected young Black Democrats — Justin Jones of Nashville and Justin Pearson of Memphis — in leading calls from the House floor for gun control.
Republicans, enraged over the breach of decorum, quickly moved to expel them. Ms. Johnson alone survived expulsion, leading to national outrage over a predominately white group of legislators ousting two young Black lawmakers. (Republicans denied that race played a factor, and the two men were quickly reinstated by local officials.)
“I always joke about, I think I’ll send a thank-you note to the Republicans, because it wasn’t the fact that we went to the well that got the attention,” Ms. Johnson said. “It was the Republican response to us speaking up for our districts.”
That attention led Ms. Johnson to launch her challenge to Ms. Blackburn. (At 62, she was the only one of the three lawmakers old enough to run for Senate.)
Gina Martin, a rental manager who voted early in Nashville this month, said when she saw Ms. Johnson protesting for gun control, she thought: “That’s my girl right there.”
The aftermath of the expulsions, she said, had been “encouraging” for Democrats like her, adding, “you hope and pray that people come around.”
But there is little indication that conservative voters have been moved by the demonstrations, and elected Republicans have not made any substantive changes to gun policy in the state.
At least one member of Republican leadership, Jeremy Faison, has repeatedly needled Ms. Johnson on social media, congratulating her on an endorsement from former Vice President Al Gore because he “knows from experience what it takes to lose Tennessee in a historically embarrassing fashion.”
Polls also show Ms. Blackburn with a double-digit lead in the Senate race, and she has declined to debate Ms. Johnson and focused on re-electing Mr. Trump. Her ads have made little mention of Ms. Johnson, and instead highlight her successful opposition to a state income tax in 1999 and her hawkish stance against China.
Some Republicans said they had not even considered Ms. Johnson as an option, and were more focused with ensuring that Mr. Trump had support in Congress to enact his economic and immigration policies.
The campaign against Ms. Blackburn “did more to help her race than hurt it,” said Melonye Lowe, a retired elementary school principal in Williamson County, just outside Nashville. For Ms. Lowe, it had “underscored the fact that she has done such a good job” in upholding the Republican agenda in Washington.
Ms. Blackburn, in a statement provided by her campaign, said that she was committed to “doing the job Tennesseans elected me to do and protecting their values.”
“What I have heard is that Tennesseans cannot afford four more years of Kamala Harris’s liberal agenda,” she added.
In her monthslong tour across the state, Ms. Johnson has met with voters over iced tea, fries and seasonal tastes of pumpkin flavors, making the case that they have suffered from the consequences of Republican political dominance.
A former special education teacher, she first sought office in the State Legislature as a way to defend public school education. She has repeatedly tangled with Republicans in the supermajority, arguing for health care expansion, abortion rights and a higher minimum wage.
“This election is where we’re going to make some changes that we never expected,” she told a group of voters gathered in a Mexican restaurant about a 90 minutes’ drive outside Nashville. “A lot of rural counties especially don’t have a lot of Democratic electeds, so they’re not getting the Democratic message of the good things that Democrats do for middle-class families.”
Regardless of the Senate outcome, Ms. Johnson is guaranteed to remain in office: She is also running unopposed for her seat in the State Legislature. She was first elected in 2012 and represents part of Knoxville.
Her position within the state party has also shaped her alliance with a number of first-time candidates, many of whom cite the aftermath of the 2023 school shooting as motivation for running.
Few are expected to flip Republican-held seats. But even contesting some of these seats is a signal of progress for the party, which has repeatedly failed to recruit any candidates or secure national support for those who do run.
Among the first-time candidates is Maryam Abolfazli, the daughter of Iranian immigrants and a lead organizer behind some of the earliest protests in 2023, who is trying to unseat Representative Andy Ogles, a hard-line Republican who faces federal scrutiny over his campaign finances.
“I think there’s a victory that’s hard to see,” said Ms. Abolfazli, who called her last-minute decision to run the “natural conclusion” to months of protests in Nashville.
And Shaundelle Brooks, who became a champion of tougher gun laws after her son, Akilah Dasilva, was killed in a 2018 rampage at a Waffle House in Nashville, is running for a rare open state House seat in the suburbs of the city.
Her hair, dyed blue in honor of her son, has faded in recent weeks, after spending hours knocking on doors and meeting with voters.
“For me, it was like, I can’t just ask Justin to do this or ask Gloria every time — I need to get out there and do this,” Ms. Brooks said, referring to Mr. Jones, who represents a part of Nashville. She added, “People were really angry and really frustrated. That got us to where we are right now — running.”
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