After Dave Brat’s stunning upset over House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) last week, Joe Carr, a Tennessee state representative who is challenging moderate Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) in an August 7th primary, is seeing signs of momentum.
Seven more Tennessee state representatives endorsed Carr on Monday, a week after Laura Ingraham, who helped propel Brat to his victory, praised Carr on her radio show.
Middle Tennessee Representatives Sheila Butt (R-Columbia), Judd Matheny (R-Tullahoma), Mark Pody (R-Lebanon), Courtney Rogers (R-Goodlettsville), Mike Sparks (R-Smyrna), Billy Spivey (R-Lewisburg), and Rick Womick (R-Rockvale) said Carr could repeat the successes of Brat and Mississippi Sen. Chris McDaniel, who took incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) to a runoff. Recent polling shows McDaniel leading Cochran by eight points.
On behalf of the group, Matheny, who is also chairs a committee in the state legislature, said that Alexander’s vote to “support and confirm the person hand-picked by President Obama to implement Obamacare shows us just how out-of-touch he has become.”
Carr said that “without a meaningful change in leadership, Obamacare will continue to impose on all of us, the Obama-Alexander climate change regulations will drive businesses away, and amnesty will become law.”
“The choice in this election is very clear: a vote for Sen. Alexander is a vote to support a status-quo agenda that working families in Tennessee don’t want,” Carr continued. “Voters in Mississippi have rejected the establishment, voters in Virginia have rejected the status-quo, and now it’s time for voters in Tennessee to take a leadership role in this movement for change.”
Carr appeared on Breitbart News Sunday with Breitbart News Editor-in-Chief Alex Marlow and hammered Alexander on amnesty, as Brat and McDaniel have also been doing to their opponents.
Carr asserted that with Alexander’s support of the Senate’s amnesty bill, he–like Obama–has allowed illegal immigrants to assault the nation’s sovereignty.
Carr also said that his campaign has traveled around Tennessee for the last year building a grassroots network of supporters with the belief that there would be a “seminal and catalyst event that was going to turn everything upside down” before the August primary.
Cantor’s victory was that moment, and Carr said it instantly gave his campaign a shot in the arm.