Election eve began with Republican U.S. Senate nominee Bill Hagerty in Cordova and ended Monday evening, Nov. 2, with Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Marquita Bradshaw in Orange Mound.

The two didn’t cross paths at the end of a campaign that passed without a single debate between the two very different contenders.

The race for the seat held by retiring Republican Lamar Alexander mirrors the political realities of the presidential race in Tennessee. Bradshaw, of Memphis, is expected to carry majority Democratic Shelby County in Tuesday’s results with Hagerty expected to carry the state.

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One recent statewide poll showed Hagerty with a 20-point lead over Bradshaw. Hagerty has stopped making any references in his speeches or television ads to Bradshaw.

Bradshaw, meanwhile, has touted a Democratic coalition that includes labor union rank and file and neighborhood activists in what she calls a “grass roots” campaign.

At the Cordova storefront that has been the local Republican party’s campaign center, Hagerty urged several dozen supporters Monday morning to “make Republican red the color of Tennessee all over again.”

A Democrat hasn’t won a statewide election in Tennessee since former Gov. Phil Bredesen won re-election in 2006. And two years ago, Republican Gov. Bill Lee followed Republican Gov. Bill Haslam, breaking the state’s more than a century-old rotation of the office between Republicans and Democrats.

Bradshaw began Monday in Johnson City on the other end of the state and ended in the parking lot of her Orange Mound campaign headquarters at Lamar Avenue and Felix Avenue.

Her campaign was expected to raise no more than $1 million, but Bradshaw has campaigned in each of the state’s 95 counties.

“I will be your next United States senator,” Bradshaw said to applause from a group of 20 people. “I’m so proud of the work we’ve done. We have broken through a concrete barrier.”

Bradshaw is the first African American woman to be nominated by either party in a statewide race in Tennessee.

“That shows we are ready to deal with racism of the past,” she said.

The race through the August primaries and to the November general election has had some surprises.

The biggest was Bradshaw’s unexpected statewide victory over Nashville attorney James Mackler, who had the biggest campaign finance war chest of any Democrat and had been campaigning as the nominee apparent for two years after he passed on a run for the state’s other Senate seat in 2018.

Bradshaw even carried Mackler’s home county, Davidson.

Marquita Bradshaw: ‘Not a fringe campaign’

An environmental activist from South Memphis, Bradshaw built support across the state in the August primary and has traveled the state, again working her connections to other activists and organizers.

Hagerty, a former U.S. ambassador to Japan and former Tennessee commissioner of economic and community development, has followed the playbook of the state’s other senator, Republican Marsha Blackburn. She was the winner over Bredesen in the 2018 general election for the seat held by Republican Bob Corker.

Hagerty saw his primary rival, Dr. Manny Sethi, get close in the polls. His response was more television ads and several virtual campaign appearances in which Trump re-emphasized his endorsement of Hagerty.

By the August election day, it was no contest even in Shelby County, where Sethi had campaigned more and Hagerty has scarcely spent any time courting the largest base of Republican voters in any single county in the state.

With the same campaign team from Blackburn’s 2018 run, Hagerty has sworn allegiance to President Trump throughout the campaign and made the word “Democrat” synonymous with “socialism.” He linked violence surrounding protests of the recent deaths of Black men and women at the hands of police across the country to the Democratic majority in the U.S. House.

He’s also been repeating unsubstantiated claims of Biden family connections to China and Ukraine.

Hagerty touted Trump foreign policy Monday, including negotiating diplomatic agreements between Israel and Sudan and United Arab Emirates.

Presidential campaigns have distinctly Memphis flavor

“What would Biden do?” he asked, referring to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. “Push us right back to the Iran deal and destroy all of that progress that has happened. We can’t let that happen.”

Hagerty was referring to an Obama administration agreement with Iran to reduce its nuclear capabilities that was scrapped by Trump.

Blackburn, who has been making the same kind of attacks on Biden via frequent appearances on Fox News that emphasize being “tough” on China, was with Hagerty Monday as he campaigned in Cordova. She has also been campaigning with Republican Senate hopefuls in other states as the GOP works to keep its narrow majority in the chamber.