U.S. General Election

Tennessee Legislature

Suburban municipal elections

In his second challenge of 26-year state House veteran John DeBerry, Torrey Harris scored an overwhelming victory Tuesday.

Harris, who lost to DeBerry by 21 percentage points in the 2018 Democratic primary, posted a lead in early voting that proved insurmountable for DeBerry as Election Day votes were added to the total. The District 90 seat takes in an area from Cooper-Young to South Memphis.

With all precincts reporting in the district, the unofficial totals are:

Harris 15,930

In a close race, John Gillespie, a political newcomer, narrowly defeated Democratic challenger Gabby Salinas in the state House District 97 race, according to unofficial vote totals. 

Gillespie, a grant coordinator for Trezevant Episcopal Home, gathered 14,697 votes (50.8%) to edge Salinas, a research scientist who is finishing her Ph.D. in pharmaceutical sciences at the University of Kentucky, who finished with 14,212 votes (49.2%).

The totals from the Shelby County Election Commission are unofficial. 

Both candidates were vying to replace Republican state Rep. Jim Coley, who is retiring from the General Assembly after being diagnosed with the early stages of dementia. Coley was elected to the seat in 2006.

Incumbent state House Rep. Mark White, who ran for a seventh term to represent Shelby County’s District 83, won re-election Tuesday, defeating his Democratic challenger, Jerri Green.

The 70-year-old Germantown Republican has held the House District 83 seat since 2010. The district includes East Memphis, Germantown and the Southwind-Windyke areas.

By 10 p.m. Tuesday with all 16 precincts reporting, White had 17,682 or 54% of the votes to Green’s 15,063 or 46% of the votes.

White, a former teacher, principal and small business owner, chairs the Tennessee House Education Committee. During his campaign, he stood on his record of education reform, including his support of Gov. Bill Lee’s 2019 education savings account legislation and his sponsorship of a charter schools authorizing commission. This commission would give the state more say over local school boards.

Republican Bill Hagerty handily defeated Democratic Memphis environmental activist Marquita Bradshaw Tuesday, Nov. 3, for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Lamar Alexander, bringing to an end the surprise run for the seat that Bradshaw began with a primary upset of Nashville attorney James Mackler.

The Associated Press called the race for Hagerty about 7:15 p.m. He claims the seat Alexander held for almost two decades.

The former U.S. ambassador to Japan under President Donald Trump rode the president’s endorsement to a win over Bradshaw.

Republicans have held both Senate seats in Tennessee since 1994. Trump remained popular enough in the state that Hagerty mentioned the president at every turn in his contested primary and the general election campaign.

The narrative in the presidential race was fluid Tuesday evening and played with the hopes of President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden.

The president decisively won Tennessee and decisively lost Shelby County, but the nation as a whole was much less clear as the staggered counting of votes across the nation amid the COVID-19 pandemic left much unsettled late into the evening. 

Biden held a lead late Tuesday evening in the electoral race to the 270 needed for victory, but final tallies in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — key battleground states — were still very much up in the air.

Trump appeared to be closing in on winning key battleground states in Florida and Ohio, while Biden was trending toward flipping Arizona — a state that went for Trump in his 2016 win over Hillary Clinton. 

Check out this 30-second time-lapse video by The Daily Memphian’s Patrick Lantrip, of absentee ballots being counted today on the floor of the FedExForum.

Elaine Sung, sports editor of The Daily Memphian, cast her first vote as a Shelby County resident Tuesday. Here is her experience.

At 2 p.m., there was no line, plenty of booths, two voters and cheery poll workers at my voting location, Ridgeway Assembly of God in Memphis.

First step: A table with a giant bottle of murky green liquid labeled as hand sanitizer. A worker handed me my own pen, stamped “SHELBY COUNTY ELECTION COMMISSION” and “Thank you for voting!” Also, a wooden coffee stirrer — “So you can poke the screen,” the worker told me, making a jabbing motion. 

Then it was a matter of following the line of orange plate-sized stickers on the floor, appropriately spaced, and another poll worker waved from behind a plexiglass barrier. She took my passport and my Shelby County voter information card, then tapped on a computer screen and handed me a white voter swipe card and a receipt.

More votes had been cast in Shelby County before the polls opened on Election Day than in any other county in the state, county Mayor Lee Harris said Tuesday, Nov. 3.

“In fact, one in seven votes cast in in our state were cast right here in Shelby County,” Harris said at the noon COVID-19 task force briefing.

“We’ve seen more votes than we’ve seen in decades here in Shelby County,” he said.

If you still need to cast your ballot, Harris said, it’s worthwhile to check your precinct location before you head out but noted it only took him five seconds.

Collierville alderman John Stamps won reelection over challenger Greg Frazier, but the top finishers in Position 3 and Position 4 will head to a runoff on Dec. 8 to decide those races.

Stamps captured 53% of the early voting and carried that percentage the rest of the night in his reelection bid against Frazier.

But fellow incumbent Alderman John Worley wasn’t as lucky. He held a narrow lead over Harold Booker in the race for Collierville Position 3.

Challenger Kevin Quinn appeared to defeat incumbent Bartlett alderwoman Paula Sedgwick by a mere 61 votes in the suburb’s only contested alderman race, according to unofficial totals released by the Shelby County Election Commission on Tuesday night. 

Quinn received 12,437 votes to Sedgwick’s 12,376, with absentee, early voting and 11 of 11 Bartlett precincts reporting. 

In the sole contested Bartlett school board race featuring two candidates seeking elected office for the first time, challenger Brad Ratliff defeated incumbent Portia Tate for the Position 1 seat. Tate, a retired educator, was appointed to the school board in September 2019 and was seeking a full four-year term on the school board.

Ratliff, who has worked at New Hope Christian Church in Bartlett for more than 16 years and is a football coach at Elmore Park Middle School, captured 58% of the vote, while Tate had 42%, according to the unofficial final tallies. 

Things slowed considerably during the midday lull as candidates waited in case of a post-workday flurry.

In Collierville, incumbent aldermen John Stamps and John Worley campaigned at Collierville Elementary School. Worley’s granddaughter, Kylie (6), was thrilled to hand flyers to voters and ask them to give Worley another term. 

Stamps’ mother was campaigning along with her dog, Peggy. 

Bartlett polling locations Singleton Community and Ellendale Church of Christ had slow and steady turnout around noon Tuesday.

The lines were long shortly before noon at Lewisburg High School in DeSoto County. Voters in line Tuesday, Nov. 3, said they’d waited for more than one hour. 

Local election officials reported a generally smooth Election Day Tuesday despite some technical glitches during the evening and a monumental daylong task of counting early votes.

With a whopping early and absentee vote of 326,000-plus Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Marquita Bradshaw easily carried Shelby County at the top of the ticket.

The totals came after Republican Senate nominee Bill Hagerty declared victory elsewhere in the state and national news organizations had already called Tennessee’s 11 electoral votes for President Donald Trump.

Finances, endorsements show alignment in Germantown elections

The one glitch in Tuesday evening’s vote count was a system problem that resulted in no breakdown data on the number of precincts reporting for all of the races. It was worked out by 10:30 p.m.

Faith Presbyterian Church in Germantown was slow just before lunchtime. Actually, there were more campaign signs and volunteers than voters present.

Poll workers declined to say how many people had voted Tuesday.

Terri Johnson, who is running for Germantown Alderman Position 3, and several volunteers were holding her red signs. Nearby, Natalie Williams and Kristi Curry were asking voters to support their husbands, Scott and Brian, respectively, who are facing off for Position 3 on the school board.

And Brian Ueleke’s wife, Beth, chatted with voters as they went in.

There were no lines at Bartlett Baptist Church around 11 a.m. Tuesday even as the weather warmed above 60 degrees.

The lack of voters didn’t deter the candidates and their volunteers from showing up just in case voters turn out later in the day.

Volunteers for U.S. Rep David Kustoff, R-Germantown, and state house Democratic candidate Gabby Salinas were at the Bartlett church on Kirby Whitten Parkway.

Salinas’ opponent Republican John Gillespie was also at the church. He said there was little activity since he arrived to the site this morning.

Voting was even faster than usual at White Station Middle School on Election Day, though there were processes, rules to be followed.

A worker greeted me and directed me to a sanitizer station, where I rubbed down my hands again, despite having done it right when I left the car (why cause trouble?). I’ve voted in the same precinct for 25 years, so I said hello to the familiar faces and made sure to thank them; their civic service comes with risk this year.

I placed my identification on a cardholder, and it was returned to me without being touched. I had my own pen, but the ones that were available were single use. I got my card, signed my signature twice and then took a little flimsy stick with me so I wouldn’t need to touch the screen. I had doubts it would work, but it did. 

All that, plus thumbs up to the handful of folks waving signs outside, and I was back in my car taking my selfie within six minutes.

At 9:30 a.m., as temperatures crept toward 60 degrees, more than 155 people had cast their ballots at Riveroaks Presbyterian Church on Germantown Road.

Despite the turnout during the first two-plus hours of voting, there was no line, and voters could walk right in, making their selections in everything from the presidential race to municipal elections for the suburb.

“Thanks for coming out to vote. Sorry you had to wait so long,” Scott Williams, a school board candidate, joked with voters as they left.

He along with Sherrie Hicks, Brian Ueleke, Jon McCreery and Rod Motley, candidates in the races for the three alderman seats, stood in the church parking lot making their final pitch to voters.

Absentee counting boards are underway at FedExForum.

Lines were reported at 10 polling places this morning at the start of voting, but those lines dissipated quickly once the polls opened.

There was no line for early morning voters at Progressive Baptist Church Downtown. Safety precautions were in place, but it felt perfectly safe due to the small amount of people at the location. All were wearing masks. In and out!

It’s election day and polls opened at 7 a.m. this morning in 166 Shelby County precincts.

This kicks off our streaming coverage of the day at the polls and other locations as well as the election returns after the polls close at 7 p.m.

Like everything else in the past seven months, this will be a different kind of election day. One of our early stops will be FedExForum, where about 100 “counting boards” start the process of counting the larger-than-normal number of absentee votes as the polls open.

Ordinarily, it’s not something we pay much attention to because absentee votes are typically several thousand at most — not the nearly 30,000 requests seen in this election cycle.

The Tennessee Democratic Party and the campaign of U.S. Senate Democratic nominee Marquita Bradshaw have filed a lawsuit seeking access to the names of voters across the state who have requested and received absentee ballots but have not yet returned the completed mail-in ballots to their local election commissions.