Recovering journalist and Nashville-area public policy expert Clint Brewer said Metro Nashville Council Member Courtney Johnston, who is running in the August 1 Republican primary for Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District, has some “real support” among voters in Davidson County.
Johnston (pictured above) is running in the primary race against incumbent U.S. Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN-05), who is a member of the House Freedom Caucus and boasts a 100 percent rating on the Heritage Action Scorecard, the nation’s leading conservative scorecard.
While she claims to be a Republican who allegedly supports former President Donald Trump, Johnston previously urged Governor Bill Lee to call a special session to pass legislation targeting firearms in a 2022 open letter and cosponsored a resolution to set an official day for Nashville to recognize the Transgender Day of Remembrance last year.
Johnston’s campaign is also connected to The Best of Tennessee, the “moderate” political operation recently organized by seasoned political fundraiser Kim Kaegi, who also serves as Johnston’s campaign treasurer and Knoxville-based Democratic lawyer and abortion advocate Chloe Akers.
“Her reputation is not that of a conservative firebrand on the Council,” Brewer said.
Despite this, Brewer said Johnston’s position resonates with a “very strong moderate wing of the Republican Party left in Davidson County.”
“[Those voters in Davidson County] don’t like Andy [Ogles] and this is the west end of town, you know, think Belle Meade, Oak Hill, places like that. Traditional Republican enclaves. Beth Harwell’s old seat, that territory. They’re the safer Tennessee crowd. So she’s got some real support in Davidson County,” Brewer said on Tuesday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District previously included all of Davidson County but has since been redistricted to include parts of Wilson, Williamson, Maury, Marshall, and Lewis counties.
To this, Brewer said the new district map “takes enough of Davidson to hold back the opponent.”
“If you think about Ogle’s general election where he beat the state senator, I think the plan, the sort of electoral map, if you will, for that district is essentially to run up the score in the suburban and the rural counties and take enough of Davidson to hold back the opponent,” Brewer said.
Early voting for the August 1 primary begins July 12.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Courtney Johnston” by Courtney Johnston.
