Tennessee's 3rd congressional district

Tennessee's 3rd congressional district
Tennessee's 3rd congressional district - since January 3, 2013.
Representative	Chuck Fleischmann R–Ooltewah
Distribution	37.24% rural
Population (2016)	728,254
Median household income	$47,681
Ethnicity	85.22% White 10.92% Black 3.62% Hispanic 1.45% Asian 0.15% Native American
Cook PVI	R+18

The 3rd Congressional District of Tennessee is a congressional district in East Tennessee. It has been represented by Republican Chuck Fleischmann since January 2011.

Current Boundaries

The district comprises two halves, joined together through a narrow tendril in Roane County near Ten Mile.

The upper half borders Kentucky to the north and is composed of Scott, Morgan, Roane, Anderson, and Union counties, as well as most of Campbell County.

The lower half borders North Carolina to the east and Georgia to the south. It is composed of Hamilton, Polk, McMinn, and Monroe, and the southern half of Bradley County.

Characteristics

Traditionally, the third district has centered on Chattanooga, which has been part of the district since before the Civil War.

In area, the district is sparsely populated. Almost half of the district's population lives in Hamilton County, home to Chattanooga.

The region is very mountainous, due to its location in the Appalachian Mountains. It contains many "natural wonders" such as: The Lost Sea, Frozen Head, Ocoee Whitewater Center, and perhaps most famously, Lookout Mountain, which contains both Ruby Falls and Rock City from the "See Rock City" signs dotted across the South.

Election results from presidential races

Year	Office	Result
2000	President	George W. Bush 57% - Al Gore 31%
2004	President	George W. Bush 61% - John Kerry 38%
2008	President	John McCain 61.3% - Barack Obama 37.3%
2012	President	Mitt Romney 63.3% - Barack Obama 35%
2016	President	Donald Trump 65.4% - Hillary Clinton 30.2%

History

The 3rd District is on the dividing line between counties and towns that favored or opposed Southern secession in the Civil War. George Washington Bridges was elected as a Unionist (the name used by a coalition of Republicans, northern Democrats and anti-Confederate Southern Democrats) to the Thirty-seventh Congress, but he was arrested by Confederate troops while en route to Washington, D.C. and taken back to Tennessee. Bridges was held prisoner for more than a year before he escaped and went to Washington, D.C., and assumed his duties on February 23, 1863; serving until March 3, 1863.

During much of the 20th century, southeastern Tennessee was the only portion of heavily Republican East Tennessee where Democrats were able to compete on a more-or-less even basis. The Chattanooga papers—the moderate-to-progressive Times and the archconservative Free Press (now consolidated into the Chattanooga Times Free Press)--printed diametrically-opposed political editorials. The northern counties have predominantly voted Republican since the 1860s, in a manner similar to their neighbors in the present 1st and 2nd districts. However, Democrats have received some support in coal mining areas (dating from the Great Depression). Also, in the years since World War II, the government-founded city of Oak Ridge, with its active labor unions and a population largely derived from outside the region, has been a source of potential Democratic votes.

This balance showed signs of changing beginning in the late 1950s, when rural and working-class whites began splitting their tickets in national elections to support Dwight Eisenhower, Barry Goldwater, Governors Winfield Dunn and Lamar Alexander, Ronald Reagan, and two Chattanoogans, U.S. Representative LaMar Baker and Senator Bill Brock. It also warmly supported George Wallace in his third-party run for president in 1968. The district has only supported a Democrat for president twice in the last half century, in 1956 and 1992. Even in those cases, that support was almost entirely attributable to the presence of native sons as vice presidential candidates. In 1956, Senator Estes Kefauver, who had represented the 3rd from 1939 to 1949, was the Democratic vice presidential candidate. In 1992, Senator Al Gore was Bill Clinton's running mate, but even with Gore's presence, the Democrats only carried the 3rd by 39 votes out of 225,000 cast.

Even as the district became friendlier to Republicans at the national level, Democrats still held their own at the local level. Brock won the congressional seat in 1962, ending a 40-year run by Democrats. He handed the seat to Baker in 1971, but conservative Democrat Marilyn Lloyd (the widow of a popular television news anchorman in Chattanooga) regained it in 1974 and held it for 20 years. As late as the early 1990s, area Democrats held at least half the local offices in the region, particularly in the southern portion.

As the 1990s wore on, Democrats slowly began losing even county and local offices that they had held for generations. This trend actually began as early as 1992, when Lloyd barely held onto her seat against Republican Zach Wamp. Lloyd retired in 1994, and Wamp narrowly won the race to succeed her as part of that year's massive GOP wave. Wamp was handily reelected in 1996, and the Republicans have held it without serious difficulty since then. Indeed, the Democrats have only cleared 40 percent of the vote twice since Lloyd retired. Redistricting after the 2010 census consolidated the Republican hold on the seat, and it is now one of the most Republican districts in the nation.

Democrats still remain competitive in some local- and state-level races, particularly in Chattanooga and Oak Ridge. Chattanooga also elects some Democrats to the state legislature. However, even moderately liberal politics are a very hard sell, and most of the area's Democrats—particularly outside Chattanooga—are quite conservative on social issues.

The 3rd District is home to several Evangelical Protestant denominations and colleges, contributing to the area's social conservatism.

2010 election

Republican Zach Wamp of Chattanooga had represented the 3rd District since 1995. After Wamp's January 2009 announcement that he would run for governor in 2010 instead of seeking re-election, several candidates announced campaigns for the seat. As of March 2010, the Republican field included former state party chairwoman Robin Smith, Air Force Captain Rick Kernea, Tommy Crangle, Chattanooga attorney Chuck Fleischmann, Bradley County sheriff Tim Gobble, Art Rhodes, Van Irion, and Basil Marceaux. Fleischmann won the August 5, 2010 primary with about 28% of the total vote. Democratic candidates as of October 2009 were Paula Flowers of Oak Ridge, a former member of Governor Phil Bredesen's cabinet, and former Libertarian Party member Brent Benedict, who won the 2006 Democratic primary for the seat but lost the general election to Wamp. Both of those Democrats later abandoned their campaigns, but four other candidates placed their names on the ballot for the August 2010 Democratic primary: Alicia Mitchell of Oak Ridge, Brenda Freeman Short of East Ridge, and Brent Staton and John Wolfe of Chattanooga. Wolfe was the winner in the August 5, 2010 primary. Six independents also filed petitions to appear on the November 2010 ballot: Don Barkman, Mark DeVol, Gregory C. Goodwin, Robert Humphries, Mo Kiah and Savas T. Kyriakidis. Republican nominee Chuck Fleischmann won the general election in November 2010 with 57% of the vote, trailed by Democrat John Wolfe with 28%, and independent Savas Kyriakidis with 10%.

List of members representing the district

Name	Years	Cong ress	Party	Electoral history	District location
District created March 4, 1805
William Dickson	March 4, 1805 – March 3, 1807	9th	Democratic-Republican	Redistricted from the at-large district and re-elected in 1805. Retired.	"Mero district"
Jesse Wharton	March 4, 1807 – March 3, 1809	10th	Democratic-Republican	Elected in 1807. Retired.
Pleasant Moorman Miller	March 4, 1809 – March 3, 1811	11th	Democratic-Republican	Elected in 1809. Retired.
Felix Grundy	March 4, 1811 – March 3, 1813	12th	Democratic-Republican	Elected in 1811. Redistricted to the 5th district.
Thomas K. Harris	March 4, 1813 – March 3, 1815	13th	Democratic-Republican	Elected in 1813. Lost re-election.	[data missing]
Isaac Thomas	March 4, 1815 – March 3, 1817	14th	Democratic-Republican	Elected in 1815. Retired.
Francis Jones	March 4, 1817 – March 3, 1823	15th 16th 17th	Democratic-Republican	Elected in 1817. [data missing]
James I. Standifer	March 4, 1823 – March 3, 1825	18th	Jackson Democratic-Republican	[data missing]
James C. Mitchell	March 4, 1825 – March 3, 1829	19th 20th	Jacksonian	[data missing]
James I. Standifer	March 4, 1829 – March 3, 1833	21st 22nd	Jacksonian	[data missing] Redistricted to the 4th district.
Luke Lea	March 4, 1833 – March 3, 1835	23rd 24th	Jacksonian	[data missing]
	March 4, 1835 – March 3, 1837		Anti-Jacksonian	[data missing]
Joseph L. Williams	March 4, 1837 – March 3, 1843	25th 26th 27th	Whig	[data missing]
Julius W. Blackwell	March 4, 1843 – March 3, 1845	28th	Democratic	[data missing]
John H. Crozier	March 4, 1845 – March 3, 1849	29th 30th	Whig	[data missing]
Josiah M. Anderson	March 4, 1849 – March 3, 1851	31st	Whig	[data missing]
William M. Churchwell	March 4, 1851 – March 3, 1853	32nd	Democratic	[data missing] Redistricted to the 2nd district.
Samuel A. Smith	March 4, 1853 – March 3, 1859	33rd 34th 35th	Democratic	[data missing]
Reese B. Brabson	March 4, 1859 – March 3, 1861	36th	Opposition	[data missing] Retired.
George W. Bridges	March 4, 1861 – March 3, 1863	37th	Unionist	Elected but initially unable to take seat when taken prisoner by the Confederate Army. Seated February 25, 1863 after escaping a Confederate prison. [data missing]
Vacant	March 4, 1863 – July 24, 1866		American Civil War
William B. Stokes	July 24, 1866 – March 3, 1867	39th 40th 41st	Unconditional Unionist	[data missing]
	March 4, 1867 – March 3, 1871		Republican	[data missing]
Abraham E. Garrett	March 4, 1871 – March 3, 1873	42nd	Democratic	[data missing]
William Crutchfield	March 4, 1873 – March 3, 1875	43rd	Republican	[data missing]
George G. Dibrell	March 4, 1875 – March 3, 1885	44th 45th 46th 47th 48th	Democratic	[data missing] Retired.
John R. Neal	March 4, 1885 – March 3, 1889	49th 50th	Democratic	[data missing]
Henry Clay Evans	March 4, 1889 – March 3, 1891	51st	Republican	[data missing]
Henry C. Snodgrass	March 4, 1891 – March 3, 1895	52nd 53rd	Democratic	[data missing]
Foster V. Brown	March 4, 1895 – March 3, 1897	54th	Republican	[data missing]
John A. Moon	March 4, 1897 – March 3, 1921	55th 56th 57th 58th 59th 60th 61st 62nd 63rd 64th 65th 66th	Democratic	[data missing]
Joseph E. Brown	March 4, 1921 – March 3, 1923	67th	Republican	[data missing]
Sam D. McReynolds	March 4, 1923 – July 11, 1939	68th 69th 70th 71st 72nd 73rd 74th 75th 76th	Democratic	[data missing] Died.
Vacant	July 11, 1939 – September 13, 1939
Estes Kefauver	September 13, 1939 – January 3, 1949	76th 77th 78th 79th 80th	Democratic	[data missing]
James B. Frazier Jr.	January 3, 1949 – January 3, 1963	81st 82nd 83rd 84th 85th 86th 87th	Democratic	[data missing]
Bill Brock	January 3, 1963 – January 3, 1971	88th 89th 90th 91st	Republican	[data missing]
LaMar Baker	January 3, 1971 – January 3, 1975	92nd 93rd	Republican	[data missing]
Marilyn Lloyd	January 3, 1975 – January 3, 1995	94th 95th 96th 97th 98th 99th 100th 101st 102nd 103rd	Democratic	[data missing]
Zach Wamp	January 3, 1995 – January 3, 2011	104th 105th 106th 107th 108th 109th 110th 111th	Republican	[data missing]
Chuck Fleischmann	January 3, 2011 – Present	112th 113th 114th 115th 116th 117th 118th 119th	Republican	[data missing]

Living former members

As of January 2019, there are two living former members. The most recent to die was Marilyn Lloyd (served 1975–1995) on September 19, 2018.

Representative	Term of office	Date of birth (and age)
Bill Brock	1963–1971	(1930-11-23) November 23, 1930
Zach Wamp	1995–2011	(1957-10-28) October 28, 1957

Historical district boundaries

2003 - 2013

See also

• Tennessee's congressional districts
• List of United States congressional districts

References

• Martis, Kenneth C. (1989). The Historical Atlas of Political Parties in the United States Congress. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Martis, Kenneth C. (1982). The Historical Atlas of United States Congressional Districts. New York: Macmillan Publishing Company. {{cite book}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
• Congressional Biographical Directory of the United States 1774–present
• Political Graveyard database of Tennessee congressmen