The ballot is back open for a Tennessee Senate seat to represent parts of Nashville.
Incumbent Sen. Brenda Gilmore officially withdrew from the August primary on Monday afternoon, just days after the deadline to enter the race. That means a 1991 law will kick into effect to allow other candidates to file for another week and a half.
“It is time for me to step away and allow the next generation of young leaders to make a difference in the community,” Gilmore wrote in a letter to the election commission obtained by WPLN News. “For these reasons, I am officially withdrawing my name from the ballot as a candidate for State Senator District #19. I do not intend to run for re-election on the August 2022 ballot.”
Gilmore announced her decision last week, on the deadline to qualify for the race. At that point, only one other candidate — Keeda Haynes — had filed to run. Gilmore endorsed her during a joint Facebook Live, which is no longer publicly available.
“She shares the same passion that I share in criminal justice reform, and I think she’ll do a good job,” Gilmore said in an interview with WPLN News.
Haynes, a former public defender who spent four years in federal prison for a drug crime she says she did not commit, garnered national attention in 2020 when she ran for U.S. Congress against longtime Rep. Jim Cooper. (Cooper prevailed in that race but is retiring after this term.) Haynes did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
However, the senator’s decision to pull out of the race at the last minute has drawn criticism, including a fiery editorial in the Tennessee Tribune, which called it the “worst political skulduggery since the 1965 Voting Rights Act was passed.” The article accused Gilmore of making a “prearranged sweetheart deal” with a sorority sister, instead of leaving more time for other candidates to consider running.
“I think with the years that I have contributed to this community, that I have earned the right to make the decision to retire,” Gilmore responded. “And I’m not retiring from working in the community. I will continue to work in the community. I just won’t have the title.”
Tennessee lawmakers passed a statute several decades ago to prevent incumbents from pulling out of the race at the last minute, in order to cede their seat to someone else. The Anti-Skullduggery Act of 1991 allows other candidates to add their names to the ballot after an incumbent withdraws. Now that Gilmore is out of the running, the deadline to join the race has been reset to noon on April 28. Candidates can withdraw until May 2.
A long tenure in local and state politics
Gilmore has spent has spent nearly three decades in office. She served in Nashville’s Metro Council from 1993 to 2003, then in the state House of Representatives. In 2018, she filled the state Senate seat of Thelma Harper, the first Black female senator in the state.
In those three roles, Gilmore has advocated for voting rights, affordable housing, environmental protections, criminal justice reform, among other progressive causes. She says she’s inspired by the young people who protested after George Floyd was killed by police in 2020. The increasingly conservative tilt of the legislature, on the other hand, concerns her — especially bills like the one that would make it illegal for people experiencing homelessness to camp on state property.
“I think time will show that Tennessee is clearly on the wrong side of issues and history,” Gilmore says.
Still, the state senator says she’s optimistic about the future. She says there are opportunities to work across the aisle — as long as lawmakers are willing to put in the extra work.
“We should be willing to work with each other,” Gilmore says.
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