Charlie Hatcher Beats Chaz Molder, Retaining Tennessee’s 5th District Seat for Republicans

Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District will soon have a new representative in Congress, as Republican nominee Charlie Hatcher beat Democratic nominee Chaz Molder on Tuesday.

Hatcher, a veterinarian, held his watch party on an upper floor of the Tennessee Equine Hospital in Thompson’s Station. Throughout the night — and throughout his campaign — Hatcher put forth his roots as a family farmer. In an introductory speech, Hatcher’s son Charles quoted Pat Summitt, the “greatest coach of all time,” in saying that cows don’t get days off. Two guests showed up with a basket of tomatoes and peppers grown on their farm. A campaign staffer described the event as “no frills,” with Puckett’s Restaurant catering and Michelob Ultra and Yuengling as the two beer options alongside a few stray Monster energy drinks.

After thanking his family, halfway through his victory speech, Hatcher saw on his watch he had a call from Molder.

Molder, he said, was the “best Democratic candidate they had to offer in this state, and maybe the country. It was a hard-fought race. I do think I outworked him. But he was a formidable opponent.”

“We’ve got real problems on our hands,” he said, confirming with the crowd that Republicans had lost the House and Senate. He said collaboration across the aisle was necessary now more than ever.

“I know what the issues are,” he said.

This message resonated with his supporters at the event, who said they liked that Hatcher seemed down to earth and “not like a politician.”

Though the redrawn 5th District favored Republicans on paper, Molder, an attorney and the mayor of Columbia in Maury County, was able to raise more than $3.5 million throughout his campaign — nearly twice as much as Hatcher. In the end, it was not enough.

In his concession speech, Molder referred to the 5th as “a district drawn to make sure this race would never be this close.”

“We made them sweat to the very end,” he added.

“He’ll represent a lot of people who didn’t vote for him,” Molder said of Hatcher, “and I hope he’ll represent them well.”

Molder, whose successor as mayor of Columbia was elected on Tuesday, also hinted at a continued future in politics.

“I don’t know what comes next or when, but I know there is work to be done,” he said. “We can still win this race. It might not be this one, but there is a race to be won.”

While Hatcher was ultimately victorious, many district voters would have had a new representative either way, as the Republicans’ scramble to redraw Tennessee’s congressional map for partisan advantage had shifted the 5th’s borders, stripping it of its piece of Nashville and extending it northwest through rural West Tennessee all the way down to Memphis. 

Hatcher’s victory also marks another milestone in the political career of U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles, the Republican incumbent whom Hatcher beat in the August GOP primary. Hatcher was the latest candidate supported by more traditional forces in the Republican Party against Ogles, a bomb-throwing figure endorsed by President Donald Trump, who later lent his support to Hatcher. 

Both Hatcher and Molder originally pitched their campaigns as efforts to oust Ogles. With that out of the way unexpectedly in August, the campaign was reborn in a new light. 

In recent months, Hatcher has acknowledged higher costs driven by Trump’s tariffs and war in Iran, especially for the farming community the candidate sought to speak directly to throughout the campaign. Hatcher, a veterinarian by trade, was the commissioner of agriculture under ally Gov. Bill Lee and is the owner of Hatcher Family Dairy. 

“The tariffs can be very effective,” Hatcher told reporters in October. “There’s a right time. I’m not saying they were used effectively every single time, but they’ve been used very effectively in many cases.”

Hatcher said the war should end, but only when the U.S. can guarantee that Iran will not have a nuclear weapon and that the nation does not have a “stranglehold” on the oil trade.

Molder raised the same issues during the campaign. His proposed solutions were more direct, though, as Hatcher sought not to directly criticize the president he campaigned for. He said both the tariffs and the war should end immediately. 

“My first priority when I get to Congress is to work as hard as I can to work with as many people as I can across the political spectrum to reduce the cost of living by getting rid of the tariffs and bringing an end to this war,” Molder said at a campaign forum. 

When asked about Ogles at the campaign forum, Hatcher said the thing he heard the most about his predecessor was poor constituent services, and he pledged to do better. Hatcher has not emphasized policy positions on which he differs from the more outspoken Ogles. 

“I will compromise to the point that we can collaborate,” Hatcher said of what to expect of him in Washington. “I won’t compromise on the values that you hold dear or I hold dear, but I will definitely collaborate and reach across the aisle, and I plan on doing that.” 

In his victory speech Tuesday night, Hatcher called his campaign the hardest thing he’s ever done.

“But not harder than a day of dairy farming,” he added, to applause.

“It’s special tonight,” said Monty McInturff, co-founder of the equine hospital, “to think about sending a farmer to Washington.”

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