Redistricting Helped Send Andy Ogles to Congress. Four Years Later, a New Map Helped Defeat Him.

Charlie Hatcher’s Republican primary victory shows that redistricting can change more than partisan advantage. It can erase much of an incumbent’s relationship with the voters.

Charlie Hatcher’s Republican primary victory shows that redistricting can change more than partisan advantage. It can erase much of an incumbent’s relationship with the voters.

By The Redemption Project Newsroom
Elections / Congressional Desk

U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles entered Thursday’s Republican primary with two advantages congressional candidates usually want.

He was the incumbent, and President Donald Trump had endorsed him.

Neither was enough.

Former Tennessee Agriculture Commissioner Charlie Hatcher defeated Ogles in the Republican primary for Tennessee’s newly redrawn 5th Congressional District, taking roughly 53% of the vote to Ogles’ 47%. Hatcher now advances to the November general election against Democratic Columbia Mayor Chaz Molder.

At first glance, the result looks like an incumbent losing a Republican primary.

The more interesting story is what happened to the constituency underneath him.

The Associated Press estimates that 82% of voters in the new 5th District were not part of Ogles’ previous district. In practical terms, Ogles remained an incumbent in Washington while becoming something much closer to a new candidate for most of the people deciding whether to send him back.

That changes what incumbency means.

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Incumbency is partly a relationship

Members of Congress normally accumulate advantages that challengers cannot quickly reproduce. They handle constituent cases, attend community events, build relationships with local officials, appear repeatedly in local media and spend years putting their names in front of the same electorate.

Redistricting can weaken much of that advantage overnight.

The officeholder keeps the title, committee experience and voting record. But if most voters are new, much of the accumulated relationship between representative and represented disappears.

That appears especially important in this race.

Ogles was not simply asking longtime constituents to renew his contract. He was introducing himself to a district that stretched far beyond the constituency that had elected him before. AP described the new district as extending from Ogles’ Middle Tennessee base northwest across the state before running south along the Mississippi River toward Memphis.

Incumbency is not only a title. It is familiarity with an electorate.

Tennessee changed the electorate.

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The irony is that redistricting once helped Ogles

There is another reason this race deserves more attention than a normal congressional upset.

Redistricting helped create Ogles’ original path to Congress.

Before the 2022 election, Tennessee Republicans broke apart the Nashville-centered 5th District and distributed Davidson County among several congressional districts. The redesigned 5th became substantially more favorable to Republicans, and Ogles won the seat that November.

Four years later, Tennessee lawmakers redrew the congressional map again. The May 2026 changes reshaped several districts as Republicans pursued the possibility of winning all nine of Tennessee’s U.S. House seats. The 5th changed with them.