U.S. Senate candidate Bill Hagerty leads his opponent Manny Sethi by almost four percentage points, according to a new poll that a Georgia-based group released this week.
Members of that organization, The Trafalgar Group, polled 1,062 likely 2020 GOP primary voters July 6 through July 8, according to their report.
According to the poll, the Republican candidates who want to replace the retiring U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) netted the following percentage points:
• Bill Hagerty: 42.3 percent
• Manny Sethi: 38.8 percent
• Undecided: 12.7 percent
• George Flinn: 3.9 percent
• Other candidate: 2.4 percent
According to the report, The Trafalgar Group polled almost an even mix of men and women.
Hagerty campaign spokesman Michael Byerly told The Tennessee Star in an email Friday that U.S. President Donald Trump has, as reported, endorsed Hagerty.
“Tennesseans support President Trump,” Byerly said.
“In the Senate, Bill will work with President Trump to support our law enforcement officers, hold China accountable, defend the right to life, support our military and veterans, stop illegal immigration, build the wall and protect Tennessee conservative values.”
Meanwhile, Sethi Campaign Manager Forrest Barnwell-Hagemeyer said The Trafalgar Group’s poll proves Sethi “has the momentum.”
“Tennesseans want a conservative outsider, not an establishment insider like Bill Hagerty with close ties to Mitt Romney,” Barnwell-Hagemeyer said in an email. “We’ve already got one Mitt Romney in the Senate. We don’t need another one.”
As The Star reported this week, Sethi and Hagerty released separate polls concerning which Republican leads the race for the primary election and by how much.
Both polls tallied wildly different results.
Bill Hagerty’s campaign released a poll that said he leads opponent Manny Sethi by 17 points.
But Sethi’s campaign released a poll showing Hagerty instead leads his opponent by two points.
Hagerty’s poll, which his campaign released July 1, sampled 651 likely Republican voters between June 28 and June 30 of this year. Hagerty poll says he had a double-digit advantage among primary voters in the Nashville, Knoxville, Memphis, and Tri-Cities media markets.
Members of Sethi’s campaign released their poll Tuesday. That poll showed Hagerty has 33 points, while Sethi had 31 points.
Among those who have seen, read or heard about the race, Sethi does 12 points better than Hagerty among voters who are much more likely to vote for a candidate, according to the Sethi campaign poll.
The Sethi campaign said it surveyed 800 likely Republican primary voters in Tennessee on June 30 and July 1 with a blend of cell phones and land lines.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Bill Hagerty” by Bill Hagerty. Photo “Manny Sethi” by Manny Sethi.
Senatorial candidate Bill Hagerty, like his President Trump hating friend Mitt Romney, seems too slick for me, especially with his association with George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney and Bill Haslam. As in: “The enemy of my friend is my enemy”. Also, as the saying goes: “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog”. I know that President Trump has endorsed Hagerty, but upon ill-advice President Trump has made some questionable picks in the past. All in all I’m presently leaning toward Dr. Manny Sethi.
Although I support President Trump, I am extremely skeptical of his endorsements. I have no proof, but I am certain President Trump made a deal with Mitch McConnell to endorse McConnell’s Establishment RINO candidates in exchange for getting the President’s judicial appointments approved in the Senate. It would explain everything. In all other areas, McConnell has been as worthless and obstructive as Paul Ryan. There is no way McConnell is helping the President without getting something in return. Why else would the President have endorsed so many RINOs?
Now is not the time to risk replacing that disaster of a sellout Lamar Alexander with another one. Lamar Alexander and Mitt Romney both support Mr. Hagerty. That is all we need to know.
I personally knew Dr. Manny Sethi’s father. He had a picture of himself with President Reagan in his office. This is a patriotic family worthy of our support.
I’ve had the opportunity to meet and talk with Dr Manny Sethi on several occasions. He came to and spoke to the main annual meeting of Tennessee Firearms Association meeting of which I’ve been a long time member. We are a hardline RBKA organization and a Constitutionalist one as well. The most important thing to me is that a candidate supports Liberty, ALL of the Bill of Rights, and obeys their delegated powers in the Constitution as it is read objectively by the rules of English grammar.. To that end, I am supporting and voting for Manny Sethi.
Bill Lee and Bill Dunn are devout Christians. Both believe that it is a Christian duty to resettle Muslim refugee’s from around the world in Tennessee. Does Sethi? DJT asked for Hagerty early on. True Conservatives will vote for Hagerty to send to support the President.
Silence, I agree with you on this issue and there are professing Christians who are either ignorant of or fail to obey their oaths of office, as unfortunately do most elected officials. Also, Christians are instructed:
But if any provide not for his own, and especially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel. –I Timothy 5:8
That is, one elected to take an oath to the U.S. or State Constitutions must obey that oath (Numbers 30:2) and be loyal to the people of their own country, just as to their family, first. Therefore, resettlement of any foreign peoples is NOT something that puts our people first. That must be according to enfircement of our immigration laws which should be only what’s best for our people and with their consent pursuant to Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution. Dr Manny Sethi has an excellent TV ad, one of his first, which strongly advocates enforcing our immigration laws without discrimination or preference. Based on that, I think he certainly would disagree with Bill Lee and Bill Dunn. Hagerty has otherwise been associated with George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney and Bill Haslam, none of whom are strong conservatives and certainly not strong on America First immigration issues. From what I know, Manny Sethi would be best on this issue.
If ever a man was an ‘insider,’ it is Bill Hagerty. I think that Hagerty will automatically do the ‘bidding’ of the ‘big boys’ and the ‘insiders’ if he is elected, and I don’t like that. I don’t think that Manny Sethi will. Sethi is young, and he has a lot to learn–he is a physician, not a lawyer, and thus he has a different experience background and skill set from Hagerty. BUT I think that Sethi is ‘the real deal’ when it comes to being a Conservative. I like the fact that his Christianity is important to him. Sethi is smart and he will learn. I TRUST Sethi in a way that I do not with Hagerty! Maybe I am wrong, but that is the way that I ‘see’ it. I will be voting for Manny Sethi for U. S. Senator, not Bill Hagerty.
Agree John, Dr. Sethi has my vote.
Go Manny Go! No more rhinos!
Rick, I agree, no more RINO’s ! Speaking of which, I just saw this posted on TheLibertyDaily.com:
https://thenationalpulse.com/politics/bill-hagerty-black-lives-matter-rj-o-brien/